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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: The roof, the roof
by Alex Ziebart 
Jun 9th 2009 at 1:00PM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
Jack Spicer asked...
"With each expansion Blizzard seems to be bringing underused talent specs around and making them highly desirable. In TBC, it seemed to be Feral Druids, Prot Pallies, Shadow Priests and BM Hunters. In Wrath, they really brought up Survival Hunters and Retribution Pallies.
But I'm curious. From a PvE perspective, which talent trees are still universally lacking and laughable?"
Oh boy, this one is going to be debated pretty viciously today, isn't it? From a purely min/maxing point of view, it's largely the very strong PvP specs that are lacking in PvE, and that's probably by design. A Shadowstep spec from Rogues isn't going to perform in PvE. A Frost spec for Mages, and I mean deep Frost and not some hybrid Frostfire thing, is pretty lacking in PvE. Both of those are strong PvP specs... usually. I think that's intended though and I'm not convinced that will change anytime soon.
I can't think of any PvE-oriented specs that are actually failing in PvE. Some specs aren't as good as they could be, but the gaps are much, much smaller than they were a couple of years ago.
Fuseitana asked...
"The Bosstiary that WoW.com featured a few days ago was really informative, I wish Blizzard would put out the same for their other raid instances. MY question is whether there is in-game lore that gives the information in the Bosstiary. IE, without it would we know that Auriaya was the archivist?"
I don't think there's any other information that says Auriaya is the archivist of Ulduar, no. Auriaya, Kologarn and the Assembly of Iron were all largely mysteries until the Bosstiary. Luckily, they're mostly in the minority. There is definitely a lot of information on the Keepers and Yogg-Saron floating around. You can figure out the roles of Ignis and Razorscale with some informed guesswork. Ignus is Generic Titanic Blacksmith #1058462. Razorscale is the only notable Proto-Drake in the place, and Thorim is missing Veranus, so you can put two and two together there. And General Vezax? Well, it's pretty obvious what he is.
Tharesar asked...
"If I create a Death Knight, play until I get all my blue gear then sell everything, send all the money to an alt and repeat again and again, will I get a reasonable amount of cash? Or is this a huge waste of time?"
A colossal waste of time. There could be worse ways to spend your time, but if your goal is to make gold you're much better off doing daily quests. Faster, significantly more profitable.
Twothing asked...
"After reading the post "Interview with a Scammer" and discovering that buying the TCG loot cards for ingame gold isn't a breech of TOS. I wanted to know can I buy time cards for ingame gold?"
No, because game time has a cash value. It costs real money to play. The item from the TCG card does not have a price attached to it. It's a free, costless bonus from buying the trading cards. You can absolutely trade in-game gold for things with no cash value. If you pay attention to the contests we run here on our site, you might notice that we don't have big, crazy legal rules attached to TCG loot giveaways. That's why. The TCG loot has no cash value, thus we don't need to worry about legal issues at all.
However, game cards do have a cash value. We pay $15/month to play WoW. If we here at WoW.com wanted to give away some game cards, we would need to get some old fashioned legal such-and-such written up because money would be involved. Gold for gametime would basically be a roundabout gold selling and buying service. The money would just come in the form of 30 days of WoW printed on plastic.
Now I wrap this up with a shout out to Oghorille of Grizzly Hills US. Hi!
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
MO Jun 9th 2009 2:12PM
So wait, what is General Vezax? WoWWiki has him as a Faceless One. Yet his arms are the same size and he looks more like some kind of Qiraji offshoot with those antennae on top. Plus he actually has a face (which seems to have webbing that is Naga-like).
ClayMask Jun 9th 2009 2:20PM
I can't think of any PvE-oriented specs that are actually failing in PvE.
From what I've seen, demonology warlocks are good for PvE soloing, but not for raiding.
Angus Jun 9th 2009 3:00PM
Demo has always been better as a fel/emberstorm hybrid. Illidan form didn't do enough because it would be nuts in PVP. You are correct though, they aren't a PVE build. Leveling, dailies, and PVP, yep, but not raid spec.
Discolando Jun 9th 2009 2:27PM
Question:
Considering Blizzard has put in considerable effort to make all specs viable, could we see an effort to make non-standard specs more viable? Specifically, I am thinking of the classic Shockadin spec (ie, Holy/Ret caster based DPS). BC and WotLK have both brought remarkable improvements in the potential output of Shockadins and the only significant things we're lacking now to be viable in end-game raiding is gear specific to the playstyle (plate with spell hit) and a small buff to bring us to the level of other hybrid dps classes. I for one would instantly change my Paladin to a Shockadin spec full time if it were possible to bring this specific kind of reliable dps and healing to a raid with one spec.
Wisakedjak Jun 9th 2009 11:27PM
Seconded on this. Also, dreamstate druids, lolsmite priests, and maybe even the infamous melee hunter... :-P (Okay, not so much the last one, but the other two are builds I've enjoyed.)
Solas Jun 9th 2009 2:32PM
Probably asked before, but here goes...
Could I get a quick explanation of instancing as it relates to a raid like Naxx or Ulduar? Specifically, if I clear 2 wings with Group A on Tuesday night, could I then join Group B on Wednesday who has had also previously cleared my wings from Tuesday, but is now working on the remaining 2 wings which nobody in the group (including myself and the members of Group A) has cleared for that given week?
I hope that made sense and keep up the great work at WoW.com!
Angus Jun 9th 2009 2:40PM
You can't.
You have a raid ID. Go to the "o"screen (social) and look at the raid tab. Look at the raid information. It will give you the ID#s of all the raids you are locked to and instances along with when they reset.
When you zone into any raid, you automatically go to whichever raid ID# you are locked to. If you are not locked, you join the one that is now assigned when it becomes saved(Boss dies or event starts.)
They want to prevent people hopping instances for loot. It doesn't save what bosses you have downed, just what raids you are part of, that info knows the bosses. I think it would be a lot of work for them to allow instance hopping in the rare cases where you had done the same bosses.
Anaughtybear Jun 9th 2009 2:33PM
"But I'm curious. From a PvE perspective, which talent trees are still universally lacking and laughable?"
Fury Warriors. There was a short time there when Titan's Grip was awesome, and was worth playing my warrior. Now we have to look at red stats on the character tab, telling us how fail it is. It is truly a sad day when Protection does more dps than Fury.
Mattimus Jun 9th 2009 2:34PM
Titan's Grip was the worst thing to happen to Fury. It sounds cool in theory, but in practice Blizz has found it impossible to balance.
nobag80 Jun 9th 2009 2:37PM
Why is it that the majority of people I see and read about online play horde? Why does it seem that alliance is a joke to the crew of wow.com and the majority of readership as it seems.
Everytime someone says something about an Alliance player it's "reroll horde". And how come I see horde stickers everywhere on peoples' cars but no alliance..... anything?
Angus Jun 9th 2009 2:56PM
/troll
Because Alliance sucks.
/end troll
You see people doing something you have not chosen to, so you are noticing it and taking note of it whenever it happens. Look at the classic cases. Mac vs PC, Ford vs Chevy, Republican vs Democrat. You can actually find people that are rabid about it and it is likely because they feel that if someone chose the other side, they have to defend their decision. People hate feeling like they made the wrong choice on something important.
Example of it here...
Matt Rossi has a shaman column. He kept showing Space Goat screenshots. People asked why and he responded that he hasn't given the Orc shaman much love. He had pics from people the next week showing Horde as an apology. That was the Horde people doing the same thing you are. We know Rossi likes both sides, he's made comments about it. But people saw a pattern that wasn't there and called him on it. Take the entire articles on the Idiot King of Stormwind being right and wrong. They had both sides talking a lot. Did you notice my putting my viewpoint in there? Yep. You saw it right away if you like Alliance or the bonehead. (heh)
I've played both sides. It's not important enough for me to be rabid. I'll punch holes in the rabid people's views because I am kinda OCD about that, but normally I do this for fun anyway.
Don't worry, the Alliance has plenty of supporters.
Nizari Jun 9th 2009 6:19PM
Another reason it might seem that there's more horde support on the 'net may be that the horde player base is simply more vocal. A lot of Horde players, especially those who've been playing Horde since Vanilla WoW, think of the Horde as being the underdog, scrappy ragtag team that has to fight for every inch of what they get. So they tend to be very vocal about their factions allegiance.
Elathil Jun 10th 2009 1:47PM
In the sortest possible terms: One reason you see Horde things everywhere because I, as a Horde player, see Alliance things everywhere.
Jason Jun 9th 2009 3:44PM
I initially rolled Alliance and really didn't get much out of it personally. The story lines were didn't pack any punch for me. I rolled Horde on another server at the suggestion of a friend and enjoyed it immensely. The story lines seemed better. In some cases I actually felt like I'd achieved something. Also, I'd have to say that playing a Forsaken is a guilty pleasure of mine - they're such total bastards.
I have been tempted to go back to my Alliance alt and see how leveling to 80 on that side is like, especially in Outland and Northrend.
Oh, one more thing...you get to kill Gnomes, which just never gets old.
lockanon Jun 9th 2009 4:02PM
I'm a Gnome.....
But you are absolutely right, we are immensely fun to kill, I still go to Dun Morogh sometimes to kill leper gnomes.....
holypaladin Jun 9th 2009 5:15PM
I do the death knight thing sometimes. It makes a reasonable amount if you're sending it to a low level alt (Say level 10-30?) but is useless once the alt gets to outlands. You net around 60g a char by level 58. It is a waste of time tho unless like me you just rerolled factions and have no gold whatsoever.
Croe Jun 9th 2009 5:23PM
In regards to the Loot Card givaways.. if there are no legal issues, why are only the people from the USA allowed to enter it? In fact, it kind of sucks that most of these kind of things (Mountain Dew anyone?) are restricted to the USA.
Cas Jun 9th 2009 5:38PM
Is there a level cap on a trial account? If not, how far do you think one can go with the time allowed?
nobag80 Jun 9th 2009 5:44PM
Level cap is 20
AyaJulia Jun 9th 2009 5:58PM
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=20590