The Queue: The roof, the roof

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!
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
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Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria news





Reader Comments (Page 5 of 5)
moragny Jun 9th 2009 7:47PM
i agree its all applicable, I raid as a holy priest by choice.... you can still heal a tank well holy or not. It is the application of your spells that make you the good healer, your talents enhance that ..... lol . I have been specced disc before and i have played this game for some time. I do know what it can do raid wide .... i even said in my post every spec has a raid application. I guess it all comes down to people just wanting to QQ np's i understand . I will iterate my point, every spec has its application raid wise and pvp wise. Some specs just do better over all in pve or pvp... just because recount says one thing doesnt mean that the person with the less hps is a noob( i hate recount and people who always want it posted) or that th person with the highest hps isnt a noob. Its about how you apply those spells and talents to suit your role or roles
AyaJulia Jun 9th 2009 7:59PM
Just to reiterate:
"people are trying to pve disc...... It is a pvp spec LOLZ."
This one sentence is why you got such a negative reaction. I realize coming from me of all people this might sound funny, but you've got to learn how to phrase and tone things if you don't want them mistaken for what boils down to "people who use Disc in PvE are idiots."
Avrador Jun 9th 2009 5:46PM
Alright, but it the point was the shut out people, then they could simply not let them learn it. Isn't that what's done with inscription? Seeing as inscription is available in the usual places, I'd have to say something other than keeping the content expansion-only was their motives in limiting the amount of JC trainers.
And if inscription is actually available to everyone regardless, then keeping JC limited is even stranger.
AyaJulia Jun 9th 2009 5:53PM
"I'd have to say something other than keeping the content expansion-only was their motives in limiting the amount of JC trainers."
You'd have to be wrong if you'd have to say that. :)
They've said it a thousand times -- there are a lot of small things they'd like to go back and touch up, but current content is pulling their attention away from those things. They wanted to keep JC expansion only, so they put the trainers in expansion areas. They haven't changed it because they have other things to worry about.
Also keep in mind that they've kept higher levels of professions expansion-only by putting Master trainers in Outland, and Grand Master trainers in Northrend. Same thing. Seriously. No conspiracy.
Avrador Jun 9th 2009 6:04PM
Are you capable of learning Inscription without LK? Because if not, then there clearly is an easier way of making such things expansion only. Which is why I said there would seem to be some other motive when they did it.
AyaJulia Jun 9th 2009 6:23PM
I don't know if you can learn inscription without LK, but my point is it's not some insidious hidden conspiracy tinfoil hat motive thing. Even if they wanted to change JC to make it available to everyone--which no one can say for sure, FYI--they simply have better things to be spending their time on. It's one of a long list of things they'd like to tweak but don't have a chance to tweak.
Look, I was just correcting your initial assumption that the trainers were there in the first place to "emphasize the new races." Don't bicker about it. The trainers were limited to Exodar/SMC to limit the new profession to people who bought the expansion. This is true regardless of how their feelings may have changed since the inception of LK and inscription. :)
jbodar Jun 9th 2009 10:22PM
I believe they specifically declared that they were not putting Inscription behind the "xpac wall" for WotLK, as they did purposefully with JC. This is likely because there is no new low-level area that is xpac-only, which would make it hard for a lvl 10 Tauren to learn Inscription, even with the xpac.
Hyacinthe Jun 10th 2009 11:54AM
Inscription came out in a patch before WotLK came out. Jewelcrafting came out in the Burning Crusade Expansion. Therefore, anybody who only has vanilla WoW installed can get inscription. Only those with BC can get jewelcrafting because it was a part of the expansion.
Avrador Jun 10th 2009 12:07PM
Ah, okay. Thanks :)
Lemons Jun 9th 2009 6:01PM
A lot of specs that are lacking are lacking all around and aren't really good for anything in Wrath. Subtlety is fine as long as you like having one really good attack every 2 mins and enjoy spending the rest of the time struggling to position behind your target to do an attack that costs 45 energy for about 3k damage -.-
Imo shs should be a much shorter cd than 30 secs. A fucking hunter's disengage is on a shorter cd than our shs...wtf is up with that? Make shs the same cd as disengage if not a little shorter. And seriously folks...buff Backstab's damage. A mut rogue can easily do a 5k mutilate AND he doesn't have to even think about positioning. Against a clever opponent who keeps his back away from a sub rogue, our only real attack, Backstab, becomes virtually useless. Backstab needs to be rethought in general. I liked the idea of a "sneak attack" that can be used regardless of your position relative to you opponent, but does more damage when used from behind. So Backstab would become:
Sneak Attack: You perform a sneak attack causing 150% weapon damage plus 465 to the target, damage is increased by an additional 50% weapon damage plus 60 when striking from behind.
That way you don't have to resort to sinister striking on an opponent who's only goal in life seems to be the show you his front side at all times. Attacks only working when you're behind a target is an archaic mechanic that should be done away with. It's fine for stealth abilities, the target can't see you for heavens sake! But when applied to an ability that you must use in plain sight it becomes unwieldy and frustrating.
artifex Jun 9th 2009 7:31PM
Alex, I would say you have great luck, not bad luck.
(Because you survive all the weird stuff that is thrown at you!)
Bpow Jun 9th 2009 7:58PM
My question: I am looking to get a new macbook pro and wondering if 2gb of RAM will be enough to run WoW smoothly. Any thoughts?
Taladan Jun 9th 2009 8:12PM
It runs... Ok. I have one of the old MacBook Pros (around 2007) and it run mostly Ok. I added 2 more Gbs and it run really smoothly.
Now, let me add that recent patches made the game incredible more responsive and that my hardware is a little bit old. So 2Gb may be just fine with newer MacBooks and the latest patches.
Risq Jun 9th 2009 7:58PM
Y'know how they added the maps for dungeons? Is it just for the northrend instances or all instances? When I went to some old world places there weren't any new maps, which I found very disappointing.
Elathil Jun 10th 2009 1:47PM
It's just for Northrend, making that very useful update significantly less useful.
I still get lost in WC.
James Jun 9th 2009 8:27PM
Alterac Valley got reinforcements because people needed AV marks to buy PVP gear, now that they don't, and most likely will be knocked out from the honor turn in quest in favor of the new BG, why are reinforcements still there especially with the new emphasis on honor only.
Rylich Jun 10th 2009 2:19AM
I've seen alot of posts about people starting DK alts on their friends' servers to get a leg up on cash. What I don't get is if you're trying to hang with your friends, you can't find one of them that will spot you the 30-50g to make up for the time you spend?
Seems to me if you're server jumping to hang, then its the time that's important. In addition, it's not as though we're talking about a life altering amount of cash. Personally anyone I know well enough to server hop to hang out with me I know well enough to hook up with 3-4 frostweave bags and 50-100g.
pietrex Jun 10th 2009 9:20AM
I've got a little question for The Queue. Is there any real reason why Archavon and Emalon are NOT in separate instances? They represent different tier levels, and I'm sure many people would want to do the easier boss without doing the harder one, but they can't because other people don't want to waste their saves.
Russell Jun 10th 2009 8:06PM
I have a L80 paladin that has a defence rating of 563 and unbuffed HP of 24800.
Is it worthwhile for me to trade off some of this Defence for greater stamina?
Should I continue to seek plus defence gear or move into plus Dodge or Parry or Block gear?
Russell
elstor Jun 12th 2009 8:17AM
I'm adding a comment so the comments are a round number. Just thought you'd like to know!