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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Tanks
by Michael Sacco 
May 1st 2011 at 12:00PM
I'm tired. I've been tanking all weekend. Let's do this Queue so I can sleep and do it all over again tomorrow.
Crispn asked:
Is it me or are the new Zandalari fights way too healing intensive? The eagle boss in Zul'Aman for example, I had 17.8k hps that fight, just to keep us alive. This is a little much, no?
While the new instances are definitely on a higher difficulty level than current heroics and they do require more healing output, most fights are types of brain checks as opposed to heal checks (Nalorakk and Halazzi excepted). For Akil'zon, as I discovered tanking the place yesterday, he only gives one person the Static Disruption debuff at a time, but it'll chain to people who're within 12 yards of his target. So if everyone is spaced out 12 yards, only one person will get hit with it, guaranteed. You then have until the next Electrical Storm phase (or until it expires) to deal with the debuff.
Also, though this has nothing to do with healing, you can melee, stun, and slow the white eagles.
Draol asked:
Is there a particular reason they stopped implementing Dungeon Sets? There were 1 & 2 during Vanilla, and it carried on into BC with Dungeon Set 3, but when Wrath came around they were nowhere to be seen.
Was there a special reason, or did Blizzard just think it was unnecessary?
I can't speak for Blizzard, but nowadays you already have all the elements of dungeon sets in the cohesive art styles of heroic, rep, and point vendor gear at the same item level. The only thing missing is the set bonus, and I think that might be the reason why you don't see named dungeon sets now, actually. Set bonuses encourage people to keep their set pieces together when, nowadays, pre-raid gear is intended to be a stepping stone to the next level of gear, a this'll do for now kind of thing. Besides, jealousy is a pretty good motivator to get better gear. "Aw man, I want a set bonus too!"
Mayanvampire asked:
In vash'jr, one of the shaman mentions that there is a fifth element, which allows shamans to connect with the creatures of the land, and maybe nature, are there life elementals? if so, could there be a life elemental lord?
Commenter Jormund Fenris sums up the fifth element for those who don't closely follow lore:
If you're looking for a life elemental, the closest thing would probably be any of the giant plants you see in various zones or on bosses like Freya and Ammunae. As for an elemental lord of the wilds, well, we don't know for sure, but there sure are a lot of demigods (especially night elf demigods) that could fill that role, such as Aessina."Spirit of the Wilds. The essentials is that shamans primarily use the first four elements, and very rarily the fifth. In contrast, druids focus entirely on the fifth and disregard the other four. The only shaman spell of the fifth element in-game is Ancestral Spirit, the shammie-ressurection spell."
Metzganator asked:
Did the feature to reorder your characters on the loggin screen come in 4.1? if so how do i access it?
Blizzard recently stated in its UI Q&A that it's slated for arrival in 4.2.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider 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: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 7 of 7)
Lemons May 2nd 2011 7:23AM
Yes you can do only one. The new quests weren't really to help us get the recipes faster, just to let low levels have access to cooking/fishing dailies nearer to where they may be questing.
Lemons May 2nd 2011 7:24AM
Dammit, this was supposed to be a reply to an earlier question.
mrrandrade May 2nd 2011 9:46AM
I've been colaborating with other healers posting on the official wow forums bug report session about the eagle boss.
If you have tried Akilzon on tuesday patch day and wed, you'd see a very easy fight, no problem healing through.
After the 'change' on the hot fix where the only listed change is 'plucker will be cast less often but have more health', you have massive epic groups failing on it because the damage we need to deal is around 2 -2.5 million, which is 3-4 times the damage presented on other fights.
It's not how it's supposed to be, and your advice on 'spread 12 yards' does not help groups with melee. Basically every discharge casted on melee will chain on the tank (+25% damage debuff on), and as you add melee the fight gets exponentially harder.
I've cleared ZA 3 times without a problem before this 'stealth buff' on Akilzon, and wiped more than 20 times just on it after that.
underground_slacker May 2nd 2011 9:22AM
I was under the assumption that the elements in wow were water, fire, nature-with stone at the forefront, wind, ice and sound.
sound in particular because anyone whos run the BC era dungeons has probably had a run in with the shadow councils attempt to bind an elemental lord of sound with a very ragnaros/nepptulon type body called murmurr. And in vash'jir a tauren shaman- possibly the same one talking about a fifth rarely used element just before he makes it so the brain of the giant creature can talk to you through a crab or whatever it was.
I mean my first thought was maybe sound is a subset of wind as ice would be to water but theres little things everywhere to point otherwise. Like if im not mistaken the stones around the ring of portals in org and sw each have a little window with a elemental representation in them, like a ball of fire or water for example, and isn't there one extra that looks like a double for the ice or wind one?
probably super tinfoil hat territory but we have seen sound elementals and it would be interesting if some connection to sound was why shamans can listen and commune with the earth in a way even druids can't to begin with.
kee May 2nd 2011 10:35AM
they only need The Fifth Element on very very rare occasions.... like when a giant alien asteroid is coming to destroy the planet... does that make Bruce Willis a shaman? :D
Matthew May 2nd 2011 6:31PM
It makes him one of the Broken
Steve May 2nd 2011 1:11PM
I've only finished 4/? bosses in ZA (it was after a failed raid Tuesday night that not enough people showed up for, so we didn't even start it until around 10:30 PM and we were all tired). However, the boss fights were the easy parts, we only wiped maybe twice total. The freaking trash was the pain in the ass part... Healing in raids is easier than healing those trash fights...and everyone I was grouped with is pretty well geared (355+ ilevel, I'm guessing, and 358 for myself, holy paladin). Granted, we were joking around a lot and just having fun, so that may have been a big factor in the wipes... The tank was getting hit HARD though.