The Queue: Go eat a pizza pie
by Alex Ziebart 
Jan 4th 2012 at 11:00AM
Today is another one of those days where I have no clever intro to put here. I guess I didn't talk about stupid things from the '90s on Twitter enough last night. I need to rectify that.
Let's see, how about ... Samurai Pizza Cats? Yeah. That'll do.
Stargazer asked:
There's a rumor going around the LFR groups that people with lower quality gear get "favored" in the roll system so they get mgeared faster. Can you confirm or deny this? Also, does Blizzard have to tell us about every single change they make in the game? What if they want to tweak something like a drop rate. Thanks.
I can't confirm or deny it with 100% certainty, but it sounds like a bunch of crap. As cutaia said yesterday: "In reality, you tend to remember the more annoying or inconvenient circumstances in life, as opposed to the times when things work the way they theoretically ought. When the guy pulling 5k DPS wins gear from each boss, it stands out more and is more likely to get shared as a story than the time 16 people, each performing average to well, each won something."
Malsi asked:
Clearly, the correct answer is Rita Repulsa!
Arrohon asked:
General Video Game question: What game (or series) do you believe has the best music?
If we're talking music made for the game, the Mass Effect series is pretty high up there for me. I'm a sucker for slightly off-kilter sci-fi tracks. If we're talking best use of music, Saints Row 3 is great at using its licensed soundtrack at just the right moments to make you feel like a big damn hero.
willmsgame asked:
Question? Why change up the UI in wow? I started raiding around the time that the argent crusade raid started, but I never felt like I needed a whole new UI besides what blizzard gave me. I mostly use macros for all my rotation abilities, I don't normally have to click on anything, and when I do, the two additional bars above my main action bar was all the room I need. Whats so great about New UI's?
It's all about customization and tailoring things to your particular needs. I never used a full UI package, either. I found Blizzard's UI to be pretty good for the vast majority of tasks, and I used addons for ... adding on to the base package. That was all I needed or wanted.
Other people don't like the base UI at all. And that's fine. They can change it if they want to do that. They might want things in different places, or make specific elements more prominent while moving others out of the way and so on. It's like your bedroom is probably not identical to your buddy's bedroom. The same basic things are in that room, but they're in different places and painted different colors because that's how you like it. If you're going to spend countless hours in it and using it, you might as well be comfortable with it.
techno-warrior6 asked:
since Kalegos is the aspect of magic why does he don't have mana? This was bugging me through out the whole Madness of Deathwing fight
Because he don't ain't no needing it does.
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!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
Caden Reigns Jan 4th 2012 11:04AM
with the feldrake and eye of the legion pet being datamined (and hopefully not from the tcg), do you think the the legion will have some influence in MoP?
loop_not_defined Jan 4th 2012 11:24AM
It appears the next big TCG release, Crown of the Heavens, will focus on Nordrassil, the Druids, and the Satyr. This is set to release in February with a preview set up later this month in Los Angeles.
I'm starting to think these are all TCG related. With a release date next month, they'll need to get the loot card items on Live servers soon.
Ralethisolur Jan 4th 2012 11:25AM
I saw this too, if it is TCG i will be full of sad. However if they are from an event in the near future? I am wondering if the burning legion spies reported back about the Aspects gone mortal and they assault a perceived defenseless planet.
Cephas Jan 4th 2012 11:31AM
Bringing the Burning Legion back for Pandaria? Sorry, but I can't picture that happening. Calling it right now - they're TCG loot.
Shinae Jan 4th 2012 11:38AM
I miss having the Legion as a major enemy, but I bet that they will not be playing a part in Pandaria.
dinossor2007 Jan 4th 2012 12:43PM
I originally thought they would be from Crown of the Heavens TCG as well, but that set already has its mount and pet, the Corrupted Hippogryph and Grell companion. It could be another set, though.
For some reason, though, I feel like theres an event or something happening that we don't know about.
loop_not_defined Jan 4th 2012 1:37PM
Are you sure?
https://twitter.com/#!/Proenix00/status/154504325320814592
loop_not_defined Jan 4th 2012 1:53PM
Also, Proenix (who made the tweet) is one of the Spanish MVPs. Just noticed that.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/es/forum/topic/3161500168
I know that doesn't really give him/her any special insider knowledge, but the person certainly isn't some random player off the street.
Michael Sacco Jan 4th 2012 2:19PM
Sorry, I was out of the loop on this one. They are indeed TCG items.
Drahken Jan 4th 2012 2:34PM
@Ralethisolur:
Now that the Aspects are mortal, the planet is defenseless? Wasn't the whole point of the Aspects becoming mortal cinematic that the mortals don't need the Aspects? It seems to me we've been doing a pretty bang-up job of defending the world so far. I love em, but the only thing the Aspects have done is suck and die. They've solved exactly one of Azeroth's problems (the final fight against Deathwing. and they needed a mortal's help for that too.) and that was a something that wouldn't have even happened if there weren't Aspects in the first place.
Edymnion Jan 4th 2012 3:32PM
Being an Aspect isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Task Jan 4th 2012 11:05AM
@Alex Ziebart
I'm pleased you did a samurai Pizza Cats theme today.
+20 samurai cat armor robots
If you keep this up, you might win what's in the mystery box, which includes bacon, pizza, $50 or a surprise pet cat or dog.
Lannden Jan 4th 2012 2:44PM
I remember 6 years ago in juinor year of high school trying to convince everyone that this show existed.
Revnah Jan 4th 2012 11:06AM
Q for the Q:
Do you believe the imbalance in difficulty of current lvl 85 heroic 5mans is going to be addressed at some point? Right now when you first hit 85 and have bad gear, you run the endlessly long, hard heroics until your gear level is high enough to run the shorter, easier Hour-of-Twilight heroics. That's a bit upside-down, don't you think?
wow Jan 4th 2012 11:18AM
378 gear is so common now, it's incredibly easy to pick up a few pieces on the AH for a few hundred gold and skip straight to the Dragon Soul dungeons. I know, because I finally got my Ret Pally to 85 and haven't done any other dungeons.
OK, so until I get those last few drops or enough emblems I still have a green quest trinket and a couple of crafted PvP pieces (because end-level crafting still favours PvP for most slots), but I'm able to put out OK DPS - and every drop makes it even more respectable.
nosoup4u76 Jan 4th 2012 11:23AM
I would doubt that Blizz does anything to change the original heroics. Once you have one 85, it's pretty easy to gear any others that you bring along. Plus, if you level up through questing and the dungeon finder from 80 to 85, you should have a good amount of JP to spend on ilevel 378 items at this point. Add in a few pieces of relatively cheap 377 pvp gear to fill in the holes that can't be filled otherwise and you can probably jump right into hour of twilight heroics.
I'm currently doing this with my shaman (81) and he probably could walk into Dragon Soul (LFR) once he dings 85 and gets the nice quest 365 cloak
Shinae Jan 4th 2012 11:27AM
So. This.
I queued into Grim Batol the other week to get a Winter Hat and finally finish the quests on a WoE-capable tank alt.
GB's harder now than it was before 4.1 because the others were so badly geared and didn't have a clue about the boss mechanics. Even after explanations, I spent hours wiping on all of the bosses before dropping after a few attempts on the last boss. It was often a case of DPS not killing adds fast enough.
Eyhk Jan 4th 2012 1:37PM
Spot on. I commented about this last darkmoon faire when I was trying to get that quest item to drop. Old heroics are like pulling teeth and ZA is nigh impossible.
To me, it seems like one of two things (or a combination of both)
1. The item level gating is working really well. The new players are banging their heads against the heroic wall to gear up so many times that by the time they are ready for the twilight heroics, they are skilled and competent.
2. The item level gating is an actual class divider where ultra-casuals who rarely game will always fail at the more unforgiving mechanics of lesser heroics, fail to get gear, and be stuck while the more skilled or people with more time will gear passed them easily and stay in the upper echelons
There was also a post on how the bosses in Stonecore were designed to wipe new parties the first time due to counter-intuitive or buggy mechanics like hiding behind the rocks on Slabhide would still kill you if you were hiding behind one of the closer ones due to the size of his hitbox which ignores los if you are still inside it.
djsuursoo Jan 4th 2012 11:51AM
you can run the regulars until you've acquired the points to simply hurdle the older heroics and the troll runs altogether. it actually doesn't take all that long, given how many bosses are in the older dungeons.
at 30 jp a pop most dungeons yield between 150 and 210 jp for a full clear, plus the bonus for pugging in.
getting a few pieces of gear that far surpasses the dungeon-dropped gear is trivial at this point.
alternatively you can skip that entire process if you're into PVP, as honor converts to justice, granted at a semi-crappy exchange rate, but it's easy to get the points for a new major item(chest/legs) in a single night if you buckle down and win a few matches.
of course, you COULD just take a full kit of the crafted PVP gear(vicious gear) and not only qualify for the new dungeons, but also for LFR. this is easiest if you have some helpful guildmates.
NOTE:
taking the pvp gear route is fudging it. the gear is significantly powerful now, and if you're DPS you can output respectably just on the strength of the main stats alone. you won't match someone in proper PvE gear, but you won't be simply leeching the run as a bystander.
ADDENDUM:
i don't recommend the pvp-gear route if you're a tank/healer unless you're GOOD. it's more fudge-able as a healer but tanks lose too much defensive stats and are extremely squishy. if the healer has some major talent/gear, they can work some miracles and keep you alive but they will hate you for it.
alternatively with healers, if you're fudging it with non-vicious pvp gear you're very likely going to get outhealed by a blood DK(i did this a few nights ago. matched his HPS and outhealed him for overall healing amount). that is, in a word, embarrassing.
TL:DR it's not that hard to get geared and get geared fast if you put in some research/patience/effort. the older heroics can simply be bypassed thanks to the availability of extremely powerful crafted gear. if you heal or tank, take the crafted gear and DPS for a while to build a healing/tanking kit and then have at it. or 'torture'* yourself by doing the older heroics.
*'torture' being relative. i rather enjoy the old heroics because they're not a simple AoE farm and they make a good test of your overall skill.
Nacirema Jan 4th 2012 11:53AM
@Shinae
Next time solo Heroic Nexus - the hat drops off the first boss.