The Queue: I'm on the bus
by Michael Sacco 
Feb 25th 2012 at 12:00PM
I follow a lot of people on Twitter, but one of my favorites is @beebee880, probably the nicest guy on the internet and a big fan of buses in general. My friend Satellite High made a split EP with Bert Smith that's all about Beebee's bus-related obsessions and it's pretty rad. You should go get it.
Puntable asked:
Why do you think they made the raid hit cap for casters more than twice as much as it is for melee?
Easy answer! Melee classes also have to deal with expertise, so it balances out in the end.
Gregorysoble asked:
Why are important lore characters unnaturally bigger than normal members of their race? For instance Thrall is like a giant in DS! And the Aspects too. If they are going to take a human or elvan form then wouldn't you think they'd pick a more realistic size so they can fit in better?
There isn't a lore explanation for this one; it's purely gameplay. Blizzard makes lore characters, especially ones involved in encounters, bigger because it's easier for people to see them and click on them when they're twice as big as normal. Trying to find a regular human-sized mob in a pack of 25 people (or adds) would be pretty difficult, health bars and nametags aside.
direbadgercvlry asked:
Do you think we'll see a savagekin class for the 4 main Druid races? I.E Savagekin class- rabid, melee damage centered on bleeds and diseases, spirit walker, melee damage with strikes centered on summoning spirits to buff and debuff, skin walker for another spec just can't think of a niche the skin walker would fill, even knowing the lore behind them.
Unlikely. Savagekin are only ever mentioned in the RPG books, and Blizzard has been upfront about those not being canon. Besides, "druids but more extreme" isn't really a compelling class idea. Let's focus on the new and cool.
Quasimofo asked:
Here's a technical question - Often when farming for transmog drops I'll end up killing huge piles of mobs at once to save time. The problem is in sorting through all the garbage looking for those rare greens. Is there a way to change your loot threshold on a personal level, so even if you are alone, you will only get sparkly corpses if there's something green or better in there?
You can't set your own loot threshold in the default UI, but there are addons that can do it for you. Commenter Aaron recommended LootFilter, which even lets you skip specific items while looting, not just certain-quality items.
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 1 of 5)
eresin Feb 25th 2012 12:11PM
I've often wondered by most bosses are so so big. I understand it's to make them see menacing and epic, but I'm getting a bit tired of just hacking away at their shins and ankles.
I do have question though. The Earthen Destroyers in the Dragon Soul raid have a resource bar which is purple, what resource is this since it's not one any of our classes use?
arkhan Feb 25th 2012 12:25PM
They have an energy bar that increases each time they cast Twilight Corruption (interruptible). When the energy bar of an Earthen Soldier reaches 100 energy, it empties and the Earthen Soldier is buffed with a 25% increase to damage done, which stacks.
From Icy Veins
Winwinchindin Feb 25th 2012 1:05PM
True.. fighting something as giant as Deathwing is a little over the top.
At least it's almost normal when fighting the Lich King or even Illidan (although I can't Illi's size compared to normal).
wowsitemail Feb 25th 2012 1:13PM
It's a new sort they added for Deathbringer Saurfang in ICC and I'm pretty sure it's been used for other Cataclysm mobs, but I can't remember any off the top of my head. It was called Blood Power for Saurfang, but I don't think it has an offical name. It's like rage in that it's built up with abilities, but it doesn't decay and when it reaches 100 bad things happen.
Nathanyel Feb 26th 2012 5:35AM
In 25man raids and sometimes even in 10mans, I hate humanoid bosses (or even trash mobs, for that matter) that are so "small" that you can't really determine their orientation from looking at them due to the spell effects from other players, especially when some melees cuddle up with the tank so you can't look at the latter to guess the orientation. Yes, I am a feral druid.
direbadgercvlry Feb 25th 2012 12:17PM
In line of recent question then, do you think we'll ever see hero "specs" instead of classes and if so which would be the most difficult to balance?
Noyou Feb 25th 2012 12:45PM
I don't think we will ever see a "hero class" again. With the level cap pushing to 100 though, there may be something where you can have a 2nd toon (one other than a DK) start at level 55 or 65- whatever level they see fit. Maybe in the expac after MoP.
Ata Feb 25th 2012 1:25PM
I think allowing access to a new spec for a class that you can only get to after say, playing to max or something, like a melee mage spell blade or something would be nifty as heck. It may even be easier to balance than DK's were when they were trying hard to make them be viable tanks/dps in all specs. They'd likely have to release it for all of the classes at once though...you can't really get away with your new 'hero spec' being one class only or you'll have cries of favoritism.
The simplification of the talents will likely make balancing easier on the devs overall once we get into Mists (fewer numbers to tweak and interactions to consider) so there'd be no way to really say what would be hardest to balance. But with druids effectively getting a fourth 'spec', that kinda opens the doors to other possibilities with the established classes that could really shake up the game and make it interesting, an expac or two down the road.
techno-warrior6 Feb 25th 2012 7:01PM
Dont qoute me on this but i pretty blizz once said something along the lines of, once you hit max level you could chose a spec branch that would tweak your character to play differently . E.G prot pally branches off to dealing heavy ao damage style of play or branches off to a more damage mitigation style of play. I think there was talk of something like that but im not sure
Noyou Feb 25th 2012 8:34PM
@Techno
Yeah. That was path of titans. It was scrapped before it even got to beta ;)
redwinger_6 Feb 25th 2012 12:22PM
If Blizzard does start selling gold, as has been suggested, won't that just inflate the prices of everything and make it so that you HAVE to buy gold in order to keep up with them? I think the only thing that keeps it from getting out of hand now is the risk of being hacked or banned if you get caught, but if it was done through Blizz, the amount of gold on each server would jump to a ridiculous amount, devaluing the currency and driving the prices up.
arkhan Feb 25th 2012 12:27PM
Blizzard is already selling gold via the Guardian Cub and so far the world hasn't ended because of it.
Chris Gonzalez Feb 25th 2012 12:36PM
I honestly doubt Blizzard would do that, because of inflation reasons. The closest that would be possible is if they put in a Real Money Auction House and allowed players to sell gold, but even then, it'd be unlikely. We're already paying $15 a month; making it so that we have to pay more just to stay relevant raid- and proffesion-wise would only make sense if they went free-to-play.
Noyou Feb 25th 2012 12:42PM
No. It's just a legal way for people who have more money than time to get in game currency. I think the guardian cub was a big flop, so my guess is that you may not see this again unless they reform it somehow. It's already fairly easy to make gold, which means people who have it, part with it more readily. Which is good and bad. Certain things are inflated and others remain very low.
Killik Feb 25th 2012 12:54PM
Yup, inflation is one of the reasons they aren't selling gold. Stuff like the Guardian Cub transfers gold from one player to another, rather than generating a load of new gold in the economy.
Whether they'll do something like the Cub again? It seemed very popular when it came out, although people were probably envisioning getting fantastically rich from selling them rather than the 5k-6k they seem to have settled at on most servers.
kewl97 Feb 25th 2012 1:39PM
The cub doesn't add money to the system, it adds a pet that can be traded, but you're just trading existing money in between people. If people bought huge numbers of cubs, then the in-game value of the cub would drop due to the huge supply.
neillr Feb 25th 2012 2:11PM
I hope there are more similar to the guardian cub. I bought 4 and cleared 35k gold the last one went for only 4k. Next one I will get in on the ground floor before the price bottoms out.
Noyou Feb 25th 2012 8:41PM
@neillr
After the first hour on my server the guardian cub was already getting undercut to 5-6k. Count yourself extremely lucky for being able to get that kind of gold ;) I bought one the second day for 4.4k, thinking I could sell it for more. I held onto it for 3-4 weeks before I finally was able to sell it for about 4.1k. For me, 5-6k gold is not worth $10.
arkhan Feb 25th 2012 12:35PM
I have an UI problem and I assume it's being caused by one of my addons. It manifests in a couple of different ways, the text in my quest log sometimes disappears and the buttons stop working. The reforge menu also stops working and I can't click on anything in the dungeon journal. A reload always fixes these issues, but it's kind of annoying. Anybody know what could be the cause? I don't really want to go through my tons of addons and disable each one by one until I find it.
keith Feb 25th 2012 12:43PM
Do you have MoveAnything or a similar addon that moves UI elements around? Sometimes MoveAnything will hiccup and put the interactive layer or text layer at a lower level than the background layer, even if its part of an object or UI element that you haven't told it to "move".