Posts with tag Proto-Drake

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, 10 little points are all that stand between us and a new ... something.

Many of the mounts this week be familiar to you if you've read The OverAchiever: Pimp Thy Ride, which I wrote before the Cataclysm content patch with an eye toward the number of people who wanted to slap a 310% mount on their toons before it had to be trained. Sadly, none of the mounts described in that article, barring one, will grant Master Riding for free now.

Also read:

• Combining The Ambassador and Mountain O' Mounts
• Mountain O' Mounts in Outland
• Mountain O' Mounts in Northrend
• Mountain O' Mounts in 5-man dungeons
• Mountain O' Mounts in raids

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. If you're looking for more healing advice, check out the Plus Heal community and Matticast, the new healing, raiding, and guild management podcast.

If there ever was an encounter in which Atonement-specced priests really stood out, this would be it. Aside from that, Halfus on heroic mode is a great test for healing leaders and raid leaders on the art of syncing defensive cooldowns.

Objective: Can your healing team help the raid survive the first minute of the encounter?

Once you get past that first minute, the hardest part is over, and your raid will get there. In this post, I'll show you a textbook case of cooldown planning from start to finish.

On the the matter of cooldowns, it looks like shaman will be getting their own fairly soon.

Spirit Link Totem: Reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. This lasts 6 seconds, and every second it is active the health of all affected players is redistributed among them, such tha teach player end sup with the same percentage of their maximum health. This counts as an Air totem and has a 3 minute cooldown.

For restoration druids, Malfurion's Gift appears to reduce Tranquility by 2.5/5 minutes. The actual effect of Tranquility has not changed. If I were to guess, I'd say it would get modified further for reduced incoming damage while the spell is being channeled. No confirmation yet either way.

So how does one survive Halfus in the 25-player raid?

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we are pleased to discover that a certain noncombat pet's going to be a lot more fun to obtain.

Hey folks. This edition of OverAchiever was initially meant to cover archaeology achievements, but we've been getting so many questions on Insane in the Membrane and other problematic achievements that I decided to pre-empt the archaeology article. The Queue comments also tend to host a lot of achievement questions, so I want to answer as many of them as I can here. I apologize in advance to anyone who already knows some, most, or even all of the answers contained herein.

If you have a question concerning disappearing achievements, reappearing achievements, achievements that are being altered, or [insert issue du jour], hopefully you'll find the answer here. Additionally, there's some information on the Razzashi Hatchling that pet collectors might want to hear about (fair warning: It involves a Cataclysm spoiler related to Northern Stranglethorn content), in addition to notes on what's going on with the Shen'dralar, Dire Maul, Molten Core, and city reputation tabards. I ran both an Alliance and Horde character ragged on the beta to confirm everything in this article personally, and the information should be accurate as of the most recent beta patch.

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.

In this edition of The Queue, we answer a couple of new questions, and a couple of questions that we've answered approximately seventeen thousand times. Okay, not that many, but it certainly feels it. Hopefully between the new and the old there's something for everyone.

cactusham asked...

"Can Horde queue up for Stockades and Deadmines, and can Alliance queue up for Ragefire Chasm and Wailing Caverns?"

Bornakk confirms something that a number of guilds still working on their Ulduar drakes have been wondering -- are they planning to eighty-six them as soon as patch 3.3 hits? Nope -- Blizzard hasn't changed anything from its previous policy concerning the drakes, and they'll still be warning us a month in advance if they do eventually decide to remove them. This started as a response to the removal of the Naxx-era drakes without much advance notice, which resulted in some very unhappy players being caught unawares.

What I always found interesting about the wording on Blizzard's policy is that they don't "currently" have any plans to remove the drakes at all, but they're keeping an eye on things. It makes me wonder if there's an ideal percentage of guilds or players they'd like to achieve the drakes each patch, and that numbers were short in Naxx and still short in Ulduar. The Naxx-era Glory of the Raider (heroic) was certainly uncommon and, for a competent guild, hinged almost entirely on their ability to get past the RNG-riddled and sometimes-buggy Immortal, then said to be the rarest raiding achievement in the game. For Ulduar, my guess is that achievements like Firefighter are probably the biggest stumbling block, although fortunately the achievements required for the meta are more dependent on skill and less dependent on RNG than Immortal. We'll keep an eye out for you, but for the moment, raiders, keep plugging away at those drakes.

Blizzard simply can't make up their minds about this, can they? The Rusted and Ironbound Proto-Drakes, which are rewarded for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider on Normal and Heroic, were slated for removal at an unspecified time in the future after patch 3.2's launch. The reasoning was that it would be easier to acquire them with Coliseum gear, and they were meant for cutting-edge players only.

However, Eyonix has just announced that they are not planning on removing these proto-drake rewards from the achievement in patch 3.2, and furthermore, they don't plan to do it "in the foreseeable future." In the event that they do change their minds again, you are promised a one-month warning. So get back to those hard-modes!

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.

This week I have a special request: I want any questions you might have about potential future expansions. Any questions at all are welcome, but I'm on a speculation kick recently, so next week's column will probably focus on the future and then we'lll be back to our regular deal after that. So no matter whether you think the Maelstrom could be next or something else entirely, ask!

Mark asked...

"Any chance that the Vrykul will be a playable race in a future expansion?"

After yet another Cracked Egg with nothing but a Cobra Hatchling in it, and the bigtime raiding proto-drakes constantly getting dropped out of the game, there's really only one other option: the Red Proto-drake, a reward for the Glory of the Hero meta-achievement. It's not easy: you've got to not only beat all of the heroics in the game, but all of the hard mode achievements for each of them. Guides like our OverAchievers can help, and a really great group to go along with helps more, but some of the achievements are so tough they need extra attention.

The Oculus' achievement, however, is one that needs an even closer look. And 4 Haelz kindly provides exactly that, with an in-depth guide to toppling two achievements in one, both the Emerald and Ruby Void, by doing the boss with five Amber drakes. The Amber drakes are usually meant as DPS, which makes this fight extra tough: you can't take much damage at all, because you can't get any damage back without healers. So what it requires, instead, is communication and coordination. Basically, you use the drakes' Time Stop ability to slow the fight down, and then try to do some coordinated kiting while DPSing like mad, all the time hoping that you can bring him down before he takes one of you out.

As Bell says, once you get the idea (and have wiped a few times -- you should probably be riding the drakes naked, since not only does your gear not affect their performance, but it'll save you repair costs), the fight's not actually that hard to pull off, but it's the learning that's going to hurt.

We had a bit of a minor freakout when we heard that the Rusted and Ironbound protodrakes might be getting removed as rewards for the Ulduar meta achievements in Patch 3.2, and then even more of one when the slow trickle of information about 3.2 turned into a firehose. Bornakk mentioned the change initially with the caveat that it was their intention to remove the drakes eventually, but that he'd seek definite confirmation either way as to whether it was happening in 3.2 or not. There's been no update about it in the past few weeks.

Well, after a thorough reading of the 3.2 patch notes, I don't see a single trace of anything saying the drakes are getting removed. At the risk of counting my protochickens before they hatch, I think we might be safe, given how fast 3.2 looks like it's coming out.

This is at least a relief for my guild, who's doing pretty well on 10-man hard-mode progression but ... is there a word worse than "dismal"? ... on 25-man hard-modes. Maybe there's hope for us yet.

Should we get the soul-crushing confirmation that they'll be removed with 3.2, we'll be sure to let you know. There's still a lot of time for change on this one, though -- maybe it was an accidental omission, maybe it'll get decided on later -- but for now, you can breathe a little easier knowing you might be able to keep hacking away at those hard modes to get your undeniably awesome drakes even after the Argent Coliseum is commanding your guild's attention.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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The official World of Warcraft community site has added a couple more galleries of the cool Wrath of the Lich King mounts for those of you who love a little eye candy now and then. You might recall that they posted a gallery of the Hog/Chopper mounts last week or so, and this week they've continued that trend with a gallery for Flying Carpets and a gallery for Proto-Drakes.

Neither of these two galleries have anything nearly as cool as the two Tauren in silly hats and lumberjack shirts contained within the Motorcycle gallery, but there's still some neat pictures. The one above is one of my personal favorites. They're kissing or possibly trying to eat eachother! How sweet! I'm also a big fan of the flying carpet that's either shooting or absorbing purple lightning bolts. You'll need to go to the official site to see that one, I'm afraid.

Bornakk had some news today that might send a lot of raiding guilds into a frenzied rush to get those raid Achievements. According to him, Blizzard will be removing the Plagued and Black Proto-Drake rewards from the Glory of the Raider and Heroic: Glory of the Raider meta-Achievements respectively. Blizzard believes that with guilds progressing into Ulduar and getting significantly better gear, those Achievements would be trivialized. So the 310% mounts are sadly going the way of the Amani War Bear.

With Patch 3.1 already on the PTR -- although without Ulduar yet -- the clock is ticking for aspiring drake riders. All hope isn't lost, however, as Blizzard is introducing two new reward mounts to go with the 10- and 25-man Ulduar raid Achievements. Pictured above as mined from the PTR files by MMO Champion is the Ironbound Proto-Drake, which I suspect is the reward for the Heroic Ulduar Achievments. There's also a Rusted Proto-Drake, which is likely the reward for the 10-man meta-Achievement. For those of you working towards the Plagued and Black Proto-Drakes, you don't have long now! Hop to it and don't die!

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Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.

Every week The Overachiever gives advice, walkthroughs and guides on completing your latest Achievement obsession.

Yes, that's right. You better start looking at ranch property because you have 100 mounts to collect. Here's the series of Achievements involved:

1. Stable Keeper
2. Filling up the Barn
3. Leading the Calvary
4. Mountain of Mounts (Alliance/Horde)

And what is your reward? Why, more mounts, of course! The 50 Mount Achievement will net you an Albino Drake (and put you mount closer to the final achievement.) The 100 Mount Achievement is separated into Horde and Alliance rewards due to racial mounts making for different requirements. The Horde 100 reward is Red Dragonhawk Mount and the Alliance 100 reward is the Blue Dragonhawk Mount.

Resources and advice after the jump!

On Friday I responded to a question regarding Pandaren, and it turns out I'm about half wrong. Partially right, but also partially wrong, which is certainly a problem. My answer was based off of something I talked about with a random Blizzard employee, but in hindsight that's a pretty poor move on my part, they wouldn't necessarily know the little inner workings of one or two departments within the company. What I said was refuted with quotes from J. Allen Brack and Chris Metzen, which I'm willing to put more weight in as far as game lore goes. The Chinese did, indeed, have a problem with the Pandaren being in-game.

I was right in that there are no laws against virtual pandas getting shivved or whatever, but there definitely was an issue with the Pandaren race, culturally. It's much more likely it just ran into a lot of friction when it came down to dealing with censors and the cultural shift, and it became not worth it to risk losing players over. I'm sure the fact that the Pandarens' original design was much more Japanese (see above) than Chinese didn't help, but that was shifted in the right direction eventually and may not have had an actual impact at all. And with that said...

Looking for our 2010 Winterveil Guide? You'll find it here!

The Feast of Winter Veil is almost upon us. The festivities kick off on December 15th, and will run until January 2nd. There are plenty of achievements to be had, as well as the title "Merrymaker" for completing them all.

If you can complete every achievement from all of the holidays in a year, you will also be eligible for the achievement, What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been, which rewards you with a Violet Proto-Drake.

You can refer to this guide for information about completing each achievement for this holiday, including links to maps and our usual comments section that should not be passed over if you're looking for tips.

Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.

We've never been this lucky, so of course we had to share it with you. Once you watch the movie and want to learn more about the mounts we discuss, click on through and we'll spill the beans.