Posts with tag bastion-of-twilight

Here's some relatively crazy news that's just been posted on the Taiwanese Battle.net site: All patch 4.0 and 4.2 raid dungeons -- that is, every Cataclysm raid up to Firelands -- will reset twice a week, once on Thursday and once on Sunday.

This change will not apply to the Deathwing raid, which will reset once a week as usual, nor will the weekly valor point cap be changing. The change is, according to the post, meant to allow people to gear up faster by killing bosses twice as often. There is currently no word on whether this will play solely to Taiwanese servers, or to all regions. If it does come to U.S. servers, it is likely our reset will revolve around Tuesday downtime, making the ideal second-reset day Friday.

Check after the break for a quick and dirty Google translation of the post.

UPDATE: Community Manager Zarhym has posted the following:

4.0 and 4.2 Raids to reset twice a week?

The new raid lockout changes for Taiwan and Korea adjust the lockout timers for the patch 4.0 and 4.2 raids. The lockout timers for these raids will now reset twice weekly instead of once. These raid lockout changes are being made to allow players to raid more often and get more chances at epic loot drops. Players will be able to down current Cataclysm raid bosses twice a week, accelerating players' progression.

We are testing these new raid lockout changes in Taiwan and Korea first. Our goal is to expand this change to other regions in the future, but we don't have anything further to announce at this time with regard to North American implementation.

source

Good news for everyone tired of all those trolls: Tier 11 normal modes will once again give valor points. According to Community Manager Daxxarri, raids will receive 35 valor points on 10-man bosses and 45 valor points on 25-man bosses. This hotfix should be live within the next few hours.

For the full text of the announcement, check after the break.

After patch 4.2 released, the previous tier of raiding content was hit with a huge swathe of nerfs and changes designed to make the content that much easier for raiders now just able to experience it. With tier 11 valor point gear now purchasable with justice points, Blizzard fully intends for the previous tier of content to be pugged by server populations. Blizzard's Bashiok took to the forums to discuss just that intention.

Bashiok does say that servers will take a bit to gain the momentum and general fluency with the encounters, but that it is entirely able to be pugged. Further, he says that from here on out, Blizzard has adopted the mantra of one cutting-edge tier, with the previous raids nerfed to allow players an easier time to complete them.

Personally, I am a huge fan of this type of content shift, and I think we've reached a pretty good compromise with regards to content accessibility and raid design. Raiders get their challenge while the content is relevant, hard modes are still skill-based encounters that do not get the nerf bat, and the previous tier of normal mode content is much more accessible to more casual raiders. Much as Ulduar drakes still presented a challenge in execution during Wrath even though we outgeared them, hard modes in Cataclysm are the execution challenges that will still prove to be tricky for meta achievements. Count me in.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

Last we left off, Halfus was laid low and the Twin Dragons were plucked from the sky. Now we come to the exciting conclusion of my "Months Behind Raid Guides" in preparation for the opening of the Firelands in the coming weeks. Before you set foot in that sulfuric realm, you'll likely want to make sure you have the current content cleared to allow you a running start in pursuit of Ragnaros' legions.

To assist you with that, this guide will help you push aside the Ascendant Council and overthrow Cho'gall, the head(s) honcho -- polycephaly joke! -- of the Cult of Twilight. The Council in particular is one of the most chaotic fights of tier 11 and will definitely prove a challenge to your raid the first time you hit it. There's a lot going on here, and the best tool you can arm yourself with is knowledge of everything this pseudo-Captain Planet will be throwing at you. And of course, Cho'gall will be a handful, as he throws varying kinds of damage your way. Steel yourself for the incoming torrent of elemental and corrupted damage.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen is busy looking in the mirror instead of playing a proper spec. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com, produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

In previous weeks, Spiritual Guidance has tackled how to heal the various raid encounters in tier 11. This week, we're going to revisit each boss on heroic difficulty. Once more, I'll be examining which spec is better equipped to handle the fight while also examining the differences in the new encounter and how to deal with them. We have a lot to talk about, so let's get started.

First, I want to point out that a major difference between any heroic and normal mode encounter is that abilities in heroic do an increased amount of damage. In order to avoid being redundant, please keep in mind that when I point out the differences between modes that the need for more healing will be assumed. If the increased damage significantly impacts the strategy of the fight, however, I will explain how.

This relax vs Bastion of Twilight movie is actually an intro spot; it's just the opening sequence for the guild's other videos, such as relax vs Heroic Cho'gall. Nonetheless, the video has captured many folks' imaginations, and it's been making the rounds of the community in the last few days.

This animation is a lot of fun and does a nice job of reminding us of each fight in the Bastion of Twilight. My wife points out (with some amount of validation) that the holy priest doesn't live through Cho'gall in this fight, either.

[Thanks to Lilydruid and Alex for the tip!]

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

Last week, we wrapped up Blackwing Descent with the demise of Atramedes and his progenitor, Nefarian. Now, with one front wrapped up, it's time to turn face and march into Cho'gall's fortress towering over the Twilight Highlands and wrap up another major staging ground for the threats of tier 11.

In this column, I'll give you the works on every boss: detailed descriptions of what each ability means to you as a tank, how to counter them, when to use your cooldowns for maximum effect, any pain points to watch out for, and how to maximize your kit to hit the ground running.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

I'm thinking about pizza for dinner tonight. It's a longstanding tradition of ours to ask for topping advice in The Queue, so I'm doing just that tonight.

Which of these should I heap on my meal tonight, folks?



Irin asked:

So, I'm losing my nerve as a tank. In guild groups and raids I'm fine. However, since circumstances in real life kept me from WoW during the early months of the xpac I'm sometimes lost dealing with bosses and CCed mobs, etc.

My question: When your nerves are getting frayed, and when the friends list and guild roster are looking empty, how do you give yourself that boost of confidence needed to get back out there?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

I've had this idea for a social experiment in my head for the past few weeks, where you lock five priests together in a room with nothing but Highland Spirits and force them to have a round table discussion about Lightwell. While I work on my hypothesis and proposal -- and find a way to bait Fox Van Allen into this possum trap -- you guys can finish reading up on the finer points of healing Cho'gall as a holy or discipline priest. Seeing as this is the last boss of The Bastion of Twilight, this will be the final installment of Spiritual Guidance's priest healing guides for this tier.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome.

As we delve deeper into the Bastion of Twilight, each boss is more powerful than the last. While Halfus Wymbreaker and the dragon twins aren't the easiest raid bosses by far, the Ascendant Council and Cho'gall are on another level of difficulty. They're not only more complicated, but simply more punishing as well. You're going to use your full spectrum of abilities on these fights.

The Ascendant Council encounter emphasizes the importance of good positioning and healing on the move, while Cho'gall will stress both your AoE and single-target healing throughout the fight. Holy paladins have several abilities that are uniquely suited to each encounter, and knowing how to use those spells will be crucial to healing effectively.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

During the past couple of months, Spiritual Guidance has tackled priest healing in Blackwing Descent and taken a peak inside The Bastion of Twilight at Halfus Wyrmbreaker and the twin dragons, Valiona and Theralion. This week, we'll be heading back into The Bastion to take a look at how to heal your way through the next encounter, Ascendant Council. This encounter is extremely chaotic and will be sure to keep discipline and holy priests busy.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why all of Halfus' drakes don't wake up when they hear us fighting.

I always have a tough time deciding how to compose my healing guides for raid bosses. Talking about holy paladin theory is fun, but at the end of the day, we're actually being thrown into real raid encounters. We're expected to know how to heal through the incoming damage and handle all of the boss' special abilities. Knowing the specific healing per second of Divine Light isn't going to help you keep your tank alive. At the same time, there's no point in turning the holy paladin column into an esoteric version of StratFu by giving you a play-by-play review of every boss encounter.

Instead of boring you with a list of boss abilities that your raid leader is going to repeat anyway, I am going to try breaking down only what's specifically important for a holy paladin to know. You'll want to know when it's safe to use Divine Plea, when Holy Radiance is going to be most effective, and what you're supposed to dispel. Who should you put Beacon of Light on? Are any of our "Hand of" spells worthwhile on this fight? In addition, please feel free to ask any additional questions that you'd like to see answers to or add any suggestions.

With 4.1 on the PTR, I've been hearing the usual grumbling. Why should we raid anymore? We'll just wait for the next tier of raiding and get all new good stuff. This argument always sort of strikes me as a little bit off, but it definitely doesn't apply to this patch. Not only is patch 4.1 heroic gear only going to be item level 353, but we won't get a new raiding tier until patch 4.2. That means you probably have multiple months left in which the best gear still comes from raiding tier 11 content.

With that in mind, this week we'll look at all the item level 359 gear available in game and figure out what's best for the up-and-coming DPS death knight. This guide will primarily cover raid gear and valor point purchases, with BoE world drops and crafting and reputation purchases where they seem to fit well into the hierarchy of what to wear.

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?