Posts with tag elder-nadox

Zarhym popped into one of the many official forum topics complaining about the seemingly inordinate amount of times Old Kingdom pops on the Dungeon Finder to offer some welcome news for exhausted dungeon runners: Old Kingdom and Nexus alike will be receiving some adjustments meant to bring the dungeons in line with other Wrath heroics.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

We had to do it. Both Anub'arak and Elder Nadox have been waiting patiently all season for their chance in the ring, after all. But did anyone think this Two Bosses Enter matchup would come out any other way? "Anub'arak wins, mandibles down," states faithful reader aarsej. "The truth is, Anub'arak is actually Hogger in disguise." Reader votes might actually support that conclusion: Anub'Arak supporters pushed this fight perilously close to a 90% slaughterfest.

Clydtsdk-Rivendare called it for the few dissenters.

Clydtsdk-Rivendare: This one is actually really close, IMO. Both mobs go invincible and summon adds, so it really all comes down to Nadox being smart enough to realize how strong Pound really is. If Nadox is invincible when Anub'arak uses Pound, Nadox wins. Otherwise, the sheer force of the blow tilts the scales heavily towards Anub.

... To make Nadox's add situation make sense, we'll set this fight in his "nest," if you will. Anub's adds come in from either doorway (the geography of this always confused me). Nadox is out of the nest for whatever reason, but when she returns, she sees Anub about to kill her kids. Nadox runs forward to engage Anub. Anub and Nadox trade blows for a while, when Anub sets off Carrion Beetles. Nadox sends his small adds to take care of these while she continues after Anub.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

INSECTS! We're getting close to the end of our first bracket of bosses for this season of Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves, featuring five-man bosses from Wrath of the Lich King. (We're sure you can all guess who's in the last fight of the bracket, just as we're sure you can all guess by how large of a landslide he'll win.) Last week's tussle with King Dred and Jedoga Shadowseeker went down with a chomp and a gulp, leaving us with two more player favorites for the week ahead: Anub'Arak from Azjol-Nerub versus Elder Nadox of Anh'kahet: The Old Kingdom.

Remember the basic ground rules:

• Assume that the opponents and their minions share similar levels, health pools and comparative overall damage output.
• This deathmatch takes place in neutral territory.
• All the usual minions will be available to each boss.
• Don't get caught up in gameplay mechanics and what actual players might do in each encounter.
• Focus on the three S's: style, story and scale.
  

It's minions versus minions in this buggy battle. Join us after the break to cast your vote for who you think will emerge this week's victor.

When I look at the Dalaran landing pad, I see fewer red proto-drakes than I should be. This pains me, dear readers. The 5-man heroic achievements are a lot of fun, if admittedly time consuming, and they force you to think on your feet and wring the most out of your character's abilities. Plus - it's a proto-drake. If you didn't get a 10-man or 25-man drake before 3.1 hit, you're out of luck there. Odds are good that you're still waiting for a green one to hatch out of the worthless egg that snake-oil salesman from the Oracles sells you, some jerk is camping the Time-Lost spawn 24/7, and the worst DPS in your Pinnacle PuG was the guy who won the blue drake off of Skadi, right right?

A lot of the WoW population has been at 80 for a while now and has some quality gear under their belts, much of it obtainable without setting foot in a raid. You should be able to pull off all of the 5-man heroic achievements in decent blues with a good group. I highly recommend trying to run with a stable set of players and -- if at all possible -- at least one Shaman. This is more true if your group is still gearing up and needs the damage boost provided by Bloodlust/Heroism.

I thought initially about organizing these from the easiest to the hardest, but I think it's ultimately less confusing to list them dungeon by dungeon. We'll address each dungeon alphabetically, so let's get started with Ahn'kahet:

There's a fun little discussion on the forums right now about the best noise out of a mob in the game, and people have all kinds of different opinions. Among the many brilliant things Blizzard has done with World of Warcraft is the way their sound design makes each and every encounter with a mob very memorable, so that even if you're not paying close attention, you know a) when you've aggroed something, and b) what you've aggroed. We all know what a wolf growl sounds like, we know what it sounds like when the caster you're trying to sneak past starts casting (and many of us can probably tell what spell, just from the sound), and of course, probably most memorably, we all know what that gurgly murloc sound means, especially when you hear it in numbers.

Lots of the best audio clips are actually from bosses (all of Molten Core's bosses were memorable, for some reason, and "Too soon!" has even reappeared in the game since). My personal favorite lately is the quote from Elder Nadox, the first boss in Ahn'Katet's Old Kingdom. He shouts an otherworldly phrase (apparently in Nerubian) and it ends with a "k-k-k-k-k" sound that must have been edited together -- it definitely doesn't sound human. Every time I hear that (and he says it a few times throughout the fight), I get the feeling that we are fighting something that is very, very old and very, very evil.

But of course lots of the audio cues help pull you into the game like that. What are some of your favorite mob noises in the game?