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Posts with tag fangs-of-the-father

Mists of Pandaria: New Wrathion voice files datamined

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So, have you been wondering why exactly Wrathion's made an appearance in Pandaria? Datamining over the course of the past month or so has revealed several legendary quality items, and the possible existence of a quest chain for more details on what those legendary items are for. And of course this all ties back to our dear friend Wrathion, who has apparently been quite pleased with what he's seen so far in Pandaria.

But Wrathion, while a black dragon, isn't necessarily a bad guy. A bit short-tempered, yes. A creature you certainly wouldn't want to cross, absolutely. A black dragon with an agenda that benefits something other than himself? ... well, that actually seems kind of likely. MMO-Champion dug up some voice files for Wrathion and the apparent quest chain for those legendary items. The implications are utterly fascinating, both for current events in Mists of Pandaria, and for future patches as well.

Spoiler Warning: These voice files may contain big spoilers for Mists of Pandaria. If you are avoiding spoiler content, turn away.

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Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

Blizzard recaps the story of Cataclysm's legendary daggers

If you don't play an endgame rogue capable of getting your hands on the Fangs of the Father legendary daggers, you missed out on quite a bit of awesome lore surrounding the future of the Black Dragonflight. Worse, you don't get to meet Wrathion the Purified, Deathwing's son, at all. This has been an ongoing problem with legendary quest chains specific to certain classes or roles, but Blizzard has provided a solution this time around.

Blizzard has released a series of videos detailing the events that occur throughout the Fangs of the Father quest chain. Even better, the entire recap is narrated by Wrathion himself, describing the events of the quest chain from his perspective. The entire thing is capped off with an insinuation that we just might run into Deathwing's heir beyond the mists of the sea.

You can watch the first part embedded above and the following three parts either on Battle.net or behind the cut below. In addition to the videos, Battle.net offers a list of the first 100 people to complete their Fangs in each world region.

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Filed under: News items

Encrypted Text: The Shock and Awe build

guards
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

If you have been raiding 10-man Dragon Soul every week, Wrathion should be handing over the Fangs of the Fathers any day now. Even the second rogues in most 25-man groups will be collecting their last Elementium Gem Clusters shortly. For many rogues, these daggers are the first legendary weapons that they've ever acquired. When you receive them from Wrathion, it might feel a bit overwhelming. What do you do with these weapons? What will they do to you?

There is a quote that's been passed down from thief to thief, assassin to assassin, and rogue to rogue for generations: "If your blades are happy, you're happy." You want your weapons to work for you, and not the other way around. You can't starve your blades, trying to forcefully adjust their diet to tolerate Morchok's rocky hide or Hagara's snow cones. If you want to keep your blades happy, you have to feed them what they really want: player blood, and lots of it.

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Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text

Encrypted Text: No'Kaled makes its claim for the throne

rogue daggers
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

If you're frequenting any of the rogue community sites, you've seen the question: Should I be using No'Kaled? While assassination and subtlety rogues can blindly equip the legendary quest daggers at each stage, combat rogues have to make a decision. As I've said for years, rogues spec for their weapons. You need to round up all of your available weapons, and then mix and match to find the right combination.

There are three different levels of No'Kaled, and there are also three stages of daggers we receive from Wrathion. Between all of these weapons, there are nine different possible combinations that you could have today. Your personal arsenal of weapons is dependent on your Elementium Gem Cluster acquisition rate and your luck with Madness of Deathwing drops, but chances are that you have at least one version of both the quest daggers and No'Kaled.

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Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text

Legendary Weapons: Story chains or class quests?

So last week, the first rogue in my guild got the Fangs of the Father set, and I started working on my set. Right now, I'm about a third of the way to stage two, and then I'll have stage three to contend with. Though there are fewer pieces to collect for the daggers, unlike the items for Dragonwrath, only one rogue can proceed on the chain at a time. That's OK with me -- I don't mind the wait, and I know I have fun stuff to look forward to in between stages. I wasn't expecting a cutscene after starting the chain, but I was absolutely delighted with the fact that I got a bit of story to play through instead of "You killed Illidan and you're very lucky -- have a Warglaive!"

However, there was another, slightly more bothersome difference between Dragonwrath and the Fangs of the Father, one I'm not quite sure how I feel about. When our first raider got his Dragonwrath, everyone rushed to Orgrimmar and watched Kalecgos appear and deliver the staff in front of everyone that happened to be idling in town at the time. It was a moment of sheer excitement, joy, and fun, both for the player who got the staff and the guild who had helped him along the long road to getting it.

We didn't get that with Fangs of the Father.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Would removing legendaries be a benefit for the World of Warcraft?

Tarecgosa, Dragonwrath's namesake
It's very hard to imagine a Cataclysm without legendary items. Despite the fact that it wasn't introduced until six months into the game's existence, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest has become a staple item in every progression raiding guild's repetoire. The Fangs of the Father, Golad and Tiriosh, have only recently started to actually appear in game, but every week from now on will see more and more being finished.

Coming hand in hand with these legendary items are the issues of imbalance that they cause. In PvE, terminology has started to crop up that puts legendary and non-legendary DPS into two separate categories of competitiveness. Concepts exist such as "enhancement shaman are currently one of the top non-legendary DPS specs..." -- a category that encompasses only 10 of the 22 DPS classes in the game. In PvP, concerns about burst damage have arisen, which was a big factor in the nerf to DTR that came in 4.3.

The issues with legendaries

Legendaries cause a balance problem, and that's a problem that's been exacerbated by two things in Cataclysm: a horrifically wide spread of specs that can use them, with 12 specs or five classes in total having access to legendary weapons right now, and incredible ease of access to legendaries (for the heroic raider).

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

Ol' Grumpy and the return of class-based quests

Hi, I'm Ol' Grumpy. You may remember me from such posts as every single other post with "Ol' Grumpy" in the title. Today, since I have this incredibly uncomfortable rocking chair to sit on, I figured I'd grump about class quests and why I think they should come back.

Back in the day (that day being 2004 to 2005), I leveled the first of many warriors to the experience cap of level 60. At that time, one of the things that set the warrior class (and other classes) apart was a long, involved quest line that sent you all over Azeroth to gather materials and finally face and defeat Cyclonian. As a result, you gained one of three iconic weapons. (Most people took the axe. As a human at the time, I took the sword.) This extremely long quest line took you from Fray Island to the area north of Tarren Mill and then to Arathi Highlands (giving them a reason to exist) and Stranglethorn Vale before bringing you back to face Cyclonian. It was a rite of passage for a leveling toon. As a 60th-level, 70th-level and then an 80th-level warrior, I would often go back and help warriors on the quest to defeat Cyclonian, who posed an extreme challenge to anyone attempting to solo him.

I lamented the removal of class-specific quests at the time it was announced. Now, over a year later, I still think removing them was a mistake. Being soaked in ancient wisdom like a turkey soaked in ancient wisdom, here are my reasons.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

Encrypted Text: How fast can you get Fangs of the Father?

fangs of the father
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

Last week, a rogue obtained the very first pair of legendary daggers, Fangs of the Father. The spelling of the rogue's name is Имбос, and I can only imagine it sounds like the words "borscht" and "gulag" combined, because those are the only two Russian words that I know. You might recognize Имбос's guild, Exorsus, as the guild that achieved the world-first Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider. Thankfully, I can actually pronounce Exorsus. How could one guild win both the Glory achievement and legendary dagger races?

In fact, how could any rogue have obtained the Fangs of the Father when they take eight weeks to acquire, at the very least? If you're keeping track, there have been seven raid lockout periods since patch 4.3 and Dragon Soul were released. If you examine Имбос's armory, you'll notice that there are a combined nine kills of Yor'sahj listed (three normal, six heroic). Lockout resetting is a known issue for progression raiders, but since it hasn't been declared an exploit by Blizzard, there's nothing stopping players from spending some cash to get ahead. I'll be waiting to congratulate the first rogue to acquire Fangs of the Father in a mathematically possible timetable.

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Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text

Encrypted Text: Remembering 2011 as the year of the rogue

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here, like how to sneak around wearing a gaudy sweater.

With 2010 fading fast, rogues apprehensively looked forward to Cataclysm and how it would shape 2011. We were the crowned kings of Icecrown Citadel, with armor penetration and attack power as our top stats and both assassination and combat battling for first place. Mutilate rogues still tied down by Hunger for Blood, and combat rogues were spamming Blade Flurry on cooldown for the attack speed increase.

Looking back, we have grown since Wrath. Each of the rogue specs has evolved and found a niche, and even subtlety can make a reasonable claim for a raid spot now. With the massive talent system revamp, the developers struggled initially to balance each spec against the others. Rogues entered into 2011 and Cataclysm with a whimper, as the loss of armor penetration and the conversion of attack power to agility was not as smooth as Blizzard would have hoped.

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Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text

Know Your Lore: Wrathion the Purified

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

While we've been busy putting Cho'gall in his place, dealing with Nefarian, and otherwise addressing Elemental Lords Al'Akir and Ragnaros, the rest of Azeroth has been busy in its own way. Players wandering through the Badlands are taken along on quests to help the red dragon Rheastrasza perform a bit of important research on the black dragons. Though at first it seems as though Rhea's work is mundane, her ultimate plans are soon revealed.

Rheastrasza is attempting to find one purified, untainted black dragon egg. And she's successful, but the egg is in immediate danger. Deathwing doesn't want this egg to exist, and he'll do anything to get rid of it. The egg has been shuffled around constantly, hidden from Deathwing's sight -- a faint shred of hope in the post-Cataclysm world.

... unfortunately, nobody bothered asking the egg's opinion on the subject.

Today's Know Your Lore contains spoilers for the rogue legendary quest line.

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Filed under: Lore, Know your Lore

Encrypted Text: Turning murder into legendaries

Lord Afrasiabi
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

Patch 4.3 is now live, and with it comes plenty of new additions. You can spend your time playing games at the newly revamped Darkmoon Faire, or you can play dress-up by transmogrifying your old tier sets. The developers buckled down and cranked out three new dungeons, complete with a plethora of new gear and valor point options. The new dungeons are also bristling with new lore moments and plot exposition, giving us insight into Deathwing's madness.

But you're not here for that. You're not reading this post because you can't wait to hear what fashion style I'll be transmogging to. (A pirate, FYI.) You couldn't care less about tossing rings or commanding tonks on Darkmoon Island. Dungeon guides can wait. If you're as black-blooded as I am, then there's only one thing on your mind: Who does a rogue have to kill around here to get a pair of legendary daggers?

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Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text

Encrypted Text: Top rogue gear in patch 4.3

blackfang battleweave set
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

If you studied my Excel usage patterns, you would be able to easily predict when a new patch is scheduled to drop. As soon as the release date is relatively fixed, I start working on my gear acquisition plan. My rogue takes priority when it comes to gearing up quickly. I'll spend as much gold or as many valor points as necessary to make sure I'm ahead of everyone else.

I typically spend my holy paladin's first batch of available valor points on the BoE valor piece for my rogue. Healers don't need gear anyway, right? If I can get my gear faster, my raid will be able to down bosses faster, and I'll get my hands on the Fangs of the Father sooner. It's a win-win scenario, and so when it comes to my rogue, I spare no expense. Please note that there are now three different levels of gear available, with the introduction of the Raid Finder difficulty level. The gear is identical between all three tiers and is simply scaled up or down appropriately.

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Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text

Patch 4.3 PTR: Rogue legendary dagger proc revealed

The legendary rogue-only daggers coming in patch 4.3, the Fangs of the Father, bring an epic quest line and a cool cosmetic effect with them. But of course, you or a rogue you know will want them for one thing and one thing only: the proc. And here it is in all its glory: Shadows of the Destroyer.

Not only is it a permanent (if variable and requiring some buildup) agility boost, but it'll also periodically explode to immediately grant you 5 combo points and cause your finishers to also generate 5 combo points for 6 seconds. Now, the only downer here is that it doesn't make your finishers cost 0 energy, so you probably won't be able to fully take advantage of those 6 seconds, but it's still a damn good proc.

Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

Filed under: Rogue

Encrypted Text: Blackfang Battleweave, or Deathwing is the Joker

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

Blizzard has been posting previews of the upcoming tier 13 sets, allowing us to see what our new sets will look like visually. When describing the tier 13 set for rogues, Blackfang Battleweave, it was said that the armor is bat-themed. When I think of bats and bat-themed armor, I immediately think of the Caped Crusader. Not to worry, as the preview also claimed that they "were careful to skirt the more obvious inspirations." Oh, that's good news -- so they're not designing our next tier set in such a way that it would warrant a cease and desist letter from DC Comics. The only real similarity between our gear and the Dark Knight's is the pointy cowl; I don't see any shaped abs on our leather tunic.

As soon as I let my guard down, the WoW Facebook page posts an image of a rogue soaring through the night air on a pair of dark wings. Our new legendary daggers, the Fangs of the Father, apparently, give us wings. You can't see this picture and not immediately see the resemblance to the Masked Manhunter himself. I can only think of two possibilities: Either I accidentally started playing DC Universe Online at some point without realizing it, or Frank Miller has replaced Samwise Didier as Blizzard's art director.

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Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text

Patch 4.3: Rogue legendary Fangs of the Father official preview

Blizzard is on a roll today with new information and official previews -- not least of which is the new rogue legendary coming in patch 4.3, The Fangs of the Father. Rogues will be tasked with assisting Wrathion, the young prince of the Black Dragonflight, through acts of burglary, stealth, assassination, and manipulation. For their troubles, rogues will be granted a set of daggers that gets progressively more powerful as the quests continue.

The legendary items will provide a stacking agility bonus that culminates in a combo point cost reduction for finishing moves, increases the damage of finishing moves, and unfurls large black wings that look imposing and destructive. Rogues can also call upon the wings on command to act as a built-in slow fall (or to just pop out the wings to look cool). Check out the official video preview of the Fangs of the Father after the jump.

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Filed under: Rogue, Cataclysm

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