Posts with tag ragnaros

Earlier this month, Paragon earned the high honor of world-first heroic Ragnaros kill, downing the Firelord after over 400 attempts on his fight. Heroic mode encounters add something new and difficult to the mix, but it is rare that we see an entirely new phase to an encounter. Paragon's heroic Ragnaros kill video shows the final stage of the heroic fight, in which Ragnaros submerges in his lava pool and emerges at full strength on new legs allowing him movement all over the encounter room.

The final stage of the fight involves Archdruid Hamuul Runetotem, Malfurion Stormrage, and Cenarius assisting players in dealing with the entirely new mechanics this new heroic mode phase presents. If you've been trying Ragnaros or have killed him, you already have experienced the hilarious Living Meteor ability. In that new phase, meteors must be kited over patches of ice on the ground to freeze them, and then players must DPS down meteors to control the number up at any time. At that point, players are also frantically running around extinguishing ground fires and trapping Ragnaros in roots on the ground.

All in all, it looks incredibly fun and challenging, and it's very nice to see Ragnaros putting his new legs to good use kicking the crap out of guilds across the world. My favorite part of the video has to be the end, with the custom death animation for Ragnaros. Watch until the very end -- it's worth it. Congratulations again to DREAM Paragon for their heroic first kill and for this awesome video of the accomplshment.

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After just a few weeks of Firelands raiding, DREAM Paragon has defeated Ragnaros on 25-man heroic mode, earning them the world first and the Firelord title. DREAM Paragon announced the news on their website, promising their kill shot and comments in the near future. Congratulations to Paragon for this world first.

The heroic version of the Ragnaros fight adds a whole new phase to the encounter in which Ragnaros regains his full Firelord strength, steps out of his swirling molten pool, and becomes mobile around the platform with his new firelegs. Cenarius, Hamuul Runetotem and Malfurion Stormrage assist the players in tackling Ragnaros' many abilities in this new phase, finally putting out the Firelord's lights for good.

Heroic modes for the Ragnaros fight and others in the Firelands were also not available on the public test realm, making it that much more difficult for these hardcore raiding guilds to get time in on these encounters.

I am excited to hear about Paragon's time with these bosses in the Firelands. At only seven bosses, the Firelands is one of the more accessible raid zones, with a time commitment that feels far smaller than the monolithic endeavors of the past, like ICC or Ulduar. Has Firelands presented enough of a challenge to the top of the top guilds? Whatever the case, congratulations again! I hope that my guild will be at heroic Rag's door in the near future.

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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.

Today is a very special treat. We have your standard-length Queue, plus I answer a very exciting bonus trivia question that has nothing at all to do with World of Warcraft! But you will love it, my gamer pals. You will.

Camero asked:

In the past week, I've recieved four emails from "Blizzard" all asking me to do something in order to get a Winged Guardian License. I just wanted to confirm that's not true.

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.

Sometimes I feel like I can't get away from Illuminated Healing. Our holy paladin mastery has been receiving nonstop tweaks since its introduction, and it's always flirting with viability. Stats like haste and critical strike rating are predictable. I can draw up some formulas to show you how many extra ticks of Holy Radiance you'll receive at a given haste level. Mastery is much more nebulous than that, as its effectiveness depends entirely on the encounter and your healing assignment.

Everyone has some amount of mastery rating on their gear, and there's even some passively built into our characters. While having a bit of mastery to make our heals bubbly helps our throughput, it's certainly not overpowered. There are a few holy paladins who, in an attempt to see how far Illuminated Healing can go, have enchanted, reforged, and gemmed into mastery completely. With IH bubbles absorbing 35% of the value of the original heal, stacking mastery can obviously make something interesting happen. How potent can Illuminated Healing really become?

There's a lot of trash in the Firelands. With great trash comes chances for BOE epic items (which can even be upgraded to heroic versions with Crystallized Firestones) and epic crafting patterns. No doubt you've seen trash runs being advertised in trade chat in Stormwind and Orgrimmar and been intrigued with the idea of what a trash run is all about. Here is some basic etiquette for running or participating in a Firelands trash run.

You'll want to be well geared before heading into the Firelands, even for trash runs. I would recommend being at least ilevel 353, the same gear level that the new Zandalari troll heroics grant you. Now that you can purchase ilevel 359 gear with justice points, reaching that number should not be a hard task at all.

Patch 4.2 brought back one of the most iconic WoW villains in the game's history -- Ragnaros, the Firelord. Blizzard Insider interviewed two critical members of the dev team, Lead Level Designer Jonathan Dumont and Lead Environment Artist Gary Platner, to discuss the process and philosophy behind the Firelands' design. Dumont and Platner go into detail about the origins of the Firelands, the design decisions that made the cut and some that didn't, and how the environment animates with the new particle and water effects.

Firelands is one of the most cohesive and engaging locales Blizzard's team has brought to life, in my opinion. Much like Deepholm and Vashj'ir, the Firelands exists to bring the realm of fire to life, when the daunting Sulfuron Keep only existed in our imaginations prior. An interesting piece of info was that Ragnaros' model was rebuilt from scratch, completely overhauling his skeleton, animations, and feel. The new Ragnaros is one of those things, to me, that the Cataclysm did right -- create a new thing with the heart and soul of the original. Ragnaros looks like he belongs.

Check out the full interview after the jump.

Finally, patch 4.2 is upon us. Azeroth has undergone many changes since Cataclysm launched, and finally, we are getting the first new "tier" patch for this expansion. Suffice to say, I am very excited. Patch 4.2 represents to me many turning points for World of Warcraft that are putting it back on the path to cohesiveness. Cataclysm's launch was a success, and we were wowed by the features and the set pieces, but patch 4.2 feels like the first time we are getting to see new content that encapsulates the drive and cohesiveness of the Cataclysm motif.

Patch 4.2 brings with it many new features. Players will be able to enter the Firelands, Ragnaros' domain, for a whole slew of new daily quests and player-specific progression. Seven new raid bosses await intrepid raiders, valor point gear will be knocked down to justice level, and the previous tier of content is becoming more accessible to raiders new and old. Loads of new companion pets and mounts await players willing to aid the Avengers of Hyjal's cause. Lucky raiders will also take part in an epic quest to forge the newest legendary item in WoW, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest.

I am especially interested and excited for the Molten Front and Regrowth daily hubs that are being introduced for max-level players in Hyjal, as the druids and sentinels break into Ragnaros' home turf, the Firelands, and lay siege for their survival. These dailies and daily hubs represent a philosophy that I love in MMOs -- your personal progression should matter just as much as the progression of the whole. You, individually, will be working with major lore characters and factions to put together the Hyjal offensive, and your decisions get to open up new quest areas and gear vendors in an order that you choose. Putting this type of control back in the players' hands feels like a Burning Crusade move, and I'm a man who loved him some Burning Crusade.

What are you looking forward to when we get to log into patch 4.2? What's your first move in the face of invasion from the Firelands?

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

Oh, you like Anne Stickney, do you? You like how she answers a lot of questions, hmm? I'm not going to be outdone by some lore-toting, tinfoil-hat-wearing mountain dweller. It's lightning round time, fools.

As for why Ragnaros is the header image for the Queue, I just like the guy. What can I say?

Trinket asked:

I just finished watching the latest 4.2 trailer and was picturing tackling the new bosses on my Fire Mage when it occurred to me I'll literally be fighting Fire with Fire... My question is why aren't raid bosses made from fire immune to fire damage? Wouldn't it seem more appropriate that Frost would do more damage against a fire elemental boss?

The simple reason is gameplay reasons. Forcing a mage to choose a different spec for Firelands is just not fun from a gameplay perspective. Back in the vanilla days, Molten Core mobs were immune to fire damage and mages who wanted to raid went frost. I forgot if arcane was viable back then -- someone please remind me. I didn't pay attention to mages back in the olden days.

Blizzard has said many times in the past that gameplay concerns trump common sense in many instances. Fire mages should not be penalized for playing fire throughout an entire tier of raiding. Sure, it "makes sense" according to made up fantasy physics or whatever, but it's just not fun for mages. It's unnecessary clutter that people confuse with depth, kind of like resist fights.

Alex Ziebart and Mathew McCurley (that's me) decided to give each Cataclysm zone the once-over now that we're many months out from the release of the expansion. In this post-mortem series, we'll examine (in our own opinions and words) what worked and what didn't work in terms of story, quests, and overall feel for the zones and the cool moments that dotted the landscape. Join us for a discussion about Cataclysm's new level 80 to 85 content and what made the cut as the most compelling experiences.

Hyjal is home to the majestic world tree Nordrassil, once under siege by the Burning Legion and Archimonde, an eredar leader and lieutenant of Sargeras. In Warcraft III, we vanquished Archimonde at Nordrassil and subsequently went back and ended his campaign in Hyjal through the Caverns of Time. Now, Ragnaros the Firelord has returned to Azeroth with the help of Deathwing and has invaded the sacred mountain with one goal -- destroy the wardens of Hyjal and burn their tree to the ground.

Hyjal's story

Mathew: I had an odd experience with the story at Hyjal, mostly because at first, I couldn't have given a damn about the druids and the Emerald Dream and all of that. The first time I went through Hyjal, it was a sprint, and I never stopped to smell the roses, since we were racing to 85.

It was only after I did Hyjal a second or third time that I truly dug in and found the wonderful story of the zone. Now, I am 100% involved in the Hyjal story and am really excited to see where it's going. Now, the druids are my best friends, and there is nothing I want to do more than help ancients punch fire elementals in their fiery faces.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? What secrets does the game still hold? If you enjoyed Patches of Yesteryear, you're going to love this.

Last week, we finally escaped the morass of World of Warcraft's beta to discuss patch 1.2, the first major content patch of the post-release game. We're going to take a break from patches for a while to examine some other myths and legends that arose in vanilla WoW. Today, we're going to look back to one of the legends of Molten Core.

Molten Core is rather unique in that it's the home of more than one legendary item. Both Thunderfury and Sulfuras have their roots in Molten Core, though one does require items from Blackwing Lair to complete; Blackwing Lair hadn't even been implemented yet when players started receiving the first pieces of these legendary items.

Everybody knows about Thunderfury and Sulfuras, though. Not as many people know Molten Core once had a third legendary.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we discuss the perils of writing about the PTR, which stands for "Public Test Realm." For a very long time, I thought it stood for "Pirate Taco Restaurant," which I thought sounded more fun, frankly.

Yes, it's always a good time when I write something and the testing process immediately renders almost every word of it completely moot. Testing is testing, I guess, and absolutely everything that pops up on the PTR at pretty much any stage of the testing cycle is entirely subject to change. So remember what we talked about last week? The whole tier 12 set bonus thing?

No longer true.

Well, okay, I guess some of it still holds true, but not the really interesting part. Gone is the moving Arcane Missiles. To me, that was the single most significant bonus being offered by the tier 12 set for mages, but it's been removed entirely in the latest PTR build. The other bonuses remain, in slightly altered form, but mobile missiles is apparently out.

Still, I'm not perturbed, other than my simmering rage at having a thousand or so of my words -- wrung from my brain only a week prior, sweat out over a hot (or at least lukewarm, perhaps slightly moist) keyboard, painstakingly arranged into mildly pleasing, competently conjugated sentences -- become instantly irrelevant. You see, I actually think this could end up being a good thing for mages, and I promise that in a minute or two I will tell you why I think that, and the answer will not be "because of all that paint I huffed."

Nozdormu, the leader of the Bronze Dragonflight and notable absent aspect, finally has a mortal form in preparation for the legendary quest line to forge Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest in the upcoming patch 4.2. Nozdormu's model is based on the blood elf and night elf models with modified tier 6 shoulders and some cool tattoos he probably got during one of his time binges out beyond time and space. Let's hope one of them doesn't say "Mom" in Draconic.

In addition to the Nozdormu mortal form, Wowhead News also has models of the new Raven Lord "on fire" version, a more complete version of Majordomo Fandral Staghelm's Druids of the Flame, some 3-D renders of the new "overfiend" enemy from the Firelands (who looks like a baby version of Baleroc), and a human spread out like Bolvar chained up above the Lich King before Tirion bought him that cool new hat.

The Avengers of Hyjal is the new raid reputation being introduced with patch 4.2 for raiders daring enough to enter the Firelands and do battle with Ragnaros' minions. Much like the Ashen Verdict, players will be able to gain rewards with the Avengers as they progress up the reputation tiers. At exalted, ilevel 391 rings will become available in a variety of styles. So far, these rings are available on the PTR:

• Viridian Signet of the Avengers
• Infernal Signet of the Avengers
• Quicksilver Signet of the Avengers
• Obsidian Signet of the Avengers
• Adamantine Signet of the Avengers

Blizzard has said that the Avengers of Hyjal faction will work differently from the Ashen Verdict, however, in that it does not want players farming the trash in the Firelands for reputation. Rather, it looks like we will get a system like the Brood of Nozdormu or Hydraxian Waterlords, where after a certain reputation level, the only way to increase your standing with the faction is to kill bosses.

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The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

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Firelands bosses Lord Rhyolith, Alysrazor, Shannox, Baleroc, Fandral and Ragnaros all have their voice emotes in with the new patch 4.2 PTR patch. Want to take a listen? They are all right here! Fair warning for spoilers and all that jazz, so hit the jump for the full clips.

This post contains patch 4.2 spoilers.

The World of Warcraft Trading Card Game's Worldbreaker block continues this month with War of the Elements, bringing the four Elemental Lords, two dragon aspects, more worgen and goblin characters, and all-new loot into play. Today, Cryptozoic Entertainment releases the War of the Elements Epic Collection, a premium package containing:

• 6 War of the Elements booster packs
• 1 War of the Elements playmat and deckbox
• Collectible storage box with class dividers
• 1 Landro's Lichling loot card
• War of the Elements visual pocket guide
• 5 random foil War of the Elements heroes

And Cryptozoic has given us 12 of them to give away to our readers! For a chance to win a War of the Elements Epic Collection, all you have to do is comment on this post between now and Friday, May 13 at 11:59 p.m. EST. When the contest ends, we'll choose 12 winners at random.

There are some rules, of course: you must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You may only enter once; multiple entries will disqualify you. And you must have a valid email address attached to your commenting profile, or we won't be able to get hold of you if you win. Full giveaway rules are here.

Be sure to follow the WoW TCG on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook!

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