Posts with tag sword

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. Email Chase if you have any questions or want to submit a great screenshot.

If you've been plugged into the rogue community for any length of time, you're familiar with some of the common thoughts that we share as a class. We're all very thankful that Cloak of Shadows is now a 100% immunity to spells, that aggressive min-maxing is part of our culture, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that our most pressing concern is getting Swirly Ball back. I would mention our years of torment waiting for a functional Vanish, but it's working now, and I don't want to jinx it.

We don't always see eye to eye on every detail, though. While I imagine the rogue as a brutal killer, some prefer to think of our class as a group of honorable assassins. One of the most common ideas that I've seen but not understood is the obsession with daggers. I've heard the old standby of "a rogue not wielding a dagger isn't a rogue" a million times, but I just don't get it. Maybe it's combat talking. I even lobbied at BlizzCon for the devs to implement quick off-hand axes and swords, but the request fell on deaf ears. Like it or not, rogue weaponry has evolved.

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. This week, I'll be sharing my report from BlizzCon 2010 for rogues.

As a member of our shadowy brotherhood, my duty to investigate and report on the rogue class is never over. Even though I was enjoying the festivities at BlizzCon 2010 and testing out the new demon hunter class in Diablo 3, I still made time to take care of business. The class Q&A panel is one of the best places to communicate directly with the WoW development team, and so I staked my place in line before the prior panel had even ended.

When my turn finally came, I had to first pay my respects to the developers. I had asked them at the prior year's BlizzCon if we would ever see a Vanish fix implemented, and Ghostcrawler avoided promising anything. Fast-forward a year and we finally have a Vanish that I'm proud to call my own. I opened my time by giving them their much-deserved thanks. I then took the opportunity to ask about something near and dear to my heart: off-hand weapon speeds. Axes and daggers were simply never meant to be used at the same time. Their art styles don't even match!

Yesterday, Bornakk said clearly that the Battered Hilt drop that starts the Quel'delar questline was dropping at the right rate, which is much less than when the patch first hit. And then of course, in last night's fixes, they went ahead and increased the drop rate anyway. He also claimed there were no plans to make it BoP, but who knows what'll happen in the future? For now, however, you can still buy and sell the quest item for quite a bit of gold. We'll have to see where the price eventually ends up -- on the staff here, we've seen anything from 8,000g to over 23,000g, and Twitter tells us that people are paying an average of around 12k or so, going up to as high as 30k (or even shady real money offers in online classified ads). Our own Matt Low has actually seen the drop three different times, and lost every roll. It drops off of any of the mobs in the Heroic versions of the Frozen Halls 5-mans, and as Bornakk says, any class can use it to come up with a pretty solid weapon, so the competition will probably keep the price high, depending on where the drop rate ends up.

The silver lining, if you really want one, have terrible luck, and don't ever expect to have all that money, is that the price will probably go down eventually. Bornakk says that as people move up into Icecrown and start picking up weapons that are even better than the sister blade, demand is likely to drop off a bit. But he also says that Blizzard does want this to be a special and relatively rare item, so you'll still have to probably either be lucky or ready to grind it out. Good luck -- I'm out there searching for one with you.

I finally got my Green Proto-drake today, so I was tempted to do that, but instead today we'll go with the old PLP standby of big scary swords. Alliance, before you go running after this one, make sure to see the note below.

Name: Edge of Agony (Wowhead, Thottbot, MMO Champion)
Type: Epic Two-Hand Sword
Damage/Speed: 651 - 977 / 3.50 (232.6 DPS)
Attributes:

• +112 Agility, +92 Stamina
• Improves haste by 62, attack power by 183, and armor penetration by 86. Note that these are the stats for the 10-man normal item (Trial of the Crusader drops are pretty confusing actually). The 10-man Heroic version has a better version of this, but with the same name and graphic.

I know what you're thinking! "If anyone could write up a scandalous exposé of what working at Blizzard is really like, it'd be our old pal Mike. I bet he's got the inside scoop of what goes on at Big Blue behind closed doors. I paid for the whole seat but I'll only need the edge."

Yeah, well. I'm going to disappoint you here and instead link you to an article from the OC Register, longtime reporter of all news Blizzard given the company's stature in the SoCal business world. They interviewed Blizzard COO Paul Sams about the studio's recent award of "One of the best places to work in Orange County" and why that award was deserved.

Every Thursday, Shelbi Roach of The Bronze Kettle guides you in creating WoW-inspired crafts using real world mats with World of WarCrafts.

Ever wanted to wield an epic weapon from the game in real life or at least put one up on display to promote your geekdom? With a few simple supplies from your neighborhood hobby merchant and a bit of elbow grease you could be the proud new owner of your very own Cataclysm's Edge... replica. Or you could just spend close to 4 Benjamins and order this fine piece of weaponry.


Here is what you will need:

• Balsa Wood x2
  
• Wood Shapes (squares)
• Spray Paint (black, red, silver, orange/yellow)
  
• Acrylic Paint (black, brown, silver)
• Paintbrush
• Xacto Knife (with new blades)
  
• Ruler
• Wood Glue

Click on the images below to view a gallery of step-by-step instructions.

This is the definition of what Phat Loot is all about-- a big old sword to swing around.

Name: The Unbreakable Will
Type: Epic One-hand Sword
Damage/Speed: 112-209/ 1.60 (100.3 DPS)
Abilities:

• 308 Armor (yes, on a sword)
• +33 Stamina
• Increases defense rating by 21.
• So as you've probably guessed by now, this is definitely a Hunter weapon.
• No, of course we're kidding. This is a weapon for a main tank, and it's definitely one of the hottest tanking weapons in the game.
• Plus, for a tanking weapon, it looks pretty hardcore. It's not really meant to do all that much damage (it's the armor and defense that define it, but with that sleek blue glow, I'd think twice about seeing it swinging around in battle.

How to Get It: Drops from Anatheron in the Mount Hyjal instance. Anaetheron, if you didn't already know, was a Dreadlord who came with Archimonde to the battle at Mount Hyjal, and who, like many other demons, fell prey to the forces of good. We're not sure where he got this weapon from (maybe someone whose will he'd broken?), but it does kind of look like it came from a place called the Twisting Nether, doesn't it?

It's about a 10% drop, just like most of this high end stuff. But the good news is that if you're main tanking at a level where you can use this, your guild will be happy to give it to you anyway. And if not, just hold the whole guild hostage-- what are they going to do, run something without an MT?

Getting Rid of It: Sells to vendors for 13g 90s 81c. Disenchants into a Void Crystal.

Previously thought to be a mere rumor, or possibly used in the Illidan fight (like the many legendaries used in the Kael'thas fight), Forte (A-Kazzak-EU) have looted the first drop of the (right) Warglaive of Azzinoth, from their world-third kill of Illidan. Here's the lowdown on the weapon:

• Name: Warglaive of Azzinoth
• Type: Legendary main-hand sword
• Damage/Speed: 214–398/2.80 (109.3 dps)
• Abilities:
• +22 Agility
• +22 Stamina
• Classes: Warrior, Rogue
• Equip: improves hit rating by 21
• Equip: improves attack power by 44
• Set: The Twin Blades of Azzinoth
• (2) Set: Your melee attacks have a chance to increase your haste rating by 450 for 10 sec.
• (2) Set: Increases your attack power by 200 when fighting Demons

It has an ilvl of 156, and sells for (apparently) 24.3g. The other weapon in the set is also called the Warglaive of Azzinoth, and you can see its details here. It's a safe bet that it drops from Illidan as well. This is, to my knowledge, the first take-away legendary anyone's gotten in BC. The Twin Blades of Azzinoth are, of course, Illidan's own weapons.

[via MMO-Gaming]

Last week we did a little joke with Phat Loot Phriday (and, if I can brag for a moment, did everyone read my completely-made-up WoWWiki article that the beautiful people over there didn't delete?), but there's nothing funny about the loot this week-- it's one of the most droolworthy world drops you'll find in the game.

Name: Blinkstrike
Type: Epic One-hand Sword (which means, yes, it can be dual-wielded)
Damage/Speed: 143 - 267 / 2.60 (78.8 DPS)
Abilities:

• chance on hit: adds an extra attack to your swing.
• What, no other stats? Nope, it doesn't need any other stats-- that proc might be the best one in the game. Players who've had one say it procs about 5-6% of the time, which is nice, but here's the big deal: unlike most "extra attack" procs, this one supposedly chains. As in, you hit once, get an extra attack, and then get another extra attack from the extra attack. One player reported seeing 8 hits chained in a row-- that's around 1300 damage without any crits with one swing. Ummm... yeah. Unstoppable much?
  
• Because of that, this thing is perfect for combat rogues, but fury warriors will love it too (Tanks will find better defensive swords, but they have to PvP sometimes, too, right?). Bewarned: the chaining thing is very likely a bug, but even if Blizzard nerfs that, extra attacks are teh win.

How to Get It: With a weapon as crazy as this one, you know they're not going to just give it out. In fact, that's exactly what they're doing, but very, very rarely-- it's a very rare World Drop, which means it could drop from anywhere at any time. Some servers haven't even seen them yet, though, so if you really want one from a drop, you'll be killing things for a long time.

The better option would probably be to just farm the gold-- they're selling on the AHs for anywhere from 1500 to 3000g. At least it's not as much as an epic mount, right? If you do go the raising money route, make sure you can find a seller first-- make friends with your guildies, in case they get one, and keep an eye on your AH and your realm forums to see if anyone's found a Blinkstrike to sell.

A Blinkstrike is more of a weapon you just come across if you're lucky, rather than grinding or questing for. But everyone can dream, right?

Getting Rid of It: If you're crazy, a vendor will give you 10g, 19s, 34c for it, and it'll DE into... well, it'll DE, but no one has DE'd it yet-- probably a Large Prismatic Shard or a Nexus Void Crystal, if I had to guess. Of course, if you have one that you can't get rid of and can't use, feel free to drop it in the mail to Punishment on Thunderhorn-- I'd love one!