Posts with tag voidwalker

The holiday season spawns many things. It can create excitement, anxiety, or shock that the big day's almost here. For some, it can manifest a sense of creativity that makes for really awesome gifts. There's a couple particularly cool items out there today, and your intrepid reporters at WoW Insider wants to make sure you get to see it all.

If your knitted Boomkin could use a friend, Alice at the Wonderland blog found the Voidwalker plushy on Etsy. The little guy is a bit under a foot and a half tall, which makes him the perfect height for huggin' and squeezin' by a fireplace. His eyes glow in the dark to scare away any night critters that might need scaring away. Unfortunately, it looks like Glowgoyle is sold out for right now, but we can hope there will be restock in the future.

BriarFox on the Livejournal knitting community created his very own Quest Giver Stocking Cap. It has the pictured exclamation point on one side, and a yellow question mark on the other. He used a "stella's hat" pattern, and modified the stitch to allow for the emblazoned symbols. He's not selling them, sadly, but maybe we can cruise around and find a commision. If you want a quest-giving substitute for your yard, you can check out the WoW-themed garden art Shelbi found Feral Glass last week.

Okay, I admit. I'm shallow and wish I could have both under the tree.

The other day, in response to a Hunter pet tanking Gruul, I posted a video of a Voidwalker tanking Illidan... almost. The Voidwalker survived most of phase one, which is quite nearly identical to all of the 'humanoid' phases, so to me that was good enough. It wasn't good enough for everyone though, so they're back with a video of the entire fight.

The Voidwalker tanks all of the phases except for the fire elemental phase, because that requires far more finesse than what you can do with a pet, or they can do on their own. The Voidwalker also didn't tank the demon phase, because there wasn't one. Their gear levels combined with the new talents of patch 3.0.2 and the added raid nerf let them beat the encounter without ever seeing an entire phase of it. That's like opening a bag of Runts to find out someone took all of the bananas. The bananas are the best part, you jerks.

Step aside, hunter pets. There's a new raid tank in town: Voidwalkers. The guild Hexed from Dragonblight-US got a little bored raiding the old fashioned way with all of the nerfs that have gone in, what with Killy J down already, so they decided to do things a little differently. They pulled out a Voidwalker and sent it a-tankin'.

Through liberal use of Demonic Empowerment (and its associated threat bug) and their awesome healers, Mister Voidwalker successfully tanked the Priestess mob in the Illidari Council encounter and most of Illidan himself. An incident with Parasites caused a little chaos, which ultimately spelled the voidwalker's demise. Illidan hits juuust a little too hard to live through a few of the healers scrambling away from parasites. Even if it had 23,000 HP.

It was also mentioned in the e-mail to us here at WoW Insider that they used the Voidwalker to tank the first three bosses in Mount Hyjal as well. I think even a baby kitten could tank the first three bosses of Mount Hyjal nowadays, but using a Voidy for it is still pretty dang cool. I hope to see more off the wall stuff like this before Wrath launches, so if you have it, please send it in to us!

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

This week, instead of showing you how to make something, I want to focus on something that someone else has created.

My main is a human warlock (yeah, Alliance here) and as such I have a soft spot for all things blueberry. So when I happened across this über cute plush voidwalker by seller Glowgoyle on Etsy, I instantly fell in love. I happened to forward the link to my husband who later surprised me with it as a gift.

Now it sits proudly on my desk amongst my other toys and assorted WoWCrafts. The plushie itself is very well-made and is about 15 inches tall. The crafter was awesome enough to include a stand and the final coup de grâce is that the eyes glow in the dark.

There's a possibility that Glowgoyle might make more in the future so definitely keep an eye on her Etsy shop.

There are a few interesting things in the Demonology tree in Wrath of the Lich King, but this 31-point talent was what jumped out at me the most. Replacing Soul Link, which was moved down to 11 points, Demonic Empowerment is the long-needed uh-oh button for our demons. Kind of like their own version of the PvP trinket. The cool thing is that, depending on the demon you have out, you get different effects.

Demonic Empowerment
Requires 30 points in Demonology
Grants the Warlock's summoned demon Empowerment.

• Succubus - Instantly vanishes, causing the Succubus to go into an improved Invisibility state. The vanish effect removes all stuns, snares and movement impairing effects from the Succubus.
• Voidwalker - Increases the Voidwalker's health by 20%, and it's threat generated from spells and attacks by 20% for 20 sec.
• Imp - Increases the Imp's spell critical strike chance by 20% for 30 sec.
• Felhunter - Dispels all magical effects from the Felhunter.
• Fel Guard - Increases the Fel Guard's attack speed by 20% and breaks all stun, snare and movement impairing effects and makes your Fel Guard immune to them. Lasts 15 sec.

With a cooldown of 1 minute, this spell will come in very handy for a variety of situations. In fact, I've key bound it in the Beta simply because I've found it to be incredibly useful. Let's take a look at the various uses after the jump.

The reliable Voidwalker won't be changing much in Wrath of the Lich King, but will be getting a few improvements with some talents from the Demonology tree such as the consolidated Fel Intellect and Fel Stamina, now called Fel Vitality, which rightfully increases Stamina as well as Intellect. Along with all demons, it also gains Avoidance, a baseline ability that helps it mitigate AoE damage by a massive 80%. Improved Voidwalker has not been changed, but a key talent that used to be perfect with the big blueberry -- Soul Link -- was reduced to a 15% damage absorption and no damage bonuses. The good news, however, is that Soul Link is now a Tier 3 talent, allowing almost any Warlock to pick it up for more survivability.

As Inscription is slowly built into a viable trade skill, Blizzard sneaks more and more glyph data onto the Beta server, even if none of it is directly available thus far. This build, MMO Champion discovered a nice selection of Warlock glyphs, and I have to say that most of them look pretty sweet. Of course, it's hard to say for sure on how good some of them are until we know for sure if PvE damage rotations besides Shadow Bolt spam will be viable in Wrath's endgame, but I'll assume they will be, for the most part.

Let's check them out after the break.

How can we amuse ourselves while we wait for Wrath of the Lich King to come out? One word: geekcrafts. Sure, you could go to Jinx or CafePress and buy some stickers or T-shirts, but then again there's all that waiting, what with the shipping and everything. Plus, although somebody made it, they didn't make it. By which I mean, it wasn't crafted. So, you know, it's like a BoE item instead of an engineers-only item.

Am I making any sense yet? No? Hm. Okay. Let me try again. Idle hands are the devil's workshop, so pick up some art supplies and start learning a new hobby. By way of inspiration, take a look at some of these cool things other people have crafted from their love of WoW.

So, the world (and WoW Insider) is alive with the sound of the Wrath of the Lich King beta, and it's high time that we take a look at our favorite commander of evil... the Warlock. We'll want to be sure we understand what's coming for us, so as not to let anyone think those other evil guys are horning in on our territory. And, yeah, there's definitely some things changing.

A lot of the changes are a little hard to noggin out -- are they meant to be buffs? Nerfs? Inexplicably different, but not really better or worse? Demonology is certainly getting a thorough shuffle, but it's hard to say whether it's good or bad. We'll chat more about it after the cut. Let's start with what the first beta patch notes obviously say, and consider what each item means. Then, in Part II, we'll start looking at each tree individually, with each of its new spells.

That Murloc was just the beginning -- since the Spore creature creator demo dropped officially yesterday, and along with this cute little C'thun (thanks, Andrew!), there are a whole crowd of Warcraft-related creatures showing up on the Sporepedia. We've collected our favorites so far in a gallery below -- while you'll need to actually put the creatures in game to see them shuffle, saunter, and dance around in Spore, you can get a pretty good idea of just how versatile Will Wright's little creator is. I've said it before and I'll say it again: while everyone is expecting Warhammer to give WoW a run for its money, the PC game that Blizzard should really be worried about this year is Spore.

If you see any other great Warcraft-related creature creations in Spore, feel free to send them along and you just might see them here. And in the meantime, our sister site BigDownload (who are also hosting the demo) is holding a creature creator contest -- send them your best creature and you could win a EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 8800GT, EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 9600GT or a free upgrade to the full version of the creature creator game. It's Sporelicious!

Seriously, look at the C'thun. We haven't seen a tentacled, ancient monster this cute since, well, Hello Cthulu.

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

Is your special WoW time constantly getting interrupted? Need to keep people from raiding your domain while you're busy raiding Black Temple? This fanciful doorknob hanger is easy to make and fun for all ages. It's also not too late to add it to your Duskwood Chest for Father's day.

Here is what you will need:

• Voidwalker Doorknob Hanger Template
  
• Foam Doorknob Hanger
• Foam Sheets (blue, light blue, green, purple)
  
• Foam Letters (of the sticker variety)
• Foam Glue
• Fashion Beads (mixed colors)
• Xacto Knife/Scissors

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

It never really gets old speculating about what Blizzard has hidden away for the future, whether it be for the Sunwell Plateau, Wrath of the Lich King or something else entirely. The topic of Warlock pets comes up every now and then on the Wrath forums and while I don't play a Warlock, its an intriguing topic. Warlocks currently have six baseline demons, two of which have a slightly different summoning process. They can get another through being specced deep Demonology. If you count the Felguard as their level 70 addition in the Burning Crusade, they get one roughly every ten levels, so its safe to assume they have something coming in Wrath.

First thing to consider is what role the pet would play. Everything but healer has been done already, and I don't want to even think about a Warlock with a pet healer. The Felguard is essentially a direct upgrade to the Voidwalker, so something like that is more likely. Personally, I think a Shivarra would fit the next demon well, and act as a direct upgrade to the Succubus.

Second thing to consider is whether it would make sense from a lore point of view. As fun as it would be to summon a pet Pit Lord whenever you want, that seems unlikely. Same with the Nathrezim or the Eredar. Shivan or something we haven't seen yet seems the most likely choice.

World of Raids came across some more of those clay dolls from the other day, and holy moly are they cute. Lookit this Voidwalker! And this hearthstone! Awesome.

Her blog is all in Chinese, so it's a little hard to read if you don't speak the language, but here's a gallery of all the new pieces. And there's no word if any of these are for sale yet-- forget about Figureprints, I want one of these of my character.