Posts with tag warlord-zonozz

In Two Bosses Enter, WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches, bosses, leaders, and powerful figures of World of Warcraft face off in the squared circle. Your vote determines who wins and claims the season title.

Welcome back to the WoW Insider ring, where two champions will face off in mortal combat (with a c, not a k) and the ultimate winner being decided by you. This week, the Echo of Sylvanas aims to knock Warlord Zon'ozz and his Old God masters back to the very abyss that they came from. It'll be a hard fight, considering people actually know who General Zon'ozz is for once because of the incredible Raid Finder.

Last week, the Echo of Baine barely carved out a win with a staggeringly close 51.7% of the vote. Sadly, that means the Echo of Jaina is sent home packing, and the tauren chieftain's ancient spirit echo lives to fight another day. You may be getting your own book in the coming months, Jaina, but this is where your story ends on Two Bosses Enter. Ha, ha! Clever!

Vote now or forever be wracked with the pain and guilt of despair as your favorite combatant loses by the vote you never cast. Vote now and be saved from the torment!

In Two Bosses Enter, WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches, bosses, leaders, and powerful figures of World of Warcraft face off in the squared circle. Your vote determines who wins and claims the season title.

It is no strange surprise that the Echo of Tyrande would retain the love, energy, and passion her fans bestow upon the night elf priestess, even here at the End Time, when Deathwing has taken what he felt was rightfully his. Wait. What? Tyrande lost? To Warlord Zon'ozz? By 43 votes?!

We'll get to this hilarious (to me, anyway) upset in a little bit. There's another important matter to discuss, which is that we have two brand new competitors on Two Bosses Enter and what seems to be an epic match up in the works.

Murozond, the twisted form of the aspect Nozdormu, has manifested himself in the End Time, ready to end all daring time travelers' adventures. As time itself bends around his gargantuan form, only the use of a magic hourglass can give even the most stalwart heroes hope of besting the great infinite. Up against Murozond is a fallen hero who wields the power of the Light unlike any other power on Azeroth. Once the leader of the Church of the Holy Light, now Archbishop Benedictus reigns as the Twilight Father, assisting Deathwing in ending all of our puny existences.

Who wins, friends? Does the great infinite dragon best one of the most powerful wielders of holy and shadow magic? You decide!

In Two Bosses Enter, WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches, bosses, leaders, and powerful figures of World of Warcraft face off in the squared circle. Your vote determines who wins and claims the season title.

As the poll closes for last week's matchup. the Echo of Sylvanas from the End Time dungeon successfully trumped the second raid boss to be a part of Two Bosses Enter, Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. Looks like this unsleeper is being put down for the night, if you catch my drift. You don't? Oh, Yor'sahj lost. By 800 votes. Another surprisingly close match, considering who Sylvanas is.

This week's matchup proves to be another fun one, especially for the commenters, who are doing their best to reconcile raid mechanics and 5-man mechanics while remembering that this is about spirit and fun. The Echo of Tyrande, leader of the night elves and caretaker of Nordrassil and the druid barrows, will have to pull out every trick in the book as she goes up against Warlord Zon'ozz, one of the two generals at the helm of the assault on Wyrmrest Temple.

Now the fate of these two champions is in your hands. Who wins it, loyal readers and fans? Does the Echo of Tyrande have the strength of will to stand up against the madness of the Old Gods' servant Warlord Zon'ozz?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.)

I've said in the past that enhancement is in a good place in 4.3, and that's the truth. Despite some really awful itemization and some as-yet-unresolved issues with the spec, enhancement is remaining a strong middle-of-the-pack contender. In non-cutting-edge raid groups that don't have multiple Dragonwrath-wielding casters, we're even better.

Dragon Soul is a great instance for enhancement in 4.3 because it offers a variety of fights. Some play to enhancement's strengths, some highlight its weaknesses, and some fights are Ultraxion and your DPS spec doesn't matter, provided you can push buttons and click a shiny purple dot on his screen every 45 seconds. For the purpose of brevity, I'm going to assume you're familiar with the normal-mode mechanics of these fights (and if you're not, some are conveniently covered by my frenemy Tyler Caraway in the Ready Check column) and just speak to how enhancement specifically fares on these fights.

Chopping Morchok

There's nothing particularly special about Morchok for enhancement, except if you're doing the fight on heroic. Shamanistic Rage and Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem make Morchok's Stomp damage negligible, but Stomps don't really hit hard enough on normal to worry about. However, if you have a healer in line of sight during a black phase (and you've done nothing in recent memory that would cause them to hate you), Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem and Shamanistic Rage will let you stay on the boss for most if not all of the phase. If you don't have a friendly healer, enhancement still fares better than most melee on this fight, as cast Lava Bursts and Lightning Bolts still hit hard.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin!

I was tired. I'd traveled to the End of Time, participated in one of the biggest moments in the history of Azeroth, and helped the spiritual leader of the Horde kill the spiritual leader of the Alliance (who, admittedly, had tried to kill us first). I'd never felt much of a calling to the Dream, but a few hundred years of meditation sounded great right about now.

Peering over the scales of my drake (I'd have flown myself, but they insisted), I gestured to the large dragon in flight beside me.

"You know, you dragons are always causing trouble," I shouted as the frigid wind of Northrend whipped by. "Can't you just drop me off at the nearest forest and call it a day?"

Nethestrasz chuckled. Through some queer trick of the dragons' magic, they were fully understandable, even in dragon form.

"If a forest existed that would be spared from Deathwing's flames, I might join you," he replied. Unfortunately, any further reply was drowned out by a sudden, loud cracking noise as the earth split asunder before us, revealing a gigantic earth elemental.

"Well, looks like it's time to be troublesome," I thought. Wordlessly, I nodded to Nethestrasz, and our army turned as one and dove for the surface.

This week and next, I'll be covering everything you need to know to DPS your way through the new Dragon Soul raid encounter. I'll provide a quick capsule strategy for those attempting the fight in the Raid Finder, then describe the changes to the fight for normal and heroic modes.

Previously, we've made explaining Raid Finder fights easier by showing you how to tackle the Raid Finder mode bosses of Dragon Soul in 5 seconds with our handy guides. You guys responded positively to those descriptions, so we're going to take it a little further. If you're a Raid Finder player who's gearing up to hit the normal mode version of Dragon Soul, here's how each encounter differs and what you need to look out for.

The Raid Finder calls the first four bosses of the Dragon Soul encounter "The Siege of Wyrmrest Temple," accessible as the first wing of the raid. In normal mode, there is no distinction between the two wings, as the whole place is just one instance. For the sake of understanding and what most people in Raid Finder are accustomed to, we'll split our explanation into two wings as well.

Before we begin, here are a few general points to make about the jump from Raid Finder to normal difficulty.

• There will be more damage. Everything hits harder in normal and heroic mode Dragon Soul. Everything. Every ability will require more healing, and every player will be required to mitigate as much damage as they can to make the healers' jobs easier.
• There will be more healing. With more damage comes more healing. Healers will need to know what cooldowns they have and where they are best used. Tank cooldowns are good for periods of high tank damage. Raid cooldowns are good for periods of high raid damage. Your raid leader will most likely be in charge of letting you know what cooldowns to use where, so listen closely.

Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid.

Unlike the other encounters in Dragon Soul, Warlord Zon'ozz only requires a single tank. For cooldown purposes, it is possible to bring in a second tank; however, there isn't too much of a need to do so. Per usual, you will want to have around five to six healers. Switch your off tank for an additional healer if you feel that would help. Your DPS should be a solid mix of both ranged and melee; there does need to be a solid balance of both. Healers should be split among the DPS, with tank healers staying with the melee.

Abilities

Zon'ozz doesn't have all that many abilities, but he's still a hands-on encounter. Most of your time will be spent watching the Void of Unmaking and bouncing it back and forth. Healers will focus more on clearing away Disrupting Shadows. For once, tanks probably have the easiest time on this encounter, only really having to watch out for a single ability that occurs about once per phase or so.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

This week, we'll be looking at how to heal on your priest through Morchok, Warlord Zon'ozz, and Yor'sahj the Unsleeping.

If you haven't read one of my boss healing guides before, let me give you the same ol' disclaimer I always give ... This guide focuses on the specifics details of how to heal as a discipline or holy priest within a given encounter. It assumes you have a basic understanding of the fight, and it will not typically explain mechanics or general strategy. If you are unfamiliar with a fight, please review the links at the beginning of each boss subsection.

I also think it's worth mentioning that these guides will seem a bit excessive to players experiencing these encounters exclusively through the Raid Finder.

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

A new month and a new patch means new raid bosses to learn! It means new mechanics to learn, new players to work with (for some of you) and new challenges. I'm pretty sure that it's safe to say most of us were getting a little ... burned out on Firelands.

The opening bosses should present a nice warmup for the rest of the instance. We'll start with quick healing setups for Morchok and Warlord Zon'ozz. The Raid Finder iteration of these bosses shouldn't be a problem for you if you already have a history of raiding. Normal versions might present a bit of a step up.

You've no doubt already braved the Raid Finder, Blizzard's new system for getting players into raiding with a new lower difficulty on Dragon Soul. Players from all walks of WoW life will now be able to participate in the epic raid encounter to take down Deathwing once and for all.

Even with the new lower raid difficulty, it's good to go in with some knowledge. Reading your Dungeon Journal is a good start, but here are some quick tips on the first four bosses in the Siege of Wyrmrest Temple wing of the Dragon Soul raid.

Here are some quick facts to remember about the Raid Finder:

• No lockouts. Participating in the Raid Finder will not lock you out from doing the raid on 10- or 25-man with your guild or group.
• You only get to roll on loot once per boss per week. You can fight bosses multiple times but are only eligible for loot on the first kill.
• 250 valor points for completing the raid wing.
• Two tanks, six healers, 17 DPSers are needed for a Raid Finder raid.
• You can queue up in Raid Finder with your Real ID friends across servers.

Blizzard's Daelo has just announced that several patch 4.3 Dragon Soul raid bosses are coming open for testing on the PTR. The bosses are coming fast and furious; hopefully this signifies a near-future release date for WoW's final raid content patch. The first boss (Warlord Zon'ozz) will be available very shortly, so start rounding up guildies for a test run!

PTR Raid Testing Schedule - Oct 17/18

Today and tomorrow we're going to try and test the remaining bosses in Dragon Soul on 10 player difficulty.

Oct 17
14:30 PDT - Warlord Zon'ozz (10 Player)
16:30 PDT - Hagara (10 Player)

Oct 18
10:15 PDT – Ultraxion (10 Player)
11:45 PDT – Warmaster Blackhorn (10 Player)
14:30 PDT – Spine of Deathwing (10 Player)
16:30 PDT – Madness of Deathwing (10 Player)

There will be additional testing scheduled in the upcoming weeks including 25 player and Heroic difficulties, both in the morning and afternoon. There will not be any testing during Blizzcon.

As always, the scheduling for PTR testing will be VERY fluid. Tests can be announced, canceled, or rescheduled at a moment's notice depending on build and server status, outstanding bugs, etc. I will try to give as much advance notice about tests, but that is not always possible. Also note that these encounters are all works in progress.

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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!

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