Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

The above is a screenshot from Free Realms. Dancing ponies are not exactly my thing, but god knows we’ve talked about them enough. So I think after this screenshot, I’m never going to ask for a pony again. Forget it.

Instead I’ll be asking Ghostcrawler for a moose. I encourage you all to as well.

Ghostcrawler promised me a moose.

Eddy asked…

“Can you lose achievements? I just got the Loremaster of EK and Kalimdor achievements and I keep reading things on Wowhead about how such and such quest used to count, how people’s quest count changed… and I’m a little anxious about them. If Blizzard changes whether, say, a particular quest counts for EK or Kalimdor and messes up my totals, would the achievement disappear?”

Right now, once you have an achievement you have it for good. I don’t anticipate Blizzard changing their stance on this anytime soon. However the idea of permutable achievements does sound cool — think if the guild with the most players online at any one time all got the title “of the Crowded,” or the player online with the most non-buffed HP got “the Tank.” But those are not necessarily achievements as much as titles (much like the current arena titles are implemented).

Either way, for now — you’re safe. No chance of having an achievement removed by normal gameplay means.

Sprinte asked…

“Why did the Lich King never launch a counteroffensive against the Horde and Alliance? He seems to have been on the defensive the entire expansion. A friendly visit to Dalaran could have been great fun. Think of the chaos!”

Who says he’s not going to go to Dalaran? Maybe he’ll meet up with Jaina and some undead form of Kael’thas and they’ll all sit around and pine about how they hate and love each other. I won’t continue where this story goes… but what I’m trying to say (for real) is that we don’t know that Arthas is done yet.

As for him being on the defensive most of the expansion, we can assume that’s because he’s had the problems at the Wrathgate, as well as the major offensive he had prior to Wrath’s release. That’s a lot to happen to any nation state (even a terrorist one like Arthas’), so I don’t think anyone should be too surprised nothing has happened yet.

Besides, there’s a Cataclysm on the horizon…

And Shade? You win one internets today. Congrats!

Tim asked…

“Does Blizzard hate trolls? We have plenty if backstory, which I am thankful for. It’s just that players kill so many of them in the game. Who knows how many troll themed instances there are? I know I don’t. It seems Blizzard wants us to enjoy killing them.”

No, Blizzard doesn’t hate trolls. They also have you kill tons of humans, elves, and other creatures. They don’t have you kill enough gnomes however. Clearly Blizzard loves gnomes.

Kyrro asked…

“Does weaponskill have any effect to casters? Would I do better with 400 skillpoints staves than 1 skillpoint in staves?”

Nope. The only thing weapon skills will reward you with is an achievement. Although if you are a caster and can use a wand, I suggest having that skill be maxed. You never know when you’ll want to play with your wand…

Guys? We have our pony!

The Warcraft twitter account just linked to a new page on the official World of Warcraft site regarding Invincible. This stallion served Arthas in life as his mount. Unfortunately, Arthas worked his mount a little too hard and slipped on ice. Arthas had no choice but to give Invincible a merciful death. (You can find more details about the story if you’ve read Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden.) When Arthas became the Lich King, he visited Invincible’s grave and raised him from the dead in order to serve him.

How do you get him?

Oh, it’s fairly simple to get. This pony can’t get hungry, tired, or feel pain. Great for a Lich King to use when traveling around, right? All you have to do is pry it from Arthas’ cold, dead hands. Beat Arthas in Icecrown Citadel on heroic mode, and Invincible will serve you.

But we don’t know if everyone in the raid is going to get one (like Ulduar drakes) or if only one mount will drop (akin to killing Sartharion with 3 drakes up or the Mimiron head mount from Yogg-Saron).

When team Canada’s Olympic roster for the men’s hockey team was announced, I was extremely excited to check out who had made the cut and who didn’t. For the most part, I agreed with all the choices. I’ll admit a few of the selections had me wondering why. I had to ask myself why a player like Brenden Morrow (captain of the Dallas Stars) was selected over other players. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn’t always about the goals or the points. There were people that brought in certain intangible qualities that just could not be measured.

I started thinking about raiders and my guildies for a moment. Who was valuable and what did they contribute? Sure they didn’t exactly bring dominating numbers into the game, but they were able to hold their own in a race. For example:

• Theorycrafter: That guy in the guild who happens to hold a degree in math or physics? Yeah, he will theorycraft the heck out of you and anyone else who asks him for advice. Not only will he tell you what gems and enchants to get, he’ll even write up a multi-page theorem indicating the balance of stats required for optimum performance.
• Veteran raider: She’s been around since Molten Core and remembers what its like to wipe for weeks and even months on end for one boss. Still believes that the new content isn’t as bad as it was back then. Instills a sense of calm in the raid during the most turbulent of raid nights when things don’t seem to be executing. Also happens to be your grandma who makes the world’s best chocolate chip cookies.
• Diagnostician: This is the player who can accurately recall every wipe and the series of events that led up to it. Just give him a few seconds to double check his information on some death logs and review his videos. Yes, not only can he give you a good explanation as to why and how a wipe happened, but he has it on tape in case anyone tries to dispute it.

So now allow me to ask, what intangible qualities do you bring to a raid? Are there other people in your guild that offer something unique as well?

Sometimes a boss just seems to get lucky.

You know what I’m talking about: you just see 1% wipe after 1% wipe and you don’t know what else you can do to get over the edge. Do you need more DPS? Are the tanks dying? Are the healers going OOM, or people standing in stuff that’s killing them? What’s the important thing you’re doing or not doing to get that last little bit of performance out and kill that big loot sack on legs in front of you? You tweak strats, and then tweak them back, you play with raid comp, you change positioning… sometimes you get that little click and it all falls into place and some times you don’t, nothing seems to work. Whether it’s a PuG wiping on Garfrost or a raid working on the Blood Queen, things don’t always go our way.

So what do you do? Are you the ’stomach it out’ type who won’t leave until it’s dead or someone else pulls the plug? Are you a tinkerer always coming up with new strats and new approaches? Are you the “this is what I read on Wowhead” guy? How do you move past failure to success?

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Relentless, Furious, Deadly, Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters on the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Frostwyrms. We’re especially focused on the people who play these games, to further shed light on the world of the PvP player. If you’d like to be interviewed for The Colosseum, please feel free to contact us — be sure to include your armory as a link!

We’re in for a real treat this week. We interviewed Jhazy of Blackrock, one of the few players in arena history to achieve a 3,000 rating in 3v3. More impressive yet, he’s done this on the very competitive Bloodlust battlegroup, and is currently holding that #1 spot by a margin of more than one hundred points. Jhazy’s team STRAIGHT TO THE TOP is a protection warrior + marksman hunter + holy paladin composition. As a team, they are holding down the world’s #1 3v3 spot!

Check out what Jhazy has to say after the break!

WoW.com: Who are your teammates right now?
Jhazy: My teammates right now are Ellihs, the baller paladin and Alloraan the worlds best protection warrior.

WoW.com: What’s the general plan behind your composition?
Jhazy: We plan to take this team composition to the top once again in season 8 if our paladin feels up to it. Even after the protection [warrior] nerf we just intend to play better, though RMP [rogue-mage-priest] will be slightly harder.

WoW.com: What challenges does your team have?
Jhazy: Pre 3.3 we had slight trouble vs any wizard cleave [two spell dps casters + healer] on ring of valor — and funny as it may sound, I’m the hardest target to kill. Our paladin or warrior usually dies if we do at all.

WoW.com: How do you prefer to run your comp?
Jhazy: We play our comp like a plate RMP [rogue-mage-priest] you could say. We make hard swaps with certain cooldowns up and go for quick kills on quick swaps throwing ccs in the proper spots while bursting down our target with stuns and silences placed accordingly.

WoW.com: What’s your opening strategy?
Jhazy: We usually pick a dps out of the 2 dps (which is usually the case unless it’s double healer) and we’ll hit that. Alloraan will sit on something else or our kill target for a short amount of time depending on the setup. For example against RLS [rogue-lock-shaman] we’ll go against the lock and swap rogue and go for a kill in a shockwave.

WoW.com: What do you like to do as soon as the gate opens?
Jhazy: Setup my focus target and pick two kill swap targets. and sit behind our pilar for a moment to setup our strat for that particular fight.

WoW.com: How do you work out target designation? (Does someone call it out, or is everyone on their own to figure it out?)
Jhazy: Alloraan and I will basically talk 95% of the time telling each other what’s going on. We call out our swaps a lot and I usually lead off with a Serpent Sting.

WoW.com: Do you have favorite classes to kill on the opposing team?
Jhazy: Beast mastery hunters and enhancement shamans.

WoW.com: How do you schedule your playtime? Do you try and play at “good times to queue?” Is this different now than in previous seasons?
Jhazy: We usually just play whenever all three of us are on and when there are any teams worth queing against. We try to play smart about when we queue so we’re not queing blindly (meaning not knowing who we could be facing). I’ve always que’d this way, even in previous seasons.

WoW.com: What signals to you that you need to radically change strategy midmatch? (And how do you accomplish that change?)
Jhazy: We’ll usually wait for our stuff to come up off of cooldowns and we’ll ask each other whether our stuff is up or not, if it’s not we’ll continue what we’re doing if it is, we’ll switch.

WoW.com: What’s the biggest thing that differentiates a good player from a great player?
Jhazy: A good player is someone who knows their own abilities and can for the most part understand when to use them. A great player is one who knows their own abilities and how to use them in the correct timing and positions, and knows everyone elses abilities to make their own sync with theirs better.

WoW.com: What are you trying to improve?
Jhazy: Not making mistakes, and keeping my hands warm.

WoW.com: What motivates you to keep playing?
Jhazy: I find the competition very fun to play against, as well as the friends I have known as long as I have. I’m not too fond of drama so I try to avoid that part of the game.

WoW.com: What spec do you play? What advantages does that spec provide you that others do not? (If you switch between specs often, feel free to explain why you might switch)
Jhazy: I play marksman at the moment. I think this spec has double the cooldowns when needed on command with Readiness, Silencing Shot is a must for high caliber level of playing. The beast mastery tree is good for straight up pressure, but doesn’t have the swap kind of burst needed to kill someone in a swap and a silence that marks has. The survival tree regardless of it’s name has less survivability because of the lessened double cooldowns from the lack of Readiness, and just again has pressure, no real swap burst.

WoW.com: What do you think of the state of arena this season?
Jhazy: I don’t think this season is balanced just like every other. Double healer warrior playing and climbing because they suck, yet arms warriors can solo players. Wizard cleaves globaling players with unbearable CC, as well as immense pressure. Beast cleave [beast mastery hunter + enhancement shaman + healer, usually holy paladin] still strong as ever just straight up sitting on something without remorse. And of course my setup, protection warrior + marksman hunter + holy paladin. Stun after stun with a crazy amount of control on any single caster and undodgeable burst.

WoW.com: What’s it like playing on the world #1 3v3?
Jhazy: It’s a lot of fun. We get tons and tons of tells saying how much we suck just “riding the prot warrior train” when we’ve been playing this comp since the beginning of season 6. It just puts a smile on my face seeing all the haters hating. This is just a video game after all, and if my comp happens to be rank 1 because of how we play it, then so be it. We are playing to win, and we’re having a lot of fun doing so as well.

WoW.com: What are your thoughts about protection specs? Are they overpowered?
Jhazy: I think protection warriors at the moment are currently a little overpowered yes. They do need some sort of nerf. I don’t know if this Warbringer and Shield Slam damage nerf is what it needs, but we’ll find out after the season begins and we start to climb again. I think protection paladins in arena are slightly stronger in damage than they should be, but they need something other than the “support buffs” to their class to make it not just a whirlwind of damage.

WoW.com: What’s your advice to players who just might be picking up arenas?
Jhazy: Practice, practice, practice. That’s all arena really is as a beginner. You’ll have to learn your class, study it. Study what every single other class can do and how it counters you. Dueling is a good way to find out other classes abilities. Then once you figure out the abilities, learn when to use them in arena for certain times to burst, and control the opposing players.

WoW.com: Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Jhazy: Just like to thank the people who actually aren’t haters just because I run a specific comp. We all try very hard when we play and I think it’s quite funny that everyone thinks this comp is “faceroll” when it’s really not. If anyone else and prot warriors around the world climb up to a 3,000 rating and still tell me it’s faceroll — be my guest. Until then we have worked hard on our strats and how to play this comp as well as we do.a

If you read WoW.com with any regularity, you probably saw and read our pieces on Friday discussing some rather curious policies Blizzard has recently instituted. There are two in particular that I’d like to discuss further: The care package for hacked accounts and the possibility of mandatory authenticators.

First, how many of you have had your accounts stolen, or know someone that had theirs stolen? Chances are good every single person that reads this post will raise their hand to that question. The problem is not a small one. I’m in a rather large guild, and every few weeks someone has their account stolen and the little bits of our guild bank they have access to go with them. My large guild is also just one guild in a larger guild alliance which suffers the same problems. Every two weeks or so, someone I see online on a regular basis gets their account stolen.

This is only a small set of guilds on one server, and the problem is not unique to us. It’s a problem you will find anywhere you go in WoW, so you can guarantee that every single day, hundreds of accounts are stolen. Each of these stolen accounts needs to be investigated, retrieved, and if everything turns out right, restored. Much like anything else in the world, this takes time. When you rush these things, you end up with the Martin Fury situation. As hilarious and intriguing as that was, it’s not healthy for the game.

Plus, if that person you just restored is especially lacking in computer know-how, there is no guarantee they won’t get their account stolen again the very next day after their restoration. Score one for the bad guys. Two stolen accounts for the price of one.

The Care Package

In many cases, after the care package policy was first implemented, Game Masters were offering players the care package and only informing them of the ability to do a full restore after they turned the original offer down. Since we’ve reported on this situation, the policy has been reiterated and it’s been made clear that the intent is to offer both simultaneously, and let the player make their choice. With that clarified and reinforced, the policy is surprising, but not a wretched sleazy thing.

Remember that not all WoW players are people decked out in phat epic loot. WoW has a significant number of players still running around in greens, or even just leveling up for the very first time. Do these people really need full gear restores for their character(s)? This care package, for those players, could potentially be above and beyond what they had to begin with. For a player leveling for the first time, 2500g could easily purchase them a new set of gear on the auction house, pay their various mount/flight costs pre-epic flying, and then some. Not a bad deal for a couple days’ worth of inconvenience, is it?

A full restoration for those characters with very little of value likely takes just as long as restoring an Icecrown Citadel geared raid tank that was nearing the gold cap. If those players in greens will accept the care package, that’s a smaller number of characters in the restoration queue. With fewer players in the restoration queue, your raid’s main tank will be restored faster and you can get back to grinding your face against Professor Putricide.

This care package policy is, overall, a good thing for the game. The problem only came in when it was being pitched incorrectly, making players believe they had to settle for a few badges and some gold instead of getting back the character that they (or their raid/guild) worked so hard on. How your message is communicated is everything.

Mandatory Authenticators

I admit, I am baffled at how divided the community is over this issue. Authenticators are wonderful things, and if Blizzard can get one into the hands of every single player of the game, a lot of the most frequently mentioned problems with WoW’s customer service would be repaired. I would be most pleased if every copy of Cataclysm shipped with an authenticator.

It is difficult (if not totally impossible) for Blizzard to completely protect a player from being hacked, phished or scammed. There is very little that they can do with the client itself to protect someone from their own mistakes, and that is the root of almost all hacked accounts. Blizzard keeps things secure on their end, and the players need to do the same on theirs. Most do not. In fact, I cannot even count the number of times I’ve heard someone say, “I don’t need an authenticator, I think I know how to keep my computer secure” and then they get hacked not even weeks after. There are a lot of ways to get nailed with a keylogger, and they can be as simple as missing out on a Flash update by a matter of hours.

Accounts are rarely, if ever, hacked via brute force. Any limit Blizzard places on login attempts or any password blacklists they introduce would make people feel more safe, but it wouldn’t actually make them safe. The authenticator, being a third party item that does not actually communicate with your computer, is the best possible way to keep your account secure. There’s no threat of getting a keylogger in Vasco’s authenticator.

I know that many people are concerned about losing their authenticator, and here is my tip to you: If you only use your authenticator in your own home, find a small strip of double sided tape and stick it to the outside edge of your monitor. It will be there forever. If you do use it in multiple places, use a strip of velcro instead of tape. You can put it there when you’re at home, and when you’re taking it to a friend’s house or wherever you might be going, put it on your keychain or a necklace.

As soon as Blizzard can stop worrying about hacked accounts, they can focus on the myriad of other issues players face every day.

Final Thoughts

It’s no secret that Blizzard’s support department is worked to the bone, and the solution to that problem is not to hire dozens of people and throw more manpower at it. No matter how many game masters they hire to fix players’ hacked accounts, those people cannot stop the accounts from being hacked. The game experience won’t improve, players will just be inconvenienced for a slightly smaller amount of time. When one problem is dominating your entire staff, you don’t simply hire more staff. You find a way to solve the problem.

The care package offer is a band-aid on a gushing wound when what you actually need is stitches. Yes, the band-aid will help a little, but it’s not going to make the problem go away. You’re still bleeding out. The path to healing is through shaking things up, and getting those authenticators in player hands. If incentives like the Corehound Pup aren’t working, a more drastic decision needs to be made. I sincerely hope that the day I open my Cataclysm box, there is an authenticator inside waiting for me. I don’t need it personally, being one of the earliest adopters, but it will be good to know Blizzard’s support department will be on the road to healing and players won’t need to worry about their guild bank disappearing like clockwork.

Okay, maybe it’s not all hunter loot — certainly there are some useless plate pieces and decorative maces in there — but our ICC loot shopping list is delightful and vast, and even impacts the balance of hunter specs. This is the end game loot folks. The last major raid instance with the coolest and shiniest and bestest toys we’re gonna get (and some bows).

In fact, there’s just so darned much hunter loot delight that it won’t all fit into one post! So join me after the cut as we start to plan our ICC loot lists with a look at our itemization, tier 10 armor, Emblem of Frost options, and craftable loot.

Itemization

When we talk about itemization, we’re not just talking about having more of each stat, but also how our itemization budget is spent. ICC is the best itemized hunter look of any tier. This means that we’re seeing more of the stats we like — more red sockets, more crit, more armor penetration — and less of the stats we don’t like, such as blue sockets and haste.

The biggest impact we’re going to see from this fantastic itemization is the greatly increased amount of ArP we’ll be seeing on our gear. ArP is all over the place in ICC, in large amounts, and it’s not something you’re going to be able to avoid. MM gains far more benefit from ArP than SV, and the ease with which tons of ArP is now available will shift the balance of best dps spec strongly in the MM direction. MM will no longer have to give up nearly as much to pursue the badass ArP builds. In fact we’re going to see a lot of MM hunters hardcapping their ArP, rather than pursuing a softcap with a trinket like Mjolnir Runestone or Needle-Encrusted Scorpion.

In the ICC endgame of best hunter dps benchmarks, I think we’ll see the gap between SV and MM widen substantially.

A Note on “Best” Gear

I’m going to make an effort to identify some of the best and most desirable hunter loot in ICC. But we need to realize that what gear is the best depends not just on your spec, not just on your specific talents, but also on what other gear you have, and exactly how you play.

So rather than try to identify a Best in Slot, we’re going to look at what gear is generally on the top of the lists.

Tier 10

ICC is also bringing us the unpleasantly named Ahn’kahar Blood Hunter set, complete with two set bonuses we actually like! The tier 10 set 2-piece bonus is absolutely the first thing you should be pursuing with your Emblems of Frost. Let’s take a closer look at these bonuses:

2-piece bonus:

Your Auto Shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to deal 15% additional damage for 10 sec.

This is a phenomenal set bonus that favors BM and MM. BM has a much faster rate of Auto Shot fire with Serpent’s Swiftness and will get the proc more often. Sadly it’s not enough to put BM up into the SV/MM raid dps range, but it’s something. MM has a smaller advantage with the ability to maintain the 15% damage boost to their serpent stings indefinitely with the way Chimera Shot refreshes percentage damage boosts. But for all 3 specs this is a fantastic set bonus that scales beautifully with gear and buffs.

As a side note, you still don’t want to stack haste to try to get this proc more often. The amount of useful stats you’d give up just aren’t worth it. That said, if you aren’t already using the Improved Aspect of the Hawk talent, this set bonus might just be enough to push you over the edge!

4-piece bonus:

When your Serpent Sting and Wyvern Sting abilities deal damage, you have a 5% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 sec.

This set bonus isn’t nearly as attractive; however, it’s still a good set bonus. Using some paper napkin math, this bonus looks worse than the tier 9 2-piece bonus (Serpent Sting crits!), though certainly with much better stats on the items. Proccing off of your sting damage means that on single-target fights, this ability will be proccing very seldom. The proc gets much stronger in fights where you have multiple targets up for a sustained amount of time, and you can keep your Serpent Sting on two targets at once (which you’re doing anyway when you have the chance, right?).

Overall it’s generally a good move for hunters of all specs to pursue the 4-piece set bonus. I suspect we’ll see most hunters getting the head, shoulders, chest, and hands for their set, and leaving the legs out of the set. The Ahn’kahar Blood Hunter legs and hands have no ArP, and there’s some hefty ArP legs available elsewhere that is likely to make it the logical non-set piece.

Emblem of Frost Gear

We have some fantastic gear options purchasable with our Emblems of Frost. There’s a generic Emblem of Frost vendor in Dalaran, but the set vendor is located just inside the entrance to the ICC raid instance, as well as one in the Dalaran Leather & Links shop near the south bank.

• Ahn’Kahar Blood Hunter set
  • Spaulders, Handguards– 60 emblems
  • Headpiece, Tunic, Legguards– 95 emblems
• Back: Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape — 50 emblems
• Chest: Longstrider’s Vest — 95 emblems
• Hands: Logsplitters – 60 emblems
• Waist: Band of the Night Raven — 60 emblems
• Trinket: Herkuml War Token — 60 emblems

My recommendation (certainly what I’m doing) is to pursue your 2-piece tier 10 set bonus first, right out of the gate. Exactly which two pieces you get first will depend on what gear you currently have. I’m keeping my tier 9.5 legs and hands as long as I can, for example, so I’m stuck purchasing one of the expensive ones for my second piece and it’ll be another week before I have enough emblems.

Once you have your 2-piece Ahn’kahar Blood Hunter bonus, you probably want to get the Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape next. There’s not a lot of options for the back slot from ICC drops (and none in 10-man from any loot list I’ve seen). Maybe the Lich King is hoarding our cloaks (and our guns!). However this emblem cloak is currently the best back slot item available to us, and we can just buy it whenever we want!

The chest and hand pieces are probably going to be used for your set, so these aren’t terribly attractive (unless you really want the ArP on the Logsplitters). The trinket is filled with Haste, which makes it far less desirable for hunters as opposed to other physical dps classes. You can get a better waist via drops (in 25 man anyway) but if you still haven’t gotten a better waist by the time you’ve collected your entire tier 10 set and back, this could be a nice little upgrade to hang onto until something better comes around.

Crafted Gear

ICC also brings us new crafted gear pieces that can be made with Primodial Saronite, the extremely costly by-product of the god of death. These include:

• Shatter Rounds
• Iceblade Arrows
  
• Legs: Draconic Bonesplinter Legguards — 8 Primordial Saronite
• Feet: Rock-Steady Treads — 5 Primordial Saronite

The epic ammo is epic. The AH prices have come down, and of course you want to use this stuff. ‘Nuff said.

The Rock-Steady Treads are competitive for the best mail feet out there. You can get a bit more ArP from drops if that’s what your after, and if you need hit rating you may prefer something else; however, in general you’ll probably be content keeping these puppies throughout ICC. This is on my wish list as the Primordial Saronite prices continue to drop.

The Draconic Bonesplinter Legguards are also very good, though there is equivalent or better available through drops in early 25-man ICC as well as options with hit rating. In general if you are raiding 25-man ICC I think these are worth skipping; however, if you have deep pockets or only raid 10-man (or not at all) these are an excellent purchase.

Next Week

That pretty much covers the ICC hunter loot that we have space for today. The best thing about all of this epic joy we just talked about is that we don’t have to rely on random drops for any of it. But, there is a lot more loot left to cover!

Next week we’ll take a look at Quel’delar, the Ashen Verdict faction rings, and all the joyous purples that drop from the ICC raid bosses.

*Added a reference to the hunter tier 10 vendor in Dalaran. Thanks commenters!

When writing this Breakfast Topic I noticed in the comments a certain disconnect between how I approach running heroics and how other people seem to. So I thought I’d try and encapsulate the differences and try and help explain why sometimes tanks seem a little touchy or off in runs. It’s not just the blows to the head, guys.

For starters, I don’t run heroics because I want anything. Aside from a few DPS drops (trinkets, mostly) that I want as alternatives to trying to take them from a main spec DPS raider, there’s literally nothing in these instances I actually want. I don’t even really want the Emblems of Triumph. I blow those on gems because I can’t think of anything else to do with them. No, I generally run random heroics for one of two reasons.

Reason 1: someone asks me to tank so they can get into some heroics faster. This is usually a guildmate. Sometimes it’s multiple guildmates. Frankly, I prefer it when it’s four other guildmates and we can queue for randoms as a group, because then I know everyone and can more reliably expect what they’re going to do on pulls, I know who is a reliable Vigilance target, etc etc. But this doesn’t always happen, and to be fair, quite a few players we’ve picked up through the random system have been really nice people and good players.

Reason 2: I decided to sign up as DPS because I was bored but wanted to decompress. I get into the instance, and the tank is wearing mismatched epics selected more for their ability to get him into harder dungeons than their actual tanking viability. Sighing, not wanting to eat the 15 minute debuff, I grudgingly volunteer to tank said heroic after the tank dies three times trying to pull the trash packs in VH and I end up wearing a shield and using a two hander to tank anyway. If I’m going to do this, I want to have my good set of tools. I wouldn’t try and fix a sink with a chainsaw.

Either way, I’m not tanking the heroics I run out of any sense of need. Either I’ve been asked to do it and felt like being nice and helping some friends past the long queues, or I waited through that queue myself as DPS only to end up tanking because someone else took a shortcut but couldn’t do the job. Combine that with the consequences of others dropping dungeons they don’t want to do (like what seems to happen on my battlegroup with Halls of Stone every single day) and you end up with me looking at Krystallus while two DPS’ers I don’t know very well are dead… again… and I and the healer have to take the guy down. For the third time that day. Is it any wonder I might want to skip the guy? I understand why, to a DPS who has to wait 20 minutes between runs, this seems insane and I do sympathize. It’s annoying that there aren’t as many tanks or healers and the queue times are longer for DPS. Remember, that’s why I often agree to tank for friends, so they don’t have to wait so long.

But it seems like there could be some effort extended back to us tanks. Not just on the subject of skipping bosses, like I said, I can understand why you’d be resistant. You can’t take an hour and run four heroics back to back pretty much any time you want, you want maximum emblems for effort. So, then, since that’s the case… would it kill you not to run ahead of the tank and pull mobs with your face while I’m still looting?

This is the behavior I find most baffling and upsetting in a heroic, especially one where I’m already chain pulling packs of mobs pretty much non stop. There’s no reason for it. We’re clearing Drak’Tharon as fast as it possibly can be cleared. I pulled pretty much the entire hallway to the first boss in 2 minutes. I only stop to loot occasionally. So why? Why do you do this to me? You can clearly see me back here, bent over an undead troll to see if he has anything good on him. It takes four seconds at most and then I’ll charge into that next pack, I’m just waiting for Thunder Clap to come down off cooldown anyway. Surely that four seconds won’t kill you. Well, it often turns out that yes, that four seconds will kill you, since you run off face first into a pack and die like a chicken, then I have to charge in and save the healer who foolishly tried to keep you alive.

I try not to be that tank. You know the tank I mean. The one whose head barely fits into Ahn’Katet. Barking orders, making snotty comments. Honestly, aside from “Hi” and “Hey everyone” and the occasional quip, I don’t talk much at all. I’ll mark an initial kill target, sometimes I’ll ask if folks are ready if mana seems low on the healer, and otherwise try and get through the instance with minimal fuss and maybe some laughs. As DPS, I’ve had tanks so bad (and so bellicose) that they made the entire run a festival of autoattacking and praying. But sometimes you guys test me with things like dropping full AoE on a pack just as I charge in (I haven’t even hit Thunder Clap or Cleave yet, I’m still in transit to the mobs there’s no way I could possibly have aggro yet) or even better, using full AoE on a single pull for no discernable reason, and it makes me sad. Well, sad, and slightly insane. Insane enough to deliberately taunt pull the abomination after Skadi and just let you AoE it into your face, then stand around waiting for you to die to taunt it back.

I’m sure we both regret that incident. Okay, I don’t. I laughed. My wife laughed. My other guildmate laughed. Even the random healer we’d picked up with you laughed. Pretty much everyone laughed. The abomination even laughed, as I recall.

Let’s all try and be respectful of each other, I say. You can do things to make my life easier, like use aggro dumps or redirects, wait until you see the ground explode under my feet before throwing down AoE (feel free to adapt this for the paladin, DK or druid tanks you get) and stay behind me, and in return, I’ll try my best to keep all the bosses you want to kill (even the ones I don’t want to do) off of you and all the other mobs safely hitting me in the face where they belong. I think we can agree that we want me to be the one getting hit in the face here.

If you’re a little confused about why this week’s Ready Check: Tonight we’re gonna raid like it’s 2009 begins with part three, then you probably didn’t catch last week’s riveting parts one and two! Go check them out, and come back as we continue our epic journey through raiding in 2009.

We talked first about a handful of new concepts that would change the way Blizzard designed raids. Achievements provided the hardcore raider a little something extra to which they could strive. At the same time, “bring the player” and “accessibility” were the two overwhelming thoughts that would drive the first instances like Naxxramas. With that in mind, we did a quick reminder about those vestige raids of 2008, Obsidian Sanctum, Naxxramas, and Eye of Eternity.

Now that we have that firm grounding in the past, take a look behind the jump. We’ll start out this week’s review of 2009 with Ulduar.

Ulduar

Ulduar was released in April, 2009. The first new raid released in 2009, Ulduar seemed to reflect all of the lessons, design paradigms, and feedback responses garnered from its predecessors. The raid proved to be a delight to folks looking for more exclusivity and challenge in their raiding, but also a frustration to folks who hadn’t had much trouble with Naxxramas.

Ulduar technically housed a mere 14 bosses, which might have made it feel smaller than Naxxramas. However, Ulduar had something that Naxxramas didn’t really have: challenging trash mobs. While each fight in Ulduar felt like an exploration of new design philosophy, the bosses were separated by trash mobs which were nearly as difficult as any boss in Naxxramas. In the end, that trash was so difficult they got nerfed over time.

Flame Leviathan, of course, was the first fight in Ulduar. One of the (thankfully) few vehicle fights in Wrath, Flame Leviathan did right everything that went wrong with Malygos’s third phase. The combat was restricted to two dimensions of player movement. While gunners could (and should) fire up into the air, you didn’t have to keep track of your location and movement in terms of up and down. The vehicles scaled with your gear, which meant players started keeping track of “highest item level” profiles in their gear managers. Even more importantly, the vehicle fight moved at an even, understandable pace. If the Malygos dragon ride felt like a frantic rush, Flame Leviathan and its trash were a slow, steady joy ride.

Immediately following Flame Leviathan, of course, was where players encountered that difficult trash. If you were going to fight Ignis next, then you had to contend with Molten Colossus.. And then you fought Magma Ragers. Each of these trash mobs had tactics and challenges as complex as Noth the Plaguebringer. You had to LOS your healers away from the giants, so that their heals and casts weren’t interrupted. You had to carefully monitor which raid member was the target of the flame whirlwind, or risk devastation wrecking your raid.

Bosses like XT-Deconstructor exemplified the Hard Mode philosophy we previously saw with Sartharion. By killing XT’s heart in a single phase, you turned the manageable robot boss into a raid-wrecking machine. But if you managed to down him in this hard mode, the gear was much, much better. Not every boss enjoyed this dynamic. Razorscale, for example, is basically an add fight and a tank ‘n’ spank no matter how you do it.

Every boss in Ulduar had a dance or new trick involved. It felt like the developers were responding to forum feedback that Naxxramas was too easy, that there was no challenge left in the game. While most of the fights in Ulduar were actually optional (no one made you fight Razorscale, you could just walk by him), any raid trying to gear up really needed to handle every encounter.

For all of the difficulty and new challenges in this new raid instance, a subtle benefit has come to light ever since. In my opinion, no other raid instance has so firmly captured the imagination of machinima creators. That might not seem like a big deal, but I think it goes a long way toward understanding why Ulduar was such a popular instance.

The lore of Ulduar was rich, engaging, and could actually be traced all the way back to old world content. For example, remember Uldaman? Uldaman was created by the same fellows who created Ulduar. The Discs of Norgannon aren’t directly linked to the whys-and-wherefores of Ulduar, but the genre and story lines draw a connection to the Titans.

Yogg-Saron’s Lovecraftian story is completely saturated throughout Northrend, but raiders finally get a crack at the old god in Ulduar. The fight against Yogg-Saron is rich, beautiful lore that you would miss if you didn’t get to see it. That’s why the accessibility doctrine in 2009 is so important: any player engaged in the story and experience of World of Warcraft would suffer a disservice without a fair opportunity to see that fight. While machinima videos do a good job of conveying that experience, there’s nothing quite like seeing it yourself.

Finally, Ulduar housed a fight which provides a direct link to the Titans who created Azeroth. Algalon is the true final boss of Ulduar. Having gauged Azeroth too corrupt to live, Algalon is interrupted in his communication back to the Titans by your raid stomping its way into his chambers. Your raiders are once again in the position to save the world, even if there are hints that maybe this story isn’t done.

In my opinion, Ulduar was the raid of 2009. Ulduar was a definitive experience in both lore, fight design, and variable Hard Modes that let raiders choose their own difficulty. If you weren’t trying to do bleeding-edge challenges, you could blow through on normal difficulty. Even in normal mode, though, some of the fights required new skills and better coordination. If you wanted something more difficult, however, you could always press Mimiron’s Big Red Button and take your raid up to a new level.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. Winter Veil is winding down, and as we here at the WoW.com offices fight over the last carton of eggnog, we’ve been taking a lot of time to look over the past year and celebrate. Of course, here in the Tuesday Morning Post, we generally look at the past 7 days or so. So yeah, there’s plenty of the navel gazing stuff, but there’s a good smattering of news too. Nothing too major, I suppose. Even the dev team likes to see their family over the holidays, I guess. But it’s there. And in the meantime, a little bit of a navel gazing never hurt anyone. Our navels are pretty awesome anyway.

Join me for the last Tuesday morning of 2009 and catch up on your WoW reading. The usual list is after the break.

Hot News and Features

• Could the building blocks for the Cataclysm world event be right under our noses?
• As Wrath winds down, we remember the abandoned and half-finished things.
• We know why ICC’s gated. You can, of course, always blame the gnome.
• The 2009 WoW.com best stories showcases our personal picks for the best articles of 2009. Check out what we’ve posted so far, and watch out for the last few months to go up in the next few days.
• If you logged on and got to the tree, hopefully you got your 2009 Winter Veil gifts — And hopefully, you didn’t shoot your eye out.
• The official WoW magazine has a preview out.

Class News and Guides

• Encrypted Text looks back at 2009 from a rogue point of view.
• Totem talk looks at 2009 from a shaman’s eye view.
• Care and Feeding of Warriors looks back at 2009 for warriors.
• Arcane Brilliance looks back at 2009 for mages.
• The Light and How to Swing It looks at 2009 for paladins.
• Spiritual Guidance looks back at priesting in 2009.
• Warlocks look back at 2009 in Blood Pact as well.
• Healing’s going through some changes in Cataclysm. Here’s what we know so far.

Dungeons, Items, PvP, Professions, and More

• Sometimes, especially when it comes to Dungeon Finder groups, it’s best not to know.
• Rossi has his own philosophies for powering through PuG dungeons in manner not unlike one might expect of a Wookie Jedi.
• Rejoice, disciples of the rod. You get a new fishing skill enchant in patch 3.3.
• Ready Check takes a look back at the raiding scene of 2009.
• In the mood for spoilers? We have some footage of one of the early quest encounters in the Shadowmourne quest line.
• Officers’ Quarters tells you how to make friends and influence guild leaders.

Odds and Ends

• If you like it, then you should have rolled need on it. Note that we do not condone the actual viewpoints condoned in the video, but damn if the song isn’t catchy.
• Congratulations to November 2009’s guild of the month, Sleeper Cartel!
• WoW Rookie looks at making the most of the new tutorial tips.
• Drama Mamas has more advice for handling the drama of the new Dungeon Finder.