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We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• Fel Fire looks at Patch 3.2 from the perspective of a guild leader.
• DeathKnight.info continues exploring every corner of the Isle of Conquest on the PTR. This time we see the glory of the human catapault. I hope you like slamming face first into stone walls a few dozen times!
• Mystic Chicanery explains why she thinks the Caverns of Time are the most logical dungeons in WoW.
• Lorecrafted gives his take on patch 3.2’s Tauren Druid revelations.
• Slow Wolf’s next installment of their Creature Feature series is up, this time featuring the Gorilla.

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Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI and addons blog for WoW. A brief look at the tier 9 sets and the origins of those who it is named after: Velen and Zabra Hexx.

We’re getting more news as the weeks go by. Last week, tier 9 information was released. As some of you may know, the upcoming Crusader’s Coliseum is slated to drop tier 9 items. All classes are getting three levels of the latest tier. I’m assuming one set drops from normal (10-man), heroic (25-man), and heroic hard mode.

Our current tier 8 bonuses feel lackluster. It’s difficult to cater towards a Holy Priest and a Disc Priest as they both favor different approaches to healing. Check out our tier 9 gallery if you’re interested in seeing the specifics along with the other set bonuses.

Here’s what the tier 9 bonuses are:

Old

• 2 set: Decreases the cooldown on your Prayer of Mending spell by 2 seconds.
• 4 set: Increases the critical strike chance of your Prayer of healing by 5%.

That’s what the old bonuses were. I had a feeling they weren’t quite finished yet.
New

• 2 set: Increases the healing done by your Prayer of Mending spell by 20%.
• 4 set: Increases the shield from your Divine Aegis and the instant healing from your Empowered Renew by 10%.

This is what the new bonuses are that just got released. That 2-piece bonus looks good. A spell that both healing Priests use will be getting a pretty cool buff. Make sure you use an addon like PoM tracker (although it has since been discontinued for a while).

I’m enjoying the direction that this 4-piece bonus is taking. It offers bonuses to to both Holy and Discipline Priests. The Discipline bonus is the Divine Aegis buff. The strength of the shields have increased by 10% but don’t forget that Divine Aegis can stack. The other side of the 4-piece bonus is an effect to Empowered Renew. I’ve got some mixed feelings about this. I guess they’re offering more incentive for Empowered Renew to get picked up.

Looking at the current tier 8 for a moment, it’s obvious that the four piece bonus has Discipline written all over it. Every time a shield is cast, gain 250 spell power for 5 seconds. It’s obviously not the most ideal for Holy Priests as it’s difficult for them to shield with other Discipline Priests in the same raid group. Not to mention having a 4 second cooldown means constantly using the shield on cooldown to maintain that spell power. Doesn’t seem like the cost/benefit ratio is in its favor.

So with tier 8 and (soon) tier 9 available, this presents some interesting gearing options for Priests. As Holy, I would probably be satisfied by snagging a 2-piece tier 8 and a 2-piece tier 9 and call it a day. This gets me the 10% increased Prayer of Healing chance and the increased Prayer of Mending healing. As Discipline however, I’d probably shoot for the tier 9 as quick as possible.

Of course, that could change at any time. None of this stuff is finalized yet, so who knows?

Who the heck?

There are two faction versions of our tier 9 sets. They’re named after prominent Priests in the game. Bear with me as while I do have a great interest in lore, I may not be the most qualified as the other columnists we have on the team.

For the Alliance

Velen the Divine is the leader of the Draenei. He has a rather storied history. He was there when Sargeras tempted Archimonde and Kil’Jaden. Of the three, Velen was the only one who managed to figure out what Sargeras’ true plans were (since the title Destroyer of Worlds does kind of give that away). Leading the rest of his followers, Velen managed to escape and eventually land on the Orc homeworld of Draenor. The relationship between Draenei and Orc were not hostile initially. Kil’Jaden managed to influence Ner’zhul enough for him to start going after the Draenei. Soon after that, Velen and his followers were on the run again. They managed to hide out in Zangarmarsh for many years. This was during the time of Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal. During the time period of Warcraft III, Velen led an assault on Tempest Keep and commandeered the Exodar. The Blood Elves managed to sabotage it resulting in a crash landing into Azeroth when they fired up the engines.

He now leads the rest of his people from within the Exodar. Read more about Velen here.

For the Horde

I wasn’t familiar with the name Zabra. He certainly wasn’t in either Warcraft II or Warcraft III. Zabra Hexx is a Troll Priest. His background isn’t quite as illustrious as Velen but he’s the closest Priest Hero the Horde have. It’s a rather intriguing story. Zabra managed to seek shelter and resided within the Scarlet Monastery. He learned about the light reading by various books and tomes. That must have been a lot of reading. He was almost killed by Brigette Abbendis until Mograine verified that he had a connection to the light. Not much is known about him after that. Zabra appears to Darion Mograine during the time that he is mourning the death of his father. Zabra leaves and disappears after relaying to Darion the idea that the spirit of his father had not yet passed on. You can read more about Zabra here.

I’d like to see Zabra make a return at some point in the future. Even though I’m Alliance at heart, I still have a strong respect for Troll Priests.

More 3.2 changes?

Some other minor additions were made to the Priest notes.

• Levitate now only affects a friendly party or raid target.

I guess some pranks were being played or something. I never tried casting Levitate on the opposing faction before! Nothing absolutely class breaking with this change here.

• Holy Concentration now procs from Empowered Renew instead of Renew.

It looks like the Renew ticks will not be activating Holy Concentration anymore. Even more of a reason to snag Empowered Renew!

Remember that not everything is finalized yet! Check out more patch 3.2 stuff!

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3.2 approaches! Sort of. The PTR itself isn’t up yet (at least, not as I write this), but nonetheless, 3.2 approaches on little cat feet.

I’m going to examine the 3.2 PTR patch notes line by relevant line, just because there are several changes that impact Druids while not being class-specific. If you want a quick summary without being massively spoiled, Balance is getting a huge and welcome change to the functionality of Eclipse, Cats are getting bonked by the nerfbat, and PvP-Restos are really getting bonked by the nerfbat. Bears, well…not much is going to happen to bears this patch, which is a little demoralizing given the improvements being made to Pally tanks, but that’s OK. We still have our, uh, amazing Tier 8 set bonuses and…um…the best — sort of — tanking cooldowns in, uh, the…uh…

…Oh, screw it, just stack the hell out of stamina and pray to the gods of RNG if your guild’s dumb enough to try Ulduar on hard-mode. Congratulations; you have now done all you can possibly do to prepare yourself for modern tanking.

Sad lolbare is sad. But cough syrup for everybody! Is nise! Now let’s take a look:

New druid art for cat and bear forms has been added. There are now five unique color schemes for each form and faction. Changing hair color (Night Elves) or skin tone (Tauren) via the barbershop will change the look of one’s cat and bear forms.

We’ve already covered this, but if you’ve been holed up in a cave somewhere since Wrath hit, you’ll find the new Tauren bear form here, the new Night Elf bear form here, the new Tauren cat form here, and the new Night Elf cat form here, with a Shifting Perspectives column devoted to the new art here.

Long story short, I will be permanently retiring the I hate Tauren cat form tag as of the release date for 3.2. I will do it with a song in my heart, a spring in my step, a gleam in my eye, and a carbonated malt beverage in my hand. Also, as soon as the 3.2 PTR goes live, I am going to try to make my first ingame video to show everyone what the new forms look like in motion, so stay tuned.

Mana Regeneration: All items that provide “X mana per five seconds” have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.

So something like Unraveling Strands of Sanity is going to go from 19 mp5 to around 24-25 mp5 if my math’s right. I’m not sure is whether this bonus also applies to trinkets with mp5 procs like Spark of Life, so I’ll schlep it along when the PTR goes up and see what happens.

While an mp5 bonus may sound like a great deal, it’s actually happening because of this –

Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgments of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts, and Soul Leech).

I was all set to go into the usual Righteous Indignation routine over this until I had a somewhat disturbing epiphany.

Longtime readers of Shifting Perspectives will know that 3.1 and my computer haven’t gotten along very well, so I haven’t seen much of Ulduar on the live realms. Recently I’ve edged back into raiding as much as my gasping hardware will allow, and I’ve been coming to raids as Resto in order to cover for the scheduling difficulties of our two usual tree druids. Now, while my Resto gear isn’t awful, it’s far from being exemplary, and I’m two months behind the gear progression of everyone else in the guild. Moreover, while I’ve healed all of the game’s existing raid content outside of Ulduar and consider myself to be a competent healer, I am no great virtuoso. An experienced Resto at my level of gear would trounce me on the healing meters with less overheal, better mana efficiency, and better healing output — and that’s exactly what both of our usual Resto Druids can do.

So I will say this concerning mana regeneration in raids; I popped into a hard-mode Iron Council in Ulduar-25, which is a truly unenjoyable healing experience wherein you will almost never stop frantically spamming everything in your arsenal, and still managed not to go OOM (or even close to it) in my clownish ensemble of Tier 7/heroic/blue gear.

So I am forced to the conclusion that either: A). I’m a friggin’ genius at playing a tree, or: B). mana regeneration is still too good. For the sake of my withering self-esteem, I could choose to believe A, but rational observers would conclude that B is more likely. It is still exceptionally rare for me to encounter complaints among Druid players concerning either Balance or Resto mana efficiency.

B it is. Nerfing Replenishment reduces mana efficiency in raids without impacting caster soloability, so you shouldn’t see a difference while you’re out grinding — and honestly, the change from 0.25% maximum mana per second to 0.20% per second is not exactly a disaster in the making.

Flight Form: Can now be learned at level 60. Flight speed increased to 150%.
Travel Form: Can now be learned at level 16.

This is the result of Blizzard tinkering with earlier and/or better mount mechanics to help nudge the leveling process along, so it made sense to bump Druid travel bonuses forward a bit.

Balance of Power: Now reduces all spell damage taken by 3/6%, rather than reducing the chance to be hit by spells by 2/4%.

Per Ghostcrawler, Blizzard didn’t like the RNG feel of this component of the talent (which otherwise increases the Druid’s chance to hit with all spells by 4% — and I assume that portion will stay the same), and the change will also affect Shadow and Holy damage that can be caused by Death Knight and Paladin melee attacks. This will make you slightly easier to heal while raiding, but the general effect will be felt most versus caster enemies in PvP. Actually, between this and the Owlkin Frenzy change (see next), I get the feeling that Blizzard is really trying to shore up moonkin arena performance which, after a strong early start (helped in no small way by what was then an amazing talented stun proc from Starfall), has stuttered badly.

The thread just linked will reappear in our discussion of the Lifebloom nerf, so keep reading.

Owlkin Frenzy: Now also restores 2% base mana every 2 seconds for the duration (10 seconds) in addition to its current effects.

Owlkin Frenzy tends to be a hit-or-miss raid talent. I see a number of PvE builds that incorporate it in order to get a boost from the common-as-dirt raid damage that’s especially prevalent on hard-mode encounters, but it’s not among the first talents in any high-DPS lineup. The mp5 bonus is (at least currently) superfluous for raiding given that most moonkin can easily afford to blow potion cooldowns on Wild Magic rather than a mana pot. So if you’re using Owlkin Frenzy already, the change is nice, but not sufficiently good on its own to move OF to a first-pick PvE talent.

This will, however, shine in PvP, and Owlkin Frenzy finds its best use there anyway. The change is probably inspired partly by the Innervate change (discussed below), as moonkin are much more vulnerable to going OOM during a match than their Restoration counterparts. My guess is that Blizzard is trying to avoid punishing Balance for changes made that will weaken Restoration’s seemingly-limitless mana supply in arena.

Eclipse: The Starfire and Wrath buffs from this talent are now on separate 30 second cooldowns. In addition, it is not possible to have both buffs active simultaneously.

This is a big change. As a matter of fact, it’s so big that I will be devoting this week’s Shifting Perspectives to it. This wrecks all of the arguments surrounding the lunar/solar rotation deal, has some fairly important implications for how a moonkin should choose gear, and it also has the potential to smooth out moonkin DPS somewhat unless Blizzard monkeys around with the proc rate in order to compensate for the likelihood of its being active twice as often (possible, but not likely given Blizzard’s efforts to improve moonkin damage).

I could write a lot more and actually did before I realized it was rapidly turning into an article all on its own (hence the upcoming “Shifting”) but the TL;DR version: if you don’t have Eclipse, get Eclipse. If you do have Eclipse, it’ll be getting the hell of a lot better, and you’re going to want to take a close look at your gear and stats before 3.2 hits. A high-DPS rotation will obligate you to switch Starfire and Wrath frequently in order to benefit from as many Eclipse procs as often as possible, and the two spells do not prioritize +haste and +crit in the same way (nor, with present itemization, does each benefit from a single idol).

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Brilliant. Just brilliant. If you’ve been keeping up with the many changes in Patch 3.2, you might get an inkling that PvP is going to change drastically and for the better. Adam has already gone through the whopper announcement that Blizzard hinted at some time back: players can now gain experience from the Battlegrounds. It’s something I’d wished for since the days of vanilla WoW and the developers have finally gotten around to implementing it in the next major patch.

Does this mean the death of twinks? Not necessarily. Players can opt to toggle experience gains on and off by going to Behsten in Orgrimmar or Slahtz in Stormwind (best-in-slot, get it?) and ponying up 10 Gold. But wait, there’s more! Players who turn off experience gains will only be placed in the same Battleground queues as other players who opt not to gain experience. That’s right — twinks will be facing off against twinks. Twinks who have always contended that it wasn’t about the unfair gear advantage will finally get the opportunity to test their mettle against equally geared opponents. Enjoy.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. After the jump, we’ll take a look at a whole bunch of changes that will impact World of Warcraft PvP from the obvious (Arena and Battleground changes) to the not-so-obvious (item and ability changes). Let’s hit it.

Arenas
2v2 is officially dead. Alright, it’s technically not dead, but Blizzard took it to some back alley and beat it to an unrecognizable pulp. This little line in the patch notes dealt the beating all by its lonesome: “The newest season of Arena gear can only be purchased if you meet the requirements with your 3 or 5 player team rating.” This means that players who want to gear up in the best PvP gear must participate in 3s and 5s. It’s an artificial way of boosting participation in the bigger brackets, but it’s guaranteed to work.

Ratings obtained in 2v2 is usable to purchase the previous season’s gear, however. But given that points gain is lower and queues for the bigger brackets will improve… it’s simply better to get at least one more person and play in the 3s. Farewell, poor 2v2, we hardly knew you.

Blizzard also changed the Dalaran Sewers map, increasing its size by 25% and allowing the use of mounts. The horrid crates on the corners of the raised platform which create nightmarish Line-of-Sight problems were also modified both in position and collision. The size increase gives ranged classes more breadth to move around and not as easily get trained by, say, a cleave team. The Ruins of Lordaeron have also been revised somewhat, with the alcoves in the starting chambers removed. I have no idea what that means. What they should really do is have players get shunted out of the rooms and close the doors, similar to the sewer pipes in Dalaran arena. Blizzard has also made the tombstone easier to move around, which should make Line-of-Sight less problematic.

Strangely, there’s nothing in the patch notes about the Ring of Valor, which has numerous issues — I’ve lost matches by being trapped in the bottom of the elevator as it rises — and is generally abhorred by most Arena players. By most I mean anyone not playing a Hunter. Hunters just hop onto the pillar and pewpew things.

Battlegrounds
While the biggest news about the Battlegrounds is the long-awaited experience gains, Blizzard made a few other changes, too. For one thing, they’re now removing Battlegrounds-specific NPCs in major cities, replacing them with a generic Battlemaster whom players can talk to and queue up for any Battleground. It’s a cosmetic change and I totally called it wrong when I said that the Isle of Conquest will have new NPCs all over the place. It makes a lot more sense, actually, since if Blizzard adds more Battlegrounds, the war rooms will simply get more and more crowded and confusing.

So say goodbye to NPCs like Adam Eternum and Keldor the Lost, who will now only be seen during their particular Battleground Holiday (in this case, Arathi Basin). It’s only natural that some things will fall by the wayside in this pruning and streamlining process — after all, these NPCs became obsolete after Patch 3.1, when players gained the ability to queue from anywhere in the game. This means I’ll need to make that trip to Shattrath with some flowers and send off Yula the Fair, who will only visit once every six weeks now.

In the meantime, as those NPCs take extended vacations, Battleground matches themselves will be much, much quicker paced now. Warsong Gulch now has a 20-minute timer, which means the game can actually end in a tie (which happens with some Battlegrounds). Expect more players to participate in this fast-paced map more with the changes.

Other Battlegrounds have been sped up, too, with the resources needed to win in Arathi Basin and Eye of Storm reduced to a mere 1600, down from 2000. It also only takes 8 seconds to take flags in either map as opposed to 10. As Blizzard aimed to balance the length of all Battleground playing times, most matches will last around 20 minutes. That’s just freaking awesome. Casual players who have little time to play can gain a lot from playing a few Battleground matches.

Finally, Blizzard has implemented a buff called Honorable Defender, which gives players 50% more Honor when killing enemy players within the vicinity of a Battleground objective in Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm, and Isle of Conquest. Take that, road fighters! Players will no longer exasperatingly implore mindless combatants to “fight on the flag.” It’s simply more rewarding to do the right thing.

Little things
While those are the PvP-specific changes, there are plenty of changes across the board that should affect PvP in general. One big one? The mount change that lowers the casting time of land mounts to 1.5 seconds from 3. That’s the span of one GCD. This means players can flee or pursue opponents much quicker or get to a particular point in the map in less time. The availability of mounts at an earlier level will also make Battlegrounds a more enjoyable experience for leveling players, particularly in maps such as Arathi Basin.

The class changes will affect PvP, too, but that’s an entirely different story altogether. One key point, however, is that pets will scale better with their masters in many aspects. In particular, pets gain 40% of their masters’ Resilience, making them much more, uh… resilient targets in PvP. Many changes have been implemented in the past few patches that raised the survivability of pets, and imparted Resilience has been one of the most requested changes since the stat was introduced in The Burning Crusade.

Oh, and did you read about the return of faction-specific armor sets? Sure it’s from the PvE Argent Tournament, but I’ll be darned if that isn’t one of the coolest things about Patch 3.2. Maybe we’ll see faction-specific PvP gear again, too. You know, just putting that out there.

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Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, another Ulduar boss dies to moonkin nukes, feral claws, and tree slaps.

Chase Christian from Encrypted Text recently started a series of guides on doing Ulduar as a Rogue, and I must admit that the relative ease and simplicity of describing the role of a pure DPS while raiding is enough to make me sob quietly into a wow goldhanky. Meanwhile, I’m driving myself to the nuthouse trying to describe four entirely different roles for a single class. Pardon my saying so, but this column was the hell of a lot easier to write back when we sucked at everything that wasn’t healing. Damn you, multi-spec viability! Damn you to HELL!

Before we get started, I’m going to continue what I did with the last Ulduar preview column, link to general strategy guides, and assume you have a basic familiarity with the encounter before delving into more Druid-specific advice. Today we’re going to confine ourselves to Freya, as it’s one of the few Ulduar fights I have now seen outside of the PTR. With luck, my computer is going to cooperate for a full clear this week plus a few hard modes, so I will be revising (and, as necessary, expanding) our current Ulduar Druid guides to reflect changes that Blizzard has made to the fights and a few notes concerning hard mode issues. Any changes made will be noted in next week’s column.

FREYA

If you’re not familiar with basic Freya strategy, try here, here, and here. Multiple commenters have noted that the fight bears a passing resemblance to Sartharion, but I always felt like Solarian was an equally good, if not better, comparison. If you can survive her annoying adds, the fight turns into a tank and spank. If you can’t survive her adds…well, the view from the Ulduar graveyard is really quite lovely.

As an aside, the fight also looks and feels more frenetic than it actually is. Watch any Freya videos closely, and you’ll notice that a clean kill is basically controlled chaos.

BEARS: To be frank, this isn’t really a difficult tanking fight. If you’re tanking Freya, all you’ll be doing is keeping her occupied until the raid finishes the six waves of adds, so just make sure you’re not outranging your healers and that you keep an eye on healthy mushroom spawns once an Ancient Conservator is up. Threat is not a concern on Freya; feel free to use your a high mitigation set to reduce healing load.

If you’re off-tanking the adds (I should say, tanking the tankable adds), drag them to the edge of the raid and make sure the water elementals in the first and fourth waves are always facing away from other players; ideally you should be the only person who ever gets hit by Surge. The trickiest portion of the 3-add waves will be judging how long you can stay in to tank the Snaplashers (if you are tanking them, and many guilds choose to have them kited) until they’re rendered completely immobile. With luck, Barkskin will be up for each of these waves and should be used to preempt the worst of the damage as their buffs start to stack. If not, Survival Instincts your way out until you get clear (this becomes more important on a hard-mode Freya with buffed physical damage).

Two of the add waves will spawn untankable Detonating Lashers. You can go Cat to help DPS these down, but whatever you do, do not get caught in the middle of them as they near low health.

Make sure you find (or are already under) a healthy mushroom quickly when the Ancient Conservators spawn; aside from the obvious threat generation issues, you’ll take additional damage from your inability to generate Savage Defense procs if you don’t avoid or get rid of Pacify quickly.

CATS and MOONKIN: Most of the difficulty on this encounter is in the hands of the DPS. 90% of your job is going to be nothing other than controlling and destroying adds in the right place and at the right time. In that vein, there really aren’t a lot of substantial differences between ranged and melee DPS on Freya, although Cats will need to watch their aggro on Snaplashers if your guild elects to have them kited by ranged DPS instead of tanked. Most guilds use a Hunter for this role, but Moonkin are also effective kiters, and Entangling Roots is helpful (though likely to break quickly) until their damage/slowing buff stacks to the point where they’re immobile. Cats with Infected Wounds can also attempt to keep the Snaplashers slowed, although many guilds don’t bother putting melee DPS on them at all. Maim can be used to stun Storm Lashers if your guild’s melee rotates interrupts on them (and in general you should plan on this, as this becomes important for a hard-mode Freya where Elder Brightleaf has been left alive). For Moonkin, Hurricane is your buddy once the time comes to DPS down the adds at the same time: the same is true for Swipe with Cats. Enable floating health bars (the default option for this being the V key) to ensure they die within a few moments of each other.

For Detonating Lashers, Hurricane and Swipe are only useful if the adds aren’t yet close to death or are a safe distance from the raid; multiple Lashers exploding at once tends to have an unfortunate effect on general life expectancy.

Ancient Conservators are largely a tank-and-spank affair, although DPS on them may be periodically interrupted by their Pacify ability. Again, mushroom mushroom.

Add waves will spawn either a few seconds after the previous wave has been killed or every 60 seconds, whichever comes first. With better gear and more experience, you should realistically expect this to be considerably faster than once per minute.

The Lifebinder’s Gift tree spawns every 45 seconds for the duration of the encounter and should be priority kills. Cats have an advantage over most melee DPS in being able to reach them quickly between Feral Charge and Feral Swiftness. These trees can be a real nuisance while an Ancient Conservator spawn is up; always be aware of the closest healthy mushroom spawn.

RESTO: There’s a fairish amount of raid damage on this fight but nothing unmanageable as long as your raid is sensible about not sitting in a pack of people if they’re targeted for Nature’s Fury. Wild Growth is useful for anyone affected by Sunbeam or its splash damage (which can be considerable if people are grouped up under a mushroom). Otherwise, make sure you’re close to healthy mushroom spawns once a Conservator is up, but again, most of the responsibility for this fight belongs to the DPS. Unless you’re doing hard mode, Freya’s not a very tough encounter to heal.

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It was with a mix of anticipation and apprehension that I wrote about the Ashbringer Trade Paperback by Wildstorm which collects all four issues of the limited series. After all, I wasn’t entirely impressed with the regular series featuring Varian Wrynn but thoroughly enjoyed Tokyopop’s Warcraft Legends manga, so while I was decided upon getting Ashbringer, I had moderately low expectations.

The good thing about having low expectations is that it’s hard to get disappointed. It turns out, however, that I didn’t have to set my expectations so low… the Ashbringer comics are a very good read from start to finish, particularly for readers who play World of Warcraft. In fact, that might be its one caveat — the Ashbringer limited series is a decent read for the average reader but truly shines for players, who are familiar with the story and recognize the characters.

Fans of lore will appreciate reading the story of Alexandros Mograine, even though most lore nerds will already know it. The real treat of the comic is the wonderful work of Tony Washington, who colors over Ludo Lullabi’s pencils. The colors are done in a painterly style, complementing or enhancing Lullabi’s art better than the traditional ink and colors of his initial run with the Varian Wrynn story arc. This isn’t a knock on Sandra Hope’s inks or Randy Mayor’s colors, but Lullabi’s art in the original series was sometimes somewhat sparse in detail. This isn’t the case in Ashbringer, where Lullabi draws some breathtaking panels, and in the spaces where he leaves empty spots, Washington takes over. The result is one gorgeous comic that is an unmistakeable emulation of Joe Madureira and Christian Lichtner’s pencils + Painter collaborations.

It’s not quite Madureira-Lichtner just yet, but considering JoeMad produces comics at a rate of one every decade or so, Ashbringer is a pretty good substitute. That might seem like an unfair assessment that does Lullabi and Washington a disservice, but Ashbringer is worlds better than the World of Warcraft comic which indicates that Lullabi is only getting better. Fans of veteran colorist Washington can also check out some of his other work, which are astounding, as well.

Story-wise, Ashbringer benefits from a well of preexisting lore instead of having to shoehorn a new character into canon and the game world. There are also little nuggets that should make a player smile, such as the appearance of many characters you’d find in Old Hillsbrad, Scarlet Monastery, or Light’s Hope Chapel. Even Zabra Hexx, the Troll Priest from DC Unlimited’s line of World of Warcraft action figures, makes an appearance. The story’s pace feels a little rushed at times, however, a consequence of trying to cram a lot of lore in just four issues.

Slightly disjointed pacing aside, writer Micky Neilson — part of Blizzard’s creative team — handles the story rather deftly. I have to confess there were moments in the series where I felt an embarrassing well of emotion. Neilson builds up drama in a way that doesn’t feel forced or contrived, and players who enjoyed the climax of the Death Knight starting experience should get a fulfilling kick out of Ashbringer. There’s a lot of drama and plain good old storytelling here, enriching the game world the way the comics are intended to.

The weakest part of the comic is also ironically one of the more enjoyable ones, where Darion Mograine leads a charge into Naxxramas. It is a silly mission in game terms — a mere handful of heroes go in and try to take on a raid instance, ending as a player might expect (you guessed it, pretty much a wipe). But even though it drives the story forward and is actually necessary, this part of the story felt a little like an excuse to tour Naxxramas. Players will recognize and enjoy the cameos, though, and many will even relate to what the protagonists go through and smile.

One surprising thing for me while reading the comic was being reminded of just how young the Ashbringer (sword) is. It has a very brief history, less than a generation old, that takes away some weight from one of the most fabled weapons in the game (or more accurately, not yet in the game). But it turns out that a lot of what players know as Azerothian lore isn’t very old at all — classic WoW “begins” a mere four years after the events from Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. What it all indicates, actually, is that the players are right in the heart of Warcraft’s story as it unravels. As a reader and a player, the immediacy of things makes it all the more special.

The painted covers by Chris Robinson sweeten the deal, as well as the token bonus sneak peeks into the penciling and coloring process. The latter could’ve used more pages with bigger images, but we’ll take what we can get. Ashbringer is a good read with gorgeous art and should be on every comic book nut and World of Warcraft players’ bookshelf.

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Doubtless Druids all around the world are still absorbing the new-look Night Elf cat form which was announced yesterday. We know Blizzard was going for something of a colour-coded approach, trying to match skins to that of their owners but what does it all mean? Well, blue Zarhym posted on the forums this morning and went into a little more detail.

It seems that rather than being able to go ‘oh I’ll have the white kitty with the cut pink gem on it’s collar’, that your form is actually linked to your toon’s physical appearance. Yes, you can easily change how your bear or cat form will look but the only was to do this, in my understanding, is by visiting a barber shop and changing the skin tone (and/or hair) of your Druid in humanoid form.

Zarhym puts it better than I:

“Now that everyone has had a chance to check out the new art for druid cat and bear forms, we’d like to share with you the current break down of Tauren skin tones and Night Elf hair colors associated with each form color. Please note that, while we have attempted to associate each form color as carefully as possible, this list is subject to change before the next major content patch goes live. All options for skin tone (Tauren) and hair color (Night Elves) are listed below followed by the forms that will be associated with each set of tones/colors.”

Click on the jump to see what your druid is going to look like.

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Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we contemplate whether the phrase “the agony and the ecstasy” can be properly applied to graphical improvements in MMORPG’s.

So once I finished sobbing tears of joy over the new bear art that debuted last week (and looking up pictures of Bull Terriers after seeing the new version of Tauren cat form), I started tabulating reactions online, and held the following conversation with myself:

Me: Is there an unusually high level of stupidity in the forums over this issue?

Myself: Can the level of stupidity in the forums ever be correctly described as “unusually high?”

While forced to admit that my good bifurcated self had a point, it remains that the sheer amount of dumb in the forums threatens to explode from its containment area and slosh down the hallway carrying off screaming bystanders. This is Bad. Some of those bystanders might be the artists working on making sure the new version of Tauren cat form goes live without bugs, and I don’t want that. I worked hard to ensure that this site is ranked #1 by Google for the search phrase “I hate Tauren cat form,” but I’d like to be able to retire that tag permanently.

Anyway. Let’s take some time here and address some frequently asked questions, common misconceptions, and whether Blizzard owes the American Kennel Club a kickback:

OH NOES THE BEAR STILL CAN’T CLOSE ITS MOUTH!

Yes, it can. What we’re seeing here (per Nethaera) is a single screenshot in which each new model has been posed roaring. I assume the basic look is going to be somewhat like the closed mouth you sometimes see with the Black War Bear, which seems okay, but does raise some questions concerning the quality of orthodontic care in Azeroth given the proliferation of underbites.

DO WE STILL GET THE SEIZURE!!!BEAR EFFECT FROM CONSTANT SAVAGE DEFENSE PROCS?

I assume so, because current information indicates that the animations remain the same. I really hope they fix this, or add a different animation, or even eliminate the animation effect altogether given that it’s such a constant proc. I can understand the need to give the player a visual clue that the effect has triggered, but as of now the result is a hilarious “Hello, raid boss! As a means of increasing my mitigation, I will be exposing my vulnerable midsection to you every 1.54 seconds on average!”

Seriously. This is poor technique, and makes us look bad in front of the other tanks.

IT’S JUST A NEW SKIN ON AN OLD MODEL!

EDIT: Thank God for WoW.com commenters. Brian and Carrie corrected and expanded my explanation here.

People are tossing around the terms model, texture, and skin a lot without differentiating between the three. Now, while I could be entirely wrong about how Blizzard chooses to use these terms, and they sometimes confuse me by using them interchangeably, a model describes the external frame (what turns an NPC or player character into a recognizable 3-dimensional form) applied over a skeleton. The skeleton itself is given its own set of animations, but model differences account for the variety of different NPC’s who move the same way but don’t look alike. All bears in the game share the same skeleton (and thus most of the same animations), but Druids do not share the same model with NPC bears.

Skins and textures are generally used interchangeably. They provide the cosmetic exterior changes that distinguish between versions of the same model. Textures also interact with the game engine to change what skin, fur, or gear look like in different environments.

The new Bear forms are demonstrably not the same model as the older Bear form, nor do they use the same textures. However, it is likely that they share the same skeleton as the older Bear form, and that is all they share.

WHEN ARE THE NEW FORMS GOING LIVE?

They’ll be live in the sense that they should be reaching a player server when the 3.2 PTR goes up. Otherwise, they’ll become usable when 3.2 hits the live servers, whenever that’s going to be.

WHEN ARE THE NEW CAT FORMS GOING TO BE RELEASED?

The correct answer as of April 13th, 2004 when Tauren cat form went live in WoW’s beta was (and remains) “Not fast enough.” The more likely answer is this week. The answer per Blizzard is Soon.®

Soon® is a registered trademark of Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard, MMIX. All rights reserved. Used here with permission as enumerated in the terms of service.

…Actually, I’m hoping they go live today.

Edit: And they did.

SO…NEW TAUREN CAT FORM? RIGHT. YEAH.

I want to like it. I genuinely want to like it, and I think it’ll eventually grow on me. It’s a huge improvement over the present form, although to be perfectly fair the same could have been said of a happy face, or an animated Richard Simmons.

I’m still disappointed that Blizzard, which usually does such a beautifully thorough art and animation job on everything that goes in the game, allowed the original Tauren cat form to go live. We can quibble over the aesthetics if you like, but to this day the model continues to have animation issues (ever try sitting down or, before patch 2.3, rotating?) that I can only assume were the result of a copy-paste gone horribly wrong. Between that and the Rake animation, which was obviously built for a lynx (read: Night Elf) model, it sucks to be reminded at every turn that you are playing something that was probably rushed or, at the very least, not their best effort.

Irritating, but understandable. Less understandable and far more irritating was allowing it to remain that way for more than 5 years.

QUIT BITCHING.

Yeah, I know. /rubs temples. I need to get the number of Ghostcrawler’s gin supplier.

First impression; the elongation of the face and the disproportionately small eyes result in an unfortunate resemblance to the astoundingly ugly Bull Terrier. I assume this is an effort to keep the model visually suggestive of the male Tauren’s facial option of a pinched muzzle, but the transition is an awkward one at best. Otherwise, the paws are similar to the present model in that they’re somewhat chunky and sock-like, with no visual distinction between toes save that implied by the individual claws. Like the eyes, they don’t seem proportionate to the size of the body and head. That’s kind of disappointing, but I also get the sense that the finer detail down there might be lost by their pose against a black background. I’ll reserve judgment until I see it in motion on the PTR.

Second impression: Andreas Deja called and wants his character model for Scar back, although he suggests that Blizzard takes the “expressive eyes” theme from the new Tauren bear form and run with it.

Otherwise, by any metric you could name, this model is massively better than its current incarnation. Interestingly, it has different horn colors as well (not an option we’ve seen on the new Tauren bear forms). The overall shape and level of detail, particularly in the sense of the cat’s weight and musculature, is significantly better. I’d love to see them do something about the eyes — possibly making them larger, or just adding shading to make them a bit more realistically deep-set — but again, still a vast improvement, and I’d like to see them in motion on the PTR before harping on that point. Again, a screenshot against a black background isn’t the ideal way to experience these.

Like many players (female or otherwise), I’m not wildly enthusiastic over having to play what is very obviously a male lion while my main is just as obviously a female Tauren, but…meh. Most gamers are male, and I don’t expect Blizzard to put a lot of time and effort into creating a female form when so few people play a female Tauren anyway. And no, I’m not being sarcastic; it’s a waste of resources. It would just be a very welcome waste of resources.

Verdict: 5,000,000x better than the present Tauren cat form, but given how hideous the current form is, this is not a ringing endorsement. Still, in the celebrated manner of a fungus or malignant tumor, it is likely to grow on me. I like it more now than I did when I first saw it.

/gin

ARE YOU NOSTALGIC NOW THAT THE OLD TAUREN CAT FORM’S GOING AWAY, OR DO YOU STILL HATE IT?

With the fire and passion of a thousand dying suns reaching the apex of their fading existence, soon to collapse into an endless, timeless void consuming the souls of the surrounding galaxy over a millennia’s tortuous process, with each entity involved agreeing on their way to mortal oblivion that this end is a blessed relief from the cruelty of the god who bestowed Tauren cat form upon the universe.

Short answer: yes.

BUT WAIT! I’M AN AUTUMN! HOW DO I GET THE COLOR BEST SUITED TO MY DELICATE COMPLEXION?

Hit the barbershop. Tauren will be able to change the general color of their shapeshift forms by altering the color of their caster-form fur, which will become a barbershop option in 3.2. Night Elves can change theirs by toying around with the color of their hair. You can reasonably expect that each hair/fur color will directly (or at least roughly) correspond to the resulting color of your bear/cat forms.

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Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

What does your guild mean to you? Is it a community of like-minded players enjoying the company of their peers, helping one another to meet goals, and overcoming challenges together? Or is it simply a means to an end, a treadmill of raid attendance and loot rewards, where you slog through the necessary steps but never feel any real companionship with your fellow raiders? Some guilds start off as the former — a fun, social organization — and then end up as the latter — a tier-set assembly line. This week, one officer wants to know how this can happen and what he can do about it.

Hello Scott,

I am an officer in a medium-sized European raiding guild. We have always been proud on our mature and social playerbase. It is one of our spearheads to provide fun raids in a relaxed atmosphere. But lately, the social aspect has been degrading. Ever since the launch of Wrath and people rushing to level 80 something has changed. Where TBC provided a challenge and a common goal to work towards (mainly progressing through the different raid instances) Wrath has left us with a lack of common binder.

Our members are too busy with themselves, either working on achievements or doing the Argent Tournament. There is no helping each other out unless there is something to gain personally. A raid nowadays is a group of people gathering, doing what has to be done, and going there own way as soon as the raid is over. Although there is still laughter and silliness, it’s very limited and only from a couple of players. Most communication done is strictly functional. Guildchat is the same, hardly anyone greets a person who comes online and the chatting has been reduced to “Gratz” on an Achievement. It is hard to describe the feeling but trust me when I say that the connection between the guildmembers is missing somehow.

This has caused us to lose our edge over other raiding guilds, and now we face players leaving to find the missing link elsewhere. For me, the exact cause is indefinable, its hard to fight a feeling that my guildmembers have, let alone come with a solution. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Thank you in advance.

Regards,

Anonymous

Guilds go through periods like this from time to time. A few problems could be the culprit in your case.

One is that your members have “cliqued up.” That means they’ll help out the people in their group, and interact with them on a social level, but they don’t want to deal with anyone else. This usually results in fewer conversations in guild chat. People have their own channels or use Vent to communicate, so they don’t have to deal with people outside their clique. One way to identify this type of behavior is to look for patterns of who’s running Heroics together, who’s in the same Vent channel, etc.

Cliques are common in larger guilds especially. They have a purpose in that they keep people who actively dislike each other from interacting too often. But they can also produce the feeling of social malaise that the e-mail’s author is witnessing.

Another cause could be a single player, or maybe two, that have shut everyone else down. Do you have a player who constantly begs for help in guild chat, even for things they could easily do solo? That could dampen your member’s enthusiasm to help anyone. They won’t want to speak up and be ID’ed as a person who helps, because then that player who always needs help will pester them.

Do you have a player who makes awkward statements in guild chat? A player who says offensive things, or bums people out with depressing statements, or trolls the channel looking for an argument, can absolutely murder guild chat.

These problems can be difficult to root out if you didn’t notice them before they shut down the socializing in your guild. The only way to find out what happened is to speak with some members and ask them why they think the social nature of the guild has changed.

Identifying the cause is just the first step. Now you need to take steps to build up a community again.

My recommendation is to talk to your fellow officers about the issue. Acknowledge the problem. Some officers may not even be aware of it. Then discuss ways you can help. This is definitely a situation where officers have to take the lead.

Encourage them to instigate conversation in guild chat. Stir things up with a joke or just talk about a movie. Get people talking to one another, even if the conversations are silly. If your officers are prone to having fun conversations in the officers’ channel, ask them to take those conversations into /g when they can.

Also, ask your fellow officers to be the ones who volunteer to help. As the leaders, you have to set the example. Helping encourages others to help.

One thing I do every so often is to schedule a two-hour window, announced in advance, where I help anyone with anything they need to do. It’s tough sometimes to drop what you’re doing to help someone with a random request, particularly if you have limited playtime. But if you log in with the expectation that you’re there purely to help, you can approach it with a more positive attitude, and even have some fun with it. By announcing it in advance, it can cut down on the random help requests throughout the week. People will know that if they ask during that window, they’ll get the help they need.

Another strategy is to ask if anyone needs helps when you first log in. That way, you won’t have the feeling of being interrupted in your tasks.

You could also put together a fun event that isn’t raiding — something purely social or fun (or even achievement-based, like raiding cities, if that’s what it takes to get people interested). Give your members something interesting to talk about. Even progression raiding can become a chore. Do something new and different!

/salute

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This is a crazy-looking wand from Ulduar that spits out Holy damage like nobody’s business.

Name: Nurturing Touch (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory)
Type: Epic Wand
Damage/Speed: 378-702 / 1.80 (300 DPS)
Attributes:

• +29 Stamina, +26 Intellect, and +24 Spirit
• Improves crit strike rating by 20, and spell power by 39
• Pretty straightforward wand — nothing too special about it. But it is a nice one, and it’s likely an upgrade from anything you’ve gotten in Naxx or the earlier raid instances.

• In fact, the most interesting thing about it is simply cosmetic — that front part of it rotates in a very Ulduar-esque way, and when you use it to cast, a holy burst shoots out of it. As mana has become more and more prevalent, wands are more and more useless, but if you’re raiding at this level and can use this one on your way to hard Ulduar, it’s not a bad upgrade to take.

How to Get It: Drops from Auriaya, the seventh boss, just after Kolgarn, in normal mode Ulduar. She’s a little nutty, and comes with some fun adds to deal with, but she’s not too much trouble as long as you can get to her. Get her down, win the roll (obviously Priests and caster healers are probably the best for this weapon, but really, anyone who needs a wand upgrade can probably use it), and it’s yours. You’ll ditch it by the end of 25-man Ulduar, but still, it looks cool, right?

Getting Rid of It: Sells back to vendors for 16g 4s 17c, and disenchants into a Void Crystal. But you might want to keep it — it almost seems so distinctive it should go with a Hallow’s End costume of some kind, but I can’t think of what.

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