As you may recall, Blizzard announced their intent to get rid of consumable ammo in Patch 3.1, only to withdraw the change a short time later, with the promise of reimplementing it at a nebulous later date. Now, it’s been more or less assumed that said later date is Cataclysm itself, or at least Patch 4.0.

In a general forum post created to discuss ammo replacements, Ghostcrawler piped in to remind us that the only change announced for Cataclysm was the removal of ammo, with nothing else yet decided (or, more accurately, announced). While he did acknowledge the possibility of adding in new situational ammo, he did observe that the hassle of collecting and swapping different ammo types might grow old pretty quickly, especially for a class like the hunter that already needs to push a lot of buttons to play at peak potential, in addition to already having a pet to manage.
I do see some wisdom in Ghostcrawler’s words. As someone who played a hunter relatively extensively during Burning Crusade and has recently begun leveling that hunter again via random dungeons, I can attest that we do have a lot to juggle if we want to put out a respectable level of DPS or PvP utility. One more thing to worry about could conceivably get a little bit tiresome.

That said, I’m a hybrid player at heart. I played a druid when I first started playing, and I play a death knight as my main now, and in both cases, I always keep a set of gear upgraded and ready for all their respective roles. Those sets include relics. I have my tanking relics and my DPS relics already. If ammo become a similar “relic” system, it might not be so bad. Being able to spice up your shooting with some procs from an ammo relic would be a great way to add a little bit of fun to the system without making it overwhelmingly unmanageable.

Of course, if they just take out ammo altogether and roll the extra DPS back into the base weapon damage, I wouldn’t complain too much either. My engineer will be sort of sad that one more source of cash flow is gone, but then again, raw materials sometimes sell for more anyway.

It was announced today that there will be a major change to resilience, which is being hotfixed into the game as we approach the new arena season. The change is expected to be in place for the duration of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion; which we take to mean it will not carry over into Cataclysm.

This change will “double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players,” according to Bornakk. Players will see a 10% to 20% reduction in damage taken. However, this change will not affect critical strike chances or critical strike damage. If healing becomes too over powered with this change, Blizzard has a “PvP only solution” ready to go, however they’re not rolling out that part of the changes just yet.

The full details after the break.

From Bornakk:

We are currently in the process of applying a hotfix to buff resilience. While some modifications may be made, we intend to have this buff in effect for the remainder of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

The change will double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players. So depending on their current amount of resilience, characters might experience a 10 to 20% decrease in damage taken from other players. The critical strike chance and critical strike damage reduction components of resilience will remain unaffected by this change.

We are also aware of the possibility that this change will make healing in PvP too difficult to counter. While we are not making any immediate changes to address this issue, we have prepared some further changes that will allow us to quickly deploy a PvP-only healing adjustment if we feel it is warranted.

We will be applying this change very soon while we are between Arena seasons so we can evaluate how it works in multiple PvP scenarios for the upcoming Arena season, and as we continue to prepare for Cataclysm. As we have mentioned previously, one of the goals for Cataclysm is to have a PvP environment where it is harder to regularly achieve so much damage and healing in relatively few global cooldowns compared to what we currently have in the game.

Some actual new information from tonight’s developer Twitter chat with Lead Systems Designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street and J. Allen Brack? I’m as surprised as you are. When asked why the resplendent (and glowy) Crystalsong Forest is oddly barren of anything to do beyond sightsee (and, of course, the rare quest), we received some interesting info about game performance:

Part of the problem is that it sits beneath Dalaran, which ended up being more of a resource hog than we had anticipated. We didn’t want to draw too many more players to that zone. Initially the Crusaders’ Coliseum was going to be there, which is why some of the quests send you there. We just worried too much about the performance hit.

So what does this mean to the average WoW-player? That you can enjoy the peace and quiet of Crystalsong Forest for a long time to come, because additions to the zone just aren’t on Blizzard’s agenda. And it’s probably for our own good — we all know what a lagfest Dalaran can be, don’t we? Now close your eyes and just imagine combining that with all of the players that come and go from the Crusader’s Coliseum. If your thoughts on this imaginary scenario are anything other than “do not want,” well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

Welcome to another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that firmly believes the frozen throne simply isn’t frozen enough. Frankly, we don’t think the Lich King was trying hard enough. And so we applaud the efforts of the enterprising young mage pictured above. Way to show Arthas how it’s done! Also, we will miss you.

So 3.3 has been live for several weeks now, and a great many of us have farmed up more Emblems of Frost and Triumph than we know what to do with. We, as a nation of mages, have bought ourselves a whole set of really nice new gear, possibly far nicer than anything we’ve ever had before. And what do we like to do when we get something really nice? Why, make it even nicer, right?

We get the nice video game system, we want a nice controller, and a selection of top-shelf titles to play on it. We get the HDTV, we want the shiny Blu-Ray player so we can watch Firefly in glorious high definition. We get the new car, we want to get a nice alarm system for it so that nobody can steal it. Unless you’re that dork from my high school who bought the high-tech alarm system for his mom’s 1976 Volkswagen Rabbit. Oh how we mocked him. Maybe someday you can get a good car to go with that sweet alarm system, we’d say, and laugh as he would hang his head in shame. Somewhere, he probably has all of our names on a list of people to kill, which he stares at while he puts on lipstick, Steve Buscemi-style.

But for most of us, this shiny new gear stirs within us the primal urge to trick it out even more. Which of course means that business is booming for Enchanters and Jewelcrafters. We discussed gemming last week, and this week, we’re moving on to the fine art of enchanting your mage’s already quite magical wardrobe.

We’ll cover each enchantable slot in turn and list the best available enchant options for those slots. We’ll also cover a few more cost-effective alternatives for those slots that you haven’t upgraded yet, and might replace before long. Maybe you have a Volkswagen Rabbit and would rather wait to install a top-end alarm system in something with a bit more…flair. Or maybe you’re just cheap.

• Head

Your only real options here come from the various Northrend faction quartermasters, which of course means you’ll need to actually raise your reputation with those factions in order to purchase them. For mages, that faction is the Kirin Tor, and that enchant is the Arcanum of Burning Mysteries. It costs 150g, and you’ll need to be at revered to buy it. There are several pieces of good news there, though:

1. You’re a mage, which means you already start out at friendly with the Kirin Tor.
2. If you’ve been farming emblems in random heroics, and you’ve worn your Tabard of the Kirin Tor for even a small portion of those farming sessions, you’re probably at or beyond revered already.
3. If not, start doing that. It doesn’t take long. Really, this is probably the first Wrath faction you should start grinding rep with as a mage.
4. 150g is not a lot of money.

As of the last patch, these faction-specific enchants are all Bind-on-Account now, so if you have another character that’s at revered or better with the Kirin Tor, you can always buy this with that character and send it to your mage. But really, you’re a freaking mage. You should get in good with the mage faction.

1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

I still say 150g and revered with the Kirin Tor is cheap, but if you want a budget alternative, you can always go for the PvP head enchant, available in Wintergrasp for 40 Stone Keeper’s Shards. You lose 1 spellpower and 20 crit rating and gain resilience.

• Shoulders

Greater Inscription of the Storm

This is purchasable at exalted with the Sons of Hodir for 100g. Now, this faction isn’t quite the grind it once was. The initial questline to open up the vendor and dailies hands out significantly more rep than it used to, and the repeatable turn-in quest has also had its rep reward boosted.

1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

Again, there’s the PvP option in Wintergrasp, or the lesser version of the Sons of Hodir enchant, available for 75g at honored.

• Back

Are you a tailor? If so, so have access to the single greatest cloak enchant for mages in the game: Lightweave Embroidery. It procs all the time, and when it does, it provides you with a nice chunk of spellpower. Not a tailor? Your best-in-slot option then becomes the Greater Speed enchant.

1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

Cutting your extra haste from 23 to 15 saves you a lot of pricey mats. Enchant Cloak: Speed is really about it for cheap back options.

• Chest

Powerful Stats is the very pricey way to go here. It gives you intellect and spirit, which is better than any of the other options for this slot. Honestly, who came up with the chest enchants in this game? As I do when determining the origins behind everything I don’t like, I’m guessing warlock.

1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

Super Stats is fine, and far cheaper. Honestly, unless your chest armor is the absolute best-in-slot and money is simply not an issue for you, the extra benefit of a couple points of spirit and intellect simply aren’t going to be worth the massive hike in mat value.

• Wrist

Ah, finally a pure spellpower enchant. Superior Spellpower is the no-brainer here.
1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

The mats are cheaper for Greater Spellpower, and though you lose 7 spellpower, it’s a perfectly servicable enchant for the budget-conscious.

• Hands

Enchant Gloves – Exceptional Spellpower provides you with 28 spellpower. Best of all? The mats are actually quite inexpensive.

1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

Depending upon the value of Burning Crusade chanting mats in your server’s economy, this may not even be cheaper, but you can always downgrade a bit to Major Spellpower and its solid offering of 20 spellpower.

• Legs

You have a couple of choices here. Sapphire Spellthread gives you 50 spellpower and 30 stamina, while Brilliant Spellthread trades the stamina for 20 spirit. I’d take the spirit for pure DPS reasons, though 20 spirit isn’t going to offer you anything significant enough to really worry about. If you’d rather have the extra stam, go for it.

It’s worth noting that if you happen to be a tailor, you can enchant your own pants with equally excellent stats for virtually nothing.

1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

Become a tailor. Or buy the less expensive but still passable Azure or Shining spellthread instead.

• Feet

This is an interesting slot. There’s only one really decent pure DPS option: Icewalker. It gives you crit and hit. But before you run out and snag that enchant, you should also consider the fact that feet enchants are a very inexpensive way to increase your run speed. This is a life-saver in PvP, but can also actually increase your DPS by a significant amount in fights that require you to stay mobile. Any time you can save in getting from point A to point B is extra time you can spend casting.

For this reason, Tuskarr’s Vitality is worth looking at. In movement-heavy environments, this is your best-in-slot enchant. In static situations, Icewalker is the only game in town. It might actually pay, if this is an option for you, to have an alternate pair of boots with Taskarr’s on them for movement-based encounters. If you don’t need the hit rating, then just go with the run speed enchant.

1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

It’s still Icewalker, really. It’s already cheap.

• 1H Weapon

Enchant Weapon – Black Magic

This is, bar none, your best 1H caster weapon enchant. It trumps the 63 spellpower one, and costs about the same in mats. The proc happens quite frequently (Elitist Jerks puts the rate at about 35%), lasts 10 seconds, and has a 35 second internal cooldown.

1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

Exceptional Spellpower gives 50 spellpower, and is much cheaper in terms of mats.

• 2H Weapon

Honestly, Black Magic is still competitive here, but Enchant Staff – Greater Spellpower with its constant, static 81 spellpower, is probably the best in slot option for your magical staff of awesomeness. Holy crap is it expensive though.

1976 Volkswagen Rabbit option:

Enchant Staff – Spellpower (69 spellpower) is perfectly fine when money is an issue, or if you think you’ll be replacing your staff soon.

And with that, your shiny new gear is even shinier. And let’s be honest: who doesn’t want enchanted pants? If you have your hand raised, you are a liar. Everyone wants enchanted pants.

Welcome to Know Your Lore, WoW.com’s weekly column about the story behind the game we play.

Last week we discussed the formation of the Alliance in response to the Horde invasion of and destruction of the Kingdom of Azeroth via the Black Portal, and the Alliance’s eventual triumph over the Horde, expedition to Draenor, and the events of Warcraft III that saw the destruction of Lordaeron and creation of a new order. This week, we talk about the events that caused those events.

Yes, this week we’re discussing the origins of the Horde, that organization that began as the manipulated, deceived and then ultimately demonic blood addicted orcs of Draenor. It’s not a simple tale: we’ve already told parts if it before when we discussed Gul’dan, Ner’zhul, Teron Gorefiend, Grom Hellscream and many others. It all really began untold thousands of years ago on the planet Argus, home world of the Eredar and their Draenei, or exiled, cousins. Thus, ironically, while the existence of the Horde caused the creation of the Alliance, it was an Alliance race that helped start the events that led to the creation of the Horde. Symmetry in origin.
Note: the events I’m about to outline are the current version as Blizzard presents it, which is considered to be the canonical version. If you remember differently from the RTS, that’s because it was different then.

Untold thousands of years ago, Sargeras, the champion of the Titans, went mad. Confronted with the unfathomable evil of the Nathrezim, the corruption of the old gods, and chaos itself, he decided that the Titan’s plan for order and creation in the cosmos was doomed to failure. Oblivion and chaos were not only the destined fate of the uncountable reaches of existence, they were all existence deserved. And so, Sargeras sought to undo the work of his fellows and destroy everything they sought to make. To do this, he needed a host as terrible and powerful as he himself was, and he found the seeds of this dread army on the world Argus, in the already magically gifted and potent eredar. So mighty were the eredar that they no longer feared death through natural causes or age, and the three mightiest and wisest of their people were Archimonde, Kil’jaeden and Velen, a triumverate among them. To this triumverate Sargeras appeared in all of his titanic majesty and offered them power and knowledge beyond that which they could possibly aspire, to walk the surface of countless worlds and see existence in a way none of their people ever had. It sounded perfect. It was perfect.

A perfect lie. Velen, suspicious of the offer, was given a vision of the future: his people corrupted striding the surface of world after world not as explorers, but as destroyers. Aided by the mysterious Naaru, Velen gathered what few of his people he could and fled the inescapable doom that awaited them if they remained on Argus. Enraged, his fellow triumvirs (especially Kil’jaeden, who had been as Velen’s brother and who felt personally betrayed by him) stalked these exiles, or Draenei in the original eredar language, throughout the cosmos from world to world. The pattern always the same. Always the draenei would settle on a new world and for a time be at peace, always Kil’jaeden would find them, always the hunt would resume. It might have continued indefinitely, in fact, had the draenei and their naaru allies not crash-landed on a relatively pleasant but unremarkable world whose native inhabitants had not even bothered to give a name.

The draenei named it Draenor, a world meaning ‘exile’s refuge’ and settled in. They found relatively little to conflict with their new neighbors, a race who called themselves orcs. For over five thousand years, the orcs and draenei coexisted, the draenei in their salvaged crystalline cities, the orcs in their nomadic, shamanistic society. They occasionally met but for the most part left each other be, the orcs finding the draenei strange and aloof, the draenei not wanting to interfere in the development of orc society. Then, as had happened before, one of Kil’jaeden’s agents found them. But this time, Kil’Jaeden was almost more interested in the orcs than his old enemies. Here were a people perfectly balanced between savagery and restraint, raw fury and contemplation. Their grasp of shamanistic magic was unlike his own people, and yet presented opportunities, as clearly orcs had an aptitude for summoning and controlling entities that rivaled that of the eredar themselves. This, thought the master manipulator, this is a people I can make use of. The orcs had a potential that, for all their wisdom and power, the exiles hadn’t understood. (Save perhaps Velen himself, when he met Durotan and Orgim Doomhammer.)

And so Kil’jaeden the Deceiver did exactly that, deceiving first Ner’zhul and through him, the orcs as a whole. Slowly at first, and then more quickly through Ner’zhul’s more compliant apprentice Gul’dan, Kil’Jaeden taught demonic magics to the orcs, while also teaching them to use the aggressive nature they once employed in hunting and testing their strength against the elements to dominate and destroy the draenei instead. Not expecting attack from a quarter they’d so long been at peace with, the draenei fell, and were nearly destroyed by this unexpected threat which turned both numbers and new powers against them. (It didn’t help that among the orcish numbers were Durotan and Orgrim Doomhammer, who’d been inside a draenei city and knew how to bypass its defenses). An attempt to broker peace at the site the draenei came to land, the sacred mountain Oshu’gun, only exacerbated the issue and ultimately led Ner’zhul to be replaced by his even more aggressive and power hungry apprentice, and Gul’dan prosecuted the war with the draenei with no regard to the truth of Kil’Jaeden’s original accusations.

In order to make sure the war moved forward even as the orcish shamans began to lose their powers (the elemental and ancestral spirits abandoning them) Gul’dan moved quickly to teach warlock magic to the former shamans of the orc clans, especially his own Shadowmoon and those of the Blackrock clan offered to him by Blackhand the Destroyer, Gul’dan’s chosen puppet and first Warchief of the Horde. This Horde was born out of orcish traditions from the long wars with ogres and gronn twisted to a new form, and eventually Blackhand even offered his own children (and those of others) to the Warlocks and their demonic, life draining magics, aging the children to adulthood so that they could fight sooner. The orc traditions of honor were turned inward, creating a society ripe for Gul’dan’s last act of betrayal and destruction against his own people.

On the orders of Kil’jaeden, who wished to ensure orcish obedience, he called forth a demon, the dread Mannoroth. This pit fiend had once walked the surface of Azeroth during the events of the Sundering, and it was his blood that was poured forth into a great vessel, and it was Grom Hellscream of the Warsong Clan who first drank of it: indeed, all the various orc chieftains save for Durotan of the Frostwolves and his childhood friend and ally Orgrim Doomhammer (second of the Blackrock Clan and thus Blackhand’s second in command) drank of the blood, and felt at first the enormous power and later the far more enormous cost of the power so gained. Fueled by this new demonic lust for battle, the last draenei cities were destroyed by the Horde, and their inhabitants driven into hiding in swamps and other desolate corners of the world. So triumphant, Gul’dan’s Horde began consolidating under the secretive Shadow Council of the corrupted Temple of Karabor (now the Black Temple) and only the actions of a disgraced Ner’zhul helped preserve the Frostwolves as the last uncorrupted clan of orcs.

While this occurred, their ancestral home in Nagrand was turned into a quarantine zone when a mysterious disease known as the Red Pox struck many orcish children and other uncorrupted orcs. Unlike the Frostwolves who, despite not drinking the demon blood turned the same greenish color as those who had, those survivors of the Red Pox who were quarantined in Nagrand avoided that fate and are today the last remaining brown orcs in existence.

Meanwhile, Gul’dan had been seemingly abandoned by Kil’jaeden, who grew disenchanted with his blood crazed army now that they’d seemingly killed his ancient enemies. However, Sargeras himself had never forgotten his defeat on Azeroth and was in the process of taking steps to remedy it – he discovered that Kil’jaeden, his student, had either consciously or unconsciously done the same as he himself once had and corrupted a race with great potential to act as servants. Seeing more in Gul’dan’s power lust than Kil’jaeden had, Sargeras reached across the Twisting Nether and led the Arch Warlock to construct the Dark Portal itself in order to breach the Nether and lead his Horde to Azeroth. Stranded on a slowly dying world where the spirits refused to answer and which only grew more sterile and desolate with each demon they summoned, the Horde was eager for a ripe, lush world to conquer. The Black Morass was brooding, forbidding, and teeming with dangerous life… but to a blood crazed orc, it didn’t matter. A fetid swamp full of insects and reptiles and enormous arachnids seemed positively inviting compared to the lifeless wasteland of Hellfire, and the Horde eagerly poured forth into Azeroth.

Next week we’ll take a look at both the Horde and Allaince through the First, Second and Third wars and how we got to the current state of affairs with a unified Alliance and new Horde.

The Care and Feeding of Warriors this week goes back to Icecrown Citadel to discuss the last two currently accessible encounters, the Gunship Battle and Deathbringer. Matt Rossi kind of wishes the Deathbringer fight was just against a great big talking axe. We don’t have enough boss fights with inanimate objects.

Okay, so you’ve done the first two bosses in the place. Now what? Well, now you launch yourself via poorly designed goblin explosives between flying boats and you fight the son of possibly the greatest living warrior on the face of Azeroth. And then if you’re Alliance you turn the whole thing over to a gnome with a frying pan and go raid Trial of the Grand Crusader for another week, I guess. Horde are presumably too clever to trust the opening of Icecrown to breakfast technology. Or too hungry. At any rate you’re stuck with the same content as the rest of us.

So let’s get on with it, shall we?
Gunship Battle

I want you to go listen to this song now. The part where they’re on the chairs? That’s the Gunship Battle.

What? You want more detail than that? Come on! Just imagine yelling GUNSHIP BATTLE instead of Mortal Kombat. That’s all you need. There’s rocket packs!

You’re not going to leave until I actually describe the fight, are you? I have some ham I really want to eat, but you don’t care. You don’t care about my ham! You just want to hear about your precious gunship battle. Fine! Fine then! I’ll do it, but I’m doing this under protest.

The Gunship Battle is stupid fun. Seriously, it’s awe inspiring in its purity. You get on a big flying heavily armed boat thing, and you shoot at another heavily armed thing while some of you have to use rocket packs to jump over to the other boat and whup ass on either Varok Saurfang or Muradin Bronzebeard. (And by whup ass, I mean, inconvenience them slightly. I mean, come on, it’s Saurfang and Muradin! You’re lucky Saurfang doesn’t just cleave you to death for having the temerity to try and hold aggro on him. By that, I mean come to your house and cleave you where you’re sitting playing the game. He can do that.) For a tank, you have one of two roles. Either you’re on defense, in which case you sit under a portal gathering up enemy mobs and holding them so your boatload of DPS can burn them down,or you’re on offense, in which case you rocket jump over and tank Muradin or Saurfang.

The complication for the Muradin/Saurfang tank is Battle Fury, the single best buff in existence OMG I want this. Every time Saurfang or Muradin hits someone with a melee attack, he gets a stacking buff that increases all damage done by 10%. That’s right, 10% more damage every time he hits something. So, if you were to attempt to actually tank him through the entire encounter, he’d soon have some ridiculously high damage buff that would cause his normally reasonable normal melee (about 2k or so on plate when you first engage him) to become ridiculous, 20k white swings. Plus, of course, he cleaves for 110% damage anyway, so… yeah. Not good. If Muradin/Saurfang are not tanked, however, they tend to throw axes at people that stack a nasty bleed debuff on whoever they’re hitting. There’s various ways to deal with this… the way we did it on 10’s was to have a friendly hunter use Distracting Shot to pull him off of me long enough for me to run out to range, then I taunted him back and let him throw axes at me until the buff fell off of him and I could go back into melee range.

On 25’s we had a bug where the buff wasn’t falling off of him (it seemed like a DK’s bloodworms were in constant melee range, allowing him to kill one and keep stacking) so I and another tank just got out to range and taunt traded him every 10 stacks of the bleed debuff. I hope they fix this, because it feels kind of cheap to beat Saurfang by standing 20 feet away and yelling at him over and over again.

Another way to deal with this is to simply leave the ship and let him throw axes at you from the other side. Rocket jump back when his stack falls off, rinse and repeat. This has become my favorite method, to be honest: you just have the offensive force wait on the edge of the ship and rocket over when the battle mage comes out. Be sure to have your tank target Muradin/Saurfang before jumping, throw a taunt on him as you land, he runs over, you hold him until the Battle Mage is dead. Then you get the heck out of dodge, my friend. I was actually being healed from the other boat, my healer didn’t even have to come over. He throws an axe or two at you once you’re on the other side, then runs back and resets.

Meanwhile, a DPS warrior will most likely either be using the cannons to shoot the enemy ship or be running around the enemy ship wiping out the Battle Mages when they come out to freeze your ship’s cannons. The cannon fire takes care of axe throwers pretty effectively, but you can DPS on them too. Keep jumping onto the ship, tank Muradin or Saurfang without getting insta-gibbed, kill the battle mages, you win! And you get to wear a rocket pack doing it!

Okay. Now I’m gonna eat this ham, and after I get done with that I’ll describe the Deathbringer Saurfang battle.

Deathbringer Saurfang

If I had to come up with a list of the greatest living warriors in World of Warcraft (hey, that sounds like a column idea! Vote for your candidates in the comments!) then you know Varok Saurfang would be near the top of that list. For some of the contenders the difficulty is in determining if they’re actually warriors. Rexxar is a Beastmaster, Thrall a Shaman, but with Saurfang you have absolutely no difficulty upon watching him in action during the Borean Tundra questlines at pegging his class. Dude’s a warrior. Always has been, always will be.

As a result I felt kind of bad killing his son. Dude was cool to me in Nagrand. But you know how it is, birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, I gotta hit raid bosses with an axe until they die. (Yes, yes, with the help of 24 other people, sheesh, it wasn’t intended to be a literal rendering of how raiding works.) At any rate, the Deathbringer Saurfang fight is interesting on a mechanical level as well as a lore one.

To be honest, I’ve never been DPS on this fight. So while I have an understanding of what DPS does on it, there may be flaws based on the fact that all I really do on this fight is hit taunt a lot. Frankly, this is not a particularly hard or challenging fight for a tank. You basically have to show up, get into position, know whether you will be tanking Deathbringer first or second in the rotation, and either pick him up or wait until the other tank gets Rune of Blood. If you’re the second tank, you taunt Deathbringer as soon as he puts Rune on the first tank, who will then do the exact same thing once he puts Rune on you. Deathbringer spends the entire fight as a ball the two of you play taunt catch with. As long as you can do this one thing properly and manage your cooldowns to not die once he gets Frenzy at 25% health, that’s the entire fight from a tank’s perspective. Threat’s not really even an issue since you’re constantly taunt trading him.

The fight is far more elaborate than this, of course, but the elaboration is in elements of the fight that as a tank you shouldn’t really be experiencing. DPS will need to pay attention. Be very careful with AoE damage, as not only does it not really matter much when Deathbringer is up by himself (although of course a fury warrior will use Whirlwind when its up, it’s part of his/her main rotation) but the Blood Beasts Deathbringer summons take almost no damage from AoE. (As a tank, you should also watch AoE threat moves like Thunder Clap, as you don’t want the Blood Beasts to stop and hit you, it will gain Deathbringer stacks of Blood Power faster.)

Basically, this fight is an execution race. You tank Deathbringer Saurfang as described, trading him between tanks. He summons Blood Beasts which cannot be AoE’d down and must be kited/killed with focused single target DPS, as every time they deal damage they give Deathbringer a stack of Blood Power, which increases his size and damage by 1%. Some strategies call for a hunter or other ranged player to get aggro on one while the other is snared, rooted or stunned (I’ve seen entangling roots and I’ve even used shockwave to stun them in place when asked) and then each is burned in sequence. They go down fast if a lot of ranged switch to them. (Some Blood Power stacking in unavoidable as Deathbringer Saurfang gets it every time he deals any damage at all, meaning when he hits a tank for damage… it’s therefore even more critical to minimize all other opportunities for him to get it) If Deathbringer reaches 100 energy he places Mark of the Fallen Champion on someone in the raid, increasing the healing burden tremendously. Considering he’ll be casting Boiling Blood and Blood Nova the last thing you want to subject your healers to is a lot of Marks to try and heal through. (Each Mark does roughly 5k or so damage to the marked target every single time he performs a melee attack on one of the tanks. As you can imagine, it’s even worse once he frenzies.)

So basically, while you definitely want DPS to be high, you also need execution to be spot on. If you can execute elements like getting away from the blood beasts and otherwise not allowing Blood Power to stack unnecessarily, this is not a hard fight. If you can’t, you will not be able to do it. (They changed Rune of Blood to make this fight effectively impossible to single tank, so you can’t bring an extra DPS and just burn through the healing from it, it now heals Deathbringer for 10x the damage he inflicts. So if he hits you for 4k after armor, he’ll heal for 40k.)

And these are the last two fights in ICC right now. As soon as that guy gets the doors open, we’ll start talking about the next ones. In the meantime, happy killing.

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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

This is The Queue that doesn’t end. Yes, it goes on and on, my friend. Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was, and they’ll continue writing it forever just because this is The Queue that doesn’t end. Yes, it goes on and on, my friend. Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was, and they’ll continue writing it forever just because this is The Queue that doesn’t end. Yes, it goes on and on, my friend. Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was, and they’ll continue writing it forever just because this is The Queue that doesn’t end. Yes, it goes on and on, my friend. Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was, and they’ll continue writing it forever just because this is The Queue that doesn’t end.*

dpoyesac asked…

“Every time I kill his son I forget to ask High Overlord Saurfang when the doors to the next wing will be down. Soon?”

It should be soon, but we don’t really know for sure. Our collective gut says it will open this upcoming Tuesday, but Muradin and Saurfang still say 28 days until it opens. It hasn’t changed since Day 1. Blizzard will just flip the switch whenever they please, we figure.

mcdingo asked…

“I recently did the epic druid flight form quest. Spoiler alert, it revolved a lot around the emerald dream. Turns out the raven lord was causing problems. At the end of the quest I killed him. Does that mean I fixed the emerald dream? Is there no possibility of the emerald expansion because of a class only quest that fixed the whole problem?”

Just because the raven lord was causing problems in the Emerald Dream does not mean the raven lord was the only one causing problems in the Emerald Dream. You just dealt with that particular issue. We really don’t have any clear idea of what’s going on in the Dream beyond the fact that it’s bad, and it’s screwing with the Green Dragonflight.

Of course, that being said, Malfurion is making his comeback to our realm in Cataclysm. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t just throw their arms up in the air and say, “Okay, the Emerald Dream is fixed now!” So I’m pretty sure Malfurion is just under the impression that what’s happening on Azeroth takes precedence, leaving Ysera and Cenarius to deal with the Nightmare themselves. I’m sure you can guess where that’s going for them.

Darksky asked…

“I remember reading in one of the loading screen “tips” something to the effect that “while players can make critical strikes, enemy mobs cannot.” Again, over-exposed photographic memory film may be playing a huge part in my confusion, but… did I seriously misread it, or is the tip wrong? Maybe it only meant spell crits or special attack crits or something like that… don’t know. Just hoping somebody else remembers that tip a bit more accurately and can de-confuse me.”

Yeah, you’re just misremembering the tip slightly. Mobs cannot crit with spells, but they can crit with any physical strikes. For example, a skeleton punching you in the face will land a crit now and then if you don’t have the proper defense rating. A skeleton casting fireballs at you will never, ever crit, even if you’re butt naked. That is, until they run out of mana and run up to you to start the whole face punching thing.

uncaringbear asked…

“Is T10 going to be the final tier of armour before Cataclysm? If there will be no more tier gear, how likely is it that we’ll see any new armour at ilevels higher than we can currently get in ICC?Is T10 going to be the final tier of armour before Cataclysm? If there will be no more tier gear, how likely is it that we’ll see any new armour at ilevels higher than we can currently get in ICC?”

I think it’s too early to predict what absolutely will happen, but as far as we know, Blizzard’s plan is to end with Tier 10. Not only have they pretty clearly said Icecrown will be the last major raid zone in Wrath of the Lich King, but we’ve seen some pretty nasty gear inflation due to the developers already needing to sneak in an extra tier of gear for how they handled hard modes. I’m pretty sure that if we were handed some Tier 11 before the end of the expansion, Azeroth would explode.

They have mentioned that we might get one or two one-shot raid bosses to herald the incoming Cataclysm just to keep us busy, similar to things like Onyxia, Gruul and Malygos. If we do get something like that, I personally expect the epics we get there will be aimed towards leveling in Cataclysm rather than elevating us to even higher ilevels.

Niennee asked…

“When did the portal area in TB (with the priest/mage/inscription trainers) become mountable? It always annoyed me that I had to run out of the cave to mount up, yet the other day I went through the portal in Dalaran on my mount and was pleasantly surprised to see myself not get dismounted on the other side. Is this some stealth change or did I just miss the announcement?”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I think a better question is why does the Horde get to mount up by the portals in Dalaran? As a primarily Alliance player, I call BS!

Okay, not really. In all seriousness, I have no idea when this happened.

*Yes, it goes on and on, my friend. Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was, and they’ll continue writing it forever just because this is The Queue that doesn’t end...

Moore returns with a ukulele. I’m going to pull out one of the big guns on the folk scene in the Americas — Richard Shindell. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a high-quality version of this song available anywhere online, and I highly recommend listening to the versions off Shindell’s Sparrow’s Point or (more especially) the live album Courier. Yes, it starts off slow, but give it a chance. On A Sea of Fleur-de-Lis is a very odd, albeit poetic, song with esoteric lyrics, although they make a little more sense once you know they were written while Shindell was considering leaving Union Theological Seminary. Otherwise, as with many of Shindell’s pieces, BYO subtext.

Beat that, Moore.

Anyway, after reading Archmage Pants‘ article on the new LFG system for mages and Daniel Whitcomb’s guide on the same for death knights, I decided it wasn’t fair letting a bunch of smelly DPS have all the fun.

“But some death knights tank,” you object.

That’s just a widely-disseminated myth, as all those of us on the Retaliation battlegroup know. You have tried the new LFG, right? Allow me to be the Virgil to your Dante in this new, more lucrative version of hell. Concerning tanks, by the way –

1. You can queue for dungeons as anything, but the process is a lot faster if you do so as a tank or healer.

If you’re geared to do whatever you like and simply want to enjoy LFG for its own sake, you’ll be fine queuing as anything. However, if your priority is amassing a huge pile of badges to get yourself equipped in full Tier 9 for your preferred spec/s, the most expedient means of doing this is to go as a tank or healer.

Of these, the barrier to entry for a tank is considerably higher, and the group much more likely to be a punishing experience if your fellow players outgear you. Of the two “I can’t even finish swigging my Pepsi before the queue pops” roles, it’s easiest to start off healing, not least because you don’t have any loot competition for a Need roll on leather +spellpower gear unless there’s another druid in the group.

Admittedly, the barrier to entry for a DPS player is lower than that of a healer, but on my battlegroup I see 3-second waits as a tank (no joke), 5 to 7-second waits as a healer (score!), and 4 to 17-minute waits as a DPS (consolation; you can finish your Pepsi).

2. Only queue as a tank or healer if you can tank or heal.

People have already noticed a rash of hybrid players popping into groups through the tank or healer option while not actually being specced or geared to do either. Don’t lie about your toon’s actual capabilities — despite the queue times, only go as DPS if that’s what you’re comfortable doing. Otherwise, you get situations like the one I had last night after wiping on a Drak’tharon Keep trash pull and then finally inspecting the tank:

Me: Um, I’m sorry to ask, but are you Prot full-time?
Paladin “tank”: No.
Me (eyeing his Mark of the War Prisoner and unenchanted, ungemmed “tanking gear”): I don’t think you’re defense-capped in your current gear.
Paladin: (silence)
Me: I’m pretty sure you need 535 +defense to tank this place.
Paladin: F**k no I don’t.
Me: (discovers she is out of schnapps)
Paladin: Hey, can we do Better Off Dred?

3. When you queue can have a big impact on the group you get.

If you’re still gearing up and worried about running into players who massively outgear you, try to use LFG during typical raid times. Most raids span a period from roughly 7:30 pm to midnight, and that’s a decent chunk of time to avoid the majority of raiders if you’re apprehensive about being in a group with them.

Now, it has to be said that most people are perfectly friendly and this may seem like it’s overly paranoid, but if you’re queuing as a tank or healer, you are much more vulnerable to the problems that result from getting matched to a group with significantly better gear than yours. An outgeared tank will go prematurely gray trying to keep aggro against people in 245+ gear. An outgeared healer may not have the healing throughput or mana regen for a group that’s chain-pulling dungeons. While most reasonable players will adjust to a tank who’s doing as much threat as their gear allows, and will wait for a healer to drink between pulls when necessary, some won’t.

Queuing during your own server’s raid times isn’t foolproof — not all of the servers on your battlegroup are on the same timezone — but you are much less likely to run into players with high-end raid gear between, say, 9:00 and 11:00 pm server time. Conversely, if you want the now-archetypal silent-but-deadly group that mows through pulls with brutal efficiency, you are more likely to find overgeared players outside of raid times.

4. Doing Halls of Reflection? Remove Curse and Abolish Poison are your friend.

Icecrown’s three new 5-mans have some nasty damage in store, and Halls of Reflection trash has all of its keys mapped to Cursed Arrow, Deadly Poison, or Level 5 Death to Tank. On heroic, the failure to dispel these can result in a wipe due to the sheer amount of damage that can build, particularly if your healer gets CC’d in the interim.

Moonkin: A well-played moonkin can singlehandedly drop the difficulty of HoR trash. If your healer is a priest and struggling keep up, help them out by dispelling poisons (particularly if on the tank). If your healer is a paladin or priest, remove curses. On all 4 healing classes, keep an eye out for the healer Cowering (a magic debuff from the Ghostly Priest mobs that we can’t do anything about), getting Kidney Shot by the Shadowy Mercenary, or being ice-trapped by the Tortured Riflemen (which we can’t shift out of). In all three cases, that’s 2-4 seconds where your healer is effectively out of the game.

As a tank and sometimes healer, I normally despise Typhoon and other knockback effects in dungeons (bonus points to the players Typhooning or Thunderstorming mobs into the next pull in Pit of Saron!), but here it can be a godsend. Use it to interrupt the Ghostly Priest’s heals and/ or force some of the ranged mobs into a better position for the group. If your group needs the CC, Root the Spectral Footman or Shadowy Mercenary before they can reach the group (the Footman is probably a better target because the Mercenary is likely to shadowstep to the group anyway). Or, you can Root any of the mobs if the group has effectively LOS’d the entire pull (which they should be doing anyway).

Cats: Feral cats will point out that popping out of form all the time to dispel is a crippling DPS loss that may wind up impacting the group more negatively than if you’d just let the debuffs stay up, and that’s entirely correct. However, that still leaves you with the problem of multiple enraged mobs doing a ton of damage, and one of them (the Priest) attempting to heal. If your healer or tank is in desperate need of some breathing room, consider using Maim as a finisher on one mob and burning Predator’s Swiftness for an insta-Cyclone on another. The ability to shut down the damage output of two mobs should not be underestimated, particularly near the start of a pull. Don’t forget to Innervate the healer on cooldown; there is very little time to drink between trash waves.