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Know Your Lore: Top 10 lore developments of 2011, part 1
Joystiq by Anne Stickney Jan 1st 2012 at 6:00PM The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how — but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your … |
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin!
Just like last year, this December brings both new beginnings and endings. A new raid, with new toys, but the end of an expansion, with likely no significant changes to mechanics until the release of Mists of Pandaria. As we sit around the fire with mugs of cider, enjoying (or loathing) our new sweaters, let’s take a moment to look back at the events of 2011. Those of you who have already set them on fire, feel free to follow along from outside. (Bad cat! Bad cat!)
Patch 4.0 blues
Let’s face it: Life was not so hot in early Cataclysm for us ferals. It’s long enough ago that it’s hard to remember, but our AoE damage was just pathetic. Swipe hit so weakly that our best AoE strategies revolved around multiDoTing, which was quite difficult and even then wasn’t very powerful. Heroic Maloriak really brought this out; feral was consistently the lowest DPS spec, a good 10% below the next spec and almost 50% below our fellow balance druids. While most of the balance issues are typically ironed out quickly, this one persisted for quite a while.Thankfully, our single-target damage was passable, but only just.
Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: 2011 for feral druids
Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Shifting Perspectives: 2011 for feral druids originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
 Big Shiny Robot! |
Citizen-Bot's Top 30/ Bottom 10 of 2011
Big Shiny Robot! Just getting small tastes of it earlier this year, I cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription. It was kind of a “one you've seen the bright lights of the city you can never go back to the farm” situation. As Star Wars fans, we've been blessed this … |
Bearheals: (on archaeology) The smallest distance between two points is a bunch of erratic zigzags.
After patch 4.3 went live in late November, class columnists and commenters busied themselves with the new 5-mans and Dragon Soul raid. I think it’s safe to say that Raid Finder problems have dominated December commentary. Players loved it as a feature, but they hated the various cheats that guilds used to get themselves to a four-piece tier bonus as quickly as possible, and they especially hated the outbreak of loot greed. More on this past the cut.
That wraps up our look back at 2011, and I’m looking forward to a bright, happy, and hopefully less trees-falling-on-my-house-filled 2012, even if the world is apparently scheduled to come to a crashing halt next December. Happy new year, everyone, and if you’re out partying tonight, stay safe.
Continue reading The best of WoW Insider: December 2011
The best of WoW Insider: December 2011 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 31 Dec 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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IndustryGamers: 2011 Winners Of The Year
VGChartz The free-to-play MMO was just an oddity in South Korea a few years ago, and now World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic are starting to seem like holdovers from the Cretaceous era: Massive subscription dinosaurs surrounded by nimble freemium … |
It’s hard for me to believe that Cataclysm has only been out for slightly over one year, especially given how we’re already on the last raid of the expansion. It’s been a turbulent year for the shaman class, and elemental as a spec is no exception. Between legendaries, highly fluctuating DPS, and more tweaks to AoE then I care to count, elemental has had more than its fair share of ups and downs this year.
Tier 11: The lows
Elemental was not a strong DPS class in the first tier of Cataclysm raiding. Fights like heroic Halfus, Maloriak, and Sinestra brought our lack of competitive AoE damage into the limelight, while Cho’gall, Conclave of Wind, and Ascendant Council all highlighted how elemental’s mobile DPS was terribly low. With Unleash Elements and shocks being our only mobile cast — not to mention low levels of haste that left us with terribly slow Lightning Bolt casts — and we really struggled to pump out respectable numbers on any fight that wasn’t Patchwerk-esque.
Continue reading Totem Talk: 2011 in review for elemental shaman
Filed under: Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Cataclysm
Totem Talk: 2011 in review for elemental shaman originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 31 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Breakfast Topic: What was your favorite WoW moment of 2011?
Joystiq There's been a lot of really awesome stuff going down, and at WoW Insider, we've been in a reminiscing mood. But don't let us have all the fun. We want to know what your favorite World of Warcraft moment was this past year. Was it the time your guild … |
Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone! It’s almost time to throw your old 2011 Justin Bieber calendar in the trash and hang your new 2012 Justin Bieber calendar.
No doubt, 2011 has been a heck of a year so far — we were introduced to Mists of Pandaria, we killed Deathwing with 24 complete and total strangers, we BlizzConned, and we visited parallel universes. There’s been a lot of really awesome stuff going down, and at WoW Insider, we’ve been in a reminiscing mood.
But don’t let us have all the fun. We want to know what your favorite World of Warcraft moment was this past year. Was it the time your guild finally downed heroic Ragnaros? Was it the time you scored that Cho’gall kill with only one person left standing? The moment you hit the 999,999 gold cap? Or was it something more personal — say, that moment your boyfriend shared news of your wedding proposal via a popular World of Warcraft website?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Breakfast Topic: What was your favorite WoW moment of 2011? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 31 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Silversol: You cast symbiosis on a warlock. You get soul swap. They get symbiosis. Combat log divides by zero. Your computer gets sucked into a black hole.
Patch 4.3 went live on Nov. 29 to much rejoicing (well, from everyone barring a very unhappy legion of restoration druids smarting over the Wild Growth nerf), and Blizzard saw it, and said that it was good, and rested on Sunday, and then went back to nerfing everything on Monday.
Also, Skyrim was released around the middle of the month, and we didn’t hear from several of our staffers for weeks.
Continue reading The best of WoW Insider: November 2011
Filed under: WoW Insider Business, Humor
The best of WoW Insider: November 2011 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
This was a fun year for me as a healer. Granted, I had to learn how to heal again, but I do enjoy this expansion’s model of healing (although a part of me does miss The Burning Crusade a little when all I had to do was pound Circle of Healing repeatedly). There were many memorable moments that I experienced during raids, and there are others that affected many more of us.
Announcing the monk Undoubtedly the best news for healers this year is this. BlizzCon 2011 unveiled a ton of news and announcements. The biggest one for healers was that there would be a new healing class for players. You guessed it, I guessed it, and I’m pretty sure half the world guessed and hoped for a monk class. These leather-wearing bears are set to help heal in the upcoming challenges that Mists of Pandaria will be throwing our way. While we don’t have a complete look on the full range of abilities that monks can do, we do know that they rely heavily on mobility to get their spells out.
Continue reading Raid Rx: Top healing moments of 2011
Filed under: Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Raid Rx: Top healing moments of 2011 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.