Filed under: Raiding

This is a topic I know will get me into trouble. Classic WoW is known as "classic" for a reason, after all. Being the opening foray into the MMO that has since become the standard for the entire industry, WoW's first incarnation is filled with memorable encounters. The raid bosses we battled back then are the yardsticks by which we have judged pretty much everything that has followed.

I know it's tempting to say something like Ragnaros or Onyxia or C'Thun, because those are the big bad end boss fights that remain etched in WoW players' collective consciousness. I've always tried to stay away from the obvious answers, though, because, well, they're obvious. I don't think there's anything particularly interesting I could write about Ragnaros or Onyxia that hasn't already be said better by someone else. When I sat down to brainstorm about this topic, I ran through many of the classic bosses, testing my memories of them, and after a while I hit upon what I knew would be my personal answer to this question: Vaelastrasz the Corrupt.

Huzzah! Pinnacle of Storms, the final wing of Throne of Thunder Raid Finder, is open this week, and that means you're almost done. If you're just venturing into ToT Raid Finder, we recommend you head over to our 5-second guides for the first, second, and third wings. This wing is mostly downhill in terms of difficulty, especially after the Durumu pre-nerfed maze business, but can still prove to be a challenge to Raid Finder champions clueless on strategy. And just for you, we've put together a quick guide for the final wing. We accept cookies and high fives. (Thanks Zhonya for the help!)

Iron Qon

Tank swap at two stacks of Impale. Stay off of fire, ice, or lightning lines on the ground throughout the fight, reposition the boss as needed. During the lightning phase, move out of and away from tornadoes once sucked in. Move the boss to the back of the room. Stay spread out during lightning phase. During ice phase, move to hit the boss on his unshielded sides. Stack in his final phase for healing.

While perusing Wowhead's blue tracker the other day I stumbled across this thread on the EU forums about the LFR loot system, its frustrations, and potential alternatives. Community manager Draztal is pretty active in the thread, which is nice to see -- there is plenty of back-and-forth and, despite player accusations of just parroting Blizzard policy, Draztal has a lot of good points to make about the nature of effort and reward.

The truth is that WoW has never consistently rewarded players for running dungeons or raids. I still get a little involuntary curl to my lip anytime I think about Burning Crusade-era heroics, particularly Magister's Terrace, and how often I ran them trying to get some piece of gear, and how often my groups wiped and nothing I needed dropped anyway (and all those useless PvP gems).

I agree it's frustrating to run LFR and only get gold, though I did have to sit down and think about why, in particular. After all, I killed Saurfang in Icecrown for probably upwards of three months before I finally got the Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff. During all that time it never occurred to me that my failure to receive loot was an indication that the entire system needed an overhaul. After a couple minutes ruminating, though, I think the answer is pretty obvious: loot is the only real reason to run LFR (with the exception of just experiencing content, for those who may not have the opportunity to raid otherwise).

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I wrote a KYL this week talking about Uldaman, and one thing became clear to me very quickly - there's a ton of things we haven't done in Uldaman yet. We barely explore the place at all, really - the Map Room we find during the dungeon clearly shows many, many more buildings than the few we actually explore, and it's telling that the Reliquary dig and the Explorer's League digsite are half the length of the Badlands away from each other. Furthermore, the long Wrathion quest chain makes it clear that there was a lot going on in Uldaman - the Eye of the Watchers used to purify Wrathion's egg comes from Uldaman.

Uldaman is often referred to as one of three Titan cities along with Uldum and Ulduar, but unlike those two it has barely been explored due to its position buried beneath the Badlands. It's possible that the original Uldaman complex reaches as far as Khaz Modan (both Gnomeregan and Ironforge are settled by beings that would have traced their descent to Uldaman, and the troggs flooding into Gnomeregan are escaping from Titan vaults that are part of the Uldaman complex) which would mean that its size rivals the Storm Peaks Titan complexes that were part of the Forge of Wills inside Ulduar or the vast Uldum ruins.

It's over. We'd predicted that we would get him this week, and after two pulls it was done. We are now the only people in the world to have killed the last boss of tier 15.

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Apparently 七 煌 switched to 10 man after downing Lei Shen in 25 and that made all of Ra-Den's abilities work as it if were 10 man (except they had 25 people there fighting him) [...] The guild supposedly reported the issue to Blizzard so there isn't any actual exploiting going on, just a bug due to the different way in which 10s and 25s are handled in Asia (different lockout etc).

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

I always agonize over breaking set bonuses. You can sim it out all you like, you can run dummy tests, you can hit up LFR to test it out, but at the end there's always that brief period of self doubt over abandoning a set bonus for overall higher stats. My current raid had something like four warriors, four hunters, and a fair amount of shamans and monks so I'm not even trying for tier right now, instead focusing on overall upgrades. So last night, after getting a nice DPS ring and breastplate, I decided to break my Tier 14 4 piece set bonus.

To be honest, my performance seems to have improved, and I find myself wondering if it's because I raid as arms, since we don't get the double-crit on Mortal Strike that fury gets on Bloodthirst. I did do some LFR after the raid as fury, but my weapons are significantly below my arms weapon (since I can't use a polearm with Titan's Grip and I haven't gotten squat for SMF in two tiers of raiding) so in the end it felt like a wash. Heck, in order to even test TG I had to do an item restore on my upgraded Starshatter.

One of the issues facing us as DPS warriors is the idea of maximum DPS by spec. A lot of people will use sites like Noxxic, look up what the maximum DPS is for their class by spec, and just spec that. It doesn't work, and they get frustrated. Based on a conversation I had in LFR last night, I'm doing everything imaginable wrong by speccing arms as a DPS warrior, and I found myself forced to defend my spec choice even while outperforming everyone else. In fact, it seemed to irritate said person that I was doing what he said couldn't be done. Now, let me be clear that this isn't Noxxic's fault - it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools, and it's a worse craftsman who tries to use a power drill as a belt sander. But let's talk a bit about the difference between your DPS in a perfect vacuum vs. your DPS in an actual raid situation.

The third wing of Throne of Thunder Raid Finder was unlocked this week after a short break from the last one. After our previous 5-second guides to the first and second wings, how could we abandon you now? You've almost made it through. If you thought the beasts in the Forgotten Depths were rough, just wait until you meet your new friends in the Halls of Flesh-Shaping. Here's a quick rundown to quickly share with your Raid Finder buddies (thanks for the help Lucid guildies!).

Durumu the Forgotten

There will be a tank swap, taunt at around 4 stacks of Serious Wound. Step into Life Drain to intercept. During phase two, the raid should split itself between the yellow, red, and blue cones. Move each cone around until the three fog adds are revealed, and kill them. Move out of Force of Will and pools on the ground. During the third phase, be patient and navigate the purple maze while keeping ahead of the death beam. In the maze, stuff on the ground hurts, so stick to the cleared melee or ranged path. Tip: Point your camera downward to better view the cleared maze pathing.

Primordius

Kite the boss to prevent him from picking up too many Living Fluids, and kill them. Tank swap at around seven Malformed Blood stacks and avoid dragging him over the purple Volatile Pools. Only tanks should stand in front of the boss. Collect the red Mutagenic Pools on the ground dropped by Living Fluids to become mutated, DPS the boss. Avoid the red pools when you are mutated.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

This has been something of a wild month for me. I started it playing a tauren warrior, and I'm ending it as a worgen. I've spent the month raiding Throne of Thunder and thinking about warrior gear I need to pick up as we progress through the place. The weird thing about gear is, it's really just a means to an end. You get gear to get better to progress through harder content, that's pretty much all there is to the gearing cycle. Each new patch, each new raid opens up new angles for progression, but it's really always heading towards that brass ring of "Beat X boss, get Y gear to beat Z boss." Until the expansion ends, anyway.

As one of the largest raids we've seen in a while, Throne of Thunder has a lot of gear. We covered six bosses last time, taking us to the mid point of the raid. Now we get to look at the remaining bosses. The Halls of Flesh Shaping and Pinnacle of Storms await. As before, I'm just going to list the 522 gear that drops in normal 10/25 - thunderforged variants are 6 ilevels higher, and thus are usually the best option in normal raids.

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The second wing of Throne of Thunder Raid Finder was just unlocked this week, so get ready to queue. After our last 5-second guide to the first wing, we couldn't just leave you hanging without a second! After being thrown down to the Forgotten Depths, you'll be introduced to a few beastly bosses -- be prepared. Here's a quick rundown perfect for sharing with your Raid Finder comrades (thanks for the help Thugmuffins!).

Tortos

One tank on Tortos, the other on Vampiric Cave Bat duty. Don't stand in Rockfall. Healers be ready to top the raid after Quake Stomp. Kill priority is bats, Whirl Turtles, then boss. Be sure to kick one of the turtles into Tortos to interrupt his Furious Stone Breath. Although you can mostly survive the breath on Raid Finder difficulty, make your healer's life easier by interrupting.

Megaera

Note: You will have to kill the three Eternal Guardians around the cave and ring their bells to spawn the boss.

Tank the two active heads facing away from the center, and don't tank the same head twice in a row to avoid debuffs stacking too high. The raid should stack in the center during Rampage for AoE heals. Kite the beam out of the raid if you're targeted with Torrent of Ice. Run out of the raid for a Cinders dispel. Run away from the Acid Rain. Kill order of the heads in this difficulty isn't too important, just rotate -- green, red, blue will work fine.

See Ji-Kun's quick strategy after the break!