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Blood Pact: Inner demons in our talent selection

Blood Pact Inner demons in our talent selection MON
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thinks it's too difficult to convey moving while casting in a static screenshot, so, instead, have the Scholomance potion guy in front of a Demonic Gateway.

We covered Karazhan's pets, mounts, and fun last week, so this week, we'll cover Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep in the continuing quest to colle--

No. Sorry. If you really thought I was going to skip this past week's bombshell of warlock PTR patch notes for collecting pets from retro raids, I will scold you later for having no faith in me. Let's talk level 90 talent problems.

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Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

The Queue: Cheese

The Queue Cheese
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Today's edition of the Queue is brought to you by muenster cheese. There is no better.

Roseland1985 asked:

What are the odds that we won't actually kill Garrosh, but merely defeat him, casting him into exile? If this happened, I could see him going into exile to Outlands, being around the fel orcs who would more than likely share his yearn for war and bloodshed, more-so than the orcs already do, and going mad with fel corruption. He could end up popping up in the next XPac, if we are, indeed, headed back to Outlands to battle the Legion again.

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Filed under: The Queue

Know Your Lore: The lore leading into patch 5.4

Know Your Lore The lore leading into patch 54
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 Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Patch 5.4 is now live on the PTR servers for testing, and it has several ... dramatic changes, both to the world and to the characters in it. While patch 5.3 may seem small on story, there's actually plenty going on -- more than enough to serve as a catalyst heading into the new patch. In fact, plenty of the events in 5.3 directly effect what's going on in patch 5.4. Although we don't know the whole story just yet, considering the PTR is a test realm that may undergo changes as time goes on, we do have enough to tie 5.3 and 5.4 together in a significant way.

If you've been following the lore, you may have seen the signs already and know what to expect. But if you haven't been paying much attention to the story, or you're wondering what's going on with those images people have been posting from the patch 5.4 PTR, we'll do our best to get you all caught up. Mists of Pandaria has been an expansion chock full of new story, and patch 5.3 has certainly been no exception to this -- but 5.4 is shaping up to be the biggest hit we've seen so far in Mists.

Please note that today's Know Your Lore contains some spoilers for patch 5.4 content. If you're avoiding spoilers, turning away now would be advised!

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Filed under: Lore, Know your Lore

Around Azeroth: Make like a tree and leave

Around Azeroth Make like a tree and leave MONDAY
"I'd just sent sent the new ancient to my girlfriend, Samhhainne, so it could play with my sapling," writes submitter Macrobunker of BitTaurent on Illidan (US-H). "They didn't get along at first, but when the new 'Old Man' finally decided to show affection in his own special way, I think my tree friend was more than a little surprised." Indeed, sudden floral explosions are terrifying, at least to people who are allergic to pollen ... or bees.

Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.

Filed under: Around Azeroth

Drama Mamas: Being deaf and raiding

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

I had to edit this week's letter for length, but it's still a long one so that you can get the whole story.
Howdy Drama Mamas,

[...]

To begin with, I'm a male deaf gamer. I've been very blessed with great support systems in all areas of my life and have made friends both on and offline who have been extremely supportive of everything that I do. But I'll also be the first to tell you that I'm not perfect but I do try to avoid drama where I can.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Drama Mamas

Breakfast Topic: What are the songs?

Breakfast Topic What are the songs
One of the nice things about Tolkien's expansive universe -- both the one he created and the ones expanded upon by others -- is the rich, beautiful music. Whether it's a plate-tossing tune or an orcish battle chant, the world of Tolkien is rife with music. Even Game of Thrones has more than a few ditties, even if you need to be a little creative to find them. But we don't have that some musical background in WoW.

Don't get me wrong: WoW has some fantastic theme music. Between the Arkenstone-penned backgrounds or thematic zone music, Azeroth has plenty of musical ambiance. But it doesn't have a lot of songs with lyrics, or folk tunes, or those little sing-along moments that make a world so vibrant. You have to reach for filk or machinima to get much of that. And sure, there's the Chieftans but that's not quite the same as "music of the world."

The game references music, though. It's out there. So, I ask you, dear breakfast readers, to put fingers to keyboards and try out your Azerothian muse. What's the music you would add to game? Is it just battle chants? What about something with a nice flute? What would the music of Azeroth sound like?

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

EU forums announce amazing transmogrification race

scarlet crusade transmog
If you live in the EU and love to dress up your toons, you might be interested in this new game announced by community manager Meldheron: the transmogrification race! According to Meldheron it will be a monthly mini-contest in which players are prompted with a transmog theme on the WoW forum. Reply to the thread with a list of the pieces for use in your outfit, and upvote your favorites. The five most popular will be featured on the World of Warcraft facebook page.

I know we've got lots of transmog fiends around, so if you're in the EU this might be a fun way to share your ideas with fellow WoW players and even get a little bit of attention for your sartorial efforts. Have fun, and I look forward to seeing the top contestants!

Filed under: News items, Transmogrification

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Diving into Patch 5.4's PTR

The Care and Feeding of Warriors Diving into Patch 54's PTR
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.

Okay, so let's look at what we're getting as of the most recent Patch 5.4 PTR build. What stands out?
Patch 5.4 PTR Patch notes
Warrior

General
  • Enrage now also triggers on critical hits from Devastate and Shield Slam.
  • Shattering Throw no longer costs rage.
Talents
  • Enraged Regeneration now instantly heals the warrior for 10% of their total health (up from 5%), and an additional 10% over 5 seconds (up from 5%).
  • Vigilance no longer transfers damage to the Warrior. The talent now reduces amount of damage the target takes by 30% for 12 seconds.
Arms
  • Slam now does an additional 10% damage to targets affected by the warrior's Colossus Smash.
Fury
  • Titan's Grip now works with polearms.


There are actually some other changes if you log onto the PTR itself that aren't in the notes: Bladestorm is down to a 1 minute cooldown on the PTR, for instance. I like to call this the Christmas in Pandaria. In fact, if you look at these spell changes on Wowhead, you'll see that a lot of spells got buffed - Storm Bolt's damage got increased, Impending Victory's heal got doubled to 30%. So now that we've looked at the changes, what do they mean?

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Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

Community Blog Topic: What is your favorite class and spec?

Community Blog Topic What is your favorite class and spec
For most of my WoW career, my main character and first love was a druid. I particularly liked the balance spec even when it wasn't fashionable to do so. I still like my druid, but she is not even close to my favorite character. I've leveled paladins and mages, priests and shamans. I've toyed with hunters and warlocks. But the class that I love the best now is most definitely the monk.

I haven't felt this way towards a class in a game since my bard in Everquest. Well, that's true for fantasy characters. I also adore my operative in Star Wars: The Old Republic. But for World of Warcraft, my true love is the monk. I played with the brewmaster a bit, but while I like the spec, I'm not overly fond of tanking, so it's not quite for me. It's easier to do solo questing and dailies on my windwalker so that is the spec I play the most, but my favorite is the mistweaver. I enjoy the different healing mechanics of the monk and I feel I do a good job with them.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

The Queue: Robin Hood

The Queue Robin Hood
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Don't worry, this will be the last Queue he does for a while.

It's just occurred to me that I've never seen a Robin Hood MMO, or even really a Robin Hood CRPG of any kind. I mean, I don't have a universal knowledge of gaming, it's certainly more than possible that such a thing exists, but I don't know about it. There's been a fair number of Camelot/King Arthur games, but a surprising dearth of games about Robin Hood. It could be because the character has a fairly convoluted origin with a lot of interpolations, or maybe the idea of a heroic outlaw is too far outside of vogue nowadays. WoW has the Defias Brotherhood, but it's less the Merry Men and more guys who build a giant ironclad warship to blow up Stormwind.

I may be bringing this up because both Kevin Costner and Russel Crowe have played Robin Hood, and they were both one of Superman's dads in Man of Steel. I'm not saying I am, but it wouldn't surprise me. Anyway, on with the Queue! Some of these questions will undoubtedly contain spoilers for Patch 5.4.

Electresserin asks:
Question for the queue- I'm not sure if this has already been answered elsewhere: does Vol'jin want to be warchief? I understand that he wants revenge for the attempt on his life, and of course he wants the trolls to get out from under Garrosh's rule. But does he really want to take on the responsibilities of being the warchief? If he defeats Garrosh, does he automatically become warchief or could he refuse the title?


Well, one of the problems here is, there is no mechanism for determining who is the Warchief. Thrall appointed Garrosh, and Thrall himself was simultaneously appointed by a dying Doomhammer and acclaimed by the orcs at Hammerfall (which wasn't named that yet, of course). Doomhammer got the job by killing Blackhand and anyone else who might stand in his way, and Blackhand got it because Gul'dan manipulated the orcs into accepting him. So basically, in the history of being Warchief, murdering the dude before you has been the method of succession once out of the four times the job got passed down. So if Vol'jin is seen as having defeated Garrosh in battle, then yes, he may well become Warchief. Now, I don't see any reason he couldn't refuse the title if it was offered to him.

As to whether or not he wants the job, so far in game he hasn't said. I suspect we'll find out once Shadows of the Horde comes out. My suspicion is no, he's not really keen on it, but he'll do it if he thinks he has to. I wouldn't be surprised to see him and Baine try and create some kind of Horde Council to replace the position.

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Filed under: The Queue, Mists of Pandaria

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