A Patch 3.1 talent build cookie platter for Death Knights

So now that Patch 3.1 is underway, the basic cookie cutter tank and DPS builds have begun emerging. Any imagine nerfs really have slown us down in any major way, and with dual specs in, we're doing better than ever on the whole versatility front. In recognition of this, let's give it to you straight, no chaser. Here's a handful of cookie cutter DPS and Tank builds for each tree to get you on the right path to DPS or tanking dominance in Patch 3.1, or both if you've dropped that 1000 gold. All of these builds also included recommended glyphs at the link as well.

DPS

Unholy: This 0/10/61 DPS build is one of the top competitors for DPS and the one I'm personally sporting. While it may seem like sacrilige not to head into the Blood tree, the Unholy tree does enough shadow damage that Black Ice's new shadow damage multiplier wins out. In addition, having 130 runic power comes in handy when you're trying to unleash a Gargoyle and still have enough leftover for Unholy Blight and a couple Death Coils. In this build, you get Frost Fever and Blood Plague up, then keep the Scourge and Blood Strikes coming for as long as your glyphs keep refreshing the diseases, adding your runic power dumps as needful. One note of caution on this build: You'll be flying without Subversion, so you'll want to make sure you're aware of the extra threat.

Blood: Blood was the redheaded stepchild of the Death Knight trees in 3.0 as far as imagined effectiveness went, but that really shouldn't be true in 3.1 Blood easily keeps pace with Unholy in the DPS department. Here's one of the more popular Blood/Unholy builds. This build focuses a good amount on heavy-hitting physical damage, so armor penetration becomes surprisingly useful in this build. Army of the Dead in the Unholy tree makes the disposable Ghoul a little more effective. The rotation should be more or less like Unholy, but use Death Strike for your Frost/Unholy rune strie, replace Gargoyle with Dancing Rune Weapon, and replace Blood Strike with Heart Strike. If you're afraid of losing AE potential with this build, remember that Blood Boil can hit undiseased targets now, and Blood talents have some pretty hefty buffs to that ability.

Frost: Frost, especially 2-handed Frost, continues to be somewhat of the dark horse DPS build. Not many Death Knights consider it, but it still manages to do very respectable DPS. 2-handed Frost DPS sometimes seems to me like it could be called the class' best kept secret. This build is one the favorites for solid 2-handed Frost DPS. You'll actually focus on churning out Obliterates with this build. Save the Howling Blasts for AE DPS or Rime procs - which you'll have a decent amount of, since you'll be using obliterate as fast as you can churn out the runes for it. You'll be using Frost Strike for your rune dumps, of course. This build also includes Improved Icy Talons for a little grouping love.

Tanking

Frost: Frost remains the stereotypical tank build, as it seems a lot of people failed to get the message that Blizzard abandoned the Frost is tank thing back before the Wrath Beta. That said, it's definitely a more than passable tank tree. Here's a Frost Build to try out when tanking. Howling Blast is here to help with AE threat grabbing, and it goes into the Unholy far enough to grab some extra help for Death and Decay. It's worth noting that a lot of people like grabbing Bladed Armor for extra threat in this build. If you do this, it'll probably best to take the points out of 2-handed weapon specialization and Acclimation.

Unholy: I'm still an Unholy fiend myself, so this is the tank build I'm using too. Even with repeated nerfs to Bone Shield, Unholy remains a very respectable tank tree. Try this build on for size. It focuses primarily on picking up all the delicious magic absorption and threat goodies in the Unholy Tree, leaving Blood and Frost for the first tier defensive abilities. Improved Icy Touch counts here too, the extra slow means fewer hits against you. Like Frost above, a lot of people like to take Bladed Armor for the extra threat. If you decide to go that route, Taking points out of Virulence and reducing Wandering Plague to 1 point is probably your best bet.

Blood: Yes, the Blood Tree can tank. For a while, a lot of Death Knights swore by a Blood build to tank 3-drake Sartharion. But even though Sarth is yesterday's news, you can still get some very respectable mileage from Blood Tanking. This build gives you the all of basic defensive cooldowns and abilities of the Blood Tree, a lot of strong physical-based single target threat, and some AE threat in the form of Heart Strike, Bloody Strikes, and Morbidity.

But where is Dual Wielding?

Dual Wielding is still sort of a playstyle in flux right now, but some Death Knights are still plugging along looking for ways to use it in 3.1. This thread on Elitist Jerks suggests a few ideas, but most of them assume you have some pretty sweet raid gear and are on track to get more.

Myself, I'd wait for 3.2 to try dual wielding again, once we see what the devs have in store. Some people are claiming it should be as simple as converting weapon strikes to hit with both weapons. I'm pretty sure this would be the exact wrong way to go about it, since it would immediately remove the major reason 2-handers have even been able to stay head of dual wielding in the first place. Without the weapon strike edge, Death Knight 2-handers stand a very good chance of going the way of Enhancement Shaman 2-handers.

But anyhow, 3.2 is a ways away. For now, Take any combination of the builds I have linked above, and go forth and conquer. New class or nerfed class or whatever, Death Knights are still plenty enjoyable in 3.1, and they're even more enjoyable with a good build.

Varian Wrynn is Right

Among WoW players these days, it seems to be a popular opinion that King Varian Wrynn is a narrow minded short-sighted bigot who will lead the Alliance to ruin. This is an easy opinion to have, since he does show a considerable amount of anger at times when dealing with the Horde, and it's long been the general opinion that "no-one is truly evil" in the Horde and Alliance conflict. This is even the opinion of some of my fellow writers.

Here's my problem with this: The underlying causes of Varian Wrynn's anger are all unconditionally justified. Varian Wrynn is not angry at the Horde because of a series of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. He's been witness to or victim of multiple wrongdoings and atrocities perpetuated by the Horde time and time again, both the new Horde and the Old. Most, if not all of these times, the wrongdoings have been the result of outright maliciousness on the part of the Horde or its members, and in the case the so-called "peaceful" New Horde, there's been no sign whatsoever that Thrall is punishing or disciplining the perpetrators of these acts, and at the least, it is clear that he is not properly dealing with the consequences.

Regarding the First Fall of Stormwind

The first fall of Stormwind occurred when Varian Wrynn was a young man. So this was Varian's first encounter with the Orcs. Now mind you, this Orcish Horde had no justification for the war. They were not being driven from land, they were not starving or lost, nor were they addressing some ancient affront by the Human race. No, these Orcs were foreign invaders from another dimension

Consider, also, how they eventually razed Stormwind. They were able to do so by way of Garona, a Half-Orc assassin acting on behalf of the Horde. So Varian not only saw that the Orcish Army was a mindlessly violent army bent on the destruction of the human race, but that the one Orc who might have been different, the one Orc who appeared to have befriended humanity and proven that not how all Orcs were mindless beasts, betrayed them and proved herself an enemy to humanity by murdering Varian's beloved Father.

Horde apologists will tell you that Garona was acting under mind control. There's two problems with this. First, Varian has no real way of knowing Garona was mind-controlled at the time. All he knows is that an Orc gained the trust and friendship of his father, then used it to betray and murder him, causing the downfall of his kingdom and very nearly the downfall of all humanity. Secondly, Garona was still under the control of the Shadow Council, which was at the time solely an Orcish organization and the de facto leadership of the Horde. Either way, it was the Horde who killed his father and nearly wiped out his people.

On Varian's loss of his second father and Humanity's loss of their greatest Hero

Now, consider the aftermath of this incident. It was Anduin Lothar who saved what remained of Stormwind's people after the razing. He spirited Varian away to Lordaeron along with the rest of the survivors. Once in Stormwind, he replaced Llane as Varian's father figure and mentor, and worked with King Tereneas to establish the Alliance, the force that became the only hope of humans, dwarves, and elves against the Orcish Horde.

And yet, Anduin Lothar was killed in cold blood by the Orcs during their attempt to finish what they had started at Stormwind, killed by Orgrim Doomhammer himself.

Horde Apologists will argue that Orgrim Doomhammer was not under the influence of the Burning Legion, and that he was doing it in self-defense, but again, there's problems with those who insist on this. First, while Orgrim was a friend of Durotan and supposedly had heeded his warning that Blackhand and Gul'dan did not have the Horde's best interests in mind, he still allowed Gul'dan to live, employed his necromancers and the Death Knights in battle, and continued the Horde's genocidal campaign against the the Humans. This all strongly implies that Orgrim was more interested in his own personal power, or at least the dominance of the Orcs, rather than doing what was right.

Regardless, whether Orgrim was under the control of the Burning Legion or not, he was still acting as an enemy of the Alliance. In addition, while the forces of the Alliance did have the Horde pinned down at Blackrock Spire, there was no attempt by Doomhammer to parlay. Instead, he went out to kill.

A Note should be made here that in the original events of Warcraft II, Lothar came to Blackrock under a flag of truce to offer terms of surrender to Orgrim, but was ambushed and killed in Cold Blood by Orgrim's order. A retcon changed this to put Lothar and Orgrim in single combat, but the basic crimes of Orgrim remain, and later depictions of the battle (for example, in the d20 Warcraft games player's guides) have left the circumstances of the single combat murky enough that an ambush or deliberate drawing out of Lothar on the part of Orgrim may have still happened.

Regardless of the exact cause of Lothar's death, the point remains that Orgrim, no matter what his ultimate loyalties, continued the genocidal campaign of the Horde upon the Humans, Dwarves, and High Elves, and killed Anduin Lothar in the process. The Horde killed Humanity's greatest hero and Varian's mentor and second father during an unjust war of genocide against Varian's people, the people he was sworn to protect as King. Thus, the injustices perpetrated against Varian by the Horde continue to stack to unbelievable, unwieldy heights.

On the formation of the New Horde and their attitude toward the Alliance

Horde apologists will argue that all of these problems are the Old Horde, and that the New Horde should be treated as a new, separate entity. Once again, there are very definite problems with this view. Not only are most of the Orcs that make up the current Horde the same Orcs who were the rank and file and leaders of the Old Horde, the fact remains that the New Horde is still using many of the trappings and philosophies of the Old Horde, and is more and more committing new violent acts of their own.

To start with, on the most basic of levels, Thrall continues to use symbology and symbols for the Horde that are, in Human experience, most clearly and basically connected with the Old Horde that was attempting to wipe out the free peoples of Azeroth.

The very title "Warchief" is said to be an ancient title of the Orcs. However, current lore suggests that the title had fallen out of use, and was only taken up again by Rend Blackhand as a tool by Gul'dan to unite the clans as an army of darkness and death. Orgrim Doomhammer took over the title, but continued to use it as the head of a genocidal army. Thrall now claims the title, but the fact remains that, ancestral ties or not, it has been most recently used as a tool of the Burning Legion, only very vaguely tied in to the heritage of an old line of Warchiefs that may or may not have existed, a history that Thrall, as of yet, shows few signs of trying to uncover. When Thrall uses the title Warchief, it is most clearly being used to evoke the power and authority of Orgrim Doomhammer.

Yes, Thrall and the Horde still revere Orgrim Doomhammer, the bloody Warchief who killed Anduin Lothar, the savior of humanity. He is considered a Hero, so much that Thrall wears his armor and carries his hammer - the same Hammer that killed Lothar, or one very similar to it. Thrall calls for peace while wearing the armor and weapon of an Orc who very nearly destroyed Humanity, ostensibly to honor him. In addition, he calls his capital, the symbol of the power and might of the new Horde, Orgrimmar. It's not very hard to see why a human, dwarf, or High Elf might find this symbology a bit insulting, and wonder why the "New" Horde is so eager to honor the Orc who committed some of the worst atrocities of the "Old" Horde. It's even worse for Varian, considering how close he was to Lothar, who was murdered by Orgrim.

Orgrim certainly isn't the only one to be honored like this either. Many of the main generals and architects of the Human, Dwarven, and High Elven genocide are now revered and honored by the Horde, with little to no attempts made to acknowledge their faults and the very real war crimes they committed against the Alliance. Grom Hellscream was one of the first to drink the Demon's blood offered by Gul'dan and commited many atrocities against the Draenei, against humans in the second war, and against Night Elves later.. Kargath Bladefist likewise has had multiple landmarks and fortresses named in his honor, and when he was killed in Outland after revealing himself to be a continued servant of demonic powers, Nazgrel (Another war criminal of the "Old" Horde) spoke of him with respect and honor.

If you are trying to break away from the example of the Old Horde, embracing so much of it seems like a very counter-intuitive way of doing it, and Varian, having at least seen the way Orgrim himself is honored, has a right to at least be made uncomfortable by this.

The state of the Horde and the Alliance

Once upon a time, when the World of Warcraft was all shiny and new, things were simple: the Horde hated the Alliance and they, in turn, despised the Horde. It was a simpler time, but this wasn't just some game mechanic to facilitate PvP and hours of ganking, oh no, it was integral to the lore of Azeroth.

Now, it's also worth remembering that there's no black and white in Azeroth either. The Horde aren't evil for just being the Horde, neither are the Alliance all pure as newly fallen snow. Each faction has done its fair share of pure and evil acts depending on the actions of individual heroes and the motivations of their leaders.

But now we're post patch 3.1, it's time to rexamine the state of relations between the two factions. Times have changed quite drastically since we first entered Azeroth and the addition of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King have only made things much more complicated. The Wrath Gate cinematic gave us some glimpse of how the two factions are getting on in the continually evolving lore of Azeroth. While the recent trailer for the Secrets of Ulduar offered an even more promising glimpse at the deterioration of that tenuous peace.

For the most part this is mutual, but the real culprit behind everything is King Varian Wynn. Yes, the human king hates the Orcs (and by extension the Horde) and, to be honest, who can blame him? Abducted, bespelled and sold into slavery as part of a grand plot by the dragoness Onyxia he (as the gladiator Lo'Gosh) found himself without his memories in Orgrimmar.

Now returned to his throne room in Stormwind, he is a changed man. Bitter and battleworn, his attitude only gets worse once the Alliance loses its greatest living legend Bolvar Fordragon during the battle of the Wrath Gate.

So last night, I finally got around to completing the Wrath Gate questline and witnessed for myself how much Varian is letting his hatred rule his head. He blames the Horde and Thrall personally for the death of Bolvar despite the fact that it was a renegade faction of the Forsaken under the orders of Grand Apothocary Putress which caused the massacre. For now, at least, he seems so blinded by hate that he is unable or unwilling to make that distinction:

"I've waited a long time for this, Thrall. For every time I was thrown into one of your damned arenas... for every time I killed a green-skinned aberration like you... I could only think of one thing. What our world could be without you and your twisted Horde..."

At the same time, the Horde are not all innocence and light either. Thrall's right-hand orc Garrosh Hellscream is just as bad. While he doesn't so much hate humans, he does lust for power seeing himself as the next Warchief and believes Thrall's weakness is his willingness to entertain humans like Jaina Proudmore (who I'm sure Thrall has a crush on).

So with 3.1, we got our first proper look at how the Alliance and Horde are coping post-Wrath Gate and it's not pretty. Varian seems to be swallowed by grief and fury while Thrall is receptive to Jaina's suggestions simply because she has always been a mediator between the factions.

You'd think such a dangerous situation as the resurgence of the Old God Yogg-Saron might unite these enemies against a common foe. Perhaps in the past this could have been true but now, neither side is willing to be co-operative. The trailer, as well as setting up 3.1, also features a promising sub-plot focusing on how the the two sides are beginning to turn completely against each other. I think it's only a matter of time before Blizzard bring this whole mess to a head and Varian and Garrosh face off.

We've already seen from the trailer that this is part of an on-going storyline, but I suspect it's not just a justification for war. There's a promise of something larger than just one king's grudge and perhaps we will discover an answer in the next patch or expansion.

The OverAchiever: Starting Glory of the Hero

Time for some thrilling heroics. -- Jayne, "The Train Job"

When I look at the Dalaran landing pad, I see fewer red proto-drakes than I should be. This pains me, dear readers. The 5-man heroic achievements are a lot of fun, if admittedly time consuming, and they force you to think on your feet and wring the most out of your character's abilities. Plus - it's a proto-drake. If you didn't get a 10-man or 25-man drake before 3.1 hit, you're out of luck there. Odds are good that you're still waiting for a green one to hatch out of the worthless egg that snake-oil salesman from the Oracles sells you, some jerk is camping the Time-Lost spawn 24/7, and the worst DPS in your Pinnacle PuG was the guy who won the blue drake off of Skadi, right right?

A lot of the WoW population has been at 80 for a while now and has some quality gear under their belts, much of it obtainable without setting foot in a raid. You should be able to pull off all of the 5-man heroic achievements in decent blues with a good group. I highly recommend trying to run with a stable set of players and -- if at all possible -- at least one Shaman. This is more true if your group is still gearing up and needs the damage boost provided by Bloodlust/Heroism.

I thought initially about organizing these from the easiest to the hardest, but I think it's ultimately less confusing to list them dungeon by dungeon. We'll address each dungeon alphabetically, so let's get started with Ahn'kahet:

As a quick note, these guides are being written from the perspective of a player who is usually playing a Druid tank (and occasionally healer). I'll try to point out if I know of alternate strategies for different groups or tanks, but I certainly don't know them all. If there's a strategy you've successfully managed that I don't mention here, please drop a note in the comments.

AHN'KAHET: THE OLD KINGDOM

This is one of the harder heroics overall, but the achievements here range from very easy to fairly difficult. As such, it's a good heroic to use as a diagnostic tool; the individual achievements here will allow you to figure out if you've got the tank quality, healing throughput, and DPS firepower to get through the meta-achievement. If you can manage all of the achievements here, you should be able to manage everything else.

A Bloodlust will help a lot on the final boss and, depending on your group composition, may also help on the first.

Respect Your Elders

As you're probably aware by now, the Ahn'kahar Guardians which spawn periodically during this encounter render the boss and his titchy little adds immune to all damage. Ordinarily you handle this by killing the Guardian (they have about 35K health) and then going back to DPSing the boss and AoEing the adds, but here you're going to have to come up with a way of keeping the Guardians occupied elsewhere. The immunity effect is canceled once you get them out of range, which I believe is roughly 40-50 yards. You know the somewhat elongated room in which you'll find Nadox? Its length is a rough guide to the distance you need to maintain between Nadox and the Guardians in order to keep the latter from granting the former total immunity.

You'll need:

Tank
Off-tank (DPS DK, Warrior, or Paladin is fine)
Healer
Off-healer if needed (hybrid DPS is fine)
DPS

If your tank is very well-geared, you can usually pull this off without an offhealer. I've also had a group successfully use DPS Shamans as Guardian tanks here, but any sufficiently hardy class that can heal itself could probably manage it. Most strategies suggest having your off-tank pick up Nadox and your real tank pick up the Guardians because Nadox's melee is very weak but damage from the Guardians really starts adding up.

Now, I used to do this all in Nadox's room, but commenters in the Wowhead thread on this achievement noted a much better way to do it that I'll be using in the future. As you clear to the boss, take the path to your left, and clear all of the trash you find in the hallway immediately preceding Nadox's room. Have your off-tank aggro him, pull him out of the room down the stairs to the left, and tank him at the farthest end of the hallway you just cleared (if this doesn't make any sense, the commenter Caylie on the Wowhead thread provides pictures). Your DPS and healer stay here as well and just nuke down the boss. If you're situated correctly, Nadox will never go immune.

Your real tank will sit at the stairs and wait for Guardians to hatch. Because they'll make a beeline for your healer, they'll head down the stairs toward Nadox and you can pick them up very easily and keep them tanked here. You may need an off-healer to toss you a few heals because you will be well out of range of the real healer. However, if you're sitting on some decent gear, blowing a few cooldowns and a health pot is usually sufficient if your DPS is competent and Nadox dies quickly.

The Party's Over

Fairly simple. The most obvious way to do this is just to have someone drop group and leave the instance, but apparently you can also have someone drop group, wait for the rest of the group to start DPSing the boss, and then participate as you normally would. The person who drops group doesn't get the achievement but can still help on the kill. Weird.

Volunteer Work

If your tank and healer are well-geared, this isn't tough. Jedoga's damage will increase substantially when her "sacrifice" isn't nuked down, but it's really nothing that a few cooldowns -- or, failing that, a lot of healing -- can't handle. If your tank is still having difficulty living through this, try to have an off-healer in the group who can help out a bit. If that still doesn't work, you can attempt to rotate taunts on Jedoga across her platform -- but with diminishing returns on taunts in 3.1, I think it's safe to say that you should treat this as a tank/healer gear check more than anything else.

Volazj's Quick Demise

This achievement is significantly easier with a Protection Warrior tank, as they can Spell Reflect Volazj's Mind Flay and cause a ton of damage to him, but it's still doable with any class of tank provided they don't threat-cap their DPS.

This achievement becomes fairly straightforward once you realize that the real boss isn't Volazj but rather your Insanity adds. Volazj himself will actually die quickly to competent DPS; it's the adds for whom you need to be blowing cooldowns and potion timers. With a Bloodlust/Heroism and good DPS, you will probably find yourself triggering both Insanities at the same time. If your group has the capacity to deal with these adds within 30-40 seconds, congratulations -- you can do this achievement with time to spare. If you can't, time to start tinkering with group composition or some of the more punk ways of managing this achievement. The good news is that there are a lot of ways to manage this (the Wowhead comment thread lists most of them), from Warlock summons to Army of the Dead to Divine Intervention to having your healer suicide straight off the pull or just come as DPS. The bad news is that none of these will compensate if you just can't pump out the damage you need.

My groups tend to go for the straight burn method, using Bloodlust at the start of the fight and triggering both Insanities at the same time. Using Army of the Dead going into the Insanity phase is extremely helpful if you have a Death Knight, as is stacking your group on top of each other to minimize time spent getting to ranged adds for your melee DPS/tank. Blow all of your serious survival and DPS cooldowns on the adds and get back to killing Volazj posthaste. If you manage this, you should have plenty of time to kill Volazj before the 2-minute mark. The fastest I've managed it is 52 seconds; the slowest has been 1 minute and 27 seconds, so I tend to favor this over more gimmicky techniques because there is room for error or slower/less bursty DPS.

Wotlk News: Patch 3.1 lesser-known changes

Sure, you know about dual spec, the Argent Tournament, and Ulduar. But patch 3.1 was a patch of many changes, and some of them seem to have flown under most people's radar. Here are a few changes that have been surprising some people recently, judging by the tips we've been getting.

• Siphon Life is no longer a separate spell. The talent now adds a self-healing effect to your Corruption, as well as boosting the damage on Corruption, Seed of Corruption, and Unstable Affliction.


• Emblems are now automatically distributed to everyone upon the first person looting them, similar to gold. This means no more forgotten emblems, and no more rush to the corpse as everyone goes to get theirs. It will also make loot chests much less unpleasant.


• Many spells with ground effects, such as Rain of Fire, Blizzard, and Death and Decay, are not showing the same as they used to. This is because there is a new video effects option, "Show Projected Textures," which controls whether things like the rune circles from RoF/Blizz/DnD are rendered on your client. It also appears to control my framerate in 25-man raids.


• The 10% experience bonus from heirloom shoulders now applies to quest experience as well as experience gained from killing mobs.

Is there anything else that took you by surprise in patch 3.1?

Wotlk Article: Emalon the Storm Watcher

So ends the age of the weekly loot piñata. The Wintergrasp raid instance, somewhat inappropriately called the Vault of Archavon, has a new tenant who isn't quite the pushover Archavon the Stone Watcher has been since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. The Vault of Archavon was essentially every Level 80 player's weekly lottery and near guaranteed shot at Emblems. It was the most compelling reason to capture Wintergrasp as the raid was only available to the faction in control of the zone. Enter Emalon the Storm Watcher, a new raid boss with Patch 3.1 who drops Ulduar and Season 6 loot. Emalon's difficulty is ramped up considerably from Archavon and -- if initial forays are any indication -- hard enough to give seasoned raiders like our own Matt Low an aneurysm.

Unlike his meek neighbor Archavon, Emalon actually requires a bit of strategy and situational awareness. He also comes with four bodyguards, the Tempest Minions, who are integral to the fight. As can probably be inferred from his name and his crew, Emalon the Storm Watcher's primary source of damage is lightning, or Nature damage. It won't be necessary to stack resistance, just an understanding of the fight, his abilities, and knowing what to do and avoid. You can visit Emalon by turning into a corridor on the right just before heading into Archavon.

Emalon abilities
Chain Lightning - Sort of like a Bizarro version of the Shaman spell of the same name, the first target will take no damage while targets after the third jump can be one-shot. Think of a boss version of the Lightning Constructs in the Halls of Stone.
Lightning Nova - Emalon borrows another ability, this time from Loken in the Halls of Lightning. Emalon's version has a five-second cast time, which should be enough time for melee to run the hell away. It has a 20 yard range and should be relatively easy to evade.

Tempest Minion abilities
Overcharged - Emalon chooses one Tempest Minion to Overcharge, which heals that minion to full health. It's a buff that increases its damage dealt by 20% as well as enlarging it. This buff will stack periodically at about 2 second intervals and once it reaches 10 stacks, the Tempest Minion will overload and explode, dealing ridiculous damage in an extremely wide radius that will wipe the raid.
Lightning Nova - In Heroic version, Tempest Minions will also cast a version of Lightning Nova that's weaker than Emalon's but stronger than Loken's. They cast this every 20 seconds.

What to do
The general idea is to get some generous spacing amongst the raid to minimize Chain Lightning damage. Ranged DPS work really well for this fight because they can generally avoid Lightning Novas and switch to an Overcharged Tempest Minion without having to reposition themselves. Melee DPS will have to work a little harder as they keep DPSing Emalon, avoiding the novas, and moving to an Overcharged minion throughout the fight.

There are only two phases to this fight and there is no enrage timer. One tank is required for Emalon and another for the adds, of which there will constantly be four. Whenever a Tempest Minion is killed, Emalon will spawn another one at his location, which means the off-tank should be ready to taunt it to prevent it going after other raid members. Because the off-tank is constantly on the adds, she is generally the one able to spot the Overcharged Tempest Minion the earliest and should be the one to mark it. All DPS should switch (use an /assist macro if you need to) to the minion and kill it before it wipes the raid, which puts low-DPS raids at an extreme disadvantage.

It's essentially shuttling between these two phases and getting into the rhythm of things. If all players -- particularly melee DPS -- manage to stay alive every Lightning Nova cast, and the raid downs Tempest Minions in a timely fashion, Emalon should be a manageable fight.

The loot
Normal mode Emalon drops two pieces of loot and Emblems of Valor. He can drop the hands, legs, or chest pieces of Tier 8 (which drop in 10-man Ulduar) and Deadly Gladiator non-set pieces such as the cloak, boots, bracers, rings, and amulets. This gives Emalon a considerably more complex loot table than Archavon. In Heroic mode, he drops four items which can be the hands, legs, or chest pieces of Tier 8.5 (from 25-man Ulduar) or an assortment of Furious Gladiator items, and a pair of Emblems of Conquest. Emalon can drop legs and gloves from the Arena Season 6 sets, as well as any of the non-set pieces making the 25-man loot table even more expansive than the Normal mode. Fortunately, PvP non-set items are not class-specific, which should give players a better chance at winning something. Good luck and have fun storming the castle vault!

Observations from running a Naxx-25 PuG

I'm very "up" on PuGs. I started my career as a PuG tank and met a lot of great players that way, many of whom I still raid with today. I've always been a stout supporter of throwing caution to the wind and joining LFG for an afternoon to see where it'll take you; it's been my experience that random players on your realm can and often will surprise you.

Once you master the art of the 5-person PuG, the ultimate risk is a raid PuG. One-shot the instance, or spend the night wiping? You won't know until you try.

I used to run Hyjal PuG's in late Burning Crusade and got to be the person in charge of arranging healers on Anetheron, explaining where to die on Azgalor, and uttering a hollow laugh at suggestions on whether or not Archimonde was in the cards (answer: hell no). I wasn't around for my guild's Naxx run one of these past weeks, and a few guildies were interested in gearing up their alts, so we thought -- PuG a 25-man Naxx? Why not?

1. Sending an open invite for tanks, healers, and DPS into the trade channel provides a pretty instructive look at what people are most interested in playing and gearing right now.

My totally unscientific take on things; it's a lot easier to PuG a tank now than it was in BC, healers are still scarcer than hens' teeth (but this will get easier if they know your run has a good track record), and -- as predicted -- everyone and his brother has a Death Knight. I could easily have filled every non-healer slot with a Death Knight, and wound up running 3 Death Knight tanks and 3 Death Knight DPS. For the forseeable future, I think you can realistically expect the Vanquisher token to be a complete nightmare.

2. Trying to explain Heigan to new raiders apparently sounds like you're reciting The Decameron as translated from Esperanto into Farsi and back again.

I think a 20 minute, 27 second kill says it all, although I await the legion of commenters certain to pop up and say, "You think that's bad?"

Tip: send people here, don't pull until everyone's seen it, assign an experienced "dancer" a raid icon, and tell people to stick to this person like glue on phase 2. I made the mistake of assigning this icon to one of our DK off-tanks, who assured me he knew the fight. It turns out he really didn't, and I spent each phase 1 bawling, "Move now! OK forward! More! More! Stop right there! Great! OK, forward! Back a little bit! Stop right there!" until I went hoarse.

3. On that note, who's tanking for you still matters a lot.

Tanks invariably set the pace of the run, and if they've never seen a fight before, you'll wind up having to spend a lot more time before each boss pull explaining what they have to do. Try to run with at least one tank who's familiar with the fights, even if they're not the best-geared. They are still likely to outperform a better-geared tank who stares blankly when you ask them in which direction they'll be kiting Grobbulus, and if you're really lucky, they'll coach the other tanks on what to do while you're handling other problems.

4. Take the number of healers you'd need for a basic, competent raid. All set? Now add another one.

Good healing -- or, in its absence, a lot of healing -- can hide some of your raid's inexperience with the encounters, and if you're pugging a 25-man run, it'll also help tremendously once you hit fights like Heigan, Grobbulus, Gothik, and Sapphiron. There comes a point at which you start to hit diminishing returns on this -- i.e. there's no point overloading your raid with healers if you won't survive Patchwerk and Thaddius -- but a full complement of 7 healers would have been a godsend at times.

5. Get Failbot and configure it to send information to you or the raid leadership.

Failbot is a tiny mod that will let you know instantly if someone's crossed charges on Thaddius, has two left feet on Heigan, or has an uncanny attraction to void zones on Kel'Thuzad (among other things). No matter how good you are as a raid leader, you still have to do your job in raids on top of trying to watch how things are going elsewhere. If you're not using Failbot, try to use and/or configure other mods to give you fast, simple information on how players and the raid are doing overall. If someone is clearly having problems on a particular fight and you know they're new to raiding, you won't lose anything by messaging them privately and asking them if they have any questions before you reach the next boss.

6. There's no perfect loot system for a PuG raid, but consistency is important.

/Roll subjects you to the tyranny of RNG and how lucky -- or not -- players are on a given night. Loot council is stupid when, by pugging, you've tacitly admitted you can't rustle up enough of your own players. Telling players to talk amongst themselves to figure who needs an upgrade most is just asking for trouble, and I'm equally uncomfortable with a third party trying to make that call. While the stars might align on any given night and one of these systems might result in a perfect set of drops going to the most deserving and grateful players -- don't count on it.

We wound up using Master Looter and a version of /roll that gave greater priority to main spec, main-toon players over alts and off-specs, and greater priority to players who hadn't previously won anything during the run. 22 out of 25 players ultimately left with upgrades, and in a lot of cases, multiple upgrades and even some offspec gear. I didn't get any serious complaints and people seemed happy with the arrangement, but it was occasionally very hard master-looting a piece to someone who I felt wasn't as deserving as a more hard-working player.

Whatever loot system you're using, announce it before the run begins, and stick with it. You may not like the individual outcome all the time, but one of the most frequent complaints we get on the site is that a PuG group or raid decided to change the loot rules on the fly. If your pugged raiders didn't like the loot rules, they didn't have to come, and there's nothing that says you have to like the individual outcome of each decision as long as you're consistently enforcing the process by which they're made. Having to master-loot a tier piece to a 700 DPS player over his healer comrade just because they have equal priority and the former won the roll will make you want to pull your hair out, but that was the system you all agreed on before you started, and as any lawyer could tell you, hard cases make bad law.

Master-looting a piece to a more "deserving" player is a great way to get the entire raid to think you're a dishonest prick (and they'd be right). Incidentally, it's also a fantastic way to end up on Guildwatch.

Guessing on the patch 3.1 release

bridges_squares wants to know, and we're getting really, really close, so let's finally go out on that limb, shaky as it may be: when's the patch coming out? Turpster predicted it would be this past Tuesday on the WoW Insider Show last week (since Noblegarden and the equipment manager got delayed, he figured they wanted to hurry for a release), but obviously no dice on that one. And on the other end of things, April 26th is the date we're told Noblegarden will start, so it's a pretty good guess we'll see the patch by then.

If you follow that line of reasoning, that just leaves the next two Tuesdays, April 14th and 21st. And since we had rolling restarts last week, it seems like maintenance this week will bring us the patch on Tuesday, the 14th. But of course there are other factors in here: the PTR should go down before the patch comes up, and since the PTR it still up, we be waiting until the 21st. Also, just because Blizzard said Noblegarden on the 26th doesn't mean they won't delay it again, so we may still see the patch on the 28th or after that. And Tuesdays are usually when the live realms get patched (Fridays are usually when the patch the PTR, in my experience), but technically they could do it anytime, right?

So let's do a poll. I'm going to go with Tuesday the 21st (since there's no sign of the PTR going down yet), but when do you think patch 3.1 will drop? And no, "when it's ready" is not an option -- we'll just assume (hopefully correctly) Blizzard will make sure of that anyway.

Tom Chilton on what's coming in patch 3.1

Our old friend Jessica Citizen has an interview up with Blizzard's Lead Game Designer on World of Warcraft, Mr. Tom Chilton. When Jeff Kaplan shipped off to other pastures in Blizzard to work on the new MMO, Chilton says he took over Kaplan's meetings, so right now, he is the flag leading the big ship of WoW. In the interview, he talks a bit about dual specs -- the system was originally planned to go in with the Lich King expansion, but it had to be pushed back to 3.1. And Chilton says he's already expecting to answer questions about triple specs at this year's BlizzCon, but of course, there's a balance there, as there has to be some choice on the part of the player as to what they decide to specialize in.

He also talks about the Argent Tournament and Ulduar -- the Tournament, he says, will be a boon to solo players and players who enjoy daily questing, with the jousting minigame mixing things up a bit. And Ulduar's hard modes, as we've heard before, will bring raiding back to the difficulty that players expect. Chilton fesses up to an error that GC hinted at yesterday -- Blizzard nerfed PvP items at the same time that they made raiding more accessible, and the result is that people flocked to PvE while ignoring most of the PvP options. "We kind of over-solved the problem," he says.

In the end, he calls 3.1 "the most ambitious content patch we've ever done for World of Warcraft." We'll have to see -- given that Noblegarden should show up with the new patch, it ought to be implemented by at least April 26th.