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Funny Money- 19 April 2009Funny Money is a weekly column published at the end of the week with the intent to have a little fun with the world of finance. Every weekend we’ll bring you a financial quote, a song relating to money, something interesting from the real world of business and a quick WoW gold making tip. Read on and have some fun…
Money Quote
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Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Matt's got awesome raid healing tips to share as Discipline along with some thoughts for dual spec!
The first week of Ulduar is almost done! For those in there, how far have you managed to go? I've found it to be a test and a challenge for not only myself, but for the crew I raid with. Thank goodness for dual spec as it's saved me both time and money for switching between different roles.
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The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.Season 5 is over. The dawning of Season 6 is peaking over the distant horizon, the bright traces of new challenges and adventures casting long shadows over the victors of Season 5. Reflecting over the first season of Wrath of the Lich King, one 2v2 composition has clearly dominated the ladder. The Death Knight / Paladin synergy had definite dominance.
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There is a great thread over on the Damage Dealing Forums started by a Rogue about the mechanics of the Armor Penetration cap/observed effectiveness. Armor Pen is a statistic that will allow an attack to ignore a given amount of armor.The thread and the contents inside it are notable in that it is, by my recollection, the first time a Blizzard employee has given out the complete rundown of an in-game formula. While there have been hints and comments about how certain statistics impact the game from patch notes and game designer posts in the past, there has never been a "step a, step b, step c" like algorithmic definition to all those stats contained within the black box of theorycrafting.
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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.
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You may have heard that a number of guilds have cleared Ulduar to Yogg-Saron already, which to me is perfectly fine. I like to think that a lot of good, properly-coordinated guilds will kill Yoggy this week, and the Blues agree with me. Of course, this week's Yoggy kills were on the easiest possible difficulty, so world first or not, it doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of fame and fortune.[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]
- 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.
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The patch 3.1 changes have not been sitting well with some players. Death Knights are up in arms about their nerfs, and Mages are feeling as rejected as ever.And Warlocks? Who plays those anymore. I received a free level 70 Death Knight in exchange for deleting mine. True story.
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A few weeks ago, when it looked like Oufitter was dead and Blizzard's Equipment Manager was on the way, I did a rundown of some alternatives to Outfitter. Now patch 3.1 is here, dual spec is upon us, and the situation is reversed: Outfitter is still in action, and Equipment Manager is not (yet).
- Outfitter fully supports dual specs, letting you select gear sets to automatically swap into when you activate your primary or secondary talents (see screenshot).
- For ItemRack, you can set up a custom event to switch gear when you switch specs.
- ClosetGnome can do it with the SwapSpecs plugin.
- WardrobeAL doesn't seem to have particular support for dual spec.
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This week, we have a couple of comics that haven't updated because the authors are otherwise occupied. Namely, these are The Adventures of Disgraph T Dwarf and World of Warcraft, eh?. Enjoy your hiatus, Cadychan, and good luck with your story D (I can call you that, y'see, we're tight or something. Plus, you won't know if I'm really calling you Dan, Disgraph, or "Dwarf", which is slightly better than "You" but not quite as polite as "You there!", and I do like to antagonize Dwarves!). 
The shamans said that the risk of ... defects was too great for us to have children. But we went ahead anyway, and everything turned out okay. Sure, you don't blend in too well in Darnassus. But you'd be right at home in Northrend. That's why we're sending you two to private school with the Kalu'ak! The brochure said that your skin eventually hardens enough to stand the cold, and you'll learn twenty-three uses for whale blubber. No, sweethearts, we're not sending you away because we're ashamed of the monsters our twisted love produced. This is what's best for all of us. Now put these mooncloth sacks over your heads and get on the ship. (Thanks to Cristyn of Gurubashi for the shot!)
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We've all seen some Alliance kiddie named "ikillhoarde" or a Warlock named "ifearyoudie." After all, what Horde wouldn't run for cover from a Hunter who's named after his very death? And woe is the person who actually thinks he can get away from a Warlock's fear. Phear the lock, baby.[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]
Algalon Watch
Inner Sanctum managed to defeat Hodir on Hard Mode today, meaning they only need to defeat Mimiron to complete the four needed to access Algalon. Unfortunately they didn't get an Archivum Data Disk from the Assembly of Iron, so even if they do manage to beat Mimiron's Hard Mode, they won't be able to do anything until next reset. However, unless anything drastic changes with these encounters they definitely have an upper hand on the competition due to already knowing the Hard Modes.
Note that this was also the retuned version, which requires you to beat the encounter within 2 minutes 30 seconds.
New Ulduar LootAnother day, more new loot. Below is a list of the most recent items discovered.
- Deliverance (Phys. DPS Crossbow - Yogg-Saron-10)
- Devotion (Spell / Spirit Staff - Yogg-Saron-10)
- Faceguard of the Eyeless Horror (Plate Spell - Yogg-Saron-10)
- Kingsbane (1h Phys. DPS Dagger - Yogg-Saron-10)
- Leggings of the Insatiable (Mail Phys. DPS - Yogg-Saron-10)
- Royal Seal of King Llane (Stam Passive / Parry Use - Yogg-Saron-10)
- Treads of the Dragon Council (Cloth Spell - Yogg-Saron-10)
Vodka has released kill videos of Mimiron and General Vezax -- both from a Warlock's Point of View.
Mimiron General Vezax Movie Watch: Major League Azeroth by AFK Players
Our friends over at Myndflame have a new video available from AFK Players, called Major League Azeroth. Here's a brief summary of the video for you-
A new machinima by Taiwanese production AFK PL@YERS.
It's about a baseball match between The Alliance and The Horde in Gurubashi
Stadium.
Who will be the winner of the game? and what does it has to do with the
mysterious Ulduar?
The final round is about to begins.
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The Loot Council is regular column highlighting interesting and informative posts from around the WoW finance blogosphere.
Warcraft Econ has an excellent tip for the PVPers out there. They’ve discovered what they say is an otherwise undocumented new way to spend honor points in patch 3.1- Blue gems can now be bought and sold for honor. Finally, a bailout for those PVPers with their honor points capped! Hurry, because as more and more players discover this trick the gems will fall in value.
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