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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.
This week's electrically charged boss battle is a real shocker: General Bjarngrim from the Halls of Lightning versus Sjonnir the Ironshaper of the Halls of Stone. There'll be adds and sparks galore in this deathmatch between two Iron Vrykul.
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Flame Leviathan's hard mode was hit as well. The amount of extra health he gets per tower up was reduced and the snare effect of Hodir's tower removed. Additionally, vehicles caught in a flash freeze will be freed with a single shot from a Demolisher or Siege Engine cannon. Players will also not go quite so high when ejected from Flamey following a stun, which should make them a bit easier to pick up.
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Quote from: Bornakk (Source)06/11/09
- The Yogg-Saron encounter has received the following changes: Death Ray no longer hits players who are under the effect of Malady of the Mind, Guardians of Yogg-Saron no longer use Dominate Mind, the spawn rate of Guardians of Yogg-Saron is more forgiving, and these Guardians will no longer spawn if a player that is protected by Hodirs Flash Freeze hits an Ominous Cloud.
- In the opening sequence of Ulduar you can now see Liquid Pyrite from farther away.
- The Flame Leviathan encounter has received the following changes: the bonus health Flame Leviathan receives per tower has been reduced, the ejection height from Flame Leviathan has been reduced, the snare effect of the Tower of Frost has been removed, and the cannons on Demolishers and Siege Enginers should now break Flash Frozen vehicles in 1 shot.
- The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: the health of the heart has been slightly reduced in heroic difficulty and the rate at which Gravity Lapse and Searing Light are cast has been reduced.
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Last week, we started our homage to Chase's rogue tips for raiding Ulduar by discussing what you, as a warrior, can expect from that massive Titan fortress/prison for old gods and their flabby, tentacle faced minions. That's right, Vezax, I'm calling you flabby. This week, we'll discuss the bosses of the Antechamber, Kologarn, Auriaya and the Iron Council, three bosses in one! I was hoping that the warrior class Q&A would be up by the time I sat down to write this so we could discuss that as well, but such does not seem to be the case.
Since the Iron Council is the most complicated of these three encounters (and because it has two alternate, or hard modes, we'll discuss it last. Of course, as a warrior you'll either be tanking or DPSing in these fights... there's simply no alternative role for warriors... but there's more to it than that in each case. Let's start with Kologarn.
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The Guild (which, as we were told by Michele Boyd last week, just started putting together their third season last weekend) is having a video contest, with a little twist. They want you to make a one minute video of a potential guildie for The Guild that would obviously get rejected -- in other words, a worst guild candidate ever video contest. So maybe you could clearly be a loot hog, or not know anything about your character (but claim to know everything). Or whatever else you come up with -- it sounds like they want the entries to be as embarrassingly bad as possible. To enter, you'll just have to create a video, upload it to a sharing site like YouTube or Vimeo (make sure you save a high-quality original of it just in case), and then drop them an email with a link to the video.
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Both Blessing of Kings and Unbearably HoT have posts up talking about the Shroud Loot System, a looting system designed to serve as an alternative to the standard DKP setups. The main point of SLS is that unlike DKP, it rewards points not just for downing content, but for just attending content, so that the focus is more on attendance and participation rather than progress (which, you'd assume, would eventually come if people are constantly showing up). Instead of kills, points are awarded at the beginning and the end of raids (no matter how much progress is made), and then when an item drops, players can bid points either by "Shrouding," spending half of their DKP (whoever spends the most gets the item), or by bidding a low fixed cost (and then they roll off for the item, with whoever wins paying the low fixed cost). BoK has a great example of how it works: either you spend half your points (if you have the most overall DKP, you're guaranteed to win) or you take your chances against a dice roll.[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where 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 a pretty short one, but it's an important one. I'm making a change to the format of this column, which will be explained in our very first question of the day. Why is it so short? When you read the answer to the question, you'll understand. I just ran out of steam after pulling that off.
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We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
- Alterac Volly has a good look at the daily quests for the Frenzyheart Tribe.
- DeathKnight.info posted a guide to using tank points.
- Startin' a Ruckus explains Disc Priest PvP Glyphs.
- A nice 25-man Algalon kill video by Stars over at World of Raids.
- Do you know a Prot Paladin that needs help gemming? Check out this flow chart from Righteous Defense.
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They're reading my mind! Just an hour or two ago I was thinking to myself, "if I can get a mount at level 20 in patch 3.2, what's the point of all those level 20+ speed-increasing skills?" Zarhym has solved my conundrum: they're all going to be reduced to level 16!
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Last week we talked about the many different resources are available for Hunters. This week I thought to build on that and talk about item level (iLevel) and what makes a good upgrade.
Yes, I'm sure you are already thinking, "Boring! How difficult can that be?" Maybe for some that would be true. But the changes that happened with Wrath of the Lich King have forced us to rethink some of the old standards. For example, Agility isn't always the king stat like it was in the past. Sometimes you might need to decide between adding Critical Strike Rating, Armor Penetration, or Attack Power all the while considering how much Hit you might be losing.
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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.
For the second week in a row, the victor of Two Bosses Enter ... One Boss Leaves was determined by a margin of fewer than 100 votes. Anomalus fell short of his task of protecting Brann Bronzebeard throughout the Hall of Stone's Tribunal of Ages event, falling to the combined forces of the Tribunal's defenses.
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Reader Malos on Nagrand sent me an interesting idea that I thought was worth some discussion. For a long time now, I've been a big fan of the idea of turning the old instances into Heroic versions -- I think it would be really fun to play Deadmines as a level 80, or roll through Scarlet Monastery for badges. But obviously the problem there is that Blizzard already has enough to do -- they're focused on creating new content, not revamping old instances that people have already played.[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

Another patch 3.2 announcement today, this time from Zaryhm concerning a few travel options in Azeroth.
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Quote from: Zarhym (Source)In the next major content patch we will be adding a few methods of improved transportation to areas of interest while leveling.
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We've seen WoW-based Mac commercial spoofs before, such as the epically famous Frost Shock. BroncoTV is now continuing the legacy with their own donation to the effort, Alliance vs. Horde - Episode 1. The series will be focused on the two player factions, and their ongoing argument about who is better and why.
This particular episode digs up the old chestnut about who has the best girlfriend and why. I admit, I had a brief chuckle when the dwarf claimed Onyxia as his girlfriend. I guess I can't blame him, as there was something a little fetching about her appearance in BLIND.
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With a flash of flame and a gout of smoke, Blood Pact appears again! It demands that columnist Nick Whelan make a sacrifice! Either he must write on a relatively simple subject this week, or be doomed to perform poorly during his finals! Left with no other recourse, Whelan submits to the will of the column.
Spells are the essence of playing a Warlock. Just about every part of playing the game, save role playing, has spell casting as a central feature for us. Fighting for control of Arathi Basin, dueling on matters of honor with some upstart Mage, questing and leveling, or any instance from assailing Defias scum in The Deadmines, to unlocking the secrets of Azeroth in Ulduar. Without spells the only things a Warlock could do would be run, jump, and weakly bonk our foes with our staffs. And there just aren't enough platforming sections in WoW to make that kind of thing fun.
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The last couple of days have seen a few more 'firsts' around the world for Algalon, the supposed Destroyer of Raids. Premonition of the Sen'jin server scored the US first, roughly a week after Ensidia's world first. Their kill revealed two brand new drops from the boss, both of which you can see in the little gallery just below. Good work, guys.[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]
Xtoferal of <Order of Valtiel> on Ravencrest writes, "After a server restart forced our 10-man Ulduar group to take a break before we fought Auriaya, as we were logging back in and waiting to regroup, I decided to pull out my handy Murloc costume. Another member of the raid summoned his pet Murky. Jealous because I wish I had that pet, I tried to show off by dancing. But Murky was having none of that. He ignored me the entire time. Sadness."
Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next![View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

When it comes to lore, Druids, Mages, Death Knights and Paladins have it covered. Druids have the Emerald Dream, Mages the Kirin Tor and Dalaran. Meanwhile Paladins and Death Knights' lore revolve around this chap called Arthas who did bad things and became one of the biggest bads in all of Azeroth. But what about the other classes?
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A fierce debate has been raging within the WoWenomics team for the past few weeks. This debate has centered around the simple question, are we witnessing the decline of World of Warcraft?
The Opinions
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Two Bosses Enter: General Bjarngrim vs. Sjonnir the Ironshaper