The Onion, the well-known and consistently hilarious parody news site, has turned its eyes toward World of Warcraft once again. In the past, they have introduced us to geek love in WoW and the World of World of Warcraft, and this time, they introduce us to the world of Raiding via nerd columnist Larry Groznic, who has previously written on his mastery of Quotes from Monty Python's Holy Grail and the merits of Weird Al Yankovic's Wikipedia entry.

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Each week Matthew Rossi lovingly hand-crafts Totem Talk from a single switch of aged Barrens scrub pine. This week, we try and calm some fears and discuss what changes we're still hoping might make it into patch 3.2. This week's image comes from Protein, a restoration shaman on Bladefist (he didn't specify US or EU realm).

Before we get rolling on the changes that shamans haven't seen yet in the various notes to patch 3.2, let us take a look at what notes we have seen, especially the most recent ones.

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Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

I love it when a content patch includes some professions love. As the details keep surfacing, patch 3.2 is looking better than ever.

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New Items Discovered on PTRs - 25-Man Hard Mode Included
A few items appeared out of nowhere on the PTR servers, right now I can't really tell where they are from because there wasn't even any testing of 25-Man hard mode yet. Considering that they weren't here last time I checked a few hours ago I'll assume that they're drops from the Faction Champion encounters (see here) but I'd rather not confirm it for the moment.

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• Talid, Resto Druid
• Sneep, Elemental Shaman
• Arnesca, Prot Paladin (Alex Ziebart)
• Venda, Survival Hunter
• Mosta, Elemental Shaman (Me)

The mounted battle against the Champions is shown above, and the rest of the videos are after the jump. Be sure to watch in HD by clicking the "HD" button on the Youtube UI! If you're observant you might even catch me using some salty language. Chivalry is officially dead, folks.


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PTR Focused Testing - Faction Champions
The Faction Champions encounter is nothing more than a team of the opposite faction, the encounter seems to be unfinished for the moment and is REALLY easy. You fight 7 NPCs from the opposite faction in 10-Man.

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For today's WRUP, I'm just going to let the team speak for themselves. In the form of this poem by Michael Gray:

Would you raid listening to GWAR?
Would you raid in Ulduar?
Would you raid with an axe?
Perhaps you'd raid in good old Naxx?
Would you raid, Mike I am?
Would you raid Sartharion?

I would not raid, Mike I am!
I will not raid old Karazhan!
Would you, could you, with a hose?
Would you, could you, raid Malygos?!

Malygos, Mike I am?
I'd love to raid old Malygos.
Would you, could you, raid WotLK?
All 10 mans this weekend, it might just be!

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Update - Looks like the instance is now closed, loot added.

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The schedule for the 2009 San Diego Comic Con is finally starting to emerge, and Blizzard has now confirmed details of its presence there.

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A kodo peacefully grazing in the middle of Tarren Mill? To those of us familiar with the Hillsbrad Death Zone, it's an unthinkable idea. But Thommas of <Pirates lnc> on Gnomeregan is free to go AFK without fear. On a PvP server, he'd be just a smear of fur on the grass by now, and there'd be three level 80 rogues stealthed and waiting for him to rez. But on his quiet PvE server, the only thing he has to worry about is a wandering bear, and they tend to stay away from downtown TM. Bears -- nature's quitters.

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Yes, that's me, the handsome draenei shaman up there with the irresistible moustache. Despite the bugs with the encounters on the Patch 3.2 PTR, my party had a fun time in the Trial of the Crusader, the new 5-man normal and Heroic dungeon in the Crusader's Coliseum.

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Trial of the Champion (5-Man) Loot Table
The 5-Man instance is now open and we have a good news, it only drops epic items! The item level is 200 in normal mode and 213 in Heroic mode. (Having a few issues with the DB, will have the tooltips back asap)

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The items look to be well-itemized given their level, and hopefully they'll fill some gear gaps that Naxx and Heroics have missed.

If you've completed the dungeon and have loot we haven't seen yet, send us a legible screenshot using our Contact form. Let us know on what difficulty setting you completed the instance as well.

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Several people across the U.S. are having authentication or connection issues tonight. I haven't been able to log into my main realm for at least half an hour myself. The above screen may say I'm connected, but it's just stuck there. Sometimes it gets stuck at the character loading screen and sometimes at the authentication screen. Many readers have written in with the same problem.

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Without much fanfare, Patch 3.2's new 5-man instance, the Trial of the Crusader, opened on the PTR tonight. Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer, AKA Daelo, noted that the instance is still a work in progress and that there would undoubtedly be bugs in the encounters.

I immediately assembled a crack team of terrible players, including uneducated elemental shaman Sneep of <Goon Squad> Horde Mal'ganis US, betraying his faction and playing a draenei; my obligatory hunter girlfriend; my dead-weight editor and prot paladin Alex Ziebart; and probably the worst druid raid leader I've ever had in my current guild, Talid.

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