Last weekend we spotlighted the big healer survey that went around the blogosphere a little while back -- it was chock full of information straight from healers about their classes and abilities and what they thought of them. Now, Death Goddess is aiming to do the same thing for DPS classes. She's only got a few blogs who've answered so far, but they run a good range, from hunter to warlock to mage, and maybe getting the word out like this will encourage a few more DPS-style bloggers to put their answers in the pot.

[View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

The Mistress of Pain costume contest winner is actually a Diablo-related costume, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. You'll find an interview with her and more bloggy goodness below.

• Alltern8 has a long interview with Lorraine Torres, who dressed up as a Mistress of Pain at BlizzCon 2009.
• Mania examines the pets of Kalimdor, and which ones might become endangered once the Cataclysm hits.
• "When I first think about self defense in a raiding context," says WoWGrrl, "'staying alive' is what comes to mind."
• Rhii of I Sheep Things has a short essay on keeping a long-distance relationship alive in WoW.
• And Cassandri at HoTs and DoTs wants to help you turn those old Emblems you've got laying around into cold hard cash!


[View Remaining 1 Lists]

Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com.

Wife aggro (GF aggro, SO aggro -- whatever you call it at your place) isn't about WoW. Let's get that misconception out of the way right now. Wife aggro is about balancing a relationship with a hobby that tantalizingly dangles one person physically in front of yet emotionally light years beyond the reach of the other partner. Wife aggro is about attention – who's giving it where, who's not getting enough. Wife aggro is about what happens when couples lose their grip on how to separate "me" time from "us" time, on how "being at home" is different than "being available." Wife aggro is about what happens when the wires of "my" time, "your" time and "our" time become crossed and start arcing angry, white-hot sparks. And left unchecked, wife aggro is about demands that cast one partner as the shrill arbiter of what the other partner is "allowed" to do and be.

[Expand 3 Paragraphs]

I'm kind of surprised we've never done this one on PLP (in fact, I think we may have, though I couldn't find it in the archives at all, and it just changed recently anyway). But just in case you don't want to spend $10 of real money on an epic in-game pet, you can try to get this one anyway.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

John Funk of WarCry recently interviewed Blizzard's VP of Game Design, Rob Pardo, about WoW's five-year anniversary, and he shed some light on a number of topics, including their total subscriber numbers (twice to three times as much as its current 12 million), what audience their new MMO is meant for, and what he thinks WoW's greatest successes were. But some other very interesting information came up when the interviewer asked what he thought WoW's biggest mistakes were.

He begins by saying that he wishes that the servers had been more stable at launch, and that there had been more of them, but he says that in terms of design, Arenas were the single biggest mistake in WoW's history.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

Queen Lana'thel and Gunship Airbattle US PTR Testing
Queen Lana'thel and the Gunship Airbattle will be available for testing on US PTRs tonight. New loot will most likely be discovered during the testing, stay tuned. For more information about the encounters please check :

• Queen Lana'thel Testing
• Gunship Airbattle Testing


[View Remaining 1 Lists]

Like new content? Of course it's more of a rhetorical question -- proven scientific research tells us that everyone likes new content. For those of you not on the PTRs yourself, the WoW.com team is there for you, running the latest Icecrown dungeon, the Halls of Reflection. We're hoping to meet Arthas for a friendly chat over tea -- but we'll see how well that goes. Want to come along for the ride? Join Alex Ziebart, Matt Low, Matthew Rossi, Mike Schramm, and our new-found compatriot Selfish on Ustream.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

There is quite a thread going around with some ideas about how to fix raiding lag. Lag, like many cross-computer issues, is a pretty complicated thing -- there's all kinds of reasons it could be happening, from errors on your computer to errors on Blizzard's end, and all the little connections and switches in between. A certain amount of lag is unavoidable. But there are certainly some things you can do to make sure the link between your client and Blizzard's server is working at its best. This thread, which started on the EJ forums and then moved on to Livejournal, has some good tips in it, including turning off most combat logs like Recount and even Blizzard's official "Everything" log -- having to write down everything happening in game does cost some computer time as you play. Blocking addon "spam" is another way to keep things simple and clear -- while lots of useful addons help you share information between raid members, sending that info back and forth can cause problems when you're down to milliseconds of lag.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

Very often, what seem to be class balance issues or problems with a class or spec aren't, in fact, problems with that class/spec at all. They are instead consequences of encounter design or gearing issues. One example of this is the current state of the DPS warrior: on paper, there's nothing really tremendously wrong with either arms or fury for DPS in PvE content. Having used arms to great success in PvP recently, I sat down and really looked at what was hampering me when I switched to it for PvE DPS, and the problems I found seemed to be as follows.

• My PvE set is ridiculously high in expertise. Every piece that dropped with superior strength, sockets, and so on had expertise instead of armor penetration or crit to the point where I was forced to go back and wear older Ulduar gear over TotC 'upgrades' that had me at a ridiculously high 44 expertise and a shockingly low 33% ArP. Part of this problem was exacerbated by the 2h weapon that I'm using, a sword with lovely stats but so much expertise that I actually have gone back to using Aesir's Edge for PvE until I get a suitable axe or polearm. This is luck of the draw time: I took what dropped first and then noticed that over time my expertise was far higher than I needed at the cost of other stats, necessitating that I drop down to lower iLevel gear that had the mix of stats I needed.
• My tanking gear is now very enviable in most respects, but much of the upgrades that drop in TotC/TotGC lack hit rating. As a result, I can't wear my absolute best necklace or bracers because doing so drops my hit rating below where I'm comfortable even with Glyph of Taunt to help make up some of the difference. We're talking a difference of almost 2k health between my maximum stamina set (what I wear for tanking heroic Twins, because threat's really not an issue there) and the set I wear if there's any chance of threat being an issue. I'm basically going to have to go run TotC/GC 10 to get the hit rating tanking gear there.
• Both of these issues are gear related. But another issue is encounter related: warrior DPS is still dependent on rage generation and remaining in range long enough to turn that rage into damage output. Similarly, warrior threat generation is still limited by incoming damage being turned into rage and then outgoing threat. What this means is, warriors (and yes, druids use rage too but I'm not qualified to discuss druid issues) still start with the tank nearly empty compared to other non-rage classes. Tanking or DPSing on the DK I've noticed that having some abilities that use runes and others that cost runic power limits the DK without feeling like a limitation, while warriors are every bit as limited but can really feel the constraint.

What this ultimately means is that it's not always the class (although sometimes it is). Sometimes it's encounter design and gear itemization that holds warriors back, in part due to the synergy between warriors and their gear.

One of the examples I've used before and will again now is the idea that avoidance (dodge in particular) has gotten too high in WotLK and the only way to counter it has been to design bosses that hit harder and harder. The problem with this idea is that it reverses the way the paradigm actually evolved. It's not that bosses were forced by the cruel, naughty players to hit us harder and harder because of our vicious and malicious dodge stacking until finally in Icecrown they threw their hands up in despair and nerfed dodge. It's that bosses kept hitting us like freight trains so that block rating, a once-useful stat, became basically useless and all anyone cared about was stacking Effective Health so to survive as long as possible when one of these ridiculous damage dealing machines was focusing its ire on us.

[View Remaining 6 Paragraphs]

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. I finally lived through Faction Champions and now you can too!

After surviving defeating Faction Champs in Trial of the Grand Crusader, I've managed to figure out a few tricks healers can use to help themselves. While it's almost impossible to come up with a unified and methodical strategy, I've compiled a list of tips and advice to maximize your survivability and the players around you. Think of it more as guidelines as opposed to solidified rules.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

For the past day WoW.com has been hard at work getting the story straight on the discrepancies between what the Las Vegas Convention Center was saying about BlizzCon 2010, and what Blizzard was saying. Until recently, the LVCC had been telling us, and others, who inquired that BlizzCon 2010 was being held there July 30th and 31st. Blizzard was, more or less, denying it. Given both organizations are quite large and reputable, this was quite a confusing situation.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Professor Putricide / Blood Princes EU PTR Testing
The Blood Princes and Professor Putricide will be tested on european test realms tonight! Stay tuned for streams, abilities, and loot!

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

The Wolvar are one of my favorite parts of Wrath of the Lich King, and I'm darn happy that they're finally getting their moment in the sun. Stone Falcon Productions has brought the love for Wolvar to the public in their mockumentary called Among the Badger Men.

Among the Badger Men is an amazing piece of work, especially when you consider the team created this piece in a mere 48 hours. The voice acting is spot on. The music is well selected and perfectly matches the "action" of the film. The plot is wonderfully complex, with enough moving parts to hold the audience's attention through the entire movie.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

Twenty-Five Tabards is one of the cooler achievements to do -- not only does it reward a pretty neat-looking tabard in the end, but having the reputations necessary to pull it off (unless you're cheesing it with a lot of TCG tabards) is going to help you a lot while going for The Exalted.

The first thing I'd like to point out is that you don't need to do what I did while getting pictures for this article and run around like a headless chicken collecting tabards from all corners of the world. The easiest way to re-collect any tabards you've previously owned is by visiting Elizabeth Ross in Dalaran or a tabard vendor in any major city. I do need to mention that they sell tabards for the currency each faction uses (e.g. you still have to pay 10 Glowcaps to purchase a Sporeggar tabard from them) so if you don't have the currency on you at the time, you'll still be making a field trip to collect it.

[Expand 6 Paragraphs]

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

I was up so late at the local Irish redneck bar's karaoke contest -- I'm in the finals next Thursday, for singing Fiona Apple's "Criminal", booyah -- that I pretty much forgot I was supposed to write The Queue today. I tried to explain to Alex and Adam (after stumbling home) that I owned that song and I should be off the hook, but they disagreed. So here I am, 3:19 in the morning, answering your questions.

[Expand 8 Paragraphs]

After a long day of adventuring (and pugging) throughout Zul'Drak, Ephemora needed to unwind," writes submitter Ephemora of <Jaded> on Blade's Edge. "There's nothing like some tai chi chuan to help her relax! She found the perfect spot just along the border of Crystalsong Forest near the Unbound Thicket. Her Pandaren monk buddy couldn't help but to join in! Afterward they shared some brews and gazed at the stars before heading back to Dalaran."

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

Blood Queen Lana'thel and Deathbringer Saurfang Videos
It's time for PTR testing videos! Myth released a video of the fight against Blood Queen Lana'thel and Cuties Only released one of Deathbringer Saurfang.