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WRUP: It's the final countdown!

The new patch is here. You might say that this weekend is the final countdown. (Da da dahhh dahhh.) So when we talked to your intrepid WoW Insider staff, we asked what they most enjoyed about patch 5.1... and what they least enjoyed about patch 5.1. It's a mixed bag, after all.

Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) I'm not sure what I'm doing this weekend -- likely writing along with working on alts to level the new guild. Best part of 5.1? Easily the lore in the Dominance Offensive/Operation Shieldwall stuff. I loved doing those quests, and they did a fantastic job of keeping the story moving along. Worst part? Well there was that time my guild went splat. We're back together and doing great now, however -- so I guess you could tack that onto the "best" answer as well.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Poll: The worst boss of tier 14

Poll The worst boss of tier 14
Don't pretend you didn't see this coming after the earlier poll asking about the best boss of tier 14. Where there is light, there is shadow, and just as we love to discuss the best of a raid tier here at WoW Insider, we find ourselves duty bound to also talk about its bad sides. What was your worst boss in tier 14?

For me, again, just expressing a personal opinion, not a statement of fact, the worst bosses were the worst bosses thanks to either mechanics which I found gimmicky, or fights that seemed overly long and sluggish. Leaping to the head of the pack for my worst boss in the tier, then, is Amber Shaper Un'sok. His random transformation of players into vehicles with, as you'd expect in a vehicle, completely revamped abilities, is frustrating at best. In fact, I say it's random, but it isn't. Almost without exception, Un'sok has a remarkable ability to target the player least equipped to deal with a sudden transformation into Lord Ryolith. If the vehicle was something that could be targeted, or selected for a specific player, it would be fine, but that isn't the case. He is, therefore, number one on my worst boss list.

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Filed under: Raiding, Mists of Pandaria

WoW Moviewatch: Yesterday's News

A new patch lurks right around the corner and it's carrying change. Some big changes, some little changes. Change is a beautiful thing, but it does sometimes leave heartbreak behind it.

That's what Yesterday's News is about. It's about how change can turn your life upside down. It's a roller coaster ride and the best thing you can do is find someone you love and hold on tight.

Yesterday's News has been a favorite of ours for a long time, and we wanted to share it with you before the weekend. Take a moment and give someone a hug this weekend, and get ready for all the changes ahead.

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

Phat Loot Phriday: Swift Lovebird

Phat Loot Phriday Swift Lovebird
Think of this Phat Loot Phriday as a love note. It's a love note to you, our readers. It's a love note about a lovebird. Don't you see this lovebird? Isn't it a thing of beauty? It's like you, our readers. A thing of beauty.

We wanted to make sure you know about this swift lovebird, because you're almost out of time to get it. If you grind real hard and get all the Love Tokens you need, you could still get this lovebird. But it's a lot of tokens -- 270. That's a lot of killing but if you truly want love, you can do it. You have today and tomorrow.

We were going to have the regular characters of PLP write this love note to you, but they're oddly not around. Who knows where they are?

Item Note: It's a mount. And while play old ground mounts are a little deprecated these days, who doesn't want a lovebird?

Phat Loot Phriday brings you the scoop on some of the most ... interesting ... loot in the World of Warcraft, often viewed through the eyes of the stalwart Throgg and indelible Lolegolas. Suggest items you think we should feature by emailing mikeg@wowinsider.com.

Filed under: Phat Loot Phriday

Seeing Azeroth from a bird's eye view

wow fisheye shots
We've seen plenty of cool WoW screenshots in our day, but these bird's eye view images of Dalaran, Kun-Lai Summit (above), Lordaeron, Stormwind and most recently Orgrimmar still caught our eye. To capture these stellar views, Masserah of Arthas takes anywhere from 65 to 95 screenshots (at 1366 x 768 resolution on ultra settings), which he stitches together using the free app Hugin. This is the time-consuming part of the process, as Hugin can take two or three hours to piece a large scene together. Once Hugin has done its thing, Masserah manipulates the scene to give the fisheye effect and then goes into Photoshop to smooth out imperfections and correct colors.

These aren't the first WoW panoramas Masserah has made -- he has a gallery of panoramas, tilt-shifts, and other cool shots dating back to 2006. "I tend to come and go, and do these in waves," Masserah says. "I'm always on the lookout for the next scene, but I rarely get off my butt to do so."

So why take WoW screenshots in the first place? "I'm from Ireland, and more often than not the weather didn't cooperate with my photography," Masserah tells us. "I realized one day that I spent hour upon hour staring at a virtual world through a camera, and just started snapping scenes from around Azeroth. The small mercy is that a screenshot is about one-eighteenth the size of a professional photograph, and loads and processes much faster."

And, while we aren't professional photographers ourselves, we definitely approve of these results.

Filed under: Fan stuff, Odds and ends

An early look at patch 5.2 for monks, part 2

An early look at patch 52 for monks, part 2
Interested in trying out the new monk class, but can't tell your Tiger Strikes from your Tiger Palms? Written by Chase Hasbrouck of World of Monkcraft, WoW Insider's new monk coverage will get you kicking in no time!

In my last column, I explored how monks (well, windwalkers and mistweavers) are dramatically changing in terms of PvP. This week, we'll take a spec-by-spec look at what you can expect to change for PvE content, and draw some tentative conclusions as to what abilities and stats you'll be using and not using. Keep in mind that this is still PTR content, so things change on a day-by-day basis; a hotfix tomorrow might invalidate every conclusion I make today.

Changes for all specs

When you first log in for patch 5.2, take a look at your healing talents. All of them have been redesigned from the "uses chi and no-cooldown" model to "free with cooldown" model, so the only cost to using your self-heals now is one global cooldown. The actual strength of the heals are still being tweaked, but given this new model, I expect Brewmasters to continue to go for Chi Wave; Chi Burst to be decent for Mistweavers needing to raid heal; and Windwalkers to go "meh," since they'll want the GCD's for damaging abilities. Zen Sphere is interesting, but it took a massive nerf (62%) which makes it not very desirable at first glance.

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Filed under: Monk

Poll: The best boss of tier 14

The best boss of patch 50
As patch 5.0's raids' glory days draw to a close, it's time to look back on the first tier of Mists of Pandaria. No, you're right, it's highly likely that a lot of players will not yet have completed this tier, maybe not even seen the latter half, but most will probably have made it through the Raid Finder, at least. So, as we stand on the brink of embarking on a new patch, and new raid content, what has been your best boss in patch 5.0?

For me, and of course this is just my personal opinion, based on my experience and preferences in bosses, there are a few contenders. I actually like a lot of the fights in the earlier part of this tier, maybe because we're used to them so they're more relaxed, but I like to think that it's because they have mechanics that are innovative without being gimmicky, and because the fights don't last forever. Some of the Terrace of Endless Spring fights seem to last about a week, and maybe it's because I'm healing, but that isn't a characteristic I particularly enjoy.

For me, as a shaman healer main, the best boss contenders are the following. Gara'jal the Spirit Binder, because the Spirit Realm health knockdowns, plus mana regen buffs, mean I can blow the top off the healing meter as mastery kicks in and mana becomes a non-issue. Pure /flexing, I know. And I must admit that it's pretty terrible on the raid finder.

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Filed under: Raiding, Mists of Pandaria

Diablo III on the PlayStation 3 and 4 to have offline play?

We spotted an interesting tidbit from the above interview GameTrailers did with Chris Metzen and John Hight (a new Production Director at Blizzard) after the PlayStation Diablo 3 announcement. Hight says around the 8:35 mark:

We think the thing that was really cool, that Chris talked about, is that we're going to allow for local co-op as well as online co-op. So you can have four people on the same screen, no split-screen, and we just zoom the camera out, or if you're offline...

Now at the end of his sentence he gets cut off by the host, but the fact is easy enough to pick up. It would appear that Diablo 3 on the PlayStation 3 and 4 will have offline play; which would be the total opposite of the PC version.

Having to always have an internet connection for Diablo 3 has been a source of, what's the right word... annoyance for a lot of players. The fact that this might be changing bodes well, even if it is only for the PlayStation for the time being.

There is no indication offline play is coming to the PC. We've reached out to Blizzard for a response to this, and will update when we know more.

Many thanks to the readers who sent this in!

Filed under: Diablo 3

When things get better

When things get better
There's no other way to put it - I was not having fun in World of Warcraft the past couple of months.

A big chunk of that was my personal health woes, which are what they are and have nothing to do with the game. Since those have eased up, it's not surprising that I'd enjoy the game more than I was before. But what's come to my attention is how much of that "not having fun" had nothing to do with the game itself, nor my personal situation, but one person. One person in my guild made the game not fun for me. What's really amazing is, I only figured this out once that person wasn't around to ruin my good time.

Daily quests? I've been doing them like gangbusters this week - to the point where, on some days I actually had to go back to Cataclysm content because I ran out of dailies to do. Heroic dungeons? Yup. Scenarios? Double yup. Raids? Been in the thick of 'em, and even increased my performance. Leveling alts? Yes I have. The only thing I haven't done is LFR, and that's because I don't need anything from it. I even hit up Sha of Anger, and I haven't looked at that guy in 2013.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria

The Queue: Literature is lovely

Image
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. You will have to pry Anne Stickney's (@Shadesogrey) book collection from her cold, dead hands.

Pictured above are two books from my collection. Both are significantly older than my father, and he was born in 1929. There is something so keenly beautiful about holding something that has passed through the hands of I don't know how many people in its 100+ years of existence, and I can't really describe it. Yes, they are books of stories -- fairy tales, actually -- but the books themselves are a story, delicate and winding and impossibly long, trapped within the fragile spines and soft, worn pages. I'm glad they've found a home with me.

Now stop trying to sell me on a Kindle.

ejunk77 asked:

Q for the Q: Are you rooting for Lilian Voss to return in one of the remaining MoP patches? I know I am!

Not especially. But there's a reason behind that.

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Filed under: The Queue

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