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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.

• Grey Matter really dislikes the Moonkin set bonus on the recently unveiled Tier 9 armor.
• Pink Pigtail Inn has a pretty convincing argument for why “more epics” does not equal “new content.”
• Burnout? With all of the new patch 3.2 information coming down, Pike doesn’t know anything about burnout.
• Rhii of ISheepThings, on the other hand, isn’t real happy with the World of Warcraft today.
• And finally, Sydera over at World of Matticus waxes philosophical about exploits and how Blizzard is punishing them.

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Sometimes, during the summer, it can be especially difficult to find time to enjoy the game. Arena fighters are no different, which is why the following two interviews are a little shorter. We were only able to grab a little bit of their time, but we wanted to get their unique perspective on some aspects of the Arena.

Soballinlol is a Warrior on the Mug’thol server, who is 3rd rated in the Vengeance battlegroup on his 2v2 team. Even more spectacularly, Soballinlol’s 5v5 team has achieved the number one place on the battlegroup. Nailpolish is also on the Mug’thol server, but is in the 7th ranked 2v2 team on her battlegroup, and the 8th ranked 3v3 team.

Both come from wildly different perspectives. Nailpolish operates in a 3v3 RMP team, who uses precise Crowd Control to dominate their opponents. By comparison, Soballinlol is a Warrior, a class that’s reknowned for its juggernaut-like ability to smash through defenses, use unparalleled survivability, and still offer incredibly effective offense.

Check out what each had to say behind the cut.

WoW Insider: Why did you choose the class you’re playing? What are it’s advantages?

Soballinlol: I chose the warrior class because at level 60, I felt it could excel much more than other classes with the right gear setup and support.

The advantages right now to playing a Warrior are that you can really help your team out a lot if you play it right. These advantages are made a great deal more apparent because of the new Overpower buffs and -50% spell power. Warriors have a lot more mobility. It is a lot easier for a warrior to bounce around and slow down the other team while dealing a lot of damage out.

WoW Insider: In terms of things changing in the future, how are you feeling about 3.2? Warriors didn’t get any changes. and 2v2 is being deprecated. What’s your opinion?

Soballinlol: I think 3.2 is going to change a lot of things. Arena is going to be moving away from 2v2 to mostly 3v3 and 5v5 and I definately think that is the way to go.

Instead of Blizzard trying to balance around 2s, it’s gonna be more about balancing in a group setting. As far as the Warrior changes go, I definitely think it’s retarded that warriors got no changes at all except for a 200 attack power boost. At least it is better than a nerf.

Nailpolish

WoW Insider: I noticed your team seems to have a theme name across the characters. How did that come to be?

Nailpolish: Lipstick and I have been playing with each other for about 4 years now. I met him in a 20-29 Warsong Gulch match on my Alliance Hunter and he was a rogue back then. We thought each other were really good even though it was the 29 brackets.

We later joined a guild together to PvP and PvE. When BC came out, I took a break for about 6 months, and Lipstick rerolled Horde during that time with our other friend. They named themselves Lipstick and Mascara.

When I came back to the game towards the end of Season 2, I logged on our old Alliance Vent just to see who still plays. Lipstick happened to be there so I transferred my 60 Horde Rogue over there and named it Nailpolish to fit in with their names. Our priest — Aftershave — transferred from BG9 to Mug’thol. We thought he was really good so we picked him up for our 3s and he later renamed to Aftershave to also go along with our names.

WoW Insider: So how long have you been playing together? What’s your general strategy like?

Nailpolish: I have been playing with Lipstick for 4 years and our 3v3 team has been together since Season 3 to now.

Against “Cleave” teams, we generally just keep them away from our Priest, because every Cleave team gets a boner when they see a Priest on the other team. If there is a Warrior, we shut him down and pressure him hard so he has to be defensive. The same goes with Ret Pallies.

Against RMP mirrors, it’s all spur of the moment. Some games we just zerg down the Priest because we’re triple Undead, but during some games we kill the Mage. Most of the games, we just do the standard Rogue vs Rogue combat.

WoW Insider: While it’s probably pretty obvious to you and a lot of other RMP players, I think there’s some folks out there who don’t understand why Rogue/Mage/Priest is such a winning combination. Could you elaborate for our readers — what about RMP makes it so much “the” composition?

Nailpolish: What makes RMP such a powerful comp is the fact that we have so much CC and the ability to capitalize on other people’s mistakes.

We make people trinket fast with Cheap Shot and Kidney Shot on our kill target. In the mean time, we Deep Freeze to Fear to Sheep or Blind on another target. We can essentially make it a 3v1 game for the first 10 to 15 seconds of a match, which is essential.

Often times against Druid Healer teams, if the opponent Druid keeps everyone HoTted, then it will be very hard for us to land a kill or switch to a target. If he doesn’t have HoTs on a target, we can usually do a fast switch to that target and kill him in 2 to 3 global cooldowns. If someone is in a bad spot without a trinket for a few seconds, he will get switched to and die.

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Reader UI of the Week is back! Each week WoW.com will bring you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you’re using, to readerui@gmail.com.

Let it never be said that I don’t listen. After last week’s sparse screenshot, many of you said you wanted to see a UI in real action, and especially a healer UI. I got a number of good submissions, but Twigleaf’s (of Unity on Velen) stood out from the pack by being both very functional and very pretty. Everything has a place, the screen is information-packed, and nothing is ugly.

If this was my UI, I would move the center scrolling combat text up a bit, since I like to keep the very center of my screen clear to watch for things. But hey, it’s not my UI. Let’s see what Twigleaf has to say about it.

Lately, I’ve noticed that a lot of people are commenting that they would like to see a UI pictured with raid frames and all of those other mods necessary for raids. My UI is designed around seeing everything I need to know as a healer, while keeping many of the add ons smaller so that I can see when my raid members are standing in fires, void zones, or Yogg clouds. I also like to be neat and orderly, and my screen is arranged as symmetrically as possible with concurrent color schemes. My UI goes to show that you can have a lot of important raid add ons running while still being able to have a large amount of screen space. I use a Clique and Grid combination for healing the raid to minimize space. Overall, the UI is made to look sleek and get the job done.

Yep! Looks sleek, gets the job done, and shows a ton of information. As a raid healer myself, this is everything I’d need: raid frames down and center, myself and target frames below my character, tank frames off to the left, damage and threat meter down in the bottom-right.

I especially like the various rounded corners on the eePanels. The only thing that doesn’t quite fit in this interface to me is the main tank frames; they need a little more integration as far as appearance. Overall though, a great healing UI.

Addons used:

• Acheron: death info
• Ackis Recipe List: profession info
• ArkInventory: bag compressor
• Atlasloot Enhanced: loot display
• Auctioneer: AH mod
• Bartender 4: Action bar replacement Bidder_EPGP: DKP mod
• ButtonFacade: button appearance changer
• Chatter: chat mod
• ClassLoot: shows loot priorities
• Clique: click-casting mod
• CowTip: tooltip replacement
• Deadly Boss Mods: boss timers and info
• Decursive: debuff remover
• eePanels 2: colored squares to add to background
• Elkano’s Buff Bars: buff and debuff info
• Grid: raid frames replacement
• Grid Mana Bars: adds mana bars to grid
• GridStatusHots: tracks HoTs on grid
• HealPoints: tracks healing capabilities
• MiksScrollingBattleText: combat text mod
• Minimap Button Frame: collects minimap buttons into a moveable square
• Omen: threat meter
• oRA2: important raid info
• Pitbull: unit frames mod
• Quartz: casting bar replacement
• RatingBuster: tracks loot upgrades/stats
• Recount: combat meters
• SexyMap: minimap replacement
• SLDataText: FuBar-like add on with display info

And here’s a bonus screenshot for reading this far, of the UI in its resting state.

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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.

Well folks, we’ve had some tight battles lately — and this wasn’t one of them. In a rather predictable display of superiority, the Hall of Lightning’s General Bjarngrim outclassed Sjonnir the Ironshaper from the Halls of Stone in this week’s Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves.

Loyal Two Bosses fan Siaperas is always good for a fair recounting of the battle.”If I knew nothing else about them, I would wage my bet on General Bjarngrim based on how Loken assigned these men,” he wrote. “Loken would want somebody who could handle himself but have good managerial skills to oversee an operation like the Forge of Wills. However, he would want to protect himself with some of his most dangerous servants. I’m not saying that Bjarngrim is just muscle and Sjonnir is all brain — they’re both very intelligent and powerful opponents — but in Loken’s eyes, I suspect he sees Bjarngrim as the more dangerous opponent in a fight. And I would agree.

“I do not think this would be so one-sided as Bjarngrim winning without Sjonnir getting his licks in. The adds would bring some nice flavor, but between Whirlwind and Chain Lightning, they’re not going to be much help. What’s going to win the day for Bjarngrim is his ability to think on his feet, to put the most hurt on his opponents. Sjonnir puts too much reliance on his minions. He’ll be able to kite Bjarngrim around a little and buy himself time, but still he won’t do too much between Bjanrgrim’s Spell Reflect, Intercept and Pummel. In the end, Sjonnir just can’t deliver the same amount of hurt to Bjarngrim as he will be receiving, and Bjarngrim wins.” 

“I think this fight’s over before it even begins,” agreed Ilya. “General Bjarngrim is a GENERAL. Sjonnir the Ironshaper is simply a guard for the Forge of Wills. The guard of the Forge is definitely easier to beat down, and even if Loken loses the Forge of Wills, he’ll just get mad for a while before ordering its reconstruction. Thus, he trusts a dangerous (but not insanely powerful) guard to it.

“Think, then, on how he chooses Bjarngrim, a general, to guard himself. He knows that while the Forge of Wills can be reconstructed, he cannot. He KNOWS that Bjarngrim’s the more powerful fighter, or it’d be Bjarngrim guarding the Forge of Wills. Put simply, Loken’s trust in Bjarngrim’s skill to defend both Loken and himself is greater than his trust in Sjonnir to accomplish the same task. He knows who’s the stronger fighter, and as such, we should take note of his choice of ‘personal guard’ and ‘Forge guard’.

“General Bjarngrim takes this too easily with sheer strength, intelligence and experience.”

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People have only been able to get their hands on the WoW themed Mountain Dew Game Fuel within the last couple of weeks (and is only officially supposed to be in stores today), despite the months of hype being thrown behind the product. Throwing more gasoline on the hype-fire comes the new Game Fuel commercial, which you can watch above. Watch it a few times, actually. You may need it to fully comprehend what you’ve just watched.

It’s terrible. Nobody who actually plays WoW will find this commercial anything but corny. It’s definitely not aimed at us. Or if it is, the people who made it probably… you know, shouldn’t have been the ones to make it. And does it frighten anybody else that even though they used two females as the soda-swilling gamers, one of them turned into a dude? I mean, play whatever avatars you want in-game, but there’s something disturbing about a pretty young lady hulking out and turning into a bulging green monstrosity. And I’m not talking She-Hulk. I’m talking a throbbing mass of masculine muscle. Augh. I’m not sure I want to let my girlfriend drink this stuff anymore.

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Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we’ll cover it here.

A reader wrote in a few days ago with the question “What add ons would you consider helpful/essential for a new raid leader?”, and as a raid leader myself, I thought it was such a good question that I’m devoting this Addon Spotlight to it.

Deadly Boss Mods

Boss mods are very helpful for all raiders, of course, but particularly crucial for raid leaders, who need to call out when raiders need to do things. If you’re not familiar with boss mods, they basically aim to tell you any information about boss abilities that you might need to know during a fight. For instance, on XT-002, boss mods will tell you if anyone has a bomb debuff, when XT is about to throw a Tantrum, how long the heart has left, and so on.

Up until last night I used BigWigs, an alternative to DBM, but DBM shows you so much more information that I don’t think I’ll be going back to BigWigs any time soon. One especially key point in DBM’s favor is that it will show you health bars for mobs that need to die at the same time, like Stalagg and Feugen or the trio of elementals on Freya. Still, BigWigs is almost as good if you want an Ace version or if you just hate DBM for whatever reason.

Download Deadly Boss Mods at Curse/WoWInterface (I’m not linking to their official site because it has gold ads)

Omen Threat Meter

This is pretty much the only threat meter anyone uses these days, as far as I know. Crucial for yelling at the DPS to back off, or the tanks to pick it up. And since raid leaders are often tanks themselves, it’s a good way to monitor your own performance.

The default appearance is pretty terrible (parchment background, ugh), but it’s relatively easy to configure.

As a note of interest, threat meters are now 100% accurate in WoW 3.0, since addons can access threat information directly from the game API - no more guesswork.

Download Omen at Curse/WoWInterface

Recount

Love them or hate them, a damage meter is a useful tool if you know how to use them right. Recount is my current favorite, although there are others around. You do need to take damage meters with a huge grain of salt, because many things can affect a player’s performance (are they melee on a movement fight? did you put them on adds?). Still, information is good to have.

Recount is a fairly flexible and powerful damage meter. It records damage out, damage in, healing done, healing taken, dispells, resurrections, deaths, and more that I don’t even remember right now. It can break down a player’s damage, showing you how much comes from what spells (as pictured at right). It can list overall data, or data for any given fight. It can report to any channel you like. It works great for me, but again, there are many healing meters around; if you don’t like Recount, find one that fits your needs.

Please don’t put much stock in healing meters, though. They’re next to useless.

Download Recount at Curse

Raid frames

Blizzard’s raid frames are…well, I could politely call them “feature-light.” From range to ready check markers, custom raid frames can give you much more vital information, and in a much more compact space.

I use Grid because I fell in love with it as a healer, but X-Perl is also extremely popular. Pitbull will also work and is very powerful and flexible, though it’s labor-intensive to configure.

Download Grid at Curse/WoWInterface
Download X-Perl at Curse/WowInterface
Download Pitbull at Curse/WoWInterface

oRA2

Honestly, I don’t use this mod and don’t plan to, but many people here at WoW.com think I’m crazy for that. It’s basically a successor to the venerable CT_RaidAssist. It lets you do things like set up main tank frames, polls, and reagent/durability checks, and more. If that sounds like something you need, oRA2 is probably your mod.

Download oRA2 at Curse/WoWInterface

Acheron

This was a new mod to me; I owe Chase big time for pointing it out. Acheron produces death reports. When somebody dies, you can right-click their unit frame and click the Acheron menu entry, and you’ll see everything that happened to them in the six seconds (or so; configurable) prior to their death.

So whether it’s because they stood in the fire or because they really weren’t getting any heals, you can find out - and link it in whatever channel you want. Crucial. I used it at least half a dozen times last night in Ulduar.

Download Acheron at Curse/WoWInterface

That’s about it as far as what I consider near-mandatory for leading a raid. Of course, you also need anything that you would want for helping you play your class, or helping you play in general (cooldown bars, a bag mod, and so forth). If your raid uses DKP, you might want a mod for that.

A chat mod like WIM could come in handy to manage all the whispers you will be deluged with from time to time, although for my money it takes up too much space; I just use Prat and a separate tab for whispers.

There are literally hundreds more mods out there that could make your life easier in raids. In this article I just tried to hit some major categories (and Acheron, which is a revelation to me). If you think I missed anything crucial, or if there is a much better mod in one of these major categories, let me know in the comments. Happy raiding!

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I don’t know if it’s because I blog about WoW, or just because I play a fair amount of it, but analogies between WoW and other parts of life constantly leap into my mind. This happens often enough in everyday conversation that it doesn’t even annoy my girlfriend anymore; she’s just used to it.

Most recently, I was at a large family event, maybe 30 people. I was noticing how hard it was to get the entire group to do anything - waiting for people to get ready, deciding what to do, etc. I immediately thought of 25-man raiding, with its horrendous logistics. By comparison, a group of 10 people, in raids or real life, is much more manageable.

What sorts of WoW analogies have occurred to you recently? Or am alone in this particular affliction?

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The second and final round of BlizzCon tickets go on sale this Saturday, May 30, and I’m pretty sure they’ll go fast - the first round sold out in half an hour. However, if you miss out on a ticket (or if you think they’re just too expensive), you may have a chance to go anyway.

Wowhead, along with APC (makers of UPSes and such), is running a contest over the next few weeks, with a drawing every day until June 18th. June 17th is the last day to enter; all you need to do is fill in your contact details on the contest page, and you’re automatically entered for every drawing. Sadly, this contest is only open to US residents age 18 and older (”we know it sucks,” Wowhead says).

Oh right, the prizes.

There is one grand prize, consisting of two tickets to BlizzCon, along with air fare and accommodations, an APC UPS, and a dinner with the Wowhead folks. Three lucky first-prize winners will get their choice of a Wii, a PS3, or an Xbox 360, as well as an APC surge protector. And every day that those prizes aren’t given out, someone will win a Wowhead t-shirt and an APC surge protector. One of these last winners will be randomly chosen to win a Blizzcon ticket as well, at the end of the contest.

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Welcome to Lichborne, Your weekly peek into the world of the Death Knight.

Death Knights have it pretty good in PvP. Thanks to big wow goldwhomping two-handers and magic damage strikes and spells, we can do massive burst damage and tear through armor defenses pretty easily. On the control front, we have Strangulate, Mind Freeze, Chains of Ice, and, depending on spec, maybe even a few other ways to silence, slow, or shut down an enemy player. Finally, our plate armor and defense cooldowns assure that should we the unlucky target of the burst train, we can hold out a lot longer than many.

Still, it’s not just being a Death Knight alone that gets you PvP fame and godhood. It does help to have the right talents, gear, and strategy. So we’re going to talk about that a bit, focusing mostly on the talents. Here’s two popular PvP Talent builds.

Unholy

0/17/54 is generally considered the premiere Death Knight PvP build (Some people like to take a point out of Impurity and stick it in Unholy Blight, or take a few points out of Toughness and stick them in Annihilation for some extra burst). Unholy certainly has a lot going for it. Since Unholy has 3 diseases, it means healers will have a much harder time keeping everyone cleansed, especially if you simply use Pestilence to re-spread the diseases. The controllable Ghoul allows you to use Leap and Gnaw as extra utility skills to interrupt spells and harass targets. Finally, since most of Unholy’s Damage is shadow-based, You won’t have to worry about Armor Penetration as much. In fact, you won’t have to worry about gear as much, period. Unholy has enough innate power that as long as your gear isn’t outright horrible, you should be able to get a foothold in the world of PvP.

This build can also squeeze off some pretty righteous burst. Isolate your target, use Strangulate and/or Mind Freeze if needed to prevent casting, and unload with multiple Scourge Strikes (optimally, you’ll have already converted your Blood Runes to Death Runes so you can get off three), your Gargoyle, Your Ghoul, and, if you can spare the runic power, a few Death Coils.

Frost

14/54/3 Frost certainly looks like it would lend itself well to PvP. Abilities like Hungering Cold, Chilblains, and Endless Winter all provide extra control over the flow of the battle for sure. If there’s one problem with Frost, it’s that the burst potential is a lot lower. Your main burst combination will be squeezing out as many Frost Strikes as you can on a full runic power bar (which should be 3-4 with the glyph), along with Obliterates and, if you’re lucky, a Rime’d Howling Blast.

The lower damage potential of this build leads many to claim you can’t do much with it unless you grab some PvE gear. The biggest piece that makes this build work is the Sigil of the Vengeful Heart, off Heroic XT-002 Deconstructor in Ulduar. The sigil boosts Frost Strike up to a whole new level of damage. This has caused some resentment among pure-PvP Death Knights, but the fact remains that you’ll have a definite advantage in Frost PvP if you have the Sigil.

General Death Knight PvP Observations and Tips

So once you have your talent, how do you play? In general, Death Knight PvP play is pretty intuitive, but here’s a few things to keep in mind:

• Know your diminishing returns. This can be helpful when choosing a partner as well. For example, if you’re doing Frost PvP with a Mage, you may want to remember that Polymorph is on the same diminishing Returns as Hungering Cold. Gnaw is the other major one to watch out for here. If your target has recently been stunned, Gnaw may not be as effective.
• Use your interrupts and crowd control wisely. Try to save that Death Grip or Chains of Ice to use on the Mage once his Blink is on cooldown. When interrupting a caster, use Mind Freeze first and Strangulate last to get as much effective silence time in as possible. Also, don’t be afraid to use Anti Magic Shell as part of this rotation too. If you know someone’s winding up a big spell on you and you don’t have the time to get off one of your silences or interrupts, or just want to save those cooldowns for later, pop that AMS.
• Don’t forget your cooldowns. Hitting Empower Rune Weapon allows you to gain a second wind during a burst rotation, putting all your runes off cooldown (thus enabling, say, a couple extra Scourge Strikes) and giving a chunk of 25 runic power. Hitting Icebound Fortitude when that Rogue tries to Stunlock you can turn the tide against them pretty quickly. If you’re the flagrunner in a WSG, this can buy you enough time for your teammates to get to you, if you’re lucky enough to be in a battleground where they actually pay attention.
• When bursting targets down, switching to Unholy Presence can help you squeeze in more abilities in a shorter amount of time.
• Remember that you’re a “tank.” Even in PvP, you can take more punishment than most other classes. Not only do you have plate armor and defensive cooldowns, but your attacks are almost all instant, meaning interrupt abilities and melee damage don’t slow you down as much. This means you shouldn’t be afraid to get up in your enemy’s face and force them to attack you. Death Grip and Chains of Ice are your best friends here. If the enemy finally decides they have no choice but to attack you, this leaves your healer and caster allies free to do their thing.

As far as choosing one’s teammate in PvP, especially for arenas, I admit that my method has primarily consisted of finding out which of my buddies is interested at the time. Still, if you’re looking for optimal partners, there’s a few classes you can consider. Any healer works very well with a Death Knight, but in particular, consider a Shaman. Heroism can give your burst a nice bit of extra oomph, while Hex and Earthbind are great for isolating targets or making sure your target’s teammate doesn’t interfere while you’re raining down destruction. For a DPS partner, consider a Warlock. Their DoTs plus your diseases means even more stuff to cleanse down for an already beleagured Healer. In fact, Warlock/Death Knight/Healer is fast becoming the spec to beat in 3v3 Arenas as well.

But really, as Zach’s pointed out, PvP’s not too difficult to get into right now. Even making a point to go to Wintergrasp a couple times a week or so can help you get some good starter PvP gear and get into the game. Hopefully, the tips above will help you get the rest of the way into it, at least on a casual level. With the Argent Tournament getting a bit repetitive and Ulduar only good for a couple nights of raiding a week, now is as good a time as any to break into a new aspect of the game. Good Luck!

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