Ignis the Furnace Master has been tweaked by Blizzard to lower his DPS in Heroic Ulduar 25-man. Some guilds are reporting their main tank is getting one-shot by Ignis within 20 seconds into the encounter. Blizzard will compensate by increasing his hit rating.
Blizzard Quote:
We’ve made some changes to Ignis’ melee attack on Heroic. We reduced his overall melee DPS by about 15% and he swings faster which will make his individual hits less devastating. In normal mode we increased the cooldown of Activate Construct from 30 to 40 seconds.
We also decreased the damage of the Scorch ground effect by 20% on both difficulties. On a side note, Ignis has always had the flag that prevents parries from making his next melee swing happening faster. We’re still working on the people being melee’d in the slag pot issue, this one is proving tricksy.
This has been a hot topic in the community latety concerning the stealth-removal of the Hot Hot Hot Streak/Flawless Victor achievement without a mention of it in the live 3.1 patch notes. Blizzard now has an official statement about this. The achievement was removed due to an exploit, and it willl be re-implemented at a later time.
Blizzard Quote:
We have removed this achievement and the title it rewarded because it was often being earned through methods that were not what we wanted to encourage. We currently have an idea to bring it back soon, and hope that players with the current titles will get to keep them but we can make no guarantees at this time.
Our sister site, Worldofwar.net, has a giveaway of five World of Warcraft: Arthas Collector’s Edition. If you missed Blizzplanet’s, then head over there to participate.
Myndflame has released a new machinima video titled Theory of a Death Knight. A good watch while patch 3.1 is released during Maintenance downtime. It has heavy use of the “F” word and maybe other inappropiate language however. Use discretion.
Description of the Movie: An angry Death Knight gets kicked out of his band and must pursue a new line of work.
Written and Directed by: Clint Hackleman
Edited by: D.W. Hackleman
Voice Cast: All Voices
Patch 3.1 is almost upon us, and Blizzard’s AWESOMENESS is shown off with the debut release of The Secrets of Ulduar official trailer. Prospector Brann Bronzebeard flees Ulduar to alert Rhonin at the Violet Citadel in Dalaran that the Explorer’s League expedition’s raid on Ulduar failed, and that Yogg-Saron has escaped. There Jaina Proudmoore and King Varian arrive to meet with Rhonin for a possible support of Alliance forces to attack Ulduar. Thrall and Garrosh arrive to Dalaran for a meeting with Rhonin too—- and a battle between Varian and Garrosh ensues. Hatred is in the air for what happened at the Wrathgate, and that’s something that won’t be easily forgiven.
Varian refuses to join forces with the Horde because his forces have been killed more by the Horde in this Northrend campaign than by the Scourge. Garrosh messes up big time too. Without the support of the Alliance and the Horde, the Kirin Tor must face the mysteries of Ulduar on their own with the help of heroes.
It is up to heroes like you to hear the call, and to band together with Rhonin and the Kirin Tor to put an end to Yogg-Saron and to unveil The Secrets of Ulduar. Watch this great trailer here.
Blizzard Quote:
ith the upcoming release of Secrets of Ulduar, the next major content update for World of Warcraft, Ulduar’s gates will swing open, allowing heroes of the Horde and Alliance to venture into the titan Pantheon’s ancient halls.
In addition to an all-new raid dungeon, Secrets of Ulduar will introduce the dual talent specialization system, new quests at the Argent Tournament, and the epic tier-8 armor sets.
Blizzard has updated their UI developement policy granting a grace period to the UI addon community to comply. Those who do not comply after May 19 will be contacted by the infamous Blizzard Legal Department. A letter you really won’t want to ever have in your inbox, no doubt. Blizzard is known to win most if not all of their cases in court. This policy was triggered when certain addon communities were selling the addons or advertising within World of Warcraft through the UI system.
Blizzard Quote:
Nethaera: On March 20, we released the new add-on development policy to the public as an ongoing effort to help ensure add-on integrity, safety, and quality for the community. Since that time we have been in touch with many UI development communities on what the policy means to them and the continuing development of these add-ons. We would like to announce further that we are providing a sixty-day grace period beginning at the time of the initial release of the policy for UI developers to comply with the new policy. After May 19th, Blizzard Entertainment will begin to enforce the Add-on Development policy, and developers found to be in violation of this policy will be contacted directly.—source
Blizzard Entertainment bids farewell to Dave Arneson, a pioneer of the roleplaying genre (alongside Gary Gygax) who inspired the boom of board games, d20, tabletop, MMO and RPG games. Last year, Blizzard dedicated patch 2.4 (Sunwell Plateau) to Gary Gygax. It remains to be seen if they will do the same for Dave with patch 3.1.
Share The Love is one of the Glory of the Hero achievements required for a Red Proto-Drake flying mount. You need to defeat Gal’darah in Gundrak on Heroic Difficulty and have 5 unique party members get impaled throughout the fight. Easy right? Wrong. It takes a lot of trial and error until you get the right strategy.
In a PUG it is nearly impossible to get this done, without a proper party class setup. Not everyone is Tier 7.5, some don’t even reach a full Tier 7.0. I spent so many hours in Gundrak trying to get this done. About five times a player would quit and I had to invite new people. Yea, PUG sucks. Here I am with full Naxx gear, and some from Heroic Malygos, maybe one from Sartharion. Unable to progress and get it done. Finally got a strategy that gave us the chance to complete this achievement.
The final party setup we had after so many people left in separate times, was two holy healers, one fury warrior, one prot paladin and one death knight. The issue was not so much DPS, it was a matter of survival. Players would usually tank him where he stands, in that general area. That is a mistake. The factor here is the knockback. At some point Gal’darah emotes and a rhino comes out of nowhere and hits a random player knocking him back—if this is the healer or someone that is low in health that is a guaranteed death or a wipe in some cases.
A big factor that played in our failure to complete the achievement was that the tank would never get impaled, thus only four of the party members would get impaled and never get the fifth member: the tank, impaled.
Strategy
If you look at the mini-map the area looks like a “Y” letter. The tank must pull Gal’darah to any of the upper dead-ends. Stay there at all costs. The healer must remain with his back on the opposite wall. Everyone else with their back facing a wall. The boss must be pulled to a corner, then move forward across the boss so the boss remains in the corner. He will start doing whirlwind. Everyone should move away from the boss. He will whirlwind and chase the tank.
Eventually Gal’darah will transform into a Rhino, and he will charge a random player. If this player is an off-tank, that off-tank getting impaled must taunt Gal’darah. One of the two healers could be a holy paladin, but if any of the two healers isn’t a holy paladin then the prot paladin could do the trick. The tank needs to be bubbled and Hand of Salvation. The trick here is to have the original tank lose aggro entirely. Now he will become a target of impale at some point. If one of the players who is not tank, off-tank or a healer is impaled, that player should move on the opposite dead-end across the room, and hide—causing Line of Sight (LOS). That way there are more chances of the original tank to get impaled.
A good healer could take care of this run, but if you want to be extremely safe to get this achievement done, a second healer would do wonders. When a healer is impaled, usually any player who has a bleed effect will probably die. That’s where a second healer or even a retribution paladin or elemental shaman could serve as off-healer when the main healer is impaled until he is able to return to his duty.
The achievement was completed with this group setup with no problems once the boss was tanked in the corner and kept there. Knockbacks didn’t get the healers and the tank out of range thanks to the walls surrounding us. And that was a big win-win factor. The second issue was resolved too which was the Tank never getting impaled. A shield and a hand of salvation took care of that, while the off-tank gained threat with a taunt.
Blizzard Quote: 
