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Zach is a PvP nut who is excited at the prospect of more meaningful Battlegrounds play. He is about as unfunny as Jay Leno but has a slightly smaller chin. Last week we kicked off a PvP series on how to deal with specific classes starting with the druid. We featured those slippery shapeshifters mostly because I’m a doofus who thought they were first on the alphabetical list — cut me some slack, though, since druids were first on the list for years before those upstart death knights came along. Of course, when the game’s first hero class was introduced with Wrath of the Lich King, it was no coincidence that their popularity was directly proportional to their being completely imbalanced and overpowered. It was so broken that Arena Season 5 was dominated by death dnights and even unskilled keyboard turners and clickers could sometimes achieve gaudy rankings using the class. While the class has been tuned down somewhat, this hasn’t diminished their popularity and death knights remain formidable opponents in the Battlegrounds and world PvP. Today we’ll take a look at the dreaded death knight and try to outline a few key points to remember when facing

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Coming out of the Twitter developer chat tonight was this question and following answer, given by Ghostcrawler and J. Allen Brack: Q. With the new skins for druid forms, what is the chance that warlocks might see race/faction specific demon skins or maybe a new one? A. When you look around, there are a lot of say imp or voidwalkers we could use. It’s something we talk about quite a bit. As for new demons, I hear warlocks are going to be getting some new spells for the next expansion… While it’s not a direct confirmation that warlocks will be getting a new pet in Cataclysm, I think it’s safe to read into this and maybe get a bit excited about this one. I doubt they’d mention warlocks getting “new spells” in relation to getting a new demon if such an addition to the warlock class wasn’t planned. So, new demons for warlocks? Probably. My guess is that it’ll be a pet lava monster or something related to the elemental plane. Just the perfect kind of thing to pop up into the evil hands of warlocks from the sundered land in Cataclysm.

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The holidays, alas, are behind us, and most of us are back to our regular daily grind of work, school, or whatever other responsibilities life might have set for us. But on the weekend, we can put all of that behind us and slack off ’til our heart’s content — or if not content, at least more contented. For many of the WoW.com staff — and perhaps many of you, as well — this means we’ll be in World of Warcraft, running ICC, leveling alts, and grinding our way through as many random dungeons as possible. So, if you care about our poor exploits (or even if you just want to brag about your own), read onward! Adam Holisky (@adamholisky): Assuming my internet connection stays up for more than 20 minutes at a time, I’ll be finishing off another 80 while participating in some ICC 25-man raiding. Alex Ziebart (@aziebart): I am dumping my girlfriend for my XBox 360, but it’s okay because she’s dumping me for the Oculus in her furious attempts at getting the drake. Allison Robert: Some RL correspondence to catch up on, and likely some scheming on how to get my main over the last few-hundred points hurdle to the It’s Over 9,000

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If you’re a shaman you’re familiar with the “grar grar grar grar” sound of Bloodlust or the “ktang!” of Heroism, its Alliance counterpart. For a long time one of the complaints has been that you absolutely had to have a shaman along in order to gain access to this buff. Even when leatherworking drums and inscription scrolls were created for lesser versions of buffs like Blessing of Kings and Prayer of Fortitude, Bloodlust/Heroism were still a unique buff to the shaman class. Is that going to change? A discussion on the forums leads to Ghostcrawler revealing that yes, they are considering allowing Bloodlust/Heroism be a buff one can gain through an item. Now, I’m torn. On the one hand, NO! Keep your filthy crafter fingers off of my precious! My precious! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of you! But on the other hand, it really isn’t fair at this point that Bloodlust/Heroism is pretty much the only buff we can’t get a lesser version of through crafted items. A 25% speed increase for 30 seconds (or even 35) would be weak enough in comparison to real Bloodlust that you wouldn’t have to worry terribly about being

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The WoW Insider Show returns to the airwaves today at 3:30 PM Eastern time, bringing you post-new-years-eve fun. Michael Sacco and Matthew “Burly Ives” Rossi will be your co-hosts with Colby Moore jumping in to stop these two shamans from talking about just how great elemental really is. This week they’ll be covering the major stories in the later half of 2009 and talk about the earthquakes happening in game. And as usual, of course, they’ll answer your emails and talk live with the denizens of our seedy chatroom. You can email the podcast any time of night or day at theshow@wow.com, and you’ll be able to listen in to the show on the feed on our Ustream site, or after the jump.

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Two Bosses Enter … but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com’s series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to the semi-finals of the five-man Wrath of the Lich King season. Scroll to the end of the last round’s post for a listing of semi-final matches. Grab a seat, and let’s get ready to rumble! Welcome to the semi-finals of the Wrath of the Lich King Original Five-Mans season of Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves! This week’s matchup is big — really, really big. In fact, we’re thinking about expanding the Two Bosses Thunderdome so that our opponents can physically fit inside (and because these adds are not something we want running loose in the stands). Top-seeded Anub’Arak of Azjol-Nerub squares off against the ever-popular King Dred in this week’s Thunderdome match. There are sure to be plenty of hasty conclusions: “It’s Anub, man — he rocks ToC!” (wrong fight there, dude) and the inevitable “OMNOMNOM” of the dino fanboys. Rescuing us from the tedium are our loyal fans, who’ve built an entire season of convincing scenarios that make weighing your vote a real pleasure. Be sure to read (and

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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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I thought about starting today off by apologizing for the abomination that was yesterday’s image… but what did Mike Sacco think would happen when he asked me to add a picture to the post for him? That’s a dangerous thing to ask someone. He brought it on himself, and has nobody else to blame. If the image scarred you for life, it’s his fault. Krsnik asked… “What level of gear is recommended to have before attempting to raid ICC 10man? Can I just go from 10 man ToC to 10man ICC or must I first get gear from 10man ToGC? I would really hate to replace my tier gear and since the guild I’m in is just starting 10man ToGC, I know it’ll be a while before I can get Tier 9.5 gear.” You should be able to start 10-man Icecrown Citadel with the gear that you have. Heroic mode gear, as some of the people in the comments said yesterday, tends to be incredibly helpful in progression but largely optional. The next tier of normal modes is tuned with the assumption that

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With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. This week he’s trying to help those of you crazy enough to tank Gnomergon when it’s still a level appropriate instance. We’re doing a much longer than expected series of articles on the low level dungeon runners now that the new cross-realm Dungeon Finder is up and running. This is part two of our series on the low level tank. Last week we talked about the basics of threat, avoidance, mitigation, and what stats to be on the lookout for when choosing gear. We did promise to get into talents and skills this week, but that would have ended up being three pages long. So we’re going to leave skills until next week and just concentrate on talents this time around. If you’re extremely new, take a look at this nice article explaining talents for new players. If you’ve got that down, let’s start move on to more paladin specific info. Talents: The three talent trees available to paladins are holy, protection, and retribution.

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Larisa makes an interesting observation about the Battlecry mosaic that’s being assembled over on Blizzard’s website. There certainly are a lot of Horde symbols there, and not quite so many Alliance symbols. The best information we have access to actually says that Alliance outnumber the Horde, and ancedotally, we know that’s probably true. So why aren’t the Alliance representing? Now, it could just be specific to this outlet — perhaps Horde players spend more time online, or have more free time in general, and thus have the knowhow and chance to submit their pictures. But this issue has come up before (on our podcast as well): while many Horde players are ready to jump in and shout “For the Horde!” at a moment’s notice, not so many Alliance players are as open about their allegiances. As Larisa asks: where’s the faction pride? I suppose I’m probably suspect number one: I’ve played my Horde characters for longer, so even though I’ve been playing Alliance toons for over a year now, I still consider myself a Hordie. And you could argue that being Alliance means you’re more default and less aggressive by

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Zach enjoys the Battlegrounds a lot. He thinks it’s one of the most re-playable content in the game, so he writes about it every week to spread the word. When all players are finally in the Battlegrounds bashing each others’ brains out, he’ll consider his mission complete, and he’ll sneak out to farm Shoveltusk Meat in peace. We’re now at the end of our Absolute Beginners series, which has been surprisingly helpful to a lot more players than I expected. As it turns out, the game still gets a lot of new players even after five amazing years, which is really cool. Players still leveling up might want to check out where we kicked this series off, an introduction to the Battlegrounds. Once you get an idea of what its all about, you can get your feet wet (or swords all bloodied…) in Warsong Gulch. Ten levels later, you can enter the proving grounds of Arathi Basin, or wait until you level up a bit more for the snowy landscape of Alterac Valley. Players who have upgraded to the Burning Crusade and leveled past 60 can get a taste of some space action in Eye of the Storm. When Wrath of the Lich King shipped, Blizzard introduced a brand new

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Two Bosses Enter … but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com’s series of fantasy death matches. This season’s combatants come from the original five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King. We’ve got adds here, people: it’s Gortok Palehoof (Utgarde Pinnacle) versus Krik’thir the Gatewatcher (Azjol-Nerub). Gortok steps into the Thunderdome fresh from a resounding defeat of Lavanthor, while Krik’thir arrives after besting the Commander Stoutbeard/Kolurg from The Nexus. Let’s review the ground rules: Assume that the opponents share similar levels, health pools and comparative overall damage output. New clarification: All of the competitors’ abilities, including crowd control and other effects to which bosses are usually immune, work on their opponents. This deathmatch takes place in neutral territory, which shall in no way hinder either opponent from using his usual resources. Don’t get caught up in gameplay mechanics and what actual players might do in each encounter. Don’t neglect style, story and scale. Let the doors open, and let the contestants come forward. As Dr. Dealgood would say: Ladies and gentlemen, boys

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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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Please, everyone. We’re begging you. Stop asking us Cataclysm questions that we’ll need a time machine to answer. We’re not in any betas, and if some of us were magically in an alpha, we probably couldn’t tell you. We don’t know what will happen to your favorite NPC when the world explodes. We don’t know how much Loremaster will change. We don’t know if Ragnaros procreates with Maiev Shadowsong. We don’t know if Deathwing has enslaved a herd of unicorns. Mr Shinra asked… “Where are all battlegrounds supposedly located on the world map? I figure if come cataclysm we have the entire (old) world available for flight then perhaps we might by able to see the (empty/placeholder) battleground locations by flying over? I know the BGs are seperate instances much like a dungeon is, but it would still be kind of cool to be flying from, say Mount Hyjal to Orgimmar and passing over Warsong Gulch.” I can say with almost absolute certainty that we

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