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 one. Just as with the first installment of this series, these articles are by no means an exhaustive and complete guide to fighting a particular class. PvP depends greatly on context, in part determined by your own class, your environment, your opponent’s spec, and player skill among other things. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s take a quick overview of death knights just to give players a general idea of what to expect.

Dual resources
The main thing that separates death knights from other classes is that they operate using a completely different resource mechanic — Runes and Runic Power. The three basic Runes — Blood, Frost, and Unholy — are a constantly regenerating or more appropriately, refreshing, resource that can be used to cast spells. Because they renew at a constant rate, the closest parallel resource to runes would probably be rogue Energy. On the other hand, Runic Power is generated when the death knight attacks or uses special abilities but decays over time through inactivity. In this way, one could imagine Runic Power being very similar to warrior Rage.

Death knights basically have two sets of spells that use two different resources. The advantage that death knights have over other classes is that Runic Power is the only one of the two resources visible to opponents, such that there’s no way for players to know what Runes are off cooldown. Even if players were to memorize the Rune requirements of a spell, all three death knight trees have talents that can conditionally produce Death Runes which count as Blood, Frost, or Unholy Runes which complicates matters for those who like to keep track of these things.

Furthermore, death knights also have a few spells which require absolutely no resources such as Death Grip, a spell that very often sees use in PvP. Blood Tap is a spell that converts a Blood Rune into an active Death Rune and uses no resources, although demands 6% of the caster’s base health. Then there’s the Frost talent Lichborne, an extremely useful PvP talent, which doesn’t use either Runes or Runic Power. As an added bonus, none of the aforementioned abilities trigger the global cooldown, which make them usable pretty much anytime.

It’s very difficult to determine a death knight’s full capabilities upon engagement solely on the basis of the available visible resource. As a general rule, death knights are at their most dangerous when they’re loaded with Runic Power, although abilities have been rebalanced so as to no longer scale with it, such as Summon Gargoyle. A death knight with a lot of Runic Power can fire off two or even three Death Coils in quick succession, or use other abilities also popular in PvP, such as Icebound Fortitude and Mind Freeze. Because Runic Power decays, death knights often want to use abilities that use up Runic Power, so be wary. That said, even a death knight with 0 Runic Power can build it up relatively quickly.

A plateful of diseases
Another interesting feature of death knights is that they deal a mix of physical and magical damage, similar to retribution paladins. They also make use of a previously uncommon debuff type, Diseases, which plays a huge part in death knight damage — or at least the unholy spec, which is popular in PvP. Classes able to remove diseases such as druids paladins (sorry, missed that one! thanks, folks!) and shamans have fair defense against them, and it’s often a good strategy to spend some mana and a few global cooldowns removing their debuffs, which can prove fatal if allowed to stack and run their course.

Death knights are a plate-wearing class, which allows them to withstand a lot more physical damage. On top of that, they have a few healing abilities that allows them to heal themselves or their undead allies. Don’t be surprised to have a death knight be low on life and suddenly be rejuvenated. Regardless of spec, a death knight can use Death Pact to sacrifice a minion such as a ghoul or gargoyle to regain 40% of the death knight’s health, as well as use Death Strike to regain health while dealing damage. blood-specced opponents, in particular, can generate a lot of health using various tricks. We’ll get to that when we take a look at each spec a little more closely.

Although most effective at close range, death knights have a few means by which to close the distance, most notably the fearsome Death Grip. A lot of less experienced death knight players will use this as an opener, which can work to your advantage as long as you are mindful of the ability’s long cooldown of 35 seconds (or 25 with Unholy Command). Another important snare ability is Chains of Ice, which uses up a valuable Frost Rune. Dispelling the first Chains of Ice is a good way to waste a death knight’s Frost Rune. It’s a Magic effect, so classes that can dispel magic such as priests or paladins should do so instead of using a trinket or Hand of Freedom. Frost Runes are needed for some important strikes such as the unholy talent Scourge Strike or Obliterate, so many death knights will be judicious in their use of Chains of Ice, although they won’t hesitate to use it often to keep enemies in place.
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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.

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 feat of strength.
• Brian Wood: I’ll be working on recruitment for my new raid team Wyrmfoe and meeting all the new raiders coming on board. I’ll also finally buckle down and do all the math on the hunter tier 9 2-piece vs the tier 10 4-piece bonuses. I secretly think tier 9 will win until I can get tier 10.75.
• C. Christian Moore: Leveling up a level 60 paladin twink for AV. He’s already 51. The instance leveling nerf wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, he’s at /9 hours played. 45-64 are the easiest levels tho, so he should be 60 in probably ~11 or possibly ~12 hours played. IRL, it’s the wife and I’s engagement anniversary (as well as her birthday) so we’ll be spending a lot of time together. Update: 11 hours, 53 minutes. Level 60 paladin is gonna start gearing up now to own some noobs in AV.
• Chase Christian (@madsushi): Working more on Putricide this weekend, and doing as many ICC runs on my alts as I can possibly handle.
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): Despite a really, really busy weekend coming up, I still want to make plans to get some random dungeon runs in to get at least one more piece of T9 on my druid. I’m also thinking I should level up my hunter again just so she can use all the ammo I churned out on my death knight while leveling up engineering.
• Eliah Hecht (@eliah): Done badge farming for the priest; time to start on the druid. Also excited for Chuck on Sunday.
• Fox Van Allen (@foxvanallen): I’m going to finally take on the Plagueworks in ten man. There’s only one item from there on my wish list: the Abracadaver. Supposedly, the damage from the proc stinks, but there’s still something undeniably cool about a shadow priest commanding the undead.
• Kelly Aarons (@Cadistra): Probably going to faff about in Zul’Drak for a bit, then I’m going to be drawing my cowhide off. I have a lot of comics to do before I am…ah…’incapacitated’ near the end of January.
• Lisa Poisso (@eMused): Savoring a return to my original WoW character, who retired several years ago. I’ll probably spend most of the weekend cleaning her bank. There are sooo many memories I simply can’t part with. Last night, my husband and partner in crime re-discovered his Arcanite Reaper, while I was ooh’ing and ahh’ing over my Benediction, Prophecy, Transcendence, and Confessor’s sets. So sweet. The chat on this old server today is amazing — people in Trade actually chat about gaming! Very different from my current main server, where people use Trade to set up raids and talk smack. You think maybe the older servers mellow with age?
• Matt Low (@matticus): Working on Loremaster now and some other achievements. I made a resolution to try to break 8000 achievement points before Cataclysm hits. There will be some PvP ones I will need to go after as well.
• Matthew Rossi: Possible GDKP run Saturday, then ICC10 Sunday.
• Michael Sacco (@mikesacco): Podcast, more game design iteration for Hemlock, Law and Order reruns.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): Wintergrasp on my druid. Otherwise, Ladies Robin and Cricket Gigglezilla will be tearing up Toontown. Splat!

And so, readers, it comes to you — what are you up to in game this weekend?

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 replaced by a drum kit. I suppose. Man, I don’t want you to have my Heroism. Like I said, I’m torn.

So what do you think oh why am I even asking we all know you want my precious. My precious!

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.

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 contribute to) the comments before you cast your vote — you just might change your mind after seeing what your fellow spectators have offered up for consideration.

Let’s review the ground rules:

• The Two Bosses Thunderdome is considered neutral territory, where both combatants are able to access their usual encounter mechanics and abilities.
• All of the competitors’ abilities, including crowd control and other effects to which bosses are usually immune, work on their opponents.
• Assume that the opponents share similar levels, health pools and comparative overall damage output.
• Don’t get caught up in gameplay mechanics and what actual players might do in each encounter.
• Don’t neglect style, story and scale.

And now, to the Thunderdome: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls … Dyin’ time’s here.

In Corner One: Anub’Arak (Azjol-Nerub)
I was king of this empire once, long ago. In life I stood as champion. In death I returned as conqueror. Now I protect the kingdom once more. Ironic, yes?

Anub’Arak, the former king of Azjol-Nerub, was among the Nerubians slaughtered in the War of the Spider and later raised as Undead by Ner’zhul the Lich King to do his bidding. Read the extensive lore page on Anub’Arak to learn more about his background.

Anub’Arak’s battle strategy includes truly relentless tactics. Besides wreaking havoc with vicious attacks and environmental damage, he swarms opponents with protective Locusts and nettling Carrion Beetles. He periodically burrows underground, besieging opponents with packs of summoned minions.

• Carrion Beetles
• Locust Swarm
• Impale
• Pound
• Anub’ar Assassin
  • Backstab
• Anub’ar Darter
  • Dart
• Anub’ar Guardian
  • Strike
  • Sunder Armor
• Anub’ar Venomancers
  • Poison Bolt
  • Poison Bolt Volley

Learn more about Anub’Arak’s strategies, and review comments from players who’ve battled him.

In Corner Two: King Dred (Drak’tharon Keep)
King Dred raises his claws menacingly …

King Dred, the great Devilsaur, is found within Drak’tharon Keep. His vicious attacks are augmented by those of the smaller raptors he calls to his aid during battle.

• Bellowing Roar
• Fearsome Roar
• Grievous Bite
• Mangling Slash
• Piercing Slash
• Raptor Call
• King Dred also “raises his claws menacingly,” after which he performs all three of his bleed effects in rapid succession.

Read more about the Devilsaur’s battle tactics, and look over comments from players who’ve faced him in Drak’tharon Keep.

Inside the Thunderdome
Two Boss matchups are about substance and style, not game play and mechanics. Don’t base your strategies on player tactics, which opponent has been easiest or most difficult for you personally, or the difficulty of each opponent relative to instance progression. Vote for the spirit of the battle as set forth above. Set aside differences in opponents’ health pools, game level and actual damage output. Absolutely no game-mechanic nitpicking!

Before you cast your vote, join the debate in the comments. Who wins, and why? Style points go to spectators who use the comments to sway other readers to their point of view!

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 you did the previous tier’s normal modes. If they assumed everyone is doing hard modes, we’d run into some trouble. The whole reason they made the normal mode/hard mode split was to make sure bleeding edge players have something to keep them busy (hard modes) while everyone else can see the content (normal modes.) Requiring hard modes to progress would render the system useless pretty fast.

Grendalsh asked…

“There’s actual quests for the new race/class combos fluff? I’ve seen the High Elf awaiting an audience with Tyrande in the Temple of Elune, but didn’t notice any quests… where would one start these?”

The quests themselves are just a little bit of buildup and lore, so don’t expect any long, epic quest chains. They’re just some text to set the stage. The Horde and Alliance both have one right now, and they start in their respective area of Dalaran. In Dalaran, you’re looking for a Highborne (night elf) with an exclamation point over his head, and the Horde is looking for a tauren worried about his friend.

There have been some other hints at progression, such as Dark Rangers showing up in Undercity, but they don’t have any quests yet.

Azure asked…

“I have been running a lot of the Random Heroics lately but… Why is it that sometimes I get stuck being ask to go to a dungeon where the bosses are already dead? Happened to me several times this weekend.”

If someone drops before that group finished their dungeon, well… someone has to fill that gap, right? If the dungeon finder is bringing you into groups where even the last boss is dead, that’s probably a bug and you should report it. If you’re getting in before the last boss is dead, just be glad that you’re getting your end reward faster!

I do agree that it’s odd you’re not warned of this beforehand when queued for a random dungeon. It’s always a bit confusing to port into an instance that’s almost entirely empty when you expected to show up at the front door with all of your teammates. They should probably add a boss counter to the random dungeons, but then you might see healers passing on that instance and requeueing endlessly until they get an instance with only one boss left alive. That’s not healthy for the system, so I can understand why they wouldn’t do it.

Jack Spicer asked…

“Do you know of a post on this site, or any other site that might have a guide or suggestions as to the best method for earning money through daily quests? Such as a suggested route, and which quests are better/faster than others?”

I don’t think we have an updated one. We have a very old one that likely isn’t anywhere near the best route anymore. However, I’ll pass this request on to our team and see if anybody wants to pick up on it. Maybe our money making column, Time Is Money, will take care of it.

Butts asked…

“omg, will tauren druids ever be able to use warstomp in bear form?”

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. Holy is devoted to healing others, protection is concentrates on staying alive longer, and retribution is focuses on doing damage. Being as this is the guide on low level tanking, we’re going to primarily be looking at things in the protection tree.

Some people will tell you that you must have this one talent build or you’ll be horrible and die. While there are some must have talents out there, you can also setup things in a couple different ways. The most important thing is that you know your talent tree and the talents you have available to you. Play around with one of those online talent calculators for a while until you find a setup you like. Actually, with the feature in the game to preview talent changes turned on, you can even do that while taking a break one afternoon.

However, always be sure to try and know your class as much as possible before going out and seeing what other people say is the best way to do things. I’d rather have a knowledgeable player in my group than some guy that read somewhere that this talent build makes him uber. All it takes is one hotfix for that guy to suddenly have a very un-uber talent build and not know what to do until someone comes up with the next greatest talent build.

Generally, as a tank you’re going to want to make a bee-line up the center of the protection tree. This is mainly to grab Blessing of Sanctuary at level 30 and Holy Shield at level 40. These are rather key skills in the protection paladin arsenal and it’s rather hard to tank without nabbing them. The other big skill talents you’ll aim for are Avenger’s Shield at 50 and Hammer of the Righteous at level 60.

These aren’t all the skills in the tree, because I didn’t mention Divine Sacrifice. You can run dungeons happily without Divine Sacrifice, because it’s more of a raiding talent. Yes, there are places where it would be nice to use, but all in all it’s designed more for raids. However, I recently did a whole article on Divine Sacrifice if you want more information about it.

As for other talents, you’ll want to have some utility as well as survivability. Divine Strength is a good place to start out the tree for a little easier time while killing things while soloing and for threat while tanking. Anticipation and Toughness are nice as they boost dodge and your armor which will let you live a bit longer. Combat Expertise adds a stat called Expertise that helps reduce the amount your target can dodge and parry your attacks. The talent also adds a decent amount of stamina as well as some extra critical strike rating for threat.

There are also some obscure talents in the tree that might be confusing for a new paladin. Kind of like Reckoning, Redoubt, or Spiritual Attunement.

Reckoning lets you occasionally get another quick hit in on whatever you’re attacking. This is a nice soloing skill and also can help out your threat in dungeons. It’s one of those talents that is really nice while leveling, but not one of those end game talents you see a lot of 80s recommending for raids. Being as this is for the leveling paladin, we’re going to recommend it.

Redoubt is a fun one. It’s essentially a second Holy Shield that randomly pops up adding up to 30% block for a short period of time. The talent also increases your block value by 10% per point you put in it taking you up a maximum of 30% extra block value.

Spiritual Attunement is a peculiar one. It restores some of your mana for every heal you receive. It used to be something that all paladins learned from trainers, but then there started to be issues with how it worked in higher end raids with holy and retribution paladins. After that, they removed it as a baseline ability and tossed it into the protection tree. If you’re absolutely fine on mana, then don’t worry about this talent. If you’ve got some mana issues, then grab at least one point. If you’re still having mana problems, then grab that second point.

Ardent Defender is made of win covered in awesome sauce. When you’ve got the full three of three points in it, every time you fall below 35% health, all incoming damage is reduced by 20%. This gives your healers some breathing room by reducing some of that incoming damage so they can get caught up.

Also, if you do happen to take a killing blow with Ardent Defender talented, you will be healed up to 30% of your maximum health once every two minutes and depending on your defense skill. The more gear with defense rating on it, the larger the heal will be. So, how this works is much like Forbearance. If Ardent Defender saves you from death by healing you, you’ll get a debuff called Ardent Defender for two minutes. During that two minutes, Ardent Defender won’t save you from death again. However, once that debuff is gone, you’re vaguely immortal again. Oh, and from personal experience… falling damage doesn’t make it turn on.

Touched by the Light is a funny talent. Paladin is a mana and spell power using class, but neither retribution nor protection paladins wear spell power gear. That’s why each of those two trees were given special talents to convert stats they do use into spell power. This adds threat, because our spells scale off of both attack power and spell power. But not only that, a skill we get later in the game, Sacred Shield, scales off of spell power as well.

Guarded by the Light is useful for a couple different reasons. First off, it reduces incoming spell damage which is one place we need as much help as we can get. Secondly, it refreshes a spell we get at level 71 called Divine Plea which helps us recover mana much easier. Third, it helps prevent Divine Plea from being dispelled. With this talent, we can keep Divine Plea up 100% of the time if we keep pulling monsters fast enough. Being that Divine Plea gives us 25% of our total mana back every 15 seconds, this is a massive boost to our available mana.

Non-Protection Tree Talents:

Not all of the good tanking talents are in the protection tree. There are some useful ones scattered across the other trees. Retribution has a lot of good threat talents if you go deep enough as well as couple useful debuffs. Holy actually has a decent threat talent within easy reach. You’ll probably want to talent these after you’ve already taken Holy Shield in the protection tree and might even wait longer depending on your plans. Let’s look at a couple of the major ones.

Deflection over in the retribution tree is the parry version of Anticipation. With full points, it adds a flat 5% to your parry percentage. This definitely goes on your talent grocery list of things to pick up.

Improved Judgements as a tier 2 talent in retribution is always worth at least one talent point. Since you’ve already gone 5 points into the tree for Deflection, it’s not difficult talent to grab. This lowers the cooldown of judgement by one second per point (with a maximum of two points).

Seals of the Pure adds bonus damage to your Seal of Righteousness and your Seal of Corruption/Vengeance and their judgements. The strange part is that this is from the holy tree which isn’t usually know for its extra damage dealing. However, it’s up at the top of the tree and you can grab it without putting anything else into the tree.

There are a lot more talents I didn’t cover, but most of those are fairly self-explanatory or deep enough in other trees that you don’t need to worry about them. Remember, be sure to read through your talent tree and make informed decisions when picking what talent spec best matches your play style. If that talent spec doesn’t work out, you can always respec. Check back next week when we get into those skills you’ll want to use and keep on your action bars somewhere.

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 nature — everyone knows Horde are the folks who pick a fight.

But certainly, even though Blizzard has done their best to engender some Alliance pride (and I’m sure they’ll keep trying in the future), it just doesn’t seem there. Why aren’t we seeing more Alliance stepping up for their faction?

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 Battleground unlike anything that had come before it, an assault and defend scenario that was about as balanced as a Battleground could be because the factions took turns playing the exact same map. Strand of the Ancients also introduced the new vehicle combat system and destructible buildings, which made for a whole new gameplay experience. Click on read more to see what this Battleground is all about.

What is Strand of the Ancients?

Strand of the Ancients is a 15-player per side Battleground where the ultimate goal is to capture the Titan Relic (located in the South of the map above where the swirly thing is) in the shortest possible time. It is unique among all Battlegrounds in that it employs an attack and defend mechanic which allows players to experience assaulting the keep as well as defending it. Prior to Patch 3.2, the Alliance always started the game on the offensive, allowing them to set the time for the following round. Currently, the game randomly selects which faction starts on offense.

Strand of the Ancients, or SotA, is also the first — although with the introduction of the large scale Isle of Conquest no longer the only — Battleground to employ vehicle combat and structures that can be destroyed. In this case, players on offense must break down gates in order to advance towards the goal of capturing the Titan Relic. On the Northwest, there’s the Gate of the Green Emerald, or ‘Green’, and right below it on the Western side is the Gate of the Purple Amethyst, or ‘Purple’. If you’re on the offensive, these are the gates on the right side. On the Northeast, there’s the Gate of the Blue Sapphire, or ‘Blue’, and right after it on the East is the Gate of the Red Sun, or ‘Red’. These gates will be on the left side if you’re on offense.

The last two gates are the Gate of the Yellow Moon, or ‘Yellow’, which when broken down opens up the Courtyard, and finally the doors that open up the Chamber of Ancient Relics. There’s no shorthand for that gate, because when players finally get to the keep, everybody on offense should just yell, “break down the (expletive) door!” and there should be no confusion as to which door that is. Gates can be destroyed with vehicles or bombs, which players can plant beside the gate to deal it damage.

The team that starts on offense has 10 minutes to capture the Titan Relic, which is an instant tag. It’s a glowing, spherical thing in the center of the room. You can’t miss it. Once the starting offensive team captures the Titan Relic, the first round ends and another begins. This time, roles are reversed and the defending team gets to assault and offensive team gets to defend. The new assaulting team must either beat or match the time the opposing team set in the previous round. It is possible to have a tied match of Strand of the Ancients (e.g., both teams are unable to capture the Titan Relic within the allotted 10 minutes).

There are also three flags that can be captured — the ones near the green and blue gates grant access to Goblin Workshops and a graveyard. The one at the center of the map grants a graveyard near the yellow gate. For all you SotA beginners, do your team a favor and don’t ever capture the flag at the center. I can explain the whole rationale behind this but it’s a long discussion. Just trust me on this one.

It sounds like an extremely complicated Battleground compared to the others, doesn’t it? The goals of SotA aren’t readily apparent, and the quick assault/defend scenario can be confusing to a lot of players. I was very disoriented the very first time I entered the Battleground, but it’s easy enough to acclimate yourself with a few games. When in doubt, destroy a gate (if you’re on offense) or a vehicle (if you’re on defense). Heck, if all else fails, just kill opposing players.

Uh, okay. Why am I doing this again?

Because Titan Relics are filled with awesome power and whoever possesses it gets to kick major butt. No, really, that’s all there is to it. Continuing the trend of having no Battleground factions stared by Eye of the Storm, there’s nothing more here beyond honor and necessary Strand of the Ancients Marks of Honors for particular items. Oh wait, let me see… SotA marks aren’t even needed for any items! It’s just part of the turn-ins for the quests for more honor. So more than any other Battleground, SotA is basically all about honor gains. It’s a lot of fun, though.

Ok, fine, I want honor. Where do I sign up?

Strand of the Ancients is one of the features of Wrath of the Lich King, so you must first upgrade your account to the expansion. It also requires that players be Level 71 or higher. There are two brackets for this Battleground: 71-79 and 80. Similar to Eye of the Storm, there is no physical entrance for Strand of the Ancients although it is supposed to be located off the Southern coast of Dragonblight.

Because of vehicles and bombs, even lower-level characters can contribute. Players on offense can just hop on a vehicle either as a pilot or a passenger, making team members useful regardless of level. Defenders can man turrets that flank each gate and do considerable damage to assaulting vehicles and players.

I’m on offense! Help!

One of the very first things you should do is try to memorize the colors of the gates or at least understand where everyone is going when the game starts. You’ll start the game on a boat landing on a beach and teammates will usually ask ‘Green or Blue’? Blue is on the left side, while green is on the right (it’ll be reversed on your mini-map since the Battleground is oriented Southwards). Once your team has decided which gate to assault heavily, go to that side and do one of three things: 1) ride a Demolisher and drive towards a gate while blasting away, 2) pick up a bomb from the docks and drop it by the gates, and 3) kill enemy players trying to destroy your vehicles.

It gets easier from there. Once you’re inside, you must try to capture either the Eastern or Western flag to gain access to a workshop. Don’t worry about the flag once you’ve tagged it, as its permanent and cannot be recaptured by the enemy. The trick is to keep moving forward — keep pushing uphill until you’ve smashed all the gates. Always have a bomb, even if you’re piloting a vehicle. Chances are, the Demolisher will blow up near a gate, anyway, so make sure to drop a bomb to make it all worthwhile.

And whatever you do, please don’t capture the central flag.

I’m on defense! Help!

At the very start of the game, there are a few options that you can pursue. One is to hop onto a cannon and blast away towards the shore on all incoming vehicles. Another is to get to the beach and start whacking away at the Demolishers once they become attackable. One last, but more difficult, option is to defuse the bombs that enemy players place near your gates. It’s a channeled action, so it can be hard to pull off when enemies are bonking you on the head.

Protect the Eastern and Western flags as long as you can. The longer you maintain control of those flags, the farther away offense has to start with their Demolishers. It’s good to note that cannons can disrupt attempted flag captures, which is a channeled action. If the secondary gates — either the red or purple ones — are broken through, drop whatever you’re doing and fall back to the yellow gate and protect that (and needless to say the chamber doors) like I protect my Krispy Kremes. That is to say, rabidly.

Oh, and don’t defend the central flag. When enemies try to capture it, let them. Then laugh maniacally.

Whew! On to more interesting things!

I only recently wrote a guide to the Isle of Conquest, and while it’s not written in the complete beginners’ style, it should give players the rundown of what the Battleground is all about. If you’re ready for large-scale Battleground action in Wrath, hit that up. This means we can talk about something else next week! If you have any PvP-related or Battleground question you’d like to ask, send them my way and we’ll see about answering them in this column. Until then, battlegrounders, I recommend you cause some mayhem!

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 and girls … Dyin’ time’s here.

Gortok Palehoof (Utgarde Pinnacle)

What this place? I will destroy you!

The Magnataur Gortok Palehoof is the second boss of Utgarde Pinnacle. He will be preceded in battle by (one at a time, your choice of sequence) his companions the Furbolg, the Worgen, the Rhino and the Jormungar. Consider the relative power they wield as a group; no single opponent shall be considered as powerful as his opponent.

• Arcing Smash
• Impale
• Withering Roar

Ravenous Furbolg

• Chain Lightning
• Crazed
• Terrifying Roar

Frenzied Worgen

• Enrage
• Enrage
• Mortal Wound

Ferocious Rhino

• Gore
• Grievous Wound
• Stomp

Massive Jormungar

• Acid Spit
• Acid Splatter
• Poison Breath
• Summons smaller worms

Read more about Gortok Palehoof and sift through player comments about typical tactics for him and his companions.

Krik’thir the Gatewatcher (Azjol-Nerub)

Keep an eye on the tunnel. We must not let anyone through!
I hear footsteps. Be on your guard.
I sense the living. Be ready.

Krik’thir, an Undead Nerubian vizier, is the first boss of Azjol-Nerub who guards the gate that leads further into the ancient city. His commander, Anub’Arak, is a powerful servant of the Lich King.

Krik’thir is accompanied by three groups of three spiders, led by Watcher Silthik, Watcher Gashra and Watcher Narjil. Some groups contain an Anub’ar Skirmisher. Once the first group of spiders has entered battle, the others (and later Krik’thir himself) will eventually join in.

Krik’thir the Gatewatcher

• Curse of Fatigue
• Frenzy
• Mind Flay
• Watcher Silthik
  • Infected Bite
  • Poison Spray
  • Web Wrap
• Watcher Gashra
  • Enrage
  • Infected Bite
  • Web Wrap
• Watcher Narjil
  • Blinding Webs
  • Infected Bite
  • Web Wrap
• Anub’ar Skirmisher
  • Backstab
  • Fixate

Read more about Krik’thir and his minions, and check out comments from players who’ve fought him.

The Thunderdome clash

Remember: no game-mechanic nitpicking. Set aside differences in opponents’ health pools, game level and actual damage output. Vote for the spirit of the battle as set forth above, considering each opponent’s abilities — plus the style, scale and story he or she brings to the table. Refer to the ground rules at the beginning for guidance on power and balance.

After you cast your vote, we challenge you to hit the comments with a convincing scenario that will sway fellow readers to vote for your opponent of choice!

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 won’t see these battlegrounds physically on the world map. There’s simply no room for them. Unless I’m completely misunderstanding how Cataclysm is going to work, Blizzard isn’t making a new world map. They’re revamping the old one. They’re prettying things up, filling in the gaps, and opening up the areas that were previously closed off. They’re not stretching the map out or anything like that. There’s no room between the Barrens and Ashenvale to stick Warsong Gulch. There’s no room in Alterac to plug in the Valley.

If they were on the map, they would be in the filling places:

• Arathi Basin – Arathi Highlands
• Warsong Gulch – Southern Ashenvale
• Alterac Valley – Alterac Mountains
• Eye of the Storm – Netherstorm
• Strand of the Ancients – Off the coast of Northrend
• Isle of Conquest – Off another coast of Northrend

I hope I didn’t forget any!

Condor asked…

“I read that there will be 5 attempts per boss in Icecrown at first. Does that mean 5 attempts total for all the bosses or just for the “end boss” of that wing? Using Naxx as an example for this system, does that mean, say, there are unlimited attempts on Patchwerk, Grobbulus and Gluth but then only 5 attempts on Thaddius?”

I’m going to caveat this answer again with “unless I’m horribly mistaken.” My understanding is that only the end bosses of wings will gobble up attempts. You can wipe all you want on Patchwerk, but you better watch your step on Thaddius. The only bosses limited by attempts are Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa and the Lich King himself.

Frank asked…

“Whatever happened to the weather in Azeroth? We used to get rain and now nada. Were the storms removed at some point?

I can’t remember the last time I saw it raining.”

I really miss weather in WoW. They left it in the old world, but only used it in Zangarmarsh in Outland and completely abandoned it in Northrend. I find it terribly sad, because I loved the somewhat random weather. One of my fondest raiding memories is actually from Zul’Gurub. We were fighting our way to Hakkar, and suddenly a wicked downpour rolled in. It got dark and wet, just like that. It added a lot of atmosphere and I miss it. Rain in Stranglethorn is possibly one of the prettiest things in game.

The lack of it in BC and Wrath leads me to believe they’re just done with it. Who knows if we’ll ever see it again.

Wilt Chamberlain said…

“I don’t like you.”

Man, I never knew the Big Dipper was such a hater. Why you gotta be like that, man?

Drak asked…

“How do Ogres reproduce?

I’ll keep asking till it gets answered.”

And I will keep ignoring it until you take a sex ed. class.

Ratskinmahoney asked…

“Does anyone know if heirlooms are going to continue to scale to 85 when Cataclysm comes? I’m assuming they will, and I’m wondering if it will be worth dropping my shoulders and chest in favour of the +20% exp until I hit 85.”

They currently do not plan for current heirloom items to last through level 85. They’ll only function up to level 80. At level 85, we’ll probably have a whole new set of heirlooms we can pick up.