by Michael Gray

Professor Putricide is the final boss in the Plagueworks. He’s kind of the R&D guy for the Lich King’s slime armies. If you recall from fighting Rotface, Putricide is the guy who’s constantly screaming about what good news it is that the slime is working again. Frankly, I’m mostly motivated to kill the guy to get him to shut up about the slime.

Putricide is a movement fight. There’s a lot of mechanics that will require your raid to rapidly swap targets (to kill adds), and then not-stand-in-stuff. (Most of the stuff you’ll not be standing in is one variety of slime or another.) It’s not really much of a coordination fight, per se, because your tanks are probably pretty well-versed in swapping aggro back and forth. However, Putricide is going to put to the test your raid’s ability to get on an add quickly. And not stand in stuff.

Let’s take a look behind the jump and talk about the fight in more detail.

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by Matthew Rossi

You want to kill things. You want to rip them into bloody gobbets and leave their ruined, looted corpses in your wake. You want to wear two huge weapons crossed on your back and reach up to draw them forth as soon as things get ugly, which can’t come soon enough in your opinion. You want to get on up there and rip things heads clean off. You’re the kind of person who thinks Grom Hellscream had a good idea but didn’t go far enough with it.

Come right this way. Fury is the spec for you.

1. What is fury?

Fury is the “grrrargargsgarg DIE DIE DIE DIE” spec. It’s the spec Blizzard described in the Class Q&A last year as “screaming barbarians in woad” and that still remains the best way to think of the spec. For in game examples of warriors who seem to embody the fury playstyle, both Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream fit the bill. (Sorry, guys, Saurfang is arms. We all know this to be true.) Fury warriors can offtank in a pinch or even tank a five man, but they’re not designed to be tanking in raids. The spec is designed at present to equip two huge weapons and smash them into things.

It’s refreshingly simple in concept, really.
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by Daniel Whitcomb

The Blood Princes

10-Man

The big thing the Battle-Maiden’s Legguards have over Scourgelord Legplates is one extra gem slot and haste instead of critical strike rating. However, the 4-piece bonus makes sure the tier 10 edges out anyway. Just stick with tier 10 and let some the tanks grab this for their off set, I’d say.

In other questions, what are the blood princes doing with legs belonging to a Battle Maiden? Have the Val’kyr been making booty calls? Man, girls and their vampires, I swear.

The big problem with the Thrice Fanged Ring is that haste and critical strike rating aren’t the most glamorous stats for us for DPSing anymore. There’s better than this ring to be found even in 10-mans for Death Knights. It’s not horrible, but there’s better. This will do in a pinch if you can’t find better in a ring though, or if all you can find is +hit or +expertise rings when you’re already capped.

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by Allison Robert

The in-game holiday Love Is In the Air begins Sunday, running February 7th (3:00 am server time) through February 21st (3:00 am server time) this year. Doing most of the achievements related to the holiday will reward you with the meta Fool for Love, the title “the Love Fool,” and one more notch in the long trek toward What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been.

Love Is In the Air has been markedly changed for 2010; Blizzard’s eliminated much of the painful RNG that drove players up a wall in 2009, and right now you can expect a rather cool and fun little holiday that’s not entirely unlike Brewfest in its approach to achievements. You can do dailies and other quests for Love Tokens, and buy holiday items from vendors in addition to enjoying some stuff that’s just for fun.

But you’re here for the meta, right? We all know you want that drake.

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by Allison Robert

The 2010 Love Is In the Air holiday doesn’t much resemble its 2009 version; Blizzard’s eliminated much of the frustration surrounding RNG and item drops, and overall things are a lot more fun This FAQ covers all of the questions we think will be most helpful to readers concerning the holiday’s mechanics.

Help! Where do I go to get started?

Head for any of your faction’s major cities in Azeroth (Stormwind, Ironforge, the Exodar, or Darnassus for Alliance, and Thunder Bluff, Orgrimmar, Undercity, or Silvermoon for Horde). New goblin NPCs (most from the Crown Chemical Company) will have popped up around the more heavily-trafficked areas (read: AH/bank) with quests and information.

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by Matthew Rossi

Want to do the Love is in the Air holiday bosses? Short version: don’t stand in things.

Longer version, you say? Sure, we can do that. First off, while there is a quest chain that leads you to Shadowfang Keep, you do not have to have done any of those quests to engage the evil Crown Chemical Company apothecaries: there’s a helpful NPC, Investigator Fezzen Brasstacks who will give you the quest and items necessary for the fight. Like previous holiday bosses, you’ll be able to engage the apothecaries once per player so yes, you can chain in alts and keep repeating the fight over and over again. (I believe we killed them roughly eight times before people started getting sleepy.)
Depending on gear levels, this fight can be somewhat challenging or a complete cakewalk. For starters, the quest that allows you to start the event and turn Apothecary Hummel hostile also grants you two items that trivialize the fight’s ‘don’t stand in X’ mechanic and reduces the various apothecaries damaging auras. The ‘Perfume Neutralizer is the purple vial that comes in the kit the questgiver hands you: it renders you immune to Apothecary Hummel’s damaging aura and all his chemical attacks, including the purple puddles he throws on the ground.

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by Xerin @ tentonhammer

Love is in the Air this 2010 with a revamped holiday event!
Buffs can be dispelled, but sockets are forever. That was the line from the Valentine’s Day World of Warcraft commercial that aired during the days of WoW: The Burning Crusade. Now the holiday has come back around but this time with a vengeance. No longer do you pick up chocolates from the guards or find out who’s spiked the perfume. A mysterious group of Goblins called the Crown Company has taken over the holiday and the Steemwheedle Cartel is none too pleased.

Love is in the Air runs from February 7th, 2010 to February 20th, 2010.

What’s New

A lot has changed and the holiday has been revamped to remove all of the frustrating bits out of it. No longer do you have to hope you get the right item from a guard or sit AFK for hours at a time while a debuff wears off.

• Guards no longer give out gifts and “Heartbroken” no longer exists.
• Innkeepers have no role at all in the new Love is in the Air holiday.
• You can now do four daily quests for your capital cities in addition to other daily quests once you’ve unlocked them.
• Love Tokens are now used to purchase all of the goods that used to come from Pledges. You can get these from daily quests or by farming any mob for XP to make bracelets.
• Many of the achievements have changed, but they’re rewarded retroactively (so you won’t lose any achievements).

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?by Chase Christian

Rogues have still been stunning on every fight in Icecrown, but the competition is definitely heating up. The true test will be how we fare against the Lich King himself.

We’ve all heard about the hybrid tax: Blizzard regrets mentioning it, and every druid and ret paladin brings it up when they complain about their position on the DPS charts. Some estimates put it between 5-10%, but obviously hybrid classes are currently designed to stay near the pure DPS without passing them up. However, how many rogues are actually doing their maximum theoretical DPS? There are several common mistakes or oversights that can cost us dearly. Read on for a detailed list of ways you’re hurting your own DPS, and how to fix it before your next raid.

Tricks of the Trade:

We picked up the seemingly humble Tricks of the Trade at level 75, where it looked like a Misdirection clone that was likely to get rogues killed with its short range and our need to be in melee range to do damage. I was certain that a hunter developer at Blizzard threw it in just to spite us. Why would we want to waste our energy on threat? Isn’t that the tank’s job?

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by Fox Van Allen

A wise ski instructor named Thumper once said, “If you french fry when you pizza, you’re gonna have a bad time.”

Let’s put that in Warcraft terms: You need the right spells for the right situations. Soloing, five-man instances, raids — they’re all different and require different mind sets. If you Mind Sear when you pizza — let’s say Mind Flay — you’re gonna have a bad time.

In the context of skiing, a bad time means crashing through the wall of a ski lodge. In the context of Warcraft, a bad time means pulling aggro, putting out lousy DPS, and getting yourself berated by a “leet” fourteen-year-old who recently learned the phrase “l2play” and is just dying to use it.

It all happens when you french fry when you should have pizza’d.

The minor leagues: Soloing
We can talk about raiding all day long, but the fact is that your average shadow priest is more likely to be spending their time soloing, doing dailies, or running 5-man instances. The rules here are a bit different than in a raid, and trying to create your own little shortcuts might wind up getting you killed by some ridiculous looking tree thing.

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