by ALEX ZIEBART

This quest is actually training for Phase 3 of the Malygos encounter, in which you do battle with the Aspect of Magic from the back of a red drake. 

You pick up Aces High! from Corastrasza on the Band of Transmutation, one of the floating platforms around The Nexus. If you’ve never done it before, head down to the Transitus Shield, there’s a quest that will tell you exactly where to go. Practicing with this quest will make the fight much, much easier when you fight Malygos one day, because the abilities the Drake has in this quest are the exact same as the ones in that fight.

Once Corastrasza has put you on a drake, your action bar will change to the vehicle’s action bar. If you’re not using any bar mods, the vehicle UI will pop up. The abilities you’ll be given are as follows:

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by ZACH YONZON

The battle for Lake Wintergrasp is one of the most fun parts of the game today — it’s certainly my favorite thing, such that I sometimes only log in whenever I know there’s a battle. The great thing about Wintergrasp is that there are numerous battles throughout the day. It’s the game’s best mini-game, and I’m looking forward to seeing it get even more awesome as more and more players reach Level 80 and Blizzard makes improvements to the zone.

Pre-game
An hour before each battle, an NPC in Dalaran — Arcanist Braedin for the Alliance and Magister Surdiel for the Horde — will yell that a battle will soon begin. He will repeat this battle cry again at thirty, fifteen, ten, and five minutes in order to alert the inhabitants of Dalaran to hopefully drive players into going to the zone. To make it easy, portals to Wintergrasp appear at the Silver Enclave and Sunreaver’s Sanctuary. 

Generally, a portal to Wintergrasp appears in Dalaran for the controlling faction and observably disappears about an hour before battles begin. This usually means that defenders must make their way through flying mounts into the zone before the battle begins or wait until the game ensues whereupon their faction’s respective Wintergrasp Battle-Mages will open a portal to allow reinforcements. Defenders will port directly in front of Wintergrap Keep, where the Titan Relic is housed, while players on offense will port into their respective landing camps — the Horde on the West side, and the Alliance on the East.
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by ZACH YONZON

Arena Season 5 is here, a completely different season from all the ones before it because of three critical things. First, there are ten new levels. Even though rated Arena play will still be available at Level 70, the real PvP endgame is at Level 80, with new spell ranks, new abilities, and ten more sweet talent points for wonderful PvP tricks. Second, there’s an entirely new class to throw a monkeywrench into the equation. How does the Death Knight fit into new team comps? Will they be enough to curb Druid dominance in 2s and 3s? The metagame changes drastically with one more variable. Third, unlike previous seasons, there will be three tiers of Arena gear. Furthermore, there will be numerous sources of Season 5 gear, and not just Arena play. It will be quite possible for players to get entire sets of Gladiator gear without having to PvP at all!

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by ADAM HOLISKY

Stew is good. Put some vegetables, meat, broth, and a few other chunks of whatever you have laying around your home into a pot and cook it for a few hours. Pour it into a dish and sprinkle some salt and pepper on top, perhaps add a side of saltine crackers. You’ve got yourself a great dish for those cold Northrend days.

In the daily cooking quest Sewer Stew you’re going to deliver some stew to Ajay Green located in the sewers of Dalaran.

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by ZACH YONZON

Wintergrasp is the smallest zone in Northrend, bordered by Sholazar Basin, Icecrown, and Dragonblight. It is a PvP zone, which flags all players entering it for PvP. This isn’t an issue on PvP servers, but on normal or RP servers, this makes everyone in the zone fair game. There is no physical way to access Wintergrasp other than through a flying mount, creating a natural Level barrier of 77 although lower-level players can be summoned or take the portal from Dalaran. It is my favorite zone in Wrath of the Lich King, although it isn’t without its flaws.

To best understand how to play Wintergrasp, it’s important to understand the zone itself. Wintergrasp Keep is the structure North of the map, with siege workshops and graveyards to the East and West, as well as further down South. There are three towers South of the map that currently have no strategic advantage but confer bonus Honor when destroyed or defended. The Horde permanently controls a graveyard and flight path on the Northwest side while the Alliance have a counterpart on the Northeast.

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by DANIEL WHITCOMB

As a reminder, defense skill is not the same as defense rating. Rather, you need defense rating to get defense skill. Specifically, you will need approximately 690 defense rating to gain the 540 defense skill you need to gain critical strike immunity against level 83 mobs.

Helm

Questing in Storm Peaks, you should stumble upon the Crown of the Hyldnir in the middle of the massive quest line started by They Took Our Men at K3. While 37 defense rating seems a little low, the helm does have a handy yellow gem slot, perfect for a Thick Autumn’s Glow or a Thick Sun Crystal, bumping up that defense rating by a handy amount. 

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by JENNIE LEES

A quick word about trash. Several of the packs leading up to Razuvious, and between Gothik and the Horsemen contain Dark Touched Warriors. These pleasant chaps whirlwind a lot, which means if you’re melee you’ll likely be picking yourself up off the floor multiple times unless you get out of their way (or stun them). There are also axes between Razuvious and Gothik which whirlwind, swords that cleave and staves that AoE, so all in all, this isn’t a great set of trash to get close to.


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by ZACH YONZON

With blue, or rare, gear easily attainable through several sources, it should be extremely easy to gear up in preparation for ten- or even twenty-five man raids. 

Of course, before we get all our gear, we have to have a clear idea of what we want from them considering Blizzard has seen fit to load some Plate with Haste and others with Crit. Protection Paladins have no problem because as soon as you see a Defense value, we’ll know it’s meant for us. Holy and Retribution don’t have it as easy, and must often choose between Crit and Haste. Don’t worry about Tier 7 and other raid epics — they’re loaded with both. There are benefits to both, so we’ll examine those are after the break.
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by AMANDA MILLER

There are faction recipes and dropped recipes, as well as highlights from your trainer that you won’t want to miss. Here is a quick summary:

• New and improved exclusive spellthreads for enchanting your pants.
• A 20-slot bag and a 22-slot bag.
• A slow flying carpet mount as well as an epic one.
• Specialty cloth for epic gear.
• Frost resistance gear.
• An 8-piece PvP pseudo-set.
• Exclusive cloak enchants.
• Special threads that you can sell for a profit.
• Soul shard and enchanting bags with 32 slots.

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