Posts with tag featured

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) prefers her pancakes with blueberries. On a plate, not in a tub, thanks.

It's 2am, I am not breakfast, but hey a bowl of Golden Grahams sounds really good right about now.

Puntable1 asked:

They said the 5.3 "quests" were an experiment. Do you think the experiment failed or succeeded? I prefer the 5.2 Isle quests. I think killing Commanders will get old really quick.

Now, if you've been living in a secluded cave on the shores of Darkmoon Island for a few weeks, it's possible that you might not have heard of patch 5.3. This recent augmentation of the WoW universe hit US servers on Tuesday, and brought with it a bewildering array of changes, several for PvP, along with a ton of class changes, some bigger than others, as well as several new scenarios, and a whole new dynamic environment in the Barrens around Orgrimmar. If you're curious about any of this, you could do worse than checking out WoW Insider's Patch 5.3 coverage.

But the question is, do you really read patch notes? The official patch 5.3 notes appeared the day the patch launched, and as someone who processed them for our post on the matter, I am well aware of the sheer magnitude of this document. So the question stands: do you read patch notes? Personally, I do, to an extent. I will look at the general notes, the PvP notes, as well as the notes for raiding, and any class notes that particularly grab my attention. I won't read the pet battle notes, simply because that's not a part of the game I regularly engage in. And I wonder, therefore, whether, if there's a really exciting patch that makes substantial alterations to pet battles, I am missing it all because I just plain don't read the notes. So how about you? Do you read patch notes? Do you read them selectively? In full? Barely at all? What could Blizzard do with them to better hold your interest?

Deepwing Gorge is the newest battleground in the game, added in patch 5.3. At this precise point in time, it is not in the Rated Battleground rotation, thanks to some bugs, but it will return fairly soon. Nonetheless, this guide is intended for random groups, not for rated teams, who, with additional organization, will be able to execute more complex and precise strategies.

What are we supposed to be doing?

Good question. There are three mines, the Goblin mine, the Center mine, and the Pandaren mine. I wrote about this in more detail back when this was still on the PTR, but suffice it to say, for now, that the Horde has a slight advantage in getting to the Goblin mine, while the Alliance has a slight advantage in getting to the Pandaren mine. As a result of that, a strategy that seems to work well enough for random groups is to split your team, sending around half to the Center mine, and half to either the Goblin or Pandaren mine, depending on which faction you're playing. You will also need to take a few players, depending on your healer numbers, to get the opposite faction's cart. I've been having success with a warrior and a couple of healers as a cart team, but you will need heals at the Center mine, where most of the fighting will take place.