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Singing the praises of Heroic Countenance


Lariana on Skywall has words of praise for "Heroic Countenance," a new NPC spell in patch 2.4 that unlocks you to the Heroic mode of MrT -- to get it cast on you, you have to complete the instance on Normal mode first by doing a quest to kill of Kael'thas once and for all. Basically, it replaces the Heroic reputation keys, which Lariana says were a much less interesting system than Heroic Countenance.

And Bornakk basically confirms that Blizzard agrees (well, all he says is that they'll talk about it on the next Blizzcast, but he adds a smiley, so odds are that Blizzard is down with the Heroic Countenance). They've been talking for a while, too, about making the reputation grind easier for alts and guilds, so maybe this type of spell is how they'll deal with that -- get it cast on one of your characters, and it will be cast on all of them.

The only question, then, is what to do with all those Heroic keys that we've picked up. The answer is probably nothing -- Blizzard doesn't really care, it seems, about updating old content, and my guess is that the instances in Outland won't be changing much from their current form. But in Wrath, it might be fun if the keys stayed, but opened up other, less consequential content. Instead of Heroic mode, what if a Revered rep key opened up the way to an additional optional boss, or an additional loot area per run? Not enough to make it necessary, but enough to reward those who went all the way with the reputation factions in the game.

Sticking with just one character

We've done a lot of talking about alts here at WoW Insider, and if I had to guess, I'd suspect that most of our readers tend to be what most of us writers are: alt-a-holics, with many, many classes and levels of alts, sometimes even spanning across servers. But not everybody is like us-- some people, like the Nameless One over on LJ, have only one character. And to tell the truth, I kind of envy her a bit.

I've known a few people who have only played one character in the game ever, and in my experience, they've done great-- all the money they make goes directly to them, they never have to redo rep runs, all the keys they collect never have to be collected again. If you are an altaholic, think about all the gear you've gotten across the board and all the time you've sunk into other characters-- people with just one toon get to put all that time and effort into just one character, and get to reap the rewards.

There is a lesson here, however, even for us altaholics. I've often found that if I really want to level up one of my alts, the switching just can't happen-- I have to choose one character and stick to it. All the money I earn stays with that character, and my only goals while online are for that character alone. And when I focus, and put effort into just one, that's when things actually get done. I, like many players, get bored easily-- if I had only one class ever, I would have had to give up on this game a while ago. But when it comes to earning gear and leveling fast, the best strategy I've found is to sit down, focus in, and play like you have only one character.

Heroic dungeons now require "Honored" reputation

This just in: In addition to the latest Patch 2.3 updates we just noted, the various heroic instance keys will no longer require "Revered" reputation with the various factions around Outland. "Honored" is now sufficient to get you in to Heroic dungeons everywhere.

This raises myriad questions: Does this devalue the heroic instances at all, or does it simply open them up to more players? Is it a slap in the face to all those who had to grind their way to revered up to now, or is it just the natural progression of opening up content for more and more people to access as time goes by? Will anyone run regular Steamvents, Shattered Halls, or Shadow Labyrinth when they can just skip to the heroic versions? Will this get thousands (or millions?) of players who got burned out on the rep-grind back into the game?

Breakfast Topic: Consumable consumption

So I have a question: how exactly do you use your consumables?

I noticed a few weeks ago now that I never really used my consumables when I was supposed to. On my Resto Shaman, I have Nature's Swiftness bound to Q (since my left hand is always on WASD) as a panic button-- need a heal instantly, hit it fast. But consumables like potions and healthstones just sat in my bag-- I almost never remembered to whip them out when the party was going down.

So recently, I opened up the second hotbar on the right side, and put all my various pots and healthstones there. That way I'm just one click away from one if I need them. And that's worked pretty well-- now, even the tank sometimes forgets to use his healthstone, but I always have them available in a clinch.

But they're still all the way on the side of the screen, and it seems like I could do it faster. How do you have your consumables set up? Do you forget to use them all the time, or do you have them bound to a certain key, ready to jump into action at a moment's notice?

Get trinkets out of inventory-- and on a chain

I can conquer dragons, I can crush Centaur, and I can even take candle (I've been waiting for days to get a chance to post that hilarious thread), but if one monster in the World of Warcraft has cost me more than anything, it's a full inventory. On my hunter, I've got a bag full of food, and on my shaman, I have to carry around four totems all the time. Crafting items take up another bag or two (my disenchanting rogue has a bag full of enchanting mats and a bag full of poisons). Quest items, potions, food, reputation tokens, noncombat pets and mounts, and that hearthstone-- there's just not enough room for everything!

So here's one idea, shared with me by Braila of Thunderhorn (our guild's tree-mendous healing druid) during last weekend's Karazhan run: How about a trinket chain?

It makes a lot of sense. Blizzard implemented a keychain to get keys out of our inventories, and considering that we're all hauling around tons of trinkets lately (I had seven on me, and one of our warriors had eight with him), this seems like the first place Blizzard should go to thin out the inventory. It's not like trinkets are huge items-- why should they take up 1/16 of Netherweave Bags when you can fit 200 arrows in the same place? Spare trinkets should have their own tab to sit in, something that grows the more you get, just like the keychain.

Of course the obvious solution would be to just not carry so many trinkets around. But there's so many of them for every situation-- healing, solo grinding, raid healing, DPS, PvP-- that it's no wonder everyone at 70 has such a collection. Blizz should give us a chain to put them on.

No UBRS key for you!

Call me crazy, but I am still collecting Azeroth keys and attunements. It's this thing I have with needing to complete things. I realize fully that I will hardly ever go to UBRS now that I am 70 (it's a Murphy's Law thing), but should any of the lower members of the guild need entrance for attunements or gear of their own (my guild is full of collectors just like me), then I will be able to help them out. I have two out of the three gems needed, and have in my spare time been running the instance with our guild leader trying for the third. So imagine my irritation when I read today on QJ.net that the quest line is bugged, severely.

Vaelen, the schmoe who gives you the quest in the first place, is now in the habit of deleting the quest and your quest items when you talk to him. Now, this isn't right by any stretch of the imagination. Vrakhris mentioned in the forum post that Blizz knows about the problem, and are working on fixing it in an upcoming patch. Meanwhile, there's a workaround to tide us over.

Continue reading No UBRS key for you!

Breakfast Topic: So how are those keys coming?


So the expansion's been out for over a month, you've gotten all your raid keys done, right? RIGHT? The overwhelming looking raid attunement chart hosted by WoWWiki seems intimidating, but a lot of things turned out to be easier than I'd anticipated. For example, you don't need to complete Shadow Labyrinth, The Steam Vaults, or Arcatraz for your Karazhan key. The Shadow Labyrinth key is at the end-boss, Murmur, but the fragment in The Steam Vaults can be reached without actually killing any bosses, and the one in Arcatraz can as well. The reputation buildup just from doing the usual instances and quests was enough to provide me with almost all the reputation I needed for heroic mode keys, but I haven't started any heroics yet.

How are those keys coming folks? Horror stories with that pickup group in Steamvaults got you down?

Introducing: Keyrings!

keysEyonix announced this afternoon that keyrings have been implemented in the game starting with patch 1.11.  The keyring will hold multiple dungeon keys, and the number of keys your keyring will hold is based on level (4 for levels 40 and under, 8 for 41 to 50, and 12 for 51 and over).  While a small change, it certainly makes me happy - my bank will no longer be cluttered with keys and I'll have far fewer moments where I arrive at a dungeon only to say "Oops... that key is in my bank."


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