Needs a Hug

Once a week Kaziah and Belthal take you through the trials and tribulations of the Needs a Hug guild on Ravenholdt US. Weekly guild news, World of Warcraft news ,commentary and special guests bring the unique flavor and insanity of the Needs a Hug guildies to the airwaves.

WEEK IN WARCRAFT

WOW NEWS

Ask the Devs #7 - professions is out with some interesting questions and answers.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2522165843

Will you add more non-combat, or purely artistic, or stat-free, or random effect toy / fun / flavor items to the profession of my choice? – A multitude of players from all regions

Yes, especially considering they are some of our favorite things to add to the game. We can't promise that every profession is going to get equal amounts, but we definitely intend to spread them out more evenly, except for engineering. Engineers will always get more toys. :)

Archaeology is supposed to be about discovering, preserving, and honoring cultural items found, in order to learn from the past. Currently we don't do that. Instead we are forced to coldly vendor what we don't want. No donation to a museum, no return to the races of origin. Couldn’t we do something more important with these items? Can we expect more interesting stories with artifacts? Will you do something about this to make it feel like the player is getting something useful back, and perhaps remove a little bit of the random part of it so that it's more fun and focused? - Whitewnd (KR), Pusen (EU-EN), Unjoiner (NA/ANZ)

Originally, we didn't intend to create items at all when you completed a normal archaeology find, but that didn't feel right. So now we have these items that still don't feel right because you can't do anything fun with them. We are working on a more thematic and interesting way to consume the artifacts you dig up. These include returning them to the museums (for the devoted archaeologist) and the option to continue vendoring them (if you wish to continue your career as a cold-blooded treasure hunter.)

Additionally, we plan to add daily quests, a deeper story, additional skill gains, and the flexibility to focus on a specific race.

Some players may not have noticed that all artifacts have lore associated with them in the journal, even the grey ones. Every bit of it is Genuine Lore, and verified by our lore masters. So were the Dalaran Coins, of course, but not those silly Romance Novels

Will there be a way to distinguish profession nodes on the minimap for those that have two gathering professions? - Discordia (LA)

That’s a good suggestion. We recently added the ability to see your target and focus target on the minimap, but the feedback we’ve received from players is that they clutter up the map too much. Coming up with unique icons that work with only a few pixels might be challenging. We’ll give it a shot though.

Will you provide a way to speed up the acquiring of glyphs usually acquired through research and glyph books? Glyph books (Book of Glyph Mastery) are hard to come by now that people spend so little time in WotLK content. - Furlqt (NA/ANZ), 에르네스트린덴만 (KR), Kånê (EU-ES)

Yes. We will be changing the discovery spells so they can teach all possible glyphs, and the books will simply provide a no-cooldown method to do the same thing.

Are there any plans to somehow change Archeology and Fishing, which have become notoriously tedious? Do you have plans to make archaeology more appealing, maybe with puzzles or something else? - Boîndal (EU-DE), Kalani (NA/ANZ), Käworu (LA)

Yes. The dailies help with fishing skill gain, and we plan to add archaeology dailies as well. We've also discussed further incentivizing fishing in pools with faster skill gain.

We would love to add a puzzle mini-game to archaeology, and may do that one day, but we can’t make any guarantees. There are some other ideas floating around for moving between archaeology sites more quickly, and we've been brainstorming for rare random events when you are digging or fishing.

Our overall goal for these professions is that it shouldn't be too difficult to max out your skill, but catching every fish and finding every artifact should be a long journey.

Remote Guild Chat and Auction House Free Preview Ends

GUILD NEWS

We have got our first raid kill on the Omnitron Defense system. Congrats to all that downed him this past Sunday and looking forward in progressing from here.

Alot of epics coming from the Zul Dungeons. The Zul dungeons have definately helped people gear up.

Wargames on the Friday Night Fights

The Buddy System Win 500 ranked arena matches while in a guild group.

Time To Open A Restaurant Cook 10,000 Cataclysm cooking recipes.

New 85’s

Kolowgo

QUESTIONS

Question from Mooktar

SAY IT DONT SPRAY IT

Drwhat: Congrats Everyone on Downing Omni tonight!!! Hope this is a sign of raids to come

Rheya: Best wishes go out to Steadmund, for a speedy and pain-free recovery!

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Once a week Kaziah and Belthal take you through the trials and tribulations of the Needs a Hug guild on Ravenholdt US. Weekly guild news, World of Warcraft news ,commentary and special guests bring the unique flavor and insanity of the Needs a Hug guildies to the airwaves.

WEEK IN WARCRAFT

WOW NEWS

Childrens Week

- New Pets, Leggs the fenstrider, Scooter the Snail

- School of hard knocks on fri

Preview for 4.2

- New Armor sets.

Previews for T12 armor sets

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2288-Tier-12-Models-Preview-Warrior

- New Mounts

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2286-Patch-4.2-Models-Bosses-and-Mounts!

- Change the location of Char on the login screen

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2287-Tier-12-Sets-Bonuses-Patch-4.2-Character-Selection-Screen

- Personal Progression in Hyjal

GUILD NEWS

This Week

Guild hits Level 22

Our guild just hit level 22 earning us Chug a Lug which gives us an extra hour on our guild cauldrons... so now all we have to do is make enough flasks to get guild cauldrons. so everyone don't buy flasks on the auction house get someone in guild to make them!

Children's Week Event

On Fri our guild members went out and murdered the Alliance with a reason. The school of hard knocks is one of the hardest of the yearlong achievements that make up the Meta Achievement: what a long strange trip it has been. The problem of course is that unlike the other events School of hard knocks requires you to do a set of tasks while you have your orphan with you, these are:

Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm

Assault a flag in Arathi Basin

Assault a tower in Alterac Valley

Return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch

Doing any of these things reliably is hard at the best of times. trying to do it when 10,20 or even 40 people are all rushing to do the same thing is almost impossible. that is where the guild comes in. This fri we bundled up together and managed to get a lot of people there School of hard knocks.

Looking For Guild

So this week we enabled the Looking for Guild options and wow have we had a good response we have had new people applying from all over so I wanted to give people an Idea of what it is all about. Along with all the little checkboxes that you fill out in the LFG tool there is a 255char block that we can put in a message. and this message is what diferentiate us from the other guilds.Currently our message reads:

message “Why not join Needs a hug. We have 14 bank tabs, our tabard gives +400 stamina, our guild name improves our sex appeal, and our recruitment messages lie outrageously.”

This message is pulling us in about 5-10 recruits per day once the apply I look at the message they have sent back. if they don’t put anything in the request window they are out. The more fun there message is better the chance we grab them. Once I or one of the other offciers contact them we fill them in on what the guild is like and if they want to join we invite them. Unfortunatly, this is never fool proof and we get a lot of chaff with the wheat. So if you think someone is awesome or you are having a problem let an officer know as soon as possible.

Coming Up

Friday Night Fights

this friday

Naxx achivements

The dread fortress Naxxramas, one of the ancient temples of the Nerubian people, torn from the ground by the Litch King and retooled by the mad architect Obrahiim, the Traveler now floats above dragonblight serving as a staging point for the tattered forces of the litch king. Fortunatly for us while we have been leveling to 85 they were still trying to figure out why the litch king isn't answering his phone. Since they aren't expecting anything its about time to beat them up and take there achivements. So sign up Fri for the 20th social event and show these dead heads what we can do.

Say it Dont Spray it

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Once a week Kaziah and Belthal take you through the trials and tribulations of the Needs a Hug guild on Ravenholdt US. Weekly guild news, World of Warcraft news ,commentary and special guests bring the unique flavor and insanity of the Needs a Hug guildies to the airwaves.

WEEK IN WARCRAFT

WOW NEWS

Childrens Week

hatchling for japan

Patch 4.1

- Zul dungons

- LFGuild

GUILD NEWS

Guild reached level 21

New 85’s

Vandall

Kalidar

Epic Loots!

GUESTS

Exige

- History of the guild

- Choice of Ravenholdt as a server - RPPvP unique experience, new server = fun economy

- Origin as a roleplaying guild: roleplaying in all aspects of the game

- Making guildies rich by farming

- Funny recruitment messages made for interesting recruits

“Roses are red, violets are blue, some poems rhyme and some don’t. Join ”

“The Alliance will fear your name. You will double your DPS. Random strangers will give you hugs as you pass. One of these will come true when you join ”

“We have 14 bank tabs, our tabard gives +4 stamina, our guild name improves our sex appeal, and our recruitment messages lie outrageously. Join ”

Mooktar

- Healing in Cataclysm. Throughput isn’t a problem but mana is the primary healing concern.

- HpM vs HpS (forum post with spell priority). Needs to be updated.

http://needsahug.guildzilla.com/forums.html?show=posts&tid=476972

- Rotating chakras during fight phases

- Healer’s responsibility is to end a fight with barely enough mana. Too little mana means you were too agressive (or undergeared). Too much mana usually means you were conserving too much and playing too close to the edge. OOM usually means a wipe.

- Using consumables and cooldowns BEFORE you need them

- Mythical mana potion 10k

- Concentration potion 22k mana (channel for 10 sec)

- Shadow fiend, Hymn of hope, in that order. Hymn gives a 15% boost to mana pool and fiend restores a % of mana per tick.

- Why lightwell is farking amazing and why you should click on it.

- Doesn’t drop target

- Can click while casting, while stunned or under other cc effects

- 20 yd range

- Can pre-cast prior to combat and regain the mana

- Powerful HoT but expires quickly

- Limited charges. Use when needed but ITS NOT A SPARKLY TOY

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/04/11/spiritual-guidance-a-bitter-priests-guide-to-lightwell/

QUESTIONS

- Question from Anonomous Priest. Why do Tauren Druids named Albuimin suck so much? Is it just the foul smell or are they somehow mentally deficient? Maybe they just have priest-envy (I can’t say I blame them).

Seraphimia Writes

Hi Kaziah and Belthal,

When I was learning to DPS I was told to install omen and keep an eye on my threat. It was part of my job to keep my aggro lower than the tank, and this was especially important in leveling dungeons where the tank may be a lower level than you. Now, several years later, as I'm learning to tank there seems to be none of this in the DPS. If they are 3 levels higher than me and pull a guy off me they yell at me. I've noticed running as DPS too that the job of controlling your own aggro seems to have disappeared. I know you have both tanked and Belthal DPS's too on Belriel, what do you think of this? Should I just stop worrying about my aggro, or should I keep trying to encourage the DPS around me to either control their aggro, or enjoy their multiple deaths? (nicely of course)

Thanks guys

Seraphimia

(pronounciation: Sara-fee-mee-ah)

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Once a week Kaziah and Belthal take you through the trials and tribulations of the Needs a Hug guild on Ravenholdt US. Weekly guild news, World of Warcraft news ,commentary and special guests bring the unique flavor and insanity of the Needs a Hug guildies to the airwaves.

WEEK IN WARCRAFT

WOW NEWS

Warlocks get Gender Choice for there Demons

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/04/14/warlocks-getting-male-and-female-versions-of-all-demons/

Blizcon Tickets going on sale May 21st and 25th

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/04/12/blizzcon-2011-tickets-on-sale-may-21st-and-25th/

GUILD NEWS

New 85’s

Two new level 85’s this week looks like both Rheya and Manamoni made it to the level cap, gratz guys and now you can chase the Epic Loots

Epic Loots!

Ya. On Wed we downed Argaloth and stole the good stuff that he was hiding under his prison issue mattress. As always it seems to be nothing but PvP gear but I will tell you the 362 gear is still nice even if it looses some stats to resilience. This week we have had two lucky winners. The Vicious Gladiator's Silk Trousers.went to Pemmoria and Drwhat landed the Vicious Gladiator's Band of Cruelty. Grats Guys!

New Voice Server for Needs a Hug

Needs a Hug has a new voice server. We have moved from vent to Mumble

QUESTIONS

First question we have today is from Mooktar who has sent us in an a voice call about Blizzards new game Titan!

blizzard leaked product road map

http://8th-circuit.com/sites/default/files/blizzard-product-slate-leaked_69312_screen.jpg

Blunderbus writes:

The guild is doing a great job at helping the 'greener' members get to the point where we can raid, and making sure we feel loved and accepted when we join in, any ideas on ways to make it even better? Perhaps we can set up formal gear and training nights to work on gearing our alts, and helping the green members get what they need to join in the higher level content, learn the dungeons so they can handle PUGS etc?

Thanks for making the podcast guys, it makes my long weekly trip to the office go much faster!

The Blunder Bus

Thanks for the email Blunderbus, we have looked at the idea of a training night for a while. The reason that we haven’t done something about it is two fold. One we dont have a officer that is willing to take on the job, unless you are volunteering, the other thing is that we have 3 nights of guild events going on currently wed,fri,sun and we dident want to burn people out thinking that they had to come to all the events. Now if we did have someone who wanted to step up to orginize it we would definatly try it out so if anyone out there is looking for a way to get more involved with the guild and think this might be fun let me know and I we can talk.

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Once a week Kaziah and Belthal take you through the trials and tribulations of the Needs a Hug guild on Ravenholdt US. Weekly guild news, World of Warcraft news ,commentary and special guests bring the unique flavor and insanity of the Needs a Hug guildies to the airwaves.

WEEK IN WARCRAFT

Our week in World of Warcraft

WOW NEWS

Patch 4.1 stuff

Guild chat on the iPhone

Call to arms in the dungeon finder

wailing caverns shortened

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/04/07/patch-4-1-new-wailing-caverns-layout-unveiled/

New WoW Jerseys and Hawaiian shirts

http://www.swagdog.com/armoryinterface.aspx

From WOW Insider

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/04/07/patch-4-1-ptr-new-pve-to-pvp-currency-conversion/

Patch 4.1 PTR: New PvE-to-PvP currency conversion

by Matthew Rossi

If you've seen the patch 4.1 PTR patch notes recently, one thing will probably jump out at you immediately. Namely, you can now buy honor points for justice points and vice versa, and you can also buy conquest points for valor points.

Updated 4.1 patch notes for April 7, 2011

General

Honor is now purchasable from the Justice Commodities Vendor at 250 Honor per 375 Justice.

Justice is now purchasable from the Honor Commodities Vendor at 250 Justice per 375 Honor.

Conquest is now purchasable from the Valor vendor at 250 Conquest per 250 Valor.

This is huge for people who have found themselves capped on one or another of these currencies for a while now. I know for myself, I've ended up stockpiling heirlooms for characters I may or may not ever level just to keep below the JP cap. Now I can get serious about those last few PvP items I've been holding off picking up. I am surprised to see a valor-to-conquest conversion but not a conquest-to-valor one -- seems somewhat unfair, as it gives PvE players with access to a lot of valor points a way to jump into PvP but gives no such return for PvP players who want to get a leg up in PvE.

Keeping in mind it's the PTR and is always subject to change, of course, this should be a more interesting solution to point capping than we've seen before with trade goods and suchlike.

GUILD NEWS

Achivements:

That’s a lot of Bait - Seafood Magnofique!

Kill Squad! - 100K kills

Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker - Aeromoni

Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnoros - Darvina

Level 20

Newest Level 85

Rakzar

Special Guest

Gutterball

QUESTIONS

Seraphima Writes:

As a young tank I’m wondering if you have any hints for bear tanking or druid leveling so I can finish up my last 15 levels?

DrWhat writes:

With the new Call to Arms coming out what do you think the effect will be on random dungeons?

Say It, Don't Spray It

Kaziah: Ok, finish this sentence. Fe Fi Fo Fum, I...

Mooktar: ... instead of Magmaw, lets fight his mum

Wieland: ...want to kick some alliance bum?

Seraphimia: sell the blood of a Shammy, mon

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Once a week Kaziah and Belthal take you through the trials and tribulations of the Needs a Hug guild on Ravenholdt US. Weekly guild news, World of Warcraft news ,commentary and special guests bring the unique flavor and insanity of the Needs a Hug guildies to the airwaves.

WOW NEWS

Patch 4.1: Guild Challenges

   http://www.facebook.com/notes/warcraft/patch-41-guild-challenges/10150176046835874

One of the newest things to come out are the guild challenges. These seem to be a replacement for the daily quests in Dalaran. When you complete the daily guild challenge the guild will get guild XP and gold that goes right into the guild bank. This XP is over and above the guild list.

Patch 4.1: Account bound Heirlooms

We just posted about the new heirlooms based on tier 1 armor discovered on the patch 4.1 PTR, but apparently there's even bigger news! Wowhead has discovered that as of 4.1, all heirloom items (including the newly added ones) are labeled as "Binds to Battle.net Account," an entirely different label than "Binds to Account."

Next we have some Fake news from blizzard.

Fake patch notes

http://www.facebook.com/notes/warcraft/patch-4111-preview/10150178289705874

Best one for me cause I cant spell worth a damn

Due to continual misspellings of the “rogue” class, we have officially changed the name to the easier to type “rouge.”

babble about patch notes

GUILD NEWS

New 85’s in the last week.

Headbasher

Guild Progression

The Guild is closing in on Guild level 20 which opens up the perk Happy Hour which gives us a 50% bonus on the guild cauldrons. This will be great as soon as we start making guild cauldrens. The problem of course is that first we need to make 10,000 Cata flasks.

I am really excited about level 21 which gives us Have group will travel which allows a group summon of everone who is in the group or raid to your location.

QUESTIONS

Mooktar writes:

Love writes:

difference between NAH raids and general dungeons

NAH Raid phylosiphye

Bad dungeon luck

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A special episode with hardcore raider Aideth. He talks about his time in Japanese MMO Final Fantasy XI and about hardcore raiding in WOW.

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The Needs a Hug Podcast. A podcast about World of Warcraft and our guild Needs a Hug on the Ravenholdt US server.

Guild News This Week

Newest level 85's since 3/8/2011

Jundice

Steadmund

Gnog

Vivsie

Blunderbus

Cythane

Naked Dungeoneering 101

03/25/2011 8:00 PM

Epic Fishing Party!

04/03/2011 1:00 PM

Naxx for Cheevos!

04/08/2011 8:00 PM

WOW NEWS

updated 4.1 patch notes

New Valor point cap going to weekly instead of daily

Word of Glory:on a 20 second Cooldown for Retribution and Protection paladins. We’d rather these two specs spend most of their Holy Power on damage-dealing abilities, with occasional healing.

All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target. This includes Pummel, Shield Bash, Kick, Mind Freeze, Rebuke, Skull Bash, Counterspell, Wind Shear, Solar Beam, Silencing Shot, and related player pet abilities.

Resilience scaling has been modified for linear returns, as opposed to increasing returns. Under the new formula, going from 30 resilience to 40 resilience gives players the same increase to survivability as going from 0 to 10. Resilience now scales in the same way armor and magic resistances do. A player with 32.5% damage reduction from resilience in 4.0.6 should see their damage reduction unchanged in 4.1. Those with less than 32.5% will gain slightly. Those with more will lose some damage reduction, increasingly so as their resilience climbs.

Death Knight

  1. Raise Ally has been redesigned to be a battle resurrection, similar to Rebirth. It is instant cast, but costs 50 Runic Power to use, and has a 10-minute cooldown. It shares the same global battle resurrection cap with Rebirth and Soulstone.

what Chilton said about Desolace at GDC

**Having decided to revamp Azeroth’s original two continents, the first priority was not to change things too much. “We knew we needed to retain the soul of the original,” Chilton explained. “People had to feel like it was the same world.” In order to strike the right balance, the designers hammered out a useful maxim, attempting to ensure that the content was comprised of “one third old, one third improved, and one third new.”

Desolace was flawed for a number of reasons. The quests, to close legion portals, herd Kodo beasts around, and pick a side in the centaur war, were not as compelling as the designers had hoped. The desolate landscape, while atmospheric, was deemed too “monotonous and oppressive.” The war between the centaur clans was difficult to understand. The Burning Legion presence was “more annoying than threatening.” Maybe most importantly, the two quest hubs were at the extreme ends of the zone, meaning that you had a lot of running to do if you wanted to turn anything in.

In order to fix the zone’s problems, the designers decided to address the monotony first, by adding a dash of color and life to the zone. In Cataclysm, the Cenarion Circle, a group of tree-hugging Night Elf druids, moves into Desolace, creating a large, verdant area smack dab in the center. The designers also made significant upgrades to the player’s travel patterns, along with the quest mechanics.

Looking back on these changes, Chilton was rueful, deciding that the introduction of the Cenarion druids and their green thumbs changed the zone too much. “I’ll be the first to say I signed off on the regrowth idea for Desolace, but it lost some of its soul.” “If you’re reworking content,” he cautioned the other designers in the room, “make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.”

Say it dont Spray it

Pemmoria: Great job on the podcast Kaziah and Belthal. Looking forward to the next one!!

Seraphimia: EPIC PRAIRIE DOG!!

Klaine: internet withdrawal...it crapped out on friday and I have 2 days to go... i love typing on BB's

Rheya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJoJ51mm5Nc Great techno remix of "O Thanagor"(Invincible)

Klaine: its a fun read, thought i would share it

Klaine:http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/02/14/breakfast-topic-to-grats-or-not-to-grats/

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Finally guys, finished editing the first episode and here it is for your listening pleasure.

We muddle over some guild news, upcoming 4.1 patch notes, newest level 85's in guild and more.

Email us with any questions for the show.

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