March 24, 2014

Episode 34 - WoW Trivial Pursuit

March 24, 2014/ Adam K. aka Bay

Mobs and Minions, get your meta gems socketed and helm enchants on, because it's time to break out the brains. Grab your nearest friend to complete our FinalBoss raid and play along with episode 34's Trivial Pursuit event!

This week, six familiar faces pair off with Bay and Ana into four teams to trek around the board. Alex and Loz of FatBoss form the entire blue team, and Nobbel pairs with Letomi on the green team. Ana picks her class color to go with Elvine's gnomish hair -- except Elvine himself doesn't have pink hair. Last but not least bearded: Bay teams up with Brutal to complete epic team purple.

The rules are tweaked for FinalBoss: no team can go more than twice in a row and getting to the center means chat picks your category. The time limit for each question soon became to guess before chat caught up with a flood of the correct answer.

Don't be pink with embarrassment -- the only celebrity class I could remember was Ozzy the warlock, because really, who cares about mohawks and hunters. Orange'cha glad you play to defeat encounters?! Lady RNG is particularly cruel about handing a raid encounter question to a raider. Just don't let your egotistical cores get corrup-- errr, what? It's a tainted core? Aww, fffffffff.

Unfortunately watching the cinematic in your head for the chat-chosen, yellow-sliced answer just leads to Aggravation when you can't hear her say Thrall's name. Nobbel might have footnotes on every lore question, but it's on the green villainous slices that the rest of the pursuing gang overthinks. Does the question want the kal'dorei, the quel'dorei, or the sin'dorei? What's the difference between all the orc skin colors?

Don't be blue -- people mix up what's a Valley and what's a Vale all the time. It'll be OK, Horde players, we forgive you for going for the red-named isle over the blue-named draenei starting isle. Finally, killing a raid boss doesn't guarantee you'll get loot and raiding likewise doesn't guarantee you'll get the purple slice loot questions right! Even if you can't remember what your class's tier 10 was called, the Ashbringer most definitely belongs to ... we're sorry, Loz, that answer was so terribly Thunderwraang.

As always, Final Boss and its guests love to answer community questions at the end of the show. You can ask them via the website: http://finalboss.tv/askaboss/ - via Twitter: @finalbosstv #AskABoss & via Twitch Chat during the After Show!

Final Boss airs on Twitch.tv/FinalBossTV every Sunday at 1pmPST/4pmEST/10pmCET.

- Poneria

March 17, 2014

Episode 33 - Bearly Face Tanking

March 17, 2014/ Adam K. aka Bay

Mobs and Minions may watch this episode in any shapeshifting form; double enjoyment is had if viewed as a bear. That's right; the furrier you are, the more you will Heart (of the Wild) this episode.

From the US this week, we have an inconspicuous bear who's been behind many druid contacts already on FinalBoss: Arielle of <Bear Retirement Home>. From the EU, Buraan of <Divergent> rakes in the math and optimization in and out of Azeroth, but beware: his soothing Scottish voice is a crowd control that's castable even in bear form.

Before we get down to Tanking With Your Face 101, Arielle and Buraan go over the progression of the bear tank, from the health pools and resistances or armor of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King to the rise of the bearcat in Cataclysm. Landing at the "active mitigation" style of Mists of Pandaria gives a great segue into how to currently bear tank. While bears are seemingly sparse in the US, the EU's spectrum of tanks prove that bears can make it work in both 10-man and 25-man content.

Episode #33: Bearly Face Tanking will crit you all over with bear information. You'll find out what's useful in the level 45 and 75 talent tiers and what's the story with that "Heart of the OP" level 90 talent. While there are some definite favorites for various situations when it comes to Symbiosis as a bear, the guests point out that it will likely never become a big deal of an ability. So c'mon, bears, you know you want to try out Life Tap just once.

Final Boss airs on Twitch.tv/FinalBossTV every Sunday at 1pmPST/4pmEST/10pmCET.

- Poneria

March 10, 2014

Episode 32 - The Wrath of Retribution

March 10, 2014/ Adam K. aka Bay

Mobs and Minions can rest assured that The Firelord and his majordomo did not need to skymirror Ana twice over to get guests for the retribution paladin episode.

This week's "retribution ride" features the world-class Morgeine of <Envy> and forum-frequenter Bear of <Ninth Order>. Bay and Ana note how there are so many EU guilds killing heroic Garrosh, as <Ninth Order> is EU 82nd where Ana's <Something Wicked> for example is US 34th.

After discussing the big IRL changes to come for each guest, we move on to talk about how retribution paladins stand apart from other DPS specs. Bear refers to himself as a paladin, not just retribution, for both guests agree that a ret pally is brought to raid not for his astounding "meter-maiding" DPS but for the plethora of raid utility that resides in the paladin class toolkit.

We know that warlocks are better, but don't think that the three-tribution paladins on this show will leave all the mobs and minions hanging when it comes to better retribution DPS. You'll hear about what 40% haste does to mastery, how a glitch like ability lag can turn an inferior stat build into viable, and that simming it really is the answer to everything.

Ana leads into talent choice discussion with the unfortunate evolution of the level 15 speed boost talent tier from cool choice to boring default. Does the level 75 talent tier have only one purposeful choice? Does Execution Sentence leave the rest of the level 90 talent tier dead for choice? What abilities should be nixed in Warlords of Draenor? Well, we mean other than Guardian of Kings, Ana.

Packed with pally pride, it's all inside Episode #32: The Wrath of Retribution.

Final Boss airs on Twitch.tv/FinalBossTV every Sunday at 1pmPST/4pmEST/10pmCET.

- Poneria