Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 141 of 260)

      Galio drops this week

      August 9, 2010 /

      Galio, Idol of Durand.

      At least I’m pretty sure he does. The “Champion Approaches” post is now live with an official skill list for the gargoyle of Durand. Here’s the official ability breakdown:

      Resolute Smite: Galio fires a concussive blast from his eyes, slowing and dealing damage to enemies caught near the impact point.

      Bulwark: Galio shields an ally Champion, increasing their Armor and Magic Resistance, and restoring Galio’s health each time that Champion suffers damage.

      Righteous Gust: Galio claps his wings, unleashing a gust of concussive wind that damages enemies and leaves a directional draft in its wake that increases ally movement speed.

      Idol of Durand (Ultimate): Galio assumes the form of a statue, taunting nearby enemies and storing concussive energy as they attack him. Galio then bursts from his statue shell, releasing the stored energy to damage surrounding foes.

      Runic Skin (Passive): Galio converts 50% of his total Magic Resistance into Ability Power.

      As I mentioned in the sneak peek thread, Idol of Durand is actually his ult, which makes him much less threatening. The Righteous Gust skill seems pretty cool, though – a bit like Janna’s tornado with some speed boost for you. I could see him playing very well on 3v3, where the fights happen just about as often as player ultimates are available and tend to be full on team fights.

      Reviews

      All Roads Return to WoW: Kicking off a PvP set

      August 9, 2010 /

      Moonkin druid.I’ve transferred back to my original server and finally convinced a friend to do the same. We’re going to be starting up an arena team over the next couple weeks, so I’ve been working on kickstarting my PvP set. If you’ve just hit 80, there are a couple things to consider.

      First, you can get really nice PvP stuff with heroic badges. Playing a tank means I have free badges whenever I want them, pretty much as fast as I can get them. That’s a good thing, especially because the gear is more expensive than the T9 set pieces. You can also considering using some badges to get trinkets for your DPS spec or healing spec if you’ve been doing something other than that in the heroic runs. Heroics also get you lots and lots of Stone Keeper’s Shards for picking up the cheap PvP gear from the Wintergrasp vendor.

      Next, make sure you’re running Wintergrasp. I still think the design behind Wintergrasp is fairly crappy, and when I was just getting started I had no idea what I was doing. Frankly, I still don’t really know, but I try to contribute as best as I can. My time in LoL has actually given me better sensibility about when to fight and when to get out of dodge. Racking up your HKs in Wintergrasp gives you good honor and more importantly bonus WG marks, which you can redeem for some nice trinkets. I was shocked to find so many quests offering up honor when I first joined. I came out of my first WG with 35k honor and a few marks. I bought my set pants on the spot. Not a bad start.

      The last thing I’ll have to start doing is dueling. Dueling is at the heart of PvP in WoW, and can actually be a lot of fun. It always helped me learn to manage my pet, my traps and my cooldowns when I was playing my hunter, and I’m hoping it can provide the same insight on the druid.

      If you’re in the Stormstrike battlegroup, keep an eye out for “The Wugglers.” We’ll be wuggling fools from coast to coast.

      All Roads Return to WoW

      Pro Tips: Control the Dragon

      August 8, 2010 /

      Dragon control.

      At the outset, this seems like a very simple and sort of “no shit” post, but based on my experience I think this post is necessary, particularly with as young as ranked play is. If there’s one thing I find myself furiously pinging in almost every game, it’s little skull over the dragon. As Phreak reminds us in almost every Champion Spotlight, the dragon is not only worth more than a tower in gold, it’s also a couple heroes worth of XP for your entire team. If you find yourself having problems in ranked, start playing toons that can keep control of dragon.

      It should go without saying that this won’t guarantee wins, but it can definitely improve your chances and hopefully give your team the edge for early ganks that may have otherwise gone the opposite direction. Most jungling toons are also good at taking down dragon, though some may require a little itemization to deal with the dragon’s health pool. Examples of good junglers/dragon-killers would be toons like Udyr, Shaco, Xin Zhao, Warwick, Amumu, and Fiddlesticks. While Shaco and Xin Zhao are regularly banned (occasionally Amumu as well), I almost never see an Udyr or Fiddlesticks ban, and despite some nerfs, both remain strong characters. There are some less played options as well. Gragas makes a surprisingly good jungler, and Poppy is plenty capable of killing dragon with a little help.

      When you’re running one of these characters, dragon should be your number one priority. I cannot stress that enough. Remember the gold and experience benefit to your team. Getting dragon early and often means your team has both a level and gold advantage which only grows as the game continues. Once you’ve taken a few dragon kills, dragon also creates a great choke point to encourage the team fight that will hopefully be working in your favor. If the other team isn’t trying to stop you, it just makes dragon that much easier.

      Even when your team is in control of dragon, make sure you’re warding. It’s easy to be out of position when the dragon spawns, and though you should be focusing on dragon, it can be advantageous to knock down a tower if your opponent is out of position. Even if you have the opportunity to push while the other team takes dragon, abandon the tower. Always keep in mind how much the dragon provides. It’s not a little game inside in the push/gank game. The dragon is the game, it’s just something people tend to ignore.

      I like to think about things this way – the towers, the heroes, the creeps, all of those things will be there regardless of whether or not you go for dragon. If the other team is serious about dragon, though, you will be woefully behind.

      league of legends, Pro Tips

      Valve making a DotA clone?

      August 7, 2010 /

      DotA.

      Some of you may recognize the name Jon St. John. Yeah, he has a badass name in real life, but he’s also done voice acting for one well-known and incredibly delayed badass: Duke Nukem. Well, Jon St. John has a new project, and one that could be of interest to LoL players. He’s doing voice acting for Valve’s version of DotA.

      I don’t really have any details, and frankly, the DotA moniker comes from JSJ, not from Valve. What we do know is that Valve hired IceFrog (the mind behind DotA (along with Zileas)) to make something to please DotA fans. Jon St. John posted to his Twitter account this weekend that he has been doing voice work for DotA at Valve Software. I’m not sure why he would call out the name of the game without hearing it from Valve, and if they didn’t give him the go ahead, you can bet he wouldn’t be talking about it.

      This doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot for the LoL community, but it could be bad news for any HoN fans out there. I’ve played a bit of HoN and been completely unimpressed, so it’s not like the name DotA will kill a game like LoL. It could kill HoN, though, especially with the kind of money Valve has. What could be a problem for LoL is just that – the money.

      Valve could very easily sweep in on LoL territory with more bank, more developers, but more importantly, more support. With better server uptime and the bankroll to back a quicker development cycle, Valve could make a dent in the LoL player base. That’s not to say Valve will do that, just that it could with the resources it has. Valve was notoriously slow with some of the TF2 developments, though, even if TF2 has a massive player base. Let’s also not forget that IceFrog did work on HoN, and we can all see how well that’s going.

      In short, I think it’s totally possible that Valve is working up a DotA clone and it has the potential to make a bit of a stink for the big players in the MOBA world. There are so many variables, though, that Valve has a long way to go before

      league of legends, News

      Carry/Feeder adjustments coming to ranked play

      August 6, 2010 /

      ProFeed.I don’t think I’ve read better news today (granted, most of my reading to this point has been focused on either games or gadgetry, so it kinda makes sense). I found a thread in which Zileas said he would be adding feeder/carry consideration to the ELO calculations at the end of games.

      This. Is. Huge. This is at least a step toward addressing the individual performance in a team setting and the penalties/benefits some players reap as a result. As a for instance, I had a game today in which I played Shaco. I got a slow start, mostly because I was on the phone and not focused on my jungling, so I didn’t gank much early. I did try for one big gank on our 1v2 lane and sent them back to base, so it wasn’t a horrible early game. Well, not to me anyway.

      My teammates, on the other hand, would not stop berating me for being a terrible Shaco and a waste of a team slot and on and on. Our Olaf kept insisting I was going to be useless late game because I hadn’t ganked. As it turned out, I went 11-2-15 with two tower kills before the other team surrendered. Regardless of what my team thought was going on, I was largely the reason behind the victory, or at least the very heavy piece of leaden straw that broke the camel’s back. Our Olaf slightly below 1.00 in his K/D ratio and our Mordekaiser was 1-9. For the other team, that can be an extremely frustrating loss. They likely could have beat our team with a different player. My understanding, then, is that their ELO will not be as negatively effected because we had a strong carry. Likewise, my own ELO should receive a slight bonus for carrying.

      On the flipside, if Kaiser had somehow lost us the game (which he almost did), we likely wouldn’t be as penalized because we had a heavy feeder on our team. No word on when these changes will come out, but I’m really excited about them.

      Development, league of legends

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