Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 168 of 260)

      LoL: Patch day (Garen)

      April 27, 2010 /

      Red Riding Annie and Grandma Warwick.The Garen patch is finally upon us and with it comes a load of changes to both the client and the game system. On the whole, I think this will be one of the better patches for the game, even if Garen is a bit underwhelming.

      For starters, we obviously need to cover the new champion, Garen. He’s going to run you 3150 IP or 585 RP so I hope you saved up. It’s a long, slow crawl to 3k for most people. His skill list remains essentially unchanged, which leaves him in a weird sort of melee DPS/hybrid role with very low utility. He’s still highly susceptible to hard CC (stuns/snares) but he does have a slow immunity, which will be nice for chasing. Unfortunately, chasing is usually a bad thing, unless you’re running cleanup after a teamfight, in which case its usually best to just push.

      Healing got some massive nerfs this patch. Alistar now has greater self healing by 20 percent at all levels, but his allies will now only receive half the heal value. Ouch. Taric got cooldown and value buffs to his heal, but radiance no longer heals allies. Radiance also costs more mana for both startup and upkeep so you’ll probably have to break out that mana regen rune page if you still want to play him. Rally also got its ally heal removed, though the cooldown came down a full 90 seconds.

      Katarina caught a big rework, giving her more base health and some survivability in the form of new Killer Instincts mechanics. The active Shunpo effect now reduces incoming damage by scaling percentage per level, giving her the durability to jump into a fight and ult when it’s actually useful instead of waiting until it’s over like she’s basically had to recently. Killer Instincts now adds a persistent damage buff and the damage ratio on her ultimate got a 10 percent buff. Overall, she should be decent now, though I doubt she’ll be great.

      Morgana got some nice cooldown and mana efficiency buffs for her skills as well as the addition of a stacking MR debuff from Tormented Soil. Having played as her and also against her on the TR I can tell you she is truly horrifying. Just pray she doesn’t ever catch you alone.

      Shen got reworked a bit, which will hopefully bring him out of the godlike tier on TT. The feint damage block will be excellent, but I think the cooldown increase, duration nerf, and nerf to damage blocked (now 180 at max rank) will be enough to keep him in line. AP Shen may be a bit more viable though. I’ll have to check on his AP ratios and relay what I can after some testing. Stand United also caught a nerf, bringing down the shield value, duration, and removing the refund if the ult is cancelled for some reason.

      Other than that most of the changes were fairly small. Nunu got some buffs. Mordekaiser received some shield tweaks. Fiddlesticks got a long overdue nerf. Sion and Rammus got some small efficiency buffs. Tryndamere got a bit of a buff and Jax caught another small nerf (which still isn’t enough).

      As for the game on the whole, there are two new items – one for tanks, one for physical damage dealers – and the assist system got a rework for debuffs on the target and buffs to the attacker. It should give support some much needed love. Matchmaking also received some changes to make things a little more smooth. Players should now be matched more appropriately by both level and ELO (it scares me that this wasn’t always the case) and full premades should be facing other premades more often (again, why wasn’t this happening or being discussed?).

      Last but not least we got some skins. Garen gets the typical duo treatment, while we have yet another silly skin for Warwick (Grandma), a corresponding Annie skin (Red Riding Hood), and a skin for Sivir. I have to say, I hate Sivir – I think she is one of the most poorly designed toons in the entire game – but the Warrior Princess skin makes her look hotter (yeah, bangs are hot) and the extra armor makes her look kinda badass. If it didn’t cost 975 RP I would totally buy it and potentially right click my way to a huge winning streak with her.

      Development, league of legends

      Halo:Reach gets the live action treatment

      April 26, 2010 /

      Skull spartan.More and more video games are turning to live action shorts to serve as commercials in the months leading up to release. Perhaps the most notable was the Halo:ODST trailer last year, but there were also shorts for Assassin’s Creed II, Alan Wake, and Ghost Recon:Future Soldier. We can now add another to the list for Bungie’s latest and last Halo project, Halo:Reach.

      The Reach short will debut tomorrow night at 9PM PST. The short, which was directed by Noam Murro, details the story of Carter 259, the Spartan squad leader you’re sent to control for the title’s campaign. More specifically, you’ll get to see how Carter evolved from your average marine into a suited-up badass Covenant killing machine.

      Keep an eye on Bungie.net for more updates.

      Development, Xbox 360

      LoL: You gotta have team solidarity

      April 25, 2010 /

      League of Legends champ spread.Now that I’m back to winning, I’ve been able to spend more of my time thinking about game mechanics and less time wondering if it’s possible to set my horrible teammates on fire from great distance using only my mind. In all seriousness, though, when I’m in a losing streak I tend to lose focus on simple things, like paying attention to whether or not my opponent Fiddlesticks’ ultimate is up. I also tend to get super kill-greedy, which is why I’m making this post.

      I finally had a chance to play some Arranged Team with two friends and enjoy some time on Twisted Treeline. It went well for the most part, though we did struggle in one game. Our success was largely due to our focus on team solidarity, meaning we were consistently targeting the same target, switching targets to protect one another, and generally playing as a team. It’s one of those things that’s hard to pinpoint when it isn’t working, but feels so damn good when it is.

      If you’ve been having trouble stacking up some wins lately, try to get back to teamfighting basics. Always stick with your teammates, and try to position yourself so you can be most effective. For support, that usually means away from the action. DPS and tanks can be in the mix, trying to rip down targets as fast as possible. Whatever you do, though, make sure you move as a team.

      league of legends

      LoL: Finally getting some wins

      April 25, 2010 /

      winning_againI promise, guys, I’ll stop bitching about my extended losing streak soon. It’s actually starting to look like things might come around. I had a really nice string of games tonight, highlighted by an exciting Kennen victory in which I picked up a quada-kill. It was good times.

      Bitching aside, I am curious what your experience has been lately. For a long while there, and I mean 150 games or so, it seemed like matchmaking was treating me just fine. I was getting the occasional player I thought was probably out of his league, but for the most part games were won or lost based on errors and poor judgement, not a complete lack of skill.

      Lately, though, it’s been a wreck. I had my bout with seriously noob teammates who were still level 30, but my experience since has been punctuated by anomalies like a game earlier tonight in which my team’s Warwick had played just 33 games. As someone with approximately 1500 games under my belt, I was more than a little surprised. We dominated that game, pushed to nexus in 20 minutes legitimately, but it still made little sense considering my opponents were all level 30.

      A good friend also reported a game on TT recently where he was matched against two level 1 characters, both of which had zero wins. Granted, they were a premade with a friend, but even then, should they be paired up against a guy I regularly play and win with? They were beaten soundly, 13-0 in 18 minutes. That’s hardly even fun for the winning team, much less the losing side.

      So how have things been – average, good, or much worse than normal? I know my ELO is headed back in the right direction, but even the matches I’ve won have had their share of what I would call mid-tier/average players on both teams.

      league of legends

      LoL: Are the spotlights helpful or misleading?

      April 24, 2010 /

      Phreak owns some noobs.Since Ezreal’s release, Phreak has been taking time out of his busy pwnage schedule to bring the community some Champion Spotlights, short videos aimed at increasing the understanding and visibility of certain, difficult champions. I really enjoyed the first – Ezreal was such a different playstyle that it seemed appropriate to highlight his strengths, particularly when played against good players. We’ve since had spotlights for Shen, Pantheon, Kennen, and now Anivia and I have to say, I’ve been less and less impressed with each subsequent spotlight.

      To be fair, I think the Champion Spotlight accomplishes part of the goal – it does good job of detailing the basic mechanics for a hero and offers at least one perspective players can use to build the hero if they’re just learning. The problem, though, is that Phreak’s last several spotlights have been played against far less skilled players, which makes the champions seem godlike if you can just follow a few simple steps. Granted, he never says those words or even alludes to them, but he does talk about the relative “strength” of a champion when he’s sitting on an unstoppable streak or better.

      As an example, this most recent Anivia spotlight included a kill montage in which Phreak takes down a Yi with little trouble (anyone surprised?). That Yi player has 179 wins, 159 of which are with Master Yi. That wouldn’t be a hard kill for 80% of the toons in the game. In another scene, Phreak gets an easy kill on a Shaco, who tries to jump him as he recalls. In Phreak’s words, Shaco couldn’t withstand Anivia’s “basic spell combo.” Look at the stats, though. At that point Phreak is legendary and four levels above his opponent. The “basic spell combo” far outranks anything Shaco has, not to mention the well-beyond-basic damage output of a legendary mage with 12 stacks on a Soulstealer.

      Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have a problem with Phreak or his narration. My beef is that these spotlights are supposed to highlight a champion’s abilities for an average game, to display their place in a team. Any champion would looks appealing when they’re legendary and grossly outlevel the opponent.

      The even bigger problem, for me anyway, is that I immediately write off any player who plays a toon Phreak has recently spotlighted, particularly if they use Phreak’s build. Is it fair? No, of course not. Is it possible these people are experienced with that given champion? Of course it is. Unfortunately, I keep getting burned and burned badly. I just got out of a game with a Flash/Ignite Anivia who was 2-5-0 and diving into packs of three enemies at a time. He claimed he played Anivia long before the spotlight. Right.

      league of legends

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