Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 174 of 260)

LoL: Servers are up, store is down

Taric in the 5th Age.The servers are officially back online and staging games. I’m in one now to give a test to some of the new features, mostly the new store. I would love to say I’m giving Kennen a go, but the store is down and I haven’t been able to purchase him.

Udyr’s running a thread on the forums to address the store maintenance. There is no ETA yet, but hopefully it will be fixed within the next hour.

I neglected to mentioned a couple new skins in the patch. Pantheon got a 300-themed skin, all shirtless, rippling goodness, and Taric got a crazy-fabulous pink skin, dubbed the Armor of the 5th Age. I have no clue what that means, but it looks pretty incredible. Nothing quite like marching down towers in bright pink glory.

LoL: Patch day 04/08 (Kennen)

Deadly Kennen.Another patch day is upon us, bringing another ninja to your summoner’s pane in the form of Kennen, the Heart of the Tempest. As with every patch, there’s a host of balance changes and tweaks along with the usual skin release and random audio updates.

First, let’s talk Kennen. I’m pretty excited about him, though he probably won’t hit his stride for a couple weeks. There was more active discussion on the test realm forums about his AP ratios and skillset than I’ve seen for any of the other recent heroes so I’ll be curious to see where he ends up. For now it seems he’s somewhere in the middle of the pack with regard to viability. His ult needs some considerable work to be truly powerful (personally I say drop the CD down to Ryze levels and he’s good).

Jax is finally catching a nerf, though not to his obscene survivability. His AP ratios have been lowered across the board, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, Ninja Tabi got a small buff to both armor and dodge and Phantom Dancer caught a dodge/movespeed buff as well. I see more scary AD Jax players in my immediate future.

Other than that things mostly remained the same. Anivia got a small movespeed buff, Ryze got a little nerf, and Janna caught some much-needed love with a slightly tweaked ult to include a slow for targets who reenter the heal and some mana efficiency improvements. The Item Shop UI has been tweaked and several items have been changed, perhaps the most significant of which is Haunting Guise, which now gives lifesteal on spell damage.

Overall I think this should be a pretty sweet patch. I’ve got 7300 IP banked for the Kennen purchase and 3900 RP to spend on some new skins. Hello, Swamp Master Yod…err…Kennen.

First round of WoW class changes are up

Level 80 Shaman.Yesterday we got news that Blizzard would start to preview the class changes coming with WoW: Cataclysm. Good to its word, the changes are up on the official forums. So far it’s just Shamans and Warlocks, but it’s something, right?

The changes seem…good? I don’t know. Honestly, it’s been so long since I’ve played either class that it’s tough to say whether the changes are actually decent or if they’re just changes that will be unqualified until they’ve actually been tested. My guess is the latter. This kind of thing usually takes a while to properly iron out, and even then there are periods of underwhelming results for a lot of classes. Remember the sad state of the elemental shaman?How bout the retadin?

Today also brings word that press-only beta opt-in invites are going out. That points to a very close beta date, but the fact that it’s press only means it’s probably a hype ploy. Why give it only to the press if you want real testing? Because they’ll leak things, that’s why. I’m sure Blizzard is well aware of the fact that people have been losing interest and with Bob Kotick at the helm, you can bet everyone at Activision is anxious to keep profits high.

LoL: Dealing with losing streaks

Summoner's Rift defeat.A couple weeks ago I went on a tear. I had been somewhere around 50 games over .500 for a little under a month and for whatever reason it seemed the stars had aligned. I was getting matched with smart teammates who could communicate and move as a group. Even when my teammates left a little to be desired, my opponents were always in far worse shape. My win count climbed and climbed until I plateaued sometime last week at 69 games up.

I should have seen it coming. Over the course of the past two weeks I’m now down 16 games, back to 53 over even. I know, that’s still 3 games positive, but when the swings come in batches of 15 games or so, I don’t really know what to do. As it stands I’m about as frustrated as I’ve ever been with the game. As my friends and I like to say, I seem to be losing the teammate lottery time and time again.

Once my score dropped below 60 games up, I decided I would go tryhard, choosing only the strongest toons for the map at hand. I rolled a bunch of games as Jax and Poppy on TT and had my first Twisted Fate match on SR in a long, long time. None of it seemed to matter. I carried the SR game handily, with 2 legendary streaks and a handful of turret kills. The rest, though, were mostly losses. I’ve had teammates AFK, teammates leave, teammates who start fighting with one another before the game even starts. The latest trend is teammates who refuse to get survivability. Two games in a row I played with an ally Morgana. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but Morgana dominates on TT if she’s played well. The spell shield alone is enough to make any DPS champ climax with glee. Throw her ultimate down in a team fight and you’ve got nearly guaranteed victory.

There is one caveat: she has to live. You know what doesn’t help her live? All the blasting wands my teammates keep buying. Then there was the Ashe that refused to buy any health items against Sion, Nasus, and Shaco. I’m sure you can imagine how that turned out.

By this point I’ve given up on the tryhard comps. My last game I played Yi. I was legendary. We still lost because of the aforementioned Ashe. I’ve got my fingers crossed for some good action in the next round of games I have time for. I’ll be playing whoever strikes my fancy until I can turn this ship around. At the very worst, I figure my ELO will drop to the point that I can just steamroll some opponents and hope that the streak will turn in my favor.

You want WoW news, you got it

WoW Cataclysm wallpaper.It figures just one day after I write a post wondering what happened to everyone’s favorite MMO, Blizzard decides to unveil some of the major changes coming to each of the game’s ten classes. Oh, except Paladins, but really, who likes Paladins anyway?

Technically, we don’t have the changes just yet. There was a post on the official forums, though, that said we’d get a preview of the new spells, skill changes, talent trees, and other class modifications to be found in Cataclysm within 24 hours. As to the Paladin thing, here’s what Blizzard had to say:

The paladin is still deep in development. Instead of giving a preview that would be potentially less comprehensive than the other classes we made the decision to post it when it’s ready, in order to properly honor the paladin class and those that play them. The wait isn’t too long however as we’re expecting to be able to post it on April 16.

I would never have guessed that “deep in development” meant one week from public consumption, but I’m not a developer now, am I.

This is a big day for the crackheads. It’s the first real news about specific changes in Cataclysm since the expansion was announced.

Source: WoW Forums

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