crit
Latest
Stats 201: Getting your secondary stats just right
Though we did an article covering the game's basic stats that will guide you through leveling any character, once you hit level 90 you need to start considering your secondary stats. These stats, like hit and expertise, become more important when you stop leveling through content and gear to stop at top-tier content. Unfortunately, figuring out what these stats are, what they do, and what you need isn't exactly self-explanatory -- sometimes even requiring you to consult an addon or website to figure out whether a new piece of gear is really an upgrade. Fortunately, Blizzard is working on simplifying the system with Warlords of Draenor, removing a some secondary stats and the ability to reforge gear -- which will make it a lot easier to tell what gear is an upgrade and start using it immediately. Unfortunately, if you're a new 90 or you've just boosted a new character to 90, you still have to deal with the current system, so we'll lay out just what the secondary stats on your gear mean -- and how to tweak them to your liking with reforging so you're ready to hop into LFR or whatever else you want to do.
Champions Online nerfs dodge for the sake of diversity
Champions Online is looking to nerf -- er, re-balance -- its dodge mechanic for the sake of diverse builds. As it stands, Cryptic noticed that the too many players were stacking dodge for its passive ability that outstripped other forms of avoidance and tanking. A new dev diary explains that while dodge tanking will still be viable, the team is looking to reduce dodge rating, keep the chance bonuses flat, and make dodge proc off of active powers. A new power, fluidity, will be introduced as a block power to help superheroes avoid being hit. The team is also lowering the damage from critical chance in an upcoming build while raising the damage from offense to keep it from being lopsided. These changes follow significant tweaks to the game's alert system in the previous patch.
Blood Pact: Buffs and debuffs for warlocks and logs
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill is almost free for summer. Almost. The last two weeks have been on simple topics like glancing at a raid parse on World of Logs (WoL) or looking at the various graphs WoL has. Before we dive into the actual combat log itself with the expression editor, I'm going to take a stop at what buffs and debuffs are going on in the fight. This information is still broad in scope and can apply to almost anyone, but it's still important foundation knowledge for warlocks and logs.
Blood Pact: Find greater knowledge in elites' tricks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill finally landed a heroic-mode soulwell this Ji-Kun kill. Every time we hit Ji-Kun, I try to place a soulwell mid-air. There isn't any performance-breaking reason to do this other than pure amusement as raidmates try to "grab the cookie from my jar, young grasshopper." But it's possibly my favorite use of KJC so far. This isn't an trick that requires super skill. Mostly, it's whether or not you can time your cast, your latency, and the wind that grabs you off Gastropod Boulevard. But what I do like to do sometimes is watch elite players from the top guilds in the world do fights in a crazy or simply slightly different way. Usually this involves watching a lot of soloing videos: e.g, Spygnesy, who just uploaded a warlock solo of Ragnaros in Firelands. But when it comes to minor tips for huge meter wrecking, I love watching Sparkuggz of play.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Items and runes for League of Legends' attack damage champions
Attack damage is a universal thing for most League of Legends champions to build. Even characters that do not normally build AD are commonly played as AD in "joke builds." AD champions also have some of the widest variety of items available. There are a fair number of caster and tank items and a handful of hybrid items, but items that bolster physical attacks are everywhere. This can cause some confusion in what to build, and today we're going to talk about what gives you the most bang for your buck. This article will focus heavily on offense rather than defense for AD champions. We'll cover defense in a later week.
Five Diablo III Wizard myths tested and debunked
When building your Diablo III Wizard, you have two main schools of thought on weapon type: use a high-damage two handed weapon with low attack speed or use a one-handed weapon and offhand and stack as much attack speed as possible. Items with increased attack speed on them greatly increase damage per second on paper, but there is some confusion in the Wizard community as to which spells are affected by it. Some players contend that Blizzard and Hydra are unaffected by attack speed; others report that channeled spells ignore both critical hit chance and attack speed. To find out the truth, I bought a two-handed weapon with 0.9 attack speed and a one-handed weapon with 1.6, both with the same rated damage per second. I then tested every spell on the zombies at the start of Act 1 in hell mode dozens of times and checked the damage difference, finally adding attack speed rings and amulets and re-testing both weapons. For almost every spell, the one-handed setup dealt lower damage but hit more frequently, averaging to the same damage per second. But the story was a little different for Hydra, Blizzard, and channeled spells. In this guide, I put five popular Diablo III Wizard myths to the test and discover the inner workings of Energy Armour, Hydra, Blizzard, Critical Mass, and other abilities.
Arcane Brilliance: Do mages need to be hit-capped?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we're discussing a topic near and dear to a caster's heart: the problems associated with reaching the hit cap. Because when you conjure a flaming boulder from the ether and hurl it toward the hideous walking nest of claws and teeth that's currently eating your tank, you don't want to miss. We've discussed this before. But this is a new expansion, and a new crop of players seems to be playing it, and I just had to berate a holy pally in Zul'Gurub for like 15 minutes about how he doesn't want the Hakkari Loa Drape that just dropped because he doesn't need the hit rating on it and he should give it to the elemental shaman instead -- and did I mention it took 15 minutes to convince him of this? Needless to say, the run was long, yeah, and lo, it was also full of wiping. So the facts are these: The game has been out a long time, but the playerbase is constantly rotating. It may be hard for old-timers to accept, but even the most basic of gameplay concepts still need to be explained, and ignorance of a thing doesn't constitute a bad player, necessarily -- just a new one or one who is returning after an extended absence. All of this is the long way of answering the many emails and comments I've gotten lately about hit rating, its importance, and whether or not mages still need to worry about capping it. The short way? Cap hit.
Spiritual Guidance: Further changes on Patch 4.2 PTR to consider
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen tries to go back to the future -- or the past, or something. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. It's been another exciting week for healing priests who have their sight focused on patch 4.2 and the next raiding tier. First, Blizzard announced that it was going to go ahead with its plan to change how critical heals worked. Previously, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) explained that the developers were looking to increase the value of crit for healers, since most classes were ignoring it in favor of other stats. Now that they've gone ahead with their plans, we'll need to examine the impact this will have on discipline and holy priests. But before we do that, we have to look at the most exciting news for priests this past week: Our set bonuses got changed! If you missed it, last Thursday Zarhym hopped on the forums and announced that the developers had made some changes to the set bonuses of several classes. Priests were, of course, on that list.
Spiritual Guidance: Shield spam and Divine Aegis, a theorycrafting story
In the beginning there were priests. Then Blizzard said "Let there be other classes!" Things have been a lot more complicated ever since. Fortunately, there is Spiritual Guidance, WoW.com's bi-weekly guide for priests. On Sundays you can enjoy discussion on discipline, holy, and healing in the company of Dawn Moore. We don't have cookies here, but only because we call them biscuits, and serve them with tea, sandwiches, and scones. Did you want one lump, or two? A couple of months ago I found myself talking to a non-priest about the gems I had slotted on my character. He was of the understanding that disc priests wanted nothing but crit, and thought it was strange that I had gemmed straight spellpower on all my gear. Figuring he was behind on the times, I happily explained to him that I was using the standard gem set up for shield spamming disc priests, which works around the premise that if the majority of what we do is cast shields, then we should stack as much spellpower as possible in order to make our most used spell (Power Word: Shield) absorb more. This is the standard practice advised to shield spammers throughout the priest community, and I've advised it here on Spiritual Guidance before as well. The non-priest still didn't understand though. He kept insisting "but crit ..." which inclined me to gently stroke back his hair and say "there there, poor little confused non-priest, it's all right." I allowed him his dignity though, and instead went on with my explanation. I told him that alternative stats like crit and haste didn't do much for shield spamming since Power Word: Shield can't crit, and Borrowed Time removes the necessity for haste since the talent carries us down to the 1 second GCD soft cap whenever we cast Power Word: Shield. The non-priest still didn't understand, so I explained to him that a disc priest's primary interest in crit was Divine Aegis, a talent which applies a second shield whenever one of your spells crits. "But shields don't crit," I reiterated. "The heal from the Glyph of Power Word: Shield can, but that would only add say ... 500 extra absorption from Divine Aegis. The spellpower is still better." As I typed out those last words, they boomeranged back and hit me square in the face. Startled, I peeled the sans serif off my nose and and reexamined the limp letters in my hands. Suddenly I wondered, "is that really true?"
Raid Rx: Is that DPS gear or healing gear?
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. If in need of additional healing advice, check out the Plus Heal community. Thanks to Dawn and Allison for filling in for me while I was away at Laguna Seca. Dawn did an excellent job discussing pointers about paladin-less healing. Maybe the next time I join a raid that doesn't have a holy paladin, it won't take hours to get off the ground. Then Allison comes along discussing what is considered good and bad when applying to guilds. What's scary is that some of those seem familiar. It's as if she looked at one of my guild applications years ago. Got an email this week from a reader. We'll call him G. I'm sure it's a question that many raid leaders or loot masters had to struggle with over the years. [...] When cloth item A drops, our caster DPS and healers always /roll on it; the caster DPS doesn't seem to mind if it's MP5 or spirit. Let's take an example of the Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner. Our warlock says spirit is good for him and he /rolls; our priest says it's healer gear [because] of the spirit [as] regeneration for him; and our mage of course wants this also. The healer complains the caster DPS gets to roll not only on items like this but also on cloth stuff with +hit, effectually rolling on everything cloth in ICC. I can kinda see what he means. My question is what's an easy way to differentiate "healer" gear from caster "DPS" gear, or is it all rolled into one big pot now? Thanks for any help you can give me, I am not the guild leader but I am the full time loot master, the guild leader has given it to me to decide, as he's never played any caster at all.
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for enhancement shaman
Breaking news: enhancement shamans get the dumb in Cataclysm. Intellect is gone! Are we becoming rogues with mana? No doubt you've read the big changes coming in Cataclysm. At this point there are a few confirmed points with the rest falling into the "confirmed they'll be changing" category. What do these changes mean for enhancement shamans? Read on.
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for mages
I have to say, there's an awful lot in the just-announced Cataclysm stat and system changes to take in. But if you're anything like me, you're able to cope with that dense heap of information by narrowing your focus to what's really important: what does all this mean for mages? Here's the short list of specific things we need to be aware of: Stamina - Like all clothies, we'll be seeing a bunch more of it on our gear. The aim is to have our max health be similar to that of plate-wearing classes. Spirit - We won't need it anymore. It'll be a healer-only stat, and we'll be getting our mana regen some other way. In other news, there is a God. Intellect - Now grants spellpower, but will provide less mana than it does now. I assume this is to balance out our mana pools with all that extra intellect we'll be seeing on all our gear. Spellpower - Gone from most gear, the only place we'll now be seing straight-up spellpower that isn't tied directly to intellect will be on weapons, and only to distinguish caster weapons from melee weapons. Haste - Still around. Critical Strike Rating - Still around. MP5 - Gone. Spell Ranks - Gone. Every spell will now have only one rank and will scale with level. The levels at which we learn many of them will change, to fill in the gaps. Mastery - New stat that will be tied directly to your talents. Supposedly, no matter your spec or class, getting more of this will always, always make you better at whatever it is that you're best at. For me, this means getting more mastery will make my mage incrementally better at making fun of warlocks. Existing gear - All of it will change to reflect this new statistical system, but we're being assured that the gear we have now will still be good for us. I have concerns about this, though. Brief (as brief as you're going to get with me, anyway) analysis after the break.
Scattered Shots: Picking the right hunter loot, part 1
Welcome back to the Scattered Shots, the weekly hunter class column. This week we begin our series "Picking the right hunter loot." Where we will review what truly makes something qualify as hunter loot, and not just loot hunters can use. We'll also review the drops off of each major raids starting with Naxxrammas and ending with the PTR Patch 3.3 raid, Ice Crown. So join me, Eddie Carrington, aka Brigwyn from The Hunting Lodge, as we explore what loot we should put on our watch lists. Things on the patch 3.3 PTR are getting closer and closer to wrapping up, so I thought it might be a good idea to review hunter stats and how they help you select the right gear for you. In the past we have talked about how to use iLevel to do a gear check. Also, we've talked about how to use the different hunter tools and resources out there to select an upgrade for your hunter. What we really haven't talked about was what makes up good hunter gear, and in each of the different raids in Wrath of The Lich King makes up some good hunter gear. And a recent comment on the Damage Dealing forum from Ghostcrawler got me thinking that it might be a good idea to make sure to first review how stats impact our gear choices, and how they impact both our and our pet's raid performance. Just like the hunter leveling guide, I'd like to set a few discussion guidelines.
The Daily Quest: Goodnight, sweet prince
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. The blogosphere is going to be a little less fun from now on. Ratshag has called it a day. All Things Azeroth #138 is available for download. Check out the website for a list of topics! Help! Help! I'm at 540 defense and got crit! What happened!? Too Many Annas has a bunch of tips for the brand new roleplayer. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Phat Loot Phriday: Cosmos
I don't remember doing an off-hand for a while, and this is pretty much the offhand to have. Who wouldn't want to carry the universe around in the palm of your hand?Name: Cosmos (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDB)Type: Epic Off-handDamage/Speed: N/AAbilities: +52 Stamina, +55 Intellect. Which points at Warlocks (they tend to value Stamina, as they can convert HP to mana), but really any caster who uses offhands would love this one. Because it improves hit rating by 51 (!), crit strike rating by 41, and spell power by 84. %Gallery-33600%
The Queue: I have no regrets. Well, maybe one...
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Maintenance day, maintenance day! One of the best days of the week, or one of the worst? I'll leave that to all of you to decide.Nautical D asked...I stopped playing WoW just before 3.0 patch came out and deleted all my characters and items to make sure I didn't return, is there any way I could get back and start on WotLK without having to roll new chars?
Arcane Brilliance: Statistically speaking
Arcane Brilliance is a Mage column on a weekly spawn timer. It shows up all of a sudden on your computer screen or your iphone and starts wandering about, waiting for somebody to come shake it down for loot. What does this rare and wondrous column drop, you may ask? It drops a magical potion that, when imbibed, grants the magical ability to waste about 15 minutes of your employer's time reading a column about Mages. Hurry up and tag it, before the guy in the next cubicle does!I'm listening to a playlist full of old NES chiptunes as I write this, Zanac, Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, Crystalis, Shatterhand, Tecmo Super Bowl, Legacy of the Wizard--just some awesome old stuff, some of which comes from composers who went on to become even more awesome. I love the game music from that era; I find it absolutely amazing what those guys could make that tiny sound chip do. And yes, I am a massive and unrepentant dork. Why do I bring this up? I have the playlist on shuffle, and the overworld theme from Dragon Warrior just played, and it got me thinking about this week's subject: stats.Dragon Warrior was my first role-playing game. It was my first exposure to such concepts as experience points, and leveling up, and hit points. Stats in games of that era were pretty simple. You had strength, which affected how hard you hit things, and agility, which...made you more agile? Who knew? That was about it. Hit points measured how many whacks you could take before you died, and magic points ran out as you used spells. There wasn't a whole lot to it.When I first started playing WoW, knowing which statistics were important to my Mage and which weren't was comparatively simple too. As you leveled, you looked for intellect and spirit. At max level, you learned the value of a few other stats, like spell crit, spell damage, and spell hit rating. Generally, if it said "spell" in front of it, your Mage wanted it. Now, though, we have so many different stats--one covering every aspect of every spell we cast, and so many different ways to customize the amounts of each that your Mage's gear has--that it can be quite daunting trying to decide which ones to prioritize. Follow me through the break where we'll discuss the various caster stats and the relative value of each to our class.
The Queue: It's always sunny in Azeroth
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. Today has been a busy day around WoW Insider HQ (we actually have a virtual HQ where we sit around and work with each other; often we are served milk and cookies). So The Queue is coming to you a bit later than normal. We've seen the surprise announcement of BlizzCon 2009 come across our desk today, a good preview of Ulduar, PTR 3.1 testing information, and the opening of the arena tournament registration. Now all we need is the actual PTR to go live. Come on Ghostcrawler... you know you wanna push that live button...Drew M. asked..."Do heals crit?"
Spiritual Guidance: Secondary stats and what to stack
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Some requests were made recently to help newer Priests figure out what secondary stats are important and what to aim for. Matticus shall help! I know when I started playing World of Warcraft, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to secondary stats. To be fair, stats like Hit didn't exist back in the day. This post is meant for newer Priests who aren't quite sure what these secondary stats do or what they mean. Just to be clear, primary stats are base attributes like stamina and intellect. Secondary stats are things like haste and critical strike rating.
Encrypted Text: Patiently awaiting patch 3.0.8
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we'll discuss the upcoming Rogue changes in patch 3.0.8.According to the SK-Gaming Top 100, Rogues are doing pretty well. Our fraternity of assassins has a solid hold on the coveted #3 slot, behind the insanely dominant Death Knight / Holy Paladin combination. With Druids and Warriors being as powerful as they were in Seasons 3 and 4, seeing them bring up the bottom of the Top 100 representation is the truest indicator of significant balance changes that Wrath brought with it.Luckily, I feel that Rogues are far stronger than our 10% representation shows. We are poised to absorb the market share that Paladin and Death Knights will be hemorrhaging when the long-awaited patch 3.0.8 comes to right all the wrongs that this team has committed. Four of the top six classes in the SK-100 are being nerfed significantly, with Rogues being the least affected by these changes. After the cut, I'll cover important changes for Rogues in 3.0.8, as well as a few changes that will alter our top opponents as well.
