crowd-control
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The Daily Grind: What mob do you hate fighting?
I'm an equal opportunity killer; put a bad guy in front of me, give me a flimsy excuse to blast it into kingdom come, and watch me go at it. But I'll admit that there are some mobs I shy away from more than others, not because they have me quaking in my booties, but because they're just... annoying to fight. Usually these are the mobs that pull out some form of crowd control by stunning me, knocking me down, or disabling my skills. I'm also not fond of mobs that like to vanish for a while before reappearing, nor of the ones that like to run home to mama when their health bar gets to 15%. I'm betting that you have pet peeves in the form of a particular mob or two. Which ones do you hate fighting and why? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Black Gold's Skycaller class designed for crowd control, support
If you're a fan of crowd control classes, chances are good that you'll like Black Gold Online's new Skycaller class. An update on the steampunk MMO's website says that the newly announced archetype is "capable of high-level single-target crowd control abilities plus excellent support." The Skycaller also boasts "long-range area attacks with light damage but crippling effects." Skycallers wear light armor, and they can be played by either the Kosh or Yutonian races. Snail has also provided a description of the class's special moves as well as a bit of lore, all of which you can read via the links below.
Warlords of Draenor is making big changes to WoW's number game
When World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor hits, players will be adjusting to more than just a new continent and gussied-up character models. With the expansion, Blizzard is looking to squish stats across the board, bring racial traits into parity with each other, prune excess abilities among the classes, and nerf a bunch of the game's crowd control skills. The stat-squishing in particular is something that the developers address at length in a new "watercooler" post: "It's important to understand that this isn't a nerf -- in effect, you'll still be just as powerful, but the numbers that you see will be easier to comprehend. This also won't reduce your ability to solo old content. In fact, to provide some additional peace of mind, we're implementing further scaling of your power against lower-level targets so that earlier content will be even more accessible than it is now." The post goes into detail about the reasoning behind the changes and how the devs expect each of them to improve WoW as a whole, so give it a read if Warlords of Draenor is on your wish list this year.
Dev Watercooler: Pruning the Gardens of War
We've been waiting for it forever and it's finally here -- Blizzard released the first in a series of Dev Watercoolers discussing Warlords of Draenor. This particular post is about systems changes and the reasons behind them. So what did they reveal this time? The upcoming item squish is detailed, both in terms of the reasoning behind it and the effects it will have. In order to ensure old content will still be soloable, you'll even see a buff implemented when higher level characters clear older content to make them even more powerful by comparison. Base damage on player spells and abilities is being removed - all abilities and damage will scale with spell or attack power. Racial traits are being adjusted - high outliers (like, perhaps, Every Man For Himself) will be reduced in power, while obsolete abilities will be removed entirely. In terms of the ability purge (called 'pruning' here), one big target is Cooldowns. Various classes with multiple cooldowns will see them removed or combined. Crowd Control is seeing a significant overhaul and reduction, with a complete list on the blog post - examples include interrupts no longer having added silences, certain CC's like Cyclone now being dispellable, and all stuns now sharing the same DR.
Blood Pact: Do warlocks have button bloat?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill won't give it up on Soul Fire. Celestalon started the talk about what abilities would we be sad over losing. I don't know that warlocks would lose many spells with our recent expansion overhaul -- we're pretty streamlined as it is. Veteran warlocks can see and feel the difference between Cataclysm's complication and Mists' minimalism every time they play. A warlock class strength is that we're so flexible at dealing damage, whether we do it through DoTs or with direct damage, or whether we're single target masters or AoE beasts. So we end up with a good deal of situational abilities that confuse the casual or fresh warlock as to what should be keybound. We might not lose the amount of abilities that, say, hunters will, but we're likely not immune from the chopping block. Let's talk some suggestions.
Tamriel Infinium: The true meaning of The Elder Scrolls Online skill lines
I have always thought it presumptuous to declare that anyone can know the true meaning of anything. However, I believe that players might be led slightly astray by the latest Elder Scrolls Online video. I don't think that the ESO creators were lying because I do believe that it is distinctly possible to take on nearly any role no matter the class or race choice. However, as in every other MMO in existence, only certain combinations will reign supreme, and unfortunately, I also suspect that if you wish to fill a specific role, you will have to pick specific classes. Thanks to some of the data fan sites have gathered from convention playthroughs, we can guestimate which combinations will fill which roles the best. In order to understand where I'm coming from, let's explore how the progression system works. The minimalistic user interface for ESO displays four components related to your skills. Your health bar depletes every time an enemy lands a hit. The magicka bar indicates the amount of spell-slinging power you have. The stamina bar depletes when you perform a physical action like dodging or swinging your axe. Then you also have the toolbar, which gives you five active ability slots and an ultimate slot. When you reach a certain level, you will be able to actively switch between two toolbars based on your weapon. Your weapon, armor, and skills determine which role you play in a group.
What is crowd control and how do I use it?
You've probably heard about crowd control -- or maybe even used it yourself -- but you may be a little unclear as to what people want when they ask you to "CC" or "sheep" a monster. Crowd control generally refers to a lot of different skills, but they all have one thing in common: they let you, in some way, control the actions or movement of a hostile target. The standard example is mage's Polymorph spell, which turns its target into a sheep for up to 50 seconds, during which it wanders aimlessly, without doing any damage or casting any spells. So just why would you want to "sheep" a monster? Well, when it's a sheep, it's not attacking you or your party, which can be the difference between life and death when you're trying to take out a large group of monsters at once. The idea is that you polymorph one monster while you focus on taking down others. When the polymorph runs out, you can either recast it to get more time to fight your other targets or take that opportunity to kill the formerly polymorphed monster. Good use of crowd control can let you and the rest of your group take on more difficult monsters and groups by limiting who's attacking you. So just how do you become a crowd control ninja -- and the hero of any party you're in? We'll walk you through the basics.
The Daily Grind: Is crowd control in MMOs dead?
Crowd control used to be a major feature of MMO gameplay, so much that CC, not DPS, was considered the third element of the MMO holy trinity until World of Warcraft swept into the market in 2004 without a dedicated crowd-control class. Before that, crowd-control characters enjoyed an almost godlike status in MMORPGs. An EverQuest Enchanter was one class you never partied without, Dark Age of Camelot's RvR was infamous for its unbalanced zerg mezes, and City of Heroes embraced crowd control so closely that it named an entire archetype for it: the Controller. Not only did WoW begin the trend of deleting pure crowd controllers from game rosters everywhere, it also downplayed the importance of crowd control in general, so much that many of WoW's modern dungeons have little to no trash that'd require control in the first place. It's dramatically different gameplay from the style of the aforementioned City of Heroes, which literally threw huge crowds of villains at you to control and subdue in order to make you feel heroic. Are other modern games continuing the trend? Is crowd control, or at least crowd-control characters as we once knew them, dead? And are they a welcome casualty of the slow elimination of group-or-die MMO gameplay? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Summoner's Guidebook: How to get through a LoL teamfight alive
It feels good to be back to writing strategy articles about League of Legends. When I play a lot, I want to punch out words about what I'm thinking about, and while covering a tournament is exciting, I really enjoy teaching fundamentals a lot more. This week we're going to cover teamfighting again. You guys might remember some things about teamfighting from me a while back, including a basic primer and a guide on positioning. I feel that my understanding of teamfighting -- and perhaps more importantly, my ability to communicate it -- has improved a lot since then. Some of that is from watching tournament matches and listening to others talk about teamfighting, but a lot of it is from watching pro streams and hearing what is going on in a top player's head too. This edition of The Summoner's Guidebook is a continuation of both of the previous teamfighting articles, and I suggest reading them too as the information there is still useful. I definitely recommend going back and reading them after you've finished reading this if you haven't already.
The future of CC and Diminishing Returns
Following his post on Friday listing out the giant categorization of Diminishing Returns (DR) in PvP, Blizzard Community Manager Lore has posted again regarding the future of DR and its PvP implications. Lore As our senior PvP designer Brian Holinka tweeted over the weekend, we've got some pretty solid goals for the future regarding crowd control. We do think it needs to be toned back a bit, both in the amount of CC effects available and in how frequently they can be used. That said, CC is still an integral part of World of Warcraft PvP. Dealing with it intelligently, both in choosing when to use your own CC as well as reacting to opponent CC's, does have strong gameplay value. Quote: Honestly going to guess they're getting the exact opposite of what they planned from it. Our only "plans" were to try to make an admittedly confusing system less so. Confusion about which CC effects share DR's doesn't help anyone. source So where do we go from here? First up, the post he's referring to in the section about their "plans" is the Diminishing Returns list published last week. This is an incredibly useful resource, which all teams should have at least a cursory glance at before they start trying to make CC chains. There's no need to memorize it, but it's good to have an idea of how your comp's CC works. But that aside, it's a pretty scary list. As Lore mentions above, Brian Holinka tweeted about their plans to rectify the issues behind the DR system in the next expansion. What are the options? What should they do? What shouldn't they do?
WildStar locks you down for a look at crowd control
Whether it's made up of stuns, knockdowns, sleeps, or disarms, there's a whole part of MMO gameplay dedicated to making sure your opponents don't get to do anything. The latest WildStar Dev Speak video notes that this is an important gameplay aspect that's also very challenging to manage from a design perspective. After all, having the ability to disable others adds a lot of strategic depth... but absolutely nobody enjoys being beaten on by multiple opponents without being able to do anything. So what's the WildStar solution? Simple: Make sure that even crowd-controlled players have something to do. If you're stunned, you can mash on a key to try and break out early as in many fighting games. Knocked down? Use a roll to get back on your feet quickly. Disarmed? Run over and grab your weapon! You can see several forms of crowd control in the video below, and while the changes might not prevent you from being stunlocked by seven people, you can at least react with something other than patience. [Source: Carbine Studios press release]
The Summoner's Guidebook: Support in League of Legends doesn't mean healing
Out of all the roles in League of Legends, support is the most misunderstood. People expect supports to be similar to healing classes in other games, the kinds of characters who knit sweaters and cook dinner while the real warriors go out and fight on the front lines. When people first learn about the metagame, they often have the mistaken impression that because the support doesn't farm, there are fewer expectations of the playstyle. However, supports are less like MMO healers and more like the shortstop in baseball. He's not a baseman, but that gives him flexibility to be where a baseman can't be. He's constantly in the thick of the action, and his team regularly relies on him to make plays. In League, the support's freedom from farming gives her the freedom to roam, to fish for aggressive opportunities and shut down the enemy. She can even wander into mid lane or the enemy jungle in search of these opportunities. Far from a shrinking violet, the support is one of the biggest playmakers on her team. I got my start in LoL playing support, and it's a role I inherently understand well. I'm not really happy making aggressive lane plays and would prefer to relax and let my mechanics win my games for me (hence why I like ADC), but when thrust into the role of playmaker, I do reasonably well. For team leaders or just people who like to make others play by their rules, support is the role of choice.
Pro Tip: Damage meters don't tell the whole story
Some people /ignore others in random raids or dungeons for language or bad play. I add to my instant /ignore list those who spam the meters in raid chat. Anyone who cares about whose bar is the longest is already measuring on their own screen. Not only is the reporter almost always on the top (and conveniently never reports when s/he is below), but displaying the damage done for a fight to the same raid who's on the meter is just pure epeen spill. Asking for a damage meter is just laziness (or, in rare cases, a really crappy computer paired with a log-intensive fight). Let's not forget that problem of boiling a player down to a single number. All three roles of the holy triad have a complex set of abilities for every encounter.
SMITE's newest god controls crowds and water
"Release the Kraken!" Yes, it was Zeus who said those words, but it was Poseidon who did the actual releasing. In Hi-Rez Studios' third-person multiplayer online battle arena SMITE, this god of the deep will take center stage in the patch dropping tomorrow. Poseidon's water-based abilities range from his passive wave-riding movement ability, Changing Tides, to his ultimate, Release the Kraken. Poseidon controls the battle field by slowing or impairing enemy movements. Besides dealing massive damage, his ultimate slows enemies in the blast radius, and his Whirlpool ability draws all enemies in the area toward the center of a raging maelstrom. Those players who enjoy playing support roles will definitely want to give this god a try tomorrow. Check out the full introductory video after the break.
Newest SMITE god specializes in ranged crowd control
Hi-Rez Studios has announced a new god this week for its popular multiplayer online battle arena SMITE. This god, named Neith: Weaver of Fate, is ushered in right along with the newest update to the open beta. Neith looks to be a ranged crowd control god who weaves and unravels webs to damage and control her enemies. You can learn all about Neith's origins and watch her in action during the video embedded just after the cut. [Thanks to Don for the tip!]
Patch 5.2 PTR: Triple turkey stack gobbled by pet battle crowd control nerf
Now that MoP has been out for a few months, I find myself enjoying pet battles far more than I thought I would. That being said, it was only a matter of time before griefing made its way into this part of the game as well -- even if it is by turkeys. Yes, turkeys. It all started with the rather harmless sounding "Triple Turkey." Unfortunately, it's not a sandwich I can nom on, but is instead something much more sinister in the world of pet battles. The Triple Turkey comp quickly became the flavor of the month for trolls in PvP pet battles, using abusing the irritating Food Coma ability to the max. If you've never encountered it before, Food Coma puts the opponent to sleep for two rounds, on a five round cooldown. But that cooldown only applies to the turkey who casts it. So, we were left with creative individuals who would use Food Coma, swap to a second turkey, use Food Coma, swap, and so on.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Teaming up to fight in League of Legends
Grouping up to fight enemies together is a concept that is old as history itself. Numerous treatises on group warfare have been written, ranging from small unit tactics to battle strategies involving hundreds of thousands or millions of combatants. A lot of the same principles of combat that are used in warfare are applicable to games and especially to team-based PvP games like League of Legends. It might not be readily apparent how ideas like the mission of a Marine rifle team might apply to a five-player team in LoL, but there are more similarities than you think. The tools are different -- for example, games use different means to suppress the enemy than real soldiers -- but the tactics are surprisingly similar. This week, we're going to cover the beginning of a fight. Starting a fight at an advantage is important element in victory, as the opening seconds of a battle matter the most. If you can leverage an advantage early on in a fight, you can snowball that advantage into a decisive win.
Is instant-cast crowd control too ubiquitous?
First, no, Polymorph isn't an instant-cast spell. Second, onwards! Blizzard Community Manager Nakatoir has posted this morning about Blizzard's current thinking on instant cast CC. Nakatoir First things first, I want to make sure you're aware that the information below reflects both short and long-term design considerations on our end. This isn't all on the table for patch 5.2 for a number of reasons. To make this clear right off the bat: This shift of instant casts back to cast times is not just targeted at crowd control. We also wish to start moving some heals back to having a cast time rather than being instant. That said, we're not necessarily planning on overhauling many of the spells and abilities that have been instant for a long time now, such as Hand of Justice. We're looking at some of the big outliers that we see brought up a lot, which are instant-cast, area-of-effect abilities like Blinding Light, or Presence of Mind in combination with Ring of Frost. We think that there are too many of these AoE CC spells at this time, especially instant AoE CC, which can create some frustrating gameplay experiences. Some other particular crowd-control effects that are on our radar are abilities like Blood Fear, which we're considering redesigning altogether, and Predatory Swiftness in combination with Cyclone, which feels virtually impossible to counter. Posted by Inférnal While we are talking about cc what about having some more spells share DR with each other. A pala can repentance/blinding light/ hammer. No Dr at all. Why is it that fear and blind share a DR and polly/fear and cycone dont? and many more examples like this. We're looking at diminishing returns for CC right now as a possible way to help with CC in PvP combat, but it's the type of gameplay overhaul that can be risky to implement in the middle of an expansion cycle if the change is too drastic. We are, however, taking a look right now at the DRs within particular classes, as well as special snowflakes like Cyclone. Either way, the design discussion will undoubtedly continue! ^^ source
Blood Pact: Staying slightly alive as a warlock
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill completely devours a real-life box of cookies while listing out all the ways a warlock can heal herself. Om nom nom. Dead DPS does zero DPS. We all know that saying. I introduce to you my Princess Bride collorary to the Dead DPS rule: Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do. Inigo Montoya: What's that? Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change. The perfect description of what happens when a mob dies in an RPG aside, Miracle Max is right: mostly dead is slightly alive, and slightly alive means you can still do more damage. Naturally -- since we are magnificent, resilient bastards instead of glass cannons -- warlocks are quite excellent at staying slightly alive.
Control Wizards join Neverwinter's class lineup
You've seen the brawn that's coming in Neverwinter, the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons action MMO, now meet the brains: the Control Wizard. These masters of arcane magic eschew physical battle, instead relying on knowledge and study for their power. As their name suggests, Control Wizards have the ability to hinder multiple foes by using their spells to stun and disable large groups of surrounding enemies. Check out a video after the cut as well as images of the Control Wizards doing what they do best in the gallery below. And tell us, which class would you prefer to play when Neverwinter releases -- muscle or magic?%Poll-78724%[Source: Perfect World Entertainment press release]%Gallery-152607%
