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Excelsior! The cheerful insanity of the Guild Wars 2 Asura
It would have been easy for ArenaNet to make Guild Wars 2's Asura race just another batch of quirky MMO "shorties," playing into the standard fantasy trope. You know how it goes -- what the little guy lacks in brawn he makes up for in quick wit and charm. Throw in some floppy ears, a mischievous grin, and some mechanical gizmos, and you've got yourself a gnome by another name. So did ArenaNet rise to the challenge of porting and updating the Asura? We got a good look at the race and its starting zone in the game's final beta weekend event in the hopes of figuring that out. Follow on for our first impressions!
The Summoner's Guidebook: Dealing with Heimerdinger
When I was a League of Legends nooblet, I latched onto Heimerdinger during a free week and found him really fun. He was my first taste of bottom lane Dominion play, and he contributed a lot to my early wins. I felt pretty invincible as bottom lane Heimerdinger, and while he was highly gankable, I used it as a way to practice flashing to escape. A lot of my mid-levels were gained by playing Heimerdinger. In Dominion, he's a strong bottom pick, though he has a lot of weaknesses that can be exploited. On Summoner's Rift, he's a strange pick that nobody knows where to place. We'll talk about either case this week and some things you can do to handle them.
League of Legends' Viktor wields science for evil
Meet Viktor. He's your basic nice-guy scientist who has one teeny, tiny bad experience and decides to turn his entire life into comic book villainy. Feel sorry for him or don't, he's going to rend you limb from limb either way. Viktor is the latest champion on League of Legends' drawing board, and Riot Games has given us a sneak peek at the awe and terror that he will bring to the game. Viktor is written as the creator of fellow champion Blitzcrank, but is a wee bit upset that his work got stolen from under his nose. Instead of joining a therapy group, Viktor turned his body into a robotic slaughter apparatus and is out for some good ol' fashioned revenging. Viktor's passive ability, Evolving Technology, allows players to purchase an item from the store to modify his bonus to suit the players' needs. He can also shoot a beam that bounces back to him as a shield, set up a Graviton Field to slow and stun enemies in his immediate vicinity, and fire a massive Death Ray that cuts through multiple foes. His Chaos Storm is neat as well, allowing Viktor to send out a cloud that silences and damages enemies caught within it.
