AoE
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Around Azeroth: AoE damage
Nick sends us this screenshot with only the briefest of notes on Paladin AoE damage by way of explanation. And while I appreciate AoE damage as much as the next person, it's very rare that any AoE results in an image quite this perfect. Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wow.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world! %Gallery-1816%
PTR Notes: Pet in position
Mania's Arcania is at it again with the Hunter testing. This time, she heard in the 2.3 patch notes that pets will apparently always try to fight from behind their target (thus supposedly removing Parry and Block from the hit table for those attacks, but apparently that's not always 100% either), and she decided to test it out.When her pet was tanking, she didn't see a change. That seems obvious-- if the pet holds the highest aggro, it would be pointless for them to run around in circles to try and get behind a mob. Unless the target was somehow stunned (Rogues use that tactic all the time, of course), but she didn't say that she was able to test that case at all.But when she or someone else was tanking, sure enough, the pet slowly circled around to the side of the enemy (which, I believe counts as "the back" in terms of theorycrafting), and attacked there. The problem was that the pet did move slowly, and during the whole time spent positioning, wasn't attacking at all.It sounds like Blizzard is trying to get some complicated code down here, and I wonder if the result is really worth the effort. But then again, for Hunters who raid, a buff to their pet's attack like this is probably very welcome. And the real reason for this change probably has nothing to do with attacking from behind anyway-- despite the short loss of DPS, keeping pets out of frontal AoE and cleave attacks is definitely a terrific benefit.
WoW Moviewatch: 20k DPS in Black Morass
Pretty incredible. Xetrov on Farstriders took a few friends (and a pretty good Pally tank-- never thought I'd say those words) into Black Morass, and trashed all the trash. At once. With AoE. Good lord, look at all those numbers. He says he cracked 20,000 DPS, which is pretty jaw dropping.And this is also a really good example of how Blizzard has more or less crushed AoE when you're taking on more than ten mobs-- Xetrov has almost 800 spell damage, and yet his crits are hitting at around 150-200, because with so many targets, his spell damage is pretty much negated. He's still pulling down tons of DPS (and when are you really taking on more than 10 mobs, except in wacky situations like this?). But showing numbers like 150 and 160 coming off of a Mage with 800 spell damage show pretty clearly how weak AoE can get with this many targets.
Trust me, everything is under control
Marilyn has an interesting point over at WoW Ladies: if you see her grinding Consortium rep and taking on three mobs at a time in Netherstorm, leave her alone-- it's all under control. I sometimes have this same problem as a resto Shaman-- onlookers don't always realize that even though my health is low and I'm almost out of mana, redemption for me is just a huge heal and a Mana Tide totem away. Things may look bad, but really, don't worry about it-- my Earth Shield just got refreshed, and I'm good to go for two more mobs, so no, I don't need saving.On the other hand, I'm not sure I really want to discourage people to help in this game-- I'd much rather have them help me fight than really be in trouble and have them /laugh as I die. So I'm not sure I'd tell everyone to lay off.Rather, the problem here is that when I pull a group of mobs, I don't want someone else stepping in and tagging them away from me in the name of help. So there are plenty of ways to help that don't include stealing my XP-- drop a DoT on something that's been tagged (I do this all the time on my Shadow Priest), or throw me a heal (always appreciated, even if my Mana Tide totem is off cooldown). And just paying attention is nice, too-- nothing burns me more as a Rogue than taking the time to sneak up on a mob, only to have them charged by an overzealous warrior who claims afterwards that they didn't see my Distract go off.If it's legitimate kill-stealing, the best option is just to ignore and move on to a less populated area-- there's no dealing with those people. But if you do see someone fighting a bunch of mobs solo, there are better ways to help than grabbing one of their kills, and chances are they'll be more than happy to help you the next time around.
How to AoE for fun and profit
I'm very suprised we haven't posted this video before, but I took a gander through the archives, and while we've touched on the magic of AoE mages before, I don't think I've seen it. If you want to know how to hit up a whole bunch of mobs at a time while playing your mage, this extremely thorough guide will teach you top to bottom.And for everything else you want to know, you can check out also very in-depth text guide by Bangy posted over on the EU forums, who also references the video above. He covers everything, from spec to process to the best spots to do it at every level. Mage AoE is extremely powerful when set up correctly-- for grinding in the right places, it almost breaks the game. There are a lot of compromises that have to made in terms of how and where you can do it, but in the right place with the right abilities, there's no faster and easier way to crush whole groups of mobs at a time.
The Light and How to Swing It: The sadist's guide to PalAOEadins
"Paladins are for masochists," say the wise elders on pally boards and blogs. "You either spec healbot and can never farm, spec ret and can never find a group, or spec prot and spend half your time trying to convince people that prot pallies can actually tank. You're either being ordered around by your raid leader and tank or wandering in the wilderness soloing stuff." As I was leveling my paladin, I began to feel that this statement had some truth to it. Ret had nice, big numbers, but I couldn't take on many mobs, had to heal a lot, and found myself constantly out of mana. Holy ... well, I didn't have enough talent points yet to take Holy Shock, and I didn't even want to know how tough leveling would be with a spec mostly invested in healing. Then one day, while talking to some other belfadins, I discovered the wonders of protection AOE, the most sadistic spec in paladindom.
Speedrunning Shadowfang
This is something cool that I haven't seen in WoW before. The video above is a paladin named Daz on EU Bronzebeard speedrunning Shadowfang Keep in 11 minutes and 17 seconds.Now, I don't know if that's fast or not, only because I haven't seen anything at all about doing speedruns in WoW. Speedrunning (beating the game as fast as possible) has gotten popular for games in the 8bit era, probably because of emulators and save states, but WoW instances seem like a great place to race through. I wonder why it hasn't happened much yet. Well, except for that one big exception.One reason may be that, unlike battleground twinking (another "below the radar" kind of competition), the classes just aren't balanced for it-- while the paladin here does pretty well, I'd imagine that at level 70 in a lower level instance, a mage would always be faster, just because they can push out the most AoE damage. But that doesn't mean we can't pit the same classes against each other. Anyone want to give the pally's time a go and see how fast you can tear through SFK?
WoW Moviewatch: How I learned to AoE and make the Scryers love me
Although this video has probably the single worst song I've heard on a WoW vid, it does manage to impress me with a mage's AoE capabilities. (Not to mention the mere fact that he manages to play pretty well on what looks like 800x600 with no mods running.) I wonder how much +damage gear I'd need for Holy Nova to perfom like that. Oh, by the way, don't bother with the last minute of the video -- it's just the song finishing its torpid existence over a black screen.
Age of Empires 3 goes gold for Mac
It's already been a year since the PC version of Age of Empires III shipped, and now Mac strategy enthusiasts can finally look forward to conquering the New World in glorious 3D. MacSoft has announced that their conversion of AoE3 has gone gold and will be available before the end of the month for both PowerPC and Intel Macs. The AoE series is developed for the PC by Microsoft-owned Ensemble Studios (Halo Wars, Age of Mythology), and the latest entry received heavy praise for its new graphics engine and balanced gameplay. Check out MacSoft's product page and the Inside Mac Games preview for more details. See also: Mac Civ 4 shipping soon, trailer released Metareview - Age of Empires III vs. Civilization IV Age of Empires III board game in the works
Shelley on the history of Civilization
Ensemble Studios' Bruce Campbell Shelley has been a force in strategy gaming for over 20 years (PC Gamer proclaimed him a "Game God" in 1999). Anyone who's ever played Civilization I and II, the original Railroad Tycoon, or the Age of Empires and Age of Mythology titles should be familiar with his work. What you may be less familiar with is the iterative design process he and former MicroProse colleague Sid Meier used to craft the very first Civilization game. In a recent interview, Shelley offered a little history lesson on the "design by playing" methodology -- a process he and his design teams still use at Ensemble today. The strategy pioneer fondly recalls being the second person ever to play the first Civilization prototype on a 5 ¼" floppy disc, and also describes how working with Sid Meier is like going to a game design university. In discussing the influence of Civilization on AoE, Shelley had this to say: "There is certainly some Civilization in the Age of Empires series. The vision for the original Age of Empires game was something like the historical and economic aspects of Civilization merged with the gameplay of Warcraft and Command & Conquer."See also: Metareview - Age of Empires III vs. Civilization IV
GameSpy Arcade to host AoE 1 and 2
After June 19, the Age of Empires legacy titles will have a new online home, now that Microsoft and Ensemble Studios have decided to move on. GameSpy Arcade has agreed to assume multiplayer hosting duties for AoE, AoE 2, and their respective expansion packs. According to Ensemble, player-created ladders and friends lists, in addition to basic online matchmaking services, will now be supported by the free version of GameSpy Arcade.This changeover does not affect Age of Mythology or AoE III.[via StrategyPlanet]
Rematch: AoE III vs. Civ. IV, who's buggier?
The two went head to head in a metareview showdown: Civilization IV versus Age of Empires III. AoE III won in sales, but got edged out in overall rankings, but then it was revealed that Civilization IV was playing injured. Reports of buggy software flooded the nets, and then it was AoE III's game to lose. Then today, a reader informed us that AoE III suffered from a plentitude of bugs as well. The forums are buzzing with comments like: vodka-mike: Ensemble's devs and brass should feel ashamed [of] this release. Vincedia: OK, so we bought this game, get it home, start to play, and find out we are paying to Beta test? I've had the game for a bit over 2 weeks now and I still can not stop the crashing to desktop. gman: What I haven't seen is a response from ES at all. There are hundreds of posts just like this one, on this forum alone! Is this a case of two competitors both rushing their competing titles out the door only to have them compete against another rushed product? Or was the lucrative holiday season looming, so the "patch it later" mentality kicked in. We love Sid Meier, but we want him to know that the DS doesn't work that way. Now, if Microsoft brings AoE to the 360, maybe they could patch it... but let's not even think about that.
Metareview: Age of Empires III vs. Civilization IV
Whilst Age of Empires III and Civilization IV are classed in the same genre as strategy games, they have very different styles. AoE is real time and has a permanent "down with the troops" view and feel. Civilization IV, on the other hand, is turn based and features a lot of micromanagement. Rather than trying to represent one age as best as it can, it tries to cover the whole of civilization; from cavemen to spacecraft. The two games took the 1st and 2nd place on the PC games sales chart for the week ending November 13th. So we thought it'd be very appropriate to write up a versus metareview of the two games - in the style of our previous F.E.A.R. vs Quake 4 metareview. Take the jump to find out what reviewers thought of these two strategy game behemoths.
