magic-resistance
Latest
The Summoner's Guidebook: Balancing League of Legends' offense and defense items
Last week, we talked specifically about building League of Legends' attack damage champions and the multiplicative effects the various bonuses have on these heroes. Building attack items is fairly cut and dried. The good attack damage items (IE, BT, PD, LW) are common to most pure AD builds, and there's not a lot of reason to heavily deviate from building them. Defense is another story, however. In Dominion, defense is more heavily itemized than in Summoner's Rift simply because irregular engagements happen constantly. On Summoners' Rift, there is more structure to specific engagements, and a single champion getting spotted out of place either results in an epic bait or a brutal gank. In those situations, defense doesn't help much. However, it's important to itemize defense in any game mode, and in Dominion, it is outright critical. Building only damage items will cause your champion to get melted by enemy attacks very early on, while building defense allows you to play more aggressively and capitalize on damage opportunities with less risk. Building defense is also important for bruisers who must close the gap to melee range, which inevitably means taking more damage than normal. Want to know all about the best time to start building tank? Read on!
The Light and How to Swing It: Resistance, the magic stat
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. Perhaps the most elusive of all tanking stats are the various magic resistances. You can't get them on any of the normal gear you strap to your various extremities, only on some trinkets. Some races have magic resistances as part of their racial bonus toolkits, but these are minimal and don't stack with any other resistance buffs. And speaking of which, two raid buffs -- Mark of the Wild and our own Blessing of Kings -- will increase all magic resistances by a set amount. Lastly, you can buff your resistances by a rather large amount with an elixir. It fits that resistances are so rare considering how very, very powerful they are. Just the combination of a Prismatic Elixir and a raid buff can be worth about 28% magical damage reduction for fire, frost, and shadow damage, for example. Combine on top of the that the clicky effect from Mirror of Broken Images -- Image of Immortality -- which is worth 40.51% damage reduction by itself, and you're talking a serious percentage of magical damage just brushed off like dust on a sleeve. A short history of magic resistance In the early days of WoW, a key gear check for some raid fights was the requirement that everyone in the raid had to accumulate a set of gear with resistance stats for a specific type of magical damage. Molten Core was obviously the first, requiring raiders to grind out a complete fire resistance set so they could withstand the various fiery attacks that Ragnaros' minions would dish out. This trend continued throughout vanilla WoW to fights like Princess Huhuran, for whom you needed melee players kitted out in nature resistance gear, to well into The Burning Crusade for fights like Hydross the Unstable. There, the encounter demanded one tank in frost resistance gear and one in nature resistance gear to correctly tank the fight. Black Temple had several fights that rewarded shadow resistance, and perhaps the grand swan song of the resistance set in The Burning Crusade was M'uru.
Wings Over Atreia: Class builds -- Cleric
Last week we discussed how personality influences class choice, so after some deep reflection, you have decided that it is time to reveal your true nature and be reborn as a cleric in Aion! Either that, or maybe you just wanted to solo some dungeons to horde all the loot. *cha-ching* Perhaps you already became one to impress that really cute voice in vent who is always looking for a healer. Whatever your reason, the life of servitude is for you. Now what? Welcome to Build-a-Cleric. While some Daevas are content to just play with what they get from drops or quests, a number actually want to outfit their characters the best they can. Even if leveling too quickly to worry about uber gear thanks to mentoring and an easier grind, it is never a bad idea to keep an eye on endgame. And with the plethora of manastones, armor sets, weapons, and stigmas available -- not to mention advice, both solicited and unsolicited -- it can be a daunting task to maximize your potential. So to help you wade through the possibilities, Wings Over Atreia will be exploring each class individually and highlighting popular and effective builds. With any luck, some advance knowledge will help you make informed decisions and avoid the catastrophes of expending all of your energies in obtaining the wrong gear for your needs. Nothing shouts broke like having to re-socket entire sets or enchant new ones! Roll up your sleeves and explore various builds for Aion's Cleric class after the cut.
New racial abilities for Wrath
It looks like Blizzard isn't done tinkering with everything for Wrath of the Lich King. This time, they've turned their attention to racial abilities, which many have pointed out to be imbalanced. Kalgan dropped by the forums to answer a good question regarding the Orc racial Hardiness, which grants a passive 15% resistance to stuns. It's been nerfed a long way from its original 25% resistance, but the poster made a good point about the game's direction towards reduced durations instead of resistances.Kalgan responds by saying that Hardiness was being changed into exactly that -- an effect duration reduction of 15%. He also goes over all the other racials, some of which were changed, others of which were buffed, and yet a few others of which were inevitably nerfed. The changes should make it into the next Beta push. Check after the break to see the complete list. [CLARIFICATION: This isn't the complete list of racial abilities. Abilities not listed here are unchanged or, if they will be changed, will be mentioned in the future.]
