armor-pen
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The Summoner's Guidebook: A beginner's guide to League of Legends' runes
Runes are one of the easiest ways for a beginning player to waste IP in League of Legends. A lot of players spend a lot of IP on wasted runes. The truth is, you can get away with a relatively small number of useful runes and still be effective. We've gone a long, long time in the Summoner's Guidebook without a discussion of runes and rune pages, so we should fix that. A bit of a disclaimer, though: Runes are costly, and you'll have to put several new champions on hold no matter what you do. At level 20, you will want around 5,000 IP for runes, and you'll want another 10,000 or so more over the course of your career. On top of that, there is easily more you can blow on runes if you want some real diversity. I'm not here to explain that, though -- we can leave that one to the pros.
The Daily Quest: Yummy
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. I find it comical that November is known to someone as Peanut Butter Lovers Month. Why? Because peanut butter is obsolete when you have baconnaise at your beck and call. Here's some good things from around the web to read as you enjoy your bacon flavored awesomesauce. OutDPS looks at quick and dirty "rules" for Armor Pen v.s. Agility. Restokin has a great explanation of the patch 3.3 druid changes. Gray Matter has a look at pushback resistance. 4 Healz thinks you need to give Lifebloom some love. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Blood Sport: Patch 3.2.2, the times they are a-changin, Part I
Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple Rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column.Okay, I'm a bit of a music buff. I love Bob Dylan, one of the most influential American singer/songwriters of our time. Here's some listening music while reading -- you can probably guess what it is. I selected it primarily because the song title goes well with our discussion -- and I love Dylan's brilliant live performance in Budokan. It's a bit much if you're not a Dylan fan, I'll freely admit.Patch 3.2.2 has a myriad of PvP changes in it; I am stunned to see so little conversation on the interwebz about it. In fact, I've written so much about these changes that I was advised to split the article into parts. A lengthy article here on WoW.com is approximately 1000 words -- this article was over 3,000. (No, not over 9,000.)I'm going to split up this article into three parts. Overall changes Class changes Bug fixes and Glyph Changes Check out what's a-changin' after the break.
Hunter thoughts on the Patch 3.2.2 Armor Penetration nerf
Well folks, we recently heard that Ghostcrawler announced the upcoming nerf to Armor Penetration in Patch 3.2.2. I'll be honest with you. I'm not sure why this is turning into such a big deal is to everyone. I'm not saying I don't understand the mechanics of the change. And I do see the impact to us Hunters, especially endgame raiding Marksman Hunters. But really, let's take a step back and look at the reasoning behind the change.Ghostcrawler said that they implemented this change after noticing everyone was picking up Armor Pen at the expense of their core stats. Really? And somehow we're surprised that when a secondary stat becomes more important than a class' primary stat and it forced a nerf? It seems more of a correction in my opinion.If you're a raiding Marks or Survival Hunter you should be focusing on picking up as much Agility (Attack Power if you're a Beast Master) as possible. Hence why in Cataclysm we're seeing things like Armor Penetration removed from the itemization.
Ghostcrawler on the mechanics behind Armor Penetration
There is a great thread over on the Damage Dealing Forums started by a Rogue about the mechanics of the Armor Penetration cap/observed effectiveness. Armor Pen is a statistic that will allow an attack to ignore a given amount of armor.The thread and the contents inside it are notable in that it is, by my recollection, the first time a Blizzard employee has given out the complete rundown of an in-game formula. While there have been hints and comments about how certain statistics impact the game from patch notes and game designer posts in the past, there has never been a "step a, step b, step c" like algorithmic definition to all those stats contained within the black box of theorycrafting.In giving out the computations behind Armor Penetration, Ghostcrawler makes note to point out that Blizzard is not, and will not, get in a habit of delivering theorycrafting to players. They like the idea that players have to test out game mechanics, and that while the starting and end results are known, what happens in the middle of combat isn't written in stone. In the case of the Armor Penetration rating, they released it due to quite a bit of (somewhat) inaccurate information out there.The armor penetration formula, and an example, after the break.
