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The Summoner's Guidebook: Yes, I've seen your bear Tibbers
Annie is a very popular champion in the lower skill ranks of League of Legends. This is especially true of the Classic gametypes, where she is one of the more common choices for the solo mid lane. Additionally, she is a fearsome enemy even when played by the AI. Horror stories of Annie Bot wrecking whole teams have been going on since the dawn of the game. Because Annie is so popular and deadly, she's an ideal character to spotlight on the Guidebook. She's fun, easy to play, and oh-so-very cute. When you go up against her, it's good to know exactly what to expect.
Scientists unlock the secrets of bike stability, make riders optional
We've peered back in time to the early days of the universe, just following the Big Bang, and unraveled the mysteries of the human genome -- yet we don't really know how a moving bicycle manages to stay upright without a meatbag manning the handlebars. Scientists have long thought that it had something to do with the gyroscopic effect created by the spinning wheels and the caster effect of having the front wheel trail the steering axis (don't worry, it's all explained in a video at the source link). Researchers at Cornell, however, have created a tiny bike that generates neither of those effects yet, thanks to carefully calibrated mass distribution, still stays vertical when moving over 5MPH. The insights learned here could lead to self-stabilizing rides for us and cooler wheels for our pedal-happy automatons to inherit. PR after the break.
Vindictus takes a look at casting with Evie
The highly active nature of Vindictus has made the game a bit of a darling within the free-to-play community for the time being, but many of the class spotlights thus far have focused on getting into your opponent's face and carving him up. All well and good, but sometimes you'd rather just hang out in the back and start casting some fireballs or summon up devastating golems from the surrounding debris. If that sounds like your cup of tea, the latest video from the game will be for you. Evie is a caster, focusing less upon beating things to death with a staff and more on controlling the battlefield via magic. Among the spells on display are her abilities to summon golems, create magic turrets to attack enemies, and reverse gravity to give party members a fighting edge. Click on past the break to take a look at what things look like in Vindictus from the caster's point of view. (Here's a hint: It's violent.)
The Tattered Notebook: Mail time
Ah ha! Finally! Freedom from the human reporter, Seraphina! She is going to PAX East, leaving me to my own devices! Now, finally, I can enact the plan I've been waiting so long to do! ...answer one of your e-mails. Muhahahahahahaha! Ok, ok darlings. I know that perhaps this is not quite the same as world domination or the destruction of Qeynos, but it's special for me, yes? Usually I have to be somewhat pleasant in these weekly scribblings. But, with my oversight gone, I can let you experience the wrath of a true Tier'dal! ...with helpful advice along the way, of course.
Phat Loot Phriday: Mystifying Charm
Here's a spooky looking offhand for current endgame casters. If you have an item you'd like to see here next week, shout it out in the comments below, please. Name: Mystifying Charm (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory) Type: Epic Offhand Damage/Speed: N/A Attributes: +65 Stamina, +65 Intellect, +57 Spirit Improves crit strike rating by 57 and spell power by 100. %Gallery-33600%
Phat Loot Phriday: Clemency
Umm, drool. This staff is so awesome it makes me want to go back to playing a caster. Name: Clemency (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory) Type: Epic Two-hand Staff Damage/Speed: 280-518 / 2.10 (190.1 DPS) Attributes: +153 Stamina, +153 Intellect. Yes, that much. +86 Spirit, too. A Blue and a Red socket, with a +7 spell power bonus if you match both up. Remember, you don't have to if you don't want to, and this is certainly a socket bonus that's probably not worth going for. If you need an extra gem for your meta, this is probably the place to put it. %Gallery-33600%
Phat Loot Phriday: Wisdom's Hold
Not all shields are for blocking. If you're a Shaman or a Pally, this caster shield is probably droolworthy.Name: Wisdom's Hold (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDB)Type: Epic ShieldArmor: 8130, 227 BlockAttributes: +70 Stamina, +48 Intellect, which means lots of HP and Mana for you. Improves crit strike by 40, haste by 47, and spell power by 75. Nice set of bonuses there, too. And a blue socket, with a socket bonus of +5 spell power. It's a slight upgrade over Voice of Reason, the other big caster shield near endgame, but enough of an upgrade that you want this one if you can get it. %Gallery-33600%
Phat Loot Phriday: Petrified Ivy Sprig
Let's do a wand! A really, really hot wand, too -- best in slot for most casters in the game right now.Name: Petrified Ivy Sprig (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDB)Type: Epic WandDamage/Speed: 414-719 Nature / 1.80 (328.6 DPS)Attributes: +19 Intellect, +22 Spirit, +26 Stamina. Which is actually less than that other big endgame wand, but wait, there's more: %Gallery-33600%
Phat Loot Phriday: Ironmender
Here's an offhand, one that works pretty well for Priests.Name: Ironmender (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory)Type: Epic Off-handDamage/Speed: N/AAbilities: +54 Stamina, +47 Intellect, +45 Spirit Improves haste rating by 36 and spell power by 74. %Gallery-33600%
Phat Loot Phriday: Cowl of Sheet Lightning
Lots of the endgame cloth headpieces look the same actually, but it's a good look -- the pointy head, the glowing eyes. And nothing says power than a name like "sheet lightning."Name: Cowl of Sheet Lightning (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDigger)Type: Epic Cloth HeadArmor: 244Attributes: +67 Stamina, +68 Intellect Meta and a Yellow socket, with a socket bonus of +9 spell power Improves Haste rating by 48, and spellpower by 85 %Gallery-33600%
Phat Loot Phriday: Staff of the Great Reptile
I tried to find some great caster/healing staves for you to work towards this weekend, but they're hard to come by, and strangely enough I couldn't find a single caster staff as a reputation reward -- Druids get all the good ones I found. This one's from an instance you can run this weekend, though, and it should hold you up until you hit 80 and head into the endgame.Name: Staff of the Great Reptile (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDigger)Type: Rare StaffDamage/Speed: 148-269 / 2.10 (99.5 DPS)Abilities: +81 Spirit, which has been becoming more and more useful lately. It's really still the domain of Warlocks and Shadow Priests, but depending on the talents and other gear you've got, Spirit, especially this much of it, can be more helpful than you'd think. Improves haste rating by 66, which again, will depend on the other stats you've got to figure out just how much it'll help you. Haste gets more and more important as you head towards the endgame, but especially with the changes to Haste affecting global cooldowns, this could be really great for anybody casting instants as well. And increases spell power by 271, which is a no brainer. You'll definitely be able to get more spell power by the time you hit 80, but for the level, this is a decent place to start. And, I have to say, subjectively I admit, it's a badass-looking staff. %Gallery-33600%
Brewfest tip for casters: Get both spell trinkets
If you're like me, you've been madly farming the elusive Great Brewfest Kodo since Brewfest began. Even when I was having a bit of hand trouble, my little dwarf found his way into Blackrock Depths to do beer-laden battle with the big, bad, belligerent brewmaster. But there's an important tip that you should remember while Brewfest continues. The two spell trinkets are both useful to all spell casters (who don't out gear them) after the content patch unifies spell damage and spell healing into Spell Power. Right now, the Dark Iron Smoking Pipe is a spell damage trinket, and the Direbrew Hops is a healing trinket. But in the content patch, both will be turned to spell power -- the Pipe has 43 spell power and 155 on use, the Hops have 44 spell power, 153 on use. Of course, this begs the question about how the Pipe and Hops will compare to other trinkets when the patch hits. Timbal's Focusing Crystal from Heroic Magister's packs 44 spell power. You'll have to decide whether you want an on-use bonus 154ish spell power from the brewfest trinkets, or Timbal's on-use proc for 285 to 475 extra damage. The Hex Shrunken Head from Zul'Aman is a clear upgrade from the Hops and Pipe, since it has more constant spell power and high on-use spell power. Coren's dropped trinkets are equivalent to the 41-Badge trinkets purchaseable from G'eras. The Essence of the Martyr and Icon of the Silver Crescent are both slightly better than either Hops or Pipe since they have 44 spell power, and 158 spell power on use. But for 41 badges each, I'm probably not going to lose any sleep over 5 spell power every 2 minutes. [Thanks Rikitiki for the tip!]
Hybrid Theory: Yet another spell power discussion
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart. Last week we talked a bit about gear and spell power, and various related things. I mostly approached it as supplying my personal experiences, but a lot of people wanted numbers. Specifically, how your current gear will translate into the new spell power mechanic.A kind fellow named Dan helped us out with a little bit of that in the comments section last week, so let's expand upon it somewhat. Again, this will focus mostly on the Healer and Caster aspects of the Hybrids. You Melee guys don't really need to worry about how spell power will change your gear.Alright, so the question is this: If you have a choice between taking +Damage gear or +Healing gear in the current game right now, which would be a better choice for taking with you into Wrath of the Lich King leveling? Let's make liberal use of Wowhead, shall we?
Totem Talk: Scraping off the rust
One of the interesting aspects to playing a class as varied as the shaman (or any hybrid, really, but Hybrid Theory's on weekends, you should read that too) is the disparate roles you can end up playing. For example, on my slowly leveling paladin, I'm constantly forced to look at quest drops and say "Well, it's a healing drop, but it would be an upgrade to my healing set, so I'll hold onto it." On my shamans, even though I rarely see a quest drop nowadays, I've worked to assemble elemental, enhancement and restoration sets for each: my restoration shaman has been getting some love lately, with certain new drops and enchants helping increase his plus heal to around 1800 or so, but at the same time I've been forced to realize something.I went three months playing nothing but enhancement and man, I was rusty. The first Magisters' Terrace run I did on the orc was a parade of dead tank, dead me, dead DPS. Now, admittedly, this is entirely due to my own foolishness in trying to heal MgT my first run back on the job, so to speak, and subsequent runs in Shattered Halls and Black Morass went much better, helping me to get my legs back under me. It's not like you actually forget the role so much as you have to take the time for it to become familiar again.
The strange art of marking
I like Nikol's writeup of her experiences marking targets in instances. There really is an art to laying down those icons in a group, and it requires quite a bit of knowledge to do right. You need to keep group makeup in mind, know the abilities of all the classes involved, pay attention to what individual members want to do and even how they're specced, and have a basic knowledge of the instance and how it works. There's so much that goes into it that it's basically an art in itself -- do you sheep the caster and take out the minions, or focus on the big bad first and then move on to trash? Do you have the group to interrupt and pull a caster to a trap, or do you need to get the mobs out of the way before the patrol comes through?It's complicated and fascinating stuff, and this kind of group coordination is why some players choose to play PvE rather than PvP -- because while yes, the mobs are predictable (and players aren't; as much, anyway), the fun is in the planning. And when you get a good group to go with a good planner, then things really get interesting. There is an art to laying down marks, but once you study what a good marker does, and get the hang of it, you're that much more helpful to any groups you're in.
Arena stats from the second season start
Caster has posted his "first successful pull" of an exhaustive list of arena PvP stats about class and spec over on the forums. There are tons of stats to play around with here-- for each bracket of 5v5, 3v3, and 2v2, he's got the average, minimum, and maximum of specs for each class, wins and losses, the low, average, and high of hit points, and even a breakdown of who's grouping with who.Not surprisingly (though I was surprised back when Arenas first started up), Warriors and Paladins are topping the charts in terms of numbers, so it seems a good way to win 5v5 Arenas is simply to stay alive. Apparently 2v2 teams are the most volatile (since people switch around with them all the time), but the numbers there are the most interesting-- Warlocks and Priests top the charts there (thanks a lot, Fear), and it turns out Druids might have actually have a place in Arena PvP-- as long as it's right alongside a Lock.And the big loser is apparently Hunters-- their numbers are down to single digits in 2v2 and 3v3 (as in 1 and 2 total), which means players are not taking their Hunters into the arenas. Is that because Hunters aren't useful or viable enough in the smaller teams? I'll leave that one up to you.[ via WoW LJ ]
Phat Loot Phriday: Auchenai Staff
One of the more interesting twists in the expansion is the introduction of two new, completely opposed factions: the Aldor and the Scryers. Players first entering Shattrath City are asked to choose one, and each has different rewards and recipes available. It's an intriguing proposition, and we'll probably see more effects of the decision (some have even speculated that eventually we'll have an Aldor vs. Scryer battleground, so Horde and Alliance will for the first time be able to fight side by side against players).So this week on Phat Loot Phriday, we're covering a droolworthy Aldor weapon, and the Scryers will just have to sit back and be jealous. Next week, we'll switch. If you want more info on the Aldor/Scryer decision, WoWwiki is the guide to read.Name: Auchenai StaffType: Rare Two-Hand StaffDamage / Speed: 92-171 / 2.10 (62.8 DPS)Abilities: +46 Intellect Improves spell hit rating by 19, spell crit rating by 26, and healing and damage by up to 121, so it's pretty darn amazing for almost any caster, especially damage-based Available only to people Revered by the Aldor faction How to Get It: You've got to be Aldor-- hopefully you've caught that much already. To get Revered, you have to do quests labeled for Aldor rep-- there's a bunch of them in the Lower City of Shattrath, and quite a few in the Aldor area there. You can also turn in various Marks from around Outland (Kil'jaeden until Honored, and Sargeras after that) and Fel Armaments. Hit Revered, and then bring 56 gold and some change (so 57 gold, really) to the Aldor quartermaster to get this pretty stick o' power.Getting Rid of It: Once you've got this thing, you probably won't lose it until you start rolling through the endgame instances in Outland. After you do find something nicer, though, a vendor will give you 11g 26s 53c for it.
Phat Loot Phriday: Amberseal Keeper
It's Friday again, and that means it's time to check out another piece of sweet gear available for you to find in Azeroth. Since we've done melee and ranged, let's do a cool caster piece this week.Name: Amberseal KeeperType: Epic StaffDamage, Speed: 144-228, 3.30 (56.6 DPS)Abilities: +20 Intellect bonus +5 to Arcane, Fire, Nature, Frost, and Shadow resistance Restores 12 mana / 5 seconds Increases damage and healing done by up to 44 Nice staff for almost any caster-- there are better staves out there for specific classes (except maybe druids), but the Int bonus and the across the board 44 boost make this a nice staff to have as you work toward your sets But then again, it's a heck of a challenge to get-- see below How to Get It: Drops from the demon Lord Kazzak, an outdoor raid in Blasted Lands. And even as outdoor raids go, this guy will give you as much trouble as he possibly can. He's got a crazy undodgeable shadowbolt volley that will kick the crap out of your and your raid, and he's got a spell called Mark of Kazzak: drains mana from the target for 250/sec, and then explodes them aoe for 4000 damage when it's done. Yeah, scary. And if anyone does happen to die during the fight, Kazzak casts Capture Soul, a spell that instantly gives him 70,000 health.And one more thing: you have to finish the fight in three minutes, because if it lasts a second more, Kazzak goes into "Supreme Mode" and starts tossing Shadowbolts every second, which works out to almost 1000 dps for everyone in the raid. Can you say wip? The good news is that the drop is 15%, so even though Amberseal Keeper is a great staff, it's almost worth more as a sign that you were able to down this monster.Auction Price: BOP, natch. Vendor it (if you're crazy) for 11g, 92s, 78c.
