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Warlords of Draenor: Periodic effects changes
Warlords of Draenor is about to make some sweeping changes to the way we play World of Warcraft -- in a way that is elegantly reducing those tiny little annoyances that we've dealt with for so long, we've nearly forgotten they were there. One of those items on the streamlining checklist has always been the matter of Damage over Time and Healing over Time spells. Unlike flat casts or attacks, DoTs and HoTs distribute both damage and healing evenly over a brief period of time, through periodic ticks of either damage or healing. These can be layered over direct damage and healing spells to deal more damage and boost those direct cast damage and heal spells to greater effect. Sounds good, right? Yes and no. There are a few weird quirks with periodic damage spells -- casting a DoT while under the effect of a buff like a trinket proc currently means that every tick of that DoT will be boosted by that trinket proc -- even if the actual buff for the trinket has worn off, an effect called "snapshotting." In addition to this, haste modifies DoT and Hot uptime. The more haste you have, the faster your DoTs will tick. In some cases, stacking enough haste meant that your spell would actually get an additional tick of damage or healing -- which led many players to look for that mysterious magic number of haste that would allow this effect to occur. A lot of this is changing in Warlords.
Massively Exclusive: Darkspore reveals the Viper
Unless you're relatively new to gaming, you've undoubtedly heard of Maxis -- the developer behind the The Sims. Maxis and Electronic Arts have decided to use concepts from Spore to create a brand-new dungeon-crawling isometric online RPG called Darkspore -- and we've secured an exclusive first look at the Viper hero that gamers will be able to play in this upcoming title. With venomous damage-over-time attacks, enormous blades built into its muscular body, and the ability to add even more spines covered in poison, this beast is deservedly subtitled the "toxic ravager." It's got lots of damage, lots of carnage, and by the looks of it, lots of fun! While this is one of those borderline-in-the-MMOeque-neighborhood type of games, we understand the world is persistent, and players will be able to gather gear and customize their characters as they level up within the powerful Spore engine. Darkspore will feature both a single-player mode and groups of four players in the basic co-op multiplayer modes. We haven't heard concrete numbers on PvP battles, so perhaps the game will cross into the truly massive at that point. For now, you can check out the exclusive video for Darkspore's newest hero, Viper, behind the break.
The Road to Mordor: Just around the bend
It's been a few months since the November Update in Lord of the Rings Online, and the natives are restless -- as usual. Some folks are despairing the long wait until Rise of Isengard while others are itching for more challenges to their currently level-capped characters. Then there are the players who are hopelessly lost in Moria and would give their eye teeth for a flashlight. Happily, a new update is just around the bend, code-named Echoes of the Dead. The actual name is Echoes of the Dead too, so I guess that's not such a great code. Over the past couple of weeks, we've started to get a feel for just how large this update is, and after reading through the Bullroarer test notes on Wednesday, I think we're in for a tsunami of a patch. Of course, these patch notes come in the middle of Turbine's carefully spaced dev diaries dealing with each major change or addition, which means that we're a little in the dark as to the specifics of half of this update. That's not going to stop me -- or any of you -- from analyzing, speculating and gesturing excitedly to no one in particular. So let's dig in to this hearty meal of mushrooms and patch notes to see just how deep LotRO's rabbit hole goes!
Spiritual Guidance: Playing catch up with shadow priests
Fox Van Allen steps out of the shadows every Wednesday to take control of Spiritual Guidance, telling you all you need to know to melt faces with expert precision. The era of patch 3.2 held some dark days for a shadow priest. The fights in Trial of the Crusader were definitely not built for shadow priests, especially in heroic mode. We scaled terribly with new gear. Our tier 9 gear was questionably designed. Every class has their own problems, but the problems that besieged shadow priests were bad enough to negatively effect raid performance. It wasn't hard for shadow priests to get left behind. Patch 3.3, though -- this is our time. The changes to the spec have already been detailed: buffs to our glyphs, talents, and haste-affected DoTs gave us a ten-to-twenty percent boost to our damage right off the bat. Our tier 10 gear gives powerful two- and four-piece bonuses. And best yet, the fights in the new Icecrown Citadel five-man dungeons and raids seem as if they were built for us. We add tremendous value to an ICC raid in almost every fight. Actually seeing those fights, though -- that can be a challenge. Patch 3.2 did a lot of damage to the shadow priest class's reputation. An increased emphasis on "gear score" in the game can (unfairly) get an average-geared shadow priest written off. We can't just take playing for granted -- past problems with the spec means there's a higher bar for us. If you got left behind in the last patch or even if you're a newly minted level 80, don't worry -- you can catch up quick. Here's how.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Shadow Word: Pain not affected by haste
We heard a little while back from Ghostcrawler that haste would soon affect Heal-over-Time (HoT) and Damage-over-Time (DoT) spells, and sure enough, soon after that, Shadow Priests -- who use DoTs all the time -- saw a nice buff. But of course this is the PTR, and everything is subject to change, and so last weekend, Blizzard removed Shadow Word: Pain from that equation -- right now, it's not affected by haste at all. GC says that sure enough, Blizzard thought shadow priest DPS was too high with all of their DoTs given a boost, so SW:P got the boot (for now -- remember, this is all still on PTR). Misery, my go-to shadow priest, has some good insight on the change, and says that sure, if shadow priest DPS was too high, it was too high. But it's too bad that Shadow Word: Pain had to take the nerf, especially since you get it so early on in the class and it's such an iconic spell for the spec. The reason these guys are so happy about the hasted DoTs is that DoTs as cast don't really scale with your gear -- they just sort of do their damage on their own. When haste got put into the equation, shadow priests became happy that they could go after more haste to increase the DoT part of the damage. They could tailor the spec and spells the way they wanted to use them. Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
A refreshing change in spells
I missed the Wrath of the Lich King alpha explosion, but looking over the proposed spells and talents, I noticed an interesting proposed change. New talents and spells are available that refresh the duration of Damage-over-Time effects, such as Corruption and Shadow Word: Pain. While some of these effects are delivered by direct damage spells, the interesting and impacting change that struck me was its inclusion of channeled spells.With the proper talents, Mind Flay would refresh Shadow Word: Pain and Drain Life would refresh Corruption. This gives more utility to channeled spells, which normally require its full duration to run for optimum effect. PvP, in particular, requires constant motion which gimps the use of channeled spells. If the proposed changes push through, this means that channeled spells can be used for a short duration in order to refresh existing debuffs. This is an incredible trend that I hope makes it into live as well as extend into other, channeled abilities.
The science of snagging a tag
WoWWiki defines the tag as damaging a mob, thereby reserving the monster or NPC for you and your party so that only you may loot or gain XP from it. It also turns the status bar of the mob gray to other players to indicate that it has been tagged by another player. Rufushonkeriv asks an interesting question over at LiveJournal, however, about kill stealing and how it can happen in World of Warcraft. The tagging mechanism, which isn't present in more than a few MMOs, is supposed to prevent kill stealing in the game.However, the poster asks how a mob he has tagged is sometimes tagged away from him and explains how, when attempting the same thing, he only ends up killing a grayed-out mob faster. It is quite possible that the poster uses a DoT spell to get a mob's aggro, only to lose it to another player who deals damage with an instant cast spell. Lag can also sometimes explain how a player might think she damaged a mob first, only to have it turn gray when another player hits it. Technically, the first player to damage a mob tags it -- it isn't the player who has aggro or the player who first cast a non-damaging spell on the mob (such as Mana Tap or Hunter's Mark). There is some confusion as to the amount of damage needed to secure the tag. For example, if a player damages a mob for 1 point and a second later another player hits it for 1,000... who tags the mob? In theory, it should be the player who hit the mob for 1, because she damaged the mob first. The mechanic is pretty straightforward but in some cases players are confuddled through a mix of lag, lack of understanding about the tagging rules, and just plain old bad luck. As a rule of thumb, when tagging, hit it fast and hit it hard!
Fun with DoTs in Star Wars Galaxies
Lead designer on Star Wars Galaxies, Blixtev, compares going through the old Damage Over Time code to rummaging through your grandmother's attic. "It's loaded with old junk and it sure smells really bad", he says. Still, that's exactly what the SWG developers are doing as they work to revamp Commando abilities for the upcoming Game Update 4. In some posts to the official forums, Blix talks about opening up moldering trunks and tossing aside ancient silverware to get at the DoT code beneath. "The DoT system is one of our oldest systems, and it sure does some wacktacular things. We found 10 different calculations amoungst 5 functions to determine just the value of absorbtion from armor against DoTs. For folks who don't code, that's alot."He goes on to describe their upcoming plans for the system, which will spread DoTs to two different abilities and substantially change the way they're applied. After the update they're going to stack up to 10 a piece on a single character, a process that could take some time. Because of this change, DoT removal will change as well. Taking long minutes to apply the full 10-stack to a PC shouldn't be automatically negated by a Medic power. Instead, DoT removal will take away part of the stack, and make the recipient immune to further DoT additions for a short period. Meanwhile, the existing debuff will continue to tick down - harming the character with an element type determined by the Commando's weapon. A later update indicates that these trials are proving very effective in making the Commando a more fun profession to play, a claim we'll be able to put to the test hopefully very soon.
Blood Pact: Changing resilience to weaken DoTs
Perhaps you've heard about the planned change to modify the resilience stat to effect DoTs? When I first read about it, I can't say I understood it. Resilience is an anti-crit stat, which reduces the chance that you'll take a critical strike and reduces the damage done by a critical strike if you take it. Specifically, each point of resilience (and at level 70, it takes 39.4 resilience rating to equal one point of resilience) reduces your chance to be crit by 1% and reduces crit damage by 2%.But the main downside to using DoTs as a damage source is that they're incapable of critting. So what in the world do DoTs have to do with resilience? Eyonix explains it for us:As it currently stands, each new tier of equipment adds to the amount of damage DoT abilities have, yet that damage is not mitigated through combat ratings found on typical equipment. This change will help ensure that DoT effects do not scale too well compared to other damage mechanics. The amount of damage reduced will be equal to the critical chance reduction effect that resilience grants.If you're as confused as I was about why this was being done, not to mention how it was going to work, read on.
