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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!
Totem Talk: The Arsenal
Totem Talk is the column for Shamans. Matthew Rossi has been rediscovering his restoration roots this week, so of course he's decided to write a column all about the offensive aspects of the shaman class. There's something seriously wrong with that boy.Damage dealing. The next few columns will discuss just how shamans go about putting the hurt on people: this series (The Arsenal) is about totems, shocks and the two lightning bolt spells, the offensive arsenal of the shaman class. As you first start out playing a shaman, you quickly learn that there are a variety of ways to output damage as a shaman: offensive totems, instant-cast but short range shocks, and longer rage lightning bolt and chain lightning spells with a casting time. As time passes and you settle into either a melee role using weapons or a caster role (meaning that you don't want to be anywhere near the things you're killing) you'll change the way you use these abilities. There are effectively two 'play styles' for the shaman, which we'll call 'elemental' and 'enhancement' for the specs that make the optimum use of these styles: a restoration shaman can act like an elemental or an enhancement shaman as he or she chooses, but even in equivalent gear she'll of course be less effective at dealing damage than they are, since the restoration spec is optimized for healing.This week we'll be primarily talking about totems in a direct offensive role.Some totems, of the fire variety, deal direct damage, either through a directed fireball effect (Searing Totem) an area effect burst (Fire Nova Totem) or a continuing AoE pulse (Magma Totem). There are other totems that an enhancement or elemental playstyle benefits from dropping during combat (we all know about Windfury, Grace of Air, Wrath of Air, and Totem of Wrath by now I'd assume) but these are not direct damage totems and so this paragraph is the last time I'll be mentioning them. It's interesting to note that Totem of Wrath is a fire totem, and so you can't drop any of the direct damage totems if you use it, but by the time an elemental shaman has Totem of Wrath he or she probably prefers it for most situations anyway. A starting shaman will probably be dropping Searing Totem as much as possible, mana permitting, as it's one of the first offensive totems you'll get (level 10 vs Fire Nova at level 12 and Magma Totem at level 26).
Scattered Shots: Auto Shot
Scattered Shots is for hunters. 'Nuff said.One of the most confusing things about a hunter's repertoire of spells is the exact use of Auto Shot. This ability is unlike the abilities of any other class, quite different from a warrior's swing timer, or a caster's wand shooting. Auto Shot is like a metronome, and the music of hunter DPS requires that we play according to its beat.We've discussed Auto Shot a little bit in last week's introduction to Shot Rotation, but Auto Shot is much more complex than is first apparent from simply reading the ability's tooltip. First of all, there is a discrepancy between what the interface shows you of Auto Shot and what is actually going on. If you don't use any hunter addons, you may have great difficulty getting a feeling for any of what this article is about, because Auto Shot doesn't have any representation in the default UI. If you use an addon like Quartz or ZHunterMod, however, you'll be presented with a timer that looks something like a regular casting bar -- and while this Auto Shot bar will help a great deal, it is still not complete. No matter what, your imagination and inner sense of timing are going to have to do a good bit of work in getting your shots timed right.
iPhone vs. gravity is no contest
Apple's MagSafe power cords have probably saved thousands of laptops from untimely impacts -- too bad there's no such insurance policy for the iPhone. Brett Peters' phone had an unfortunate encounter with his young son and moments later, with the floor, and the result is as you see above. While the screen glass is shattered, Brett was able to lay a piece of clear packing tape on top of the phone and keep all the shards in place. You can see all the photos on Brett's blog and here on Flickr. Believe it or not, the phone is still functional; more surprisingly, except for the most seriously damaged spots, the touchscreen still works. Brett is considering a screen replacement via this procedure, but in the meantime I'm sure he's having a heart-to-heart with his son about the facts of physics. 9.8m/s^2 -- it's not just a good idea, it's the law.[via Twitter]
Damage coming to GT5 Prologue, weather possible for final release
There's something peculiar about the ability to drive 120 mph into a wall and not see a single scratch on your car. The Gran Turismo series has always been fond of that physics anomaly. Speaking to VideoGamer, series creator Kazunori Yamauchi said damage modeling is coming to GT5: Prologue. "We're not really planning for a trial or test version," he said, "we're going at it full speed. We'll see what happens." In a separate interview with IGN, Yamauchi expressed hope for a Fall release of the update.Yamauchi also hinted that weather effects would be in the final, non-Prologue Gran Turismo 5, due out about a year from now. We're not expecting Burnout-esque pile ups, but a fender bender in the rain would be nice.[Via PS3 Fanboy]
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue to get downloadable damage this Fall
How soon is "soon"? Well, sooner than we expected. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue will be getting a vehicular damage model, according to a new interview with IGN. This long-awaited feature will be made available as a download and could be available as early as this fall. Polyphony's Yamauchi said that, "maybe by Fall we'll be able to implement it."[Via Digg, Image from FlatOut]
Asus' Eee PC gets torture tested on video
For those that had no qualms kicking Teddy to the curb and cuddling with Asus' Eee PC throughout the night just as soon as it was released, you may want to utilize your scroll wheel right about now. For those with a tough stomach and a perverse appetite for destruction, you can most definitely stay put. In the video posted after the jump, the Eee PC is pushed from great heights onto solid floors, forced to sit in extreme temperatures and repeatedly prodded to see if it still functioned. Interested? You're just one click away from a clip sure to make gadget aficionados everywhere cringe.[Thanks, Roman]
One Shots: Impossible!
Guild Wars photographer Paul sends in this screenshot which seems to have been taken purely to prove a point. You see, one of Paul's friends said it was impossible to do more than 280 damage to any foe. But as you can see above (click on the image for a larger version), in a delightful display of fiery carnage, each of the beasties in this shot is taking 574 damage. Mystery solved!One Shots lives on a steady diet of your screenshots! Snapped a good screenshot lately? Tired of seeing the same old games featured? Send us shots from your favorite game! It's easy to participate -- just send your screenshots and stories to oneshots@massively.com. %Gallery-9798%
Is the DS really this fragile?
Over at flickr, user yatta has had a most unfortunate incident occur. His DS lite has been busted all to crap. It was only dropped about two feet, he claims, but since it fell right on its hinge, it pretty much exploded. Talk about your weak points for massive damage, eh? Maybe this gentleman could use a handy guide to help him fix it? Or, maybe just the phone number to Nintendo customer service.Any of you out there have horror stories about broken DSes?
Charter hit by second fire in Malibu area
For the second time this season, Charter Communications and its Malibu, California-area customers are dealing with outages stemming from wildfires. Granted, one's cable service is the least of our worries when dealing with situations such as this, but a whopping 12,000 feet of the operator's primary fiber optic cable was recently torched and will have to be replaced. The cable also provides feeds to homes in Agoura Hills, Calabasas and Hidden Hills, and while the firm is working to provide service to those affected, it's having to wait for power crews to sweep through first. Notably, Charter was already in the process of constructing a "redundant path to make the company less vulnerable to fire damage," and the latest word is that it's still a few weeks away from being completed.
Fire temporarily takes out several HD networks
If you noticed any outages earlier this week -- particularly when trying to view A&E HD, The History Channel HD, YES HD and NFL Network HD -- chances are an early morning fire at a Stamford, Connecticut building were to blame. Reportedly, the fire broke out in a building "that houses facilities for several programmers and a company that does uplinking for them," and while it took less than a day for A&E HD and The History Channel HD to resume operation, the other two channels took a bit longer to get back on track. Nothing like a brief outage to make you realize how critical HD is to your well being, eh?
iPhone vs. recliner: recliner 1, iPhone 0
Ouch, Flickr user kwarren's iPhone suffered a vicious end when it slipped from his pocket and into the inner workings of his (brutally gaudy) home theater recliner. But, there is a bright side to his sad story, when presented to the Genius at a local Apple store, it was replaced without issue or cost to him. We say cheers to Apple for this type of generous support and for the comedic relief in the repair invoice: "if scratched, describe what caused it to scratch. iPhone was crushed in a recliner." Hit the read link for more pics, but be warned, the images contain grievous depictions of severe iPhone suffering.
WoW Rookie: All you needed to know about stats, part 3
In today's continuation of our series on what the various stats in World of Warcraft do for you, we're going to be discussing caster stats. And, while a long-time player probably knows everything I'm talking about here, someone who's newer to the game might find spelling all of these things out to be handy. Curious as to how gear with +spell damage helps you out? Not quite sure how useful gear with mana per five seconds on it is for your class? You're in the right place.However, before you keep reading, it's well worth it to check out part 1 (covering the five main game attributes) and part 2 (covering statistics effecting physical damage). Coming up our next installment we'll talk about defensive statistics (armor, dodge, parry, resilience, etc), so stay tuned!
Mage Spell Calculator shows numbers behind the casting
From a forum post by Jonaleth, we find this nifty little tool that will tell you everything you ever needed to know (ever) and even some things you didn't about how your mage spells push out damage.It takes a while to load, and the site seems pretty rickety (I really hope posting it here doesn't bring it down), but once it loads up, you can realize just how powerful a tool it is. Put your mage talents in, use the checkboxes at the top to fill out info about your gear and situation, and then the tool will show you average hit calculations,damage per mana spent total, and even all of the damage coefficients (up to 2.0.1, so Arctic Winds hasn't changed here yet) on each one of your spells.Pretty incredible tool for mages, especially for those who want to squeeze every possible bit out of their class and spec. Jonaleth uses the guide as proof that frost mages don't get to churn out nearly as much damage as fire mages do. Well, umm, yeah. What else is new?But Jonaleth is right-- this kind of tool does provide a really clear look at what we already know to be true. Now you can see in raw numbers just how crazy powerful Pyroblast is.
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?
Phat Loot Phriday: Blinkstrike
Last week we did a little joke with Phat Loot Phriday (and, if I can brag for a moment, did everyone read my completely-made-up WoWWiki article that the beautiful people over there didn't delete?), but there's nothing funny about the loot this week-- it's one of the most droolworthy world drops you'll find in the game.Name: BlinkstrikeType: Epic One-hand Sword (which means, yes, it can be dual-wielded)Damage/Speed: 143 - 267 / 2.60 (78.8 DPS)Abilities: chance on hit: adds an extra attack to your swing. What, no other stats? Nope, it doesn't need any other stats-- that proc might be the best one in the game. Players who've had one say it procs about 5-6% of the time, which is nice, but here's the big deal: unlike most "extra attack" procs, this one supposedly chains. As in, you hit once, get an extra attack, and then get another extra attack from the extra attack. One player reported seeing 8 hits chained in a row-- that's around 1300 damage without any crits with one swing. Ummm... yeah. Unstoppable much? Because of that, this thing is perfect for combat rogues, but fury warriors will love it too (Tanks will find better defensive swords, but they have to PvP sometimes, too, right?). Bewarned: the chaining thing is very likely a bug, but even if Blizzard nerfs that, extra attacks are teh win. How to Get It: With a weapon as crazy as this one, you know they're not going to just give it out. In fact, that's exactly what they're doing, but very, very rarely-- it's a very rare World Drop, which means it could drop from anywhere at any time. Some servers haven't even seen them yet, though, so if you really want one from a drop, you'll be killing things for a long time.The better option would probably be to just farm the gold-- they're selling on the AHs for anywhere from 1500 to 3000g. At least it's not as much as an epic mount, right? If you do go the raising money route, make sure you can find a seller first-- make friends with your guildies, in case they get one, and keep an eye on your AH and your realm forums to see if anyone's found a Blinkstrike to sell.A Blinkstrike is more of a weapon you just come across if you're lucky, rather than grinding or questing for. But everyone can dream, right?Getting Rid of It: If you're crazy, a vendor will give you 10g, 19s, 34c for it, and it'll DE into... well, it'll DE, but no one has DE'd it yet-- probably a Large Prismatic Shard or a Nexus Void Crystal, if I had to guess. Of course, if you have one that you can't get rid of and can't use, feel free to drop it in the mail to Punishment on Thunderhorn-- I'd love one!
AddOn Spotlight: SCTd
We all probably know SCT, or Scrolling Combat Text, the mod that puts incoming damage, buffs, etc. above your character's head, or down the side, or whatever. It's the AddOn that Blizzard ripped off borrowed for their built-in Floating Combat Text, and it's a true classic of the AddOn world.But what if you wanted to display your own damage, the damage you dish out, above your head? SCT - Damage (or SCTd) is the ticket there. It requires SCT, and can show all the damage you do, including names of special skills, resist information, coloration by spell school, DOT ticks, and so forth, right in the middle of the screen over your character's head where you can see it. It's very nice for ranged damage, since your target may be inconveniently located for the built-in damage display.It's a good mod, and I love it. I only wish it would show heals I do as well as damage I do -- I know SCT can show my heals, but it would work better for my setup if SCTd could do it too. New in the latest version of SCTd, by the way, is an oft-requested feature: the ability to show damage above your targets' name plates. It's still in beta, so to speak -- it's buggy and has some limitations -- but if you want it, there it is.Download SCTd at WoWInterfacePreviously on the SpotlightAddOns for the Complete Noob
More claims of cracked Zune screens
While earlier reports of Zune screens cracking from battery pressure didn't exactly prove to be widespread, that hasn't stopped others from supposedly finding new cracks of a different sort, although the cause of them remains unclear. As the shot above courtesy of Cliczune.com shows, at least one of the cracks appears to have occurred on the LCD panel itself, with the Zune's screen protector remaining intact, which would seem to preclude damage as a result of direct impact. What's more, according to Cliczune, another of its readers reported hearing a popping noise just before their screen cracked, and yet another reportedly sent their cracked Zune back to Microsoft for repairs, only to have the newly replaced screen crack a week later. That said, the problems still appear to be relatively few and far between, so if anyone's had some unfortunate Zune experiences of their own, feel free to let us know about 'em.
Today's overkilliest video: Nerf Druid
Finally, some hard video evidence that druids are a bit too overpowered in World of Warcraft. You can't really argue after seeing this video. Could your poor warlock, paladin, or shaman stand up to this? We highly doubt it. Hopefully Blizzard will heed the call and scale back on the druids just a tad, because while some of the other classes are pretty powerful, this one goes to 11.
Smash my PSP: katana claims victory over Sony handheld
While a bevy of gadgets have been laid to rest for 15 seconds of YouTube fame, Sony's PSP has somehow eluded the brutal beatings that the iPod, PlayStation 3, Wii, and other highly coveted gizmos have suffered. Unfortunately, the PlayStation Portable has now received the same off-kilter treatment as the electronics that have come (and gone) before, as a couple of rowdy youngsters with a faux katana laid the smack down on a helpless PSP. Interestingly, the device seemed to hold up fairly well to the bashing it took, but we can't help but wonder just how sharp the sword was that was used in this melee. Seriously, we know how bad you want a PSP2 to finally surface, but we promise that getting medieval on your current rendition won't encourage those Sony execs to move their plans along any faster. If you dare, click on through for the ruthless obliteration.[Via PSPFanboy]
