destruction
Latest
Breach expected to launch this summer on XBLA for $15
We popped by Atomic Games' booth here at PAX to check out Breach, the dev's attempt to take on DICE's online-only, digitally distributed Battlefield 1943. Atomic president Peter Tamte revealed during our play session that he hoped to get Breach on XBLA this summer (as previously estimated), and that the developer is targeting a $15 price point. Considering how polished the game was in the state we saw it, we certainly believe it can meet that deadline. Look for our hands-on impressions later today.
Blood Pact: Patch 3.3.3 raid build roundup
Each week Dominic Hobbs brings you Blood Pact. "Ah, a most excellent recovery. The blood will suppress the Doomguard's magical defenses" ~ Daio the Decrepit It's been a few months since we did a roundup of the raiding builds and how the current game mechanics impact their relative DPS. With the patch 3.3.3 changes becoming public there are a couple of interesting warlock changes that are worth having a closer look at. Back in November with the coming of patch 3.3 we saw destruction lose its crown as "the best by far." Before then it was simply hard to justify any other spec unless you were giving the Demonic Pact buff to the raid, and doing so came at a personal DPS cost, so wasn't very popular. While we've been raiding Icecrown Citadel affliction and destruction have been pretty even in their competitiveness, with demonology still trailing along behind like a wheezy fat-kid -- you still want him with you cos he has all the sweeties, but he's not one of the cool-gang. Well, times are a-changin', that kid is growing up into a real power-house.
iMac burns, melts, survives to tell the gruesome tale
We reckon this is a story with something for everyone. Microsoft zealots can see Apple's hardware burnt beyond melting point, while Cupertino loyalists can enjoy the fact that the iMac lived on after it. Anders Norman of Sweden recently suffered a major house fire, but has emerged from it with some good humor and a scorched but amazingly still functional computer. He tells us that even the mouse's scroll wheel is operational and he took a picture of the iMac displaying the local news website's report of his home's unfortunate demise. Click the source link for more pictures. [Thanks, Robert]
Blood Pact: Leveling a warlock, 40 to 60
Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. "Closer! Come closer... and burn!" ~ Keli'dan the Breaker Once again Blood Pact turns its gaze towards those up-and-coming warlocks; those who are learning the craft, battling foes to hone their skills and sharpen their minds. I've said before that leveling a warlock is great fun and part of this is due to the diverse ways in which you can go about it. By the time you start getting a decent pile of talent points to spend you can shape your lock in many and varied forms. There's the unstoppable train of death that is the affliction lock, cursing and corrupting all around it as it passes smoothly through the world. The demonologist, pouring their power into their minion and pushing them into the fore while sitting back and calmly picking off their foes. And of course, the destruction warlock, blazing a trail of raw power in an explosive display of mental prowess over physical frailty. Let's see how these locks in training are getting on.
Blood Pact: 2009 through the Eye of Kilrogg
Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. "The avarice never ends! 'I want golf clubs. I want diamonds. I want a pony so I can ride it twice, get bored and sell it to make glue.' Look, I don't wanna make waves, but this whole Christmas season is stupid, stupid, stupid!" ~ The Grinch Hmmm... a look back at changes for warlocks in 2009. Well there was... no, wait, that was 2008. Well what about... nah, that's planned for Cataclysm. Wow, this is harder than I thought. Nothing particularly outstanding has happened in the warlock area this year; but so much has happened and, well things have changed. It's like waking up each morning and something is subtly different. Your blue toothbrush is now red... The sofa is now against this wall, not that one... each change is pretty unremarkable in it's own right but by the end of the year you are a stuntman living in LA married to a small, blond Portuguese skier who when she's not training does abstract painting, practices yoga and brews her own beer. As we surfaced, bleary-eyed into January our memories of sacrificing succubus and SL/SL were fading faster than those of December 31st. Those heady days of power that also led to FotM wannabes flooding our ranks. Skill and complexity had been leaking out of the class for a while and Naxx wasn't really providing any of us with much of a worthwhile proving ground. Affliction spell rotations were causing carpal-tunnel injuries on those who were determined to take the cold-turkey approach to dropping their addiction to Shadow Bolt spam. Fans of demonology were taking felguards like some sort of methadone for simplistic raiding, meanwhile retaining the use of their fingers.
Border security guards kill -- literally kill -- a MacBook (update: video!)
Young American woman travels over to Jerusalem to meet some friends, see the sights, live the life. Overzealous border security officers ask her a bunch of questions, take issue with her answers, and a few well-placed bullets later she is allowed entry into the country with a somewhat altered MacBook in tow. So what can we all learn from this incident? Firstly, back up all the data you consider important; B, Israeli policemen don't mess about; and 3, distressed laptops look gorgeous no matter how they got there -- just look at the way the glass trackpad has wrinkled up from the force of the bullet penetrating near it, it's a borderline work of art. The young lady in question has been promised compensation, but lest you think this is a one one-off you can see pictures of an equally dead Dell at the Flickr link below. We've got a couple more close-ups of the ravaged MacBook after the break. [Thanks, Itai N.] Update - We've tracked down a video interview with Lily herself, which shows off a few more angles of the former MacBook and current article of modern art -- check it after the break. P.S. - As always, we encourage a discussion. A sensitive, intellectual, worldly discussion. If you can't infer what it is we're asking of our dear readers tempted to intone on this matter, then please skip commenting on this thread, mkay?
French magazine shoots handhelds through boards, much to our amusement
Show full PR text As you know, there's one thing we love more than gadgets -- wanton destruction. Combine the two (on someone else's dime, o'course) and we're having a pretty good day. That said, we're glad that there are others out there with our bent, including Amusement, a "gaming lifestyle" mag based en France. Apparently, the theme of the current issue is "computer bugs," with a number of articles illustrated in a clever, artistic, Gallic manner. But that's not what caught our eye -- no, we were into the pictures of handheld game consoles (specifically, a Nintendo DS and a PSP Go) being shot through particle board. Feel free to peep some more action photography after the break -- and we'll just go back to working on our coilgun.
Sony Australia flings a PS3 into a Bravia, technophiles cringe
Dear Mr. Larson, Congratulations! With your recent purchase of our 46-inch Bravia KDL46X 3100 LCD TV, you're eligible to receive a free PlayStation 3 -- provided you haven't changed your address, and still live in Australia. Funny story: You're actually the last person that's eligible to receive the free console with the TV's purchase. "Lucky Number 25,000," we've been calling you around the office. I'm running to the stockroom right now, so I can ship your console and television to you personally, along with a very heartfelt letter of gratitude. Oh, crap. Listen, Mr. Larson -- I might have forgotten something ... important. See, to promote this offer, we may have flung the last PlayStation 3 into your Bravia television at 50 mph. By "may have flung," of course, I mean "totally did fling." If it makes you feel any better, it was a really good ad (check it out after the jump)! Very thought-provoking, and even a little cheeky. Just know that your television and video game console died for a worthwhile cause. (What? No! Of course there are no refunds. Don't be silly.) Love, Sony Australia.
One Shots: The couple that slays together stays together
While there have been many asking for non-glitched Warhammer Online shots, we've had only a few brave souls like today's One Shots contributor Pedro D. take us up on the challenge. As if sending in a non-glitchy shot weren't enough, he's managed to catch a picture of the strange mating rituals of those on the Destruction side. He writes in: Recently I've created a Zealot on another server to [see] how it [feels] to be a healer of pure evil. [While] walking through Chapter 2 (for those who don't play Warhammer Online this is for players of level 4-7) I stumble[d] upon four level 40 characters in some kind of double date of evil. Being at WAR and being on the side of pure evil is no excuse to stop loving. (By the way, that is my always friendly Hell Hound back there.)If you've got a non-glitched shot of something fun, interesting, pretty, crazy - or pretty crazy - from Warhammer Online, we want to see them! Email them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, a brief description, and whatever else you'd like to add. We'll post it out here for folks to enjoy.%Gallery-9798%
Choose My Adventure: Turpen dings 45
WoW.com readers, it's up to you to decide the fate of Turpen the Gnome Warlock with Choose My Adventure. Casting your vote toward the many aspects of Turpen and make him your own! Well, not literally. He belongs to Alex, but you know what we mean.Well, it took longer than I had hoped, but Turpen has finally dinged level 45 and he did it in the wet, muddy wastes of Dustwallow Marsh. It wasn't particularly hard, but between all of the patch 3.2 preparation I've been doing, it was sort of a scatterbrained trip. Do a few quests here, a few quests there... all in all, it wasn't particularly memorable!Throwing fuel on the 'not very memorable' fire was the completely anticlimactic ding of level 40. I remember that level being something of a landmark, but for Turpen the level came and went without much celebration. Mounts are at level 30 now, and the level 40 talent for Affliction Warlocks is pretty useful, but not much to get excited about. Oh boy, Dark Pact! Mana regen is so exciting! Don't get me wrong, I love me some mana, but could there be anything less exciting to someone who's leveling, questing and exploring? I want toys! I want explosions! I want excitement! This was none of those things. Maybe I would've been more excited if I run around with my Imp or Succubus out, but I've been getting pretty good mileage out of my Voidwalker still. I didn't have mana problems before Dark Pact, so I rarely use it now that I have it.
One Shots: A face only a mother could love
Believe it or not, not every Warhammer Online image we get has a glitch in it. It just seems like more people snap screenshots of funny glitches than normal life. We figure they're too busy trying to kill each other for that. That's why even if this guy's face is scary-looking, we're glad to see it today on One Shots - and glitch-free! Without further ado, here's today's contributor: This is my Warrior Priest, Serathor, from the Phoenix Throne server of Warhammer Online. As I [was] waiting for me and my warband to finish defending a battlefield objective in the Shadowlands, I turned around to capture an amazing lightning strike hitting one of the spires.When you're out and about in your favorite MMO, why not snap some screenshots and send them our way? It's always appreciated as we love to have lots of different worlds to show off. Just email them to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name and the game the image is from. Be sure to add in your name, the name the game is from and a brief description so we can credit you properly.%Gallery-9798%
Choose my Adventure: I'm on a mount
WoW.com readers, it's up to you to decide the fate of Turpen the Gnome Warlock with Choose My Adventure. Help test the site's new features by participating in this event, casting your vote toward the many aspects of Turpen and following his exploits on Alex Ziebart's WoW.com profile!Another week, another level. Ten levels, actually. And I guess it's been a few weeks. It sounded cooler that first way though, didn't it? Anyway... Yes, Turpen has hit level 35. The last couple of weeks have been busy around the office due to patch 3.2, so I didn't get as much done between level 25 and 35 as I had between 15 and 25. I only squeezed one dungeon run in, but I did manage to do something else that was asked of me: Battlegrounds.Yes, I did quite a bit of PvP this week on our Gnomelock, primarily in Warsong Gulch in the 20-29 bracket. I tried a round of Arathi Basin (which we won 2000-100) but very quickly decided never to do that battleground in that particular bracket ever again. Running around Arathi Basin without a mount is pretty much the worst thing ever. Patch 3.2 will change that I suppose, but it'll be far too late to be of any use to Turpen. My next alt, maybe!
GPS coordinates lead demolition crew to destroy wrong house
Tired of blaming GPS on petty mishaps like the destruction of cars, a demolition crew in Georgia has managed to accidentally destroy an entirely wrong house based on GPS coordinates. Oddly enough, it wasn't even the first time they'd been by: the man who cuts the grass noticed that the power box was missing from the home and holes were punched into the walls about a month ago -- it was suspected as vandalism, but it now seems that the stealthy, directionless demolition company was to blame. The demolition company says it had "paperwork" authorizing the destruction, complete with the coordinates and a description of the home, which the owner's father had built with his own hands "brick by brick."[Thanks, Leonard]
Choose my Adventure: Insert funny title about being level 25 here
WoW.com readers, it's up to you to decide the fate of Turpen the Gnome Warlock with Choose My Adventure. Help test the site's new features by participating in this event, casting your vote toward the many aspects of Turpen and following his exploits on Alex Ziebart's WoW.com profile!Well, you guys wanted me to run Deadmines. As you can see, I ran Deadmines. Many thanks go to Urse (Healer), Child (Tank), and Sneafoo (Noob Rogue of Doom) for 4-manning the thing with me. Urse was pretty overleveled for the place so healing was hilariously easy, but Sneafoo made up for it by starting the run at level 12 and aggroing Gruul from the pirate ship.I went further than that, too. I didn't stop at Deadmines, I did Wailing Caverns, Blackfathom Deeps and Shadowfang Keep as well. I was kicking around the idea as soon as someone suggested Deadmines, but I didn't think I would manage to land a group for either of them. When I went out to the Barrens to get my Succubus (Angva) at level 20, that sealed the deal for me. I picked up the quest The Orb of Soran'ruk, and despite the fact that its quest rewards sucked, it gave me more reason to try and get the groups together. I put out a call to all of the various resources I knew, LFG and community chat channels (your server probably has a few good ones) and all of that, and managed to score a few groups.
Blood Pact: Return to the depths of the third tree!
Warlocks had best beware! Blood Pact preys on people who wander too deeply into the dark depths of the internet! Author Nick Whelan apologizes for being a tad late this week -- sometimes final projects just don't go smoothly, ya know?It's no secret that I haven't exactly been in a PvE mood lately. I don't know what it is, but every year around this time I just...lose all motivation to progress. I've come to accept it as the natural cycle of my WoW-life, but lately I've been thinking I want to get back into it. I'm not ravenously trolling Dalaran looking for a raid, but I've been doing some heroic pugs to dust the rust off of my shadowbolting finger. Frustratingly, though, I've been having an exceptionally difficult time getting back into Affliction. Not only does the rotation and casting style fail to engage me, but it feels like far too much of a struggle to dish out DPS. Back during that golden age between patch 3.0 and patch 3.1, Affliction was a zen thing for me. My rotation was so deeply ingrained that typical spell casting was handled by my subconscious mind. My fingers seemed to move on their own! Post 3.1, Affliction seems to have been made so user friendly that I keep stumbling whenever I try to do something. Like switching from Windows 3.1 to Vista overnight. The most reasonable course of action, I concluded, was to revisit the first instructions given to me by my Jedi teacher. I needed to unlearn what I had learned, by switching to a completely different spec. So without further ado, welcome to Project Respec: Post 3.1. As clever readers probably divined from the title of this post, the subject this week is Destruction!
Choose My Adventure: The birth of Turpen, Gnome Warlock
WoW.com readers, it's up to you to decide the fate of Turpen the Gnome Warlock with Choose My Adventure. Help test the site's new features by participating in this event, casting your vote toward the many aspects of Turpen and following his exploits on Alex Ziebart's WoW.com profile!The polls are closed and the votes have been tallied. The audience has decided that for this little experiment, I am going to play a Gnome Warlock while I track my misadventures on my profile. As mentioned in the original post, most of the decisions regarding this character's growth will be made by you, our readers. I'll give weekly updates on my progress via the blog here, but so much more will be happening over on my profile. I've already started a photo album which will contain screenshots of my little 'lock as he goes from level 1 to level 80.I've already rolled the character and I've named him Turpen, in homage to a certain Englishman on the WoW.com team. I've decided to play a male, because... well, I usually play female characters as you can see on my character list. Let's be different this time around! However, dear readers, there is still more for you to decide. There are three polls behind the cut below. Professions and my talent tree.
Fire and Brimstone buffed for patch 3.1.2
When patch 3.1 went live, Destruction warlocks (and 0/40/31s) had a lovely time smacking everything in sight with massive Conflagrates. This was promptly nerfed, for PvP purposes; the devs felt it was overpowered for 'locks to be able to do that much, that fast. However, it was acknowledged that Destro would need some PvE buffing to make up for it. It looks like we'll see that buff in patch 3.1.2, when the deep-Destro talent Fire and Brimstone is currently planned to be changed to: Now increases the damage done by your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by 15% on targets afflicted by Immolate, and increases the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate by 25% (at rank 5). The first part is entirely reworked, and the second part used to only apply if your target's Immolate had 5 or fewer seconds remaining. There was also a brief and terrifying time where they were considering changing Glyph of Conflagrate to give an entirely different effect, but fortunately, the current plan is to leave it as-is. Will this F&B revision be enough to make Destruction competitive with Affliction again? We'll see; I know I'll be trying it out.
Blood Pact: What's up with everybody?
Another week, another Blood Pact! Bringing you all the wacky Warlockery that nine out of ten healers recommend for a healthy diet. And it's not because Nick paid them off or anything. Hello again, my reprehensible cabal of spell casters I call a readership! How's it hangin?Not a great deal has actually changed for me since last week. I was forced to disband my raiding group due to unfortunate scheduling problems, so I still haven't set foot in Ulduar. And since heroics stopped offering an interesting challenge months ago, I haven't had much of a reason to log in as of late. With Noblegarden upon us though, I suppose I'd better get to it--a proto-drake in my class color doesn't come along every day, yo!Lacking any escapades of my own to pen for your amusement, I thought it would be nice if I did some research on how the various specs are being played these days, for the benefit of players (like me) who wish their spec' s play style would settle down longer than a handful of months. It's hard enough to be a DPS class beset by near-constant nerfs -- radically changing our play style all the time isn't helping. But enough QQ, lets talk about how Warlocks are doing their pew pew these days.
Blood Pact: WTB Glyph of Haunt...anybody?
Greetings fellow Warlocks! Welcome, to our wicked weekly: Blood Pact! Here, heretical happenings are heard, diabolical deeds are done, and alliteration is always awesome. So continue to sit at your computer, continue to read your monitor, and enjoy the ramblings of Old Man Sentai as much as you're able. I've dreaded the coming of 3.1 for awhile now. I love the new features of course. Being able to switch to a spec with replenishment any time my raid needs it will certainly be handy, and Ulduar will be a nice change of pace once I get in there -- even if I really wanted to get a few more Naxx achievements done before moving on. What I don't love is the new Affliction. There's so few buttons I feel like I'm playing Burning Crusade style Destruction. (Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt...)3.0 Affliction's rotation went something akin to Shadow Bolt > Haunt > Corruption > Siphon Life > Curse of Agony > Unstable Affliction > Immolate > Shadow Bolt Spam, followed by dot refreshments as needed, and Drain Soul once the target was below 25%. There was some variation based on whether or not the group wanted Curse of Elements, or whether you liked your short duration dots to go up first, but on average that's how it was. Now that Siphon Life has been removed as an active spell, as well as Unstable Affliction and Immolate being altered so that they're mutually exclusive on a given target, two dots are out of the rotation. I'm sure it's a welcome change for some, but I'll be referencing the period between 3.0 and 3.1 as the golden age of Affliction from now on. Oh well, such is WoW.
Top 3.1 specs so far from 3D Armory
Not to be outdone by TalentChic, the folks at 3D Armory also sent us their lists of what the most popular builds are in the game after patch 3.1, and since everybody seems to be build-hungry lately (and why not -- we each get two!), here they all are.Warrior: Fury 18/53/0.Paladin: 0/0/0, which means you need to log in, Paladins! Also 51/5/15 for Holy.Hunter: 0/0/0 wins here, too, but Survival (6/14/51) comes in next.Rogue: Combat 15/51/5.Priest: 14/57/0 for Holy.Death Knight: 17/0/54 Unholy.Shaman: Elemental 57/14/0.Mage: 0/53/18 Fire.Warlock: 0/41/30 Destruction.Druid: 14/0/57 Restoration, which surprised me.Keep in mind that these are from only a small sample of the game, so they're not the most popular specs in the game, just the most popular among those surveyed by the 3D Armory. And unfortunately, unlike TalentChic, it doesn't look like there's any way to see where the points are going, just the distribution of points among the trees (though that reminds us that Blizzard probably has some amazing point-by-point stats on how popular talents are).
