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Hyperspace Beacon: Find the Force
With E3 last week, I really considered devoting this article to opinions regarding the latest news for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Then I realized that Massively already published a ton of SWTOR related articles about E3 this week. During the show itself, Dan gave his impressions of playing the game, and all four of our attendees delivered impressions yesterday. It's good to read impressions from people who love MMOs but aren't necessarily die-hard fans of BioWare or Star Wars -- you'll get a different perspective than you would reading this column. So instead, this week I'll examine the announced abilities for the Jedi Consular class. The majority of this information stems from the advanced class page, but there is a little bit that comes from MMORPG's interview with Georg Zoeller. Hop past the break as we explore the abilities of this powerful Force-user.
Eden Eternal turns the spotlight on the Cleric
Despite being deep in the beta process -- or perhaps because of it -- Eden Eternal has emerged to highlight another one of its 15 classes: the Cleric. Master of buffing and heals, the Cleric promises to be a welcome addition to any team (not to mention a very solo-capable class). Clerics are unlocked at level 5 and are the first characters to be capable of healing and supporting others. The class has access to seven Cleric-only skills as well as five skills available to all support classes. And while Clerics -- like all classes in the game -- can wield any weapon, they do the best when equipped with a mace. You can check out the class trailer for the Cleric after the jump, and make sure to check out our first impressions of Eden Eternal if you haven't done so already!
The Light and How to Swing It: Dealing with healing caps
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, or catch me weekly on the Matticast. If you've ever played a DPS class, you're familiar with working with stats with caps. You have to worry about hit and expertise caps, and there have even been haste and crit caps, too. While playing the min-max game with these stats can be entertaining, healers rarely have to worry about stat caps. Our primary stats, intellect and spirit, don't have any caps to speak of. We do have a few haste breakpoints where we get bonus Holy Radiance ticks, but haste and mastery don't have any hard caps that we can reach. We can pick up any healing stat without worrying about having too much of any given stat. Instead of dealing with stat caps, healers deal with spell caps. DPS classes have an optimal system or rotation that they follow, but healers have several spell options they can choose from. Each spell has its own limitations, and knowing when to use what spell is a key part of playing a healer successfully. Holy paladins are especially familiar with these issues, as our spells tend to be in flux nearly even patch. Learning how to work around each spell's strengths and weaknesses will ensure that you always use the right tool for the job.
Hyperspace Beacon: The hybrid
As many of you know, BioWare revealed the Trooper progression video for last week's Friday update. This surprised me because I was expecting a light update -- after all, E3 is next week, and Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to have a major presence at the expo. During the video, we witnessed many of the different Trooper abilities. The AoE of the gatling-like blaster, the heals from remote droids, the root from the carbonite grenade, and all the other abilities attest to the range of roles the Trooper can play in a group. The Trooper is not the only class that can possibly fill every role of the group dynamic. In fact, we know four of the eight classes have the choice of being full DPS, healer, or tank: Trooper, Consular, Bounty Hunter, and Inquisitor. There is much debate on what this means for group dynamics and boss fights as well. Although most of the community would agree that having these hybrid classes isn't going to stop anyone from buying or playing the game, they might have an impact on the staying power of the MMO. For me, it boils down to a couple of different schools of thought. On the Galactic Underground, an internet radio show, the hosts and the IRC audience spoke about the differences between a hard and soft trinity gameplay and which they preferred. For me, how the hybrid works depends on whether the game is set up with a hard or soft trinity. The definition of hard and soft trinity is a bit subjective. After the break, I will outline what I mean by hard and soft trinity and detail how I think the hybrid classes fit in Star Wars: The Old Republic...
Reader UI of the Week: Germany represents with Viday's UI
Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com. Tuesday is here, and you know what that means: We are one week away from a WoW Insider Show special live show extravaganza! You heard me right, folks: Next Tuesday, May 31, Mike Sacco, Matthew Rossi, and myself will hit the live stream for a full show dedicated to all things WoW. Plus, we're doing the show during downtime, starting at 11 a.m. Eastern/8 a.m. Pacific, so you won't be busy and can totally listen. We'll be giving away prizes, too. That rules! Anyway, we've got other business to attend to right now. Reader UI of the Week gets a good number of submissions from both Europe and the United States, but there is a really fun factor in seeing non-English UIs. The localization process is awesome and incredibly intriguing to me, and I love seeing what different UI elements are labeled as and how UI issues are dealt with. Imagine my utter disappointment when German native Viday changed his entire interface to English so it would be more understandable. Story of my life. %Gallery-19902%
Shifting Perspectives: The future non-suck of mastery
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we contemplate the possibility of writing a future article on predictions that came true, because goddamn, we're amazing. One of these days I really ought to write an edition of Shifting that's nothing but a smug-a-thon on how much I've been able to get right. That this necessitates ignoring the 95% that I get wrong is somewhat troublesome if you're one of those people who gets hung up on the ephemeral phenomenon sometimes known as "accuracy," but a good writer never lets the truth stand between herself and a great story. On this occasion, I am pleased to say -- to a legion of people who could reasonably have expected an upcoming change anyway -- I told you so. Booyeah!
Reader UI of the Week: Bloom with Skoddie's UI
Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com. Welcome, friends, to another exciting week here at Reader UI of the Week. I am your ever-vigilant host, Mathew McCurley. Before we begin, I wanted to remind everyone about the submission process for sending your Reader UI to be thrust into the spotlight for all readers to see. First, send images, not videos. I appreciate you taking the time to put together a video showing how your UI works, but for the purposes of the column, I do need some screenshots to go along with it. Second, "here's my UI, I hope you like it" is great, but it cannot be the only content you send along. We need more! What do you like about your UI? What was your design goal? Do you have any pieces of the UI that you just can't live without? You don't have to write a novel, I swear. Other than that, submissions are easy! Big screenshots, please, and your WoW character's name is suitable. If I cannot tell what gender you are from the screenshots or your name, a gender-identifying pronoun will be provided for you at random. Submit your UI to readerui@wowinsider.com! %Gallery-19902%
Behind the Mask: Being a good team player
The holy trinity is a sort of abolished concept in recent MMOs, and Champions Online is really no different. It's easy to make healer-tanks, tank-DPS, healer-DPS, and all sorts of variations on those themes. I commented previously that I like the idea of the trinity, but that was a year ago, and I've got a little more to say. Champions is a hard game to explain in terms of role, so I don't really expect the community at large to actually accept a lot of what I'm explaining here. However, this is a breakdown of the real contributions each person can make to a team. Although there is no real "crowd control" role, there are still a lot of ways people can contribute to victory.
Enter at Your Own Rift: Looking for groups
Like some of you, I feel that RIFT's Update 1.2 can't get here soon enough. A good content update, in my opinion, has a little something for everyone, and in talking with Trion Worlds last week, I definitely got that feeling from this patch. The team is catering to endgame players with Slivers, build-enthusiasts with a fifth role, rift-runners with new types of dynamic events, and people who aren't content to merely spam my Twitter feed with accomplishments but must now do so from inside Facebook as well. I'd be lying if I said I'm not planning on spending huge amounts of time assembling dashing and fashionable outfits for my characters once the wardrobe is in the game, too. I'm all about outfits in Lord of the Rings Online, so it's great to see RIFT bring this type of system into the game (unlike some other stubborn studios, which shall remain nameless). Players like to feel powerful while looking incredible, and this outfit system will hopefully allay some of the complaints of similar-looking toons. Above all this in Update 1.2 towers one of the biggest changes to the game yet: the Looking for Group (LFG) tool. Designed to assemble teams of players to tackle dungeons and group quests, the LFG tool will certainly change how we play RIFT. Will it be a good change or bad? That's the $1,000,000 question, which I will tackle after these brief messages, by which I mean, "after the jump."
Enter at Your Own Rift: 'Role' play
In retrospect, it was all my fault. I had gotten too used to just throwing RIFT dungeon groups together and assuming that with the flexible soul system we'd be able to provide everything necessary no matter what archetype mixup we had. I suppose it's a testament to Trion Worlds' design that an exact group composition wasn't a top concern -- the goal is just getting five willing players together for a fun run. We were running Darkening Deeps, and I decided to start a group so that I could show off the dungeon to Rubi. We had two Rogues, two Mages and a Warrior, and I felt pretty confident going in that we would prevail. And while the Warrior stepped up and said he would tank -- taking the burden off of my Riftstalker build -- everyone else was curiously quiet when I asked if there was another healer who could back up my Bard heals for boss fights. Nothing. Not a peep. The other Rogue didn't have a Bard spec, and the Mages were whistling innocently when I asked if they happened to have a Chloromancer role tucked in their back pocket. Oh crud. This was going to hurt. Six trash pulls into the dungeon later, I called it and said that we simply didn't have enough healing power to make it through the bosses. My bad, I said, thanks for playing!
The Anvil of Crom: It's the Bear Shaman (barely)
Well, the people have spoken, and it seems like I've got some new marching orders when it comes to Age of Conan. If you've been following the column for the last little while, you'll know that I'm running a miniseries that borrows heavily from Massively's Choose My Adventure pieces. Every so often I'll offer up some polls relating to various gameplay choices, giving you the reader the opportunity to vicariously explore aspects of Funcom's fantasy title that may have lacked previous coverage. I'll report on my character's adventures on a regular basis, with the long-term goal being a pretty comprehensive record of what it's like to play AoC from 1 to 80, as well as a deep look at endgame. In addition, it's a public character, so anyone who wants to group for dungeons, PvP, or general shenanigans can hit me up in game. Preambles aside, head past the cut to see the results of last week's polling and a glimpse into the future.
Alter-Ego: An overview of the trinity in DC Universe Online
In DC Universe Online, all of the different powersets can pump out DPS -- however, the trinity is alive and well even in this superhero game. Thankfully, due to the way the powers are designed, our ability to stack effects, and the heavy utilization of combos, grouping or raiding in DC Universe Online doesn't generally feel like you're stuck simply mashing buttons. If you get in with a regular group, you'll learn the ways you can play your powers off each other using synergy, thereby adding an entirely new level of awareness to encounters. Unfortunately, endgame isn't just about going into an instance and unleashing everyone's max damage to tear through the place. While all characters can do damage in DC Universe Online, roles are still vitally important for group PvE and endgame content. As a preamble to a series that will look at builds for each role in the game and what they can bring to the table, I thought it would be a good idea to take this first week to look at which powersets go with the roles players use in endgame. Join me behind the break as I break it all down for those who are new to the game or perhaps are looking for a refresher.
Champions Online unveils the eight free-to-play archetypes for launch
It's an interesting road ahead for Champions Online as it prepares to go free-to-play. To facilitate the change and give subscribers a reason to keep paying regularly, the game is rolling out rigidly enforced archetypes that take away power selection but still allow for some personal customization. We've seen the initial description of how the archetypes will work, and the team at Cryptic Studios has just unveiled the eight archetypes that will be available to both free players and paying players when the conversion goes live. Each archetype has a strictly defined role, along with several powers meant to enforce that role. Tanking, DPS, and healing are all represented by the available choices, meaning that even players who haven't spent anything will be able to take on whatever role best suits them in the game. Players should take a look at the official listing to see exactly what powers will be available and at the lore description for an idea of where each archetypical concept fits within the Champions Online framework.
New Tree of Life form in all its video glory
The new Tree of Life form went live on last night's beta build, and I've shot a short video to show you what it looks like in action. As mentioned previously, the Tree currently shares the male orc skeleton and animations, so you won't see anything too unfamiliar here, but the new form is just beautiful. If anything, it's kind of depressing that it's now a cooldown. The new forms are colored by race, and here's the breakdown: Night elves get the purple form. Tauren get the brown and green form. Worgen get the dark brown form. Trolls get the light brown form.
Ol' Grumpy's guide to Cataclysm instance protocols
If, like me, you've been tanking for a while, Cataclysm will be a return to a slower, more deliberate form of instancing. There are pros and cons to this, of course. The positives are: After a few weeks, those jerks who constantly say "go go go" in runs will have died a lot and will either have stopped playing or learned to stop doing that. Same for people who feel the need to pull while the tank/rest of the group is regaining mana and so on. Abilities that haven't seen much use in Wrath of the Lich King will probably make a comeback. You're going to need to learn to Polymorph, Sap, Trap, Hex and use other forms of CC. For the first few months of Cataclysm, at least, there will have to be more of a focus on skill and execution than numbers. Switching targets properly, not breaking CC before it's called for, and using your abilities at the right time will be rewarded. You're going to get whole new dungeons you haven't seen hundreds of times already, with all-new mechanics. Glory in once again having no idea what this pull does. The downsides, however, are also worth mentioning.
Raid Rx: A rock and a hard place
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. If you're looking for more healing advice, check out the Plus Heal community. Stop me if you've heard this one. You're taking on some dragon. Some really powerful spell is about to hit you and the rest of the raid. You don't have any cooldowns to use because you had to pop them earlier. The tank who is busy yelling obscenities at said dragon just took a massive fireball to the face and is down in the red. You know for a fact that the next blow is going to be lethal and you have maybe 2 seconds to react. If you move, you may well have condemned your tank to death. If you stay and heal, you'll end up taking some damage which could be lethal. Normally, this isn't that big of a deal, but we're in an age where we have so many informative addons that tell us which attacks successfully hit a player and when it happened. What's worse is that this data means the difference between staying and getting cut from a raid (or a guild). This is a topic of one of the emails that I received from a healing shaman. So what is a healer to do? Is he wrong for making the decision to take avoidable damage to keep the raid or the tank alive? Is he better off just taking the damage so that he doesn't look bad? Either way, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. Lots of players don't understand that these are some of the decisions that have to be made.
Waging WAR: A healer's survival guide
This week, Waging WAR steps back from all the news and hype of Gamescom and GamesDay and focuses in on the healing archetypes in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. As we all know by now, Greg plays a healer and he's put together a guide for those who kill by mending the wounds of those who kill by bludgeon or blade. In my time in WAR I've learned a thing or two. No, I'm not writing about my extensive knowledge of how various terrains taste (the sand on the beaches of Nordenwatch and the cobbled brick streets of Praag have become favored delicacies). I'm writing about how to be an effective healer in WAR. While I am by no means invincible or infallible, I do consider myself a decent, relatively resilient and capable PvP tank (let's not kid ourselves here -- who needs plate when you can wear robes, right?). I have some advice to share with those who are interested in endgame PvP/RvR healing, or even those who are already there but seek to add an edge to their game. To achieve enlightenment, click the Read More button.
Raid Rx: Identifying and avoiding insane applicants
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host, Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus, is on vacation. Today, Allison Robert pens advice concerning recruitment policy that you would probably be better off not reading. Unlike Dawn, I did not consult Matt Low prior to writing this article, because he would have told me to quit screwing around and write something helpful. I think we can all agree this serves as an important lesson to all WoW.com columnists -- namely, going on vacation leaves your column to the mercy of people like me. Healers, like nuclear fission, are prone to instability and drama. This is perhaps understandable because the rest of the guild holds us responsible for the collapse of fishery stocks, split infinitives and the raid's survival through enormously stupid gameplay. Because we exert an equivalent amount of influence and control over all three issues, pressure eventually builds to the point where we crack and start screaming obscenities at the height of the raid hour, or else sit at our computers muttering to ourselves, oblivious to the stares of nearby friends who make a mental note to refill the Percocet when they are next in town. So. As this process inevitably consumes most of your healing team, it will eventually become necessary to recruit. Healer recruitment is a process fraught with danger and heartbreak, as it involves the repeated casting of one's line into Yoohoo Lake in the hopes of fishing up the least terminally incompetent player therein. Officers are subsequently obliged to make distinctions between different applicants, some of whom may be legitimately crazy and nearly all of whom are lying in some respect. The following guide should prove useful to any player who wants to know when someone can be comfortably incorporated into an existing healing team, and when an applicant should be shuffled in the direction of the nearest KFC selling two-piece and a curb stomp.
Waging WAR: Patch 1.3.6 and the proverbial DPS-Healer
There aren't very many companies that open up planned patch changes to their players and fans for discussion; however, Mythic is one that does. This week, Waging WAR focuses on the suggested career balance changes for the Zealot and Runepriest coming in patch 1.3.6 for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. We'll cover the issue as well as the proposed solution for these careers. We'll also discuss the impact that these changes might have on the affected careers and on the community in general. There's also a part where Greg throws some drama at the fan and rants about "DPS-Healers." Let's start by clarifying the main issue and the proposed change. Currently, the other healing careers (Archmage, Shaman, Warrior Priest and Disciple of Khaine) have their mastery paths organized by the role which they might play (i.e. damage focus, healing focus, etc.); whereas, the Zealot and Runepriest don't. Their mastery paths are organized by the delivery method of their healing (i.e. over time, direct, or area). The problem is, after deciding whether to specialize offensively or defensively and gearing to that role (a freedom of choice that they should be given), the Zealot and Runepriest are left with only one-half of an effective skill-set -- the other half of their skills being rendered ineffective by role choice and gear itemization. To bring these careers in line with their archetypical cousins, a new mechanism is proposed which gives Zealots and Runepriests a chance to retain some effectiveness in skills that are outside their chosen role.
The cynic's guide to World of Warcraft
We tend to be very careful while composing articles here at WoW Insider. We're always mindful that not everyone plays the game in the same way, or has the same experience on different servers or factions, but every so often a certain madness seizes us and we feel the urge to ... tell the truth. In that vein, I am pleased (sort of) to present The Cynic's Guide to World of Warcraft. This article owes a heavy debt to Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary. If you want to see a real master at work, read that.
