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Massively's hands-on with End of Nations' PvE and PvP
You know that scene in Contact in which Jodie Foster is looking out at the cosmos, telling the folks at mission control that they should have sent a poet? All the while I was playing End of Nations at Trion World's Gamer's Day event, I kept thinking, "Massively should have sent a StarCraft guru!" I initially felt very much out of my element. MMOs and RPGs are my shtick; I only rarely dive into turn-based strategy games. And RTS games? Forget it. They don't agree with me. If it doesn't have a pause button, I probably don't have time for it. I'm too easily distractible, too impatient, and too exhausted after a work-day of multi-tasking to spend my playtime multi-tasking even more. There's just no time for cooking meals, browsing lolcats, and chatting with the spouse when you're neck-deep in an RTS. RTS games are serious business; they require my undivided attention and concentration, and I don't like doing things halfway. And yet maybe that makes me just the right person to try out an MMORTS hybrid like Trion's EoN. Most people who give it a spin when it hits the market will probably have a lot in common with me -- they'll be loyalists to one side or the other, not to both. Maybe an RTS novice is just the sort of person who can test out the game, present it to MMO gamers, and explain just what the heck this game thinks it's doing playing around in our end of the pool. Or maybe I'll end up sobbing amidst the charred remains of my tank minions. You'll never know if you don't hit the break! %Gallery-99563%
WoW Rookie: Collective wisdom
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. Let's face it: Crowdsourcing is king. Every company that beta tests its products (hello, Cataclysm!) knows the benefits of having hundreds, thousands or even millions of creative (and not-so-creative) minds plinking away at its features. If we put our heads together ... Today's WoW Rookie rounds up recent posts at WoW.com that spawned info-rich comments ready to mined by us newbies. Before we dive in, though, I'd like to remind everyone (even you old hands out there who happen to be reading along) to keep sending in your favorite pointers for new players -- things it took you months to realize when you first started playing, things you wish you'd known back in the day. Send 'em in to lisa@wow.com, and we'll run one every week in WoW Rookie. One more piece of business: Got a question or wondering about something in WoW that has you stumped? WoW Rookie is opening a mailbag section especially for new and leveling players. Send in your questions to lisa@wow.com. Now, with thanks and much love to our prolific Breakfast Topic commenters, let us unleash the wisdom of the masses!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The replacements
Hey, guys, did you know that Going Rogue is launching in less than a week? That's crazy. It feels especially strange to me, since this was an expansion that had barely been announced when I started here, and has since become pretty personally important. But we're not here to talk about my vague feelings about the impending launch, we're here to talk about its larger implications for City of Heroes -- namely, the obvious systemic changes that might well be coming when the expansion goes live. Now, some of you are doubtlessly going to point out that we're not even getting our first Incarnate slot, the expansion isn't changing any part of the system, and so forth and so on. But you forget that there is an interesting change to the system coming that we all know about: the fact that archetypes will no longer be allegiance-locked. That's right -- whether you're in City of Heroes or City of Villains, you'll no longer be limited to five different archetypes. And considering the fact that the archetypes are roughly analogous on both sides now, this might have just a bit of an impact.
Breakfast Topic: Tank anxiety
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. I leveled my main as a retribution paladin until about level 65, when I picked up two new toys running randoms -- a shield with high defense and block stats, and a one-handed sword with good stats that glowed purple and matched the shield. Yes, I became a tank because I wanted to accessorize. I'm a girl; that's how I roll. I dual-specced protection, invested in tank gear and said to myself, "How hard is it?" I already had leveled my death knight through every heroic instance repeatedly, so I was confident that I knew the layout and the fights. My husband and I queued for a random with me as a tank and wound up in Hellfire Ramparts. And then it all went bad. I kept getting confused about who to pull first and which direction to go, and the group promptly lost confidence in me. They started playing the "kill them all quick" game, in which they used their hardest-hitting AoE spells to take the mobs out quickly and try to survive through it. Never mind that this tactic usually makes holding hate really difficult! We wiped, the healer left, the warlock and the hunter told me I was the worst tank ever, and I literally cried. I've ran quite a few instances since then, some successful, some not. Now that I am a new level 80, I am on that perpetual quest to get lots of badges and upgrade my gear -- but I'm still suffering from tanking anxiety.
Shifting Perspectives: Pulling 101: Assessing the group
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. For a long time, I've been kicking an article around on the art of the 5-man pull. Knowing how and when to pull is arguably the foundation of a smooth dungeon run, and it's certainly among the first skills that any tank needs to develop. While a not-insignificant portion of one's ability to pull cleanly only arrives courtesy of experience with a wide variety of players, there are a few rules that approach universal status. Moreover, I expect them to be equally useful when I hit the new Cataclysm dungeons and have to figure out how to tank for a group safely in a new environment with new mobs. The more I wrote on pulling, the more I realized that the subject can be divided into two very distinct categories: what happens before you pull, and what happens while you're pulling. This week's column addresses the former. Everything I am about to tell you in this column is something that you, as an experienced tank, will eventually do in the space of a second without even realizing you're doing it.
The Daily Grind: Threatening
While not every MMO features aggro mechanics (Second Life is remarkably free of them, for example), nine times out of ten endgame content will at least peripherally involve someone tanking something big and nasty. Usually with claws. And in almost every case, tanking involves a series of mechanics about threat. There has to be some reason why the big nasty is targeting the character in four-inch-thick armor with a shield instead of the robed priest that has a coughing fit when she walks too quickly, after all. For the upcoming expansion, World of Warcraft's team is considering making some changes to threat mechanics, something that Spinks summarizes and rails against quite eloquently. It does raise the question, however, of how responsible a tank ought to be for managing threat. How big a part of gameplay should tanking actually be? Do you prefer games where you never have to worry about threat, or games where tanking is a very near thing? Which game do you think featured the most engaging methods for holding enemy attention that you'd like to see more of?
Cataclysm: Reaching uncrittable
For those of you who don't know much about tanking, we're going to talk quickly about a stat that won't exist in Cataclysm. This lowly stat is called defense rating, and it's something that tanks need quite a bit of. The nice thing is that it's on just about everything that tanks wear, which means at higher gear levels, we've got it coming out of our ears. The primary point of this stat is to reduce the critical strike ability for incoming melee hits from the standard of 6% to 0%. Druids currently don't need this stat, as they've got a talent called Survival of the Fittest, which means that bosses don't need to drop defense leather. All in all, the stat is kinda boring, as while it does still do nice things after you reach the defense cap of 690 rating (or 540 skill), most people don't bother with it and stack stamina or other avoidance. So Blizzard decided that they're going to get rid of it. Around BlizzCon 2009, we were told that the crit reduction we formerly got from defense rating was going to be tied into things that were available to all members of each tanking class. Examples used were baking it into Bear Form for druids, Righteous Fury for paladins, Defensive Stance for warriors and Frost Presence (or rather, Blood Presence in Cataclysm) for death knights. That means that if a retribution paladin or arms warrior wanted to tank, all he'd need to do was swap to vaguely appropriate gear (or just over to a sword and shield), pop his respective abilities, and away he'd go. That's not how it appears things went down, though.
Wrath Retrospective: What we learned from death knights
With the final content patch of this expansion on our doorstep and Cataclysm following close behind, we'll be taking the next several weeks to look back on Wrath of the Lich King and everything that made it what it is, for better or for worse, in Wrath Retrospective. Wrath of the Lich King is coming to an end, and with it one of the largest experiments that Blizzard has ever done in the history of WoW. At the onset of this expansion, we were all introduced to a new class; the death knight. The addition of a new class has major complications on the game as a whole: how they fit into PvE, how they work in PvP, what buffs and debuffs they bring, what roles they fill, what unique utility that they provide. All of these things have changed the face of the game as we know it. though fairly new arrivals, death knights have been integrated into the game almost seamlessly; the craters that they made when they first arrived, however, are still highly visible to those that know where to look. There were a lot of misconceptions about death knights when they were first released. Once they were announced, Blizzard classified them as being a hero class, not to be confused with your ordinary, run-of-the-mill class. To many people, this caused worry that death knights would be grossly overpowered and far superior to all of the others. Blizzard was quick to point out that this was not the case, but it did little to assuage many of the fears that players had. Still, death knights have had their ups and their downs all throughout this expansion, and if that is not a case for removing then from hero status then I don't know what is. What can we learn from death knights? What has all of the work done with the significant re-balancing changes and the major talent changes taught us about WoW in general? How can we apply that knowledge to all of the other classes in the game? That is what I wish to explore to day, and I hope that you will join me.
Behind the Mask: A glass jaw is not an advantage
Last week, I asked you guys if anyone was interested in a Massively SG. Well, the comments and emails seemed pretty positive, so I'll be forming one up; send a PM or friend invite to @Auspicious if you're interested. I also made a Massively chat channel, creatively named Massively. Feel free to hop in and use it to socialize with me or other Massively readers while you're smashing down villains! I'll be on this weekend and we can think of a suitably "super" SG name. This week, we're going to be talking about survival. A little bit of tanking info will be included, but I am hoping that Cryptic changes the currently screwy aggro mechanics. Right now, they require tanks to constantly attack everything in a given room at the same time -- certainly a difficult prospect even at the best of times. Staying alive, however, is universal. Everyone hates dying, even in Champions Online. Not everyone has to take hits all the time, but when those hits come, a little bit of survival sure helps. A lot of survival helps even more.
The Daily Quest: Me tanks
Here at WoW.com we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! Take a look at the links below, and be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites. It's Monday, which means I'll be plunking around on a troll warrior this evening thanks to the Choose My Adventure program. Shamefully, while I've done plenty of questing, I haven't really done much in the way of instances or tanking. This is due to some deep-seated fear that I'm going to be the horrible tank that gets the healer killed by a runaway add, the obnoxious tank that lives by the philosophy "Continuously pull threat off of me and I will let your cloth-wearing hiney tank that mob" or just simple fear of complete and utter incompetence in general. Thankfully there's plenty out there in the WoW blogosphere regarding tanking: The Wayward Initiative likes to stand in front of things that mean them harm. Righteous Defense serves up three impenetrable facts about armor as well as introducing the cooldown you can chug. Tankingtips reflects on 6 or 7 tanking mistakes you'll consistently make, as well as discussing the Dungeon Tool and how it is ruining your chances of Raid Tanking. This is doing little to ease my fears. Let's go to The Stoppable Force for a reassuring and cheery musical number instead.
Take your tanking to the next level
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. Whether you are a first-time tank or a grizzled hardcore raid veteran, a death knight, druid, paladin or warrior, you will find some useful nuggets in these top 10 tank tips. 10. Pay attention to what abilities trigger the global cooldown (and pay more attention to those that do not). For example, warriors can generate threat on a large group by charging a mob in the back and using Thunder Clap on the mobs in the front as you pass through them. This is possible because Charge does not trigger the global cooldown. Likewise, abilities like Concussion Blow and Rune Strike can be macroed into other abilities. 9. Use a unit frames addon. An addon like Grid, which is generally regarded as specific to healing can be invaluable to a tank because of the sheer amount of information that can be concisely displayed. Grab a few additional Grid modules like GridStatusThreat and GridStatusRaidDebuffs and, at a glance, you can see your threat situation, major debuffs, etc. as well as having a handy mouseover frame for the next tip.
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.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new level 80 tankadin, part 2
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon, an entire flight of black dragons. We're still talking about fresh, up-and-coming tanking paladins who have just hit level 80 and are looking for gear. After taking another look back at it, most of last week was concentrating on items from reputation vendors and craftable items that you could either make for yourself or nab off the auction house. I decided that I could have done a lot more with various tanking drops from dungeons and items from the emblem vendors. So, this week we'll take a look at just about everything a level 80 can nab from a dungeon for tanking, and next week we'll take a look at what you can do with all of those emblems you earned up running dungeons.
Lichborne: Frost tanking 101
Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com's weekly death knight column. This week on Lichborne, we're looking at yet another endangered death knight play style: frost tanking. Frost tanking is one of those strangely misunderstood specs in that many players consider it to be the only tanking spec, or at least the only viable one. This is based on the old pre-beta outline of the death knight class that dedicated frost as the tank tree. Blizzard decided to allow all three trees to tank well before even the alpha was over, but the myth of frost tanking supremacy persisted. Now, there really will be only one tank tree, but instead of frost, it's going to be blood. That means that if you want to experience the original death knight tanking tree, you only have a few more months max to do it. That's why we have this guide. This a 101 guide, so the usual disclaimers apply. This is meant to get people well on their way to being a viable frost tank, but it's not a be all, end all guide, so there are additional tricks and talenting tweaks experienced tanks will know and pick up. These are just the basics.
Cataclysm: Blood will be the only Death Knight tanking tree
In a complete about-face, Ghostcrawler just announced that there will be a dedicated tanking tree in Cataclysm for Death Knights: Blood. Rather than having all three trees try to be good at both DPS and tanking, Blizzard will be taking the tanking talents from the other two trees and adding them with some other changes to the Blood tree. They announced this today, knowing that this news will overshadow the rest of the DK class preview. The complete text is after the break.
Behind the Mask: Finding the Holy Trinity
One of the common statements made among the newer MMO generation is the idea that a game "abolishes the holy trinity." It's the idea that their game has evolved to the point where labels like "tank," healer," and "damage dealer" aren't as relevant when talking about a character. This idea isn't particularly new -- the first big RPG with mass online support to break this trend was probably Diablo 2, which actually predates most of the mass-market MMORPGs available today. Champions Online definitely takes a step in this direction. In fact, it was a suggestion on the forums and the overwhelming player response against the holy trinity that gave me the idea to write this in the first place. Champions is very solo-friendly, and a character can build to be pretty self-sufficient -- one can build for tanking, damage dealing, and self-healing all in the same package. This lends some pretty big weights to the idea that the holy trinity is a thing of the past. But Champions Online has a few things in its design that maintain the "Holy Trinity" design concept. Hit the jump, and I'll talk about why, contrary to popular belief, I think that keeping the holy trinity around is a good thing.
EVE Evolved: Medic ships, part 2: High-end healing
In the first of this two-part guide, I looked at some of the more affordable entry level ships and modules available to dedicated healers in EVE Online. I went on to examine an effective strategy for using medic ships as part of a PvE gang, whether you need some help on a particularly hard mission or you're trying to crack one of EVE's hardest exploration complexes. This week, I look at high-end healing as I explore capital ships and the role of medic ships in both PvP and wormhole operations. Healing in missions and exploration sites is a largely passive affair, with the healer permanently locked to the main tank. NPCs in these sites never switch targets but the same can't be said for players or the advanced Sleeper AI that roam wormhole systems. Repairing your gang-mates in PvP or a wormhole operation is a completely different affair, made all the more complicated by the fact that the dedicated medic ship is sure to come under fire. In this article, I look at capital ships and the remote assistance strategies players use in PvP or wormhole operations.
EVE Evolved: Medic ships, part 1: The healers of EVE
The holy trinity of tank, healer and damage-dealer is present in every MMO, including EVE Online. While most MMOs dedicate these roles to specific classes, ships in EVE can do all three at the same time. When running missions solo, for example, a ship will need to tank incoming damage, repair it and deal damage themselves. Setting up a ship for solo PvE becomes a balancing act between the three roles. Too little tank and you'll find yourself in trouble, but too little damage and you'll take forever to kill NPCs. As part of a gang, however, remote armour repair and shield transfer modules allow pilots to specialise into a traditional healer role. Rather than having each player repair their own damage, it can be much more effective to have a dedicated medic ship to repair anyone that gets shot at. There are even specialised ships for would-be healers in EVE, from entry-level cruisers to advanced Tech 2 Logistics ships and massive capital ships. Medic ships can be an effective part of any gang, whether you're tackling a tough level 4 or 5 mission or engaging in large-scale gang PvP. In this first part of a two-part look into dedicated healers in EVE Online, I look at the more affordable ships and modules available and the best strategy for healing in PvE.
Cataclysm tanking cooldown feedback wanted
Nethaera hit the forums this morning, asking for feedback from tanks around the globe. Ghostcrawler has been having a lively discussion with tanks (most specifically protection warriors) recently, and now they seem to be formalizing the discussion for the wider audience. Nethaera We're currently working on the tanking cooldowns for tanks in Cataclysm. We're interested in feedback from the community on what makes cooldowns fun and useful. For example, what is the sweet spot in cooldown duration between an ability with such a short cooldown that you must mash it constantly versus an ability with such a long cooldown? Which current abilities are fun? Putting aside any rose-colored glasses, were there cooldowns in Burning Crusade or classic WoW that you miss in Lich King? What, in your minds, should the role be for talents and glyphs. For example, if glyphs shouldn't reduce cooldowns, what can they do? source Nethaera goes on to remind people that this thread isn't the place for balance discussions necessarily, and certainly not a place to debate who's overpowered. This feedback also won't dictate exactly what the developers will do, it will simply help them make the right decisions. Do you have an opinion? Then head on over to the forums and make it known! Politely, of course.
Balancing class strength and flavor
One of the things I hear a lot from other tanks (especially paladin tanks) is how much they envy Charge, and especially being able to Charge in combat. "Man, I'd give up X for Charge." Usually what they want to give up is their shield throw, or their AoE taunt, which of course is not a terribly compelling idea: warriors have parallels for these abilities and charge isn't one of them. Heroic Throw is our weaker form of Avenger's Shield and Challenging Shout is our stronger but longer cooldown AoE taunt. As soon as they gave up Righteous Defense (which rocks on the Lich King fight, btw) they'd just say "Man, I'd give up X for Challenging Shout" anyway. If warriors actually managed to give up Shockwave for Consecration they'd want it back in a week. What it ultimately comes down to is the difference between a necessary ability and one that is useful but not necessary. You also need to take iconic roles into account. I doubt many would support giving warriors Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Sanctuary, Lay on Hands, the paladin system of Auras, or what have you. The ability to die without taking equipment damage via Divine Intervention? How much, exactly, is Charge worth and if it's so pivotal to tanking why are you rolling a paladin to tank instead of a warrior? How do we keep classes compelling and interesting while giving them the tools to do the same job?
