Monday, January 24, 2011

Tempest's Cataclysm Mage PvP Basics Vid

This Post comes via Tempest's Cataclysm Mage PvP Basics Vid.

So i am still leveling my mage at the moment... however its always good to see someone elses point of view when it comes to PVP. Found this one on the wow forums, looks like a two part series should be a good viewing. I have re-arranged the original post source to include the vids, i know it was hard work ;) but hey makes for easier viewing and readage. The following vids and skill all belong to Nighttempest im not trying to claim any of his glory just promoting some good cata mage pvp skills ;) Check it out:

kruxor pvp frost mage.jpg



DISCLAIMER: I don't claim skill! I just happen to know what I'm doing (half the time).

Anyways out of sheer boredom I decided to make a mage guide I managed to get some good clips (all of it was filmed in one day other than the scene on the docks vs the boomkin and warlock which was 3.3.5), so I decided that I should probably put them to use... anyways it's a 2 part movie just read the description, and it takes a while to load in from youtube since its popup so you can get the full quality.

As long as I don't waste your time completely, and you guys get at least ONE thing out of it I'll be happy.

Part 1

  • Movement/Kiting

  • Lining Up Burst

  • Simple Exercises to increase your mage skill



Part 1 is essentially a very slow, very chill movie starts from the very basics of everything, and ends with some silly exercises of me doing stupid crap in IF. Anyways you can at least enjoy the music if nothing else. (WARNING: I was a "bit" drunk for the last bit of part 1 since it was the end of the day so expect some weird screen shaking.)




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Check out the full thread Tempest's Cataclysm Mage PvP Basics Vid for part two of this video series.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

A Collection of WoW Leveling Flow Guide’s and Images for Cataclysm

This post comes via: KruXoR - A Collection of WoW Leveling Flow Guide’s and Images for Cataclysm

Ok so it cant be a guide beyond Cataclysm, but hey it has a good ring to it... ;) What the opposite of beyond, (checks google) Hmm, well that was no help, and unrelated to this post anyway. So I have been leveling my new mage just lately, and going through all of the changed content and locating all of the new quest hubs etc, and i have to say its pretty cool what blizzard have done to the wow leveling flow in cataclysm. It all flows together nicely and there are a lot more connecting quest chains and they break it up with a few different and fun quests here and there, but if you just feel like grinding through the level you can do that as well. I have just hit 73 on my dranei mage and it has started to get a lot slower, 60 - 70 was a breeze and before that was amazingly quick compared to how long it used to take! Even battle grounds are ok to go in every now and again being alience i tend to win more than on the horde side overall, and wins can get you about 25% of a level in the 30's and 40's. not so much in the higher levels, but you can still get about 100k exp from winning an av and thats only about 20-30 minutes of game time, so its pretty comparable.

Now i have posted the following leveling flow diagram before but its so good ill post it again here:


originally posted here... ;)

kruxor gallery 17713 20 5810.jpg



kruxor Cataclysm Map.jpg



I was looking for a bit of extra advice on power leveling as well, not the bad powerleveling that you pay for but the stuff that just helps you with general leveling in wow, dont get distracted, and concentrate, try not to get bored ;) i was leveling the other night and watching a movie, that definately slowed down my leveling process :P probably due to not being able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, might be a male thing.

kruxor 800px Cataclysm Goblin Priest Mage and Warlock.jpg



Anyway here is a few tips on powerleveling that i found:
Five golden rules of powerleveling

Minimize Downtime

Downtime is whenever you are not killing mobs or completing quests. Examples for downtime include regenerating mana or hitpoints, traveling, chatting, attacking other players, reading or dieing.
For obvious reasons downtime directly hinders your goal of leveling as fast as possible. Keeping these activities to a bare minimum is the most important aspect of power leveling.

Maximizing Burst Damage

The second most important thing when powerleveling is how fast you can kill mobs. Both single mobs and groups of mobs. Burst damage is greatly impacted by your spec (think protection versus fury), your gear level and your playstyle. And to a lesser extent by consumables, buffs and reforging/stat choices.

Play alone

To clarify right away: I do not have any math showing how grinding instances with a fleshed out 5 man group compares to leveling by questing. But if 70 – 80 is any judge, leveling by questing will be at least as fast but without the drawbacks of leveling in a group. You set the pace, you decide when to take breaks, you rely on your preparation and expertise instead of the preparation and expertise of other people. The method of power leveling purely in instances is not the focus of this text. Much rather the focus is on leveling by questing and grinding.
Questing in a group of multiple people always has drawbacks that can never outweigh the benefits. While „killing-quests“ are typically (slightly) faster in a group, a lot of drop-specific quests are much slower in groups and you will find yourselves waiting for mob respawns a lot. Not the mention the downtime is increased significantly for a group with multiple players.

Always know your next steps

Use a guide; preferably with an addon that goes hand-in-hand with the guide.
If possible use a second screen to always display the guide so you can read while you travel or grind. Always read at least the next paragraph in the guide so you know what you will be doing after the current task. This is to make sure you don't travel unnecessarily or separate tasks that should be persued together.

Stay awake

Only read this paragraph if you consider leveling to 85 hardcore.
My personal, most important advice: Do not drink alcohol when trying to stay awake and focused for a long period of time. Alcohol will get you very, very tired very fast.
Most people (including me) will find listening to music while leveling stimulating and keeping you going.
Caffeine is your friend, but you need to use it the right way:
Caffeine works by changing the chemistry of the brain. It blocks the action of a natural brain chemical (adenosine) that is associated with sleep. Adenosine is produced by your daily activity, especially by physical exercise.
To a nerve cell, caffeine looks like adenosine. Caffeine, therefore, binds to the adenosine receptors. However, it doesn't slow down the cell's activity as adenosine would. The cells cannot sense adenosine anymore because caffeine is taking up all the receptors adenosine binds to. So instead of slowing down because of the adenosine level, the cells speed up. The „problem“ is, that adeonosine keeps building up while caffeine is blocking the adenosine receptors. So as soon as the caffeine loses its effect, you have a lot of adenosine around that will rapidly occupy all the receptors. This happens very fast and you will turn from being totally focused to dead tired in a matter of minutes. Drinking a coffee or an energy drink will flood the brain with caffeine for a short amount of time. It usualy takes 15-30 minutes to feel the effect, which then peaks around 30-60 minutes after consumption.
So once your body decides that you are tired, you would have to drink a coffee around every 2 hours at least to stay focused and you would still feel a lot of „ups“ and „downs“ when the caffeine peaks and declines.
A much better way is to rely on a continuous, controlled flow of caffeine that never peaks or declines but keeps a steady level to prevent you from becoming too tired. You might know the substance that provides just this effect under the name of „Guarana“. Guarana capsules usually work over several hours (typically 5-6), emitting a steady flow of caffeine (the exact same thing that you get when drinking coffee). Designed to keep you awake when feeling tired as opposed to coffee, which is good to „remove“ tiredness when you are rested; which is why coffee is consumed to wake up.
Enough of the medical lessons. You can get guarana capsules prescription free (in most countries?) at your local apothecary. I suggest you learn some more about the effects of guarana or ask your pharmacist about them before trying them out. Just to clarify again: Guarana is NOT a drug. It is identical to the caffeine chemical derived from other sources, such as coffee and it is classifed as GRAS in the United States.

Note: This rule is for crazy gamers! For you health, I suggest that Life first, Game Second! lol!

Take care of yourself

Don't carry leveling to excess.
Make sure you always feel comfortable or immediately stop playing!

Here a few tipps:

  • Always have water or tea on your desk (or any neutral beverage) and don't forget to drink enough.

  • Eat two or three times a day. You will notice you won't be as hungry as usual simply because your body is burning much less calories. It's only a couple days, so go all out on pizza, lasagna and what else makes you happy (and can be eaten at your computer :P). I would say try to eat some fruits/vegetables too etc, but yeah, **** that.

  • Again, no alcohol or drugs apart vom caffeine.

  • Care about hygiene. It is much more comfortable to play after a shower.

  • Make sure your Monitor is at least 50cm away from your eyes. If your eyes start to hurt, take a break or stop power leveling.

  • Maybe stick around in your Teamspeak to keep some company and to motivate eachother. But it can be distracting, especially if people keep asking stuipid questions about where to find quest objectives.

  • Turn off your mobile phone and lock the door if you have a toilet & fridge in your room. For a second you thought I was serious here, right? Powerleveling is nice and fun, but don't do it at the cost of the people around you.




Now just on a small side note about leveling mages, i was arcane for ages while leveling in the low levels and that was doing pretty well for me. I switched out to frost spec at about 40 or so and have been leveling as frost all the way to 73, after reading a bit a lot of people are going fire now for leveling, i might give that a try and see how it goes.

Frost is quite easy though for leveling, Just do a Frost Fire, then ice bolt x2, and ice lance and finish with a fire blast if its still going. Then when you get the freeze spell (cant remember exactly what level thats at) has a 30 sec cd, and then u just freeze the mob and hit them with 3 ice lance crits, gonski! ;) Anyway ill check out a fire pve build and see how that goes, leveling as ice gets a bit same old after about 30-40 levels anyway :P

I found a pole on mmo champ and the results about leveling mages were, Arcane (9%), Fire (71%), Ice (20%). So it seems fire is the way to level.

kruxor cataclysm mage class preview.jpg




My mage has some rather horrid gear for a level 80. I logged onto the PTR last night to mess around with fire, and much to my surprise I pulled 5400 DPS in a fight against one of the new encounters for the pre-Cata event. This was done knowing very little about a fire rotation (Hey, I've been Arcane!), and without my normal bindings.

My thoughts on it? Scorch is insane. Quick little spell that you can cast while moving with talents, doing 5K a shot. Oh, and it's free and freaking FAST. All I did was spam the hell out of it and fire of Pyroblast when it procced. I loved it. Considering the last time I used Fire on my mage (August of 2007), I will definitely have this as one of my specs. It's just so much fun.

________ __ _

Everyone says 'go frost,' so that's mostly what you see (sheeple). The best spec is the one you have the most fun with. I levelled my mage fire all the way. When dungeoning with groups that outgear you and/or the content, your dps will suffer because of the time factor mentioned above. All things equal, fire does very well. The non-fire spells in combo do very well indeed.


kruxor cata talent trees.jpg



The Sources:
MMO Site
MMO Champ
Cataclysm Stuff

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Is there a Disc priest pvp buff in the upcoming Patch 4.0.6?

kruxor ghostcrawler.jpg

So apparently Ghost Crawler has announced some pretty crazy priest BUFFS! it should hit the test realms soon!

Lets see what we have here. Oh yeah, disc wont suck anymore. /yay. (or maybe it was just me, heh) ah well im playing my mage now so eh. But still good news for disc pvp priests. Ill break down the official disc list here, ill skip the boring bits...

  • PVP Buff: Focused Will now procs when the priest is critically hit, in addition to its current effect. : so that means that now it will stack?

  • PVP Buff: Improved Power Word: Shield now also increases the amount absorbed by an additional 15/30% when cast on oneself. : but i did hear that the mana cost for shield is also being increased so you still cant spam it (too much).

  • PVP Buff: Pain Suppression is no longer dispellable.

  • Penance mana cost has been increased by 7%, but healing has been increased by 20%.

  • PVP Buff: Strength of Soul now also causes the priest to become immune to silence, interrupt, and dispel effects for 2/4 seconds after using Inner Focus.

  • PVP Buff: Glyph of Pain Suppression has been renamed Glyph of Desperation and now allows Guardian Spirit to be cast while stunned, in addition to Pain Suppression.

  • PVP Buff: Glyph of Spirit of Redemption has been converted into Glyph of Prayer of Mending, which increases the healing done by the first charge of Prayer of Mending by 60%.


Now i have probably overlooked some of them so check out the official list below, but its looking good. Hmm do i want to go back to playing my priest or keep leveling the mage.

kruxor future talent 1.jpg

Here goes the list of changes for Priests happening in Patch 4.0.6:

  • The duration of Levitate has been increased to 10 minutes, up from 2.

  • The mana cost of Power Word: Fortitude has been reduced by approximately 68%, making it roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.

  • The mana cost of Power Word: Shield has been increased by approximately 31%, but its effect has been increased by 208%.

  • The mana cost of Renew has been reduced by 24%.

  • The mana cost of Shadow Protection has been reduced by approximately 65%, making it roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.

  • Mind Blast damage has been significantly increased. It should be roughly 50% greater than Mind Spike.

  • Mind Control now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

  • Mind Sear can now be channeled on friendly targets in addition to enemy targets. In addition, Mind Sear's damage has been increased by roughly 15%.

  • Prayer of Healing effectiveness has been reduced by 15%.


Talent Specializations

Discipline

  • Divine Aegis: Critical effects from Prayer of Healing now award a bonus amount in addition to the default, always-proc Divine Aegis effect.

  • Grace is no longer limited to one target at a time.

  • Focused Will now procs when the priest is critically hit, in addition to its current effect.

  • Improved Power Word: Shield now also increases the amount absorbed by an additional 15/30% when cast on oneself.

  • Pain Suppression is no longer dispellable.

  • Penance mana cost has been increased by 7%, but healing has been increased by 20%.

  • Strength of Soul now also causes the priest to become immune to silence, interrupt, and dispel effects for 2/4 seconds after using Inner Focus.


kruxor 3879945748 8a1dc9aed0.jpg

Holy

  • Blessed Resilience will now proc when the priest is critically hit, in addition to its current effect.
    Chakra

  • Chakra states now last 1 minute, up from 30 seconds.
    Binding Heal and Holy Word: Serenity now refresh the duration of Renew on the target, in addition to the other direct heals.

  • Binding Heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal can now trigger Chakra: Serenity.

  • Mind Spike can now trigger Chakra: Chastise.

  • Circle of Healing effectiveness has been increased by 30%.

  • Desperate Prayer now heals the priest for 30% of their total health, up from a very subpar value.

  • Guardian Spirit: The absorb/heal from this ability can now never exceed 200% of the maximum health of the target.

  • Holy Concentration now increases the amount of mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat by an additional 15/30%, down from 20/40%.

  • Holy Word: Chastise now has a 30-second cooldown, up from 25. In addition, it properly breaks from damage.

  • Lightwell's health has been increased by 50% (for PvP purposes).

  • Serendipity now has Spell Alert and Floating Combat Text feedback support.

  • Surge of Light can now also proc from Flash Heal and Greater Heal, and can now also critically hit.


Shadow

  • Shadow Orbs benefit from mastery has been increased by approximately 16%.

  • Vampiric Embrace now lasts until canceled.


Glyphs

  • Glyph of Mind Flay no longer requires Shadow Word: Pain to be on the target.

  • Glyph of Pain Suppression has been renamed Glyph of Desperation and now allows Guardian Spirit to be cast while stunned, in addition to Pain Suppression.

  • Glyph of Psychic Horror now reduces the cooldown of Psychic Horror by 30 seconds, down from 60.

  • Glyph of Spirit of Redemption has been converted into Glyph of Prayer of Mending, which increases the healing done by the first charge of Prayer of Mending by 60%.


patch notes / talents come via Cataclysm Stuff post via KruXoR

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

the top selling consoles list, looks like the nintendo ds is coming out on top followed by the wii

So which console do you prefer? According to the sales, the Nintendo DS is coming out way ahead with 47 million sales in just the United States alone and 135 Million Total Sales.



gamerstuff no price cuts for nintendo wii or ds consoles this year.jpg




According to Nintendo's internal sales figures, the Nintendo DS™ family of portable video game systems has sold more than 47 million in the United States since the original model launched in November 2004. That tally makes Nintendo DS the nation's best-selling video game system of all time.

For the second major milestone of 2010, Nintendo's internal figures show that the Wii™ home console marked its third consecutive calendar year with U.S. sales of more than 7 million - a feat never before accomplished in the history of video games by a home console. To date, the Wii system has sold more than 34 million in the United States alone.


Heres where all the consoles rank overall



  1. Nintendo DS @ 135.58 million, including DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL units (as of September 30, 2010)

  2. Nintendo Wii has sold 75.9 Million consoles.

  3. Worldwide: 62 million (as of September 16, 2010)

  4. XBOX 360 - Worldwide: 44.6 million (as of September 30, 2010 (2010-09-30))

  5. PS3 - 41.6 million (as of September 30, 2010)



gamerstuff nintendo wii.jpg



The wii was always going to be popular due to the target market for this console and the new control method that is assisting people adopt this new technology, and its available out of the box.



gamerstuff psp 1.jpg



See the PSP isnt doing so bad after all coming in at number 3, but it has been around for a little while now



gamerstuff ps3 vs xbox360.jpg



The XBox 360 and PS3 are neck and neck at 44.6 million and 41.6 million respectively, give or take a couple of million.




sources:




  1. http://press.nintendo.com/articles.jsp?id=27181

  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS#Sales

  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360

  4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3

  5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable





via KruXoR