Patrick Mackey
- Columnist -
Although he enjoys unwinding in PvE and roleplaying, Patrick's first gaming love is competition and the nuance of gaming mechanics that comes with playing games at the most intense levels. A regional tournament champion, Patrick takes his gaming seriously, whether it is MMO PvP or an intense match of Street Fighter 4.
He is an ardent pursuer of the intrinsic satisfaction of deep game knowledge; he balks when other gamers insist that "games are for fun."
Patrick Mackey's Latest Posts
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The Summoner's Guidebook: Our least favorite LoL champions
Everyone has preferences. We're naturally attracted to the aesthetics of certain characters, or perhaps we really like a character's gameplay or even his voice actor. For instance, everyone knows that I really like Poppy, but I'm attracted to a lot of other characters. I tend to like the "mature" ...
The Art of Wushu: Paying doesn't mean winning
Age of Wushu has come under a lot of fire as a pay-to-win game. There are ways to get in-game power for out-of-game money, so there are a lot of reasons to assume that real cash can turn you into one of the top fighters in Jianghu. Fortunately for the dedicated players (and to the chagrin of ...
The Summoner's Guidebook: Winning LoL games takes good decisions
Decision-making is a broad topic, so I am a bit hesitant to cover it directly. It's the little things that contribute to victory in League of Legends, and decision-making is not a little thing. It's a big topic with a lot of ground to cover. As I've said many times in the past, experience is the ...
The Summoner's Guidebook: A year of summoning Guidebooks
It feels sort of strange to be writing the one year anniversary of the Summoner's Guidebook. On the one hand, it feels like yesterday since Shawn asked me to do more MOBA coverage and I pitched the idea of a League of Legends column to him. On the other hand, it feels like I've been writing about ...
The Art of Wushu: Gathering and crafting
Life skills are the central point of Age of Wushu's player economy. All useful equipment, food, and most of the useful consumables are only available through crafting, and equipment requires lengthy production chains and an injection of tradable silver in order to make it effective. This process ...
The Summoner's Guidebook: The perfect LoL gank
We've talked a lot about teamfighting lately, but that's not the only kind of engagement in League of Legends. In truth, a large number of kills in most non-professional games occur long before teams ever group up to take an objective. Even in a teamfight-focused gametype like Dominion, smaller ...
The Summoner's Guidebook: Teamfight positioning wins LoL matches
Two weeks ago, I talked about zoning in League of Legends. One of you mentioned in the comments that I should focus more on teamfight positioning and less on laning, since there is more complexity in that. I agree, but there's a caveat. It is extremely difficult to explain how to position ...
The Art of Wushu: The right martial arts school for you
Normally at Massively, we start off a column by linking to relevant community sites and information resources for a game. Things are a bit different with Age of Wushu, however. Aside from the main community site and the wiki currently under construction, there isn't much information about the ...
The Summoner's Guidebook: Cleaning up after your LoL messes
Two weeks ago, we covered initiation in the Summoner's Guidebook, and last week we covered zoning. Those two elements comprise the early and middle parts of a teamfight, but if you want to win in League of Legends, you need to finish strong. As a fight winds down, wounded players begin to ...
The Summoner's Guidebook: Controlling space in League of Legends
Zoning is a concept that's been covered quite a bit. The concept of space control is something central to most competitive video games, and Shurelia already made an excellent video on zoning that is very specific to League of Legends. While Shurelia's video is well worth the watch, there are ...
