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The Summoner's Guidebook: Balancing League of Legends' offense and defense items

Patrick Mackey — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: PvP, Free-to-Play, Guides, MOBA, League of Legends, The Summoner's Guidebook

Last week, we talked specifically about building League of Legends' attack damage champions and the multiplicative effects the various bonuses have on these heroes. Building attack items is fairly cut and dried. The good attack damage items (IE, BT, PD, LW) are common to most pure AD builds, and there's not a lot of reason to heavily deviate from building them.

Defense is another story, however. In Dominion, defense is more heavily itemized than in Summoner's Rift simply because irregular engagements happen constantly. On Summoners' Rift, there is more structure to specific engagements, and a single champion getting spotted out of place either results in an epic bait or a brutal gank. In those situations, defense doesn't help much.

However, it's important to itemize defense in any game mode, and in Dominion, it is outright critical. Building only damage items will cause your champion to get melted by enemy attacks very early on, while building defense allows you to play more aggressively and capitalize on damage opportunities with less risk. Building defense is also important for bruisers who must close the gap to melee range, which inevitably means taking more damage than normal. Want to know all about the best time to start building tank? Read on!

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The Summoner's Guidebook: Balancing League of Legends' offense and defense items originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 05 Jul 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dawntide releases latest beta patch notes

Jef Reahard — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, New Titles, Patches, News Items, Dawntide

Dawntide, the ambitious sandbox title from Working as Intended, has released the patch notes for version 3.0.5, which also happens to be the very latest build of the world of Cieve. The title is currently in extended beta testing, and the client is being updated fairly frequently, as evidenced by a mere six days elapsing between the last two patches.

This week's changes include a major reworking of resource locations throughout the game world, various boat bug fixes including physics and dropped passenger issues, and changes to hit points, mana, and endurance. "[We've] rebalanced hit points, mana, and endurance. All attributes now contribute towards at least one of the these, and you will always have a minimum of 20 of each, even if your attributes are reduced to zero," writes WAI's Wiz on the game's official website.

Check out the full patch notes here.

Dawntide releases latest beta patch notes originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 19 Jun 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily Grind: How realistic do you like your games?

Eliot Lefebvre — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Real-Life, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Virtual Worlds

In real life, if you've not noticed, we don't have hit points. Getting stabbed by a sword once is pretty much crippling if not outright fatal. Fall too far and you don't suffer some uniform amount of damage across your whole body -- you frequently wind up breaking your legs or your spine, and it can be a slow and painful recovery process if you ever recover. We can't wander through the world without ever bothering to eat, drink, or sleep, and when you get shot to death, there will not be a fresh clone waiting to get you back into the action. In the interests of being polite, we'll not even mention the usual lack of other important facilities.

We accept that there's going to be some degree of unreal mechanics in a video game, of course, but that doesn't mean that some of us don't want the game to stick fairly close to the real world. By the same token, though, some of us take the Mystery Science Theater 3000 mantra to heart -- it's just a game, and it's not all that important if it makes real-world sense in sticky parts. Where do you fall on the scale? Do you like your games fairly realistic, fairly unrealistic, or do you not care so long as the game itself is still fun?

The Daily Grind: How realistic do you like your games? originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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