Posts with tag movement

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we continue our discussion of ways to avoid dying horribly. This week's tip: Roll a death knight.

Yes, the sad reality of being a mage is the ever-present threat of a swift and ignominious demise. We're like every character in The Walking Dead: We could go at any time, and our only consolation is that God willing, we'll be able to blow up a few zombies on our way out.

Last week, we discussed a few methods for surviving to pew pew another day, namely aggro drop and damage mitigation. This week, we turn our attention to two other lifesaving techniques: movement and crowd control. Just remember as we go forward that every time a mage survives a fight, an angel punches a warlock in the face. Have I used that joke before? I may have. Doesn't make it any less true. Angels hate warlocks. So does Jesus. And me. And, I pray, all of you.

This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

Long exposure photography is an intriguing photographic technique that involves slowing a camera's shutter speed, thereby allowing light more time to strike the film. The technique often produces otherworldly images in which there is a sharp contrast between stationary and moving objects -- perhaps you have seen long exposure photos of cars at night, their headlights melting into long streaks of color. Because long exposure photography often reveals hidden patterns, its applications can go far beyond generating simple eye candy.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to do research on interactive digital media (read: video games) at the University of Rochester, and I thought it might be fun to try some long exposure photography within my favorite game, World of Warcraft. Rather than do real long exposure photography, however (difficult when one has no camera!), I opted to emulate the effect using video clips captured with Fraps and processed with a program called Exposure. Both of these programs have free versions available.

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide.

Does your numbskull pet always seem to come between you and the object of your affectionate (or not-so-affectionate) clicking? How can you get turned around and react more effectively when something smacks you from behind while you're drinking up? Wouldn't it be nice to see something besides your own rear end? And speaking of which, is it your camera angle or do you think your character been putting on a few extra pounds?

What you need, my friends, is better movement and camera controls. As the challenges and skill level ratchets up over the levels, clunkier styles of viewing your game field and moving your character may eventually cause you to fall behind the performance curve. Our advice: Find out what the best practices are, and then try them out sooner rather than later. Let's face it, changing the way you see and move around the game world can be completely disorienting. You feel as if you're starting all over again, just learning the controls. (Bottom line: It's true. You are.) But the payoff is more efficient, more effective play that ultimately makes your character more enjoyable to play.

We posted last week that Razer had released an MMO mouse fittingly called the Naga (technically after the Sanskrit word for "snake," but c'mon, who plays WoW and doesn't know what Naga really means, right?), and when we did that, we mentioned it would be usable on the floor at BlizzCon. Sure enough, when we ran into the hall (hey, had to get to the store before those plush murlocs sold out) in Anaheim, there it was. We sat down with Travis Wannlund, community manager for the mouse and accessory company, for a quick demo and hands-on.

In that demo, we learned that Razer has actually developed their own WoW addon for the mouse's use, allowing you to map your abilities right into on-screen slots that correspond to the 3x4 touchpad of buttons on the thumb side. He also let us in on some of the design reasoning for the mouse itself, and what they've got in store for the device's future. Read on to learn more.

Reader Zanthix of Gul'dan let us know, and I just confirmed, that the Hellfire Fortifications PvP quest in Hellfire Peninsula now grants a little extra welcome gift to Outland when you do it. In addition to the Marks of Thrallmar or Honor Hold that you get as a reward, you also now get an Insignia of the Horde or Alliance, to get you started on PvP.

And yes, it is just a start -- the Insignia removes all movement-impairing effects, but it doesn't have any extra resilience like the epic PvP trinkets you can get from turning in honor, so if you're doing lots of PvP, you'll still want to grind for the other trinkets. It is equivalent to the trinket sold for ~2800 honor (that used to be a class-specific trinket, but is now basically faction-specific), just a little easier to get.

I also checked the Halaa PvP quest in Nagrand, but there's no extra trinket reward there, just the usual daily gold and the extra honor. The Armory shows that this is the only place you can get it, save for the usual honor vendors. So if you haven't nabbed a PvP trinket yet, go take some fortifications in Hellfire.

Every weekend in Lichborne, Daniel Whitcomb will take you through the ever-changing (Beta) world of World of Warcraft's first hero class, the Death Knight.

With a new Beta Build on the test servers, Death Knights have received a massive amount of talent changes. Many of them have been hinted at on the test servers for eons, and I've covered much of them in last week's Lichborne. The new disease changes are in, as is the changing of Chains of Ice's Snare component to an undispellable physical effect. You can check out the full list of changes here.

Among the new changes is a very extensive revamp of the Unholy tree, which features quite a bit of talent consolidation and quite a few new and interesting mechanics and abilities. In fact, I'd have to say that the current build may very well mark the rise of the Unholy Tree, with the changes making it an amazing tree for grinding and PvP.

As a disclaimer, there's still lot of bugs in this build. Many abilities don't seem to be working quite right, especially Blood Caked Blade (which only hits for 1-4 damage based on the number of diseases instead of 60% weapon damage per disease), Raise Dead, and Night of the Dead. Because of that, it's often hard to say how or if an ability would be better or worse if it actually worked. Therefore, I'll be discussing the abilities based on if they actually did work, backed with some feel for them from Death Knight play on the Beta Servers.

WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.

Accept this fact: to be good at playing WoW, you need to learn to use your keyboard at least some of the time. You don't have to bail on your mouse, but it's very helpful to learn some of the very basic keyboard shortcuts that will make your life in the game that much easier. (Easy is good, right?)

Using the game interface
There are hotkeys for almost everything you do in-game. You can find most of them by just hovering your mouse over the icons that you click -- as no doubt you may have already noticed. Let's start with the button bar that you use to bring up your Quest Log, Spellbook and other things. You'll see that when I hover my mouse over the gold cup icon, a tooltip pops up. The L in parentheses after "Quest Log" means you can just press your L key to bring up the log instead of clicking the icon. (Don't worry that it's a capital L, just press lower-case L. When a keyboard command is capitalized, it's written as "Shift-L".) After the break, you'll see a list of keyboard shortcuts for the game interface.

While I'm pushing through Black Temple and Mount Hyjal nicely as my guild's tank, I am still trying to improve my style and playing elements. There's not much more I can do to build threat – the Devastates, Shield Slams, Revenges, Heroic Strikes, etc., are all going off at the right time. Gear is fine, I can pretty much tank anything in the game at this point and succeed. So why am I still dying? Why am I missing that critical moment when I could put up my Spell Reflect and live a second longer?

I think I've found it.

It's all about eye movement. Try this: focus your sight to the upper left hand corner of the screen, and now move your sight down to the bottom of the screen. If you have a large enough monitor, you completely lose focus of the text and items near the upper left corner. This is problematic for tanking in that the unit frames (those things that tell you who's in your group and who you're attacking) are by default located in the upper left corner, and the action bars are located at the bottom. So if you want to make sure you're going to hit something – or even look at your keyboard for a moment – you're moving your eyes quite a bit.

Alright guys, you got me. Last week, I dissed Priests for their lack of mobility, but some of you, such as user thebvp pointed out that Priests are more slippery than I gave them credit for by pointing out their dispel abilities, among other things. With a little more thought, I really have to agree and re-assess Priests on the movement hierarchy. To kick off the final installment of this overly long review on class mobility, we'll start with a second look at Priests.

Priest
As pointed out by your comments last week, Priests have the first tier Discipline talent Unbreakable Will, which is a key PvP talent that increases Stun resistance by a massive 15%. This gives Priests more flexibility to move, although a Rogue spamming Kidney Shots every 20 seconds will probably still be a real pain to deal with. While Priests have no natural movement enhancing capabilities, they benefit from instant cast spells in the same way that Druids do. In PvP, particularly in Arenas, the ability to cast Renew, Power Word: Shield, or Prayer of Mending while on the go is critical. I cannot stress enough how instant cast is king in PvP, and Priests have it in spades.

Draenei and Dwarf Priests also have Chastise, which replaced Fear Ward. With a 30-second cooldown, it is a fairly reliable means of crowd control, arguably even better than the Paladin's 31-point Retribution talent Repentance. It is effectively a spell interrupt every thirty seconds, and the incapacitate effect gives the Priest a small window within which to move away from undesirable encounters. Of course, enjoy it while it lasts as Patch 2.4 reportedly brings a change to Chastise. It will no longer be a an incapacitate effect but a root. As far as movement goes, it's a winner, but will no longer be usable as a spell interrupt. The change also makes Repentance slightly less embarrassing.

Dispel Magic is an instant cast spell that Priests can use to full effect because it is like a mixture of both Purge and Cleanse, usable on both friend and foe alike. Against magical snares such as Entangling Roots or Frost Shock, Priests can remove the debuffs on themselves as well as their allies. This ability extends to limiting the movement of certain classes such as Shamans, whose Ghost Wolf spell is actually a magical buff rather than a physical form, or Paladins, who rely on Blessing of Freedom constantly in PvP. Lastly, I forgot to mention how Priests and their friends can be highly resistant to fear thanks to the now-usable-by-all-races Fear Ward and Shadow Protection. Since a good number of Fear effects are shadow-based (Vims, I'm looking at you), the latter ability provides excellent protection against CC in PvP. Of course, as far as CC goes, Priests have Mind Control, so they can turn enemies into friends for a short while until they can run them off the side of cliffs or until the cavalry arrives. Good times.

Last week we went over the importance of motion in PvP. Unlike in most PvE encounters, movement is vital to PvP. Kiting and taking advantage of line-of-sight is standard fare, so unrestricted movement is essential. Thankfully, in World of Warcraft, plate- and cloth-wearers alike move at relatively the same speed. It's difficult to imagine PvP at a plodding pace, which is why movement-impairing spells and abilities are key to PvP.

Every class has skills and talents that either enable unrestricted movement or hampers an opponent's ability to move. In PvP, learning to harness these abilities to the fullest can spell the difference between a mediocre PvP player from an excellent one. As a melee class, my favorite targets are those players who don't bother to move. Even melee classes engaging other melee classes benefit from constant movement, always trying to go behind the opponent to remove chances to parry or block as well as remove oneself from attack range. Let's go over the different classes and their movement enhancing or hampering abilities.

I was looking through some of the career (class) descriptions over at Warhammer Online, EA Mythic's much-anticipated MMORPG which touts a rich PvP experience as one of its selling points, and happened to go over their description of the combat system. Listening to one of their amusing podcasts, I got the impression that some careers (classes) move faster than others. This struck me as odd, if only because I've grown accustomed to something we take for granted in World of Warcraft. In WoW, all classes and races move at the same speed. With the exception of enchants, spells, or talents, all characters move at exactly the same pace. Size changes that perception somewhat, with Tauren seeming to move at a plodding step and Gnomes waltzing around like Oompa-loompas hopped up on too much caffeine.

The martial arts is all about speed, about movement where there needs to be movement. More importantly, it is about freedom of movement. Speed is essential, but it can also be arbitrary because there are so many factors that affect it. Latency, computer power... all these things contribute to one's speed or reaction time -- or more accurately, how that reaction time translates into action within the game. That's another matter altogether. What we're going to look at today is movement. How we move, how fast we move, and how we can move better. When fighting a computer-controlled mob, with the exception of scripted events or certain boss phases, there is very little urgency to move. It's easy to kill most mobs by standing still and just attacking or casting spells. PvP, on the other hand, is all about movement. Standing still is tantamount to certain death.