JamesBl0nde looks over Firefall during this early beta phase of the game.
Monthly Archives: May 2012
Spirit Tales Live Fashion Show Begins
Spirit Tales Live Fashion Show Begins
Spirit Tales Online is hosting a live fashion show to demonstrate the huge amounts of customization available in the game. Those watching will also receive information on how to win exclusive pets for launch. The show is beginning now (3pm PDT) so check it out!
Heroes of Newerth: A Freeze is Coming
Heroes of Newerth: A Freeze is Coming
By Jon Thorp (Speedohdk), OnRPG HoN Specialist
Editor’s Note: Abubakr has been reassigned to other pending projects. Speedohdk will be taking up the banner of providing Heroes of Newerth coverage in his place. Enjoy his first column reviewing Ellonia!
With Heroes of Newerth‘s patch 2.5.21 comes the release of the highly anticipated Ellonia, an intellect teamfight oriented hero based around her extremely short cooldowns and large aoe (but high mana cost) abilities. The range on her abilities gives her the power to be a large threat and have a strong presence in the game even if played as a support role; but in this review we will be looking at her from the eyes of a solo / carry / ganker / initiator role (since those are the playstyles I have been most known for).
Nearly all of Ellonia’s abilities are skill shot and combo based, giving her a high skill cap yet still being accessible and enjoyable to newer less experienced players due to the extremely short cooldown of her abilities. To fully understand what I mean by this, we will need to take a close look at her skills and analyze how each of them will synergize with each other.
Glacial Spike: This ability is the bread and butter of Ellonia, being both her most reliable nuke and longest range spammable spell. Early game glacial spike has to be used selectively because of both the cost of the ability and her low starting mana pool (luckily she has an unbelievable int gain of 3.2 per level). Every landed glacial spike applies 5 charges of frosted, slowing the target’s movement speed by 10% and slightly increasing the stun duration and damage of flash freeze. Mid and late game after Ellonia’s tremendous int gain has kicked in this ability can be used fairly often to both nuke down creep waves and harass or set up kills. With good aim you can make incredible use of this ability’s cooldown and continue snaring a target and applying more and more stacks of frosted while doing a large amount of damage from 1000+ units away.
Frigid Field: Also having a 2 second cooldown, when used properly in combination with glacial spike Ellonia can completely shut down a team’s movement speed while at the same time doing a tremendous amount of AoE damage. This ability must always be used carefully though because the max range is much shorter than glacial spike and can put her in danger of being caught by a stun or ultimate if not used at the right times.
Flash Freeze: Being her only targeted ability, flash freeze may ironically be her most difficult skill to use correctly. Because of the nature of how frosted charges add damage and stun duration to flash freeze, people naturally want to stack up a bunch of charges before casting this ability to have the greatest effect. Using this ability though almost always requires a full commitment(or kill attempt)because of the 500 max range putting you dangerously close to one or multiple enemies who would be delighted to kill you in 3 spells. Ideally flash freeze should only be used after absolute zero is cast because of the speed it applies large amounts of frosted, but more often than not it is more important to use a flash freeze with just a few charges of frosted to get a nice ultimate off. Knowing when to use flash freeze on the target is the most difficult part of Ellonia but should come naturally with practice.
Absolute Zero: And now we reach our most exciting ability, the reason people both love and hate Ellonia! Absolute Zero is cast in a way similar to how frozen orb works for sorcerers in diablo2. The closer you are to the center of this ability when hit, the more damage will be dealt to you. So that means in teamfights you should wait until an ally uses a stun or other crowd controlling ability/ultimate to hold someone still and then go bananas with absolute zero and frigid field and glacial spike until your entire screen looks like Antarctica!
Ellonia making use of the large range of glacial spike
Here we can see Ellonia making use of her ability to harass from afar even though she is a level under wretched hag. If this hag were to try and turn around and fight me with the 60% health she has I would likely be able to burst her to death in the time my stun gives me from the frosted already applied on her. A very powerful harassing ability when used correctly.
In the next section we will be going over how Ellonia should be built item-wise. You should understand though that I have a very unique play style and some people might find these suggestions controversial, but I will try to go over why I find this build and the luxury item options superior to what you would consider a more traditional build for Ellonia.(A VoD of a VERY in depth 5 hour long Ellonia only session I made to help mid level players can be found at the bottom of this article).
Solo mid / side lane Ellonia build
First, let’s go over the starting items. This is an amazing build for newer players for a number of reasons; it has a good amount of regen, it offers a tremendous amount of survivability via +4 to all stats and +armor from RoT, and once ring of the teacher is finished it will allow you to hit much harder than almost any other starting build as well as giving you a consistent source of mana regeneration for the majority of the rest of the game. The single downside to this starting build is that great attention needs to be paid to the initial waves of creeps because you will likely hit for less than your opponent so glacial spike may need to be worked into your last hitting rotation to ensure you finish your ring of the teacher at a decent time.
The laning phase (or early mid game) items can be bought in no particular order, so long as they are gotten as soon as possible to increase your mobility via phaseboots, survivability by finishing a grave locket, ring of the teacher, major totem, and of course always carrying a town portal scroll in case your team needs you! Bottle is completely optional and depends on how far your initial runes of blight take you and how much rune control you will be able to hold over your enemy.
The only item I truly consider to be necessary to this hero (and most int heroes in fact) is tablet of command, also known as “push stick”. The utility brought to you and your team as far as initiation/chasing/fleeing and most importantly your ability to continue farming safely by this item is almost unbelievable for the price (2050 gold). If you are a HoN player and do not actively buy push sticks on intellect heroes I STRONGLY encourage you to get in the habit of doing so, even if you are not used to it at first. If you are a newcomer to HoN it will take a good deal of practice to master push stick but you will thank me later, it is legitimately one of the best items in the game, and insanely cheap to make.
If you have kept up your farm as a solo laner and lategame is on its way you have to decide what to make after push stick. A number of factors come into play at this point and some things you need to ask yourself are “what does my team need?” “what will increase my ability to farm safely?” “what will grant me the most usefulness in teamfights for the gold?”. If your team is lacking initiation I would suggest picking up an assassin’s shroud. If the game looks like it will be going extremely late you may want a nullstone for the sustainability and safety it gives you while farming. If you think your team needs raw damage or if it needs you to be able to absorb some attacks you may want to consider hellflower or frostwolf skull.
The ability to choose the exact right items in every game for every situation that may arise is a very difficult thing to master. However with consistent analysis of why you pick up what items and if there could be a better solution, then over time you will start to notice it becoming easier to see what item is needed when. Overall knowing what is most ideal in a moment’s notice will make a tremendous impact on how your game is played out!
If I were to give a one word description of Ellonia, it would have to be awesome! A job well done by S2 for creating a hero with new concepts in mind that are accessible to both new players and advanced players alike. I am extremely pleased with this release and hope to see more great releases like this in the near future by S2.
Speedohdk’s Ellonia Learning Day: http://www.twitch.tv/speedohdk/b/316392034
The Pride of Taern Trailer
The Pride of Taern is set to push browser gaming one step further. Check out this gameplay trailer explaining how.
Brawl Busters Mission Improbable Trailer
Brawl Busters has launched Mission Improbable with new dynamic daily quests and more.
Elder Scrolls Online Announcement Trailer
Elder Scrolls will soon be an MMORPG. Not much else needs to be said. You may begin freaking out now.
Rusty Hearts Leila Trailer
Rusty Hearts offers a new playable character. Though she may be tiny, Leila’s agility more than makes up for it.
Brawl Busters Launches Mission Improbable
Brawl Busters Launches Mission Improbable
Rock Hippo Productions announced today that Brawl Busters, the popular free-to-play online action-combat game, has launched its latest update, Mission Improbable, complete with new daily missions and more.
Mission Improbable features randomly-generated daily missions where players can earn a variety of bounty. Complete your tasks against all odds and get rewarded handsomely.
It’s time to clean out your locker. The update will also feature the Item Sellback system. Players can sell old stuff back to the game, keeping a fresh collection of items at all times!
Offering greater flexibility players can now get Buster Points with their Rock Tokens. A rare item is included as a bonus in this promotion.
Do you play fair? Automatic match balance is also now available to ensure satisfying action-packed combat every time!
E-Sports @ OnRPG: May 4th Report – End of Broodwar
E-Sports @ OnRPG: May 4th Report – End of Broodwar; Beginning of SC2
By Umar Farooq (Kluey), OnRPG Journalist
End of Broodwar; Beginning of SC2
The Starcraft Broodwar scene in Korea has been renowned as the benchmark of a successful E-Sport around the world. Starcraft II, League of Legends and now DotA 2 have come somewhat close but haven’t matched it. The Broodwar scene in Korea was considered to be a sport by all Koreans. It was considered normal to go to school or work, come home after a long day, crack open a beer and watch some Starcraft on TV. The top players in the field could walk down the street and attract a huge crowd. Now that the Starcraft I scene is transitioning to Starcraft II, the logical prediction would be that all this will happen for Starcraft II. Is that a reasonable prediction? It’s hard to call as now there is a lot more money in the scene which can cause a huge failure or a miraculous achievement.
GSL Code S Round of 8
Naniwa against MVP has brought up some weird discussion. To sum up the Bo.5 they had quickly, Naniwa played well in a macro game against MVP in the first set. MVP noted that Naniwa liked to play ever so greedy and punished him for that in game two. Later in game three, MVP fell back to a macro game using a marine tank build. Naniwa literally had the perfect response. He attacked into MVP right before he was in siege mode. Into game four, MVP proxied two barracks and got an easy win with a bunker rush.
The discussion that was brought up was: Is cheesing Naniwa a lame move by MVP? What I think is that MVP had a good reason to cheese. Had MVP done that double proxy barracks play in the first game, I would’ve unsubscribed from his fan base and up-voted all the threads on reddit bashing him. But, that didn’t happen. MVP showed us why he’s the ‘genie’ Terran. He saw Naniwa playing super greedy and lacking good scouting skills and responded perfectly. What counters greedy play? Aggressive, cheesy play does. In the end, MVP was the better player in those 5 games and deserved that win.
Later in the day we witnessed PartinG just demolish FXOz 3 – 0 and showed us why PartinG is actually the best Protoss in the world right now. Against Oz, he did one of the most brilliant strategic moves I have ever seen. To zone out Oz’s blink stalkers, he left two immortals to basically tank the blink stalkers for a while. Oz fell for the trap and started to micro against the two immortals. While he was doing that, PartinG walked up into the natural of Oz, killed the sentries and won the game. While many people blamed that on Oz, even if he had force fielded that PartinG would’ve won. Force fields don’t stop units from walking up a ramp, they delay them. PartinG’s army was simply larger and any amount of delay wouldn’t have mattered.
The next day, it was time for Liquid to shine. Unfortunately, only one of their players made it to the Ro4, LiquidHerO. HerO played amazing even though he was ill! Throughout the games he showed us why he is the Bisu of Starcraft II. He used only micro intensive units, never the colossus or archon as his core unit. In one game specifically, HerO showed us why he’s such a badass. SuperNoVa used a Thor with SCV repair strategy and HerO demolished it with storm on the SCV’s and Immortals for DPS. That’s not the impressive part though. The impressive part was that he figured out it was a Thor build without getting an observer in his opponents base and to make a prediction like that takes quite some skill and knowledge about the game.
In the end, here is our Round of 4:
Predictions from me:
As for the upper end of the bracket, I think PartinG will slice through MVP like a hot knife through butter. The more interesting match will be HerO against Squirtle. HerO’s PvP is his weakest match up in my opinion while Squirtle’s PvP is statistically his best match up at a 76% winning percentage. I think that if HerO can prepare specific builds for this match, he is the better player at executing strategies. If he goes into this match like any other PvP, he will most likely lose.
Regardless of the outcome, I think PartinG will win later on in the finals.
TSL 4 is here!
So far, not much has been said about TSL4. What we do know is that the production value will be top notch and there will be a prize pool of 34,500 USD. We also know that the casters are: Day9, Chill, Husky, djWheat, and Apollo.
Because many people are new to Starcraft, I’d like to share a video of TSL3 and a little story. You know the best foreign Terran player ThorZain? He’s a byproduct of TSL 3. ThorZain beat FruitDealer(he was pretty good at the time), LiquidTyler, MC, Kas and then NaNiwa in the finals. Before this, absolutely no one knew who ThorZain was.
Meta’s Verse: CoH Player Summit
Meta’s Verse: CoH Player Summit
By Meticulous Meta, OnRPG Paragon Reporter
This weekend’s player summit was all about powersets, costumes, zones, and community. Throughout the day there were references to Issue 23 and things we can be expecting with it that we can already see in beta. I won’t be mentioning those today. I need something to talk about later! But have no fear there is plenty more to talk about. Some of it was leaked so a lot of people already knew about it. But the thing that made this player summit truly unique were the panels where the players got to make proposals.

Powersets
At the start of the Issue 23 beta someone was very naughty and stumbled upon a few powersets we weren’t supposed to know about. Thanks to the Internet the whole world found out moments later. This weekend the devs confirmed three of the powersets much to everyone’s excitement. Sure, learning about them secretly is awesome. But having them confirmed by a dev is even better! So what three were confirmed? Nature Affinity, Symbiotic Armor and my personal favorite…Water Blast. Nature Affinity is to be a new healing over time and debuff set. Now, when it comes to City of Heroes I’m terrible at healing. I prefer to focus on the punching. I do always try out a new power when it comes out though. Plus the whole nature theme opens up a lot of opportunities for characters I’ve always wanted to make. Water blast is well..water…that blasts. I remember just a few issues ago they said it wouldn’t be happening because they just didn’t have the tech to make it look as good as it deserved to be. And now here we are! Sure, it’s just another blast set but its water! I think it is pretty safe to say water has always been a big part of the super hero genre. And now it shall be ours! Symbiotic Armor is one I’m still a bit unsure of. That always happens when there is a new mechanic introduced. This one though I have to say sounds pretty darn awesome. The new mechanic is called Absorption. And it’s all about absorbing as a defence.
Design a powerset workshop. This was just the first of several design panels where devs and players worked together after taking proposals to design something we will see in game. A lot of great proposals were heard. And we might even see some others in the game in the future. But for now, we know Radiation Amor is a go! Now, to start with I know a bunch of people are super down on radiation because it’s boring. But you know, boring can be good! It allows for more variety than if you had say…a walking tree mastermind. Not that we can expect a tree mastermind powerset anytime soon, though it would be awesome. The powerset is going to have a bunch of awesomely named powers like: Half Life, Gamma Boost, Fallout Shelter and Beta Decay.
Costumes
What is easily one of the biggest things that draws me to City of Heroes is the huge variation allowed when making outfits. This is made possible by coming out with new costumes all the time. And I will admit I go onto the VIP beta server to make new costumes. Sure I might check out a new powerset to see what it looks like. Or do a quick explore of a new zone. But it’s the costumes that I want to know in and out and start planning before I can even properly work with them. At the last player summit the Retro Scifi costume set was created. And though its not been released live yet it is in beta which can only mean it isn’t far off. The leather armor and chainmail armor sets were discussed more in-depth. Most importantly it was announced they would be free for VIPs. Of course we have to wait for Issue 23 for them though.

We also have to wait for Mecha Armor. This armor set is one of the really unique ones though. You have to reach a reward level of Tier 9 VIP to get them. Another that came as little surprise to anyone was the prospect of new tights. This is something that devs have been working with players on in a section of the forums for some time now.
There was one costume set announced which really got my interest and was completely unexpected. Cyberpunk! As soon as I heard cyberpunk my mind went wild! So many possible ways they could go with it. It’s such a broad genre and the last ‘punk’ set they did turned out awesome. The design a costume workshop again had a ton of great ideas. And again the devs said that we might see more than one of the ideas in the future. But the winner was the Post Apocalyptic set proposed by the one and only Arbiter Fabulous. A ton of ideas were thrown around taking inspiration from everything Mad Max to Bruce Campbell. I imagine though that much like the Retro Scifi costume set there will be a lot more plotting and discussion before anything is final.
Zones and More
One of the bigger draws to the player summit was the state your case for a zone revamp. Now this wasn’t intended to do anything but give the players a chance to voice their ideas to the devs and create some conversation. Quite a few great ideas were proposed and in the end the devs seemed most favorable towards the idea of the Independence Port revamp proposal. While we aren’t being promised anything I think I actually agree. Independence Port could be awesome. Right now though it suffers due to being empty and huge. Anything they do would be a huge improvement. So long as they don’t hit it with a major alien attack.
The first set of Super Packs has been an amazingly huge success the devs say. And with 600,000 packs sold I think it’s hard to argue with them. So the next super pack has been given the green light. This one is being called Rogues and Vigilantes, and that’s all that has been said about it.

At the end of the player summit those in attendance were given a survey. Now we get the chance to answer those questions as well. They do ask you to put in your email address to confirm you’re actually a player though, which I think is only fair really. If you’re interested in doing it click here to go to the forums which will direct you to the right place. Overall the summit looked like it was a fantastic time and I wish I didn’t live so far from California so I could attend in the future. The important thing to keep in mind about everything that was said is that there are no dates and no guarantees. We still have plenty to look forward to though. But for now I have to go take care of a little Nemesis plot.








