January 29th, 2010 by dace

Mage Overview

* A magic user who uses frost, fire, and the arcane to obliterate their enemies.
* Capable of doing some of the best damage in the endgame.
* Pure DPS class means focus on doing nothing but damage.
*

Mage Strengths

* Capable of doing massive damage from afar. Strong single target damage and insane amounts of AoE damage.
* Can open portals to every major city in the game greatly saving on travel time.
* Food and water summoning abilities can save money and downtime with free food and water for themselves and the group. They can also teleport themselves or their group to major capitals.
* Utility spells like Polymorph, Spellsteal, Counterspell, and Remove Curse are requirements for high leveling raiding and a great asset in smaller groups. Highly desired in most group configurations.

Mage Weaknesses

* Very weak and fragile in solo play. Difficult to level for some.
* Reliant on mana for damage. If there isn’t any mana then the damage stops completly.
* Difficult to properly play and manage.
* Movement leads to a direct loss of DPS.

January 29th, 2010 by dace

The team at Funcom has put together this developer journal which reveals new details on the wolf mount, available in the upcoming Age of Conan expansion Rise of the Godslayer.

Rise of the Godslayer introduces some new mounts to the Age of Conan universe. Funcom is proud to announce the fearsome wolf mount, in addition to the previously revealed tiger mount as well as the Hyrkanian horse. The wolf and tiger mount follow an all new series of epic quests where the player will not simply be given the mount – they must capture it as a cub and hand raise it in order to one day ride these magnificent beasts. The quests to tame these beasts will see the players traverse several regions to train the cub and gather supplies.

“Some of the thinking behind this new system is that players will create a connection with their new mount,” says Joel Bylos, Lead Designer on the Rise of the Godslayer expansion. “Raising the mount from a cub and teaching it how to hunt, track and fight is a long process, and by the time players have proven themselves worthy of riding it a bond has been created. When you see players riding a tiger or a wolf you’ll know that it is not just a right to do so, it’s an earned privilege.”

January 28th, 2010 by dace

Tanking Stats, Enchants, and Gems

Once you have figured out your build, it is time to worry about the stats you need for tanking, which directly corresponds to the gear you need. There are various character stats that are required that you need to worry about as a tank; they include Stamina, Strength, Defense, Dodge, Parry, Block, Hit, and Expertise.  The amount you require of each and the priority it should receive is entirely dependant on your class.  For example as a Death Knight you don’t use a shield, therefore Block is meaningless.

The first thing you need to worry about as a tank is getting to be defense capped. This term is a little bit of a misnomer as you can not become capped in defense, it provides bonuses forever, however what it really refers to is having enough defense to remove critical hits from the hit table against you. This is the actual defense score on your character sheet, not the amount of defense you have on your gear.

The amount of defense varies based on your level and what you are tanking. There are many different calculators out there to help you figure out exactly what you need to have, but the most important numbers to know are for the current end game at level 80. To tank level 80 heroics you must have 535 defense while to tank raids you need 540 defense. For players still levelling up you require 485 to tank level 70 instances in the Outlands, and 435 to tank level 60 instances back in basic WoW.

Now that everyone knows about the defense cap, if you are a Druid, ignore it. As long as you put three points into Survival of the Fittest, you can not be critically hit unless the enemy is over 5 levels higher than you are.

January 28th, 2010 by dace

Many American people love panda，this lovely animal,which are unique to China.But can you image will it apears in the World of warcraft as a race？

Our friends at Blizzard sent us over an 8″ statuette of legendary Warcraft Pandaren Brewmaster Chen Stormstout, and let me just say: This thing is freaking badass. Oh, and we’ve got two to give away, too.

You know, I don’t like to brag about it too often, but I’ve got a pretty cool job. One of the more awesome parts about the job is that sometimes, companies will send us stuff, and it will be totally awesome. And then – arguably more awesome – we take pictures of it and put them up on the site for everyone else to see how badass it is.

The item in question here is a little statue of Chen Stormstout, the most famous Pandaren Brewmaster in the world of Warcraft. If you aren’t familiar with Warcraft, just imagine a race of panda-people, half samurai and half kung-fu monks, who love their liquor and whose celebrated Brewmasters wander the earth dispensing their magical drink with one hand and dispensing white-hot Drunken-Master-style ass-kicking with the other. Yeah, they’re a fan-favorite race for a reason, you know.

Appearing in the Orc campaign in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne but strangely absent (along with his entire race) from World of Warcraft despite a handful of references – and an in-game pet, Chen Stormstout can now hang out on your desk in limited-edition figure form, and it is – pardon my French – really, really, really freaking cool.

The pictures don’t really do it justice. This little guy clocks in at 8″ tall, and the detail here is really exquisite. The Brewmaster is hand-painted from his fur to his kung-fu outfit to the little design on the keg that he carries around with him (since, you know, Drunken Masters need some help on the “drunken” part), but what’s really cool is the actual materials used for some of this stuff. The ropes around the keg are actual ropes and his staff is actual bamboo – or at least some sort of very bamboo-esque wood.

But the surprising part is actually the price: You can pick up your very own Chen Stormstout (as a Limited Edition figure, it’s first-come-first-serve) from the Blizzard Store for only $50, which considering the quality of this thing seems like a pretty damn good deal.

Check below for some more pictures of Chen Stormstout the action figure, as well as how he looks proudly displayed on my desk here at the Escapist HQ (surrounded by my Gundam models, naturally – monk, meet mecha). Or, just go ahead and enter our contest!

January 27th, 2010 by dace

Talents

Before you actually go out and tank, make sure you are set and ready to assume the role. This may sound overly simplistic; however some players who have never tanked do not understand how important some things truly are. As a last resort any tanking class can shift into their tanking stance / form / presence / aura and tank an enemy really quick, however that is not good enough for all but the shortest time frames (a pull gone wrong in an instance). If you are going to tank for a group you really MUST ensure you are geared as a tank and have your talents spent in tanking talents.

Starting with talents, what talent tree you need to spec into varies with the class. For Warriors and Paladins it means that you are deep into the Protection tree and for Druids you need to spend most of their points in the Feral tree. These classes do not have a choice. You can not tank effectively if you are mainly specced into any other talent tree. Sure, you will have some points in the other talent trees, but most will be in your classes tanking tree.

Death Knights are a little different than the other tanking classes. They have the most choices available to them and can effectively tank while specced into any of their three talent trees. The main tanking tree, however, is still the Frost tree and there are several abilities you will want to have there no matter the main talent tree you use. However, you can tank as Blood, Unholy, or Frost (as long as you are actively using Frost Presence) in almost any instance or raid.

Since this is an overall How to Tank guide, I will not go into specific builds here. There are builds in our Class Guides, our forums, the official forums, and the various tanking sites around the internet.