Monday, August 29, 2016

League of Legends - WINNING WITH ASHE - Complete Guide to ASHE ADC by Phylol

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Destiny - Imago Loop Roll Guide for PvP by Mercules904

Several things to note:
  • All Pros and Cons are determined by comparing weapons within the same class (in this case Hand Cannons), not by all weapons in general, and not by only the weapons within the archetype. If you would like a different or more specific comparison than what I have listed, feel free to ask and I can provide one in the comments.
  • This guide can also be found on Planet Destiny.
  • Classes are broken down into Impact sub-classes.
  • I've listed the perks in the order that I would taken them in each column. These are strictly my opinions, so I'm very aware that a lot of people will probably disagree with them.
  • The Bolded Perk/Perks in each column mean that I would include them in a God-Roll. If there are perks listed after the bolded ones, it means I think they are good perks, but not up to par with the God-Roll ones. If there are no bolded perks, it means that I feel any of the listed perks are fine to use in the column.
  • All Times-to-Kill are assuming Guardian has 200hp (max armor not including the effects of Max Armor Juggernaut Titans or Warlocks with The Ram).

Hand Cannon

Mid-Impact
Imago Loop - Available from the Echo Chamber or Undying Mind Strikes as a random drop.
Pros - High Range. Above average Mag Size. Very high Recoil Direction.
Cons - Low Stability and Equip Speed. Below average Aim Assist and Reload Speed.
  • Time-to-Kill: 0.86s (1 crit shot and 2 body shots)
  • Rate of Fire: 22
  • Impact: 87 (86 damage per crit shot, 57 damage per body shot)
  • Range: 40
  • Stability: 32
  • Reload Speed: 33
  • Mag Size: 10
  • Aim Assist: 61
  • Recoil Direction: 95
  • Equip Speed: 36
Recommended Perks:
  • Column 1 - SureShot IS/TrueSight IS
  • Column 2 - Rangefinder, Outlaw, Hot Swap, Spray and Pray, Underdog
  • Column 3 - Rifled Barrel, Smallbore, Reinforced Barrel, Hammer Forged, Braced Frame, Explosive Rounds, Hand Loaded
  • Column 4 - Hidden Hand/Icarus, Luck in the Chamber, Third Eye, Reactive Reload, Life Support, Grenadier, Army of One
Basically the exact same as last weeks Finnala's Peril recommendations, since both weapons are in the same impact sub class and benefit from the same perks:

As always, the two best sights on HCs are SureShot and TrueSight, since they both help to boost the average base aim assist, but I would say they're the least important part of a great roll. In the second column, Rangefinder is universally considered to be the very best perk, and no God-Roll is complete without it. Outlaw is a passable second option, but after that it's a steep drop off to Hot Swap and Spray and Pray, neither of which are optimal choices. Underdog brings up the rear, but at least it can give you a range bonus in some situations. In the third column, Rifled Barrel is again the universally acclaimed choice, but Smallbore, Hammer Forged, and Reinforced Barrel (if you don't care about the massive hit to stability) are all very passable second options. If you are trying to get a Luck in the Chamber build, Smallbore and Braced Frame will be your two best choices. Explosive Rounds and Hand Loaded bring up the rear of the preferred perks in this slot, with ER greatly increasing your opponents flinch, and HL giving a minute boost to the range stat. In the final column, Hidden Hand and Icarus are my two top choices, given their all around usefulness, but some people will want Luck in the Chamber, depending upon their play-style. Third Eye is always solid in PvP, and Reactive Reload can be put to fantastic use situationally, so don't sleep on either of those. Life Support, Grenadier, and Army of One are all also decent options, so you really can't go wrong in this column, unless you get Mulligan.

SOURCE

Heroes of the Storm - Free to Play Hero Rotation: August 30 - September 5, 2016

-

  • Malfurion
  • Valla
  • Tyrande
  • Tyrael
  • Kerrigan
  • Medivh
  • Stiches (Slot unlocked at Player Level 5)
  • Chromie (Slot unlocked at Player Level 7)
  • Rexxar (Slot unlocked at Player Level 12)
  • Nova (Slot unlocked at Player Level 15)

SOURCE

Friday, August 26, 2016

Overwatch - Lucio Wallriding Guide: Contest & Heal Spots by Fallout Plays

I decided to put together a quick video that shows some helpful Lucio wall riding/jumping spots that you can utilize in either of the following scenarios:

1) You need to contest the Control Point for just a few more seconds until your team comes charging back into the fray to wipe the enemies currently trying to capture it

2) Your team is fighting for a Control Point and you're in the chaos trying to heal them, but at the same time, not die. So you decide to take advantage of some interesting wall jumps to stay alive but remain in team-heal-mode.

Some of these are more practical than others, but still. I've used many of these in-game and found them to be quite handy.

SOURCE

Diablo 3 - [Guide] Supp Wiz for GR100+ by wudijo

Hey everyone,

in S7 we have seen a revival of the support wizard, and since no one really seems to talk about it and I played it for a bit this season, I decided to make a little guide for it. I tried to keep it short and concise, both the written and recorded parts. I recommend watching the video to see how it works in action, the main aspect (Ranslor's Folly pull) has a very unique mechanic that is easier to understand when you see it.

Support Wizard is generally used as the second (with Monk) or third (with Monk + Barb or DH) support in groups and can have a big impact especially in open, dense or dangerous rifts if played correctly, however you need to cooperate with your group a little bit more than with other support classes.

Diablofans build
D3planner link
Video link (9min)

Skills:
  • Energy Twister - Wicked Wind (Ranslor's Folly trigger, Gale Force's 15% additive boost not really worth for its inconsistency with pulls)
  • Slow Time - Any Rune (we have all with Crown of the Primus)
  • Frost Nova - Bone Chill (33% additive for 2sec)
  • Explosive Blast - Chain Reaction (damage red with Orb of Infinite Depth and for proccing Conflagration)
  • Black Hole - Event Horizon (remove elite affixes, can be swapped to Wave of Force - Debilitating Force for damage red and globe spawn with Solanium)
  • Teleport - Safe Passage (or Wormhole without Cosmic Strand)
Evocation, Conflagration, Unstable Anomaly I would consider as mandatory passives. The last two slots go to Cold Blooded, Blur, Galvanizing Ward or Illusionist.

Item setup:
3pc DMO + RoRG, Crown of the Primus, Illusory Boots, Ranslor's Folly + Strongarm or Nemesis (cube one, equip other), Aether Walker, Orb of Infinite Depth + Cosmic Strand (cube one, equip other), Obsidian Ring, Oculus Ring, Aquila Cuirass, String of Ears or Vigilante Belt if you feel tanky enough.

Hellfire Amulet is recommended but not a requirement.

Stack CDR on every piece, after that RCR. A little bit of IAS, CHC and ApoC help but is not really required, stacking defense is viable too.

Legendary gems are Toxin, Gogok and then either Iceblink, Esoteric or Moratorium.

Playstyle:
The playstyle is fairly simple, keep up your Orb of Infinite Depth buff and then, most importantly, you are there for pulling monsters together with Twister + Ranslor's Folly. After that you stay in the fight, buff/debuff and remove dangerous elite affixes with Black Hole. Make sure you always have a Slow Time bubble up, especially after entering a new floor, otherwise you lose the DMO 4pc bonus and risk getting oneshot on some pulls. If you don't have a Barb in group, you should also try to pull monsters either via body pull or by using Ranslor to get them closer to the fight or through corridors, doors, etc. Consider watching the videos to see a bit more of the gameplay.

Here's also a GR101 3man clear in 12min I did with this a couple days ago: GR101

Enjoy!

SOURCE

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

League of Legends - Leona Level 1 Powerspike Tutorial by i0ki

In this video I demonstrate how to win lane with Leona at level 1.

==

Stream: twitch.tv/i0ki
Twitter: twitter.com/i0ki_LoL

No Man´s Sky - The Definitive Money Making Guide by micro_monsta

I've noticed a few articles explaining how people are making vast amounts of money in a short space of time, but I've not seen an article that combines all the current knows methods.

Lets change that.




Before Starting
  • ** PLEASE NOTE: All the blue links are either to the wiki or reddit. **
  • I'm not adding the duplication cheat to this list, its a glitch, its easy to find, its reported on every website, its that common I've seen it scrawled on the back of toilet doors next to old meg's phone number, if thats what you're looking for its easy to find elsewhere. this guide is for ingame methods without cheating or glitching (although some glitches may be covered).
  • All prices, traders or space stations, are randomly generated, that being said, if you travel back to a previous station the prices will remain the same. - Must mention, if you check the store first, it can glitch the traders, making them show the same prices as the store does, its best to check traders first.
  • Anything marked with an (S) means it will attract hostile sentinels instantly. (depending on planets sentinel status, planets with no sentinels will attract... you guessed it, no sentinels.)
  • When arriving at a new Star System always check the space station trader, this will show you the prices in this system and more importantly, what you can obtain in the current System. - So if I see for instance Vortex Cubes, that means located somewhere on one of the planets, there's Vortex Cubes to pick up. (note - doesn't show EVERYTHING in a star system, it just shows what you can get 100% of the time, other elements and items can still be found)
  • Each Star system always has one of these expensive item spawns on a planet, the problem is finding them, you're best bet is to find a planet where they are littered among the surface.
  • When grabbing these items utilize the "punch-jump" technique to escape the sentinels with ease.
  • The shells/Cases/Plants/sacks containing these items, when viewed will be named "UNKNOWN". they have to be opened to gain access to the item inside.
  • As far as i'm aware, when using the scanner, there items will be shown as a green marker with a white exclamation mark.
  • People have reported that certain items are not marked on the scanner, other have reported they are, for now I'm considering this to be a glitch with the scanner.
stacking unstackable items - known glitch
 
NOTE: If your game crashes, you quit or load a save game with these "glitched stacks" they will revert back to one single item, losing however many you had in the stack.
  • 1) find any upgrade recipe that requires +2 or more "unstackable items"
  • 2) fill inventory leaving one space for each item name in the list of returned items, e.g "returns 1 iron and 10 vortex cubes" leave only 2 spaces.
  • 3) Build one, dismantle, you will now have 1 "unstackable item" that says 1/100, meaning it stacks to 100 now.
  • 4) You now have room for 100 "unstackable items" in one inventory slot. You can move it between ship/suit, too - just never sell the last one in that stack, or you will have to repeat the process.
Venom sac/ Sac Venom (S)
  • These are what appear to be small bumpy orbs, found on planet surfaces and underwater.
  • If you approach one, spikes will erupt from the surface dealing a small amount of damage.
  • They are collected using the mining beam.
Vortex cube (S)
  • Found on planet surfaces and in caves.
  • Can be found in two states: Red, glowing, spinning cube on a small black spike (looks nothing like the item image)
Small grey/black round-bottomed cube with blue lines. (looks exactly like the item image)

Albumen Pearl (S)
  • Found enclosed in shells that resemble plants.
  • The shell is either green and shaped like an egg or red and shaped like a pumpkin.
  • The pearl, which is bright green, must be collected after opening the shell
Gravitino Ball (S)
  • Small and large green balls, none bigger than players view height.
  • Found on the surface of planets.
  • Can also appear in a "standing" plant, when you get closer, it opens up.
  • As the player walks closer to the ball, they will shine brighter
  • Reported that other colours have been found, most commonly purple.
AquaSphere
  • Found underwater on planets.
  • Small circular plate, grey or blue in colour.
  • Can be very difficult to reach due to depth and overlapping flora.
Lazy Person Trading Co (space station/afk trading)
When you see another ship on any landing pad (space stations work best), you have the option to trade with them.
  • each trader has their own prices compared to the galactic market.
  • each traders prices are randomly generated upon spawning.
  • it is possible to make widely fluctuating profits from trading ship to ship, all without having to leave the space station.
  • You can also buy from the ships that sell cheap and sell to the space station.
  • Buy and Sell only when things are green, Red and green flip between buy and sell. very confusing at first.
  • Don't ever buy things with the star icon, Star = item price is around 100% higher than average. sell your things if they have a star. but don't buy them!
Star System Trading
I'm sure you already know, but you can sell items to the galactic market, however what you may not know is on each item it will show you that stations difference in price compared to the galactic market norm.

Buying items for a low price, traveling to another star system and selling them for a higher price is a valid option.
  • All prices in star systems are randomly generated
  • Prices can vary massively, reports claim anywhere from -500% to +500%, possibly netting you a massive profit.
  • If you haven't learned how to craft a warp cell without buying items from the traders you will have to take this extra cost into account.
  • Buy and Sell only when things are green, Red and green flip between buy and sell. very confusing at first.
  • Don't ever buy things with the star icon, Star = item price is around 100% higher than average. sell your things if they have a star. but don't buy them!
  • Trade Hubs can vary drastically in the buy and trade price, some even selling items and buying them back for more, this is most likely a glitch.
Ship Scrapping
It is possible to scrap components from the crashed ships you can find via distress signals, however, it does require some ability to pilot and being able to remember where you parked.
  • PLEASE NOTE - When stripping crashed ships be very careful when switching between the two. If the game crashes or you just exit the game, your old ship will be gone when you reload the save. Once you reclaim your old ship, enter and exit it to make sure it saves.
  • Find a crashed ship via a distress signal, these can be found when interacting with a transmission station.
  • Land your ship close to to the crashed vessel, this is extremely important. you don't want to forget where you parked it.
  • trade ships and it is now possible to scrap all the tech within this abandoned ship, collecting very rare and valuable resources.
  • After you have finished scrapping, approach your original landing ship, and re-claim it. as your own. (unless you chose to keep the new ship)
  • Due to a *glitch** you can re-use the terminal at any GEK transmission station, allowing you to find as many crashed ships as you like, all from one station. - *soon to be patched.**
Piracy - The ultimate fast-cash (requires a capable ship and capable pilot) (S!) (S!) (S!)
We've all seen them, the frigates that warp in holding layer after layer of valuable cargo. Until late game i never tried piracy, i wish i had been doing it from day one.
  • Don't waste your time on the small ships, its simply not worth it.
  • Frigates come in various shapes and sizes
  • before attacking, fly around the ship a few times, locate the cargo containers and the weapon placements.
  • You never lose relations with a faction, no matter what frigate you attack or how many.
  • Take out the weapon placements first.
  • The resources from the containers usually shoot back in the direction the bullets/lasers were fired from, keep this in mind.
  • With 25 spaces filled, the contents can be sold for upwards of 500K
  • The whole process takes less than 5 minutes!
I estimate you could easily make over 10 million per hour with this method.

Farming & tips (massive thanks to these people! keep them coming!):
z1rconium - Gravitino balls can also appear in a "standing" plant, when you get closer, it opens up and the gravitino appears.

stratospaly - When collecting Venom Sacs, use the Boltcaster mod Wideshot Adaptor, you can 1 snot snipe all the balls and the Sentries completely ignore you.

madsciencestache - Tip: Buy and Sell only when things are green. I kept thinking red+star was a low price and I should buy. Red and green flip between buy and sell. Whoops. (I am horribly dyslexic with numbers so that's why it took me a while to figure that out.)

sinnerhp - I found a trade hub in my 3rd star system that offered Suspension Fluid for $2200, but would buy it back for $22,000.... So I kept buying and selling it! $$$$$!!

ZepBonham - You can stack Gravatino balls, unlike the other high value items. By dismantling the starship tech that requires 10 Gravatino balls, you can now store 100 balls in one spot. This allows you to go on a hike, collect 100+ balls at a time and sell them for over 3 million units. In last two days I've collected over 40 million units on this method alone.

PM_TxxxxxxxxSexyBits - little pro tip when farming rare items that gives you 3 stars, kill all but 1 sentinel let it call in the walker and give you 5 stars once you got this kill the remaining sentinels and they wont bother you again until you leave the planet or log out. i find it very useful when on long farming trips.

LoveExperimentation - Another great thing about piracy: You can attack and collect as much as you want and even if you die it'll remain at your grave. So when you respawn you can easily go collect it.

Special Thanks To:
Firebane - Reminding me of aquaspheres.

JawesomeJess - Pointing out that i don't know anything about space. Post updated with correct terminology :)

Griffinith - Opening the idea of scrapping abandoned ships.

vidyagames - Teaching me a lesson - Opening the Trading Section.

Rusynlancer - Piracy - before i had chance to finish writing, this guy is the re-incarnation of blackbeard :P

TheNatanx - pointing out glitch for scrapper and upcoming patch to fix it.

ProfitOfRegret - pointing out a major issue in scrapping ships, added to main post

DawnBlue - linked some really good guides and tips in comment section, added most to main post - constantly updating on things to add and change to make the post even better, thank you very much for all your help!

My Other Guides
Helpful Community Guides:
How To Max Exosuit & Ship Fast! - exactly what it says on the tin. good trading guide in the first part too!
Game Mechanics That Are Unexplained - Extremley useful for all the things the game dosent tell you! i refer to it all the time and i have 40+ hours!
There are 4 types star systems - Explains the 4 diffrent systems, what you can find in each, and what you need to get to each. (cant believe this one isn't explained in-game.)
Complete NMS Periodic Table - Not really a guide, but extremely useful and very well made!

SOURCE

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Diablo 3 - EU & US Rank #1 Witch Doctor using Jade Harvester | GR 84 by Ali RawidDuh

https://youtu.be/fzjes_MnFF4

Such a fun build to play!

You can see my build here:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/AliRawidDuh-2875/hero/81909064

PS. Our clan (EU HC) is looking for new members, cool people to play with :) Let me know if you're interested in joining!

SOURCE

Diablo 3 - A comprehensive guide to playing a solo monk in season 7 by ProbablyAPun

Before I get started, I would like to say that all credit for this goes to /u/quin69 for the builds. I will also be linking to a couple of his Youtube videos, as he will explain things far better than I can. I simply listed the optimal stats on the gear in the Diablofans guide, so it's easier to understand all of the stats you want to roll on each piece of gear. Also, I'm not an all knowing Diablo 3 player, so if you think that something I say in this guide is incorrect, please let me know!

This guide consists of two separate builds. When playing Diablo 3, There are two main things that you will be doing in order to be pushing the highest GR's you can. The first will be farming materials. You will be doing this with the LTK (Lashing Tail Kick) monk. This build is made to be as efficient as possible at TXIII. This means it is the build you want to be using for running your bounties, and running your Nephalem Rifts. The second is the R6 (Raiment of a Thousand Storms Set) monk. This is the build that you will be using to push into the higher GR's with.

LTK MONK:
This is the first build that you want to gear. You are going to use this build when you are doing Bounties, Nephalem Rifts, and when you want to level up your gems in GR's (not to max rank, just until you are no longer running GR's efficiently with your LTK monk. Then you will swap to your R6 monk to level them the rest of the way). You will want to spend all of your crafting materials on this build, until you are able to clear TXIII comfortably.
Video Guide
Diablo Fans Guide

R6 Monk:
This build will be what you want to start pushing the higher GR's with. Once you are comfortable with your LTK monk at TXIII, you will start using your crafting materials on gearing this build. This build is a highly gear dependent build.
Please note that I chose Exalted Soul instead of Beacon of Ytar for this build. It is a higher damage passive, but makes you utilize your cooldowns properly. If you're having trouble with surviving, try swapping to Beacon of Ytar. It's mainly a personal preference of how you like to play.
Video Guide
Diablo Fans Guide

Gearing (Secondary Stats):
Secondary stats are probably more important to monks than any other class.

You may have noticed from the guide that you are not putting resist all stats on anything. This is because of your Harmony passive. Harmony gives you 40% of your secondary resistance rolls as all resist. You cannot roll a secondary resistance on a piece of gear if it already has all resist. So not only are the stats that I listed in the Diablo Fans guide important to have, but it's crucial to have a secondary resist on them as well to provide more toughness at high GR's.

(This only applies to your R6 build) You also want to be getting +spirit as a secondary on both of your Shenlong's. Your Shenlong's set gives 1.5% bonus damage for each point in spirit. So you have the potential to add another 30 points of spirit to your pool. If you're at 300 spirit before your weapons, you're getting a 10% damage increase from the secondary on your weapons. It's critical!

Hope this helps you guys out!

SOURCE

Friday, August 19, 2016

Overwatch - Competitive Rank Up Guide (Solo Queue Carrying to Top 500) by Dragonmar

Before I go any further, please understand that this video is made with the assumption that you are in fact an already DECENT aimer and thus have the capacity to carry!

IMPORTANT: I could talk about the ins and outs of comp for hours, and I will eventually! This video covers 3 very important aspects, but I do want to cover much more in the future!

Whats up everyone, I've created this video to help talk about three fundamentals of ranking up and and the concepts surrounding them. It's too simple just to say "be good", because there are much more aspects of the game. Communication and leadership are huge in this game, and cannot be understated! While individual skill is important as I do go over, so is picking the right team comps and being flexible!

Anyways, I hope this video helps you! Be the X-Factor! Remember to stay positive and I hope this helps you all out!

My stats:
http://masteroverwatch.com/profile/sh...

Websites Mentioned:
http://masteroverwatch.com/

https://www.overbuff.com/

The Division - Sentry Hybrid Build Guide - PvE/PvP Variants, Smart Cover Tips, Counters by DarkZoneNinja

Hey everybody!

This will be a thread about effectively building a sentry hybrid. A sentry hybrid is all about bringing max skills into the table while dealing enormous amounts of damage, enabling your team to fully buff your team while also kicking ass.

There are 2 variants of this build that i use and can be very effective in both PvP and PvE situations.

How to build a Sentry Hybrid?
Especially with the latest PvP changes, damage reduction and increase has become more important than ever in high level play. There are 3 skills that provide these buff greatly. One of them being smart cover, a skill that allows you to have 2 signature skills at the same time, all the time. (Survivor Link & Tactical Link), Pulse and Booster Shot heals. Understanding how these skills work with each other and using them to full potential can allow you to become practically invincible.

Sentry Hybrid for PvP - 1 Electronic Piece
With only using 1 electronic piece you can get your SP around 40k which will greatly increase the power of your skills.

At 40k SP, your smart cover should have around 60% resistance and 45% damage increase without adding any gear bonuses. If you can get +smart cover bonuses on your gear it will greatly increase the power of your build.

Here is the PvP variant using smart cover and booster shot: http://i.imgur.com/R8aNNZo.jpg

Smart Cover stats: http://i.imgur.com/v5Hq47D.jpg

Why Vigorous?
Vigorous allows you to get overheals from your booster shot and booster shot gives you 15% damage resistance. Doesn't seem like much? Think again because the game mechanics are made so that any source of All Damage Resilience (ADR - Found in Character Tab) stacks additively with each other. What this means is if you are using a 75% resistance smart cover, you can add booster shot onto it and get up to 90% ADR, decreasing the damage you take by 60%. So at 40k SP, your 60% resistance SC and booster shot can provide 75% ADR to you and your group. This is why you use Vigorous and Booster Shot with Smart Cover.

Why Tactical Link?
With smart cover and booster shot giving you almost the same ADR as Survivor Link, it feels redundant to run that if your teammates are already running it. By all means run it if you are solo though. Tactical combined with SC will allow you to melt multiple people quickly when you are engaged in a crowded fight, know when to use it.

PvE - 2 Electronic Pieces
Wouldn't it be nice to have max smart cover and pulse while also doing 3mil+ headshots on NPCs? It's pretty possible. For PvE you are going to want 2 electronic pieces and then dump everything you can into firearms. In the end the build should look something like this: http://i.imgur.com/4KaPWyu.jpg

You can max out your SC at around 45k SP if you can get +SC resilience on your chest and kneepads but isn't that important because your damage buff will be capped out, allowing you to give max support to your team without anyone having to run tactician.

Summary
It's plain and simple, roll 1 or 2 pieces into electronics while focusing on firearms and you can immediately start bringing very strong skills for your team without losing much damage. This can be applied to any gearset basicly, but works great with sentry's.

Two very cool tips
  • Don't run reckless if you/your group uses SC. Reckless applies -10% ADR. This means that if you run a 75% mitigation SC, it will drop down to 65% for you when running reckless. So instead of taking 25% damage, you will be taking 35% damage, that's a 40% increase in damage you take just by using reckless on smart cover.
  • [May not be true] From our testing in the DZ, we found out that trapper mod only applies if it's dropped after your smart cover. This means that when somebody uses trapper on your SC, if the cooldowns off, you can destroy it and place it on top of their trapper without being affected by it. Visuals will say you are affected but you actually aren't. Try this out.
Of course building a sentry hybrid first requires you to actually farm sentrys which might be a tedious process but i hope this will help you out!

Also a video guide if you rather watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR03I68J-MQ

And please avoid replying with "oh 99% of the player base can't farm god roll sentrys". I'm just recommending you a path to aim for if you like being a support that can deal damage and have success in PvP. I deliberately don't share invidiual pieces to avoid replies like this, if you are interested you can PM me.

SOURCE

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Guild Wars 2 - Definitive Fractal AR Guide: Which setup is best for you? by StepW

Heya! I've seen a bit of disagreement and misinformation running around on fractal AR gearing ever since the infusion rework done in the July patch. I thought it might be a good idea to eradicate any doubts on this with some number crunching! There's a TL;DR at the bottom!

So, let's establish what the problem is: with an infused backpiece and infused/attuned rings, we have a total of 18 infusion slots active at any one time in our gear. We want to know the most cost-effective spread of agony infusions among those 18 slots to reach 150 AR.

There are two viable ways of doing this:
  • 8 +9 infusions, 8 +8 infusions, 2 +7 infusions - SETUP A
  • 6 +9 infusions, 12 +8 infusions - SETUP B

We need a way to compare the price of crafting these infusions. Since one +x infusion is equal to two +(x - 1) infusions, I'm going to go ahead and use +7 infusions as our "currency". So, one +9 is two +8s which is four +7s. This way we can compare the expensiveness of each setup.

With that in mind:
  • Setup A costs 8*4 + 8*2 + 2 *1 +7 infusions = 50 +7s
  • Setup B costs 6*4 + 12*2 +7 infusions = 48 +7s

What this essentially means is that Setup A costs two more +7 infusions to craft than Setup B. At first glance, this means Setup B is cheaper, but Setup A has a couple of advantages over Setup B:
  1. If you're the type to swap trinkets around characters, Setup A allows you to stuff slightly more AR into your trinkets than Setup B does. Trinkets have 10 infusion slots in total, so Setup A allows you to fill them all with eight +9s and two +8s, giving you 88 AR, whereas Setup B is limited to, at most, six +9s and 4 +8s, giving you 86 AR.
  2. While you can only have 18 slots active at any one time, in reality there are more infusion slots you'll need to fill up; additional weapon slots. The weapon swap alone is an additional two infusion slots to fill, without even considering any other weapons your class can use which you bring along to fractals. Setup A allows you to fill these additional weapon slots with +7s, whereas Setup B makes you fill them with +8s. If you have a number of extra weapons to fill with agony infusions, then Setup A might be better for you. More specifically, if you have four weapon slots to fill in total (which is the case for most professions because of having two weapon sets), then both Setup A and Setup B cost exactly the same (52 +7 infusions). Any more weapon slots than that and Setup A becomes more cost effective.

A couple of additional notes:
  1. If you want to invest in attribute infusions, then you're forced to use "Setup C", i.e. the [KING] setup, which is 12 +9s and 6 +7s, because those come only in +5, +7, and +9 varieties.
  2. I didn't perform any calculations assuming you don't infuse the backpiece, because this kind of stuff can be a bit tough to calculate as prices of Globs of Ectoplasm and agony infusions vary. If you don't infuse the backpiece, you'll be down to 17 active slots. Abstaining from an infused backpiece and making up for it with more +9s can definitely be worth it (infusing a backpiece is super expensive!), but I personally wouldn't recommend it. Mawdrey is very cheap to infuse and Bough of Melandru comes with two infusion slots by default. Not infusing the backpiece also means you don't future-proof yourself if ArenaNet introduces new AR schemes/requirements, you're down one infusion slot if you want to use attribute infusions, you'll have one less infusion slot when swapping trinkets to another character, and you'll be forced to put +8s in your weapon slots. However, if all of that doesn't bother you, then by all means go for it.
If I ever get round to it, I might whip up a spreadsheet that considers how many weapon slots you have and whether you share trinkets among sets or not to determine which is the best setup for you, but for now this guide should keep you going.

Hope that helped!

TL;DR:
  • Go for eight +9, eight +8, and two +7 if you have four or more weapon slots to fill (putting the +7s in your weapon slots, and all +9s in your trinkets).
  • Go for six +9 and twelve +8 if you have less than four weapon slots to fill (putting +8s in your weapon slots and all +9s in your trinkets).
  • Go for twelve +9 and six +7 if you're using attribute infusions (putting +7s in your weapon slots and ten 9s in your trinkets).

    SOURCE

No Man's Sky - How to Max Out your Exosuit and Ship Inventory Fast and FAIRLY by connexionwithal

Wanted to type this out, because the info is scattered. This isn't exploiting the game, this is using knowledge wisely so you don't waste your real life time poorly. This is the order you should do these things in, and before you start, make sure you have the bypass chip recipe.

1) First get a boatload of money. Do this by going to a space station in your star system. Upon entering go through the right door (if the exit to space is behind you). Go down the hall and check the galactic computer trade network on the wall and click "Sell Items." Look for what has a star next to it and keep note of it (Usually there's about 3 items that have stars next to them. The star means they are willing to pay A LOT more than the average value for the item). Especially keep note of items that are common and expensive, like Dynamic Resonators. Ignore any weird rare trade items like daggers or relics. If suspension fluid is one of the starred items, do not touch, it's an exception in this case, go to another planetary system. Leave the terminal and go back to the ship dock area. Clear out your suit inventory and ship inventory. When a person comes, buy those items starred items, no matter the price, and repeat until you fill your inventories. Go back to the computer terminal and sell them for MAD PROFIT BRO. At the beginning with basically no inventory upgrades, you can make like fuckin 1.5 mil every 30 minutes. Fucking raining cash, it don't make no sense, pockets get heavy yo. If you change star systems, you can get a wall computer wanting different items. For advanced strategy, go to bottom of the post

Do this until you have about 2 mil

2) Time to max out that exosuit. Go down to the planet. The smaller the better. Get a metric shit ton of plutonium and iron, which is easy to find. Make a shit ton of bypass chips. Fly til you find a signal beacon, which is easy to spot cause it's shooting a constant orange beam upwards for all the brothas and sistas to see. Make sure the chip is in your exosuit inventory. Use it on it, and click "shelter." If it shows a shelter, ignore and do again. If it shows a "Drop pod" do this til you have about 3 drop pod waypoints (any more than this and game gets weird and glitches.) Go to each one, and spend money on the exosuit. MAKE SURE YOU HIT THE SAVE FLAG EACH TIME, or else later a signal beacon may guide you back to it. Each time it adds a storage slot. 10k for the first, 20k for the second, 30k for third... until you max out. The total cost is going to be about fucking 6 mil to fully upgrade to 48, but remember, with the 2.3 mil you made earlier, you can get to like the 30's of inventory slots, and when you go back to the trading port to trade, you can carry A LOT more per haul and make about 2-4 mil per half hour. So don't worry bro. Do this (step 1 again) until your exosuit it maxxed out (48 inventory slots). Shouldn't be long to do this, this guide gotchu.

3) Now to get maxed out ship inventory. Go back to the trading port and do step 1 shit until you make about 2-3 mil. Then, buy a ship that has above 24 slots. Then, use the ship to fly back down to the planet. Remember the bypass chips? you need one or two again. Aside from bypass chips, you don't need crack shit except those and plutonium/iron. Find the orange signal beacons again, but this time choose "transmission." You either will get an Observatory, beacon, or a Transmission Tower. When you get a single transmission tower. Go there and solve the code. If you can't solve it go here. After you solve it, it'll either show you a path to a shelter or a "crashed ship." IF AT A GEK TRANSMISSION TOWER DON'T GO THERE YET. Simply hit the transmission tower computer again (they give you the same puzzle riddle code...smh...must be a mac..) and get more waypoints for crashed ship. (If you are using the GOG or experimental version on steam, or not at a gek transmission tower, it won't let you use it a second time and you'll have to find another transmission tower (thanks to /u/rj_riku and /u/momocorpo for this news)). DON'T GET MORE THAN 3 FOR THIS (because game gets glitchey and shit will be invisible. like 4 real doe you will feel like u b trippin galaxy shit when you see the ship shadow but no ship). Each time, the ship is most likely a 1 slot upgrade then your current . Dismantle your ship parts, and swap the gear. Only spend time repairing the pulse engines and launching gear. Might want to unplug headphones cause if the shields are broken the alert is fucking annoying like wtf. Then repeat this entire step until you hit 48 slots (the max). The reason you bought a ship earlier is because this is time intensive and jumping from a 16 inventory ship to a 24 will save you a lot of time.

4) Now let's pimp this multitool to max Almost same shit as Step 1. [Go down to the planet. The smaller the better. Get a metric shit ton of plutonium and iron, which is easy to find. Make a shit ton of bypass chips. Fly til you find a signal beacon, which is easy to spot cause it's shooting a constant orange beam upwards for all the brothas and sistas to see. Make sure the chip is in your exosuit inventory. Use it on it,] and click "transmission." Ignore the results that show a transmission tower or observatory, and go to the ones that say "beacon." This will lead you to an outpost or advanced life form, where the upgraded multitools can be bought. Max is 24 slots for this.


TIPS/TROUBLESHOOTING BELOW

HOW TO SPEED THINGS UP: Travel a bit closer to the center of the galaxy. This will cause trade ships to enter space ports for trading a lot more frequently.

VISITING CRASHED SHIPS BUT THEY ARE SHITTIER THAN YOUR SHIP? Happens sometimes, there is a chance that the ship is 1+ better than yours, or 1- worse than yours. Current community theory is that progressing/getting closer to the center of the galaxy increases your chances of it being better ships

HOW TO GET ATLAS CARDS v1, v2, and v3: Atlas card v1 occurs randomly as a space anomly when flying between planets. Using a signal beacon for "colonial outpost" is how you get atlas card v2 and/or v3. When selecting "colonial outpost," you'll either get a colonial outpost or a manufactoring facility. These manufacturing facilities need to be broken into, but they'll have blueprints which have a chance of being card v2 or card v3. The atlas v3 can be used to open up v2 doors as well (thanks to /u/rj_riku for the info on this)

TRANSMISSION TOWER NOT LETTING YOU REPEAT? Seems it sometimes does not let you repeat usage of one computer. From comments it seems like it is half patched depending on what version or console you use (pc/ps4/GOG/experimental) and it may also only work on Gek Transmission towers. In this case, best bet is to make a ton of bypass chips (which is easy, just plutonium and iron which is common) and reuse the signal beacon to get a bunch of transmission tower sites.

ADVANCED STRATEGY FOR STEP 1: Take record of the ships that come into the space station. Usually it's the same people with the same ships. Learn the colors for speed. For example, if you learn that the red ships will buy the item at 100%, so you can quickly sell your shit there instead of hiking back to the computer terminal. I've seen differences between people, so it's best to just learn the colors for your group. (Thanks to /u/ikbosh and /u/umbrasquall)

SOURCE

Monday, August 15, 2016

Diablo 3 - 2.4.2 Wiz T10+ GR/Bounty Farming Build by EigenVector

Preamble: For regular rifts Flashfire (link below), with gold wrap, is still probably the fastest wizard build. However, I am not sold on the scaling to t13, and it has a ramp up time do due having to get gold for defenses and reliance on In Geom. For solo GRifting and bounties, you need an alternative.

My Version of Falshfire for 2.4.2:
http://www.d3planner.com/964032838


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Intro:
The build is pretty basic and relies on using Tal's 6 bonus (3000% increase to all damage), along with Wand of Woh. However, this utilizes Aether Walker for mobility over In Geom for more consistent teleports (Thanks Vox for the idea: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/20419283223 ).

I will give two versions. The first is the basic setup for speed clears when you are somewhat out gearing the content level. The second is more defensive for when you want to push GRifts to level gems.

Speed Version:
http://www.d3planner.com/893431675

Defensive Version:
http://www.d3planner.com/903507972
Replace Leoric's with Ashnagarr for more shields
Replace Illusionist with Galvanizing ward to avoid 1 shots
Replace Pinpoint with Prismatic for more AR

Notes:
It's early in the season and I am only ~P350, but I have been able to easily clear up to a GR58 with this build. Once I hit P800 and have full defensive stats, I should be able to farm 60+ rather easily, while being able to get a 70 for the season journey. As long as you keep moving, you can maintain a relatively high level of shielding, which allows you to not be one shot, while you jump from elite to elite (or jump through bounties). My gear isnt very good right now (missing CD on my F/R and I dont have ancient weapons yet), but the damage from the three sources, EB, meteors, and Mirnae, yields fast elite kills.

SOURCE

Overwatch - A few tips for lower rank players looking to climb competitive by PositiveNonsense

Hi guys,

I'm by no means a pro-player, currently rank 68, but I've seen enough mistakes from lower level players to share a few tips with you guys. I've played a friend's account from rank 37 to 48 without any losses (about 15 games), disproving his theory of "unwinnable elo hell'.

So here are a few very simple advice you want to apply if you're looking to climb, at any level.

In attack, your main goal is to kill as many as you can.
This is one thing I've seen lower ranks consistently fail to understand. Since you resuscitate quicker and can group more easily on attack, committing to killing 3 people will be in your advantage even if your whole team dies. So you NEED to "all-in" sometimes, I can't stress that enough. People that think you need to stay under the arch of Anubis with your shield up until your DPSs kill enough people are utterly wrong. As the Reinhardt, you HAVE to commit and pick a way for your team to follow you. Doing this below rank 50 will consistently win you the attack.

In defense, your main goal is to avoid dying.
On the other hand, in defense your priority is to avoid dying. By the same logic, if you die even after killing more people, you're at a disadvantage because they'll be on the point quicker. So don't hesitate to BACK as much as you can, even abandoning the point for a few seconds if it means you'll regroup, heal, and slam them right after. This is why the pro teams defend on the high ground on Anubis' point A - whatever path the attack rushes through, they can back off. If they're on the edge of taking point A and you're alone, GET OUT. Dying will allow them to rush to point B with all ultimates and 5v6 to victory. I've lost countless games on Volskaya and Anubis because of people trying to 1v6.

The meta is 2/2/2 - 2 tanks, 2 supports, 2 dps.
By simply playing the right meta, you'll drastically improve your odds of winning. That's why you NEED to be comfortable with at least 1 tank and 1 support role, even if you main DPS (which is my case). Played properly, Zarya and Roadhog will make more difference within the meta than any DPS outside the meta. A good Lucio or Zenyatta ult will also outperform any double kills you would have made with an assassin hero. If you wanna climb, swallow your pride and prove you can carry with something else than your main hero. Remember that it is better to let a lower skilled player play his favorite hero but being as close as you can be to the meta than trying to show him you can get more kills, effectively losing the game.
By the way, Zarya feeds on damage. If a room is filled with junkrat and symettra's turrets & traps, its a free 100 stacks on Zarya's damage boost. You can then just steamroll everyone. Also, if you're a main support, learn at least one 'self-carry role'. Reaper is probably the best example of resistant, extremely dangerous foe you can play if your team doesn't need you as a support.

Communicating before the match starts always helps
At all levels when I'm attacking point maps I usually say a simple 'Let's all go right, if there's a junkrat/symettra covering back and go left'. Even if there are 1 or 2 trolls in the team, in the worst case scenario that will still be 4 people going the same way and likely surprising a random, unprepared dude with his pants down. If your team understands that you'll win 3 consecutive 6v2s even if their team plays better, you got this.

As a flanker, your absolute main goal is to kill the symettra TP and the supports
I've seen a million Genji players just trying to kill whoever they were facing and forgetting about the TP. The TP being up WILL lose you the game even if you kill a dozen people. Cool, you killed 3 people but forgot about the Mercy/Symettra TP. Now they're all there again. Cool, you didn't kill the Zenyatta before your Zarya's ult. Now none of them dies because he ults.
This is typically a case of 'wtf you guys are doing? I killed half their team and we lost the fight!'. Well yes, you killed people but not the right people. So REPICK AND LET DADDY HANDLE THIS.

Look up your stats and be realistic
People are extremely biased when it comes to losing. A friend of mine told me that he was 'always carrying with McCree' but could never win a game. By looking up his stats on one of the websites (there are many, just google them), we realized he had under 10 gold medals for over 30 games played, and very low accuracy and headshot figures. He understood that he was, in fact, the problem in these games.

The bastion dilemma
"They had a Bastion, but our Pharah never killed him once so we lost". Alright, so this is one the situations where you'll have to forget the meta. The meta is cool IF you can win. So pick widowmaker/a genji/a McCree, and kill their bastion until he's disgusted and repicks. Then take back your Tank/support and win the game.

Please, drop Hanzo
I'll wrap up the debate immediately. I'm NOT saying you're a bad Hanzo. I can even tell you you're a good Hanzo if you want. BUT, the skill required to make a difference playing Hanzo versus any other picks is TOO high to justify taking him. This also applies to Widowmaker mains. You may be the best Hanzo in the world, you will STILL not make as much difference as if you pick another champion. So please understand this. I'm not asking you not to play Hanzo ever, quick play is there for you. I'm not saying you're a bad Hanzo. I'm saying if you pick anything else, we'll have a much better chance at winning.

Calculate your ultimates
This advice is probably not relevant before you hit rank 50 to 55, but at lower levels you'll most likely take the habit of consistently getting multikills when playing Reaper -McCree - Pharah. Well at some point, it doesn't happen anymore, because they'll be prepared and expecting you. I almost always hear the reaper teleporting above us. As McCree/Roadhog/Ana, I'll immediately cancel his ult the second he jumps, because I kept my flashbang/hook/dart specifically for him. So be observant and wait for those that can interrupt you to waste their cooldowns before going in.

Ping your ults
ANYONE, please take the habit of pinging your ult status once in a while. The Ana will know when she can boost you as Genji, the Zarya will know when she can ult for Pharah to rain justice on them, etc.

Hope this will help a few of you guys, Gl and Hf!

SOURCE

Friday, August 12, 2016

How to increase your skill rating in Overwatch by northernkyle

This video looks at ways to increase your skill rating in Overwatch. We look at both your gameplay mechanics and your mental state.

0:00 - Introduction

IN-GAME MECHANICS/SKILLS
0:13 - 1. Play More
1:00 - 2. Warmup
1:35 - 3. Diversify
2:18 - 4. Kill Feed
3:01 - 5. Sound Cues
3:41 - 6. Map Knowledge
4:12 - 7. Do not die
4:49 - 8. Regroup or push
5:29 - 9. Deny enemy ultimates
6:10 - 10. Objectives
6:44 - 11. Communication

MENTAL FACTORS
7:28 - 12. Lose the ego
8:05 - 13. Have a winning mindset and learn from your mistakes
9:09 - 14. Take more breaks
9:35 - 15. Minimize distractions

10:03 - Outro

Check out my twitch, patreon, twitter, and instagram!

TWITCH: https://www.twitch.tv/northernkyle

Overwatch - Torbjörn Best Turret Spots / Route 66 (Beginners / Advanced) by Lord Quinzulin

Here's an album of all the pictures I used:
http://imgur.com/a/9Fk3V

Thanks to Josh for helping me out with this video, check out his channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5v7...

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Overwatch - Mercy Guide by Turtleye

Preface

Hey there. Due to Mercy being a Hero quite a few people want to get better with I've decided to write up a guide on how I play her. For reference, here are my MasterOverwatch and Overbuff profiles. I've clocked in over 150 hours of play on Mercy in Quickplay and Competitive combined, and I'm currently holding a 65% winrate over 100 games on her in Competitive. I went from rank 47 to rank 70 with her. While she is probably the weakest Healer in the current Meta at the time of writing this, she's far from unplayable.
Sadly enough, I can't stream or record my own gameplay as I'm playing with an average of 45 FPS on the lowest settings. I would love to, however.

That's it, enjoy the guide!

Abilities

Caduceus Staff: This is Mercy's main ''weapon'' and probably what you will be using 95% of the time. It's a staff that either heals people, or increases their damage. The healing is done via holding down the left mouse button (by default) and it heals a single target for 50 HP/s. This puts her at the second highest single target healing, with only Ana being able to outheal her. The damage beam is activated by holding down the right mouse button (by default) and increases the damage output of a single ally by 30%.
The staff has a maximum range of 15m and requires Line of Sight (from now on addressed with LoS). However, there is a 3 second ''grace period'' when your beam is on someone where if your ally either breaks LoS or moves further than 15m away from you, the beam won't break.

Caduceus Blaster: This little thing is Mercy's secondary weapon, and this time it's actually a weapon. It's a pistol-like energy blaster that fires small projectiles dealing 20 damage each. It fires at a rate of 5 rounds per seconds, giving her a potential Damage per Second (DPS) of 100. Though it's best to use this in emergencies, do not underestimate its damage potential. You can switch between the Staff and Blaster by using the scroll wheel or the 1 and 2 keys.

Guardian Angel: Mercy's shift (by default) ability. It is a targeted dash which allows you to fly to an ally up to a range of 30m. If activated, you will fly in a straight line to the ally you chose to fly to. It can be cancelled by reactivating the ability or letting go of the shift button, depending on your option set-up (more on this later). It has a cooldown of 2 seconds.

Angelic Descent: Mercy's Passive. When you're in the air and you hold down space (by default), instead of falling down like my rank when I Solo-Q'd in the rank 55's, you'll graciously glide down.

Ressurect: Mercy's ultimate. This thing is maybe the most iconic ultimate in the entire game, and for good reasons: You revive everyone in an area of 15m around you. If used correctly, it can give your team a huge advantage. Also, it has the best call-out in the game.

Playstyle

Okay so that are her abilities. Now this is all fine and dandy, but how do you actually use them to maximize your Mercy play?
First of all we'll cover the topic of Not Dying. This single skill seperated the good Mercy's from the bad ones. A dead Mercy can't heal, damage boost or revive people. But how does one actually stay alive, when everything on the enemy team that moves will try to kill you before anything else?

Positioning: You stay alive by positioning yourself in ways that the enemy team will have a difficult time knowing where you are, actually reaching you and staying close enough to kill you. Now realistically, to do this perfectly is practially impossible. However you can attempt to do it nearly perfect.
First up, the flankers have to know where you are. At all times, try your best to stay out LoS from the enemy unless it's neccesary to expose yourself. Use corners and obstacles as much as possible. Keep in mind that your beam has a range of 15m. Try to stay at the max range of your beam as often as possible. If you stay too close to your team, chances are you'll get caught in a Zarya ult, Reinhardt ult, Pharah Ult and everything else that is not good for your health and mental stability. Also, use the fact that your beam can go through a corner, as long as you reset the timer before the 3 seconds run out. ''Peek'' around a corner to keep resetting the beam. Also, especially when defending, stay on the high ground as much as possible. This is the biggest positional flaw I see when reviewing VOD's. You're vulnerable on low ground. High ground naturally exposes less of your hitbox and you have more escape routes.
But say a Genji actually manages to get to you. You can't stay close to him and invite him for a cup of tea, since he will likely kill you. If he actually accepts the offer, friend him and start queueing with him. Anyway, this is where your dash comes into place: as soon as a flanker approaches you, dash to an ally. When you're under fire or getting flanked, use your dash as much as possible. It's on a 2 second cooldown, so use this to your fullest advantage. Also, keep in mind you can dash to dead allies. This often throws the enemy team off as they do not expect this. It's risky, however. Keep in mind that allies on high ground or in the air are your best friend, especially when you're getting flanked by Tracer. There are reasons Pharah and Mercy have such a good synergy, and Pharah providing Mercy and instant escape is one of them. But please, never, ever, dash to your snipers when a Genji with ult is chasing you. This will likely end in you both dying unless your sniper is godlike. It's important to be as hard to hit as possible, as you have only 200 HP. Mercy's kit allows for jukes and throwing off enemy flankers, so be sure to use this.

Situational awareness: Another skill that you need to have as Mercy. Being able to identify where enemies are, who they are and when they are going to use ultimates is key to your survival. Remember that you are not relegated to looking at the enemy frontline, unlike your DPS and Tanks are. Look around you more often. Memorize all the flank routes that can lead to your current position and check them every 1-2 seconds. If you can spot a flanker before they've even reached you, you can easily adjust your position and won't be caught off-guard.
Next up is sound. Something which often goes unnoticed, but Blizzard has done a damn good job at the sound in this game. Not only can you hear where enemies are walking, every character has unique footsteps and gunsounds. By now, I can easily identify wether it's a Tracer or Reaper who's behind us, and likewise I can instantly recognize wether we're dealing with a Soldier or McCree.
Learn how certain characters like to position. A Reaper, for example, will likely look for a place where he can either drop down on you and possibly ult, or brawl in close combat. If the enemy team has a Reaper, keep this in mind and adjust your playstyle accordingly. In this case, it would be avoiding close spaces if Reaper's position is unknowing, and check above and/or behind you for potential edgy jumpscares. Assemble the information you have about the enemy team comps and adjust your play to it. Mercy has no ''set'' position she should be in, it entirely depends on the team comps on both her team and the enemy team.
Lastly, you should know your team's positioning at all times. This reduces the time you need to get away from things and allows for faster repositioning.

Game knowledge: Learn how every character plays. Learn their damage, cooldowns and how fast their ult generally charges. This will allow you to better know when enemy ults are coming, how much you can expose yourself to enemy fire to reach a destination or ally, etc. As mentioned above, knowing the playstyle and also cooldowns of other heroes allows you to position yourself according to the situation.

You can become better at the 3 things mentioned above through either just playing the game a lot (which I did - I'm almost level 330 at the time of writing this) and picking up things along the way - mindlessly playing the game sadly won't help you, no matter how much you play the game. Try multiple approaches and if something works out, try to figure out why and apply it to your future games. For example, Yesterday I played a game on Anubis where we were stuck trying to assault point B. We kept trying to rush through main and on one push we got to the second checkpoint. But the other 5 times went horrible. Then I suggested we should take the right-hand flank and see what happens. We hopped over the wall and steamrolled through their defenses. We completely caught the enemy off-guard and that won us the game. What you can pick up form this is to switch up your tactics if something's not working after multiple attempts. It may just catch your enemy by surpsrise and allow you to win.
The other option is to watch high-level gameplay. There are a lot of resources for this, so I'll list a few:
General gameplay: GosuGamer's weeklies, Amazing Overwatch's Channel.
Mercy specific: Most streamers have stopped playing Mercy, but both Purposefull and C9's support player Adam still have high-level Mercy VOD's on their channel.
Try to figure out why the players do what they do and apply this to your play (Do NOT simply copy what they do) and you'll see improvement in very short time.

Decision making

Even though your heal and damage boost are both awesome, they can't be used at the same time. You'll have to make a choice on who you're gonna heal or boost. Likewise, your Ressurect also requires good decision making.

Healing and Boosting: I'm going to give you a few examples. Answer them on your own before looking what I would do.
1) Your McCree is behind you, at 60 HP. You're standing behind cover. Your Soldier is ulting and just killed the enemy Tracer. What do you do?
2) Your Reinhardt is being fired at by the enemy team. His shield is up. He has 100 HP. Next to him is your Reaper who just escaped the enemy team. He is at 150 HP. Who do you heal?
3) You notice your Tracer and McCree are at 40 and 50 HP respectively. Who do you choose to heal first?

The first scenario offers you the option to choose between boosting and healing. While it may be tempting to heal McCree first, he is out of risk as he's behind cover just like you and the enemy Tracer just died. Instead, boosting the Soldier would prove more usefull to winning the teamfight and guaranteeing a push/capture. Also, Soldier will be out in the open and thus open to taking damage.
The second scenario forces you to heal a tank or a DPS. General rule of thumb is to heal DPS Before moving to the tanks. The tanks naturally have higher survivability than your DPS, thanks to having more HP and heals or shields. Of course there are exceptions. If your DPS managed to get behind cover, but your tank not yet, heal the tanks.
The last scenario is a little more tricky. Tracer has less HP than McCree. However you should still heal McCree. Reason being is that Tracer is more mobile than McCree, so she can go and find an HP pack much quicker than McCree. Healing McCree will thus lessen the downtime your team has where they're missing a Hero.
Final note, you should generally heal over damage boost. Unless someone's actively killing the enemy team (Reaper during ult, Roadhog after hooking, etc.) you should heal. Reason is that you can't damage boost a team that's dead.

Ressurect: With the recent increase in Ult charge cost, your Ressurect requires very good decision making. I'm still fucking it up every so often. You need to be able to judge the situation quickly and decide on that. There are 2 kind of Ressurects: The Ressurect to undo a team wipe and the Tempo Ressurect. The first one speaks for itself: If 3+ allies die due to enemy ultimates, bring them back. You're now at an ult advantage. However, sometimes you want to do a Tempo Ressurect. What this is, is basically a Ressurect on 1 or 2 allies who you absolutely need for your next push. Examples would be Reaper or Zarya with ult.
Get a feeling of when enemies will use their ults to teamwipe. If you know you can get your ult to ~80% before the next fight, you can Tempo Ressurect. If going for a Tempo Res, keep in mind to wait a bit before Ressurecting. More allies may die before the death timer runs out, and you want your Ressurects to be as efficient as possible. Honestly, there's not a lot I can tell you to do with your Ressurect, 80% of it comes from experience.

Using the Blaster: Most of the time, it's better to fly away when flanked because most flankers thrive in close quarter fights, so being able to increases the distance leaves you less vulnerable. However, sometimes you just can't get away easily. I always swap to Blaster upon getting flanked unless someone really needs healing, and fire away at the flanker whilst flying to an ally.
Generally, flankers will hestitate for a moment upon taking damage. Get used to the projectile and its travel time and you'll be able to deter flankers from trying to get you - 80 damage to the face is a lot for them.
If you're facing a static defense (Turrets or Bastion) and you get the opportunity, use the fact that your Blaster does 100DPS and is pinpoint accurate. A full clip is generally enough to take out Torbjörn turrets when you're behind a Reinhardt shield or simply out range. However keep in mind that you still should prioritize healing over firing the pistol. It may simply be more efficient to heal and/or boost your Soldier who's taking down the turret.

When should you run Mercy

Although at the time of writing this guide, Mercy's the least favoured support in the current Meta, she can still fit on most of the teams, both Offense and Defense. She does shine better on Defense, however.

Attacking:Generally, if your team has a Lucio, you can run Mercy. If not, go Lucio. I hate to say this, but Lucio's speed boost is pretty much a neccesity in the current Meta. You can't really afford to not run a Lucio on Offense as his speed boost can't be missed. This accounts to 2CP maps, Payload maps and Hybrid maps.

Defending: Mercy can pretty much always find a slot on Defense, as this side naturally offers her more cover, both map-wise and team-wise. Torbjörn turrets, Junkrat spam and Bastion are awesome at deterring flankers from killing you. However do beware that if you are the only Healer, you'll have to expose yourself a lot more, because there's nobody else who can heal allies and you'll have to constantly reposition and possibly give away your positioning to the enemy team.

King of the Hill (KotH): Don't go Solo Healer on this map as Mercy. Once again, you need a Lucio. Lucio is especially good on KotH maps due to the team being clumped up more because the way the maps are designed. Keep in mind that if you are running Mercy on these maps, you'll have to be very careful as these maps are a flankers wet dream. Also Winston sees a lot more play here. Lastly, the maps offer less hiding places.

Also sometimes you'll just run into teamcomps where playing Mercy will be very difficult. Tracer, Genji, Reaper, D.Va and Winston are your worst enemies. Should you run into a team running 2+ of these heroes, you have to consider just swapping off if you're constantly getting dove on by them. Likewise if your team is running 2+ of these heroes, consider swapping off as well. Mercy has by far the shortest range of all healers and therefore isn't able to heal them as effectively as Zenyatta, Lucio or Ana can, as you need to overextend and expose yourself to heal them when they jump in.

Tips and Tricks

The art of hiding: This kind of is advanced positioning. If you feel the enemy team is about to use multiple ults to combo your team, seek for a hiding spot. Stay as close to this as possible while still being able to heal your team. If your team moves up, find a new one. As soon as you hear Reinhardt slamming his hammer, Zarya firing her Graviton, or Genji unleashing his Bullshit Stick Dragon Blade, go into this spot and DROP YOUR HEALING/DAMAGE BOOST BEAM. The reason you do this, is that the enemy can and will find you if you don't. Because, you know, there's this obvious stream of light which perfectly shows your position.
Most maps have hiding spots near the objectives. Memorize them and use them. I might post a visual guide on the good ones in the future.

Reducing the cooldown of your dash: That's right. You can reduce your Guardian Angel's cooldown. It's a little trick that can prove to be tremendously usefull. Basically what you have to do is activate your dash, then at about 3/4ths you cancel the dash and hold space. Due to the mechanics of your glide, the momentum you get from dashing will keep being there, and you'll notice very little difference if you would simply shift the entire dash. This will result in your dash getting on cooldown earlier even though you're still ''dashing'' to your target, and therefore come off cooldown earlier. However, this does not work when you're trying to fly up, be it straight up or diagonally.

Ressurect: Aside from being an awesome ult, it also resets your dash cooldown. Keep this in mind to fly in, res and instantly zip away.

Fake suicide: If you're close to a cliff and an ally is close to the cliff, you can jump off to trick enemy flankers or simply hide yourself. Then you can dash back to your allies. I like to do this on KotH maps specifically, as there are a lot of death pits there. It also works on allies who've recently died, although keep in mind that their soul will disappear when they respawn. Don't die due to this, it's awkward.

Options and set-ups: I play on a high sensitivity whenever I play Mercy (or Lucio for that matter). The reasons are that you are able to more quickly assess the situation by looking around you, being able to react faster by lowering your turn speed and aim being not that important on Mercy. Mercy also has a few character specific options. First up, the toggle on her Shift. Please set it to Toggle. It gives you a lot more control over your flight. But there's a second benefit to this: If you hold shift, as soon as someone enters your range and your ''crosshairs'', you'll instantly fly to them. This helps you escape sticky situations slightly faster which can make the difference between life and death. Also, you won't be spamming the shift button and accidentally cancelling your dash.
Toggle beam is entirely up to preference. I noticed my arm got tired after a day of playing 6 hours of Mercy so I switched it to toggle. If you set it to toggle, however, turn the option to dash to your beamed target off. This prevents you from accidentally messing up your dash by dashing to the wrong person due to not being able to break the beam. You can still break the beam by Melee-ing or switching to Blaster though. Dashing to your beamed target is also up to preference. I like being able to heal people as I'm flying away, giving me the option to be more mobile as you're able to heal ~20 HP whilst flying away. However, being able to dash to people whilst not looking at them is also good. Play around with the options and see what fits best.

Final notes

There we go. I hope you all have found some usefull advice in this guide. I may update this guide in the future, as I still need to find an up-to-date damage chart for boosted allies (may make this myself) and I could probably do a visual guide on the hiding places and positioning in general. Also, new patches will be introduced and Mercy will be changed. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them.

Thanks for reading, have a lovely day and keep your team healthy. Cheers!

Edit1: Added Blaster segment & When to run Mercy. Shoutout to /u/HoeMuffin for making me realise I forgot them.

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Tuesday, August 9, 2016

No Man's Sky - The First 5 Things You Must Do by PlayStation Access

No Man's Sky is upon us - and so is Sean Murray of Hello Games to tell Rob the first five things you'll probably want to do in your epic sci-fi adventure.

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