zircon

Yeah... but do you need a $450 video card for it to work at a proper framerate?

Aside from graphics, translation and audio quality, FF7 still stands the test of time. The game is extremely long with tons of side quests, secrets, character customization, etc. Combat is still fast-paced and fun, between limit breaks, lots of magic/summons and command combinations. A next-gen remake/retranslation of the game would easily stand on its own.

How is it better than HoN? They added what looked to me like a bunch of extraneous hotkeys. In HoN, I just hit 2 (select courier), E (deliver to me), Q (speedboost), and then Shift+R (return after). Really easy, not sure what that other stuff is all about. The more I think about it the more I don't like the graphics here when it comes to the heroes themselves. It might just take more practice but the heroes all seem to look very plain/muted to the point where sometimes they are hard to differentiate from creeps. Way too small overall, too. I definitely prefer HoN in that department. Same goes for shopkeepers, the fountain, etc. Everything looks really good but individual objects blend too well, IMO. It's hard (for me) to tell what is going on, whereas HoN has vibrant contrast.

Fun game! Just played a couple bot matches. Overall I'm not crazy about the interface (had to do a lot re-binds, shop is not good, etc.) However it plays pretty smoothly and I love the DotA heroes.

Yeah... the problem is that two of the three branches of our government (sometimes 3/3) are bought out by corporations to begin with. So, for example, our Judicial branch (eg. Supreme Court) is supposed to be the ultimate objective authority on existing law, more or less. And yet in one of their recent decisions, they essentially ruled that giving money is equivalent to "free speech", and because corporations are people under U.S. law, restricting their donations is equivalent to stifling free speech. Oh yeah, and several of these same Supreme Court justices regularly attend dinners and galas thrown by multi-billionaire lobbyers. Then you have the countless congresspeople and senators who received massive donations from lobbyists to get elected, and the abuse just goes on. The level of corruption is insane. Of course, it's the Republicans who have become so crazy that they're actively supporting this kind of corruption, while most Americans are very much against it.

People tend to get upset at the slightest nerfs and buffs. Like Morgana was really out of favor for awhile (or so it seemed to me), then she gets some very minor improvements and skyrockets into being permabanned. Graves is probably still amazing.

Yay Lunatic Moon in credits Great episode, too. I have no problem with online-only. Seriously, how often are we playing games on a computer that has no internet connection? For me, that's literally never. If I'm on a plane or something it's usually too uncomfortable to bust out the laptop and try to play something non-casual, so in that situation I'm using handhelds anyway.

I don't think IE is that good on him actually. He does massive damage with Bio-Arcane Barrage which scales with AP and attack speed. That's his primary source of damage, sine each shot is at least 6% of the target's max health. The way I like to build him, in no particular order: * Berserker's Greaves or Merc Treads if you're feeling defensive * Catalyst -> Rod of Ages (he's so squishy - this really helps, plus gives him way more mana to spam) * Madreds's Bloodrazor (attack speed and even MORE damage per hit) * Nashor's Tooth (AS, AP, CDR, mana regen, all of which are very good on him) * Hextech Gunblade * Guinsoo's Rageblade With all this you end up with very high AD, max or close to max AS, massive on-hit damage and good survivability as well. Plus, you can spam your R quickly while doing high damage and not running out of mana. Infinity Edge isn't a bad item on any AD, but again because Kog does so much damage naturally per hit, it makes more sense to give him attack speed as opposed to raw AD.

Yep, no invite yet.

What are they worth?

As the topic says, I managed to get a free Phenom II (X6 1055T) processor and a mobo to go with it (Asus M4A88TD-V EVO). For awhile now I've wanted to put together another computer for gaming, office and internet stuff, while leaving my main desktop for music-only. I also have a backup computer on the network which will probably continue to do the task of... backing stuff up. Anyway, I have a small budget for this ($400 tops, including ship/tax). Can anyone help me pick out some parts for it? Case: Antec 300 seems like a good case; something with good ventilation, accessible controls. Hoping to get something $50-60. Power Supply: 600-700w? No idea on price. RAM: 8gb preferred, can be inexpensive as long as it's not a bad brand. On Newegg I could get something like this, right? $40. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233192 Video Card: NO idea here. I don't do a lot of gaming, certainly not major FPS games or anything like that. I have a Radeon HD4850 or something on my desktop and I think that does just great. Still, it would be nice to play games like Skyrim at a decent FPS. OS/Apps Drive: Would prefer SSD if it can fit within the budget. Something 64gb, well-reviewed. Thinking this ($115) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148441 OS: Windows 7. Hopefully will be able to get something academic here, so <$20. Storage Drive: A 1 or 2tb drive would be good, OEM and as cheap as possible. However all I can find on Newegg are super-expensive $150+ drives, which is awful. At the Micro Center where I used to live, I could get a 2tb drive for about $70. Is this possible online? Sound Card: Don't need a separate one, not making music on here. $0. So total, $115 (SSD), $40 (RAM), $70 (HD), ~$100 (Video Card), $50 (Case), ~$50? (Power Supply) would put me at about $425+tax/ship. I guess the SSD would be the first thing to go, unless I'm missing some deals here or not looking at stuff properly. However, there's also the fact that I need a monitor to go with this... which I guess would add another $80-100 for a decent 20-21" one. So the question would be whether this is all worth it, or whether I should SELL the processor/mobo (how much could I get for it?) and get an all-in-one computer. I saw some stuff on clearance at Best Buy in the ~$450 range, something like 4gb RAM, i3 processor, 1tb storage....

Really really sorry about this, guys. It's been a giant thorn in my side for weeks now. What happened was that MONTHS ago, a single plugin I was using to resize thumbnails had an exploit that some asshole used to put malicious PHP on my site. I immediately fixed the exploit and deleted all the PHP, or at least I thought I did. The problem was that each PHP file had its own backdoor, so the same hacker(s) could keep going in and putting more redirecting crap all over. Since my webhost (Lunarpage) was useless in helping me with this, a week ago I completely changed hosts, reinstalled everything from scratch and completely cleaned everything out to make sure that not a single file from the old site made it on to the new one without being thoroughly checked. So, there's no way any of the old malware made it on, since everything on zirconmusic.com now is fresh + reinstalled from remote servers or my computer, not simply copied over from the infected site. I submitted the domain, along with zirconstudios.com (which is just a redirct) to Google to be removed from the blacklist. Hopefully they'll do that ASAP. tl;dr - There isn't any malware on my site now, and as soon as Google reviews my request to have it rechecked, the warning message will disappear. I'm really, really sorry for the inconvenience. Moral of the story - update your plugins

Yea sorry, I meant that the traditional rezzy/squelchy sound is from a 303, not the sound in the TCM song. I would definitely guess Nord Lead as it's one of their favorite synths.

Yep; it's also not the traditional acid sound that you often hear. The squelchy, rezzy acid synth comes from an old Roland unit called the TB-303. It's famous for it's filter resonance which is unlike most other analog synths. Of course, many VSTs emulate it, such as Audiorealism Bassline. Synth1 is pretty good for Crystal Method-style acid stuff overall, given that TCM uses Nord Leads extensively, and Synth1 is loosely based on that synth. I suppose what makes the synth line unique is that they're changing the filter cutoff with each note as opposed to doing a smooth line or curve.

Legionnaire, Zephyr and Armadon are all pretty analogous, particularly Armadon.

Definitely excited for Flash nerf. It's just a really stupid spell. When 10/10 players take it at high levels, you know it's incredibly OP. Same with CV, though with that it's more like at least one player per team MUST have it to be competitive. Thing about the nerf though is that you can't look at it in a vacuum. For example, some people say by nerfing Flash, champions with no gap closer or escape will be a lot weaker, and anybody with a blink/pseudo-blink will become a lot better. But remember, they're buffing other summoner spells. So maybe Ashe can't Flash away if she gets ganked, that might just mean a buffed Heal would be better to save her, or the improved Cleanse. Who knows!

Yeah, that's the impression I got from her too. Seems like a fun champ. Why don't you like Ignite? At first I wasn't a big fan either, but for some top and mid picks it helps you seal the deal. I used to think Exhaust was almost always better, but the issue I had with it was that champions with Flash or other blinks/gap closers were able to escape even with it on. Riven is a good example. She's like a greased eel and sometimes it is preferable to have Ignite to finish champs like that off. Also I picked up LeBlanc recently and I've won nearly all my games with her. Her burst is just unbelievable and her ult is amazing too. As far as I can tell she really dominates most mid champs because she can harass safely 99% of the time (silence + built in defensive/offensive blink nuke.) She's tough to gank too between the blink and the passive. I suppose the only problem is that later on, she is not going to be able to pick away at a glob of enemies unless you have people on your team that can initiate hard and/or significantly distract attention. Otherwise an assassin can get in on you even after you escape.

Why none for me I play so much moba :[

Well, with Wriggle's + Merc Treads alone (plus flat armor yellows and MR/level reds) you're already looking at 80-90 armor and MR by level 10 or so. That's pretty good for survivability, combined with your natural tenacity, sustain and passive. So you just want more offense at this point, and Triforce gives you a ton of that, plus a really good buildup. I do like Wit's End too, and I guess against a caster-heavy team you would want to get that very quickly. But Madred's...? I'm not sure it makes sense unless you have another attack speed item first, as it doesn't add much damage in and of itself and is surprisingly expensive.

Just theorycrafting here, but it sounds like a standard Irelia-style build would work. Triforce, Wit's End, Wriggle's, Frozen Mallet/Warmog's + Atma's...

I think the amount of mind games added by obscuring mana bars is greatly outweighed by the memory tax it puts on players (trying to keep track of how much they used so you know what they're capable of.) Dotalikes already have an insane burden of knowledge, why add even more? The last thing this genre needs is more barriers to entry. I'm pretty sure it has enough of those.

It's funny, when I played WoW in 2005-2006 I thought it had an amazing community. My guild had mostly adults (college students at worst, nobody younger I could remember.) Lots of family men, some women. Everyone was cool as hell. We had a great time on Ventrilo. Even though I haven't played for almost 5 years now, I can still remember what most of these people sounded like and have really fond memories of playing with them.

Great post Luke! I'm a fan of dubstep. At it's core, I think it is just defined by a half-time beat (or low BPM, depending on how you look at it) with heavy bass modulation. Most bad dubstep is bad because people look at those two elements and don't do anything else. It gets interesting when you add more complexity, chord progressions, additional instrumentation, layering, etc. People hate on it because it's popular right now, but you could just as easily say most rock music (counting all the hobbyists/amateurs) is bad too, because most rock is just guitar, bass and drums playing I-IV-V-I, or whatever. In short, the definition of dubstep is loose enough that there's plenty of room to make cool, intricate music while still classifying as 'dubstep', and most bad dubstep is bad because people only stick to the bare bones of the genre. Like with anything else.

Speaking of QoP, apparently if you try to blink beyond your max blink range, you only go 4/5 the distance? What the hell is the reason for a mechanic like this? Supposedly it was like that in DotA as well. This is just a stupid time sink; memorizing the exact range of your blink spell so you know just where to cast it. There's nothing tactical about it. There's no decision involved. If you want to blink your max range, you should be able to do so without practicing. :/

Haha, not really, we just had mentally deficient teammates the entire time. For example we had a game with a Singed on the enemy team, while I was Jarvan and brad was Amumu. Brad would ult their squishies, like, say, Brand or Twitch, and I'd follow up with my ult. The rest of the team would promptly chase Singed and we'd all die. Repeat 10 times until we lost. The worst part was that we had an Ezreal on our team who could easily have just used his blink to get behind Singed and help us, but I guess that's too much to ask. I've seen the same thing happen with Cho'gath. Bad players cannot understand that the enemy tanks don't necessarily do a lot of damage and should be ignored in favor of squishy, high-dps AP or AD carries.