zircon

No, but I've heard good things about it. My only qualm... I know the DQ series has always been very traditional (very slow-paced battles, really long animations, etc.) Is that still true with 9?

As the topic says! I'm going to Australia in about a week and the travel alone is 20+ hours each way, even assuming no delays. For trips like these I like to pack great games to bring with me, preferably things with a lot of depth (eg. it doesn't need to be pick-up-and-play since I'll be sitting in the same place for hours on end.) I'm not really interested in racing games or fighting games (screen too small/controls cramped) and here are some of the ones I already have, offhand: * Advance Wars series * Final Fantasy (1-6, Crisis Core, FFT/A) * Golden Sun * PSO * Metroid series * Super Mario Advance 2 * Etrian Odyssey * All the Castlevanias * Kingdom Hearts * Civilization Rev * Mario & Luigi So RPGs are definitely good, as are deep action/adventure games. How are the new Zeldas? Are there any somewhat obscure titles/series I'm missing?

Seems like the music for this game is gonna be good

Y'all know me. I don't spend a ton of time on promotion though outside of social media these days.

Can't do it with something like WaveLab? Alternatively you could concatenate all the WAV files in one linear track with silence in between then use WaveLab or Waveknife to re-split them after processing the one big file.

Don't forget Nunu. He is one of the best junglers, period. Few champs require NO runes/masteries to do well, but he is one of them. Hard to beat having what is essentially an extra Smite that combos as a self-heal.

I can't wait to play ranked. I got up to a pretty high PSR level in HoN and I look forward to climbing the ladder in LoL.

Yes, that's me Thanks very much! You can check out the whole album that song is from here: http://zirconmusic.com/discography/antigravity/ There are links to the album on iTunes, CD Baby, etc. on there as well if you're interested in picking it up. Cheers!

What do you mean by 'broken'? Balance-wise or engine stuff? I actually agree with them not doing major balance changes constantly. In most competitive games it's better to let things play out for awhile and see what people do as opposed to continuously nerfing, buffing and tweaking. Let people try to deal with new heroes first. Remember Electrician in his old form, a hero considered trash tier until people discovered how to use him, after which he became godly OP?

I dunno, having played a ton of HoN I don't think the crowd control is a big deal at all. You guys are judging it harshly without putting any real time into it. Tensei, Bardic and I have all played a ton of both games. The things that make HoN less fun (for me) are the gold loss on death, extremely slow regeneration (making even tiny bits of harass annoyingly powerful) and much lower HP/mana numbers with higher ability costs on average. On the other hand, the graphics are better, the engine is much smoother, teleport stones make it more of an active game and the champion design is better.

Oh I didn't mean 1v1, I meant in terms of the champ's contribution to the game. If your team has a 5k gold Corki and 14k gold Cho, that will be less useful 45 minutes in than a 5k gold Cho and 14k gold Corki. Cho can always disable and silence regardless of his items. Corki heavily relies on items to do.. anything.

So don't buy them?

Pestilence, Soul Reaper, Fayde, Forsaken, Gladiator and Moraxus in trash tier? Really? According to recent competitive match stats, those are slightly off: http://honmatch.com/hero_use The heroes that really win games are, apparently, Pollywog Priest, Ophelia, Witch Slayer, Keeper, Revenant and Gladiator. The popular picks that DON'T win games include Kraken, Aluna, Soulstealer, Chipper and Puppet Master.

I've had games where I basically ignored my team and just farmed the whole time. From experience, I can tell you it doesn't work that well if the other team is actively ganking and pushing. Passive farming as a strategy kind of only works if everyone is doing it, including the other team. The games where I've made the most difference have been when I ganked often enough to create more map control for my team and create a big gold advantage. Also, like I said, I've maxed my farm out on a number of champions recently and been unable to win lategame even in 1v1s; some champs have a CLEAR scaling advantage. For example, Poppy, Tryndamere, Warwick and Ashe. Your maxed out Cho'Gath is not going to be a big threat compared to my maxed out Corki. On the other hand, even a maxed Yi isn't unstoppable if the other team plays well and has good team comp (tanky DPS, disables.)

I had to use it in college. For recording and editing it's quite good, but if you're doing a ton of composition then there are generally better options. That being said, I still thought the piano roll was better than the one in Logic.

Yeah, but arguably those HoN supports last longer too because there's no such thing as tenacity, and stuns are way more powerful. So your Behemoth will always be a good initiator even if he's not doing much damage by the end, Pollywog can still disable/push left and right, etc. Even if their actual NUMBERS aren't scaling much, they have a lot more utility on average. And, having played a max-farmed Brand in a recent game where we still lost, I don't think those AP carries scale as well as champions like Poppy or Tryn.

Again, I don't think that's true. I've played a pretty wide range of champions to maximum farm (every item slot filled) and some very clearly scale far better than others. Pretty sure Zero can back me up on this.

Well, they don't really... a champ like Tryndamere benefits way more from farm than Garen, Brand scales better than Vlad, Ashe carries harder than Caitlyn, etc. So I don't know about that. As for <5 kills in 30 minutes, again that's at high level play where the rules are basically different. In the games of LoL that I play in, there are dozens of kills by 30 minutes. It's a different game at our level. If I ever get to the point where I'm in the top 1% where the game is ultra-passive, enough time will have gone by for Riot to correct it by tweaking the game's design. Also Dominion.

Brad, I would say it's a bad idea to play tanks in pub games for that very reason. I just assume that my team is going to be useless and never do anything properly. Thus playing strong nukers (AP carries), ranged or melee AD is usually the best route. Tanky DPS is also a good bet generally (Jarvan, Lee Sin/Xin with Warmog's, Nasus, Garen, Renekton...) The other alternative is to play a very strong ganker like Xin, Singed or Trundle. If you can dominate incredibly hard early you can create a big advantage. Of course this doesn't always work, but I think playing tanks and support WILL get you really frustrated due to the very low skill of most pubs. When it comes to farming, just practice your last hitting a lot and ignore stuff in lane to get CS. A good goal is something like 70-80 creeps in 10 minutes. Once you get the rhythm of your character's attack down, it should be like second nature. Also, people often spend way too much time milling around the map when they could be farming. So instead of trying to do that when your team is too dumb to buy wards, just go farm

Dhsu said the same thing. However, I also really prefer the way mana + regen is handled in LoL. In HoN, I generally feel very restricted with spell usage, and if you get low on HP or mana without the right items or heroes in lane, you have to go back. Regen takes place at a glacial pace overall. I don't like how I basically have to tiptoe around in lane, especially as various Strength heroes, as one spell usage can drain most of my mana. Dancing around for the laning phase just isn't that fun for me. Even though people say LoL is more passive, I find it to be WAY more active during the laning phase as spells are constantly getting thrown all over the place.

Yes, I don't like losing gold when I die and it's a main reason I prefer LoL to HoN now. Still, it's partly in the champion and game design overall which makes it very hard to carry a team, like Zero said. It seems lately all my games have been going very long and so all the farm in the world just doesn't do enough. This wouldn't be so bad, except that it's harder to push because towers are way stronger. Edit: Seriously, I feel like giving up. I just played a game as Brand where I completely dominated mid (I had 2x the CS of anyone else, was getting kills/assists, not dying, etc.) We were hosing them early and then we just lost lategame primarily to fed tanky dps (Garen) and a Tryndamere with two Phantom Dancers. It's not that the game isn't fun but I just can't seem to win lately.

But I'm complaining about the opposite. I'm talking about games where I outfarm and outcarry everyone else in the game, but because of the way the game is designed, that isn't enough for my team to win. And don't even get me started about playing support with pubs. It works occasionally, but more often than not they run and die repeatedly then complain because I didn't help them (even when I do, I can't help if you run in 1 v 4).

Man, the one thing I hate about this game is that it's SO hard to carry a team. I know Zero can do it but I don't think I'm a bad player, and lately I've had these strings of game where I do awesome early and mid, but by lategame the enemy team is just winning every teamfight. I do everything in my power to win, get buffs, dragon, baron, max my items, buy potions, play my role, and we still lose. We usually lose a lane or two and even if we win a teamfight, the rest of the team is too scared (or dead) to push, so the enemy team just respawns and continues pounding us. This situation has happened over and over. It seems like there is no way out, no matter WHAT champion I play.

Proximity effect from having your mic too close to the amp, maybe? I don't see the problem though. It sounds great. Just EQ it in the mix if you have an issue (not that I'm hearing one.)