Patch 5.6 is here and Riot have confirmed that it continues with the buff theme of patch 5.5. Bard is the latest champion and as you might expect he’s getting some tweaks to hopefully get him just right.

Bard’s been out for less than a patch, and while we’re already seeing the growing pains of players and teammates alike coordinating around his unique abilities, it’s clear he released on the wrong note. We’re taking it slow for now, but some more power on Q and some improvements to his signature E means that you’ll have a better time on your Magical Journeys this patch…assuming bard isn’t too busy collecting chimes to open one for you.

Textures continue to be updated which is great, when the gmae is constantly updating with new champions the old models can get left behind. Kayle, Lee Sin, Pantheon, Rumble, and Ryze get the makeover this patch.

A handful of item and map tweaks, the full notes can be found here.

Dota 2 returns to KeyArena in Seattle this summer from August 3rd through August 8th. But tickets are going on sale at the end of the month, so if you planned on going, make sure you are ready!

All tickets will be general admission, which will cost $99 and give you access to all six days of the main event, where the top 16 teams in the world will compete for the Aegis of Champions. News on VIP tickets this year is yet to be confirmed, but stay posted!

Tickets will be made available through Ticketmaster at two separate times next Friday, March 27th. The first batch of tickets will be sold at 10:00am PDT, and the last batch will be sold at 10:00pm PDT. Having the twelve hour gap gives a fairer chance for fans around the world to get their hands on tickets. Instead of selling them while half of the world sleeps!

Not sure when 10am/pm PDT is in your time zone?

Seattle: March 27th at 10:00 and 22:00
Rio de Janeiro: March 27th at 14:00 and March 28th at 02:00
London: March 27th at 17:00 and March 28th at 05:00
Moscow: March 27th at 20:00 and March 28th at 08:00
Beijing: March 28th at 01:00 and 13:00
Seoul: March 28th at 02:00 and 14:00
Singapore: March 28th at 01:00 and 13:00
Sydney: March 28th at 04:00 and 16:00

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The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited is here, and their in-game Crown Store has officially opened. To prepare it for launch, it’s all stocked up on a range of convenience and customization based items you might enjoy. Here’s take a closer look at some of the distinctive mounts, pets, and costumes that are now available.

Customising your character is always one of the fun parts of RPG’s, it allows you to express your character a little more. And if it should also help you stay alive, then that’s great too!

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It’s been a long time coming, but the beta is finally coming to an end for Infinite Crisis. It’s a fun free to play mobo that I’ve always kept an eye on. It’s really gone from strength to strength, and now it will be officially launching on Steam on March 26th.

Players will be able to logon with their existing accounts, and as promised there will be no character wipe on the official launch. You will still be able to get the client from the official website, but it will also be available for everyone free on Steam from the 26th.

Steam cards have been confirmed for the launch so there’s some incentive for existing and new Steam users alike.

Beta testers will be rewarded with a cool free skin, and there’s still time to get it too if you want! All testers who possess an active beta account as of March 25th will be getting ‘Flashpoint’ Doomsday unlocked on their account as of March 26th.

Find out more here.

Champion Mastery is a new concept due to be beta tested on Riot’s PBE servers. Basically it’s a way to show progress and eventual mastery over each champion that you play. Ultimately your teams performance and your own will gain you mastery points that add up over time, taking you through a possible five tiers, with the top two giving a loading screen badge, a custom emote, and an announcement banner.

We’re kicking off the rollout with a PBE stint from 3/11. If all goes well, a couple of weeks later we’ll then launch a beta in a single region, focusing on Summoner’s Rift normal queues to make sure the feature’s stable for expanded use. We’ll read through your feedback and keep you updated with our progress, too, so keep an eye out for future posts after the service goes live!~ Riot

Read more about the upcoming mastery beta here.

Patch 5.5 is also on the horizon, bringing with it the usual champion tweaks and balancing acts. Later in the patch the new champion Bard will also be released. There’s plenty of jungle balancing this patch so head on over to the full official patch notes.

Classic 2d side scroller Dungeon Fighter Online have released a new trailer in preparation for their global release. The beta officially goes live March 24.

In online gaming you need your character to respond how you expect them to. That’s why a high latency is the bane of almost any gamer today, but it’s also a problem when you aren’t lagging and unexpected things still happen. The dota team have just confirmed they have fixed some unexpected errors with pathfinding.

We get many reports of issues in the game, and the trickiest ones are the reports of subtle, often fleeting timing issues that result in incorrect hero or spell behavior. The bug we fixed today was inside the pathfinding system, but it manifested in extremely rare cases around blink dagger usage. We’ve seen reports of weirdness around blink dagger usage for a long time, but every time we spent some time digging into it, we couldn’t reproduce the events in those reports. A couple of weeks ago we decided to add a lot more tracking data to replays, so that the next time we received a match ID it would tell us more.

Early this week, we got lucky. Or perhaps you could say Loda got very unlucky. In Esportal Dota 2 League game #2 between The Alliance and Ninjas in Pyjamas, Loda reproduced the pathfinding bug at 18:26 game time. As Slardar, Loda had given a move to position order near some trees, and the generated path included an erroneous sharp turn at the very last step. Just as Slardar reached this last step, Loda activated his blink dagger. However, since Slardar was incorrectly trying to turn at the same moment, he was no longer within the required 11.5 degrees of facing the target position. Many players forget that your Hero does have to face towards the blink target before the blink actually starts. Exactly 0.07 seconds later, before Slardar had completed turning back towards the blink target, Loda cast Slithereen Crush, which replaced the blink dagger order. Sorry Loda!

Once we received the report of this occurring, fixing the bug was straightforward, because we finally had what we needed: a match ID containing the bug at a known time, and a new replay with the full unit and command information for each player. It took only a few hours to carefully analyze that replay and figure out exactly what was going on, compared to the many prior days fruitlessly spent combing over code and user reports looking for clues. There may still be other bugs that result in weirdness around blink daggers, and it’ll take more replays to catch them, but at least we know that this one is no more. ~ Dota team

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Changes like this are never going to be popular, but Riot have chosen to increase the cost of Riot Points to their european players. Basically it amounts to about a 10% increase in the euro equivilant of RP purchases. With ten euros getting you 1780RP, after march 20th it will now only get you 1575RP.

Riot is huge now and as they admit, most of their trading is in US dollars. So the price of currency in relation to the dollar is going to always be in their interest. But you can also be quite sure they would be unlikely to change the prices back should the economy start to go the other way.

Prepaid cards will also take a hit so you have until March 20th to redeem any RP cards if you play on the European servers. You can read Riot’s full public announcement and get more details here.

As promised yesterday on their Kickstarter, here is the latest update bringing in a brand new map and with it, some bug fixes and quality of life improvements. The new map is a smaller area that is well suited for 2 vs 2, or 3 vs 3 games, it’s called Village Centre.

Also implemented is the helpful ability to pick up weapons, ammo and grenades from those unfortunate soldiers that gave their life on the battlefield.

And here is the traditional list of tweaks and bug fixes:

• You will now see the action as soon as you join a game
• Fixed a couple of animation bugs
• “NaN” issue while aiming should not happen anymore
• Being in prone position hides your soldier better now
• Being prone behind a window or wall now properly protects your soldier from explosions
• Added extra information about suppression in the hints screen
• Fixed a bug that caused grenades to stun through walls at certain occasions
• Slightly tweaked suppression
• Fixed a bunch of shader issues
• Added extra information about suppression in the hints screen

The team have also made a video to show they are real humans, not robots. I’m not 100% convinced, they could be cyborgs…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv8-K2zETWM

In a battle of tanks accuracy is one of the most important attributes and with time people were getting just a little bit too accurate. The latest update to accuracy in World of Tanks is intended to balance out a higher rate of “impossible” shots that people were able to land without fully aiming, or even while on the move! It’s not a huge change, but should be enough to be noticeable over a few games.

In terms of gameplay, there will be fewer instances of players managing to land “unbelievable” shots. For example, shots against weak points without being fully aimed, while firing on the move or at great distances are less likely to be successful. With surprise shots being less effective, letting the aim circle fully focus will give players a higher chance of landing accurate shots.

The chances of hitting the “bull’s-eye” while not fully aimed has decreased but not by much. The reworked accuracy system will make armor thickness more relevant on the battlefield again. Heavy tanks should experience increased survivability, being able to use their HP pool more effectively and ricochet more incoming fire.

If you want to maximize the effectiveness of your shot, be sure to let your accuracy reticle reach full focus!

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