Arlen

Seeing someone defy gravity in a video game feels magical. The character glides over an obstacle like it’s nothing. Then you learn there is no magic at work, just math. Gravity scaling and initial vertical velocity determine whether your jump will be floaty or responsive. Players generaly don’t think about those numbers, yet they’re responsible … Read more

The big number show up, all in bright green. It looks good. It’s cool. And then you realize it isn’t even making a dent because your teammate is already at max health. All the points beyond that dissapears. No one survives from any of that wasted healing. You just spent your mana and cooldowns for … Read more

When that explosion comes to life on screen, hearts race in a split second. It is not for the size of the explosion itself. But for if you will live through it’s edge. The fear of splash damage make for tense design. It is the line between a satisfying miss and an infuriating death. Most … Read more

That feeling of “I should’ve made it”, you know that one? That’s when you think there was just enough time to run around and reposition again, but then suddenlly your character fails to reach safety by even an inch. Most of the time, this isn’t due to lack of reflexes. In fact, it’s because you … Read more

When you reach the start of a boss fight, there’s an anxious pulse running through your health bar. A three-second timer ticks down as giant hitbox appears on your screen, and if you can time your cooldowns right, you’ll make it through. By now, having high shield uptime isn’t some abstract stat, it’s the line … Read more

Damage over time effects gets ignored by most players as an afterthought, a passive bonus that ticks away while player focuses on their main rotation. That’s a mistake: These sorts of effects increasingly determines your survival, your burst windows, and even your gear choices. They’re not dealing damage per second like something static; instead, they’re … Read more

When you’re fighting, and your damage numbers seem lower then normal, but your cooldowns and rotations all line up correctly, you might wonder why. You probably aren’t weak. Chances are, it’s not a lack of raw power. It’s uptime. More specifically, it’s that period of time after a buff drops, before the next one reactivates. … Read more

You have probably seen a healing chart that looks impressive on paper but fails in practice. “The numbers say I’m pumping thousands of health points per second into the raid, yet my tank keeps screaming and dying during a split-second pause between casts.” That’s the disconnect. Effective healing isn’t the same as raw throughput. Raw … Read more

This should sound familiar to you; it happens a lot. You build that lifesteal champion with everything but kitchen sink, thinking you’re going to drain your opponent dry while staying untouched. So you step into lane and trade blows. After only two seconds, you’re dead because unseen mechanics stripped your heals. But hey, you say, … Read more

Sure, go ahead and debate fire rate if you’d like. But when it comes to a firefight, there’s no metric other then how you’re gonna use up the rest of your ammo. On paper, this sounds obvious. But in practice, most players view their magazine as a limitless supply, until they run out of bullets … Read more

In training mode, you might learn a move because it’s safe and fast and you’ve practiced it thousands of times. When you go into an online match, however, that very same move gets you punished most of the time. The reason is that fighting games aren’t about intuition. It’s about frames. Each frame are a … Read more

Push the button. Animation begins. Your enemy blocks. Was it because you’re not fast enough? Is game rigged against you? That’s what most people think when they fail to pull off a clean combo. What they don’t know is there’s something in-between human reaction and pure math: frame data. A calculator do the math by … Read more