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"Perfection doesn't exist, it conceptually cannot be achieved"

I bet you feel real dumb now, huh?

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I am so obsessed with this fish it's unreal, honestly.

God's normalest soldier. I know it's off-type and a patrolwoman is only knight-adjacent, but I have to at least talk about some of the things she's done. In no particular order, this fish:

- Once intimidated a Victorian noble into submission, entirely by accident, by being perfectly capable of keeping up with his small talk and outdoing him in talking about the weather; she later recalled this entire conversation, word for word, from memory so she could recount it to her girlfriend and ask what she'd done wrong

- Constantly draws squiggles and squares on her sketchpad in a way that helps her think but is incomprehensible to anyone else... except the Doctor, and honestly that's basically worse than if even they didn't understand; this got to the point that Warfarin - an actual medical doctor - assumed she must think too fast for her own brain to keep up with and needs the sketchpad as an assistive device

- Compiled a detailed report of her own life, including extremely private events, and then stood stock-still for seven hours while a mortified Doctor read it, incapable of speaking up about how abnormal it was due to how intimidating she is

- Was rejected from the Abyssal Hunters program, not for being the only person insane enough to willingly apply to have Eldritch Jellyfish Goo injected into her veins, but because she was doing it to mimic the world's edgiest DILF

- Regularly spends hours in the kitchen creating 'food' that's more akin to sensory experiences, like chewing herbs or spiced jerky you're only meant to let soak in your mouth, then pairs those with artful poems or delicate drawings; she then puts them in the cabinets because she's too used to uploading things to the Atlantis 3D Printer Omninet, where they're promptly snatched by Ceobe before anyone can see

- Has several kinds of neurotoxin that she can apply to her gun, all of which have meticulously thought-through use cases

- Wrote a thesis on the ineffectual physical results of coffee as a stimulant, after shotgunning 10 espressos and not feeling a thing, and proceeded to extol the virtues of the drink as effectively a placebo since all the culture around coffee implies it should work, and so that's why she assumes it does; she even blended her usual stimulants with coffee in order to create something suitable for her experiments, and it's some neon blue sludge

- (Of note, that last thing is her module... which raises the amount of poison damage her shots do)

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Everyone should look at this

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a lot of arknights gameplay discussion is built on certain assumptions about how people (are supposed to) play arknights, often without being aware that these assumptions are being made, and thus the common gamepress (rip)/reddit assessments of whether an operator is good or bad will be assessing their suitability for a style of play that is not remotely universal, but is still assumed to be universal, because it is the playstyle of the people who are writing these assessments.

this post is not about which playstyle is better, but rather about the way people talk about operator design and viability. if your way of playing arknights aligns with the assumptions that redditors often have about how to play arknights, then their advice is very useful, they are usually correct in their assessment of how suitable an operator is to that particular playstyle. it's also a single player game and how anyone else plays it has no bearing on what I'm doing myself, so in that sense it doesn't really matter to me that redditors talk about arknights in a way that doesn't align with how I play arknights.

I think reddit-style discussion is keeping a lot of players from experimenting and discovering that they actually like a different way of playing arknights more though, because they're caught in the idea that if this is how people talk about arknights, then that must be the right way to play arknights. I also think it causes a lot of players to view a lot of units in a bad light, or rather, they are assessing these operators by metrics that the operator is not trying to meet.

lucilla is often called a bad or poorly designed unit because her debuffs only affect regular enemies instead of the elites that would usually be the main threat. however, the debuffs she applies are very potent when they apply, so when her conditions are met she performs exactly as intended. in gamemodes where regular enemies can grow really bulky like IS or CC or SSS, or maps featuring bulky enemies that nonetheless are not categorised as elites like sarkaz wither aegis, lucilla successfully achieves her intended purpose of outperforming existing hexers in specific scenarios (her fragile can reach the highest value in the game and its only condition is whether the enemy is elite or not) without being a direct upgrade (the rest can actually debuff elites). not many players value what lucilla offers, but if you like engaging with and working around map and operator gimmicks, lucilla is a good operator for you.

wisadel is good at instantly clearing whole sections of the map, which is something many players value, but if you don't /want/ to instantly clear whole sections of the map because you want to actually engage with the map mechanics, she is not a good operator. she performs just as well as lucilla at her intended role, the difference is that wisadel's intended role aligns with the redditor assumption of how to play arknights while lucilla's doesn't. this friction between the assumed way of playing and the way many people actually play was highly visible during the icebreaker games, where a lot of players started bringing aak just to get rid of the other guy's wisadel so that she couldn't blow up the map before they got to actually play it.

"is this operator good" is a question that includes many unspoken metrics, including ones that the person asking might not actually want to judge an operator by. it can be a useful shorthand to speed up discussion of where and how one might want to use an operator, but it is only useful if these unspoken metrics are actually consistent between all participants of the discussion, which in practise is rarely the case. someone who is talking about how one might use lucilla doesn't want to hear that gnosis is better or that it'd be easier to just blow everyone up with wisadel, and someone who is looking for easy to use broadly applicable operators doesn't really want to hear that lucilla is actually really good in specific situations.

the more nicheknights I play and watch, the more I come to doubt how useful it is to talk about operators as being "good" or "bad" to begin with. across all of arknights there is not a single operator that is objectively unuseable. I would also argue that nearly every operator is capable of doing what they're intended to do. every operator has a combination of qualities that is completely unique to them, which means every operator can be in a strategy that relies on that specific operator's qualities to succeed. u-official was specifically designed to be as useless as possible as a joke, and high-level challenge players have still found various uses for a 3dp ranged unit that doesn't attack + doesn't take up deployment slots + can stun enemies + can temporarily make allies stop blocking.

exploiting the unique qualities of operators that are often overlooked for easier to use alternatives is the core principle of nicheknights. the fewer options you have and the more you try to cut down on the amount of operators used, the more each individual operator's unique qualities will shine. just earlier today I saw a clear that used a combination of the aspd debuff inflicted by zaaro and the fact that manual deactivation skills will cancel attack animations to delay mr. nothing's attacks long enough that every attack he does will trigger his stun talent, largely preventing zaaro from doing anything.

arknights also has immense variety in map and enemy design, so use cases for operators often dismissed as too niche to bother actually occur fairly often. every single chapter and story event introduces both new map mechanics and new enemies that make use of those mechanics. often the less straightforward a unit is, the more ways they have of interacting with these mechanics to open up potential new strategies. even without any self-imposed challenges, different gamemodes all have various restrictions and opportunities that make certain operator qualities more or less desirable, and the combination of collectibles and risks you pick in IS or CC can completely change how you approach each map. in RA you can straight up build the map yourself to be as beneficial to your operator of choice as possible.

beehunter's high attack speed but low damage made her fairly unremarkable until the game introduced hitcount-based mechanics. corroserum is rarely built because ifrit had been in the game so long already by the time of his release and he's not ifrit, but just the past month there have been two separate maps where a large amount of silenceable enemies approach the blue box in a straight line for him to trivialise. warmy is arguably the most difficult to use unit in global right now because the only way to inflict the burn status that her s2 capitalises on is using her s1, but now there's path of life letting just anyone inflict burn so she's free to use s2 anyway. if the situation where your gimmick unit of choice can shine doesn't exist yet it will be created sooner or later, because these units were created to have their gimmicks exploited.

arknights is a highly varied strategy game that offers many different ways to engage with its mechanics, including some ways to not actually engage with the mechanics and just explode everything instead. the game offers these options so exploding everything isn't the wrong way to play arknights, but the game also offers many other options so it's not the right way to play arknights either, it's just one of the many ways available. an operator that seems way too gimmicky or specialised to see much general use is not poorly designed, they are designed for a particular playstyle that simply differs from the playstyle that is assumed in a lot of operator discussion. units like lucilla or tsukinogi or leto aren't meant for players who ask "when would I ever use this when I have far easier options", they're meant for players who ask "what strategy would allow this combination of qualities to shine".

this is the issue at the root of why a lot of perfectly serviceable operators get stamped as being bad, and also the answer to the question of why arknights would be releasing these bad operators in the first place. crownslayer is a bad unit for the type of player that want to kill everything as fast as possible, but she's great for players who like gimmicks and weird interactions. many recent 5* are bad units for powergamers because they're trying to not to intrude on their existing subclass colleagues by doing something more conditional instead, or they're experiments for new subclasses that don't have an immediate obvious use case. many times throughout the game's history a new operator has been dismissed as bad only to turn out to be very powerful if you play them the way they're designed to, like dorothy, gnosis, ebenholz, and even specter alter.

all of which is to say, operator discussion would be a lot more useful to everyone involved if it talked about what situations would make the best use of the operator's abilities, rather than whether the operator is Good according a metric that is rarely even properly specified.

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when does the insurance CEO shooter guy’s banner drop in Arknights?

He came out alongside a limited unit on year one, and has had a few rate-ups across the years, I don’t know when his next one is

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I don't have the energy in me to make a full post but once again the theme of art keeping you alive and sane and human, keeping you you, whether by self-expression via your own creative process or participation in others', your shitty little hobby is all that keeps you from becoming cursed algae. this is why every hunter is associated with one craft, and why the aegir have super 3d printers to print out your passion or hobby stuff for you no matter how dire circumstances are. for the stagnation of the mind and numbing of the spirit is akin to death. it's a survival necessity

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Man, this is straight up not fair.

+ all the stacked up passive bonuses like 30% dmg reduction, 3.5% hp regen/sec, +0.5 sp/sec, etc.

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VIVIANA FANS HER TIME IS NOW (yes the burn damage buildup is doubled vs elites and bosses)

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What makes Viviana's module clever is that they switched the rules around a bit just for her. If you look at other delta modules, you get something like this:

In Ebenholz's delta module (the first one ever made), the module base effect is 8% of damage as Necrosis damage, while the module upgrade adds 30% of Ebenholz's ATK as Elemental damage after Necrosis pops.

Viviana however, has her delta module reversed. The base effect gives her 15% of ATK as elemental damage on enemies burning, but no way to proc burn herself unless the module is upgraded, because the Burn proc is 9% of damage dealt on her first talent.

This was done because her first talent doubles its numbers against Elites and bosses. If Vivi's delta module was done like Ebenholz and Logos, Vivi would have a hard time proccing her burn status because elites and bosses can take more elemental status buildup than enemies, and there is currently no Burn Ritualist in the game.

By switching the effects around though, Vivi's elem status buildup gets doubled vs elites and bosses, freeing her from relying on a Burn Ritualist that doesn't exist yet (Warmy and Ifrit's problem) and proccing the burn herself very quickly.

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You know how there’s the exploding ice spiders? Right, I thought to myself “does Ulpianus have… I-frames on S3 cancellation when doing his return animation, even when he didn’t move?”.

He does. Killed the spiders with the AoE of the first hit, then cancelled S3 as they exploded, he was unharmed and not afflicted with Freeze.

Ulpianus has an actual quickstep with I-frames.

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Starshadowmagician was wilding the absolute hell out with the summer Reed skin

Taking absolutely no prisoners on this one. Call in massive long tail, call in dragon girl crotch, call in tummy and thigh straps, we’re going all-stars, the best athletes are here, birth rates don’t stand a CHANCE

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Doctor's sweating bullets under that hood

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drunken sailor

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genderless fucking thing in your area convicted of murdering their WIFE