#combat guide

[luminafights]

░ 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐁𝐀𝐓 𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐃𝐄: 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠

⠀⠀------------------------------------------------------------

Here's a video to show you how to dash stack.

𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬── .✦

First part: dpad dash, release (see how it triggers the halo and "shing" sound?)

Second part: dpad dash, release -> basic attack chain -- slow

Third part: dpad dash, release -> basic attack chain -- quick

[fogaminghub]

🌌 Defeating Darth Vader in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is no easy task! 💥 Dive into our comprehensive guide and learn how to effectively parry his attacks and outsmart this Dark Lord. 

Get ready to show Vader what you’ve got! 

[techdriveplay]

A Short Guide to Helldivers 2

Welcome to the action-packed world of Helldivers 2, where the battle for democracy spans across hostile exoplanets teeming with alien threats. At first glance, Helldivers 2 might seem like your typical co-op shooter: drop into enemy territory, unleash havoc on alien foes, and extract before the peril overwhelms you. Yet, delve a bit deeper, and you’ll discover a complex game ripe with strategies,…

[lucksea]

havent decided how i want the introduction to go yet but i imagine it would roughly be one of these two

[somsonsomsoff]

headcanons for the employers have somehow turned into a crossover with de skills

[onlykenobimatters]

Codywan au where the clone troopers are actually a reincarnated group of an ancient sect of warriors from mandalorian space. They remember pieces of their previous society; some from the beginning of their origins all the way to the last grasping few. A lot of effort goes in to getting them assigned to the correct battalions. For they had a pantheon of gods they once worshipped and while they have always been One Blood, they believed very seriously in their coming of age ceremony where they must choose the god they would worship. It might have been thousands of years, but none stray from their Chosen.

(The pantheon would be similar to others in which they might have a core group of gods, but other minor gods could also exist. Each with their own domains;

Plo Koon was The Guardian? Protector of Packs and god of loyalty.

Mac Windu the Seer, protector/god of the past and future

While Yoda could be one of their oldest gods, his domains having shifted through the years but mainly protector of the young.

And then quigon who is associated with natural disasters. Legend is he was roaming their world, damning and saving mortals as he went, when he created a disaster so wroth, so powerful, he could not bare for it to fade. He pleaded with his grand sire and eventually Yoda agreed to help him. Combining their domains they turned the raging storm in to a young godling.

Obi-Wan, nature personified.

There are many legends involving the young godling and his journey. How he discovers his domains. And how he uses them to follow in his father’s footsteps to create children in his Image. For what is more natural than life and death?

Obi-wan is not the only one to create a god, but he is the only one to not need assistance. He becomes the Creator, the god of natural order, Father of Life (ahsoka) & death (Anakin)

Over the centuries the Line of Natural Order is adapted to many cultures within their system. Other attributes are gifted to them by followers of The Great Powers as well;

Life, goddess of survival & champion of the light side of the Great Power.

Death, god of balance & champion of the dark side of the Great Power.

The Creator, god of natural order and the Blessed, those who hold connections with the Great Power. )

and like I don't quite know where I was going with this, but clone wars era where the clones kind of remember this culture that doesn't seem to be recorded anywhere and these jedi that feel something Awaken when they meet these shining lights in the force.

and Obi-Wan gently cupping Cody's face, his blue eyes shining brightly. Obi-Wan allowing the force to guide him as he gently lays a kiss upon Co-, no, Kote's forehead, the warrior breathing in harshly as the first Blessing in thousands of years is granted to him. Kote is glory and Kote will uphold the Natural Order as The Creator, Ken'Obi, sees fit. For Kote is now Blessed by his patron God.

i dont even know this got away from me ugh

[room-surprise]

Absolutely GORGEOUS art of Kabru! Go check the artist out on Twitter (and if they've posted this art to Tumblr let me know so I can delete this!)

[manupropriaindigo]

YouTube video: DEATH BATTLE! Combat Doll vs Affini

[zetadraconis11]

I think what a funny question would be to Professor Weasley, why does the book say that you can learn the Unforgivable Curses?

That is quite the question, isn't it? The book that has everything the students "needs" and then some.

As a somewhat completionist, I wanted to learn them, but my MC is mostly a goody-two-shoes, lol.

That being said...that would make for a funny conversation...

*in the Transfiguration classroom*

Prof. Weasley: How have you been doing with your field guide? Any luck finding some pages?

MC: Well, yes, I've found quite a few already.

Wealsey: Wonderful! It seems you've been doing well in acclimating to this new world.

MC: I have a question, though...

Weasley: Yes?

MC, opens book: In the list of spells for me to learn, I see that I CAN learn the Unforgiveables.

Weasley: Oh dear... I don't know how-

MC: But you want me to completely fill out this book, right?

Weasley: I- that was the intention, yes, but-

MC: Alright! Time to learn some war crimes!

*MC runs out of the classroom*

Weasley:

Weasley: Merlin, what I have done?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Naomi Novik's incredible, brilliant, stupendous "Temeraire" series

One of the finest pleasures in life is to discover a complete series of novels as an adult, to devour them right through to the end, and to arrive at that ending to discover that, while you’d have happily inhabited the author’s world for many more volumes, you are eminently satisfied with the series’ conclusion.

I just had this experience and I am still basking in the warm glow of having had such a thoroughly fulfilling imaginary demi-life for half a year. I’m speaking of the nine volumes in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, which reimagines the Napoleonic Wars in a world that humans share with enormous, powerful, intelligent dragons.

https://www.naominovik.com/temeraire/

If you are like me, this may not sound like your kind of thing, but please, read on! Novik is a gifted, brilliant storyteller, and even if you, like me, had never read a tale of naval or aerial battles that didn’t bore you to tears, you should absolutely read these books, because I have never been so gripped by action sequences as I was by Novik’s massive military set-pieces.

Likewise, if you’re not a fan of dragon fiction — I’m not, though I do enjoy some heroic fantasy — or talking animal stories (ditto), you owe it to yourself to read these books! Novik’s dragons straddle the line between fantasy and sf, with decidedly nonmagical, bioscience- and physics-grounded characteristics. In the hands of a lesser writer, this can be deadly, yielding an imaginary creature that is neither fantastic nor believable.

But Novik’s deft handling of her dragons — variegated in biological characteristics, sociological arrangements, and umwelt — renders them as creatures both majestic and relatable, decidedly inhuman in outlook but also intensely likeable characters that you root for (or facepalm over, or sometimes both — a delicious sweet-sour cocktail of emotions!).

Finally, if you’re not a fan of historical fiction — again, as I am not! — you should absolutely get these books. Novik is an exhaustive researcher with a gift for rendering the people and circumstances of the past simultaneously comprehensible and unmistakably different, making the past “a different country” indeed, but nevertheless a place whose contours can be firmly grasped and inhabited.

In other words, Novik has written a work of historical-military fiction with dragons in it that I enjoyed, despite having almost no interest in historical fiction, military fiction, or high fantasy. She did this by means of the simple trick of being consistently and variously brilliant in her execution.

First, she is brilliant in the themes that run through these nine volumes: the themes of honor, duty and love, and the impossible dilemmas that arise from trying to be true to yourself and others. Captain William Laurence — the sea captain who finds himself abruptly moved into the dragon corps — is a profoundly honorable man, bound by the strictest of mores. Nominally, Laurence’s moral code is shared by his fellow gentlemen and officers, but where most of the world — all the way up to the Lords of the Admiralty — pays lip service to this code, Laurence truly believes in it.

But there is something of Godel’s Incompleteness in Laurence’s Georgian morality, in that to be completely true to his ethics, Laurence must — again and again, in ways large and small — also violate his ethics, often with the most extreme consequences imaginable at stake. Novik spends nine volumes destruction-testing Laurence’s morality, in a series of hypotheticals of the sort that you could easily spend years arguing over in a philosophy of ethics seminar — but these aren’t dry academic questions, they’re the stuff of fabulous adventure, great battles, hair’s-breadth escapes, and daring rescues.

Next, there is Novik’s historicalness, which is broad, deep, and also brilliantly speculative. Novik has painstakingly researched the historical circumstances of all parts of Napoleonic Europe, but also the Inca empire, colonial Africa, settler Australia, late-Qing China, and Meiji Japan.

It would be one thing if Novik merely brought these places and times to life with perfect verisimilitude, but Novik goes further. She has reimagined how all of these societies would have developed in the presence of massive, powerful, intelligent dragons — how their power structures would relate to dragons, and how the dragons would have related to colonial conquest.

The result is both a stage that is set for a Napoleonic War that is recognizable but utterly transformed, a set of social and strategic speculations that would make for a brilliant West Point grad seminar or tabletop military strategy game or an anticolonial retelling of imperial conquest, but is, instead, the backdrop for nine exciting, world-spanning novels.

Next, there’s Novik’s action staging. I have the world’s worst sense of direction and geometry. I can stay in a hotel for a week and still get lost every time I try to find my room. I can’t read maps. I can’t visualize 3D objects or solve jigsaw puzzles. Hell, I can barely see. Nevertheless, I was able to follow every twist and turn of Novik’s intricate naval/aerial/infantry battles, often with casts of thousands. Not just follow them! I was utterly captivated by them.

Next, there’s Novik’s ability to juggle her characters. While these novels follow two main characters — William Laurence and the dragon Temeraire — they are joined by hundreds of other named characters, from Chinese emperors to the Sapa Inca to Wellington to Napoleon, to say nothing of the dragons, the sea captains, the Japanese lords, the drunken sailors, the brave midshipmen, and so on and so on. Each one of these people is distinct, sharply drawn, necessary to the tale, and strongly individuated. I am in awe (and not a little jealous). Wow. Just wow.

Finally, there’s Novik’s language: the tale is told primarily through Laurence’s point of view, which is rendered in mannered, early 19th century English. Again, this is the kind of thing I usually find either difficult or irritatingly precious or both — but again, it turns out that I just hadn’t read anyone who was really good at this sort of thing. Novik is really, really good at it.

At the end of one summer, years ago, I ran into Vernor Vinge at a conference and asked him how he was doing. He lit up and told me he’d just had one of the best summers of his adult life, because he’d started it by reading the first Terry Pratchett Discworld novel, and had discovered, stretching before him, dozens more in the series. It was an experience he hadn’t enjoyed since he was a boy, discovering the writers that preceded him.

As I read the Temeraire books, I kept returning to that conversation with Vinge. I listened to the Temeraire books as audiobooks, downloading them from Libro.fm and listening to them on my underwater MP3 player as I swam my daily laps. Simon Vance’s narration truly did the series justice, and I could only imagine how complex it must have been for Vance and his director to juggle all the character voices, but they pulled it off beautifully.

I normally read pretty widely, but almost always within a band of themes, settings and modes that I’ve specialized in. This can be a very satisfying experience, of course. Last year, I read dozens of fantastic books that were in my wheelhouse, for all that that wheelhouse is an extremely large one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/01/bookishness/#2022-in-review

But reading against type, outside of one’s comfort zone, yields new and distinct delights. The Temeraire series joins the very short list of heroic fantasy novels that I count among my all-time favorites, along with such marvels as Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos/Jhereg series:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/10/17/listen-up-you-really-owe-it-to-yourself-to-read-15-vlad-taltos-novels-seriously/

Brust is tremblingly close to finishing the Vlad books, which I started reading as a 13 year old and have been devouring ever since. I can’t wait for the final volumes to come out, so I can binge-read the whole series from beginning to end.

There are so many good new books coming out every month, and it can feel like a disservice to those writers to indulge in backlist reading, but there is a lot to be said for revisiting beloved works of decades gone by. I am so glad to have read Temeraire at last — I haven’t been this excited to read something I missed the first time around since I read Red Mars 12 years after its initial publication:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/05/28/red-mars-a-very-belated-appreciation/

[Image ID: A grid showing the Penguin Random House covers of the first eight Temeraire novels by Naomi Novik.]

[luminafights]

░ 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐁𝐀𝐓 𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐃𝐄: 𝐋𝐮𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬

⠀⠀------------------------------------------------------------

This boss is arguably one of the most annoying ones to beat when you are trying to go lean with your stats. Here are some general strategies that you can use to maximize your Luminivore fights!

𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧── .✦

Luminivore is a Boss type enemy who deals slashing melee attacks. It has 2 lock phases, one at 80% 3x HP, after which it gets an orange glow to indicate a more empowered state; another one at 30% 2x HP (the space roughly between 3rd and 4th protocore shield under its HP bar).

Luminivore is also featured in "dormant Luminivore" special stages. In these stages, after killing the first wave of mobs, he goes straight into the first lock phase.

The difficulty comes from managing the timing around the two lock phases, while also dealing with the distance Luminivore creates with its movement. The strategies outlined below show how you can deal with these issues individually.

𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐬𝐡── .✦

One way to deal with Luminivore's dash is to dash into it, using the body blocking to your advantage. I learned this strategy from fellow hunter Sene!

The first part of this clip is an example of body blocking to stop the dash completely. Your companion also helps add to the body blocking.

The second part of this clip (0:06 in the video), the body block was only able to cut down the distance by halfway - but that is still a good outcome!

𝐃𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐥── .✦

Another way to deal with the dash by positioning yourself to where Luminivore is facing a nearby wall. This way, when it dashes, it will dash into the wall instead of traversing a larger distance. To maximize this strategy, learn at roughly which points in the fight Luminivore is most likely to do the dash and pre-position yourself.

Thank you to fellow hunter Beans for this strategy!

𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩── .✦

Luminivore has a tendency to backstep which makes you lose precious time closing the distance when using a melee weapon. To minimize this, attack it from the front with its back against the wall.

In this clip you'll see that it backsteps twice - once at the start, and another close to the end when it's already has its back pressed to the wall.

𝐎𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬── .✦

Get a resonance skill in before its first lock phase at 80% 3x HP. This will help with your first oath timing to make the 1:00 mark.

Time a shieldbreak right before its second lock phase at the 30% 2x HP mark (the space roughly between 3rd and 4th protocore shield under its HP bar) to delay it. This may make your second oath timing a bit rough, depending on how much oath recovery you have, and how lean you're going with your damage stats.

You can keep inflicting damage during the second lock phase. If using a ranged weapon, keep attacking from a distance. If using a melee weapon, wait until it's done screaming and its aura disappears - that's the point when you are able to approach it again.

𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐬── .✦

2.0:

- First lock phase ends faster. - Second lock phase can no longer be interrupted entirely. I've seen it be successfully interrupted just once since the update; would need a larger sample size of interrupts before I can say for sure that it can still be done.

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐠── .✦

If you find any issues with this guide, or if you have anything to add, please contact me through my Asks! Changes will be logged here.

2024-11-02 11:06 AM · Added Beans's strategy, 2.0 changes. 2024-05-25 2:59 PM · Original conclusions.

[the-northern-continent]

Seeing some people worried about party balance with only 2 companions. Now, I’m no expert at Dragon Age combat, but I have done a couple Nightmare runs with some extremely cursed party comps (3 rogues + ranged mage, oops all glass cannons, solo daggers, etc.).

So I thought I’d put together a quick guide on how I balance out a “weird” party. Hopefully this will open up more options for your own parties, whether in Veilguard or in the previous games!

Basic theory

To win an encounter, we need to make our enemies die faster than us. So we want to speed up the damage we do to them, while slowing down the damage they do to us.

By that metric, some abilities are less helpful than we’d expect. For example, healing. We’re reducing the damage done to us, but we’re also using up time, resources, and skill points that could have done damage to them. We’re slowing down the fight for everyone; we may not be shifting the balance in our favor.

On the flip side, there’s a big difference between killing an enemy and ALMOST killing an enemy. If we load up on huge area attacks, we’re getting great damage efficiency, but it’s spread over many foes. Ten enemies at 1hp deal twice as much damage as five enemies at full health. There is no partial credit. Until an enemy actually reaches zero, they’re just as dangerous as they were at full health. We’re speeding up the fight for everyone, doing more total damage while our foes continue to hit us at full strength.

Key roles

If we want to actually widen the gap between our damage and the enemies’ damage, we need crowd control and spike damage.

In a classic tank/healer/dps party, the primary crowd control is the warrior’s taunt. But it could also be their knockdowns and stuns. It could be a mage’s freeze, paralysis, or pull of the abyss. It could be a rogue sending people to sleep or scattering caltrops to slow them down. Anything that clusters, slows, or stops our enemies, setting them up for more damage from us while also making it harder for them to hit back.

Meanwhile, spike damage fills in any gaps in our crowd control. A faraway archer or mage might not rely on movement, and bosses may be immune to many/all forms of CC. These enemies need to be spiked down while the rest of their allies are locked in CC. A rogue is the traditional choice for this, but mages can stock up on single- or limited-target spells, and warriors can also be specced into more focused abilities. Damage buffs like horn of valor, haste, or mark of death also help here. We get less total damage than we would with big AoEs, but the earlier we can drop someone, the faster we strip away their damage + their own attempts to CC us. For some bosses, killing them may also skip to the end of the fight.

Once we have these two roles covered, we can pad out the rest of our slots with multi-target damage. This can also be handled by any class, whether it’s a mage dropping fireballs, a spinning warrior, or a rogue blanketing the battlefield with arrows. With these abilities, we first target any large groups we can’t crowd control, then work our way down to clean up the rest of the battlefield.

To really underline this: all of these roles can be filled by any class. When building a party, don’t pay attention to classes, pay attention to roles. Are we getting enough crowd control, spike damage, and damage efficiency? Veilguard provides some additional help here: the skill trees have labels showing which areas of the tree deal with control, burst, and sustain.

Troubleshooting

Dying at the beginning of the fight. This is almost always a crowd control issue. We need to take several enemies off the field right away. Unless they’re very squishy, killing them would be too slow. We may also be triggering multiple encounters at once. On the next reload, slow down and don’t go as far into the new area. Maybe even retreat back through a door or behind a wall to get some free crowd control. If enemies can’t easily reach us, they’ll naturally clump together in the bottleneck.

Dying midway through the fight. We need more spike damage. Prioritize enemies who are not crowd controlled — we don’t want to waste our time spiking down enemies that are already “dead”. We may also be missing the trick to this encounter. See if there are any environmental features or interactive items we missed the first time around.

Dying near the end of the fight. First, rule out issues in earlier phases of the fight. Focusing on the long game can be a self-fulfilling prophecy — if we take too many longer-term abilities, we may be sacrificing our chance to end the fight early. When we’re sure we have enough crowd control and spike damage, we can start to worry about overall damage efficiency. Stack on some damage buffs and/or combo detonations to squeeze even more efficiency out of each AoE. ⚔️

[frogaroundandfindout]

You remember when dick was in space (for the first time with the new teen titans) because komand’r took Kory back and they needed to save her? And you remember how he understood it was a war they were fighting and that they needed to do what they had to in order to survive it? And how when Gar told him he needed to control Kory, dick wondered if he even should try to stop her from killing her sister? And how he literally killed to save her (there’s some deniability but he’s literally hitting them with lasers described as deadly right in the head)? I do.

[lonestarbattleship]

USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) leads a formation including USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62), USS Spruance (DDG-111), USS Pinckney (DDG-91), and USS Kidd (DDG-100), and USS Coronado (LCS-4) during U.S. Pacific Fleet’s Unmanned Systems Integrated Battle Problem (UxS IBP) 21, on April 21, 2021. UxS IBP 21 integrates manned and unmanned capabilities into challenging operational scenarios to generate warfighting advantages.

Photographed by U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Shannon Renfroe.

Date: April 21, 2021

US Navy Photo: 210421-N-FC670-1079

[nevadancitizen]

GRRRRR soldier reader with a grunt gladiator pit (it's more cockfighting with their size and animalistic tendencies) even though they want nothing to do with it GRHAHHHRRRRRR and hank and sanford being their champions RRGHHGHHHHH and 2b organizing the whole thing with deimos presenting "evidence" of their "treason" against soldier AHHHHHAHAGGHHHGHRRRR