#in my defense; i'm a shit sims player

[simbleleven]

hide away.

Somehow, it never occurred to me to take off that paper bag – like, why was I so surprised he actually had a face under there. Had no idea what exactly I was trying to achieve with this edit, so...[jazz hands].

[gubbles-owo]

So Manticore's paradox simulation, from what I can gather, is designed around using her S2 (Toxic Overload). But for shits and giggles I wanted to see if I could clear it with S1 (Scorpion Venom) instead. And-- because this wasn't unnecessarily painful enough-- without her passive slow module either. And I found a goddamned way.

This took three hours of strategizing, experimentation, and practice to get down consistently. I ain't a high-level Arknights player by any stretch of the imagination, so perhaps this isn't all impressive, but fuck you I'm still proud of it!! Below the cut, if you wish, join me on an unnecessarily detailed journey of pain, trials, insight, and growth. Spoilers for Manticore's paradox sim, obviously, so if you're looking to go into that fresh then uhhh dont watch the video come back to this later or smth teehee

So first, Manticore's skills: her S2 slows down attack speed, but stuns any enemies it hits (that is to say, anyone unlucky enough to be in her range). The slowdown may seem like a detriment, but when you consider that the wind up takes about the same time as she idly goes invisible, and that she gets a significant attack boost on her first fit when cloaked-- that's a hell of a damage boost. On the other hand, her S1 is more passive. Whenever she hits something in her range, it gets slowed for some time. At full mastery 3, the length of the slow equals her attack interval, which equates to a constant slow on an enemy as long as she can keep hitting em. Her module stacks on a passive slow to ANYTHING in her range. WITHOUT hitting it. This helps her S2 be a bit more effective as she can pool up more victims within her reach, and amplifies the effect of S1 to get enemies reeaall sluggish. It also just flat out boosts her attack and defense. So of course we are not going to use it here. For funsies! With that out of the way, let's get a sense of what we're dealing with here.

Upon starting the mission, Cuora (our spunky little tank turtle) is immediately bound by this slippery sack of shitsuck right here:

Doesn't even walk in or anything, just poofs in out of nowhere and kicks down your turtle. What an asshole. Anyway operators who are bound or stunned cannot block incoming enemies. As you will swiftly learn, this is a problem. Because these two slobbering snifflepricks will charge in to ruin your day.

These are not good boys. They are bad boys. Rancid, even. If you don't act quickly, these two will breeze past your sole point of defense and end your run like 10 seconds in. Amiya and Haze, your two provided casters, can take care of them if you place them cleverly and quickly. But it leaves them poorly equipped to deal with the rest of the fodder that comes rolling in shortly thereafter. This is like, just my flawed observation based on experience, but I believe the intention here is to equip Manticore's S2 and place her in this spot first thing:

Fire off her skill as soon as it's ready and it'll break the enemy caster out of its bind, just in time for Cuora to recover and block the incoming dogs. Now there is a small chance you're grabbing your screen and violently shaking it while screaming "bUt WhAt AbOuT tHe StUn GeNeRaToR!?!?" to which I say: yes, you can use it to stop the dogs in their tracks without using Manticore! It's the second thing I did when playing this sim for the first time. Ah, yet this is but a devious trap. Because there's a big surprise waiting for you 'til the very end!! :D

ouguhghh right in the dick yeeaahhhhh so there's this massive malignant amalgamation of mud (and/or rock). And it will cock-sock u straight into hell! "No big deal, Cuora can heal with her sk-" she is locked into S1 in this scenario. +50% defense, that's it. If Manticore can no longer stun this thing out of attacking, Cuora WILL go down, it's just a matter of when. So we'll have to figure out how to work around this inevitability. Even with Manticore's stun, you're going to need to save that stun box for this part too. Perhaps there's a way around this, but from all of my experimentation, you just do not have the DPS or slow to afford it. I cannot tell you how many runs died with just a teensy tiny imperceptible little sliver of its health slipping past my defenses.

Come on. You can't even SEE its health. That bar is EMPTY and nothing can convince me otherwise. This is already getting pretty long here, so I'll just do a quick walkthrough of the final run, and explain some of the rationale behind it on the way. So without further ado,

the strateyg

To start things off, we deploy Amiya first.

The dogs aren't a problem quite yet, so we want to focus on getting rid of shibari slut here as quickly as possible. Amiya's skill charges with each hit she lands, so the windup time is pretty damn good. Much faster than Haze's. And speaking of Haze, I played around a lot with who to deploy here. Originally I tried to get Haze in place to sap most of this caster's health, but uhhh

yeeeeaaaahhhh so Haze's skill here really ain't great for tanking damage. I was so goddamn confused as to why she was dropping dead so quickly, as the caster one-shots her, until I finally noticed the "-75% max HP" in the skill description. rip. So for a few reasons, survivability included, Amiya gets deployed for the opener. This positioning leaves the bottom lane wide open, and we've got two snarling problems heading up from south-side. So we deploy Manticore as soon as we've got the DP.

(NOTE: Manticore here is a pitiful potential 2, but that does lower her DP cost to 19. This is probably still doable with her base cost of 20? Haven't tested it tho) This position not only lets her get a full 3-long coverage on both exit lanes, but also covers five tiles total on the lower path. This is critical for slowing down the dogs here in time for Steward to take care of em. Once the caster finally frees the turtle, they start hitting Amiya. Hard. But don't fret, once he rounds the corner he'll start targeting Manticore (i think) instead. Bnnuy is left with little health, but this isn't a problem as we'll soon see. Once the enemy caster targets whoever else it's safe to deploy our last caster. Go Haze!

Provided you didn't deploy her too early, she should survive the last few caster attacks just fine. So one of the key things to do here is to retreat Amiya as soon as the enemy caster is defeated. We'll need her later, but in the meantime, the team of Haze + Manticore + Cuora can make quick work of the flood of incoming fodder. And good lord is there a lot of fucking fodder.

It's scary, but don't panic. Take hold of my hands. Look into my eyes. Everything will be okay. I promise. The primary thing we have to watch out here is for the first red uhhh pirate (???) that comes down from the top lane. Haze's skill needs to be activated once he's in range or else he'll leak right on through to the exit. Aside from this, this section doesn't require much action. srsly tho they look like pirate hats and u cannot convince me otherwise If we retreated her quickly enough at the start, Amiya should be ready to get back in action just in time for Mudrock's pet rock to show up.

Look at that. TACTICAL RETREAT to achieve a particular setup later. Who would've thought? And FACING HER BACKWARDS. She covers a whooping six tiles that this mud glob slowly meanders through, and she's gonna need all of them to kill this thing in time. I am so fcukign smar t. From here it's pretty simple, but strenuous: fire Amiya's skill as soon as muddy gets in her lower range. Fire Haze's skill similarly. Pray. Let Cuora get hit once, then slap the stun box before the 2nd punch so Warfarin can heal her, let Cuora take the third before activating her defense skill. Then uhhh watch as she perishes under the next punch anyways cause idk? Warfarin was quick enough in earlier iterations of this strategy but apparently not the final one? Whatever, it's fine, the thing crumbles and we win!

Since Manticore can no longer stun in this run, we use her to simply assist by slowing down the fodder-- enough to hold off the full firepower of a caster for later use. And once we do re-establish our full DPS, our favorite scorpion gal slows down the big tanky thing for as long as possible, stalling enough to slay it just in time-- even with our sole defender having been pummeled into dust. What a fuckin' run. Soooo yEAH, I'm still figuring out the whole "strategy" thing, but it was real fun to attempt a little self-imposed challenge run that I wasn't even sure was doable in the first place. There were several points I was sure it wasn't, but I wound up figuring something out after fucking around and finding out. Could it be further improved and optimized? Probably. But three hours working out the thing and an equivalent amt of time just writing out this damn thing, im gonna go lay down instead anyway uhhh manticore best arlknight gril send tweet

[sjofn-lofnsdottr]

Third place of my dudes - and he's only third because I like playing Merc with Vezin, mind you - is Errol, my dumb sadcat.

Where Dusk looks high or distracted (you'll all see, eventually), where Mercuriel looks furious, Errol looks sad. He makes the most cartoonish sad faces, and I love it to death. And I don't know why, but his eyes just seem shinier, like he's on the verge of tears, a lot of the time.

This delights me, because I have been playing Errol in various forms since fuckin' 2014. I know him and what makes him tick extremely well. He's normally a depressed, cowardly human man in these things. When I first started playing FFXIV, I realized something that was going to make things more fun for me was yammering about the batshit experience I was having (I'd never played a FF before) to people. I did this via a written LP on a forum I frequent. They were all familiar with Errol due to the Let's Plays I'd written of the Sim version of him, and I let them pick what Errol should be in his FFXIV form. They picked miqo'te, and damned if they weren't right about this being the most Errol possible thing he could be in this universe.

Errol doesn't want trouble. Errol takes losses extremely hard, and he's very sensitive to other people's losses as well. Errol just wants to quietly live his life and avoid commitments like he owes them money. He hates conflict, and especially hates fighting. Errol is the worst possible choice for a giant crystal to pick as Her Champion.

He knows it, too. It weighs on him a lot, that everyone is depending on him and he hates everything about it, especially since he has no faith in himself, but he can't just ... not. So he dies inside, every day.

So it'll come as no surprise, then, that his MSQ class is DRK. Forever DRK, no matter how inept I feel playing one (well, DPS-wise, I'm still good at rolling defensive cooldowns and shit, obviously).

Seriously, his face is a treasure.

He is also married! The way he wound up married is sort of funny. Someone in my FC - I didn't know them particularly well at the time - wanted to get married for the glamour items. Some people volunteered but I got the vibe they'd be weird about it. I didn't know my friend very well back then, but I knew they deserved better than someone bad weird. I'm an old married woman who loves her husband very much, I am safe as hell for that sort of thing! I'm GOOD weird!

Her name is Y'sonjha. We decided she convinced Errol to pretend to be her husband so she wouldn't have to come up with excuses for why she wasn't going home to hook up with the latest nunh. Then whoops, they caught feelings, because lol romance novel tropes.

It's kind of funny, because the actual player behind her has wound up my best friend, go figure.

He struggles with the idea of not being good enough for her, but by and large he accepts she thinks he's good enough, and that's what's important.

I struggle with lighting them sometimes, I should really do more gposes of them for the practice.

Anyway, that's Errol, the Saddest Cat.

Please love him as much as I do.