#tank 2 healer 2 dps but still wanted to mix in MORE

[breezy-cheezy]

Trigun Stampede (+Milly) x FFXIV rambles

Vash:

Preferred job type: Healer (Sage)

Flex-

DPS: Machinist

Tank: I'd say Gunbreaker but I think he'd be drawn to the Paladin vibes ngl.

(the rest under the cut, this got LONG)

Viera, talks like a sprout/newbie even though he's been here forever. He's just so friendly!! Says hi!! And does a funny dance when queuing into any instance!! Always resurrects a downed party member, regardless of if they got there by being stupid or not. No matter how many times they die. He WILL raise them. He also maybe cries when someone falls off the stage (while everyone else laughs). Excellent healer, very attentive and knowledgeable about mechanics. Very encouraging!! Might get overwhelmed, even if very good at adjusting. Do Not Yell At Him He's doing his best.

Insanely good at DPS for some reason. He never wants to be the DPS. Heck if there wasn't a JOB depending on damage to heal, he'd do no damage at all. :/

Meryl:

Preferred job type: DPS (Monk. Punchy. Also Black Mage.)

Flex-

Healer: Sage (she's WAY too big on the DPS part. Opposite of Vash where if this didn't heal she'd do no healing....)

Tank: Warrior (so powerful, basically self sufficient)

Miqo'te Keeper of the Sun or Lalafel. Not sure, LOL. Always down to raid, especially if it's with friends!! Tends to jump the gun and trigger boss fights before tank is ready. She's lucky her tank (Milly) and Healers (Vash, sometimes Roberto) go with her anyway and don't let her die (like I would kJHSJDKLHF). Vash will start explaining mechanics and she'll just YEET into the room. Mechanics are for cars!!! Healers have to use Rescue on her alot....

She is, while blunt, still very kind to new people. She’s also always worried she isn't doing enough, so she throws herself into another fight before ready, MERYL NO-

Milly:

Preferred job type: Tank (Paladin, Gunbreaker)

Flex-

Healer: White Mage (simple, extremely effective)

DPS: Bard or Summoner (she loves playing the instruments! And the little friends from summoning :>)

Highlander Hyur. Always there if anyone wants to do anything, very easygoing and vibes with many different parties. She’s not....the fastest Tank (she’s not one to pull mobs from wall to wall) but she’s good at getting between the threat and her friends, and that’s what matters. As a tank she’s supposed to be leading but when Meryl’s in the group, she’s usually seen closely tailing her instead....also keeps putting the “Cover” spell (Take all damage intended for another party member as long as said member remains within 10 yalms.) on Vash even when he insists he can handle the damage.

PLEASE (politely) remind her to turn her tank stance on. She will forget.

She might get a little lost in admiring the scenery of the dungeons, or. Lost in general (as I have done hhhsdkj). Gently redirect her and you’ll be fine. Doesn’t quite know the mechanics but somehow does a great job anyway!

Roberto:

Preferred job type: Healer (Scholar. His weapon is a freaking newspaper.)

Flex-

Tank: Gunbreaker (please don’t make him tank, he is very slow, you’ll be there all day)

DPS: Black Mage (don’t have to move much, better on his back, big damage)

Highlander Hyur. Grumpy healer!! Very tired, but still very good at his job, always there when the going gets tough, no matter how much he complains. He’s given up on resurrecting downed party members when Vash is in the party because that kid is always on it. SOMEONE has to cover the healing when Vash inevitably runs his mana reserves dry doing this. Says he’s too old to raid, and yet has a surprisingly solid grasp on the mechanics. He does his research. Whether he takes the time to explain them though is another issue entirely....he will do callouts if needed.

Also has Rescue on a hotkey for Meryl, sometimes Vash. Will make fun of people for dumb deaths, might play limbo with health sometimes, but he’s reliable. He’s alert, and there are very few deaths on his watch. (Mainly because they don’t want his world-wary lecture, but shhhh)

Wolfwood:

Preferred job type: DPS (Reaper. because Undertaker. get it? haha. ha.)

Flex-

Tank: Dark Knight (giant unweildy weapon?? Angsty origins? Eyup.)

Healer: White Mage (He sucks at it, don’t make him heal. He just keeps using Glare and Holy.....)

Miqo’te, Keeper of the Moon. Used to be a tank main (and really enjoys co-tanking with Milly!!) but found Reaper worked for him really well. He’s the type to keep an eye on the healers, and is the first to run down wayward mobs that escape the tank’s notice. This is especially important with Vash, who gets so focused on healing he doesn’t realize he’s getting hurt. Plus, the faster they can kill stuff, the safer everyone is. Win-win.

Likes to pull crazy stunts, has accidentally Engressed off the stage. Several times. Sometimes gets the Rescue Leash (just not as often as Meryl). Constantly bickering with Meryl over everything, who did the most damage, annoyance for running ahead (when he’s doing the SAME THING), scuffed mechanics, etc. Thinks stupid deaths should be left alone but....

“No Needles they need to learn their lesson, leave them-”

-rez sounds-

“Nevermind.”

Knives:

Preferred Job Type: DPS (Ninja, Dancer. Both throw very sharp objects. I think Dancer would be nice for him since it deals with Dynamis, and expressing emotion in alternate ways, etc. Bard for the piano playing.)

Flex-

Tank: Dark Knight

Healer: Astrologian (He likes the strategy of it.)

Viera, very rarely talks in chat. Does not emote often, but when he does it’s....rather extreme. Vash does alot of talking for him really. (”Nai said thanks!” “......”) Just wants to get the duty over with. Honestly doesn’t show up often but when he does, it’s clear he’s done extensive research so he does it near perfectly every time (he got lost in a beginner dungeon ONE TIME....). If someone fails a mechanic and dies they deserve it. As healer, plays limbo with the tank HP (unless the tank is Vash).

Do Not get between Knives and his uptime. Just don’t. He knows what he’s doing (Milly as healer used Rescue on him ONCE before he was ready, and he’s never forgiven her lmao. Then there’s Wolfwood and Meryl who do it on PURPOSE...please don’t make them heal). 

He has entirely too many weapons. Millions, you could say. His glam chest is FULL of them.

[annealeph]

Mildly effective Collapsing Hotbars guide

Imagine if you will, someone with all jobs leveled including crafters, should they want to put all of their jobs on hotbars, that would easily take more than 3 whole hotbars and at all times, which means a very cluttered UI especially on lower resolutions, but what if we could make that into one hotbar with a button that opens a selection? First thing, a little preparation, you will need at least 2 hotbars that do not change when you change jobs, and I personally like to have 3, so hop onto Character Configuration > Hotbars > Shared and set a few up for use

These will be where we put: The button to show the jobs, and the jobs themselves, I have a third one for if I need a button inside a button or something of the sort

Now, we'll be making Macros to get this done, they can be found in the System menu, go ahead and get a few started for any and all categories you would want to switch to

At the moment, these are empty and will do absolutely nothing, we will fix that in a moment but before that we need to take a detour back into hotbars, specifically the non-shared jobs

Now, there's one concept that we are absolutely going to need for the next few parts, and that is non-shared hotbars. They all change with your job, and we will need to borrow a few (lot) of them for this to work, but if you had any to spare you wouldn't need to be doing all this, would you? No, we need to find non-shared hotbars we can use without changing any of our current jobs, and for that, we need to turn back to 2.0: A Realm Reborn ARR had its jobs evolve into other, more powerful jobs with the use of the Soul Crystals, and the part that is useful here, is that jobs with crystals and jobs without crystals have completely different hotbars! This is my Dragoon with its Job Stone

And this is what it looks like if I take it off, changing me back into Lancer

And since we're not planning on using Lancer without the DRG job stone any time soon (Or so I hope to god we don't), let's steal those and put all of our jobs in those! (I will be using Thaumaturge for my own bars and throught the process)

And just like that, we have everything prepared to make those hotbars!

Well, once we have gone over Macro commands, there are a few you'll have to understand in order to do this, these are: "/Hotbar Display X on/off" - Either hides or shows the X hotbar, useful for cleaning up when you don't need to change jobs, for example "/Hotbar Copy JobA X JobB Y" - A bit more complex, this command will copy the hotbar X from JobA and paste everything on it to the hotbar Y from JobB, so say I want to put everything I have on the THM bar 1 into the Shared bar 9, I just need to type "/hotbar copy THM 1 Share 9" and voila

Now, we can get to working on our Macros to hide, display and select the bars showing up, we will use the "/Hotbar Display" to ensure we can see hotbar 9, and the "/hotbar copy" to ensure that hotbar 9 is showing the correct category for each Macro, since I have them separated into DPS / Tanks / Healers / Crafters, my Macros will be copying THM's hotbars 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 into our Shared 9 respectively, which will look something like this

Now just toss these into Hotbar 10 (Along with another "/hotbar display 9 off" button if you'd like to hide stuff after you're done) and boom, you have the basics of it down

Maybe you're already having a few ideas on how to expand this and good on you for it, with just this info you can extrapolate and imagine a ton of ways of adding into things... let's throw one more into the mix, shall we?

So, we know how to copy hotbars around now, great, lovely, hotbar 10 is still static and it's ugly and I hate it, let's change that, and I'll be borrowing Conjurer's (CNJ) hotbars for this

As you can see, I added a few more categories and nuked the "hide" button, that's because we're going to be putting it on top of whichever category is active at the moment. So let's use "/hotbar copy" in chat to paste the current category setup on CNJ's hotbars, doing it for as many categories we have + 1, if you have more categories than bars for that job, just steal from somewhere else! (I will be needing one more, so Arcanist will be the one holding the current hotbar)

Now, the annoying part, each one of CNJ's hotbars will become an "activated version", with the hide button taking the place of the current active category, so drag a hide button over one of the buttons of each hotbar except the +1 you made earlier. You likely won't have all hotbars visible, so feel free to "/hotbar copy" a modified share 10 into the CNJ hotbars

And lastly, the annoying part, you are going to put in all of the category macros a little line saying "/hotbar copy cnj x share 10", with share being the hotbar where the hide button covers that category, and in the hide button, you'll instead put the hotbar that holds the first bar you made, the +1 you (hopefully) didn't change Now, just test all your macros and then realize that half of them aren't working oh god why are they not working I'm gonna have to check the hotbars again I fucking hate this game if all is good, congratulations! Now go off and find even fancier ways to break these hotbars (Tip: You can use "/micon X" to change the icon of the macro into whichever skill or item you substitute on X, put it in quotation marks if it has a space in it)

[fgodestinyawakenings]

Which 4 star would you recommend? 🤔

Sorry for the late reply since I’m currently studying a part-time course on the weekday ^^;

I’d say it’s always boil down to what you really need the most in your party? A particular class like Saber, Caster, Extra Classes? Or more of, DPS, Tank and Healer? If you’re going for husbando/waifu, again, all the following above are irrelevant and just grind for QP. Because raising a waifu/husbando isn’t cheap

I’ll put the rest under the cut for Servants (sort by classes), numbering are based on what I used most or feels good which is debatable before anyone starts murdering me. And also some I have yet the chance to try because they are not home for me after rolling/i didn’t pick them at all

Sabers:

ST NP:

Lancelot

Yagyu Munemori & Rama

Diarmuid Saber

Papalot will always be my number one no matter who says, and been saving my ass in both FGO JP and NA. His own skill alone is summary of enjoying hearing him crit his enemies to death. With support like Tamamo and Castoria, he makes the pain twice as fun :D

Unfortunately for all his attacks, he’s your glass canon. So you don’t have either of the two support or just any support in general, he’s going to die ASAP. Munemori’s 2nd and 3rd skill are a headache with them being mixed together, especially that Evade + increase attack

Munemori is the one I feel should actually be on par very closest to Lancelot with both sharing the same NP type. In terms of surviving longer, this old swordsman is your choice. But in terms of consistent attack, it’s Lancelot.

Oh my sweet Rama, while I’m sorry DW is a dick in putting your wife in Arcade (BECAUSE FUCK YOU DW, THAT’S WHY). You’re worth to grind and have on par with Munemori. So far in LB whether or not having any Demon enemies, his damage especially on crit is as good as Lancelot. But unortunately, this skill is a one-time effect, so need to know when to make use of that burst to kill your Boss. Lastly, he’s got the Guts in terms of own survival kit.

As much as a husbando you are my dear Diarmuid... You’re also fucking expensive in terms of grinding 180 stakes to raise you. NP damage is good which is unfortunately held back that your defense buff removal comes AFTER dealing damage to your enemy. He’s more in need of a good support like Skadi to put him to his fullest potential (or heck hell you might as well take Caesar since he does better than him being in the same NP quick category)

AOE NP:

Artoria Alter

Siegfried

Suzuka & Nero

Gawain

Artoria Alter being first aside story-locked, her damage output for me is the highest among all I have used just using her skills alone. But may or not need strengthening to upgrade Intuition, have her more crit-based attack? (dude, everyone getting their intuition replaced.)

Siegfried ranked higher to me because he’s still hits hard enough in my opinion to replace AOE saber that I don’t have such as Artoria Alter in JP. However, he’s still easily replaceable once you got better AOE Sabers. And, you’ll still want him in some event and main story mobs where dragon-type enemies show up.

Compared the two above after using Suzuka, she’s definitely ranked third with lower NP damage. Charm, well, may or not work but LB debuff immunity is saying otherwise for all male servants. But her skill of generating her own stars help her in criting and gaining NP slightly more faster.

For Nero’s case, she’s more on survivalist skill thanks to her 3 times Guts skills. Arts AOE NP Saber are limited until you get budget Jason next year which, yeah, Jason works better than her if you want NP damage. Her attack boost is based on RNG probably either want to love or have hate sex with you to get that buff out. Again, if you want more of surviving long duration fights in LB thanks to break bars, she’s your good choice.

While Gawain is story-locked issue too, he’s heavily reliant on his skills. Which those skills are also can be highly reliant on field to be Sunny before strengthening. But charging of NP will take a long while with his current deck set, so you’ll need a better support or AOE Saber to do the work

Support:

Chevalier D’eon

If you haven’t grinded Georgios or Leonidas, they are your best replacement for tank support. The two I mentioned will do a far more better job than D’eon, aside wanting their NP to debuff.... Which unfortunately also not that useful in current LB difficulty, too many servant bosses are putting up debuff immunity.

Archer:

ST NP

Chiron

Tomoe Gozen

Emiya Alter

Tristan

Chiron-sensei as per his lore is more of a support due to his skills revolving mainly in supporting your party. Castoria and Tamamo may or not fix with his damage output but you definitely want that remove defensive buff which comes BEFORE dealing damage at your Boss enemy.

Tomoe’s burn debuff makes her one of Arjuna Alter’s best friend if you’re aiming for him in the future. But aside from that, her skills are quite generic of attack + np damage buff, crit gather and drop (lacking of crit dmg to make her good on her own right) and guts to survive. However she isn’t story-locked, so if you can wait for her to spook...

Emiya Alter: I haven’t tried what’s the changes aside increased in damage output with Castoria. But he’s more of a staller in removing enemy gauge by 1 and if you have those annoying enemies with tons of defense buff, he’s your Servant against to fire a hole in them. Only issue his normal version Evade and star drop rate is gone and replace with a defense buff, so may or not need support to keep him alive

For Tristan I didn’t put him high because if you have David, he’ll do a more slightly better job than him? Reliant on Skadi if you have her to boost his damage for NP, which... If you’re doing NP charge from his skill, do remember he has that unfortunate debuff of NP seal that blocks him from using NP during or not the same turn. Though if you’re getting him to complete your Knights of Round Table Servants collection urgently and not caring about gameplay, go ahead :D

AOE NP:

Mama Emiya

Atalante

Now that’s my mom who raised me :D But anyway, Emiya’s investment especially 2 years later with that one last NP strengthening, he’s a nightmare of Arts AOE Archer once Castoria joins into the party. Right now before strengthening, he still crits hard in single attacks with his own star generation + also having evasion to survive.

Without Skadi especially, Atalante both damage output of normal and NP is very weak. Her NP more or less served as a function to gain a one-time burst of 60+ stars. But if you have Skadi and your friend support does, then get her for one of your Quick Archer Servant farming if you don’t have her.

Lancer:

ST NP:

Li Shuwen

Vlad III EXTRA

Medusa Lancer

Li Shuwen will be one of decent choice Arts Crit Lancer before Kagetora kicks in next year. A good burst of his NP helps to kill your enemy Boss ignoring that he also have a instant death NP. Though said burst is relying on both 1st and 3rd skill which... they should have just kept either one (preferably ignore invincibility) and pointless for them to stack. 2nd skill however is ok with your evasion to survive and increase star gather rate.

Vlad III EXTRA’s NP... Pretty much gonna see more Evil Servant in the future so he’s good to keep around. And that ignore invincibility is good until DW being a dick and put Archer Servant with Solemn Defence in the future LB. Despite lacking skills to survive, he has his own HP recovery that also buffs his defense and attack. And a decent taunt if you haven’t got Leonidas ready, for 1 turn. Though damage output you’ll need support like Merlin to increase.

Maybe just me without Skadi, Medusa Lancer ranked low due to her damage output. But having Skadi will increase her rank with 1 skill keep her alive (invincibility + guts), 1 skill to stall (charm and provided it’s male servant), and 1 last skill for one-time burst in attack.

AOE NP:

Parvati & Artoria Alter Lancer

Valkyire

Fionn

Elizabeth Bathory

Nezha

Artoria Alter Lancer being another Servant who like her Saber, does well in her AOE NP damage. And a good debuff of NP seal to stall + def buff ignore damage. However trying to gain NP for her is problematic if you don’t have support like Merlin to do so.

Parvati will be one of the many Servants recommended to have if you’re going for Double Skadi farming. She’s got good NP refund and good support to other Servants. But make sure your Skadi or support having a star generator CE to get her loop going.

Like Parvati, you’ll need Valkyire if you already got the former for double Skadi farming. She’s more on a defensive in surviving if not use for farming, and definitely Skadi regardless to improve her damage performance. Beside that, her NP is applied with good buff such as ignore evasion and instant death for demonic enemies (excluding them working on enemy Servants)

If you’re aiming for Castoria next two years, Fionn is one of the Servants to invest for farming. And latest strengthening has upgrade to give more of NP charge to himself and your party. His own NP buff to mental debuff immunity is good to prevent him from being stun like charm, etc. However if you’re in need of Rare Prism and any other reason or so, feel free to burn him.

Elizabeth doesn’t rank high since she’s more support and debuff oriented Servant than damage. Support being attack that gives additional boost to female servants and debuff lower defense and curse. Unless you’re urgent to complete your Eli-chan collection, she’s not in a hurry to get and can spook anytime.

While Nezha has a good skill kit of own Quick + Buster buff, increase star weight and remove debuff, and guts + NP charge.... Most of her skills are best used if they are at max level. And even at max level, her low NP damage isn’t that a viable choice with better AOE NP Servants above be it farming or attack.

Rider:

ST NP:

None of the above

This is the only rare case I really don’t recommend getting, especially mary and anne. The two are definitely meant to be glass canon which unlike Hijikata, there’s no guts for them to survive if you want to utilize their NP at its fullest. Welfare and 3 star like Ushiwakamaru and Ryouma, Mandricardo in the future does a better job than her.

AOE NP:

Astolfo

Martha

Marie

In terms of damage output among the 3 Riders, Astolfo hits hardest and also perfectly compatible with double Skadi farming. Has 2 rank up on strengthening their NP and 3rd skill to improve farming performance. However outside farming, they definitely still need Skadi to keep that performance.

Martha is one of the more recommended Servants when it’s come to Challenge Quest. Mainly her instant team debuff removal and enemy buff removal targetable, and additional healing. Damage output may be easily fix with Merlin and Waver to deal more. But, as of now her status whether being useful is debatable as most LB debuff on your team are permanent thus rendering her to rank lower.

Despite sharing the same NP type, Marie ranks lower using more of a support for herself and her allies on her damage. Her NP buffs while it’s provide good support, it can easily be replaceable with either Jeanne, Merlin, Waver, etc. But if you’re not concern for her and already got Astolfo, you can still get her to invest on Quick farming. Or raise Medusa who could do about the same like Astolfo...

Caster

ST NP

Queen Sheba

Circe

Sheba while story locked, she fits well in both support and own DPS of herself for CQ and in LB. NP damage may be concern but having Tamamo and Castoria will makes up for it, especially in surviving for long fights. Her excellent NP gain with good crit buff helps her to refund NP easily for spam.

Circe while provide good support (debuff removal and star gather) and debuff (poisoning AOE), she ranked lower from a few things. One being very bad NP gain (if your NP charge skill on CD), low NP damage which can be compensated with good support, and debatable stun NP effect. If you already have Xuangzang or Caster Shuten, you’re better off with them. 

AOE NP:

Nitocris

Caster Gilgamesh

Nursery Rhyme

Helena

Thomas Edison

Nitocris ranking top for her being the best farming Servant to have, and remained that spot with now Castoria boosting her damage. NP Charge skill at full 100% when needed, increase death chance (can be RNG and not effective with some enemies) and Guts + Buff removal making her a Servant recommended to have. And of course being the best.... You’re gonna need to offer her 180 bones of your dead enemies to upgrade her skills to the max, making her one hell of an expensive material grinding Servant to have.

Caster Gilgamesh with wisdom now considered one of the recommended Arts Support Caster if you don’t have Tamamo or Castoria. While damage can be lacking, his NP debuff of lowering defense helps your other Arts DPS to crit to death thanks to his skillset. Despite that, he still additional support and composition which preferably best work when the team deck in total has higher percentage of Arts cards.

When paired with the right team, Nursery can be one of the good damage dealing and staller for AOE Caster. The latter however is RNG dependant which praying it works in your favor. She also have good NP refund and self-charging with her skill making her easily spamming her NP. But she’ll need good support to boost her damage and star generation to utilize her.

If you still haven’t gotten Waver and willing to wait for that SSR ticket in the future, she’s your alternative with all cards type buff, 20% NP gauge charge and own crit star generator. NP deals good damage, which further improve with either Tamamo and/or Castoria. However, many may turn away of choosing her because of notorious long skill cooldown even at max level. Also if friend support already got your main 4 or now 5 support of Caster, you’re better off with other Servants unless you want her for farming.

Thomas gonna need his strengthening to increase his rank here, mainly that 1st skill to reduce skill cooldown which is targetable. While his NP and normal damage is weak, he makes up by being the best stalling support (provided no debuff immunity), having skill seal, NP seal to stall enemy Servant. 3rd skill of his provide a good buff to your main DPS to overcharge their NP level. And, also being a story-locked servant some may consider getting him if you can accept the long cool down (2nd skill at 10 turns CD on max level) on his skill.

Support

Medea Lily

If you’re wondering who is the White Mage/Healer in this game, that would be Medea Lily. Pure healing + Debuff removal and now a targetable buff removal resist? That’ll be her where many sought her in Challenge Quest. But her skillset is overshadowed easily by your Top 5 Caster (Merlin, Waver, Skadi, Tamamo & Castoria) who can do those said job if not better than her.

Assassin:

ST NP:

Yan Qing & Emiya Assassin

Wu Zetian

Carmilla

Chiyome

Yan Qing while I put him first, he can easily replaceable with Jack who does better star generation. Or pair them to generate even more stars while you watch them burn your potato phone. His recent skill upgrade increase his damage making him more usable in fights, but will still need Skadi to invest him well.

Emiya Assassin, with good NP damage buff like Ignore Defense + Invincibility and NP drain, own Arts buff, and targetable taunt, he’s one of the recommended Servants for Arts DPS with Castoria when she’s out. And especially needing Castoria because of his horrible Arts card NP generation... If you got Shiki who’s doing better along with Hundred face Hassan, you’ll want them for damage and own survival kit.

Wu Zetian would be in line with Kiritsugu if not better for damage, but is heavily reliant on her Imperial Privliege RNG to work with her. Skadi support and buff removal NP makes her one of the recommended Assassin Quick NP DPS to pick if you’re lacking..

Carmilla is low rank while despite having good NP gain, charge and own healing with a staller..... You’re better off having other Servants like Wu Zetian. Or even Jack who does more better than her on the Anti-female damage.

Chiyome definitely her low damage despite NP spam and charge, make her least wanted for SR ticket. Even NP seal can be ineffective with those having debuff immunity, which many other Assassins are doing their job including the 3 stars one.

AOE NP:

Katou Danzo

While waiting for Gray next year, Danzo is your currently only 4* Assassin with more on the support side. Having both targetable evasion and invincibility, she can keep either DPS or support Caster against enemy on their attacks and NP. AOE damage may not be boost a bit with the help from said support caster, unless your enemies are demon to work against.

Support:

Stheno

Aside additional Rare Prism to exchange, Stheno acts more of a support if you want to challenge yourself with a Divine Servant theme in CQ, etc. She along with Gorgon Sister are known for their notorious Charm Lock in CQ, and NP now easily spammable to remove buffs on enemy. Stheno together with Euryale is why Gawain is having nightmare every night ever since his humiliating defeat in Camelot. But in terms of damage output, you definitely want alternative Servant than her. And support wise, you’re also better off with others if you’re not that into Divine team routine.

Berserker:

ST NP:

Heracles

Penthesila

Beowulf

Atalante Alter

Ibaraki

Aside being bias because that’s my boy I raised and grailed him, Heracles will be your number 1 must have Servant to have for all Master. One of the best surviving Servant for long fights, may need a little boost from support Caster. His investment to get Bond 10 will be a long while but will definitely be worth it once achieved. Now, with the latest strengthening his Guts Skill and own CE makes him the monster on why Lancer ga Shin Da and Emiya in Saber Route one of a nightmare to fight with.

Penthesila while ranked second despite lacking of Greek Males (doesn’t include Achilles avoiding her), she provide a good Buster support for all team, own NP charge and debuff immunity for herself that brings out a high NP damage. However, without Merlin... She’ll die before finding and killing Achilles.

I swear to god DW has a grudge against you, Beowulf. But hey, after his strengthening next year, good bye intuition, hello Inspired Hero that increased crit damage and gather rate! If you’re looking for a more general damage unlike Penth, he’s your boy. High NP damage and Guts to keep him in the game longer, but requires support to boost NP gain and normal damage.

Like many other Quick Servants, Atalante Alter is Skadi compatible. A ST NP with staller and curse debuff, her own crit generation, gather and damage allow her to produce good NP damage. Yet like all Berserker she falls harder in terms of glass canon like lacking of survival skills. Her critical dmg is hard to maintain with her 1st skill merely providing her a one time burst.

Probably the one Servant who fits truly as a glass canon is Ibaraki, NP damage can be comparable with Heracles, Penth and Beowulf. Removing own debuff and enemy buff is a good thing, but defense buff alone may not save her from enemy Servants who hits the poor banana like a truck. NP gain may also need boost from support due to her triple BBB in her deck.

AOE NP:

Lancelot Berserker

Frankenstein

Tamamo Cat

The most recommended yet also possibly need additional whaling is Lancelot Berserker. The moment Skadi appears, he’s on the top list of having in party to do farming. Own NP create large amount of sum and massive crit boost helps to refund NP. But, without Skadi and needing NP2 at least, he’ll be ranked lower.

Frankenstein will be your alternative to berserker Lancelot if you already have him. But like Berserker Lancelot, you’ll need Skadi to do the looping. Her own NP Damage boost and increase gain helps for the loop, but unfortunately you’ll need Servant with debuff removal to remove her stun after using her NP. Aside farming....You’re gonna want other Servant to save her from getting killed within few turns.

Tama Cat aside being one of Chaldea main cook, she’s more utilized for farming after abusing poor Waver and Caster support. And poor Waver everyone will have to do their best to protect Tama Cat who took a few turns of napping (stun) after using her NP. Beside that, she does provide an RNG of NP drain and own defense and attack boost. However other than farming, you’re better off with other AOE Servants for survival.

Avenger:

Situational between Gorgon or Hessian Lobo

Because a Ruler enemy is very rare to find aside coming LB3 without mention spoilers on who, it’s more or less situational. Do you want for the sake of it? Want to do your own CQ rules to experiment against? If so, AOE or ST NP?

AOE being Gorgon where she got a a decent AOE NP Damage with a stun but definitely need support to survive (guts may not be sufficient) and star generation. She’s also story-locked which if you want to get her before Babylonia, might as well do so.

Hessian Lobo is compatible with Skadi and alternative if you don’t Avengers like Jeanne Alter. Good crit gather for 3 turns with Skadi or any other Servants provide star generation. NP damage has own boost of ignore evasion and additional crit damage, excluding your instant death. While having buff removal is one and atk decrease, your death resist is still ineffective on enemy Servants boss.

[tigerkirby215]

My worries for Tasha's Subclasses

(Artwork by Wizards of the Coast)

It seems pretty much confirmed that every Unearthed Arcana that’s still considered “relevant” (IE the ones that are a year old and haven’t been officially deconfirmed by WoTC) (IE IE the ones on D&D Beyond) is going to be coming to Tasha’s Cauldron. The only thing that has been confirmed otherwise is that the Psionic Talent Die is going to be changed, which is why I’m not going to comment on any of the psionics subclasses.

However I do have some worries about the subclasses that received a poorer reception. So I guess as a way to document my thoughts, or because I don’t want this account to just be D&D builds I want to give my thoughts and worries on all the current Unearthed Arcana subclasses.

ARTIFICER

The only Artificer we’ll be getting is the Armorer, but we’re also getting a full reprint of the Artificer to “de-Eberron” the class. We’re also confirmed to have new Infusions which makes me extremely hopeful. (I hope they’re not just the infusions from the Artificer UA.)

Regardless I may as well talk about the infusions as well as the Armorer subclass:

ARMORER

The only problem I really have with the subclass is, ironically enough, right on the tin of the subclass. Giving Artificer heavy armor proficiency makes an already extremely tanky class even tankier. I think being able to wear Heavy Armor while dumping Strength is a little much, especially since the weapons also use your Intelligence modifier. It just reeks of min-maxing, and while thankfully Intelligence isn’t as broken as Charisma for the sake of multiclassing shenanigans (no Paladins with a 1 level Hexblade dip) I still think Artificer is going to be extremely strong for Intelligence subclasses like Eldritch Knight, Rune Knight, and ironically enough Arcane Trickster.

Yeah that’s another big problem with the class: the Infiltrator armor. Rogues in Heavy Armor without stealth disadvantage? My favorite. It’s a cool visual but again I don’t want to deal with a 20 AC Rogue. Everything else with the subclass is honestly fine but my problems start and end with Heavy Armor that doesn’t require Strength.

INFUSIONS

Armor of Magical Strength - Similar problems that I have with Armorer subclass, but it’s conceptually fine since it’s limited by level and charges.

Armor of Tools - It sucks but it’s fine.

Helm of Awareness - I honestly think “Alert on a stick” is fine. Infusion slot and Attunement slot for a Feat is fair.

Mind Sharpener - Just… no. Should not be printed. You shouldn’t be able to fail concentration twice.

Spell-Refueling Ring - Just let us build a Spell Storing Ring (IE the magic item.) And not at level 6. Level 10 maybe; level 14 most likely.

BARBARIAN

PATH OF THE BEAST

Thank god for alphabetical order. I honestly think Path of the Beast is fine and I could see the subclass printed without any changes. It’s a little underwhelming but conceptually fine, and it fulfills a good fantasy. I even think the healing ability of the Bite is fine; Battlerager could get Temp HP every turn and that was fine. The ability to heal is balanced out by the weaknesses of the class when compared to the likes of Totem Barbarian.

PATH OF THE WILD SOUL

Ooooh boy now here’s where my problems lie. This entire subclass is bonkers and should not be printed.

WILD SURGE

Oh cool a massive damage nuke plus temp HP for a tank class.

Oh cool unlimited teleportation for a melee class.

Arguably the worst one but still a massive damage nuke for free.

Oh cool more AC and damage reflection for a tank.

Okay the actual worst one and arguably the only “bad” one.

Oh cool making it harder to hit a tank.

Oh cool dual wielding with a Greataxe, and giving a melee character ranged options.

Oh cool an Iron Man laser at the start of a fight that bursts enemies and sets them up for you to attack them.

This ability should have more negative options. The entire point of Wild Magic is to have a chance to screw you over or a chance to majorly help. The class also doesn’t need three different damage nukes at the start of rage. (Equaling a 3/8 chance to just nuke the enemy.)

MAGIC RESERVES

The single dumbest ability ever printed on a class in 5e. I honestly see no way to make this balanced, even if it was limited to once per long rest. Also how the hell is this balanced for 6th level? This should be the 10th level ability at least.

ARCANE REBUKE

Free damage as a reaction. This ability is simultaneously super underwhelming and way too powerful.

CHAOTIC FURY

Makes your stupidly OP level 3 ability even more “reliable.” And unlike WM Sorcerers you have a 2/8 chance to get something good; not a 2/50 chance.

BARD

I honestly have no problems with the College of Creation beyond the level 3 Bardic Inspiration feature, which is underwhelming.

I doubt College of Spirits is going to come out. It’s way too early for that subclass since it hasn’t been tested enough.

CLERIC

TWILIGHT DOMAIN

Honestly I remember thinking this subclass was really overpowered but looking it over again… It’s fine? Other than the fact that the level 17 ability is poopy it’s fine.

UNITY DOMAIN

Also got no major problems with this subclass. A bit on the strong end but no worse than some of the existing Clerics.

DRUID

They’re both great and I have no complaints.

FIGHTER

Rune Knight is a very mixed bag for me. On one hand I love the growth ability and I think it makes Rune Knight a great universal damage class while also having a great mental fantasy to it.

On the other hand this class is almost entirely based on the runes? And what I find especially confusing is that the runes seem way more powerful than “doing an extra d6 of damage.” Yet Giant’s Might is limited to long rests and the runes come back on a short rest?

I’d personally like to see Giant’s Might have only one or at most 2 charges, but have the ability come back on a short rest. But to compensate I think the runes should be limited by long rests, since they’re so powerful as is. This would also make the ability to unlock more runes as you level up more useful, as it would give you more options throughout the day instead of being overloaded with actions that aren’t fighting as a fighter.

Oh and let’s talk about those runes, hm?

Hill - So Barbarian’s Rage is limited by long rests, but the rune that literally recreates Rage’s damage absorption is short rest reliant? Kk.

Fire - Cool worse Hold Person that they can save against every turn. Arguably the weakest rune, though probably the coolest mental image. I’d actually be okay with this one remaining short rest reliant.

Frost - I honestly don’t think getting +1 to Strength-based stuff is that OP. The dumb thing is that this gives you advantage on skill checks with two skills passively. Animal Handling and Intimidation aren’t amazing but they aren’t useless either.

Cloud - Again two skills you get Advantage on, but Slight of Hand and Deception are more situational. Redirecting an attack is also situational; can be strong but you need a target to redirect it to among other things. Also one of the more balanced runes.

Stone - By far the best passive boost combined with by far the worst active ability, but that isn’t to say that a 1 minute pseudo-banish is useless.

Storm - Alert on a stick? Advantage on a skill you’re probably going to be making a lot of skill checks for (as an Intelligence character)? TEN CHARGES OF THE LUCKY FEAT? Excluding the zillion and one other synergies with this rune (hey do you want your Rogue to sneak attack completely for free) being able to screw with hit percentages is a quick way to break encounters in 5e.

IMO the Fire, Frost, and Cloud runes are fine. The Stone rune is a bit too strong passively but I think it would be balanced if it gave advantage to something other than Insight. Hill and Storm are way too strong though: Hill should be limited to Long Rests and Storm should be outright reworked.

Other than that Defensive Runes is OP but it’s probably going to be limited to a number of times equal to your Intelligence mod (akin to Artificer.)

MONK

Woo boy here we go.

WAY OF MERCY

The big problem with this subclass is that it’s extremely weak early but insanely strong late. A melee range Healing Word (d4 + WIS) is insanely underwhelming but 20 charges of Cure Wounds that you can use while also attacking 3 times is ridiculous.

Oh and you know what’s especially ridiculous? Doing 4d10 damage to an enemy that’s incapacitated or poisoned! Hands of Harm is conceptually meh but with the triple damage to incapacitated enemies this suddenly lets a Monk pump out 16d10 damage for 5 Ki points (which they get back on a Short Rest!) To put this into perspective Psychic Scream does 14d6 damage - less die rolled and a smaller die size! Yeah yeah “but Psychic Scream is AoE and stuns!” doesn’t stop the fact that this subclass is doing a 9th level spell’s worth of damage.

Noxus Aura is conceptually stupid and makes a class that’s already hard to kill with ranged attacks near-impossible to kill with ranged attacks. Healing Technique lets you cast a second level spell along with your first level spell every turn but I suppose it’s situational. And Hand of Mercy? Oh okay 20 days of being unable to move and being damage immune.

This subclass is a complete mess and while I’m fine with a healer Monk it shouldn’t also double as one of the strongest DPS classes in the game. “It uses a lot of Ki points” yes but Ki points come back on a short rest. You shouldn’t have four 9th level spells per short rest.

WAY OF THE ASTRAL SELF

Honestly I think this subclass is fine with the exception of how many attacks it gets, which completely screws with action economy, average hit percentages, and just general DPS. No class should be able to outright ignore one of its earlier features because a new feature it gets is just objectively better, and Astral Self gets to ignore Flurry of Blows because it has it 24/7. I get that they wanted to recreate the JoJo Stand Rush but Monks already attack 4 times, which is more than enough.

PALADIN

Oath of the Watchers is honestly fine if a little weak. My only problem with the subclass is that it has a very Ranger-esque problem of being way too good at what it’s meant to do. (IE fight Extraplaner Threats.)

“But you said Wild Soul doing damage with its reaction was OP!” The difference is that Oath of the Watchers has limited range and is limited to spells, so unlike Wild Soul you can’t do free damage to the giant who just tried to smash you with his club.

RANGER

I’ve given my complaints about Fey Wanderer before. Basically I think the subclass is way too weak, but if they buff it up I think it would be fine. As for Swarmkeeper it’s conceptually weird but in terms of balance it’s fine.

ROGUE

I remember really disliking the Phantom Rogue but looking at it again… it’s fine? I still think the major problem with the subclass is its flavor, and while you can reflavor it decently well (I still really like the concept of a Transdimensional Trickster, playing as a foil to the Horizon Walker Ranger) I think the core concept is far too edgy for most people.

I’ve actually personally played a low level Phantom Rogue for a one shot and I think Wails from the Grave are fine if a little weak overall. I think Ghost Walk is a little OP (as you can give enemies essentially permanent disadvantage to hit you every fight, along with the ability to ignore terrain) but everything else is honestly fair.

SORCERER

I still don’t like Clockwork Soul. I think XP to Level 3 sums it up best (6:33):

Basically the early level abilities are fine but at late level you get:

An insanely high guarantee to hit your attacks (not everything at level 14 is going to have 20 AC, but if the enemy you’re fighting has 20 AC or lower you have a 100% guarantee to hit them) + a massive defensive boost (on top of your already massive defensive capabilities.)

A 9TH LEVEL HEAL SPELL FOR 7 SORCERY POINTS???

“But it’s a high level ability!” Yeah high level abilities shouldn’t be completely ass-blast bonkers. The high levels exist to be played and you can’t defend broken high level abilities with “well you won’t get to high level anyways.”

WARLOCK

My sweet darling baby Warlock. Probably doesn’t come as a surprise to people that I think both the Warlock subclasses are great, and it also probably doesn’t come as a surprise that I have personally played both of them!

Undead probably isn’t going to get in (good because I really don’t like that subclass) so let’s talk about the others:

GENIE

Currently playing a mid tier (level 8) full Genie Warlock in a campaign. First of all I want to say that I love the versatility built into this class with the four different sub-subclasses you can pick.

Anyways this subclass ironically feels like the “Warlock+” class akin to Champion Fighter (Fighter+), Open Hand Monk (Monk+), and Eloquence Bard. (Bard+) At level 3 you get a safe place to short rest (Bottled Respite) and a mini Agonizing Blast (Genie’s Wrath.) Level 6 you get three charges of non-concentration flight which is huge for a class that doesn’t get a lot of spells. Level 10 you can now get a safe short rest for your whole party. And level 14 gives you another spell slot once ever 1d4 days.

I think the roleplay opportunity with this subclass is great given the versatility between sub-subclasses and the ability to essentially carry a house with you. My only major problem with the Genie Warlock is that I find it hard to create a character who isn’t just Aladdin. I found it a lot easier to play this subclass when I started thinking of the patron as just an elemental instead of a genie specifically, but I hope Tasha’s Cauldron will come with some lore inspiration for people who want to play the Genie Warlock, because I think the subclass is very fun and well designed!

Still a little salty that my Yuumi build is outdated because of the rework to Genie, but who knows I might make a Unity Domain Yuumi when Tasha’s Cauldron comes out.

LURKER IN THE DEEP

I took a 6 level dip in this subclass for a Bardlock awhile ago. I will say I love this subclass but again ironically my only major complaint with the subclass is that it focuses too much on its theme. I would’ve much rather preferred a general “summoner” Warlock, but I acknowledge that Warlock subclasses don’t really work like that. So a Kraken Patron is honestly fine for this concept, and I can tolerate all the strange fish-related abilities while reflavoring the subclass.

WIZARD

I’m not a big fan of the Order of the Scribes, since I personally feel that it doesn’t really fulfill the “living spellbook” theme.

I have a few small complaints about the class’ features: I don’t like that the subclass is able to replace the damage type of a spell completely liberally. (Sorcerers have to use Sorcery Points and Metamagic to do that?) I also think the level 14 ability is rather underwhelming, but that can be fixed.

Other than that I think the subclass is conceptually fine? But I still feel like there’s more you can do with the theme.

TL;DR

I’m very worried about the following classes:

Mind Sharpener Artificer Infusion (You shouldn’t be able to lose concentration twice.)

Wild Soul Barbarian (Every single ability that this subclass gets is overpowered and I’m really worried about this Wild Magic Spellslot Battery Clown Fiesta subclass.)

Way of Mercy Monk (Comedically overpowered with the highest DPS of any Monk subclass along with massive healing output and a TWENTY DAY LONG PARALYSIS?!)

Clockwork Soul Sorcerer (Late game abilities are OP.)

I am mildly worried about the following classes:

Armorer Artificer (Having such liberal access to Heavy Armor is a bit too strong imo.)

Rune Knight Fighter (I think some of the runes need a major rework, and I’d like more of a focus to be put on the Giant’s Might ability.)

Way of the Astral Self Monk (Too many attacks.)

Oath of the Watchers Paladin (It’s a little too good at fighting extraplanar threats.)

I am disappointed with the following classes:

Fey Wanderer Ranger (I think the abilities are really weak compared to existing Rangers, and considering we’re talking about Ranger that’s saying a lot.)

Order of the Scribes Wizard (I think there’s more you can do with the concept.)

And everything else is fine.

[netherstray]

MMORPGs I’ve played (that I would recommend trying)

Riders of Icarus (6/10) Clunky mechanics in a beautiful world with an incredibly fun and interesting collection system for mounts. Daily rewards are valuable, but getting them means playing with bad controls and laggy gameplay. The interface is garbage, the quality control on the general experience is lackluster, but damn if I don’t keep coming back to this pretty trash fire. 

Guild Wars 2 (4/10) The world is vast and there’s a lot to do. Too much to do. You will be ambushed by things to do. If you do not want things to do, things will be thrown at you. Mechanics change constantly with weapons, but classes do not. Cities are huge and empty, but the players seem nice. Quests are cute, but too much emphasis is placed on the “living world” aspect of the game without any real clarity on what the world is about more broadly.

Final Fantasy XIV (8/10) Finally, an MMORPG I really, really enjoy. Not just in its mechanics and stuff to do, but in its quality of quests and narrative. Very surprising, considering it’s the first Final Fantasy game I’ve actually liked. Despite the typical “chosen one” narrative, the story feels organic and inclusive regardless of the character you make. Characters are not locked to a single class and can train to be every class in the game. Cutscenes are fantastic and worth watching. Damned shame about that mandatory main quest in order to do anything, but with one easy payment of $11 in addition to your subscription, you too can enjoy having alts.

The Elder Scrolls Online (7/10) An MMORPG that aims for MMO teamwork mixed with action game mechanics. No QTEs, but the staples of MMORPGs--tanks, healers, melee dps, ranged dps, etc--are vague to make room for more build customization. May take some getting used to, but housing is accessible and subscribing has big cosmetic, gameplay, and quality of life benefits. Subscribing is not mandatory for a good experience, though.

World of Warcraft (6/10) Longtime players seem to be the saltiest about this one. Unfortunately, I’m a longtime player. The game’s mechanics are solid, classes are solid (also rigid), and the game is solid from a technical standpoint. Glitches are seldom a problem and aren’t common to begin with. Still, there’s no housing, character customization is limited, and the endgame is all grind all the time. But despite all this, I have yet to see an MMORPG that matches the sheer charm and quality of interface to be found in WoW. (Rest in peace, Wildstar; you tried.)

[official-alan-dabiri]

So how about that CCL?

For those of you unaware, the CCL is a semi-pro league for Heroes of the Storm being run by Heroes Hearth. A lot of old familiar faces came back for this, either to play, or to operate the organizations (henceforth: orgs) in charge of the teams. They had their draft just this past weekend, and for those of you who care to follow the pro side of this game, I want to talk about those drafts, and hopefully shine a light on what to expect when the season gets underway.

For those of you here for memes and memes alone, I have considerately put the rest of this behind a read more for you to scroll on past. Thank you for your patience.

Names at the top are the team names (the orgs), names in blue cells are tank players, green are supports, red are dps, and orange are offlaners. Though there are some discrepancies - many players have wide hero pools and can fill multiple roles. As you can see, every team has a pretty solid mix of former pros, top-shelf streamers, Storm League GM regulars, and more than a few unknown names. There was one irregularity during the draft: 30k traded their 10th pick spot to Chilly Mountain to get the 16 and 17 double pick in the 2nd/3rd round. No other trades were made.

Largely, if you know these players, you can see that every team except Oxygen very highly prioritized shotcallers, which did lead to a bit of a tank choke early in the draft. Turk - the leader for Crowd Control - confirmed that he picked up Nightvision - a tank player who also plays supports - to intentionally force a tank choke down the line. Supports didn’t get choked, but many teams picked up a second support player, especially in the 6th pick sub position, owing to the power of double support strategies. The high priority on shotcallers, though, led to an unseen problem: many teams have two - or even more - strong leadership personalities on their team, which could lead to some butting heads and clashing strategies.

That said, let me talk about the teams.

Chilly Mountain

As mentioned, CM had a good position to start strong with the draft. They had the first pick, and then they had second pick in the second round. True to that expectation, the first half of their draft is extremely strong. Fury is considered one of the best tanks in the region, and one of the most flexible shotcallers in the whole talent pool. Similarly, Makke is a strong leadership figure and a good DPS. Darkmok is another very strong player in the offlane role, and while DarkChimera isn’t the best support - or even the best support available at that point in the draft - he has great personal synergy with Fury. The back half of the draft, though, is a bit of a joke. CPogX (more commonly known as CPX) is a talented player mechanically, but has a terrible attitude. He’s also known in the community as a transphobe and misogynist. If the CCL has any respectability, he’s going to need to be kept on a tight leash, or else he’s going to get the boot really quick. And then their last pick was Mysticleez, another offlane player, who is going to struggle to step into CPX’s role if he runs his mouth on social media and gets punted.

Side Step Kings

This team - selected by veteran player Fan - has the most potential. Fan was the only one brave enough to pick Korean players, highly prioritizing KyoCha, and then picking up Hide at the end of the draft. He also went for a few of his old friends, starting the draft with Cattle, and later picking up Jun, his former teammates from Tempo Storm. Jun has the added bonus of being bilingual in English and Korean, allowing him to bridge the gap between the Korean players and the English-speaking players. Also, he’s Fan’s roommate, but that’s beside the point. Three teams on this draft banked on ping not being a big issue, and SSK banked on it the hardest. If ping actually doesn’t matter, this team is easily at the top. The only remaining struggle is the language barrier. I’m hoping that Fan brings that big streamer money into it to hire a real translator. Jun is fluent enough in both languages to serve for right now, but he’s one of the best healers in NA. He shouldn’t be on the roster just to fill an admin role. I have high hopes for this team, but there’s a lot of room for mismanagement.

WildHeart

Now this is my pick for the dark horse underdog I want to see run away with the league. Justing (piTkiD) and Buds are old friends from Oct/R20/TT, my favorite NA team from the old HGC. Justing was NA’s mad scientist, pioneering weird compositions and developing his own unusual meta that demands respect, and Buds works extremely well with him. The rest of the team is very well-positioned to accommodate him. Unaverted is a strong DPS pick, with Zergling and Funz having very diverse hero pools to work around Justing’s unique brand of bullshit, and Wearyday to sub in when double support is the call. This is also the only team with 6 NA players. If ping does matter, WildHeart is poised to take over the whole tournament, and even if it doesn’t, Justing has been given the tools he needs to redefine the meta for the whole league. Win or lose, these will be games worth watching.

Crowd Control

On the other end of the spectrum, the next two teams banked on ping not mattering; Turk - the leader for CC - picked up five EU players, asserting confidently “EU are just better than we are” when announcing his first pick of Lauber. From there, Turk was one of the players leaning hard on his first pick’s advice, following up with more strong EU players. Reportedly, Lauber got to build his own personal dream team, especially with Dynouh and Kwazaa. Turk confirmed that the Nightvision pick was for his offrole as a support (It’s been said that he’s ten times better in his offrole than his main role) while at the same time draining the Tank pool since GG, SIM, and OXG hadn’t picked up their own tanks yet. Their sixth pick, Hebi, is the only NA player on the roster, and an obvious pickup in anticipation of a double support meta. If ping doesn’t matter - and if SSK are slowed down by language barriers - CC is lined up and ready to flatten everyone.

Granit Gaming

GG had a similar strategy to CC. They have five EU players, with a single NA on the team in Nintorii. The difference is that they’re more likely to field their NA player. Svampgroot can fill in the offlane, but he is much more likely to play his signature heroes in the 4-man than his goofball offlane picks. As with CC, GG picked a dream team of EU players, headed up by Nic, and followed by Burger and Henning, a serious powerhouse for teamfight, with Nintorii as the macro god who ran with Scythe Esports through the open division and into HGC just before its untimely demise in 2018. All things considered, I think CC has the stronger players individually, but GG can make up the difference on raw synergy. Between the two, there are ten of the best players EU has to offer, even if the games are going to be played on NA servers.

Simplicity

Back to a strong NA roster, SIM followed GG and CCs lead, but with an NA player. Kure got to build his own dream team with his old Team Freedom teammates in Killuzion and Lutano. Wit is the odd man out on this roster, as an EU player in the tank role, but at that point in the draft, all the best NA tanks had already been picked out of the pool. They also picked up the man, the myth, the legend, this Hosty guy I’ve heard so much about. There might be some smaller interpersonal struggles - three of these people are all from the same HGC team, leaving the rest of the team as odd men out, if conversations get too clique-y. But if everyone meshes together, this team is the quintessential standard NA roster. They aren’t going to break the meta, but they’re going to play standard, and play it as well as any NA team could. If ping matters - and if Justing’s weird homebrew meta doesn’t take off - SIM is going to dominate.

30k

The man who stole the draft: Michael Udall. Trading his 10th pick away for the double pick between rounds 2 and 3, he got literally the exact team he wanted, man for man. HasuObs was his first pick for a leader to build his team around, and then BBJ and Liam are bar none the best players in their respective roles, picked up while everyone else was still squabbling over shotcallers. Udall later admitted that he wanted to first pick Mascarade - his fourth pick - if it looked like the tank pool was getting pinched too hard. His last two picks were reportedly under a time crunch - Sammy is an EU player who was a rush pick to fill the DPS role alongside Hasu, and then Udall overrode everyone else to pick up Breakwood as a player he wanted to mentor into a force to be reckoned with in the next season. 30K has one of the strongest mixed-region rosters in the league right now, but that may be to their detriment. Big names come with big egos, and if the team hits adversity, there’s a chance that communication starts to break down as people butt heads. We’ll see if Udall - the biggest ego of them all - can keep everyone in line. It would also be a serious crime if Breakwood got picked up to warm the bench all season.

Oxygen

The last team has a dramatically different draft strategy compared to the others. Every other team picked up strong leadership and worked with them to build a cohesive strategy, or had a strategy already that they drafted for. Meanwhile, Oxygen hit the draft as if they had a list of players sorted by skill level and they just picked whoever was still up from the top down. Despite this unusual strategy, they have a scary-looking roster. Prismaticism and Nazmas are two very strong players to start with, even if neither is a real leader. Their subsequent picks are similarly very strong players. Reportedly, they wanted Ultralisk as their 4th pick, not Madara, but were mistakenly told that he wasn’t available, because he was listed in the pool under his current battletag “GuessWhoIAm” which is honestly peak comedy. Just the same, their pick of Madara echoed through the rest of the draft; everyone else claimed that they had their eye on him for the later stages to fill. Their sixth pick of Cascon put the truth to all the memes about him being unskippable, too. But the problem remains: someone needs to step up to lead this team. If nobody does, they’re just going to be a SL fiesta and get rolled over by more organized competitors.

Every team obviously has their faults and flaws. Many of them come down to how big a problem ping is. Considering that the EU and even KR players performed admirably in the inhouse games and the exhibition matches, it may be that it’s less of a factor than traditionally thought. However, there were indeed some strategies built around punishing their slower connections. It was said that Cassia’s Valkyrie was the key anti-EU heroic: their ping made it impossible to dodge. We’ll have to see where it lands when the games really start. Some of the teams have bigger concerns that will take longer to figure out. There is no clear winners and losers here.

Except Chilly Mountain. How do you throw away a perfectly good draft for CPX, the XQC of HotS?

[gossamer-scraps]

Thought experiment: for some reason, I am required to recommend a raid build to a training group, except that they refuse to acknowledge the idea of a team composition and insist on all using exactly identical setups, except the commander will run more toughness to draw aggro. (Note: please do NOT do this and say I said it was okay.) What build do I recommend?

I had this idea while coming up with memes for a "team comps that are awful" discussion and it just wouldn't leave my head. Unlike memes like 10-guardians raiding or doing sloth without mushrooms that are actually fun, the resulting build is terrible, so stop reading now unless you like theorycrafting for its own sake. Also, I'm ignoring special roles like hand kiting at deimos, qadim2 pylons, having a boon strip, etc.

Here's the thought process. We want to generate, at the very least, enough...

might and fury, because, well, duh.

quickness or alacrity; preferably both, but quickness is stronger if I have to pick one.

vulnerability.

healing, though I don't know exactly how much would be needed without trying this out for real.

damage mitigation (including protection), to reduce the required healing.

cc skills.

and finally...

damage, because our damage will be garbage; this means getting all of the previous stuff as efficiently as possible and investing everything else into DPS. hopefully we do damage in a way reasonably suitable for every encounter, including having reasonable cleave for fights that aren't a single target.

I always do big decisions first, so: what class/specialization are we using? The quickness/alacrity requirement immediately makes me think guardian, mesmer, or revenant. Rev is probably out for not having quickness (which makes our list the two best sustained solo damage classes, which is unsurprising), and mesmer is just too weak a healer for me to get excited about it, among other problems. Firebrand is the obvious elite spec pick, for its quickness generation, healing output, and various other utility, and we'll go condi because of its superior damage and stat efficiency compared to power. While I can sort of think of some other class options, they all seem much worse at first glance.

Okay, so how do we get...

efficient might: the zealous scepter trait does this extremely well (it's almost free), and along with scepter symbol spam should basically cap us without anything else.

efficient fury: axe symbol spam from 10 firebrands might honestly be enough, though we might need inner fire (also basically free).

100% quickness: liberator's vow and everyone pressing mantra heal off cooldown gives us 12.5 seconds of quickness every 12 seconds in quite a large radius. with a bit of boon duration to prop that up, we don't honestly need any other quickness source. we could take the quickness mantra and go super overkill if desired, though.

alacrity: n/a; we sacrificed this one to get a much more well-rounded class.

vulnerability: we don't need to do anything; symbolic avenger is more than enough.

sufficient healing: with 10 players able to use the f2 tome at will, we might have semi-acceptable healing as-is if people don't all use it at once. we want overkill, though. I don't think it's worth losing a damaging traitline, but +10% outgoing healing modifiers from food and a sigil are really strong and efficient, and 10 elite signets will give us a pretty solid amount of sustain. bow of truth might be worth a look, too, if we want more. we can get some healing power from gear pretty "cheaply" because as a condition damage build we only need 2 stats to do 80% of our damage, so I mixed some apothecary gear in.

protection: all we need to do is use some f3 skills, thanks to legendary lore, which we had anyways.

damage mitigation: we're spamming enormous amounts of aegis, so we have a lot of that already. but again, since we can get 80% of our damage with half our stats missing, we can throw on a ton of trailblazer and have everyone run a tank build, which means we're all basically invincible, without losing much damage. f3 tome gives us lots of projectile reflection, extra toughness, and a bit of on-demand resistance and stability, too.

cc: ...ah, crap. default firebrand cc is kind of bad. we can take hammer of wisdom, though which would bring us up to pretty solid.

damage: well, besides the changes mentioned above, we're running one of easily the best general-use damage builds in the game as long as we hit 100% burning duration, so I think that's as good as it's gonna get. we even split the difference between power and condi builds a little bit; cfb has burst that approaches that of a (bad, but still) power class, so we're not penalized too much on things with low health. our cleave is quite good, too.

So, what did I come up with? Here's my first shot at it, with a very defensive gear setup and dps utilities: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWwAc+tlRwgYIsK2JO+KaPfA-zRRYRBtTGdcElR1VQHJgDTTB+0A-e There's a lot of stuff that would have to be tuned with actual play, especially if we interpret the rules of the challenge as requiring us to use the same utility skills for every boss.

Is this a good build for anything but this challenge? Not in the slightest. But I find it really interesting how well firebrand seems to fit every requirement for this, which is a fun coincidence. The theorycraft is so elegant that I actually wish I could try it, though I think it would be very boring in practice.

[sapphic-sustrai]

RWBY OC Team Building Questionnaire.

So, I came across this one post by @prismaticbrave, which had team building questions for your RWBY OC Team. So, I decided to answer the questions for Team DMNO!! You can find the post here, if you want to answer the questions yourself!! If there are any errors, I’ll go back and fix them later, more will be underneath the cut!!

1) Introduce your team!

My team is called DMNO {pronounced domino}.

They’re an all Faunus team.

During the events of Vol. 1-3, they’re a 2nd year team from Atlas Academy, who are participating in the Vytal Festival Tournament.

The team consists of Douglas Craig {sea otter Faunus}, Melanie Hertz {highland cow Faunus}, Norbert Beaumont {mountain lion Faunus} & Olwen Kunik {polar bear Faunus}.

2) Who’s the leader and how do they lead?

Douglas is the leader of DMNO. He views his team as his loyal crew and himself as the captain. While he may be easy-going most of the time, he knows when it’s time to get serious. He’s always open to hear any sort of advice that his team has to offer and encourages them to speak up whenever necessary. He loves and respects his team with all of his heart!

3) Does the team get along with each other overall?

Yes they do, for the most part. They just need to watch out for Douglas & Melanie because they’ll sometimes get into tiffs, due to differing personalities/their egos clashing with each other.

4) How does each member act with their partner?

Douglas @ Norbert: With a lot of patience and understanding. They always value whatever input that they share. He wants to always show them that he appreciates what they do for him and the rest of the team.

Melanie @ Olwen: Views her as a friendly rival, sparring partner and as a good friend. She has a lot of respect for Olwen as a fighter. She isn’t afraid to roughhouse with her though.

Norbert @ Douglas: They always take the time to listen to what Douglas has to say. Douglas is one of the few people that they feel like they can be themselves around. They care about him a lot and just want to be as helpful as they can be. 

Olwen @ Melanie: What was said for Melanie, could be also said for Olwen to be honest. Except, she doesn’t roughhouse, she instead feels comfortable uttering playful/snarky comments at her partner. She does have to reign Melanie in, whenever she gets a bit too, “big for her britches”, which the other girl appreciates. 

5) How does each member act with those that aren’t their partner?

Douglas @ Olwen & Melanie: Douglas & Olwen are basically as tight as family. He views her as his closest friend and someone who he can fully depend on. He views Melanie as a good friend and he does care about her. However, as mentioned above, they do often clash with each other.

Melanie @ Norbert & Douglas: She loves Norbert to bits and they’re the only member of the team that she doesn’t roughhouse/be extremely harsh towards. What was said for Douglas could be said for Melanie to be honest.

Norbert @ Melanie & Olwen: They view Melanie almost like the supportive sister that they never had. She’s probably their closest friend on the team, but they do have to remind her to use their indoor voice often. They’re honestly a bit intimidated by Olwen, but they still see them as a good friend. They want to try and talk to her more. 

Olwen @ Douglas & Norbert: What was said for Douglas could be said for Olwen, however he was her first ever friend, so she really does cherish their friendship. She considers Norbert to be a good friend, but sometimes she has a bit of trouble initiating conversations with them. She wants to try and change that.

6) What weapons does each member have?

Douglas: A two-barreled shotgun katana mix named Black Marlin and a pair of switchblade/water pistol mixes named the Dorado Daggers.

Melanie: A pair of buckaroo-style cowboy boots named Blazin’ Buckaroos.

Norbert: A Heckler & Koch MP7 & compound crossbow mix named the Compound Piercer MP7.

Olwen: She wields three swords. The first is a katana/pana {snow knife} mix named Tekkeitsertok {Tekk for short}, the other two are both falchion/pana mixes named Qailertetang {Qail for short} & Sedna.

7) What semblances do they have?

Douglas: His semblance is called Ocean Mist. It allows the user to disappear and evaporate as a misty vapour, then reappears just a few seconds later. They can either reappear in the same spot or teleport to a new spot a few feet away.

Melanie: Her semblance is called Engine Burst. It allows the user to develop engine-like protrusions made of aura that manifest around her calves. This grants the user increased speed and extra kicking power for a brief period of time.

Norbert: Their semblance is called Flash Grenade. It allows the user to create a small aura-based stun grenade in the palm of their hand, which they can launch at the opposition. The targets will feel disoriented and stunned for a brief period of time.

Olwen: Her semblance is called Temperature Control/PATE. It allows the user to orient the semblance in three different ways: passively, actively & empowerment. Passive mode allows the user to keep things {including herself} in her immediate area/within 5 meters at an ambient temperature. Active mode allows the user to heat up or cool down her surroundings/things {as well as an inherent resistance to the effect her semblance has as a result} to the degree & speed of her choosing. Finally, Empowerment mode allows the user to become stronger, a little bit faster, durable, etc… when they come into contact with thermal energy.

8) Do they have a team strategist? 

Norbert is the designated team strategist. 

9) Do they have any combat roles on their team? {ex: a party’s dps, healer, tank, etc…}.

Douglas is a ranged/melee dps.

Melanie is a melee dps.

Norbert is a ranged flanker/support/strategist mix.

Olwen is ranged/melee tank.

10) How does your fight together overall?

The team fights incredibly well together, with good communication. They just need to watch out for the following:

A) Douglas’, “unpredictability”, becomes a negative, instead of a positive.

B) Melanie getting too cocky or losing her temper.

C) Norbert’s anxiety starts to overpower their critical thinking skills.

D) Olwen closing off from the rest of the team if something is bothering her.

E) Douglas & Melanie start squabbling with each other. 

11) How does each member fight with their partner?

Douglas & Norbert make a great team! They usually have each other’s backs, like Douglas will cover Norbert if they’re trying to find a vantage point to snipe from. Usually, Douglas will be the primary attacker, while Norbert offers support. 

Melanie & Olwen make for a deadly combination. They will usually fight on their own, but they will try and stay as close by to each other as possible. Their primary strategy is to tag-team their opponents and overpower them. 

12) How do they fight with the other members?

Because of their close bond, Douglas & Olwen are often on the same wavelength, even without saying a word. Olwen usually keeps the enemy on their toes with a strong defense, while Douglas gets in as many quick hits as possible. 

Douglas & Melanie have to communicate a lot with each other, in order for their team ups to work. However, they can work well with one another, once that communication is established. They both like to go for super quick attacks that overpower/overwhelm the enemy.

Norbert with both Melanie & Olwen, is the same as they are with Douglas. They offer support, while Melanie & Olwen are the primary attackers. Norbert will team up with Melanie, more often then with Olwen. However, Norbert can work well with both of them. 

13) Any team combos/strategies {ex: checkmate, iceflower, bumbleby, etc...}

I’m still in the process of coming up with a lot of the team’s combos, however I do have one that I can share. This is a four-person maneuver, which Douglas called, “Toppling Dominoes”.  

To let the team know that it’s time to use the move, Douglas will typically shout, “Okay DMNO, time to knock em’ down!” or some other variation.

They start things off by trying to trap the target/multiple targets in a singular area, where they can’t escape.

Next, Norbert shoots out one of their gravpolines {a jelly trampoline, with gravity dust inside that bursts from a bullet} from their weapon. Then Melanie gets ready to kick Olwen off of her leg, while using her semblance to boost her kick’s power.

Douglas runs and jumps onto the gravpoline, Olwen gets launched into the air, then Melanie & Norbert provide cover on the ground. 

When Douglas & Olwen intersect, Olwen uses one of her sword attacks {sometimes she’ll use her thermal empowerment part of her semblance to boost its power} to launch Douglas forward with incredible force at high speeds towards the target{s}. 

Finally, Douglas will perform a couple of somersaults and yells, “CANNONBALL!”, as he crashes into the target{s}, toppling them over like a row of dominoes.  

14) Does your team have any plans on sticking together in the future {e.g: post Fall of Beacon, post graduation, etc…}?

I’m still planning a lot of DMNO’s future out {both post Fall of Beacon and after Salem’s defeat}, but after the F.O.B, the team does split up for a bit. After graduation, realistically the team can’t stay together because Norbert wants to join the Atlesian Military and no one else on the team has the same plans. However, they’ll still probably team up together from time to time, if it’s possible. Douglas has said that even if they’re apart, DMNO will never disband and that they’re still a team. 

15) Any other team related trivia/thoughts {e.g: shenanigans, fun memories, etc…}?

I have a couple of shenanigans/things that happened during their 1st year together in mind.

After the Atlas Academy initiation test/getting their dorm room clean, Olwen made them all an, “everything but the kitchen sink”, stew out of random ingredients from their dorm floor’s kitchen. It quickly became the team’s favourite meal whenever they eat together. They spent the rest of the night sitting on the floor, eating snacks and telling stories about each other.

A few weeks into their first year, Douglas, Melanie & Team FNKI managed to get a dance party/hoedown/conga line going in the dorms. Norbert, Olwen & Ironwood are still confused as to how they managed to pull this off in such a short amount of time. 

Norbert once snuck their pet/emotional support ferret Scout into their first combat class of the year with them because they were feeling anxious about sparring with some of the other students/their own teammates. Eventually Scout made their presence known and almost everyone in the class was freaking out. Norbert was in a hurry that morning and had forgotten Scout’s vest, so most thought that she was just some random animal.  After talking things over with the General, Norbert is now allowed to bring Scout to all of their classes... they just need to make sure that Scout was wearing her vest. 

Douglas usually wears sandals to class, instead of the standard dress shoes. Most of the student body were surprised that he didn’t have frostbitten feet/toes by the end of the school year. 

When DMNO got back from their first mission, Olwen came back with a couple of salmon that she fished up and two reindeer that she hunted. She said that she wanted to do a bit of hunting during any sort of down time that they had. The female student body see it as her being resourceful and the male student body see it as her being scary.

[bride-and-bride]

Defiant Bride Trust NPC

Selection: “Please r-rely on me!”

Job: Either Free Paladin or Bride Healer... she call fill both Tank and Healer roles!

Weapons: Sword, Shield, and Conjury

AI Behavior: As a tank, she’s annoyingly conservative, taking pulls one or two at a time at the most to not push her healers too much... but if someone else aggros the mobs ahead of her, she’ll run up to get them all without fail. She’s quick to use cooldowns and has quite a few available to her, and her high HP and defense means that she’s very hard to topple. She’ll often cast shields on fellow party members, and can even use Cover if you’re unable to get out of an AOE in time!

As a healer, she’s focused on the best support possible! She keeps her tank and DPS topped off as much as possible, and can give damage and haste buffs to help maximize what her DPS can put out. When it’s time to attack, she does so with mixes of explosive earth attacks, razor winds, and overwhelming water surges, and can slow enemies hit by them!

Either role, no matter what her party members do, no matter how big they pull or how many aoes they stand in, she’ll always give her all to make sure they’re safe and protected, without complaint... and only use the limit break when things look like they’re about to fall apart.

Maybe a little complaint.

Battle Lines:

“S-stay behind me, please!” - Aggroing Enemies “I’m not g-going to fall so e-easily!” - Using Defensive Cooldown “My... m-my shield won’t falter!” - When surrounded by enemies “NGH...! D-don’t... don’t worry! I can stand t-this much!"- Using Cover “You’re not f-falling on my w-watch...” - Healing Ally “H-here! Don’t h-hold back!” - Buffing Ally “T-this sort of thing is bad f-for my heart...” - Reviving Ally

Limit Break:

“Hang in there...! If w-we fall here, I’ll n-never forgive myself...!” - Using limit break with 1 bar “I’m not l-letting anyone hurt you m-more!” - Using limit break with 2 bars “<W-WHO DO YOU THINK I AM!?>” - Using limit break with 3 bars

KO’d:

“N-no... no, don’t t-touch them...” - Variation 1 “I... I c-can still... I can still f-f-fight...” - Variation 2

Revived:

“Don’t w-worry... I’m f-fine now!” - Variation 1 “H...how embarrassing... a-after I said you c-could count on me...” - Variation 2

Tagged by: @ceol-aen, 

Tagging: Who hasn’t done this? Who wants to break out the templates and give it a try? Tag me if you do!

[vexredain]

Vex’s Brief Guide to Baldesion Arsenal :: Part 1 - Twin Spears & Raiden

“’E’s ‘ind me, ain’t ‘e?”

Now that I’ve had some time to get some clears done, I can finally write a guide! I’m not sure that I’ll be able to get to Ozma (though I hope I can and I’ll give it a good try!) but if I don’t, this will likely be my last guide. So thank you all for sticking with my until now if that’s the case! I’m sure I’ll have a lot of other bits of content to write guides for come Shadowbringers, so this definitely isn’t the end!

For those who may not have heard of Baldesion Arsenal, it is a piece of High-End content that is connected to, and accessed through, Eureka Hydatos. There are four bosses in total. Furthermore, unlike nearly every other piece of content in the game, raise is very limited in BA, with only three sources of raise possible - Sacrifice L, Spirit of the Remembered, Healer Limit Break 3. 

I’ve really enjoyed BA so far, it plays like an old school MMO raid, which means that it requires a lot of people, a lot of patience, and a lot of careful planning and strategy!

This guide will cover:

Runs and Organisation

Path to Twin Spears

Twin Spears

Path to Raiden

Raiden

Chests

Roles

Logos Actions

Best of luck to all you Warriors of Light whom venture into the final part of the Forbidden Land, the Baldesion Arsenal! As always, the rest will be under the cut.

1. Runs and Organisation

So, you’ve completed Eureka, and now you’re looking to do Baldesion Arsenal for the promise of that sick Ozma mount, as well as either your augmented Eureka weapon, +2 armour, or Kirin’s Osode/Vermillion Cloak. The vast majority of BA runs are organised via discord and this is the best way to assure yourself a spot in a run, rather than entering an instance beforehand and entering a portal as a pug (which may have its own problems depending on whether or not the instance has another pre-made BA group in it). You can find the discord link for the Aether Baldesion Arsenal Discord >here< and be sure to assign yourself the correct roles so that you’re available to be pinged whenever there’s a group going. 

So how exactly are these runs organised? 56 people are required for a ‘full’ run of BA, though there are only 48 portals that spawn on the killing of Ovni. This is because the last group, named the Support Group must stay outside to rally the rest of the instance to kill the ELvl 60 NM FATE “The Baldesion Arsenal: Expedition Support”. Most fragment groups aim to kill Twin Spears, then Raiden, and then clear the trash up to AV as there are three chests past Raiden and before AV. As such fragment runs will always be under 48 people, progression runs will require the full amount. 

Group leaders are usually whoever wants to step up and get the group together, and will sit in the Group Leaders channel in the chosen Arsenal Group folder (the Aether BA discord has between 1 - 9). These groups will be formed within the Party Finder and given passwords, detailed in the relevant LFG channel for the run. Each group will be associated with a different element, with the tank of each group usually sticking to the element of their party barring extenuating circumstances. As such the groups are further divided depending on what side, and therefore which Twin Spear, that they are on. These are East Side (Fire, Lightning, Ice) and West Side (Earth, Wind, Water).  From there, the group leaders will ready check, enter the instance (usually at the same time in order to try to spawn a fresh and continuing to do so until all groups are in the same instance), and organise their parties until BA is entered. You will be asked to choose a portal, a map of these is below, along side which portals belong to which group! Worry not if you do not have a stabiliser, you can wait 5 Earth Time Minutes and all portals will turn red and are able to be entered.

Once the groups are in BA, you will have to go to your relevant side. DO NOT JUMP DOWN OFF OF THE PLATFORM YET! Jumping off will render you unable to return to the Logos Manipulator, Magia Spinner, and if you’re on the wrong side, you’ll be stuck there. The West Side is always the same as the Logos Manipulator, and the East Side is always the same as the Magia Melder. Pay attention to which side your group is on, and follow them down. 

2. Path to Twin Spears

You’re now ready to begin the real fight! This will be a Demon Wall. It doesn’t do anything in particular other than serve as a wall that you have to hit. 

Further ahead, you’ll see Arsenal Magus mammets, and an Arsenal Poroggo. The Magi will do an AoE (Deadly), and should be pulled slowly. If you’re a tank, pull at range and do not attempt a big pull, this can get party members killed early. The Poroggo is your true challenge, its Toy Hammer ability must be interrupted, else it chunk your tank a hefty 80%-ish of their health pool. 

Up the top of the stairs will be two Arsenal Byblos, these guys do a tail-based AoE so do not stay behind them at any time (Remember all enemies here have no directionals), and do not stay in front of them either as they will cast Magic Hammer which will kill you. This can be interrupted. 

You’ve cleared the trash, bringing us to the first boss! It is hear that in discord your group will likely merge with another in a different channel, separated by what side you are on, this is to better communicate and perform call-outs. 

3. Twin Spears

These boys will be your first challenge upon reaching the Arsenal. There are two different bosses here with very different, yet also similar, mechanics. 

Art is the West boss, whilst Owain is the East boss. I don’t want to detail mechanics here, as the best place to find them is in the BA guide written by Kalina Skysong of Leviathan world, which can be found >here<!

After the twins are killed, they must die at the same time, you will be able to move ahead further into the Arsenal!

4. Path to Raiden

The first thing you will likely hear in Discord is people saying “Don’t go any further! Wait!!” this is because yes, the way ahead is particularly dangerous. There are traps that lay unseen and will instantly kill those who step on them. Unlike similar mechanics in HoH and PotD, these are massive. 

Yes, these things are pretty damn dangerous. Luckily, they can be detected from a range of 15 yalms by the Logos Action Perception L. This will let you know a trap is nearby from a range of 30 yalms. Please note that once the trap is discovered it is not disarmed! It will still kill you. There is 1 trap on the way up to the room before Raiden, and in this antechamber there are 4 traps, in a rough square shape around the room 2 on the East side, and 2 on the West side. 

There’s a few trash mobs that are quite dangerous on the way up to Raiden. These are:

Arsenal Magus. Avoid AoE. 

Arsenal Sprite. This mob will patrol up and down the hallways. It will cast Banish III, this MUST be interrupted as it will immediately banish a party member from the instance. 

Arsenal Calcabrina. This terrifying doll must be tanked facing away from the raid, all DPS and Healers must stand behind it as its gaze AoE will kill people who are not tanks. 

Arsenal Geshunpest. This guy doesn’t do all that much but float around and patrol down the corridors. 

Arsenal Centaurs. These guys are mean, they will cast Rear, which must be avoided by melee DPS in particular. Their other cast is Beserk and this must be Slept, lest the tank get 2 shot by the damage up buff it receives on successful cast.  

Now you’ve fought through all that! It’s time for Raiden. 

5. Raiden

Raiden is the second boss of BA, and one of the more technically difficult ones. The best thing to do is follow your raid’s callouts, and make sure that you know the markers’ locations around the room. Raiden himself has mechanics from Hashmal (Half the room is hit with an AoE depending on which side his weapon is glowing on), Ifrit (Nails will spawn and must be killed to avoid a raid wipe), and Odin. 

Again, I don’t want to detail mechanics too much here. Please check out Kalina Skysong of Leviathan server’s guide >here<!

If you die on Raiden, it’s okay. It happens to the best of us. You can watch me die to Raiden twice >here< if you want! If you have died, and you’re a healer, it’s likely that someone will risk raising you through a Sacrifice L. This can also happen if you’re a DPS or Tank too, it depends on the party and how many healers still have a Spirit of the Remembered up. If YOU are a Healer, remember to take your chest first before you attempt a gamble on a raise!

6. Chests

Following Raiden, there’s still more! There are 3 chests in the following areas that must be found, these will give 1 Eureka Fragment each, along with either 5 Obscure Logograms, a token for one of the FFXI chestpieces, or a mix. 

As with before, wait for the person with Perception to go first. Ahead there will be some new trash mobs that have some nasty surprises for you! These are:

Arsenal Scribes. Interrupt Condensed Libra.

Arsenal Bibliotheque. This refrigerator will either cast a donut AoE or a circle AoE centered around him. Avoid this as it can and will kill you in one hit. Try not to be on the stairs as this can affect how visible his markers are. 

Aresenal Eye. This will do a cone AoE, avoid it. 

Arsenal Calcabrina. The same gaze attack as before, must be pointed away from the raid. 

Keep checking for traps as you go up the stairs. Now, you’ll be on a corridor with many rooms ahead, with AV staring you down from the back. The purposes of these rooms is to find a portal that will take you to the third and last chest. The second chest is also found in one of these rooms, each aligned with a specific element, so let the tank aligned with that element pull that room. 

 In a frag run, take these slowly, pull what you can, and kill it. Do not run into the rooms without the Perception L carrier having scoped out the room first. The portal is also invisible and must be found through the use of Perception L. 

Yes, these portals can be placed VERY precariously. Once this portal is found, enter it, and you’ll be at the last chest. Take it, and prosper! Usually at this point, the raid will return back to base in Eureka Hydatos. Your run is now complete! 

6. Roles 

Minesweepers are what I like to call the carriers of Perception L. This is one of the most important roles in the instance and must be done carefully. You basically just spam Perception L to first find if you are close to a trap, and then spam it some more to locate it once you are near. WALK SLOWLY and be careful. 

Tanks. You must be elementally aligned with one specific element. This will not change unless you are down a tank, or there are mobs ahead that are not aligned with the tanks on your side at the beginning of the instance. 

7. Logos Actions

For a first time run, I would recommend Spirit of the Remembered and Wisdom of the Platebearer. This gives you enough survivability that you may survive some of the AoEs in the instance. Spirit of the Remembered will give you a 70% chance of rez on death, that’s pretty great! Refresh L is also nice for the DPS who may be often switching their magia board and losing aether. Spirit of the Remembered should always be available and you should have many of them in storage. If you can’t make them using the singular Mneme, remember they are also made through Wisdom of the Platebearer, Wisdom of the Martialist, Wisdom of the Aetherweaver being placed within the Logos Manipulator. Save your singular Mneme for when you want two Logos Actions ad it lowers the chance of failure. 

If you’re a healer, Shell L, Protect L are usually wanted and cast on people who will wait on the bridge at the start, and the stairs before Raiden. Sacrifice L MUST be paired with Spirit of the Remembered, after cast you will get doom. This CANNOT be Esuna’d, so you will die. If your SoR procs, great! If not, another healer will likely juggle procs with you until you are both alive. 

Tanks, Wisdom of the Indomitable is an especially good Logos Action, as is Wisdom of the Platebearer. SoR is required with both. 

With that, you’ll be good to continue farming your frags, or whatever else you came into the Arsenal for, whether its progression or gear, I hope this guide served you well! Thank you once again for reading! Credit to Kalina Skysong for her amazing guide, the creator of the Portal Map, to whom I do not know the name, and the Dataminers for the BA maps I used here! It’s been a pleasure writing all these guides, I’ve enjoyed it immensely being able to share, and run Eureka with you all. 

May you ever walk in the light of the Crystal, 

Vex

[obsoletesystem]

D&D Ask Meme

@wisdom-fangs​ asked me to do all the questions of this D&D ask post. So I did. 1. A favorite character you have played. I really like playing monstrous characters. Currently in Adventurers League, I play Frattek Venvaris, bugbear rogue/barbarian, who is a delightfully goofy character. But I also miss playing Bajur Mashoir, a very charismatic lizardfolk "voodoo" shaman, whose catchphrase was: "As you can see, I am an alligator, sir..." spoken in a thick southern brawl. 2. Your favorite character that someone else has played. During a one shot the guy that played an evil halfling warlock sacrificed himself to blow up the big bad with a block of dynamite. The true MVP. 3. Your favorite side quest. Idk. 4. Your current campaign. I DM a homebrew campaign, in which the party is stuck between sides in a war between the local Jarl and a fey duchess who has taken over a part of the woods. I also participate as a player in a slight homebrewed Salt Marsh campaign, in which I play a tiefling cleric of Pelor. She's got a Sad Backstory. 5. Favorite NPC. The Loathesome Gribble, an NPC in the game I DM, who is a very small tiefling sorcerer with an immense knife collection and a four-armed aasimar monk girlfriend. He is found in the most of unlikely places and his signature spell is "Gribble's Hand of Sand", which may or may be not magical, as it blinds a creature with sand, but the material component is just a handfull of coarse sand. 6. Favorite death (monster, player character, NPC, etc). The druid in our home game charged into giant stag form at a huge burning construct (The Burning Man from Burning Man, but moving), missed his attack, upon which the Burning Man rolled nat 20's on BOTH ITS ATTACKS. No advantage, no nothing, just two straight 20's. He grabbed the stag by its antlers, turned its head 360 degrees, and dropped a flaming, mutilated dwarf to the ground. 7. Your favorite downtime activity. I always like to do something that tells a little bit about the culture of the creature I play. When I was on haitus because of school, I described how Frattek had spend some time with his little bugbear niece, and had just returned from a fun little war (seeing as bugbears love to fight). 8. Your favorite fight/encounter. We had to fight a vampire spawn in a dank, dark basement, but it was light outside, and Frattek is incredibly good at grappling creatures, so we dragged the vampire out from his basement into the sunlit street, and then made a run for it as we had broken into a house. 9. Your favorite thing about D&D. Coming together with friends and not drinking (a lot) or smoking weed. I like doing those things too, but it is also fun to just hang out and play games where heavy drinking is not really handy. 10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most. Dragons are the best, spellcasters are the worst. Spellcasting Dragons are the bees knees. My players, however, are going to hate a certain spellcaster very much. Once they find out... 11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play? Usually once a week, but I'd love to be able to balance twice a week. One day as player, one day as DM. 12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from. "Name and occupation, please" comes from when we played Pathfinder, and one of the characters died, but I didn't want to get rid of him yet or he was set up to be reincarnated or some shit idk. Anyway, his soul arrives in purgatory, which turns out to be this bureaucratic office, where he has to stand in line for a long, long time, before arriving at a booth/desk type situation, in which an Ophanim angel (one of them burning wheels full of eyes) floats that asks with a bored sigh "Name and occupation, please". The player answered, and was set up for reincarnation, which involved shooting his soul from a cannon/drop tube into the unborn baby of a local woman. The child grows up unnaturally quickly, and because it has the soul of a mature orc barbarian, it is more than a little trouble. Nephertheless, the "Name and occupation, please" gag remained forever. 13. Introduce your current party. My Homeboys, the Lords of Okab Volal, are Nazreen, a wood elf ranger who missed her wolf, played by @tabula-wasa​, Tophr Thanestone, the previously mentioned dwarf druid who was murdered by a giant flaming effigy and subsequently reincarnated/put into the body of a frost elf woman (something he hasn't come to terms with) played by our bearded friend Glenn, and Adelon Vrena, half-elf bard/cleric/divine soul sorcerer a.k.a. Healer Supreme, who is really righteous but not above torturing a captive githyanki, and played by Arnaud. The Schadestenen (meaning "Damage Stones", as in dice), which is the OG Adventurers League group in the Spellenhoorn in Hoorn, consist of Aiden Rainbowscale (Albino orphan wood-elf monk/barbarian), Fjorgyn (dwarven cleric of Moradin, who died last week and still suffered from the Death Curse. RIP.), Frattek Venvaris (Bugbear barbarian/arcane trickster and gladiator/luchador, played by me), Gideon Thornton (cowardly Half-Orc Hexblade), Grommash Hellscream (Stereotypical Half-Orc Barbarian. Great guy.), Ruldra (disgraced Hobgoblin undead-hunting Ranger), Cadence (Powerful but stupid Half-elf Grave Cleric/Divine Soul Sorcerer who never learned how to read), Ullr (Arnaud's Gloom Stalker and Human Machine Gun), and Darin (half-elf ranger and Master Of Backflip). The Peeps from Salt Marsh, DMed by the guy that plays Darin, in which Arnaud plays William Wisenose, The Awfully Lucky Halfling Build (halfling wizard/bard/whatever), Cadence's player plays Sylver Ravenstar (half-elf bard/hexblade/run away princess), her friend plays Samm Enoch (Aasimar Bard and Very Handsome Man), Aiden's player plays Ankis (Aasimar Celestial Warlock and very secretive about both these facts because Back Story), and his friend plays Vena Malum (Human Bloodhunter, who is really buff and does that swirly thing with her falchions, and oh my...), Grommash's player plays Morgain of Astora (human paladin of Pelor, and companion/boyfriend/substitute son to my character), and I play Paytsarra Avèry (winged tiefling cleric of Pelor). Praise the sun. 14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed. We had one party consisting of a drider, a very evil dwarf, a fire genasi, a gnome psychic, and a kenku ninja at one point. When the evil dwarf died, and I introduced the guy's new drow "medic", I knew I lost all cohesion of the group. 15. Do you have snacks during game times? My players do. I don't like snacks that much. 16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer? In person. I tried playing online, and I think I would do again, but only if I'd have a really good headset. 17. What are some house rules that your group has? In the Salt Marsh campaign you double the value of the dice on a crit, which I think is disappointing. I just wanna roll a lot of dice :( 18. Does your party keep any pets? @tabula-wasa​'s ranger has a dire wolf...somewhere...

19. Do you or your party have any dice superstitions? Not that I know of. I do know some of my dice seem to roll better than others. 20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing? I found a d&d character creation app on the web ages ago, and that sparked my interest. Later I joined a warhammer fantasy role play group with a friend I had been rp-ing online with a lot, but this was the real deal, at Arnaud's house. He dmed number of campaigns for us, and later he joined my pathfinder group which turned into a D&D 5th edition group. 21. Have you ever regretted something your character has done? Yeah. Frattek decided to be a hero and tried to assassinate an ogre torturer. He failed his shot. We had to fucking run. 22. What color was your first dragon? The first dragon I fought as a character was a young Red Dragon. Even at 5th level, we whooped its ass. He found himself in a cave, surrounded by fools, and we beat him to pulp. The first dragon I put in front of my players was a young White Dragon. It kicked their asses. 23. Do you use premade modules or original campaigns? I usually homebrew my own campaigns, but I have dmed some AL sessions. 24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game? Not an incredible amount, but for my home game I prepare ideas months, even years, in advance. For DMs 25. What have your players done that you never could have planned for? A lot. The most notable was casting Dispel Magic on the demiplane-item the cultists were in... and then opening the demiplane underwater. 26. What was your favorite scene to write and show your characters. I had these zombies that always repeated the last thing they said before they died, which was cool and creepy. But the thing I really wrote out was the description of how an Astral Ship warps space around itself, and what that looks like from the people on the deck of the ship. 27. Do you allow homebrew content? If it's well written, absolutely, but there is a lot of shit out there. 28. How often do you use NPCs in a party? When it makes sense, but I try not to do that too often. 29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions? I prefer RP sessions, but I am leaning more toward combat. On the other hand, I don't think it completely excludes each other nor should it. I am of the opinion that 30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos? Rather diplomatic, but they can definitely kick ass. For Players 31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race? I like casters, and I will always have an affinity for wizards, but arcane tricksters and eldritch knights are cool too. I like elves, and I like monstrous races; goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears. I like things that are pretty and scary, or creepy and goofy. 32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?) I usually mix a bit of tank and dps. I don't like being very frail, but I do enjoy doing a lot of damage in one shot. 33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory? I tend to write a character from a concept, and then build out the backstory. How did this person become the person they are today? Even if you have something of a bugbear, or a hobgoblin, or a yuan-ti. They have had a childhood, they have role models, they have culture. But what is that? What defines a character? What makes them they way they are? I don't like playing monstrous races that have been adopted by a "better, nobler race" like humans and elves and dwarves. I get the appeal, but I also think it is a little trite, and a little condenscending, almost. I think a lot about what defines a monstrous identity, and being a Cultural Anthropologist, I think a lot about the way culture shapes the values and morality and thus also behaviour of a creature. Do hobgoblins tell their children bedtime stories? What are they about? How will a bugbear struggle in regular humanoid society, where his violent urges -natural to him- are equally, or even more excessively violently repressed and punished? Is this just for bugbears? Will they then look for each other, and find each other in their shared cultural/natural tendencies? Are there goblinoid lawyers or activist groups, that seek to protect other goblinoids from unjust treatment under laws that aren't theirs? How will your life be if you are a second or third or even fourth generation inhuman creature in a human society? Do they dream of returning to a society that is 'theirs'? And is there even such a thing? And if there is, will they actually fit in, or forever be an outcast, neither hob nor man? I tend to poke at such questions with my character backstories. 34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor? Everything is useful, since everything is always situational. If you plan only for situations in which you are going to kill every living thing, then you shouldn't pick something like Rope Trick, or Magic Circle. But you do you. I very much dislike decoupling "flavour" from functionality. This is a game of make-belief, so everything you do is flavour. The mechanics are an abstraction of a fantastic reality, and though inherently important to the working of the game (without rules, it would merely be improvisation, which is also a kind of game, but schwa), it is all flavour. People that brag about how much average damage they can do with this or that specific build tire me. 35. How much roleplay do you like to do? All of the roleplay! But please let me punt goblins into the garbage sometimes!

[hfbeasty]

omg the NPC asssskkkk .....!! can I ask..... Di??? or Hiet??? or Baal?? damn my heart. the one that inspires you most??

ASDFGHJK I’m gonna try all three because fuck it i love my ocs

1. Would they be recruitable?

Yep. Good luck with him.

2. Would they be a class specific character? (ie. Imperial Agent only. Republic character only)

He’s only available for Imp side characters.

3. When would you recruit them? Vanilla story? an Expac? Post KOTET?

I feel like he could fit in anywhere. He’s very simple, one goal and one minded person so where or when wouldn’t really have a big effect on his story or character.

4. Where would you recruit them from?

Anywhere but the Sith Academy. I imagine him meeting the player while already being in his thirties and very experienced yet still unpredictable.

5. What would their recruitment mission be?

Probably something you need to search extra manpower for. Di is that extra strenght.

6. What would be their original recruitment outfit?

Callous Conqueror armor without the mask (see picture). 

7. Would there be a character they don’t like? Would that cause you to choose sides?

Di doesn’t like anyone. If you chose too many options that don’t side with him this might have effects in the future. 

8. Are they romancable? Why/why not

Yes because I think he’d make for an interesting romance with him being goddamn dark sided and having to learn this weird thing called romance while also really wanting it. Also he’s Cathar so a romance with him is gonna be deep since you will be his lifemate. He’d both die and kill for you.

9. What would they say if you clicked on them?

“Don’t touch me.” “ *low growl…* “ “What are you looking at?” “My advice: Kill whatever’s troubling you.” “Did you hear the screams of that last guy? Hehehe..” “Just keep moving.” “Let’s move.”

10. Do they know any other in game characters? (ie. trained under Satele Shan during the civil war. Knew Talos before he went to Hoth)

No. He’s a hermit.

11. What weapon(s) would they have?

Cathar Honor Sword on his back and the Red Unstable Peacemaker Lightsaber on his hip. 

12. Are they better as a tank, healer or DPS?

Dps all the way trough. Good tank but sucks at healing. He’d rather tell you to get over it, that your wounds are proof of you being a warior, you shouldn’t hide them.

13. What gifts do they Love? Like? What would they say when you gave them a gift?

Love: Weapon. “Hey.. Thanks..” “That looks good.” “For me?” 

Like: Imperial and Military. “That’s nice.” “Alright.” “You got me this?”

14. What would they say if you sent them away/changed them out?

“Big mistake.” “ *angered growl* “ “Why must you keep me from battle.” “I will remember this.” “Fine.”

15. What do they say when they heal you? What do they say when they are attacking?

Heal: “Get. Up.” “Giving up is not an option.” “If you die I’ll kill you.” “That was dissapointing..”

Attack: “*deep chuckle*” “You think you can take me?!” “*violent growl*” “Get back here you coward!” “I’m gonna make you bleed…” “I’ll rip your troath out with my teeth.” “You’re gonna be dinner.” “When I remove your legs from your body you won’t be able to run!”

16. What’s their idle chatter like? Do they talk a lot (when you arrive on each planet) or do they suddenly say something in some strange places?

He’ll usually say something before a battle. “Di what do you propose?” “He won’t talk if we rip out his tongue…”

Or in certain areas.

Rural: “Yegh diplomats. Let’s get out of here.”

Outside: “I used to hunt here closeby, quite tasty meat they got around here I must say.”

17. What letter’s would they send post vanillia class story/SOR/KOTFE

Me: *hasn’t finished any of the vanilla class stories*

Hi

I’m not gonna let you go

- Di’taqt

Attachment: A rather bloody heart of something (or someone) you may not want to know

KOTFE

You.

I could have known you weren’t dead. No one could possibly kill you. It drove me mad. Not being able to find who killed you. So I just murdered everyone that looked suspicious. Which was everybody I came along… How foolish I was. Should have known. No one is strong enough. You are the most powerful. Everyone else is weak. As am I, for you.

- Your warrior

18. If they are recruitable in vanillia story, where are they during KOTFE/TET? What are/were they doing?

I’m not entirely sure what’s happening during KOTET. But he’s probably wandering on his own again.

1. Would they be recruitable?

Don’t think so. She’d probably one of the more important NPC’s walking around that you can go to for advice. She’s a Jedi Master for certain. More like an advisor that will continue to be in the story (like in Dragon Age Inquisition) and on a special occasion will be able to be used as a companion.

2. Would they be a class specific character? (ie. Imperial Agent only. Republic character only)

I feel like she’d be with both Jedi classes at the start and be available for all classes during KOTET.

3. When would you recruit them? Vanilla story? an Expac? Post KOTET?

Start of Vanilla stories for Jedi Knight and Consular. You’d meet her somewhere at the beginning and she’d guide you trough your journey. And for all classes during KOTET. She’s very accepting so I feel like she’d get along with all classes

4. Where would you recruit them from?

 Jedi temple.

5. What would their recruitment mission be?

You’d get sent to speak with Jedi Master Frodynn for advice maybe? She’ll occasionaly give clues about where you should be heading now and also is willing to help train you. But she isn’t your official Master.

6. What would be their original recruitment outfit?

A flowy and very simple yet comfortable mix between a white dress and Jedi robes. She usually has her hands folded in the sleeves.

7. Would there be a character they don’t like? Would that cause you to choose sides?

Hiet doesn’t hold grudges, is very open minded, gives everyone a chance and believes there’s light in everyone. Doesn’t mean she won’t fuck u up if ur gonna do evil.

8. Are they romancable? Why/why not

Yes because I say so. Romancing her takes time and can of course only be achieved if you don’t care as much for the Jedi rules as she does. It would be a little mischievous and very secret.

9. What would they say if you clicked on them?

“Hello my dear.” “How are you?” “You are doing well.” “ *giggle* “ “I’m here for you.” “Friend.” “ *soft humming* “

10. Do they know any other in game characters? (ie. trained under Satele Shan during the civil war. Knew Talos before he went to Hoth)

She knows most of the more well known Jedi personally.

11. What weapon(s) would they have?

Seven white lightsabers floating around her.

12. Are they better as a tank, healer or DPS?

She’s a healer but can do an enormous amount of damage. Not a great tank.

13. What gifts do they Love? Like? What would they say when you gave them a gift?

She loves Cultural gifts. “Oh my..” “This is wonderful, thank you my friend.” “I will cherish this.” She likes Imperial gifts.  “For me?” “Why thank you.”

14. What would they say if you sent them away/changed them out?

“Untill next time.” “Be careful out there.” “I’ll be thinking of you.” “Remember what I thought you.” “Be kind.” “Farewell.”

15. What do they say when they heal you? What do they say when they are attacking?

Heal: “Now now, come here..” “All patched up.” “Ready for another adventure.”

Attack: “I apologize.” “I am sorry our paths had to cross like this.” “Take that!” “I will not let you come closer.”

16. What’s their idle chatter like? Do they talk a lot (when you arrive on each planet) or do they suddenly say something in some strange places?

She usually has something to say about the areas you travel to. Some information on it’s history. Sometimes she’ll giggle depending on the dialogie choices you make or she’ll say something or make a face when you choose a dark sided option.

17. What letter’s would they send post vanillia class story/SOR/KOTFE

She doesn’t sent letters so it most likely will be a holocall in which she tells you she’s worried and that you should return safely to her.

18. If they are recruitable in vanillia story, where are they during KOTFE/TET? What are/were they doing?

I can’t say for sure as I’m not aware of what’s happening during KOTET, but she’ll most likely be helping the good guys and help the hurt.

1. Would they be recruitable?

Yep.

2. Would they be a class specific character? (ie. Imperial Agent only. Republic character only)

I think all classes would fit. She doesn’t get allong with most Force Sensitive ones though and will leave if you’ve chosen too many dark sided options.

3. When would you recruit them? Vanilla story? an Expac? Post KOTET?

Somewhere in the middle of the Vanilla story.

4. Where would you recruit them from?

Not a planet, but a ship in deep space. 

5. What would their recruitment mission be?

A Bounty Hunter has been causing trouble. Catch her. Instead you realize Baal was framed and together take the ones down that wanted to catch Baal. She joins you after you offer her a free ride and she sticks around for a while. Still very lonesome tho. 

6. What would be their original recruitment outfit?

RD-07A Vendetta armor set. 

7. Would there be a character they don’t like? Would that cause you to choose sides?

She’s very wary of Mandalorians, Imperials and force sensitive people. Also if you side with her family she’s gone forever.

8. Are they romancable? Why/why not

Yes she needs some loving.. I think it would be interesting trying to get the big bad lonely bounty hunter to trust you enough. You may even get some flowers.

9. What would they say if you clicked on them?

“Hmpf..” “What?” “I’m here.” “I don’t have anything to say right now.” “Y’know I appreciated the silent moments between us..” “… Take the hint.” “Hm?” “Stay on guard.” 

10. Do they know any other in game characters? (ie. trained under Satele Shan during the civil war. Knew Talos before he went to Hoth)

She knows all about Mandalorians and some may recognize her. 

11. What weapon(s) would they have?

Mischief and Anarchy pistol set and a sniper rifle.

12. Are they better as a tank, healer or DPS?

She’s a great tank and damage dealer and okay at healing.

13. What gifts do they Love? Like? What would they say when you gave them a gift?

Love: Weapon. “Thank… You…” “This is pretty cool.” “You shouldn’t have.. But I’m still taking it.”

Like: Luxury. “Oh, I don’t have anything for you though.” “Thanks.” “Haven’t seen this in a while.”

14. What would they say if you sent them away/changed them out?

“Bye.” “See ya.” “Don’t make me have to come back and save your ass.” “Stay out of trouble.” “Forget my name.” “I’ll go get some rest then.”

15. What do they say when they heal you? What do they say when they are attacking?

Heal: “Get up.” “The fight’s not over yet.” “Heal up.” 

Attack: “Got one.” “Get out while you can.” “Fool.” “This is nothing.” “Score says I’m hitting more than you.” “Another one for the tally.” 

16. What’s their idle chatter like? Do they talk a lot (when you arrive on each planet) or do they suddenly say something in some strange places?

She really doesn’t say much to be honest. Her dialogue exists more out of ‘hmm’s and dissapointed looks. 

17. What letter’s would they send post vanillia class story/SOR/KOTFE

She also doesn’t sent much letters. They’re more like text messages. ‘you ok?’ ‘text me when you get there.’ ‘look at this picture of a nexu i found. its funny.’

18. If they are recruitable in vanillia story, where are they during KOTFE/TET? What are/were they doing?

She’s most likely back to solo bountyhunting and got hired by Teeg to help fight Arcann.

[ishgard]

XIV Questions!

Yoinked this from @nihil242 <3

1. What’s your character’s name? I have A Ton of characters, but my main is Ahru Hiraeth. 2. What server? Many. Ahru is currently adrift over on Louisoix, but will be coming home to Crystal in the near future! 3. What race/clan? Miqo’te / Mixed Keeper-Seeker lineage. 4. Favorite class/job? Red Mage & Bard (Also monk but I'm very self-conscious about ma deeps.)

[chikkou]

hi anya, i just bought overwatch but i'm afraid to play it bc i don't want a bunch of people getting mad at me. do you have any advice?

my advice is to just keep playing! the only way to get better is to play as much as u can. if u have friends who play, its really helpful to join their games, because they can tell u which heroes are easiest and give some solid advice as ur going through. if ur really worried about being yelled at (which actually doesnt happen as much with this game as u may think), spend some time practicing against the AI ! its really helpful and i did it a few times to get my footing.

for reference, the easiest heroes to learn on (in my opinion) are:

-soldier 76 (offense; hes really well-rounded and can heal himself, so hes good starter dps and is always useful)

-mercy (support; all she can do is heal with left click and damage boost with right click, and u can fly between teammates to heal them as well as to get away from enemies, so u learn her in like 2 seconds. the only problem with her is that shes the best healer so shes always targeted, and u dont have much by the way of self-defense except for a gun that requires precision to be effective)

-junkrat (defense; no aim necessary, just shoot bombs in the general direction of the enemy, and try to die in the middle of them because u drop bombs when u die that can potentially kill them) 

-dva (tank; shes a bit of a mixed bag bc even tho shes technically a tank, shes really more of a tanky offense, so a lot of her abilities are dps based and she doesnt have much by way of defending the rest of the team. still she does a lot of damage, and if ur trying to get used to doing damage without dying all the time bc of low health, shes a good choice. plus her ult is universally terrifying)

-orisa (tank; if ur more interested in actually defending the team, orisa is a really good choice. shes a little more mobile and not as slow as someone like reinhardt, but she still has the shields and stuff that he has. she has way less health than other tanks tho, so u have to be careful to defend urself as well as ur team. i NEVER go tank, but in the rare situations when im forced to, i always pick orisa)

barring all that, my advice is to just keep trying stuff to see what u like! these are just some basic ideas, but that doesnt mean u cant try other stuff. u might find ur good at a hero that a lot of people are horrible at (like sombra LMAO), and practicing with real people is the best way to learn. good luck anon, i hope u have fun! 

[angry-healers]

This just happened to me a few hours ago (I had a nap) and I still burst out laughing everytime I think about it so here goes.

I'm not the healer in this story, although I kinda wish I was. Would have ripped that Tank a new one. Anyway.

So I am levelling SAM right now, because I want the achivement for getting all classes to 70 (and also, to know how they play to A) Help people, and B) Know what cards to give them as an AST).

65 dungeon, Bardam. Or however you spell it in english-

ANYWAY so we load in, it was the last run I needed for my level up to 67, so I was in full 65 dungeon gear.

Healer (AST) is 65, full Shisui gear and 270 augmented shire weapon.

Tank (WAR) is also 65, mix of 260 and Shisui gear.

Okay, no biggie.

Tank pulls big and eats damage like mad, DROPS TANK STANCE when things don't die in 2 seconds (a SAM and BLM as DPS does have some okay AoE, chill man). AST isn't able to DPS as they press every CD they have. We wipe at first pull because TANK STANCE IS FOR LOZERZ apparently.

Before everyone even fully respawned, Tank runs in again. Luckily, they only pull the first 3 mobs, so the healer is able to carry him through it (despite having barely any mana). While the 3 mobs were still alive, the healers Swiftcast > Protects us.

After the mobs die, Tank stops, and goes: "Protect"

I facepalm emote them.

"PROTECT"

Healer: "? it's on"

Tank: "oh whoops XDD"

Fast forward to the last boss.

Note that all the while, Tank dropped Tankstance after pulling, causing him to turn even more into paper.

So we wipe once, because Tank doesn't look away at the eyemark and kills me, while dying himself do to standing in AoE while still confused. Healer rezzes Tank, but they and the BLM die shortly after do to the Tank trying to get aggro back without Tankstance.

Try #2

Tank doesn't look away at eye AGAIN. They go for me again, stand in AoE due to confusion AGAIN and die AGAIN.

"HEALER WTF??"

So I decide to say something.

"Do mechanics and look away at the eye maybe > > It's not the healer's fault"

Tank gets rezzed (SAM tanking and Noct shields yaaay), vokes aggro off of me.

AND THEN. OK AND THEN! They get petty.

Just before the Tankbuster hits, they shirk me, causing me to have aggro and die from the tankbuster.

All I said was "Shirk. Cute <3"

Only problem: BLM had more aggro than them (BECAUSE NO TANK STANCE EVER NOPE MUH WAR DEEPS), and almost died as well.

Healer rezzed me, and we carried the babybubu tank through the last 10%, aggro all over the place.

Boss dies.

Tank goes "this was"

and probably wanted to write more about how much the healer sucked and blahblah 'I have a tiny dick and low self-esteem blahblah' mimimimi

Before there was more of them in chat, I said "Love tanks who cant tank and get petty like a 5 year old lol" and just left because I lost braincells just being near them.

TL;DR Tankstance is for losers, WARs are blue DPS and perfect, Tank ego is hilariously fragile, Tank too dumb for mechanics and decides to blame healer.

Most hilarious thing about all this?

Tank was from Odin, one of the elitist progamer high-end focused serves from the Chaos datacenter.

A true pro indeed.

And now, the weather.

[kuipernebula]

honestly i still want to know how dancer and chemist are gonna work in ffxiv because they’re clearly the best healer candidates

Dancer is probably getting folding fans as a weapon, because I can’t think of anything else good for them tbh. my best guess is that their single-target heals will allow a slightly-long-than-melee-range but still shorter than a WHM, SCH, or AST’s range? Meanwhile, their AoE heals will probably instead be focused around themselves. The most important thing is that them being TP-based means they might get used more in meta because they would benefit from Warrior’s Paeon along with melee DPS and Tanks...

For their unique mechanic... You could make a healing potency variant of Greased Lightning called Tempo and I don’t think anyone would bat an eye. But for a different one, it wouldn’t be hard to adapt/steal FFXI’s flourish system; you gain Tempo or Tension from pulling off certain combo finishers, and certain abilities require spending a stack of Tempo/Tension to be used. Making it kind of a combo of Greased Lightning and Aetherflow, I guess?

Chemist might get either some form of bag of chemicals, tongs (though that might be... weird), machine guns (FFX-2 Alchemist), or flails (FFV). Their AoE heals are probably placed AoE’s with medium range, while their single-target heals might be melee range like Dancer’s. (It’s hard to give someone a potion when they aren’t nearby.)

For their unique mechanic, I’d find a way to adapt Mix into a mechanic, which is a common idea when fan-making Chemist. Although I’d have it where you use certain weak Drinks gives you a [Color] Solution stack. Then you can use abilities (Tonics and Grenades?) that require different numbered combination of these stacks; I’d go with Red, Green, and Blue stacks as the only ones needed when juggling them for Mix mechanics.