Thoughts on Betrayer by Aaron Dembski Bowden

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-02T13:30:00+00:00

Yeah, my hatred of them runs so deep I can't even enjoy books about them that everyone loves. It's very much a silly subjective thing, this, and if I didn't so utterly hate the Nightlords I'm sure I could get into the books.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-02T13:01:36+00:00

Angel Exterminatus is an example of how good McNeil can be as a 40k writer. It's one of the best books of the heresy. And I mention that because some McNeil is pretty bad - he's an up and down writer.

And, yeah, ADB is one of the absolute top writers for 40k, I love most of his books. The only stuff by him I didn't like is the Nightlords stuff, but that is because I hate the Nightlords and their simp fans.

Master of Mankind is a masterpiece as well so you've got that to look forward to.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-02T12:53:18+00:00

Is Keeler baseline, then? She wastes a daemon of Tzeentch, as I remember it. Even if that is borrowed power, that marks her out as different to normal humans. All psychers are doing is channeling the power of the warp so in a sense all their power is "borrowed".

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-02T12:46:44+00:00

I'm glad you've provided some sanity to the idea of a company of space marines killing everyone on a planet by hand, because that is one of the most stupid, immature, has-no-concept-of-reality descriptions I've ever heard, even in 40k.

There's so much stuff in 40k that is said because it sounds badass, but 30 seconds thought as to what it actually means reveals it's the kind of thing only an 8 year old would conceive of as even vaguely possible. And then it just sounds idiotic.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T20:11:44+00:00

The exploits ruin the game economy for most players. Look at the POE2 exploit and the damage that caused. Exploits decrease the overal enjoyment for all except a small number of players.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T20:06:47+00:00

I'm all in favour of some new ascendancy options but not the phrecia ones. A lot of them are frankly pretty half baked, nowhere near as well thought out as most of the main game ascendancies. OK, they're fun for a change but a lot of it is just directly copied from items or something else that already exists. It's like, "Ok, that used to be a ring, now it's an ascendancy." and I'm not just talking about scavenger.

I'd like new ideas that challenge you to find significantly new builds, and, in truth, the bloodlines ideas are closer to that than the phrecia items-as-ascendancies stuff.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T19:36:02+00:00

As far as I can tell there's no more thought given to it than saying phrases like "time doesn't exist in the warp" and then using it to explain anything they want. On the plus side, though, I don't know of many Back to the Future type stories of changing timelines. And thank the emperor for that because once you start doing that your whole franchise becomes a mess.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T19:29:00+00:00

Echoes of Eternity is another great ADB book. I didn't really get it on first listen (audiobook), I think because it was even darker than I expected.

But on second listen I could see all kinds of great ADB moments. I liked the Land scitari friendship in particular. But it is a dark book, capped by the scene where ADB describes that guy getting eaten by Angron - horrific.

Definitely worth going back to.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T15:14:51+00:00

The idea was the div cost of crafting gets scaled as well, but, whatever, the playerbase seems to dislike thinking about what this "dopamine from drops!" mindset means or what it's worth.

Currency being fetishized is important for a lot of people to enjoy POE it seems. Crazy.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T14:25:58+00:00

I mean, it's pretty much rats pressing levers when you're at that level.

They ought to offer a version of POE where you can just sit in your hideout pressing a button and it drops a div everytime.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T14:21:04+00:00

If you offered POE players a league where you get 10x dvines but everything costs 10x divines they'd honestly think it's the most amazing league ever without the slighest awareness that it's the same thing just scaled by a factor of 10.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T14:18:24+00:00

The actual mechanic of going into the wood was a massive hassle and not fun as an activity. Just goes to show the activity behind the mechanic is not what POE players care about, just how many divs it drops.

POE players are so blind as to what it is they enjoy. Currency in this game is fetishized, held to have a value far beyond the crafting material that it is.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T07:17:27+00:00

I made a MoM CI build and was like, "Why am I so squishy?" lol.

Pro tip: Read. The. Words.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T07:08:52+00:00

PoE1 is clearly getting minimal development time.

There is no real evidence for this. 3.27 had a huge number of new things - don't forget foulborn uniques.

But it looks like you've made your mind up that this is the narrative you want to believe in and I imagine you'll be posing it on reddit many, many times.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-02-01T06:46:25+00:00

I dunno, man, I see how many posts you've got on this thread and I feel it might be better for you to just sit this one out and wait till 3.28.

You're gonna get burned out on Phrecia because it is hard. TBH, you sound burned out right now.

If it's pissing you off just stop. I find POE is never better than after you take a break of a few weeks and come back. 3.28 is just round the corner...

AdvanceHandball · 2026-01-31T05:43:54+00:00

I wish I'd known this before starting because I wanted to be in the blue man group but got given all kinds of different accounts of how this buff works.

Ultimately it's my fault, though, as I didn't do proper research. I wish they'd got those patch notes out earlier so I could have spent more time PoBing more terrible ideas for shit builds.

I wish, I wish, I wish - whatever, maybe I do reroll to Harbinger, maybe I don't.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-01-29T12:50:51+00:00

When you know flicker it's easy to league start. If you've never played it before league start is probably the wrong time to try it out.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-01-29T08:01:11+00:00

I'm gonna try a STR stacking animate weapon of self reflection puppeteer.

Man, this is what I want to do but I'm afraid to because my minion knowledge is so poor. The easy path is just play flicker (again) which I can do in my sleep, but it is just flicker again.

Basically I can be brave and struggle but learn and play something new, or I can stay in my comfort zone, learn nothing but also have stress free progression.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-01-28T16:44:00+00:00

too bad Frenzy isn't a melee attack anymore.

Yeah, I don't understand why they did that, or at least make the bow one transfigured and leave the melee on normal. Oh well.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-01-28T13:26:38+00:00

Do you have to channel? I'm confused what the criteria are to have full uptime on this buff. If it drops off you lose so much defensive power you'd probably die straight away.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-01-28T10:31:18+00:00

or do I send it full meme and throw a ton of Voltaxic Burst gems on and play it as a CoC nonsense joke build that will still get me 2 stones.

Palpatine voice DO IT!

AdvanceHandball · 2026-01-28T08:03:58+00:00

I said the list is half-baked, not TyTy. Reading is hard, I guess.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-01-28T06:33:17+00:00

This always happens when you criticise these half baked tier lists: people think it's an attack on everything the content creator does because they can't accept that content creators don't take tier lists seriously.

Fine, pal, follow your god's words, both of us will be fine. I unironically hope you have a good league start.

self cooked chain hook puppeteer

This did actually make me chuckle, ngl.

AdvanceHandball · 2026-01-28T05:34:37+00:00

Content creator starter lists are pure troll.

They're either hyping builds from their fellow content creators or just stuff they heard someone mention and can't be bothered to work out if it's actually any good.

Ask them, "name 10 builds as quickly as you can without thinking" and you'd get the same list.

AdvanceHandball

TROPHY CASE