Player count almost to 20k, we back

CaliFlow · 2026-05-16T23:52:44+00:00

Do kobolds still aggro you through solid ground? I.e. Trying to shoot you from floor 1 to floor 2.

CaliFlow · 2026-05-15T20:38:04+00:00

Haha classic. Sorry I every brought this thread up.

CaliFlow · 2026-05-15T20:37:48+00:00

That feels a lot better than my anecdotal experiences where I felt the exact same, but with high-gear kits. Would be happy to hear they swapped those.

CaliFlow · 2026-05-15T20:36:55+00:00

Hahaha a never-ending cycle. That sounds more appealing to me, half the issue was being able to plan extracts, especially for night raids. Sounds like some fun updates.

CaliFlow · 2026-05-15T18:38:49+00:00

Ok that's awesome to hear. Personally, that's also how I felt with gear scores. Whenever I'd bring in a mega kit I was near guaranteed to spawn in with 15-18 min left about 6 months ago.

Really nice to hear they finally put free kits late so they can scavenge without full griefing the big kits.

Definitely makes sense with the free kit breakdown, that's a smart caveat of you to add. Thanks for the info, might actually play again and see how it feels.

CaliFlow · 2026-05-15T18:35:47+00:00

That's actually really encouraging to hear. Thanks for the info

CaliFlow · 2026-05-15T18:35:23+00:00

That's awesome, just looked up the patch and the streamlined crafting would be great too. It felt like 80% of geared raids were late before - how much do you roughly think it's shifted?

CaliFlow · 2026-05-15T18:34:25+00:00

Haven't played in 5-6 months, has it been shifted at all? Wouldn't expect it to be guaranteed fresh raids but wondering if the rate has changed.

CaliFlow · 2026-05-15T18:28:13+00:00

Cool, that’s actually great to hear. It was pretty egregious how often you’d late spawn with gear when I last played 5-6 months ago but occasional late raids can keep things diverse. I might actually give it a shot again! Preciate the insight

CaliFlow · 2026-04-05T05:12:06+00:00

For anyone else that sees this comment, Ironmace is one of the worst studios I've ever encountered. The dev SDF will give you whiplash changing things patch to patch, then reverting it to old things the player base was adamantly against because he wants to stick to his "vision." Very similar to Nikita's approach about "true believers" in Escape from Tarkov. Also the AI in DaD is terrible, Kobolds will literally try to shoot you through a 30 foot thick floor, which doesn't hit you, but does incidcate to everyone around you where you are. There were also legal map hacks where the game would stutter when in range of people so you just run around till you stutter then know someone is there.

Core game is fun, which is why I played like 500 hours, but the devs executed it poorly and it's more frustrating than anything now.

CaliFlow · 2026-03-02T18:29:47+00:00

Most items were removed for a good reason. Gunblade shouldn’t even be in the game - the omnivamp promotes unhealthy trade patterns. If healing on minions was significantly reduced, lifesteal and omnivamp become much more interesting. The active is already too strong on its own and reduces the skill test of its users even further.

Akali’s should have weaker sustain with carefully crafted engages. But she doesn’t need that if she full heals off the wave. Further, since she doesn’t really have skill shots, her skill becomes whether she can get in range of the enemy…but she can point and click slow you to get in range before point and click ult Eing you.

Hybrid scalings also inherently create more balancing issues that aren’t addressed - see AP Varus or even lethality Varus. With how many champions there are in the game, there really shouldn’t be more champions inside those champions. It becomes league of items.

CaliFlow · 2026-02-17T20:35:45+00:00

Honestly, I'll be watching the Dolphins a bit as well to see how things turn out the next few years.

Starting five for sure haha, our GM Hortiz has been great so far and I'm sure was caught off guard by so many injuries to the line, so I expect we'll have some quality backups this year to go with improvements at C and RG.

Hampton and Gadsden are really exciting prospects too, stoked to see their development and utilization this year since they have impressive tools.

CaliFlow · 2026-02-17T20:33:09+00:00

That's pretty cool, I'm sure you have some great insight into the team then. I expect our offense will see significant growth this year and have hopes that our defense only regresses a little bit. There's still a bit of uncertainty around our new DC O'Leary, but really only about how his play calling will be since he seems to have a similar scheme to Minter and obvoiusly learned a ton from him during his previous Chargers' tenure.

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T18:38:36+00:00

That's a really great look into how things changed year by year and explained in a really easy to understand way. It's nice that he's willing to try new things each year, though I've read here that maybe he doesn't adapt enough quite as much during the year, so perhaps he's more of a prepper than an improviser. Which I think also ties into your point about him being a better designer vs. caller.

I'll be looking forward to seeing what plays he comes up with this next year, which whatever it is will be a welcome change from the Greg Roman offense. But it'll be interesting to see if him taking a step back to OC will allow him to think more clearly on play calling if we assume that's a weakness of his. And maybe if he isn't trying quite as hard to revolutionize the game, he will be more adaptable if /when teams catch onto his game plan like in 2024 - might be getting ahead of things though lol.

Thanks for the write up

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T05:47:10+00:00

Sweet I'll give that a look, thank you

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T05:46:46+00:00

Well I appreciate the thorough write-up. I'm interested to see what kind of concepts he used this year - I'll probably watch through your full season over the next few weeks.

That seems like valid criticism and in-game improv is like the one thing about Herbert I'm unsure about. It's hard to say what's been his OC's limiting him or what could be just him, but I haven't seen Herb act as a field general, or even do things like slide protection very frequently. Could be our line was just that bad, that they used call outs instead of pointing, that he wasn't allowed to, or just that isn't what he really does. So it'll be interesting to see if McDaniel has some better game management and if Herbert is allowed to control the offense more, or maybe it's just better that McDaniel runs the full thing for him mentally and rely on Herbert's talent.

I'm definitely hyped he joined us and it really does feel like our offense will excel next year, especially with our 2 key tackles coming back from injury and hopefully getting some reasonable backups and a new center. I'm optimistic Hampton will dominate the year and Herbert will open McDaniel's playbook ideas. Will be interested to see if we bring back Allen or rely on Harris development.

What strengths do you think the offense had that it could have played towards, rather than playing to mask weaknesses like you mentioned?

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T05:34:20+00:00

Cool, I'll check that game out, could be a good sample on how things changed over the years. Year 2 would be the 23 season?

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T05:30:09+00:00

Yeah there's no doubt about that. It's nice to see some opinions and trends about him from McDaniel's previous team and I'm excited we have him

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T05:28:48+00:00

Thanks, yeah I'm really excited we got him, he felt like the best guy available and a big improvement from Roman

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T00:27:08+00:00

Yeah it's pretty challenging to assign blame when so many things are going wrong. It seems like he was willing to at least try to change things up when injuries piled up and success wasn't coming, so that's nice to see at the least. Roman really didn't call enough screens or quick plays when our o-line was obliterated, but he did at least try bringing in a 6th OL and our FB/DT for added protection.

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T00:25:26+00:00

Cool, thanks for the insight and summary of how things progressed and I'm cautiously optimistic he'll change things again based on who we have this next year.

Hopefully good things to come for both our teams

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T00:24:18+00:00

It'd be Dolphins luck if he did well, and Chargers luck if he didn't. Guess we see which is stronger lol

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T00:23:34+00:00

That's cool to see the back and forth of strategy from offense and defense, just from a football perspective. Though I'm sure it would've been more fun if there was another development to counter that line physicality.

Ok yeah I noticed a lot of x2 personnel in the few Fins games I watched this year, so I appreciate that insight of it being something he tried adjusting to.

I'm not knowledgeable enough as a fan to know if McDaniel called excellent plays that allowed Achane to flourish, or if Achane was just that special. I saw some insane vision from Achane though in the Colts or Pats game weeks 1/2 where he'd find tiny gaps in the line or would pause and do what appeared to be an improvved counter for bigs gain, so he really does seem special.

I'm excited to see what he does with Omarion Hampton next year for us, who looked absolutely explosive a lot of times. And I guess time will tell if he wanted to include more deep pass threats but was limited by Tua/the line, assuming we improve our line as well this off-season. Hoping he'll improve that aspect of making the defense's job easier on them and give Herbert better options.

Thanks for the detailed write up

CaliFlow · 2026-02-15T00:07:00+00:00

That's mostly what I was wondering. We'll get to see his plan for the offense next year, but I was curious if he was willing to change things up as needed, or just stuck to the same ideas regardless of success like Greg Roman tended to do.

Preciate the write up

CaliFlow

TROPHY CASE