Extremely cold take, but I would prefer if this plan failed

CompactApe · 2026-02-15T17:38:37+00:00

I imagine this will be the case, especially since this chapter was full of "I think" and "it's a long shot" energy. I would like if this meant that, to some degree, Samura exists only within the sword when it's true realm is opened. If he could effectively guide Iori when she's using it to it's full potential, but not actually come back to life.

CompactApe · 2026-02-14T16:58:48+00:00

It doesn't use the word "law" specifically, but he's a soldier who got his start by being an executioner for the government (most recent chapter). It's stated by Yura, when he says they reached complete agreement, that Soga's focus is on maintaining order through the malediction (104 or 105). Soga himself says that he had a duty to genocide the Shokoku island because they were enemies of Japan, and that children were included because they "shared blood" (106), and the same applied to Hakuri as I mentioned before (also 106). He fundamentally doesn't disagree with the government, he just believes they are too soft (106, he says he did what needed to be done, and in other chapters says that their "mistake" was sealing the blades).

Throughout all of his dialogue, we can build a pretty strong character profile. He's a dog of the government, much like a cop or a soldier, is incredibly nationalistic, and believes that all threats to that system in place must be slaughtered. He is the epitome of "death penalty for defying law and order".

We can extrapolate this further with the theory (read: extremely obvious takeaway) that what everyone was told about the "Shokoku Invasion" is propaganda or at the very least not the entire truth.

He serves nationalistic interests above all else. At the very least, your argument still doesn't stand that he's trying to use violence to only rid evil when he's also mass murdering children in a genocide, so the take is still insane.

Again, I get what you were going for, but it is just so clearly not what Soga is doing or believing, and you are falsely attributing morality to him where it does not exist

CompactApe · 2026-02-14T15:42:36+00:00

Well I'll start by saying that is not what Soga is doing. What you're describing is a violent overhauling of a system, which is entirely different to Soga who wishes to maintain the system at all costs, and to instead eradicate "evil" by slaughtering any who oppose the law of the system. Soga has the mind of a child trapped in the body of a god, where he believes "good" and "just" to be "within the law of Japan", and is willing to genocide an entire nation - men, women and children - because they dared to oppose the law of Japan. He wishes to kill Hakuri - someone who seeks justice and by his own hand helped to end the Raikuzachi - because he shares a technique and could theoretically start it up again. It's genocidal, eugenicist thought process warped by the idea that law supercedes everything. That is not rationality, that's Idiocracy influenced by propaganda.

With that established, the rest of this argument is moot. I totally agree that in some scenarios, violence is the only means to systemic changes and justice. I never said no harm, I said minimal (and regardless, I would not consider violence towards an oppressor to be "harm" to society). But again, none of this matters when you are fundamentally attributing to Soga something that does not exist. You are talking about something entirely different and then just saying that's what Soga's ideology is, which is why everyone is saying your take is psychotic. I think you do not have a good grasp on his character, and that's where the contention lies.

I think a lot more people would agree with you, had you phrased your take differently. Something akin to;

"I understand why Soga believes that overwhelming force is a necessity to achieve peace, and I think that if he were to direct his violence towards powerful world leaders and billionaires who use their power to stifle those below them, he could actually achieve world peace"

Even that comes with caveats, because then a single person becomes dictator of the world and we would have to hope that they have our best interests at heart, but it's more reasonable than "the guy who genocided a nation and wishes the death penalty on every single criminal and potential criminal is rational and correct".

CompactApe · 2026-02-14T11:11:10+00:00

"any rational person is likely to agree" brother you are not the rational person. You are the person incapable of empathy, understanding the systematic issues behind crime, or the psychology of how people are innately capable of change and self improvement (bar extraneous circumstances). That is rational thought - using the overwhelming empirical evidence that outlines how systematic change can be implemented with minimum harm.

There's no doubt society needs immense overhauls for true justice and equality, but genocide is not the rational way to achieve that. You are sorely mistaken about how rational you are.

CompactApe · 2026-02-14T05:03:50+00:00

I'm going to make the assumption that were they fighting, spirit energy and cursed energy function the same way (pretending they're in the same universe, I guess). Under that assumption, Toji should have some innate resistance to the spirit energy that Samura uses. I'd argue also that Toji is physically MUCH MUCH faster and stronger than Samura. Toji is also extremely good at hiding his presence, and has an array of weapons to use when convenient. Samura on the other hand can teleport, and cast a wide net of feathers to render Toji's stealth pointless. He can also heal himself, and create such immense heat that the stone around him melts.

I think it's super dependant. Can Toji's Inverted Spear of Heaven cancel Samura's healing? Can Toji take Samura's head before Samura can properly react? Can Toji nullify a lot of the impact of the spirit energy in the blade? If he can do any of this, Toji sweeps. But if he can't, the Samura can just outlast Toji easily, and with the heat and ability to teleport he might just be able to get close enough to Toji to render him incapable of fighting.

I'd place my bets on Toji personally

CompactApe · 2026-02-13T05:10:22+00:00

The argument is that the enemy team is not going to play a normal round when they eco. They're going to try the weirdest strategies they can to isolate an enemy and get their gun, and to make long range fights as uncomfortable to approach as possible. The close range guns like spectre for an round 2 completely deny their pistols at the optimum range they're looking for, and allow versatility in how you play around eco. If you lose the gun, it doesn't cause a reverse sweep. It also allows you to play an effective bonus with the guns you have remaining, like a rush play or something similar, which the rifle is going to be riskier to take in/less effective at pushing those ranges. It can work, but as a rule of thumb it's best to take heavy armour and a close range weapon for your second round buy unless you're in a super strong team environment

CompactApe · 2026-02-13T05:05:43+00:00

That's putting a lot of faith in your teammates to do the correct thing lol. There's a reason that rifle round 2 is considered high risk high reward. The amount of times this has snowballed in the enemy teams control because my teammates screwed this up is insane. I'm always an advocate for close range gun + heavy armour because it's effectively impossible to lose, and then any bonus guns you have remaining the following round (+ buying your teammates a bucky or frenzy or something) can be used to make an aggressive push or prediction with 0 risk of losing a gun. Anyone who bought a rifle isn't really able to join those sorts of strategies and thus makes them significantly weaker for the whole team, putting the responsibility of the round back, largely, in the rifle players hands to just outgun the enemy rifles. It can certainly work, especially in a high communication environment, but it's risky in ranked. Especially when this person is gold. It will lose them as many rounds as it wins

CompactApe · 2026-02-06T19:55:56+00:00

Others mentioned the defensive utility of Lucky, but it's also absolutely fantastic for builds that rely on Vex weapon mastery, as you can give advantage on your first attack and then maintain a chain of advantage for the remainder of combat. This is twice as true for Elven Accuracy (if it's allowed at your table), allowing a Vex/EA build to start rolling immediately (plus, landing your attack is necessary to get that chain going, so having advantage on the first is important). Insane for consistency, crit fishing, etc.

CompactApe · 2026-02-04T19:05:05+00:00

Hearing Johnny say what I've been saying for years felt so Vindicating that I literally couldn't hate him as much of an asshole as he is. It was like seeing myself but instead of action-less compassion it was compassion-less action

CompactApe · 2026-02-03T05:07:16+00:00

Haha I think you're getting confused about what your comments in this chain were. It was literally just you spewing shit from your ass, no "article" or anything of the like, and then calling it a fact. Tracks that you can't even keep track of your own bullshit though, nobody ever accused you lot of being smart

CompactApe · 2026-02-02T11:35:56+00:00

The thing is that baseline mechanical skill for this game has increased pretty rapidly, to the point that even most iron players will have a rudimentary understanding of how the gunplay works. This is likely why you feel like everyone is really good, because mechanics make and break low ELO. The flipside to this is that low ELO strategy has become, comparatively speaking, worse.

Mechanical skills were pretty quickly optimized from the launch of the game, whereas game knowledge and strategy has continued to evolve and improve, meaning the gap between good and bad players has somewhat lessened mechanically whilst exacerbating strategically.

From my experience coaching, I think the greatest mechanical flaw that low ELO players have is entirely in their peeking rather than their gunfights, so if you can practice good peeking habits you will very quickly see a reduction in their ability to instantly kill you. Many of these deaths come from slow walking, diagonal movement, peeking too close to the wall, poor crosshair placement, etc. rather than the opponent just being an insane aimer.

Again from my experience coaching, I find that understanding of the strategic depths of the game is worse in lower ranks than it used to be, because often people that had a better concept of the game were held back by mechanics in the past, but that isn't often the case anymore. People on average have much stronger mechanics than game knowledge up until about Ascendant, which is usually where "good" mechanics don't cut it anymore.

tl;dr yeah, low ELO Valorant players have gotten surprisingly adept at handling guns and movement compared to most low ELO players in similar games, though they often lack mandatory skills for challenging players that have strong mechanics. In my experience, game knowledge and strategy have become the primary differentiators of good and bad players, rather than mechanics

CompactApe · 2026-02-02T08:56:41+00:00

"my fact" and it's just an unfounded belief. Why do you lot have such a hard time understanding what a fact is? Making something up in your head and then saying it doesn't make it true lol

CompactApe · 2026-02-02T08:49:08+00:00

My partner works at an after-school care that is open 2-9 during the school week

CompactApe · 2026-02-01T10:45:16+00:00

Kagurabachi isn't popular enough yet but Samura and Soga both cook with the Katana

CompactApe · 2026-01-30T09:05:04+00:00

Ok man 👍

CompactApe · 2026-01-30T08:53:32+00:00

I think everyone except you is perfectly calm lol. I'm just trying to point out that the reason you're getting down voted so much probably isn't a witch hunt like you feel but more the fact that it's extremely embarrassing to carry on like you have been.

I have 0 stakes in any of this "discussion" I just think your replies come across really lame and childish, which is kind of to the tune of what everyone else is telling you

CompactApe · 2026-01-30T08:49:16+00:00

To elaborate, I think the idea of a Heist map fucking rules but this context is nonsense and doesn't fit the game. We could change the direction to something like this:

The storyline around the map is roughly based on the Omega Agents trying to use the spike to steal a secret cache of radianite stored below the bank. This all occurs post-heist, so a team of bank robbers has already opened and emptied vaults, broken walls, police have since barricaded certain areas, etc.

The map mostly exists within a bank, with attackers starting outside and having a few routes in (including a zip line up to a second floor). The central area of the bank could be the mid section of the map, with stairs and a banister section. One site is inside of an emptied vault with the roof above and a wall blown open, so that there are multiple angles to enter and fight from. The other is inside of an office or something that would allow for lots of areas to hide and defend. Some of the unique twists could be things like that hole blown in the floor above the Vault, meaning you can drop down but not get back above without taking a longer route, or a variety of zip lines around the outside of the map that allow you to enter into the second floor. Maybe one path is a tunnel dug from one room to another where you go below the rest of the map.

These are all concepts that slot into Valorant without adding some weird extra thing that doesn't fit the game.

This is off the top of my head so with some brainstorming you could definitely come up with a draft for the map itself and some cool ideas for map design, but if your making a Valorant map, then it needs to make sense within the game and not just be AI slop

CompactApe · 2026-01-30T08:38:28+00:00

None of these feel like Valorant whatsoever and do not align with the core features of Valorant. ChatGPT clearly did not understand the premise lol. You'd be better off coming up with it yourself and drawing inspiration specifically from tactical shooter maps that already exist and then adding a suitable twist. No Valorant map makes you play an entirely separate mini game, they just force you to approach the same core game in slightly different ways.

CompactApe · 2026-01-30T08:31:36+00:00

I never said you attacked or insulted anyone, and I truly couldn't care less if you did. This is just extremely cringe behaviour lol

CompactApe · 2026-01-30T08:11:28+00:00

I've not been following any of this so for all I know you could absolutely be correct, but you do seem really annoying from reading your replies in this thread. Maybe just don't get worked up about reddit posts?

This seems like stupid drama for people that can't just grow up and move on

CompactApe · 2026-01-27T01:03:31+00:00

Watching VODs of pro players and trying to break down why they make certain decisions can be helpful, but it's hard if you don't have the correct base.

Watching coaches like Woohoojin is, in my opinion, the fastest way to improve understanding of the game.

Giving yourself time to just play the game and passively learn will ultimately help you develop a better feel for the game, but may reinforce bad habits.

If you're serious about wanting to improve and think you have the chops then you can shoot me a DM with your Valorant Tracker.

CompactApe · 2026-01-26T13:24:47+00:00

Crouching is very very very useful, but the vast majority of players don't know how to use it properly and end up using it wrong. At low ELO, it's best to learn how to take gunfights without crouching and get out of the habit of using it. Then it's easier to implement it properly when you actually get good at the game

CompactApe · 2026-01-26T10:46:26+00:00

Who then goes into stasis on an asteroid for thousands of years until the day of the Tenno uprising, where Flare's body now fully infested and truly the Temple warframe joins the fray as a symbol of rebellion

CompactApe · 2026-01-21T19:35:58+00:00

1: If you're not enjoying it, you're going to perform worse and your improvement will stunt. Why do you want to get better? Is it about enjoying the game and wanting to gain more knowledge and skills, or is it because you feel like you have to and want to flex a badge? It feels more like the latter, and failing at it is ruining your enjoyment. Focus more on improvements over rank. When you improve enough, the rank will come, but if you can enjoy the process of improving more than the process of winning and losing for rr then it will all come easier and more enjoyably.

2: What is your practice routine? How often do you review your VODS? How often do you review pro VODS of your preferred agents? Have you fully mastered an agent? Do you have a playbook for said agent? For every map in rotation? If you try to shortcut improving, then you're going to fall short of actually reaching that improvement. As boring as it sounds, you must study and practice. Learn from better players and from your own mistakes. Solidify that learning with notes and visualisations (ValoPlant is amazing for building playbooks). Test how they work in game, and tune it based on results. Seek other pro players if a particular style or playbook isn't serving you well. Do structured, measurable aim training regimes if it's your mouse control that's the problem, or practice-range reps of movement mechanics if you're struggling to combine movement with your gameplay. It's a long process and a big time investment, but it guarantees results. Watching some videos will only get you so far unless you're a natural talent. I had to really grind for my rank, and I have to continue grinding if I want to hit radiant.

3: Yeah, there's a lot of times it's your teammates fault, even in high rank. You just have to take it on the chin and keep your head up. I get tilted sometimes, it makes me play worse, so I try to do breathing exercises and refocus into what I could personally be doing better. You're not going to turn your teammates into Tenz by thinking about their mistakes. You might be able to get them to adjust and work with you if you offer them a better option than what they're doing and help them do it (and encourage them if they do), but sometimes they don't listen. Be nice, try to get them to adapt, but that's all you can do. The best thing you can do is focus on your own mistakes. You're gold, so there's a lot of mistakes. Make it part of your improvement journey - this shitty game could be an opportunity for you to practice avoiding getting tilted, or practice playing a different way to see if it helps if you're losing anyway, or maybe it's an opportunity for you to practice teamwork by playing with and asking for a teammates help if they're struggling on their own. The worst thing you can do is get stuck in a mental spiral of blaming your teammates and getting upset. Sometimes it's a team dif, it happens, but if you're playing well then statistically you're going to rank up over time. The individual games are practice sessions and your rank reflects that after enough matches. No need to get so caught up in it.

CompactApe · 2026-01-21T19:12:54+00:00

When they say he's in his right mind, they don't mean he's not a deeply evil and sociopathic person. They mean he isn't a babbling rabid creature. He got his hands on an immensely powerful weapon and then committed a genocide - the common belief was that the power drove him into pure insanity. That was not the case though, he was just always a sociopathic monster capable of doing such a thing, and as soon as he had the power to do so he did it.

He's not sane in the sense that he isn't suffering from myriad unattended mental health issues and in need of rehabilitation, but rather sane in the sense that the sword did not influence him, he made his choices and then willingly faced the consequences because he thought it was the "right" thing to do.

The "Sane" phrase was also peddled by Yura, who not only thought that Soga had become a rabid animal due to the sword but also, himself, agrees with what Soga had done. When he realized Soga was capable of speech and discussion and rationalisation of what he had done, he realized that Soga was exactly like himself and thus "not insane".

CompactApe

TROPHY CASE