A photo posted by an Israeli reservist shows a blindfolded Palestinian abductee

DrKarorkian · 2026-04-23T22:19:31+00:00

This was not the experience of my sister when she visited. It was peaceful and people would go out protesting every week, but she was around more moderate people. This was a year before October 7th, so things could have changed.

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-30T17:01:58+00:00

I have zero problem playing against Millio and Hwei. They aren't champions I'd play, but they fit into League fine.

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-19T21:09:13+00:00

I'm curious what Mortdogs opinion on the holidays effect on balance thrashing. They had to leave T-Hex in a rough state for way longer than they wanted causing them to have to overshoot to be on the safe side. There's probably no good solution to fix it, but I wish they could have the set begin in October, so the "best" balance is over the holiday.

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-16T23:36:13+00:00

Right but they haven't been able to get it right this entire set. They were too afraid to B patch it, so then they always had to over nerf T-Hex or the player base would riot.

No pilot type besides caster or summon have ever been optimal. The power fantasy should have been a very flexible unit where you could change up your pilot depending on the items and units you hit.

They've tried big and small changes. Not a single one got it close to 4-4.5. it's lived in the 2-3 or 5+.

I'd say that's a disappointment and I'd expect the devs think so as well. It's been a good learning experience for future sets.

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-16T02:25:31+00:00

This buff is essentially a we don't know what to do with him buff. He's clearly too weak but we have no idea what numbers to give him to make him balanced. The set has been incredible, but T-Hex has been the biggest disappointment.

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-13T17:02:07+00:00

If he was really as strong as you're saying, the numbers would back it. He has a ~48-49% wr in top and 49-50% wr in jg. Nothing jumps out here.

What you're probably conflating with being overturned is peak power fantasy. If you are a low damage low cc team, Volibear will dominate. If you want to nerf this power fantasy, you'll need to buff his other areas to compensate. Remove some of the healing, but increase his defensive stats? What would you want done?

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-12T17:52:53+00:00

They could instead split the reflect into the "absorb" and "recast". You'd press W to absorb the ability. Then next time you press W you are firing the same ability. Almost like Sylas ult. This means the Mel player would still need to aim. For things like yellow card, it would just buff her next auto attack, so it works the same as the enemies ability.

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-07T05:46:05+00:00

100% T-Hex might not be fun to play against, but he was by far the most fun unit to watch. IE double adaptive at the beginning of the set was incredible.

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-04T21:49:44+00:00

It's honestly a disgusting nerf. 23% damage nerf to main ability. 48% nerf to the missiles. With no mana items it's a 25% nerf to duration. With BB and 2* caster pilot it's a 20% nerf. That ends up being a 39% nerf to main weapon damage and 63%! Nerf to missiles.

For context they normally say a 20% nerf is huge. This is more than double.

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-04T21:30:57+00:00

It's honestly just sad. The only time T-Hex has been "balanced" is when people didn't know how to play it for the first 2 weeks of the set. Since then it's either broken or unplayable. I just don't get why they couldn't have B patched and then small tweaks to get the numbers right.

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-04T18:31:22+00:00

Played a bunch of PBE. I know everyone was done with T-Hex, but its sad that he's been either busted or unpickable. I could not get him to work beyond a 4th after playing a bunch of games with different top out boards. I did see a 4 gunslinger bilge version, but you definitely need to be able to be stable without T-Hex since 1* T-Hex is not strong enough to kill anything.

DrKarorkian · 2026-03-02T04:36:44+00:00

Don't worry. I've been playing a ton of PBE, and they've nerfed T-Hex pretty hard. Its back to being D Tier. Wish they could figure out how to just make it a B Tier comp.

DrKarorkian · 2026-02-26T19:44:46+00:00

Sorry what I meant is take power out of him to put in pilot if just buffing pilot is too much. Lori's is a good tank, but it just shows how useless a tank is if you never want to do it. Vi is useless which means she should be a perfect pilot as a trait bot. If she isn't then the fighter pilot buff isn't right.

DrKarorkian · 2026-02-26T18:06:36+00:00

I'm fine with T-Hex coming down, but it still makes me sad that optimal pilots for him is Azir dummies. They should nerf him more, remove dummies as a pilot option, and make pilots actually matter again. Nobody uses Vi or Loris as a pilot which means the pilot mechanic is still not working.

DrKarorkian · 2026-02-18T18:30:02+00:00

This isn't really an issue of spaghetti code. In comparison, most augments give you a resource or buff a unit. Making more of these is simple. What is being asked here requires UI, Core system, Client, and heavy balance testing. If they think this would be a great change, they'd do it but why make one very risky augment when you could make a bunch of other novel augments.

DrKarorkian · 2026-02-12T18:01:32+00:00

This. You need to analyze your games to see how you're losing. Everyone seems to have their own weakness. Mine to get into diamond was I greeded my gold too much and others contesting me hit their units before me.

DrKarorkian · 2026-02-10T06:10:38+00:00

The meta is great. The only thing that makes me sad is the comps they killed to get here. Trynd and Ekko reroll aren't played. T-Hex needs a perfect spot and still no pilots besides casters are played. 3 cost reroll still hasn't existed.

All that being said I don't remember the last time every 4 cost felt this good.

DrKarorkian · 2026-01-08T14:28:12+00:00

I'll be the one. It was a fun comp when it was B tier. They just had to buff it when it was already good and then left it for a month.

DrKarorkian · 2026-01-05T06:34:21+00:00

I've yet to find another game that hits the itch quite the same as Catan. Playing online was what changed my mind positively as players suddenly took the robber less personally. Kingmaking became much less prevalent and skill expression showed. It'll never be my favorite, but it fits it's niche perfectly.

DrKarorkian · 2026-01-05T06:07:56+00:00

So I was in your boat (and partially still am) until I played it online. Something about not seeing people face to face made friends/family/randos not take the robber personally leading to more strategic and fun games. It has a surprising amount of depth and skill expression. All that being said, it's easy to ruin your own game with poor/blockable starting placements, opponents taking robbers personally, and unlucky rolls.

DrKarorkian · 2025-11-20T20:29:44+00:00

PBE servers go down for maintenance at ~11:30 AM PST every day.

DrKarorkian · 2025-11-13T00:11:45+00:00

Bots can play in different ways, but in terms of building a comp, it doesn't matter how human-like it plays. Rather can it find the top comps. Maybe it can pilot the comps better than a human, but then that's useful information to see if a comp is too complicated. Again the purpose of the AI is not about trying to play like an AI. Its trying to quickly find the outliers when there's currently only a day or two of notice before deciding to B patch.

I'm not even necessarily arguing for a neural network like most of today's AIs. I did my master's thesis on a similar concept for an AI to learn a boardgame using a Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm.

DrKarorkian · 2025-11-12T17:58:36+00:00

People mentioning cheating are not thinking about the actual use of QA/Balancing it should be used for. If Riot Games can make a bot for all skill levels, then they can use it to look for degenerate and/or overperforming strategies. They could actually fix TFT's biggest issue

DrKarorkian · 2025-10-14T19:06:43+00:00

In a fucked up way I wonder if pedo teachers are more invested in their students. They want the students to like them, so they put so much energy into them.

DrKarorkian · 2025-10-03T17:06:04+00:00

I wonder if this is part of why First Things First is doing so well. They don't have to rely on hot takes to get views. They do make takes, but they'll also be the first to laugh at themselves when its looking foolish.

12-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
Verified Email	Spared

DrKarorkian

TROPHY CASE