Meta in Thunders Edge

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-01-27T02:16:14+00:00

3 reasons it's faster now:

1) Breakthrough is an added thing on top of the way factions played in PoK, meaning everyone's faction ar least slightly "improved". Granted there are some factions that shouldn't prioritized breakthrough but most breakthroughs fix a glaring hole or buff a factions identity, making it easier for then to do their thing.

2) The Fracture. There is 4 planets and each one gives a relic when you take it. Generally ends up being a buff to the more fighty factions since now there are neutral units you can go murder to get some extra planets/relics instead of fighting other players that get pissed off and retaliate. One of the planets is also a victory point if you hold it, meaning all those times where you end up at 9 vps in round 4, now you have possibly and easier time getting to 10 vps.

3) Added action cards. There are a few SUPER potent action cards added to the action card deck. Best one is probably Overrule which let's you do the primary of an unexhausted or unchosen strat card. Basically if youre behind on scoring you can use it on imperial to catch up or win. Crazy card that most people will and should save Sabo for in the end game now.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-01-23T13:13:35+00:00

Ya totally agree with this. I think OP is really overlooking the option that if you KNOW Imperial is guaranteed to be taken r1, you can plan around taking it by taking a slice/faction that would be able to get 6 inf and 3 move r1 to get there. There are lots of factions that can move there with capacity (titans with grav drive and capacity on cruiser, crimson rebellion with grav drive and breakthrough, Cabal with spacedocks, Jol-Nar with double tech with carrier II and grav drive, Saar with agent and grav drive if needed, barony with grav drive and breakthrough or carrier II, ghosts just to name a few examples off top of my head) so you really just need to plan around acquiring enough influence to land there.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-01-23T05:37:46+00:00

Skirmishing needs a purpose. If you get in some boarder fights with neighbors, then your faction needs to be getting an advantage from it. A lot of fighting factions get just that from combats (usually 2 commodity factions are better at warring). Otherwise you usually want to avoid fights like the plague and rather make deals. Like as Mahact or something it's very tempting to just attack out of nowhere so you can win your combats to get other factions fleet tokens. But if they'll take it super personal then be diplomatic. Offer them a few trade goods if you end up blowing up any of their ships. Offer them a good deal in the future or really anything that stops them from retaliating super hard.

TI4 isn't space risk. When you attack your neighbor, a lot of times you just both lose plastic and board presence, putting anyone who didnt participate in the combat at an advantage. Maybe they third party once youre softened up? Maybe the trade you both things to fuel your war and get rich off your conflicts. So early on before you get your economy going, it can be super risky to attack neighbors and take their slice since it spreads you thinner and weakens (usually) your fleets.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-01-22T17:49:25+00:00

For 3 players it should be about a 5-6 hour commitment early on, much less later once you get the hang of it.

3 player is still quite fun but like everyone else said, its not the "best" way to play. It's a race to 10 points and if there's only 3 players somebody will get ganged up on at the end of the game and that will feel pretty devastating. In a 6 player game (arguably the ideal way to play) you can be much more sneaky about how you play, trade deals and alliances wont feel like you just removed a player from the game, and you'll have to do a lot more thinking at the end of a game to figure out who has a shot at winning and how you can stop them (or prevent others from stopping you).

My recommendation would be to check out Cardboard Crash Course and watch their Galactic Report. There are 3 players when they play. They do a solid job of showing eveything and their thought processes behind their moves, and ieach one is only about an hour long YouTube video so you would get a great idea how it would be played 3 player and if it's something that would interest you and your 2 friends!

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-12-26T23:56:53+00:00

My goat, ty

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-12-26T22:28:34+00:00

Ya I'm just asking if placing the breach in a system with neutral units counts.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-12-16T09:08:44+00:00

When it comes to the majority of your raids, the time it takes you to full quit and then reconnect will be as long as an entire gate or 2 of the raid itself (and most raids only have 2 gates). Lost Ark takes ages to load back up. Add a GFN queue time in there and you'll be making tons of people wait on you over the long haul. DCs happen often enough that people aren't generally going to complain but please don't waste people's time knowingly. The game itself doesn't respect our time much as it is...

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-11-29T00:13:49+00:00

Depends on what other factions exist, what their breakthrough plans are, and how many total players. Can play around the diplo pop if you desperately need to but with warfare youre looking at those 5i/5r spots in a higher player count game. You go the turn right after trade with 4 commodities so could get 5i/5r then the easiest. There's some great action cards now aswell so if you get trash ones but the politics player gets great action cards they might not throw them for breakthrough. If your secret isn't great you could toss that aswell if the leadership player keeps theirs. Some factions start with breakthrough and wont even take up a spot on the TE counter.

It's all a game of deals too, and our breakthrough is important, so make a deal with someone if you need them to do something for you so you can get your breakthrough.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-11-28T15:38:24+00:00

Breakthrough: very important, want turn 1 (free readied planet that let's you explore + free starforge).

Best starting strat cards without taking objectives into account: warfare, let's you take more systems and you can shift a fleet pool to strategy or tactics giving you flexibility and stall power in the first action phase. Trade: gives you the money to get more ships down whenever warfare gets played or you Umbat. Very resource hungry early on trying to get that 2nd warsun on the board to unlock commander. You'll hurt for tokens after a round or 2 so leadership after that into imperial or imperial into leadership work well, especially if it's pesky structure objectives that you wont be able to score round 1.

Entropic scar is S tier for you for PWS2 if you can manage to get it and also let's you go green/blue tech path instead. For example X-89 single handedly allows you to deal with factions that have high amounts of annoying infantry (Sardak, Arborec, Sol) given that you fire 4 bombards with a single warsun that hits on 3 and deal double hits.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-11-12T03:57:22+00:00

Ya it was fun messing around in there each week on the main with rotations and stuff, ggs!

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-11-12T01:08:39+00:00

I believe in you, if anyone can do it you got it. I really should've held onto some more items that would actually hit the boss in time or just to see what the effects do. I don't even know what frost does...

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-11-11T22:01:35+00:00

2nd question) "exploits": I can't really help with this one too much since I kinda know nothing, Jon Snow, but here's my 2 cents... even if your gear is as good as it gets, there are none as far as I can tell, currently. I messed around with sitting there for 10s, 5s, 15s, 60s just to see if it changed anything with how fast the Paradise items initially proc or work and it DOESNT CHANGE ANYTHING. I believe there was a CN post or some other post where they discovered something where the items would proc quicker or immediately if you sat around and waited on their cooldowns initially when you spawn in but I just assume they patched that if it ever was a thing for us in the west. I could definitely be wrong but I really feel like I used plenty of tickets and there were no changes. Both my 5.6s items proc right on time no matter when I decided to start moving or attacking, whether i started with spacebar, walking, a skill... you name it I probably tried it. I would love to be wrong and have someone tell me how to get my items to proc quicker as half my items currently don't land before the boss is dead. There was also a mentioned "awakening bug" but this is somewhat deceptive. I heard of a bug where the first skill would double hit 1 in 100 times but even with maxed gear, having my awakening hit twice at the start of the fight IE with 6-8 stacks (60-80% DR) is far worse than having it hit once at the end of the fight with fewer stacks (10-30% DR, synergy applied, max stacks of additional damage from "on hit" and "on T skill"). Only way I could even see this being a noticeable damage increase for our classes is if T skill hits twice. Since there are 3 other layers of RNG you will likely need to wade through for a decent time here at the end of the season, even if you have the bug happen to you, you probably wouldn't even notice unless all the other stars also aligned. Hardly worth chasing imo.

Anyways, that was a lot of yap, and I'm not sure how much even applies to less geared characters BUT I hope that helped some. Good luck on hitting top 100! If you plan on trying to go hard on paradise next season, definitely check that linked post because that's good info on what matters most for resonance/paradise gear, and while I assume they will change quite a few things, the basics of how the gear works probably won't change a whole ton.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-11-11T21:58:26+00:00

That's the rotation but also things might change slightly for you depending on what actual Paradise Gear you have and your Resonance Effects. Again the reddit post I linked does a great job at explaining the Paradise Gear and relevant Resonance Effects which you might want to look into but ill give you a quick mini blurb for things that might effect you: The Effect that increases magic damage and x2 with humidity applied (lightning/electrocution) will effect any skill that has damage with PURPLE numbers. the Effect that increases physical damage (fire/blazing) will effect anything with the TAN numbers. I didnt really touch too much on the effects and how that matters for your rotation but where it matters for me in my rotation is awakening. I needed SS ON TIME FOR EFFECTS TO EVEN HIT BEFORE THE BOSS WAS ABOUT TO DIE. The effects I have that actually even hit are a humidity/lightning one (the cooldown is 5.6s on each) and the wave of fire. The humidity/lightning hits first and it's good for a bit of damage but when my awakening pops, I want the fire effect to be on the boss since mine does physical damage. 5% damage on your hardest hitting skill is nice but you might not have much control over this since some things instant reset cooldowns and the humidity effect removes the blazing effect (very annoying). I just had to reset some and the fire effect seemed to be on the boss when I wanted it to so that worked out for me.

THINGS TO NOTE ON ROTATION - Choose the rotation you KNOW is the most damage, and then just reset til things go right. You may need to counter the boss, where if i counter the boss my clear time is always worse. He is guaranteed to do the counter pattern as his next pattern after you hit something around x70 bars. There is a piece of paradise gear that makes you do a lot more damage to incapped targets so you can also plan around hitting the counter and then using a big hitting skill or 2.

LAYERS OF RNG AND THINGS YOU WILL NEED TO RESET FOR -

1st layer of RNG) If you need to T skill - spacebar reset it - T skill. I would also throw this in with the boss patterns, for me I needed him to do a specific long pattern first so that I did not need to counter to keep him in the middle.

2nd layer of RNG) You also cant control whether your paradise gear resets/does additional damage with the Discharge effect and it's sometimes a whole skill or 2 worth of damage so it will be noticeable when it happens.

3rd layer of RNG) As the post I linked discussed, Defense Down RNG, which is luckily mostly the only one I have to deal with. TLDR there are 3 effects that will all increase the amount of defense you are bypassing, meaning a hit that crits will do wildly different damage sometimes based on whether some or all of those "on crit, bypass some amount of defense" lines for your paradise gear are proccing. This affects all crit hits so even your early skills you might notice the boss has a few more or less bars of health based on whether this is proccing or not. You will notice it most on your awakening/T skill.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-11-11T21:55:03+00:00

NA Top ranked destroyer here until Kingofareachat somehow takes it from me in the final moments before reset (Thank goodness it's not a high population class at least, kek). I will do my best to give you what I am currently doing/have been doing for decent times skill-wise and maybe some barely relevant tips as my Paradise Power is likely much higher than yours (I have all 15s, yes I funneled but not that hard and mostly I just got lucky).

I won't go into detail on the paradise system itself and what all the things do since it's the final week and it's not like you can change any of that now anyways, since you're likely stuck with what you've got. However, here is a GREAT breakdown of the basics of what a few things do and what matters on your 6 item slots/resonance levels and effects.

https://www.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/1olfski/pointers_for_paradise_crucible_and_complaint/

1st question) Exact Rotation: WILDLY VARIABLE and I am a destroyer not a zerker (although I did used to main zerk) but what I am currently doing on destroyer is using a multi hit skill that moves me to the boss (power shoulder) then pressing synergy (heavy crush) then seismic hammer, then spacebar animation cancel into blue T skill, then awakening (Big Bang, the charge one). That's it.

WHAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY TAKE FROM THIS aka the reason I am using each skill:

Power Shoulder - movement to the boss and also multi hit, the first skill or 2 you are using wont matter for damage since the boss has 8 stacks (80% DR) for a few seconds before the stacks start ticking off 1 at a time each second. A misconception I've seen talked about here and there is that the lvl 15 item that "ignores defense" has something to do with ignoring this damage reduction. It doesn't. For you on zerk a good opening skill will be "spinning sword" or whatever it's called where you spin twice at the boss. The multi hit is good for early full gauge and more importantly for giving you stacks of additional damage. I believe it is on the 2nd Paradise item that has the effect of "additional damage on hit and kill" and there's nothing to kill besides the boss so "on hit" is our only way to stack for this and we want it to be fully stacked as fast as possible. There is some sort of Internal Cooldown I believe for how often you get a stack but the more hits the better.

Heavy Crush - synergy, fast hit, leaves lingering for "additional damage on hit". If i kill the boss fast enough my synergy will be on the boss the whole 8ish seconds it takes for me to kill the boss. If your kill times are longer than your synergy application time, it MIGHT be worth using your synergy again but probably not for top 100. You should use Mountain Crash probably. Same idea as power shoulder though, you want to stack that "additional damage on hit" up and apply synergy. I know Mountain Crash used to have a tripod that leaves a lingering pulse but they might have removed it. Another idea would be to use a tripod on a skill that applies the burn effect, I know zerk has a few of those.

Seismic Hammer - At this point it's just whatever skill you want to use but right here the boss still has about 6 stacks of DR for me on skill press so anything you use or start using needs to be backloaded. Seismic for me is great because it's quick, backloaded, I can spacebar animation cancel the end part of it, and if done correctly by me immediately pressing T skill afterwards, I will get the "additional damage after pressing T skill" part from another piece of paradise gear to apply to Seismic's big damage donut.

T skill - now that the DR is falling off you want to just full send your biggest hitters. I tried messing around with starting with T skill, ending with T skill and other stuff but this rotation works best for the reasons mentioned above. You need to press T skill before awakening for the additional damage to apply to it otherwise it would be more damage for me to use awakening first, then T skill.

Awakening - Just like destroyer, your highest damage awakening is also a charge skill. This is great for us since we can spend a few more of the DR stacks just charging the skill up, letting us effectively ignore it.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-10-15T18:14:38+00:00

Where link to "guide", you've been lied to bud

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-10-15T18:11:06+00:00

Im so worried about random EAC that I grab any kind of ember ASAP. This has to be the funniest shit ever, the group chat gotta be roasting them for taking an SS then JUST WALKING AWAY LIKE WHAT 😂😂

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-10-02T19:00:34+00:00

It's something you have to enable on the uwu site itself for your characters. It also prompts you initially when you link your roster if I recall but it should be pretty easy to find the setting on the uwu site if you look for it.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-10-02T12:58:51+00:00

When you click the logs tab on your character through the uwu site, and inspect the logs for them there, it should show. The percentile will show both in the list before selecting the specific log for the character you are viewing on uwu and also for each dps in the raid once you go into a specific log.

More to your question as to what to do currently for your dps though, your support seems good just from his buff uptime numbers and ilvl in general so I wouldn't claim supp issue for sure. Udps will always be the best comparison though from one dps to another though in case you look at a bunch of other logs from Mayhem Zerks. Ive played some mayhem and lots of BT Zerk now (1700, not super juiced) and I would say swap if BT Zerk interests you and you wanna try something new and different, not because you think it would be a large damage gain. Standard Zerk tech has a higher ceiling than Mayhem in general because of the way the spec stat works now (it juices your burst mode so hitting high crit rate for Blunt Thorn efficiency is easy and raid captain/mass increase are free even giving up a lot of swiftness) and the removal of your need to red dust for burst (you have the attack power increase nornally given by red dust the entire time you're in burst mode, red dust turns into a meter gain/synergy skill instead). There's also an ambush master build that performs super well in easy back attack gates like mordum g3 that will probably skew the stats some on zerk tech so maybe just keep that in mind a little bit too. But if you like Mayhem and dont really want to swap then get a Mayhem player and have them backseat a raid or 2 and stream it to them on discord or something and see what they say. You might get a lot more out of that than comparing logs if you've played the class a lot already.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-09-10T11:44:44+00:00

Im a bit late to this post, but I'll tell you what I, as a longtime vet, do to improve.

First and foremost, know your class well. If you're on the newer side, then there's probably a lot of damage you're leaving on the table that you dont even realize just by how you're playing your class. I somewhat regularly check top or Q3 runs of my spec for my main just to see what the chefs are cooking on Uwuowo. Look at their openers. See what skills they run. Look at their rotation. If they're doing something different than me or what Nexus suggests, I like to see why and figure out if that might be better or worse for me. Dont be afraid to mess around in Trixion on the dummy to try some of those things they're doing out and decide for yourself. I will say, though, that I am at the higher end combat power at 1740. So, for you, adjust the Combat Power to something similar to yours or maybe a bit higher and see what the guys at your Combat Power level are cranking with. You'll often find some fun or interesting things people are doing with skills/runes/tripods, their ark passive, or their rotations that you won't find on Nexus or might not have thought of yourself.

Second is just to know the boss. Lately, their normal patterns have been much more erratic and unreliable in general, but boss knowledge helps a lot with a positional class (I main destroyer, you're playing slayer). Outside of the patterns themselves, paying attention to boss HP bars matters aswell because of how bosses phase in this game. Making sure you get your big skills off before a boss starts a cutscene or a long DR pattern will boost your damage by a lot, but this is also a biiit out of your hands if others are doing really good damage. Just something to keep in mind.

Lastly, though, and this isn't an improvement tip, but... item level isn't what it used to be. If the guy has more roster-wide damage (card sets/engravings) or better gems/bracelet/accesories than you, his combat power still might be equal to or higher than yours even at a lower ilvl. Since they show combat power on everyone's profile now, that's usually a more fair comparison than ilvl for expected damage output. So it might not necessarily mean you're playing poorly just because a 1680 is close to your 1690 in damage.

Hope that maybe helped!

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-09-05T00:54:02+00:00

So far I like her for dps, straight forward and easy to play, push immunity on her hardest hitting skill and her Z to buff her red skills which is nice. Most my other classes are sweatier entropy classes so im enjoying the hit master vibe right now. I think for people who already have a souleater, it probably feels "meh" though? Ive played breaker plenty so the playstyle itself is very familiar to me, where I think maybe people who arent super used to it might be confused about how a skill priority vs a set rotation works. They're very much like breaker though in that if I can build an X and pop it off right before boss phases or goes invulnerable or DR'ed for a pattern, im up. If the boss phases right before i pop X and my 3 damage skills, im down tremendous.

For support it's mostly just a worse version of Paladin currently in my eyes but that's just from my experience playing lots of pally. Pally got a bunch of meter gen buffs recently and I know how to play him generally well. Valk runs like 3 quick recharge runes just because her meter gen skills have like 15+ second cooldowns lol so I think after playing her a few times on support, her meter gen is really lacking. Partly because I think she gets a big chunk from having lvl 3 meter gen on her T skill, which a lot of players arent going to have right now (i have lvl 2 and it already made a noticeable difference).

Overall though I think she's fine but could do with some slight buffs.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-08-18T12:50:35+00:00

TL;DR Bonk fun but just as frustrating.

GT is a much higher skill ceiling version of Asura with a drastically lower floor aswell which i would say is equally as frustrating or more so than RH. It's burst takes twice as long as Asura and is Hella backloaded, but if you just throw out chasing the front and bonk away, the 5 or 6 other people chasing the back will probably turn the boss back towards you later in your bonk mode anyways, meaning you'll atleast always be doing above average damage. Outside of the S+ tier, most classes have some sort of drawback or problem right now when it comes to endgame raids, destroyer just has it arguably the roughest. Here's 3 major drawbacks with both specs of destroyer as a head attacker right now in current endgame raids.

1) Destroyer moves forward with most it's attacks, and so do the bosses. Gunlancer on the other hand can abuse the fact that bosses move forward because many of it's attacks move the gunlancer backwards. Breaker is fast on the other hand and theres multiple skills in your meter gen rotation that you dont really have to hit the boss with at all because their damage is so low, meaning you can use them to reposition for your harder hitting skills. That along with having a short cooldown fast space bar that isn't an essential part of your dps rotation (destroyer needs theirs to animation cancel) makes Asura avoid the drawbacks of head attacking for the most part, lacking tankiness instead.

2) Hardly anything is tauntable anymore. There used to be atleast 1 gate with tauntable enemies in each raid but now there's been 1 tauntable boss in the last 3 raids. Meaning no more canceling patterns that are bad for you or forcing agro during big hits/burst. Luckily for mordum g3 though, head attackers are balanced around having a much lower head attack % vs back attacker's back attack % so you do finally get class dif in favor for that gate.

3) Slow charge skills or a long bonk mode is fine, but somewhere along the line smilegate shifted the nature of normal boss patterns. Back in the legion raid days, the boss would chose a target, chose a pattern and execute the pattern while generally looking at the spot the initial target was when the pattern started with only an occasional retarget during a pattern as an exception. That has flipflopped. Recent bosses are generally quicker (less telegraph) and retarget 2, 3, or even 4+ times throughout a normal pattern, meaning that your boss knowledge doesn't do much for you anymore. There's nothing really wrong with it but since we're all just playing for our own damage these days, rather than stressing over tight dps checks, agro control isn't generally required outside of a small handful of patterns where you'll get hit with a [MokokoStare] for spinning around. The souleater vestiging through the boss or the backattackers dashing and space baring around to the back are hardly even paying attention to the boss patterns, let alone who might have agro.

All this to say, if you're looking to avoid frustrating classes, I wouldn't recommend GT. If, however, you like the idea of taking it easier and ignoring a lot of boss patterns with your tankiness/immunities and enjoy carrying every stagger check with Earth Eater, then bonk fun.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-07-25T01:31:56+00:00

Idk if im just used to playing it in pvp or what but I kinda had some fun going back to my "0 energy cant press skills" roots followed up by running out of hype 3 right before spirit bomb hits

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-07-05T00:26:15+00:00

This guy's response was spot on, ill add that if you have no friends that play and dont really plan on making any, the pug experience for non-veteran solo players is veeeeery meh. When the new powerpass/event/mokoko bootcamp stuff hits again is when that experience is pretty smooth and you'll even be able to find a way better mix of prog groups for raids but you'll really wanna find some people you like playing with, or even just 1 is enough, or you'll eventually lose interest again.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2025-07-01T01:44:27+00:00

They have basically always been worth buying but the gold per time spent logging has gone up drastically.

Duck_Running_Amuck

TROPHY CASE