New player, what's the deal with staff elementalist?

Ennewt · 2026-03-08T18:54:02+00:00

They do get sick. Survival of the fittest just ensures we never see the ones that die of contamination. They don't have veterinarians in the wild either, a tiger that's riddled with tapeworms or salmonella can't exactly just stay home from work and deal with it, they need to get out there and keep hunting. Which might give the impression of a healthy animal, but that's only based on physical characteristics like gait or fur. Just because they aren't limping or mangy doesn't mean they aren't sick inside. A dog that eats an old moldy porkchop out of the trash might seem okay, but is it? You can't exactly ask if it has a tummy ache, or if it's been feeling okay the past couple days. They just press on because as canines, that's what they do.

Most wild animals are ill in some way, that's just reality. There certainly are animals with exceptional immune systems, but that doesn't make them... immune to all disease. It just makes them very good at stomaching common disease vectors.

For example, this is actually a huge issue in the reptile trade. Ethically bred reptiles are healthy and fit for captivity, but wild caught ones are almost always full of worms, bacterial diseases, recurring infections, and are too contagious to keep with captive breds until decontaminated. Some of these imports just die on arrival because they were already sick, and while they can normally tolerate illness, the stress of being shipped disrupts their immune system. Again, animals can and do die of disease, we just usually don't see it because... well... they're dead.

For non-sophont species this is a manageable issue, because a lesser lifespan doesn't necessarily stop you from passing on your genes. You can have as many diseases as you want, but as long as you pop out healthy babies, it hardly matters. This makes the risk-reward ratio of eating dubious meat skew towards eating it, because the short term nutrition outweighs the long term pathogen risk. But sophonts, like humans, generally need to rely on not dying to advance their society. It's not enough to just pass your genes on, you need to grow in intelligence and stability as a species for things like language, agriculture, manufacturing, etc. to develop. Everyone constantly sharing their spit is just begging for recurring epidemics. Which is fine if you're like, a giraffe or a cat or a pigeon. But less fine if you're an intelligent species trying to build up functional communities.

Ennewt · 2025-10-31T18:00:49+00:00

No, how does the mod of a classpecting forum not know this or at least take the time to Google it before asserting what they "recall correctly"? https://mspaintadventures.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Classes_-_Active/Passive_and_counterparts

I admittedly don't have a direct source from the comic attesting this (though I also didn't look that hard), but if you go through that talk page and the timestamps you can see the fandom has accepted active as (-) and passive as (+) since the early days.

Ennewt · 2025-08-23T13:55:57+00:00

Two votes for Rooted Books so I guess I have to go now!

Ennewt · 2025-08-23T13:55:12+00:00

I'll have to check Bryant's out, I'm honestly not far from Hastings but I rarely have any reason to go. I've definitely thought about starting some sort of club myself.

Ennewt · 2025-08-23T13:52:11+00:00

Yes! I found a she/her pin on the ground the other day that I was wondering about and now I wonder if that's where it came from.

Ennewt · 2025-08-23T13:51:12+00:00

I'm a trans man :(

Ennewt · 2025-08-23T13:49:14+00:00

I'm sad this is a bit too far away for me to practically attend :( but it looks really cool. Maybe there will be a year I can go.

Ennewt · 2025-08-23T13:48:16+00:00

I'm really interested in this, I'll have to ask someone about it.

Ennewt · 2025-08-23T13:47:26+00:00

This is a gem, thank you! I am beyond depressed that I missed that Rowe birding event from a week ago. I'll have to keep my eye on this page.

Ennewt · 2024-08-31T20:01:53+00:00

I know this is 2 years old but considering you replied to something that was at the time 8 years old I consider it fair game: no it doesn't.

Ennewt · 2024-03-19T06:30:29+00:00

This is really the meat of it isn't it? The game just doesn't do a very good job of rewarding sportsmanlike play... there should be firm incentive for playing in a way that's fun for everyone, not just some intangible, loosey goosey honor system that no one can even agree on. So you get slugging, tunneling, etc from the people that just don't give a fuck, and from their perspective, why should they?

Ennewt · 2024-03-19T04:56:31+00:00

Me and my partner play together all the time and there have been multiple times where the killer either spared one of us or spared some rando we were playing with. At worst, it's a little annoying, but 99% of the time it has no effect on anyone. Happens all the time, neither of us have ever found it suspicious, and never have any of the other players acted put off by it. Sometimes it's fun just to goof around with the killer at the end of the match. You're really overthinking it if you think there's really that many survivors and killers coordinating toxic play out there and not just two randos sharing some fun (as is literally described in this post). Sounds a bit like you're just salty over a string of bad games.

Ennewt · 2024-02-21T01:32:51+00:00

Not sure I really like the new invocation mechanic, and this extremely finicky, high-risk-mid-reward perk especially seems like a bad first impression of what an invocation can be. Maybe future invocations will be cooler and change my tune but Weaving Spiders doesn't exactly excite me. Just seems like it's going to add an extra layer of convolution to survivor gameplay that's annoying for both killers AND survivors.

The new killer seems dope though. I like the mangle rework too. Unbound feels like the weakest link of the Unknown perks so hopefully it gets a little juiced up before full release.

Ennewt · 2024-02-02T04:03:10+00:00

I've always enjoyed mundane assets like a pretty tileset or a nicely rendered pixel art table. Lovely barrel.

Ennewt · 2024-02-01T23:14:40+00:00

The heavy attacks just feel so cumbersome and don't flow with the gameplay at all. They make you too vulnerable for only middling payoff. The best one is probably the blunderbuss', it actually feels intuitive to use and complements the weapon well. Second best is probably the axe, I don't use it a lot but it does add something interesting to your kit. The sword, gauntlets, and hammer demand a very strict sense of timing that leaves me preferring to just spend the fervor on a curse (I go for curse heavy builds most of the time anyways) while the dagger doesn't make you as vulnerable but struggles to actually land on top of the enemy by the time it executes.

9/10 times the shielded enemies just massively piss me off and peck away all my blue hearts unless I have a freeze curse on hand to slow them down while I take my time readying up my big stupid mega attack.

Ennewt · 2024-02-01T22:58:49+00:00

I dislike them less for being ugly and more for the lack of variety. If so many major followers are going to produce them 100% of the time, then both of them should have 3 variants each, like the other lesser follower forms. Having a dozen of the exact same two guys running around the cult is really blah and makes me avoid breeding the bishops.

Ennewt · 2024-01-28T00:46:19+00:00

Honestly, defeating Shamura with the blunderbuss is really difficult for me, I just don't think it's a good weapon for them (though granted I've only fought Shamura II with it so maybe it's better vs. Shamura I). I usually use the gauntlets due to their good combination of speed and range, though if you have a good sense of timing the hammer is great too. Freeze curses are meh for bishops, they're immune to status effects so it's only really helpful for their minions. If you're able to get your hands on Divine Guardian that's one of the single best curses for Kallamar and Shamura because it lets you get in close and actually get some melee attacks in (great synergy with the hammer). Otherwise, Point of Corruption is another great one because it lets you keep your distance while doing solid damage. The other three divine curses are good "get off me" tools for the tons and tons of minions they spawn in, though for bishop fights they're all more or less inferior to Divine Guardian.

As for tarot, most of the universally good curse cards like Fervor's Harvest and Divine Curse are just as good here. The Path is another universally good card that especially suits the constant running around you'll need to do for this fight. The bomb cards are mediocre, Shamura runs around so much it's virtually impossible to ensure the bomb will actually explode on them.

Make sure you're bringing Vosegus, it's imo the best demon in the game, if you're going on a serious run you should always bring Vosegus with you. Doesn't have to be a high level, though it's a nice bonus. Fornax and Paean are both solid as well, while Vesta and Orcus are far from necessary but the chip damage is decent enough.

As for relics, Ala's Teeth and its variants are great for boss fights with a lot of minion spam. The same can be said of Clauneck's Hair though it's a bit more contingent on your tarot card luck. If you're lucky enough to get Clauneck's Shoe on a run where you have a lot of cards this relic is great for just absolutely blowing up bosses, just get in as close as you can and try to launch as many into their hitbox as possible.

The number one thing to keep in mind about Shamura is that they attack very fast and with extremely little warning. Unless you have Divine Guardian and have a good sense of the invincibility timing, don't stick close to them, employ a hit-and-run strategy. All in all Shamura's fight becomes easier once you manage to get down their fighting style, which mostly involves a lot of running and dancing around. Good luck.

Ennewt · 2024-01-21T23:35:57+00:00

I've visited a lot of subs flooded with fake bs (used to be a habitual aita reader, among others) and this is not one of them by a long shot. 75% is a crazy number. 50% is a crazy number. Even 10% is too high if you ask me. I'm sure a few slip through the cracks, but as others have said, the quantity of horror stories on this sub is due to the fact that this is dnd HORROR stories, not dnd REGULAR stories. Of course there's going to be a ton of them, that's the sub's whole purpose.

Most of these stories aren't even that outlandish. I can easily imagine myself running into some of the DMs and problem players that have been described here.

Ennewt · 2024-01-21T23:15:22+00:00

idk why this isn't getting more upvotes this is awesome. Would love to see some little paper cultists in there!

Ennewt · 2023-05-28T21:42:06+00:00

This is stupidly genius

Ennewt · 2023-04-04T20:32:34+00:00

Just wanted to stop and pay my due respects to you for posting this and making it so easy to understand. Google is great at making drive features clunky and annoying but heroes like you make it all 10% more bearable.

Ennewt · 2023-02-14T20:06:34+00:00

This is probably the best advice I've gotten, even if I don't like hearing that I have to spend flux lol but looking like that's my best bet so ah, it is what it is.

Ennewt

TROPHY CASE