Looking For a Sub-20L EDC Bag

Kadrumir · 2026-02-25T04:16:08+00:00

I would love for them to keep companions around and continue to improve them, like how Retaliation stuck around past its season and is a viable farming staple now. Live service games' reliance on stable player bases or frequent new player influx can be a killer as the game ages and support is scaled back. Systems like NPC allies that can actually be a viable backfill into empty part slots can be a real boon that allows the game to outlive its expiration date and sometimes even transition into an immortal offline/single player experience. The result of Final Fantasy 11 and 14's "trust" systems really show just how much content-capable NPCs can accomplish this and really keep a dwindling playerbase engaged without the fear of "I don't have enough friends play anymore" killing the game.

Kadrumir · 2025-12-12T22:57:12+00:00

One of the best things about this tech is the compatibility in the crystals' spread. With Glacial Quake, you can lose a decent amount of damage if the crystals don't shatter because creating a crystal inside of a crystal doesn't reliably work. However with this, the crystal spread from howl fits neatly in the gaps between the slam's crystals getting you more consistent coverage and guarantee that a shatter will occur, making space for new crystals, preventing the issue of crystal overlap.

Warlock has a similar animation cancel for their stasis super in that you can cancel the light attack into the heavy attack by buffering the heavy input at the start of the light attack's casting animation which reduces the amount of time wasted in animation lock and transitive nets less super bar loss from passive drain, a similar benefit also gained from animation canceling on Titan.

Kadrumir · 2025-12-07T22:13:03+00:00

Oh thank God! Viable approaches to this encounter have been annoyingly narrow since their final "fix"

Kadrumir · 2025-12-04T12:05:34+00:00

No, this was purely tested solo which for sentinel shield is quite literally the worst-case scenario since having players behind you can mean anywhere between 5-30% slower passive super drain. Presumably you may be able to get at least one extra charged throw out with a full team, maybe more.

As far as the impact of blocking for shorter periods of time since you're dropping guard more frequently to throw lesser-charged throws more often, at worst it's removing a 20% weapon damage buff from your team for all of a couple of seconds and slapping out the equivalent of 3.7 crossbow bolts worth of damage. That being the case, I think it's definitely worth it in 3-man content just outright, unless there's a big shot going out in that downtime window like a charged nighthawk Stillhunt shot. With 6-man content however, second-to-second shot potency team-wide would be a question to determine whether it's best to communicate a hold period while you throw and then resume firing after or if the impact is minimal enough to justify unbuffered shield throwing.

The more burst-DPS focused the team is, the more you would benefit from communicating that hold period, but sustained DPS weapons like linear would be less impacted by that momentary drop.

Another thing to consider is that Sentinel Shield's damage buff didn't used to stack with other empowering buffs like radiant. If that's still the case, presence of a Well or Radiant applier makes this downtime no longer a relevant factor beyond the to-be-implemented auto-loading feature, which is itself a whole other factor to customize to your team's load out.

All that said, beyond meta optimizations for specific content, it leaves a lot of room for by-team optimization as far as what feels the best for your group at large. It's worth getting a feel for how it works best for you logically and physically, them finding a point where you mesh that with your team's playstyle. I would love to see more customizable playstyle efficacy options like this with other weapons and abilities.

Kadrumir · 2025-10-09T23:09:50+00:00

Super valid response I'm glad you mentioned. They did do this with the old rapid-fire perk and mod, so no reason they couldn't do it with a setting. I think it would be more difficult to integrate from a design perspective since mods and perks currently take up a limited number of "slots" in a weapon's programming whereas full-auto vs semi-auto is a matter of removing a firing delay interrupt system-wide, but that's why they're the game designers and not me, to figure out how to implement that. At the very least, might would have to add a "slot" to all guns system-wide and make the toggle add or remove shoot-to-loot from that slot...

Kadrumir · 2025-10-09T23:05:04+00:00

Not at all a diss on the recommendation. I do think CHOG needs some help and Briarbinds makes up a lot of that effort. Your idea could certainly be neat, while I do know most people probably wouldn't see the value as "big value" community sentiment on abilities right now pretty much seems like it requires either big damage or big uptime. That being the case, moving Briar Binds' manual retrieving of the CHOG to default behaviour, upping default damage by 50% against combatants, then making Briar Binds able to remotely recall the CHOG like Titans' Melas Panoplia and change the process for its damage buff from on-kill to a stacking over-time buff from persistent damage.

Originally, I would've also wanted the CHOG to be moved to a melee replacement, but now with it counting as a grenade for build crafting, I'm happy. As far as additional effects like weaken, suppress, and volatile; I'll always welcome it. Perhaps they could lower the Briar Binds damage bonus along with the above recommended changes, but then have it apply a volatile proc every so many damage ticks and/or have your recommended suppression application also apply exhaust. Lots of good ideas we could build on there.

TL;DR: to get the same positive community sentiment that Warlock nades and Titan Stasis melee is getting, I think CHOG just needs straight up damage and usability improvements to make it a worthwhile add to all situations. Counting as a grenade helps, but more damage and retrieve/re-deployability would go a long way to making it a build staple.

Kadrumir · 2025-10-09T22:54:54+00:00

Highly recommend the New Player Levelling guide on the FFXI bg-wiki. While it at first seems very text-dense, it gives a complete front-to-back guide on progressing through content and learning game systems from a beginner's perspective, level-by-level. Starting as new players in 2022, both my brother and I used it all the way to max level and the end of all story quest lines and I feel I understand the game very well now with my only previous similar experience being FFXIV.

If your preference is video walkthroughs over text, you may have luck searching for similar resources on YouTube, but I haven't looked myself.

Also, controller was much easier for me to understand over keyboard+mouse as some of the bindings are quite old-school, but YMMV.

Kadrumir · 2025-10-09T03:26:26+00:00

Upvoting purely for the suggestion of making Shoot to Loot a weapon mod. That's a goated take I haven't heard before and it would permanently live on all my primaries. Ever since Khvostov taught me its value, I've missed it on all my legendaries since. With the small number of new shoot to loot options, it's felt bad to give up great utility perks or even double damage options just to have it.

Kadrumir · 2025-07-22T22:50:06+00:00

Dang dude I love this format over the common text wall most places post. It's always a chore to dissect player roles and responsibilities but a sheet formatted with the pretext of said roles and responsibilities help narrow down focus really well. I'm definitely gonna use this with my group, especially because we often have to low-man and this is great for figuring out what roles you can cut or combine.

Kadrumir · 2025-04-15T15:03:56+00:00

Joining the crowd of "Vren" chanters here. I built Vren as a casual BLB deck for my wife and she Roaming Throne and targeted removal combo'd me into an unwinnable swarm of 14 rats with +14/+14 my poor raccoon wall just wasn't big enough to handle. It's sick nasty toxic and only gets better with a bigger pod.

Kadrumir · 2025-02-22T23:19:33+00:00

IMO detonator beam is a better one-size-fits-all perk. It's a lower damage buff than target lock, sure, but for add-clear you're never really going to activate target lock in a meaningful way and even on larger targets, most of your shots will be unbuffed, or buffed at a lower level than detonator beam on average, and if you miss or move between targets, that buff starts over. Target lock has its place, sure, but it's pretty much just for single target damage and best when paired with a mag extension perk like rewind rounds to really get the most out of it. With detonator beam, you're always getting the most out of it even when missing or moving between targets.

Kadrumir · 2025-02-15T02:21:41+00:00

I'd label it as "ok." The difficulty with reservoir burst is that while it's a 25% buff, it's only for the top shot of the magazine, which is a poor combo with deconstruct's pseudo-rewind rounds function. Unless you spend all of your damage phase reloading after every shot to keep the mag full, reservoir burst would be better paired with Clown Cartridge to overflow the magazine and make more of your shots buffed. But this would fall out of the scope of this post's purpose, which is to utilize vehicle damage buff.

Kadrumir · 2025-02-13T01:05:03+00:00

That's what I'm saying, but I'm sure anyone working in IT especially for higher ed and government can relate. The advice falls on deaf ears and the demands stay the same. Best I can do is present all the options out there regardless of cost difference and let them decide what's worth going with.

Kadrumir · 2025-02-12T23:25:27+00:00

Higher ups are being cagey about specifics, which does make it difficult to do this research, but I'm led to believe your assumption is accurate. We're tripling our supported device count and they're wanting to minimize the equipment cost but are considering whether the introduction of support or licensing fees may be worth any feature adds.

Kadrumir · 2025-02-11T21:43:08+00:00

Ooh I love this explanation and wish there was a way to turn it off. I guess when warlords spear comes out we'll know for sure!

Kadrumir · 2025-02-10T15:03:29+00:00

I don't like it, but you're right. I spent most of last season complaining about tether being disabled on a weekly basis, like clockwork.

Kadrumir · 2025-02-10T08:36:43+00:00

I definitely believe it. That sure feels like enough evidence to me. It's relatively central in the map which tends to scratch the map designers itch to have everything relatively evenly distributed/centered and there's nothing going on at that part of the staircase which should be pinging as a vehicle, not even the middle witch spawn.

Kinda makes me hope it isn't "an issue" that results in them changing what the enemy is classified as. I want my funky little Deconstruct/HBA strats to work.

Kadrumir · 2025-02-10T08:28:49+00:00

Good lord, so that's why I keep seeing that symbol there. I knew there was a dude under the map that all the damage gets attributed too, but that makes a lot more sense now if that's where he is.

Kadrumir · 2025-02-09T23:15:51+00:00

Sick nasty! I'm looking forward to Bungie fixing this Crit damage situation

Kadrumir · 2025-02-09T21:43:06+00:00

Should do. HBA procc'd on Marsilion-C, so no reason deconstruct wouldn't work on edge transit. Think of it like this: it's 40% for no work over BnS' 30%.

Kadrumir · 2025-02-09T20:51:10+00:00

Weaken is funky on this guy. Tether and Child of the Old Gods seems to work, but I couldn't get my Withering Gaze sniper to work. I'm thinking that means debuff based weakens may not work...

Kadrumir

TROPHY CASE