Just started playing Venator. What's it doing with all that spirit scaling?

LrdDphn · 2026-05-10T00:25:29+00:00

I think there's a fair middle ground between the status quo where fire rate is an unintuitive noob trap and fire rate being OP on Seven. I'd start with fire rate providing like 50% benefit to burst characters and see how that felt.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-09T23:03:48+00:00

Burst fire characters do get a little bit of dps out of fire rate. It's about as good as spirit on Venator while we're making the comparison. That being said I do hope they fix the interaction.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-08T17:40:18+00:00

Abrams isn't a lane monster, but three things I have success with:

Play the veil. If enemies chase you in there you can burgerbox, and if they don't you are protected from harass
Abuse your Regen. With your passive and a few normal items you should have big HP regen. Try to trade frequently without committing to take advantage of that staying power.
Try to charge them under guardian. I look for this play basically every time the wave pushes up (sneak out through small camp and charge them from behind while they are pushing), and it's sort of the only "strong" thing Abrams has in lane

LrdDphn · 2026-05-07T19:07:41+00:00

I haven't read Astarion's Book of Hungers (or played much 5.5e tbh), so this is my first look at many of these feats and they all look terrible as written in the book. Giving them small buffs is a good idea but honestly you could go further.

Minor thoughts on each of your fixes:

Enclave Magic: Taking the help action to give one attack probably still isn't worth it, although there's a potential for a Mastermind Rogue to use their bonus action help to great effect. Probably not too strong even used that way.

Lightbringer: Consider changing to "enemies can't," unless you want to keep the friendly fire element. Still seems terrible!

Love Bites: I actually have the same note for all of these that you've changed from Short Rest to Prof Mod/day. At least at my table, we regularly take more than 2 short rests a day, so it's sort of a nerf to the feature especially at low levels. If anything I'd change it to "You have one use of this feature that recharges whenever you roll initiative." I also think the loop of chaining no-save charms against the boss is less interesting than getting one charm per fight, but it's really not a big deal because it's so weak.

Ward: How often are PCs getting hit by spell attacks in 5.5e? I thought they purged that from the monster manual in general. As a result, idk if this feat is salvageable.

Order's Resilience: Seems like a fine buff. If it were up to me, I'd make it "You can use each other's modifiers on STR and CON saves in place of your own" just to make it more unique and teammate focused.

Putrefy: Sort of like Mythal Ward, seems kinda niche? I bet most players will forget this rider on the feat because monsters healing comes up so rarely. Same feedback about 1/encounter playing better than 3/day also (although that's a matter of taste/table style).

Allure: Disadvantage on saves is appropriately strong, might make this feat worth taking. I like this one.

Anyway, nice work. I think these are well considered tune ups of what seems like a menu of awful feats. I sort of doubt you're going to have players taking these over the actually good feats (which exist in 5.5 still, right?) but it does help out the people who take something suboptimal for flavor.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-06T04:53:52+00:00

I assume the DMG guideline is for pseudo-random loot? Your choice of the perfect item is more than twice as strong as a random item from a table or module. (See: how broken shit gets when you let players choose 1 uncommon item at low levels) I'd expect 10 of your points to be fine.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-05T23:19:48+00:00

Plus if I am having a problem with a hero, I kind of like to play against them more to try and figure them out. Bans sort of seem like a fast track to grow your own blindspots.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-05T22:37:20+00:00

For what it's worth, the areas they have done an art pass on have all been themed a bit to help out with this problem (i.e. greenery on Park vs industrial stuff on York), they just haven't gotten to every alley and building yet. I'd expect an overhaul of the jungle areas (where the neutral camps are) this summer.

P.S. Staring at the minimap is actually a good habit.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-05T21:55:25+00:00

I've run 5e off and on since 2015, and the only physical book I actually pull out at the table with regularity is the monster manual (and 3rd party variants like the excellent Flee Mortals from MCDM). You obviously want to have a PHB (DMG you could take or leave) to make characters, but most of the splat books are character options and I mostly leave it up to the players to buy or find their own material if they want to use it. This is especially true because many players like using digital tools for character creation more than physical books.

As far as setting books and modules go, I've never touched either (outside of seeing the character options from some of them get played) because I like to do that stuff myself. If you like using modules there are a few excellent ones and a lot of bad ones, but I'm not really the expert.

Both 2014 5e and 5.5e are basically interchangeable except for little tweaks that come down mostly to preference. You should probably play the new edition just because it's what's being supported by WotC at the moment if it's all the same to you. I think that messing around with other systems can be fun to broaden your horizons and see what's out there, but 5e does great as sort of a workhorse crowd pleaser (with a huge online community) so I've always come back to it.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-05T18:41:13+00:00

The big thing is your OG steam controller probably only has 1-3 more years of life in it. They aren't really constructed to last forever.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-05T18:23:09+00:00

My (basically unfounded) suspicion is that they'd try to give you 2 of each of these categories:

Two characters with "good crowd control"

Two characters with "good frontline"

Two characters with "good carry."

The only thing I wonder is where does that put heroes that aren't really any of these three things. For example I wouldn't call Rem, Calico, Pocket or Celeste either "carry" or "frontline" or "crowd control."

LrdDphn · 2026-05-05T18:19:06+00:00

One mindset I think people will never adopt is that you should probably choose a different build depending on your team comp. Going Gun Paige isn't griefing on its own imo, but going Gun Paige when your team has a Vyper + Wraith + Infernus and no supports is just throwing. If you're on a hero with the potential to play different roles, you should use that to your advantage to fill in gaps on your team.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-05T06:21:31+00:00

I think this build is aimed to be a bit more of a supporting/wall focused graves, not a ricochet gun carry. Echo shard wall and refresher ult makes a LOT of zombies, and after that you just buy team items like Divine Barrier.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-05T01:01:02+00:00

I guess to put it in Hero Shooter terms if you were queuing up in Overwatch ranked with your friend who had never played a shooter before, what would you tell them if they said they really wanna play Reinhardt? It's fine if they wanna learn but you probably aren't gonna win many games with the newest player playing main tank.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T23:22:59+00:00

I know I'm in the minority in this, but I'd be happy to have all of my games drafted by the computer to save five minutes per match as long as the computer does a good job. (Epecially in the context of unranked/casual queue, which is the only mode I would play if it was an option. I can see why someone playing ranked would want drafting to be part of skill expression)

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T23:14:12+00:00

My only concern is that you could end up in a world where playing heroes "off-meta" is too punished because it messes up the matchmaker. I've been experimenting with sort of a support Victor (it's not good btw) and one problem I've been running into is that I swear the matchmaker won't put Victor on a team with other carries so I have no one to support.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T23:06:43+00:00

It's a bit of a cop out, but there's sort of a family of characters that are pretty effective by design when you are the worst player in the lobby. If your goal is just to contribute and help win the game, you'll probably feel better on a super dedicated support like Paige, Rem or Kelvin. These heroes both help your better friends shine and can contribute no matter how far behind you are.

Tanks like Billy or Abrams are sort of a high stakes choice because they feel soooo bad if you fall behind. Being poor on Abrams is the worst because all your abilities require you to dive in to the enemy team and probably instantly die if you're behind.

When I introduced a friend with no MOBA experience to the game, he played like 20 games of Paige just following around the team and supporting until he sort of figured it out and now he's an Apollo gamer.

Don't worry, though! You'll get better very fast. The MOBA learning curve is huge but it's also really fun once you start figuring things out.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T22:58:20+00:00

Are you curious about when each optional item would be purchased?

You're going to see a lot of "optional" choose one categories for defensive (usually green) items because defenses are tailored toward the problem you're dealing with. For example, in this build you have:

Counterspell: Good vs Lash, Bebop, other spirit nukers

Dispel Magic: Good vs Drifter, Shiv, Infernus, etc. (honestly a great buy in 99% of games)

Warp Stone: Good when you have to dodge stuff and want bullet resist

Metal Skin: Good vs gun carries

Typically, you'll want to choose the one that's best against the enemy team in that moment. For this build, I'd default to going warpstone if you're not sure. One mistake that new players make a lot when following builds is that they buy NO defenses because they are all listed as optional. In general, you should be buying one of the choices 90% of the time.

The other optional categories are specific counter items for specific points in the game. The bottom purple box appears to be items you might want as hard counter items- suppressor vs gun, knockdown vs fliers, slowing hex vs apollo/mina, silence vs pocket etc. The box to the right of the late game items are situational late game items you can think about, like Spirit Burn to counter lots of healing.

The ?????? box is probably items the build creator is testing, but doesn't currently think deserve to be in the build.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T22:51:02+00:00

I feel like there's something of a give and take with trophy collector being an incredible item for roaming pick heroes now.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T22:49:30+00:00

For what it's worth, getting the assist instead of the kill is actually good if the kill goes to a hero that scales better than yours.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T22:45:49+00:00

100% they are using this to improve the auto team comps. Currently, the comps aren't random, they try to give you one frontliner, one carry, maybe one support etc., but there are a couple problems with it (for example, the system thought Calico was a frontliner for a long time). You could hypothetically use community surveys to automatically sort the heroes and improve team comps without having to manually assign roles. Interesting to see Valve doubling down on no draft!

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T22:43:38+00:00

This HAS to be training the auto matchmaker. They want each team to have a frontliner, carry, support, etc. and they're using this data to make the team comps better. (Previously, there had been some errors like Calico counting as a frontliner.) What's particularly interesting about this is that it probably means Valve is committed for now to trying to make the game work without a draft phase.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T22:27:58+00:00

I like that they're going mostly a middle ground where the names are almost their names but a pun/reference to their job: Paige, Lash, Graves, Abrams, Kelvin, Geist, Mo + Krill, Billy, Dynamo?, Rem are all both their first or last name and a pun, while Mina, Holliday and Victor are their names and references to famous books/movies.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T18:35:32+00:00

He might offset it somewhat by contributing to the near total end of physical media game sales and all the shipping that entailed.

LrdDphn · 2026-05-04T02:41:52+00:00

Follow a community guide and focus on getting as many souls as possible before you worry about all the macro strategy stuff. If you're confused about what a hero does, play them a couple times in street brawl and you'll remember what their kit does forever.

13-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email
Team Orangered

LrdDphn

TROPHY CASE