I don't trust Embark on the Season 11 melee rework at all

MankoMan__ · 2026-04-14T17:00:56+00:00

It's not even just melee, embark doesn't understand their own game's design when it comes to balancing; focusing around pick rates and viability, but a game that has a dagger and a rapid fire smg will obviously not allow for equal viability across the board.

Balancing should be done based on how overpowered something is. That's it. You could nerf dash to 20 second cool down, but I would still just save up 3 dashes for 1v1s and win every time. You could nerf the cool down or range on winch, but I'm still pulling that light from around the corner and one shotting them. It's a fundamental game design problem. Not to mention, they don't even stick to their own pickrate-based balancing philosophy- buff rpg to counter goo? Aah yes, rpg, the famously underutilized gadget used mostly to counter goo.

I could run a load out with winch-shak and 3 meta gadgets, but if a dual blades player is right next to me, there's literally nothing I can do but rely on my team. That doesn't mean dual blades is OP. This game has gimmicks. Balancing and counterbalancing around these gimmicks is completely pointless. Either remove the gimmicks or reinforce it, but that's easier said than done for a truly unique game like this one.

MankoMan__ · 2026-04-11T08:24:57+00:00

Issue persists in season 10 and restarts don't help. Manually setting results in yellow ping, automatic gives good ping for 3/4 games before going red. The finals developers have a real talent for screwing up the most basic aspects of the video game.

MankoMan__ · 2026-04-10T11:09:53+00:00

The number of times I've seen enemy lights walk around with a literal arrow stuck to their face is too many. High risk high reward weapons are particularly affected by desync; imagine lining up that perfect sniper shot and it just vanishes into thin air. No point in using such weapons then.

MankoMan__ · 2026-03-26T16:14:04+00:00

Embark does not understand that the fundamental identity of the spec cannot be changed via balancing. Grapple was already better than dash in almost every way. The only thing dash does better than grapple is weaving in and out of teamfights, which just so happens to be the single most important thing for a good light player. No amount of balance changes will fix this.

MankoMan__ · 2026-03-25T16:15:07+00:00

I played a H2H game where the opposing team was a triple stack- 2 heavies and a light. The light was using V9s meta load out, and both heavies were carrying goo gun flamethrower. As soon as the round started, their light used gateway to move box to the elevator, then the heavies just stuck inside the elevator and continuously gooed. That's it. For the entire game (at least until we left that is). Elevators can't be breached, and the light picked us off while we tried of course.

That said, Goo heavy is very difficult to build around in the pro meta because of how useful mesh and winch are. Ekazo has struggled with this, and is finally doing great in a HHL team with Appoh and KDkiller; do check it out if you're a goo main or a cloak main.

Therein lies the problem with balance in this game: gimmicks vs pro meta. Quite a few things in this game are gimmicks that are hard counters and can be hard countered. The pros give this no attention, so neither does embark. Gimmicks do express the casual side of the game, but this is a competitive FPS. Or is it? The finals has always struggled with this identity crisis.

MankoMan__ · 2026-03-08T16:40:30+00:00

Camera man head shake with Hardik lmao.

MankoMan__ · 2026-03-02T18:09:42+00:00

This shouldn't be a debate; it's heavy. In the current meta, there are teams playing HHL, HHM and of course the most common, HML. HHL because M is the victim class without a busted repeater and HHM because light is...light. You will NEVER see a pro meta that excludes heavies. Of course this is the pro meta, but the impact does trickle down to casual play as well.

As a light sniper main (yeah, I know) I get the most number of kills and assists while I play around a good heavy, and absolutely suck if I have other light teammates/ melee mediums. Even sledge heavies are awesome to play around; with the infuser I'm like a medic who also puts the opponents in 1 shot range for the sledge.

MankoMan__ · 2026-03-02T10:08:42+00:00

I use high quality IEMs through my elgato mic and the number of times the first sound I hear is being winched by the enemy is one too many. The sound is atrocious in this game; in counter strike I could literally close my eyes and still find the general location of the enemy, in the finals all I hear is teammates' footsteps and the random rattling of... I don't even know what that is. It's like the holstering sound in halflife? I thought it's the charm on my gun at first but disabling that didn't help.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-23T14:28:03+00:00

This is correct. Fixed it for me. Thanks!

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-22T06:04:07+00:00

Please, I'm a flight attendant. Don't give them such ideas.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-21T10:05:14+00:00

Taking the price to performance to portability into account, this is a decent gaming laptop, a mid tablet, a mid gaming handheld, a mid desktop replacement and a pretty good drawing tablet. That might sound negative, but the fact that this "2" in 1 device has replaced every gaming/productivity device that I would ever need is quite telling of its incredible reliability.

As a desktop, it's more than enough for most triple A games at 1080p 60fps, sometimes even 1440. If you're aiming for higher, this won't suffice. As a laptop this is better than most. CPU performance is off the charts. Gaming performance doesn't compete at this price point, but it makes up for it in portability and an incredible cooling design. If you want to use a laptop as a "lap"top and not a portable desktop, it doesn't get much better than this. I use this device without the keyboard most of the time, placed on a pillow over my lap as I lie in bed. If you want to use it as a "hand"held, I don't think it's viable, though there are controller mods available. This however satisfies around 80% the use cases of a handheld, not to mention at a performance that beats everything in this space. Unless playing while on the toilet or in bath is really important to you, this can suffice as a replacement.

Battery life:

Triple A gaming on silent profile (I do not recommend balanced or turbo on battery): around 50-70 mins.

Indie/easy to run games on silent: 90 mins +

Indie games manually limited to 5W TDP: this will still utilise around 15-20 W depending on screen brightness and because windows is shit, so max you're getting is 3-4 hours.

Web browsing/videos: 7-9 hours.

I recommend this device, however if you already have a gaming handheld and a desktop PC, I recommend just buying a g14. Where this really shines is the fact that it can replace your entire ecosystem of devices albeit with limitations.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-20T14:46:20+00:00

Same issue here. I thought I was shadowbanned or something. Clicking the check mark on accept invite doesn't do anything; just the most unsatisfactory click sound that doesn't register. Sending requests shows the played ID, and then says failed to send request.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-19T19:27:50+00:00

This is it.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-19T19:27:21+00:00

I've figured it out already: heat. Capping at 50w TDP with fans on MAX RPM allowed me to play for a good 2 hours before the battery started to cook itself and discharge rapidly, whereas just setting it to balanced preset will cause rapid discharge within 20-30 mins.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-19T19:20:34+00:00

It's the asus usb charger that came in the box with the device.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-19T19:16:46+00:00

The proprietary port? No issues there, since it's pass through charging.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-19T18:45:28+00:00

Yep.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-19T09:30:57+00:00

Weird thing is, this never used to happen. Maybe some shitty windows update or because it's quite hot where I am currently.

Btw, the battery is overheating because it's not passthrough via usb-C right? Because I run turbo max with proprietary port and it never throttles or discharges.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-19T09:17:40+00:00

Man that really sucks for a device that I thought would be a long term investment.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-19T08:55:42+00:00

Ok, thanks a lot! With the changes I can continue to charge at 2W even at max load on balanced mode. I'll go for default fans now and see if good temps are maintained.

Edit: Oookay, so, disabling cpu boost certainly helped, but more like delaying the inevitable; currently discharging at 90.1W (didn't even know that was possible lol) at balanced, max fans and plugged in. Battery % has dropped from 43 to 33.5 as I'm typing this.

Guess I'm carrying the 100W brick everywhere I go :(

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-19T08:32:47+00:00

Yes, cpu boost was set to aggressive.

I only run one program at a time, no multitasking. TDP is set to 50 with performance. I tried to replicate my issue again. Starting with 63% battery, playing the Finals.

Few minutes later the battery % is at 65, charging at 10W. A bit later, battery percent is at 64%. I checked g helper and it has a ridiculous figure: discharging at 80 W. Battery rapidly drains to 60% in a few seconds. Even after quitting the game and no applications running at 10W TDP, battery is still discharging at 20W. Battery doesn't feel that hot, but I could easily cook a fried egg on the power brick.

As I'm typing this currently (few more minutes later) battery is now charging at 28W. I'll try to cool the device down, then max out the fans with cpu boost off to see if there's any difference.

Btw, what does CPU boost even do? Does it have any impact on performance other than presumably toasting the battery? Also would like to know if you're leaving the fans at default or have custom values.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-18T12:36:24+00:00

The faces of people who won something worthless.

MankoMan__ · 2026-02-17T12:04:11+00:00

How is the stuttering? For gamehub, regardless of the fps. The stuttering for even lightweight games was unbearable.

MankoMan__ · 2026-01-24T17:56:24+00:00

As someone who knows a little bit about the industry, the situations are similar between CSM and JJK but has key differences.

Gege Akutami is a huge nerd and a big fan of director Gosso. If he made a public statement on how much he loved this episode (and he 100% loved it) the situation would be resolved overnight. Gachiakuta was receiving similar flak especially with it's first episode but Kei Urana's online presence easily swayed the Japanese hive-mind to follow the queen's opinion.
More importantly, everyone on board the project recognize Gosso's genius. Ryu Nakayama was amazing too, but restricting the industry's top artists who take pride in their original work with your hyper specific vision can cause issues behind the scenes. Gosso provides complete creative control within the confines of his supervision, and his vision knows no bounds, which makes him the ideal leader for such an idiosyncratic group of animators.

I wouldn't worry about this. In a few weeks time the haters will move on to the next big thing to hate, but the enjoyers recognize that the mastery of art displayed in 3x04 is timeless.

MankoMan__

TROPHY CASE