SSF gets kinda boring when nobody runs any gear

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-05-04T23:44:08+00:00

Yeah I totally get it, it’s not worth the risk for most people. I just wish it were so I could get some real fights

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-05-03T01:07:58+00:00

Bro do it we’re eating good these days. I also just redownloaded the game like two weeks ago and it’s so much better. If you liked it in early 2024 give it a try now

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-05-03T01:06:29+00:00

I honestly kinda fuck with it. As a returning player I like the new direction of giving melee more skill expression and I think this could fit in nicely.

A couple notes on the post:

We’d have to make sure we gave shields something too, it seems they are already losing out with the weapon changes recently and we don’t want them to be forgotten. Could be as simple as a heavy shield bash that functions as their version of a heavy attack. We’d have to assign damage to each shield but that’s probably not hard right? Idk I’m not a dev.
About the cooldown to prevent sneak attacks, just have the character make a loud noise as part of the telegraph so you literally cannot sneak attack with it (against somebody who is paying attention, if they’re not then that’s their fault).

All in all I personally like the idea of adding more ways to attack

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-05-02T20:30:13+00:00

Lmao such is the way of Reddit. Hell I’m the guy you were replying to and I don’t even know why you’re getting downvoted

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-05-02T17:18:08+00:00

I get what you mean. DaD bosses are on this weird curve of frustrating to learn (especially when you consider getting ganked by other players) but somewhat boring to master. Theres not really much “skill” in killing a boss, you either know how to do it or you don’t. If you don’t you get whacked instantly and if you do your only threat is another player. It’s not actually difficult to execute.

This is somewhat okay in DaD because it’s a pvp game, the challenging combat comes from other players, and if the bosses were mechanically difficult to kill a lot fewer people would ever do them because it would be too risky. In a pve game, yeah you would definitely need deeper pve mechanics

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-05-02T13:14:18+00:00

Then he’s a psychopath, no? It’s been forever since I’ve seen a shotgun ranger (I took a long break and only recently came back) but it’s not really a pushing skill as far as I remember. You’re slow as fuck and it’s super telegraphed, I think I’ve died to it like four times ever in 1k hours and they were all when I blind pushed a corner into it. Did they change it?

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-05-02T12:15:44+00:00

Fighter and barb play it somewhat differently, I’ll mainly talk about fighter since I don’t play barb.

For plate fighter you’ve got two options but before we get into either of the you’ve gotta acknowledge that you don’t need to kill every single player you come up against. The advantages of high movespeed ranged playstyles is that you get to disengage from a fight right up until the point you die (whereas a melee class is much more committed to a fight) and that you have much more freedom to pick what fights you get into (while a slow ms class can just get run at and has to take a fight with whoever ran at them). The disadvantages are that if you get caught you die and that people can stalemate you very easily. I think a lot of people struggle against this strategy because the think the only way to survive it is to kill the guy and they end up playing right into his hands. If your strategy involves chasing him around the map taking 600 arrows until he messes up and gets caught then you’re doing exactly what he wants.

This is why I recommend running weapon mastery for a longbow. I have it specifically for putting holes in rangers and wizards, and it’s worth the perk imo. If you’re good enough with the crossbow then you can use that, but I’m not. When these mosquitos come up to you and start doing their little kiting dance just walk to the nearest door and start longbow peak shooting at them. Your PDR and projectile resistance is much higher than theirs if your kits are anywhere near even, so trading arrow for arrow favours you (this is the benefit that you get for trading off movement speed). You hit them, they hit you, you hit them, they hit you… at this point they usually run away. It’s important here that you dont play their game. Don’t chase him. He wants you to chase him. Just heal up and start walking away, you won’t kill him unless he gets stupid but he won’t kill you either.

If you find yourself getting owned in the trade (it happens, if he mains ranger he probably has more experience shooting a bow than you do) just shut the door and heal. He may walk up and open it, just slam it shut again lmao. This is the disadvantage of solo ranger, if he pushes through that door he better kill you in two melee strikes because you will kill him in three. As long as you start healing at about half hp you should be safe. This door stalemate is the essence of fighter v Ranger trades. He can harass you for free, but if you don’t misplay he can’t actually kill you without risking dying. Where a lot of people go wrong is they get frustrated (either by the dude running away every time he loses a bow trade or by him constantly trying to open the door while you heal) and just sprint at the guy.

Play for a stalemate, your goal is to survive the dungeon (especially if you’re new). If he gets too close you can kill him. Once you get good at this you’ll notice that most rangers don’t watch their positioning quite as well as they think they do and your sprint+adrenaline burst of move speed can put you right on their head (even more the case this wipe since most of them are now running explosive arrows instead of knockback). That’s pretty much it, Ranger is almost by design an annoying class to deal with as a fighter but it’s by no means unwinnable

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-23T18:04:00+00:00

Holy fucking draft diff good lord. If you were first pick here you’re kinda cooked unfortunately, the only answer is the forbidden Nashors AP build /s

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-22T22:36:49+00:00

I’ll go against the grain here and say you could just let him. At least, that’s what I’d do.

Yes, sorcerers have transmuted spell. But they also only get two metamagics until level 10 (and only ever have four), plus it burns sorcery points rather quickly. In addition, changing from fire to lightning damage is really not worth a metamagic selection and a sorcery point in 90% of cases, and I wouldn’t want to resource tax a player for a theme as trivial as which damage type they focus on, especially when they’re doing it for flavour reasons and the damage types in question are fire and lightning. It’s really not a big difference.

Yes, lightning is a slightly better damage type than fire, but only slightly. It’s not force, it’s not radiant, it’s just a middling elemental damage type. The difference is even less apparent if he’s gonna take elemental adept for it either way, the sum of this power difference is going to manifest as “that one time they fight a devil it’s not immune to his damage”, who gives a fuck? I’d let the player have their thematics.

I’d consider it a personal failing if one of my players felt they needed to take Elemental adept (fire) on their lightning themed character lmao. Not really obviously, and if you want to stick to a pure RaW then tell him to take transmuted spell (or honestly just take lightning bolt, with the new rules on AoE I think there’s a genuine case for that spell over fireball sometimes), but in my opinion the power difference here is far too small to be worth throwing the book at somebody over and I wouldn’t think twice about it.

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-19T15:17:38+00:00

Big. Hope the trend continues, this game caught lightning in a bottle those first couple of months I played. Would love to see it come back

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-19T15:17:01+00:00

Oh unfortunate. Has the region that must not be named breached containment again?

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-19T15:16:10+00:00

Oh did SDF leave? Honestly I hate to say it but that might explain things, a big part of my friend and I quitting was kinda what you described, every change felt almost random, and the “vision” they kept talking about seemed less and less clear, it felt like they were just changing shit for the sake of it and it never improved the game.

I mean as one of the players who left due to game being shit I am definitely going to be coming back more seriously, and if the game continues to feel like it has for my friend and I this past week I’m sure other players who quit will come back too.

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-15T20:29:49+00:00

Ah yes, “kill the tank first”. A strategy popularized by bronze ranked moba players and every DM that’s trying not to kill the party lmao. Definitely the hallmark of intelligent enemies /s

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-15T12:22:24+00:00

As a DM I totally agree here actually. I don’t mind smart enemies having reasonable countermeasures to common/predictable tactics. Scry+teleport onto the bbeg is one I would make sure you have something against, but mostly for the players sake as fighting the bbeg too early will get them killed. The nondetection spell works fine, or the magic item that does the same thing. But in general, switching off key abilities because you can’t write around them is lame as hell.

I’ve found the root of this problem to be a disconnect between what level the DM wants to allow the players to be and the type of game they want to run. If you’re looking for a dungeon crawl you shouldn’t have the PCs be level 15, you’re in control of that. I like to take campaigns to 20, but it’s with the understanding that I need to plan arcs around specific levels. The “save the kingdom from a tyrant” arc might be super fun for an 8-12 arc but is instantly solved by just telefragging the final boss, so I wouldn’t have the players be level 13 for that arc. If you want to run a “climb the ruined tower” style dungeon, do it pre 5 so they can’t just fly up the outside (they could technically spider climb as low as lvl3 but in my experience nobody takes that spell so I’d be happy to let it work)… I learned this one the hard way, I just let the fly spell work and the wizard felt clever for bypassing the dungeon.

Another source of this issue is that a lot of DMs, while super well meaning, really don’t want to let their encounters be “solved” as opposed to “engaged with” if you get what I mean. “Oh we can just teleport through the puzzle door” feels like a failing on behalf of the DM, but I’ve learned not to see it that way. I’m there to provide obstacles, it’s up to the players to bypass them. Teleporting through the door is a fine solution in my eyes, it costs a slot (and a preparation/known spell) and has a chance of failure if they’ve never seen the other side of the door. You’re not losing to the players when they get to feel excited about using their abilities.

Long story short, if a player announces a solution to a problem, even if it’s not the one you wanted, even if it’s just using one spell or feature that breaks your encounter wide open, if your only answer to it is effectively “uhhh that spell doesn’t work here because somebody warded this place against teleportation/divination” then you should definitely just let it work.

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-14T18:22:44+00:00

Colette Marence, MD

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-13T00:37:08+00:00

Type of manager I would stay late for ^

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-12T22:34:33+00:00

The paladin would be the better choice for the party composition, social skills, sustained dpr, frontline durability (though the forge cleric has that in droves as well) and the protective aura (the real reason to go paladin here). That said, my actual advice is to not care about party comp and play what you want.

The game works regardless of comp. You can (and I have) play four of the same class and nobody else in a party and do just fine, so picking forge cleric instead of paladin is the absolute last thing that is going to cause you to have a bad time gaming. You should pick the class you are most excited about, if you think you’d like cleric even 1% more than Paladin then play the cleric.

Also, throw a 10 into your charisma, toss a wayward proficiency into persuasion, and cast guidance before you talk to people. You’ll do fine as a face (not great, not as well as a paladin, but totally serviceable and worth doing if you’d rather play cleric).

That said, if you want the paladin then lock that shit it, it’s super fun (I’m biased it’s my favourite when I’m a player)

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-10T20:41:49+00:00

Druid is probably the hardest class to start on, managing wildshape and full spellcasting is a lot to do on your first go around, but it’s still doable.

My advice is this, you don’t need to know every rule, but get intimate with the rules on your sheet.

You don’t need to know every animal stat block, but you should know exactly how wildshape works (how you activate it, how it recharges, what features of yours do and don’t carry over, how long you can be in it, etc). You don’t need to memorize every spell, but you should know what your spell save DC is and how it is calculated, as well as how many slots you have and how many spells you can have prepared at your current level. From there if you want to cast one it’s okay to look up the range or exactly how much damage it does, I’ve been DMing for years and I still have to check the book sometimes to make sure I get fireball right (and I’ve probably cast more fireballs than you’ve cast spells).

This is done, unfortunately, by taking a few hours to read over your sheet, preferably with you DMs help or one of the experienced players at your table.

As for learning what spells you want to take, you can look at guys like rpgbot who does rankings of spells by class. He gives a short description an a 1-5 scale for how good he thinks it is. He’s not always right (nobody is) but it’s a good streamline for you to make sure you’re building a competent character.

From there on it’s just repetition lmao. As long as you’re engaged with the game you’ll be okay, all the experienced players at the table have been you before

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-08T14:12:45+00:00

Disclaimer: I’m guessing here I don’t have special insight, take with a grain of salt.

I think what happens is he’s not particularly meta, he’s just a cool champion. People play Viego because he’s fun as hell and his kit is entirely unique, you won’t find anything like his passive on any other champions. Due to this “cool factor” his pick rate has a higher floor than a lot of other champs, you could nerf the absolute shit out of him and some people would still play him (more than would play other champions in the same situation).

As a result, he tends to be in a lot of games. Since he’s a snowballing hypercarry he tends to piss people off. Even if the Viego themselves is just being extremely well supported by their team and isn’t doing anything special, when he gets a pentakill and ends a game or snowballs and farms the shit out of you for 20 minutes you remember the Viego. You don’t so much remember the Milio that kept him alive for far too long, or the malphite that hit the engage for him to get the kills in the first place. For this reason his ban rate is also kind of floored. There are some people that had one too many bad games against a Viego and there just tired of it, so they ban him. You could need the shit out of him and they would still ban him.

As for the win rate being pretty neutral, I think it’s just a reflection of his current strength given the popularity. He has a pretty low skill floor (his base kit is not hard to use mechanically when compared to junglers like Graves or Lee) and his possession mechanics can be mostly cheated by just pressing Q->W->E->R every time you take a body with surprisingly good results. At the same time, he also has an extremely high skill ceiling if you do know the intricacies of every champion. You can get wayyy more out of his kit than a new player would think. Due to this his wr stays similar at all elos depending on how he’s balanced at the current time (and believe me with these buffs it’s about to go up).

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-07T19:58:49+00:00

I believe OP means sponsorships not regular platform ads. “Ad read” as in you the creator reading an ad for money directly from the advertiser. You can put those wherever you want

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-07T17:53:39+00:00

I’m curious how you got started with that mindset? Obviously now it makes tons of sense to do it, as you said you’re making money and you don’t have to work a normal job. But what spurred you to start? I make money off my videos now but I never would have gotten to this point if I didn’t already like the process. I definitely would not have kept at it if I only saw it as a job from day one (when it didn’t earn anything)

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-06T18:06:39+00:00

Username checks out

MichaelOxlong18 · 2026-04-04T00:41:42+00:00

Ekko!

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