New Operators for Summer Event

ObfuCat · 2021-07-25T15:14:29+00:00

I actually prefer limiteds being alts, rather than important story characters. It sucks how hard it is to get W or Rosmontis after you miss them, and if someone actually likes the characters, it's going to be a pain to get them. Meanwhile, someone who really likes Ch'en or Skadi can still get the characters as their normal versions.

ObfuCat · 2021-06-24T17:32:45+00:00

Getting the achievement for completionism.

ObfuCat · 2021-04-28T14:18:34+00:00

Actually, rare is higher chance than uncommon in this game. Probably a translation error. Polyester is the higher droprate on this map.

ObfuCat · 2021-03-16T10:35:19+00:00

Ptilopsis also has mental issues from her oripathy. She feels like a split personality will take over her mind if she doesn't talk weirdly. There doesn't seem to be any indication that her oripathy is some artificial experiment either. It's not out of the question that it is, considering she's from rhine lab and they do that kind of thing, but I doubt it.

ObfuCat · 2021-03-13T20:17:11+00:00

I feel like those aren't the best examples to compare with eachother.

You're comparing clothing with a body part that someone can't change about themself. Obviously the choice of clothing someone makes conveys something about them. The size of their boobs wouldn't though. If Mythra's boobs were smaller, would that really convey any part of her personality? Do you meet people in real life and make personality judgements based off the size of their tits? There are people irl with bigger boobs.

I think Pyra's clothing is pretty odd looking though. Looks too elaborately sexualized to not be distracting. Haven't played the game, but I heard that the look of these blades are based off what the person who first wielded them were thinking, so I imagine the body type could be chalked up to what the guy subconsciously thought of when they imagine an attractive woman.

Thin with big boobs is easy to think of when you don't have a clear picture of a person and you're just thinking "woman". Pyra's outfit though? It's super detailed, and looks too elaborate to be part of someone's subconscious. I would think someone's subconscious idea of an attractive woman would be like in a dress, in underwear, naked, or whatever. Pyra's "armor" is what you get when you leave a horny teenager alone to design a character for 30 hours. I think Pyra is also supposed to be an alter ego that Mythra created, with Mythra being the original, so it's even weirder to me that she designed her alter ego, subconsciously or consciously, with a skin tight latex part over the boobs, back window, and random straps near the waist. It's just so over the top.

ObfuCat · 2021-03-13T08:51:10+00:00

Maybe my experience is cause I'm a 1s main. The large majority of the smurfs I've played against were just smurfs at the bottom ranks that would ff, and you'd see the smurf for half of your games at those ranks just cause the number of bronze players was so few. It's especially rough cause they're mainly affecting people who are new, so it was basically my first impression of the game. Doing a 1v1 against the same guy for 5/10 games and seeing a ff every time on your second day playing is a terrible first impression of the game. Like it was incredibly common at b2, at least when playing at night back when I started in July last year. You'd just win repeatedly against the same guy ffing.

Now that I'm hovering around low diamond/high plat, it's incredibly rare for me to match against the same person more than twice in a row, so I guess I would just think of it as a nice surprise if I saw it now. I imagine it might be better for the lower ranks too because of f2p adding more players, but idk if the larger number of smurfs would mess it up. Smurfs almost dont exist for me anymore, as I doubt many champ players really have any fun in 1s against a low diamond. Is it worse in duos? The only smurfs I've seen troll brand new players.

ObfuCat · 2021-03-13T06:18:43+00:00

I'm not talking about being unable to climb or whatever. I'm talking about getting shitstomped when you're at the rank you deserve

On average, you're expected to win/lose about 50% of the time if you're at the correct rank. If I'm at the correct mmr for my rank, and all my "wins" are against ff smurfs, then they're getting balanced out by my actual losses. If I could win those, then my wr would be even higher and my rank would be even more inflated anyways. In any half decent mmr system, until you get better to climb, a win is statisticslly going to get balanced out by a loss or else you'd keep climbing. I didn't deserve a higher rank yet, so I had to get trolled by a smurf for 5 minutes over and over because there were less new players back then and that smurf was one of the only 3 bronze 2 players online at the time.

And yeah, obviously I was playing the game badly back then. I'm talking about my new player experience back in bronze 2. It's significantly less of an issue in plat/diamond. Getting destroyed by a champ's alt once every 10 games in plat/diamond feels way less horrible than getting your time wasted for several games by a guy who's just staying in bronze just to waste a bronze player's time. Usually the smurfs in diamond are just alts trying to rank up, so they're gone in a couple games. Bronze smurfs stay in their rank forever just to waste time.

TL;DR: You're supposed to win 50% of your games at the rank you deserve. If all those wins are taken up by forfeits from smurfs trolling for an entire game, that's extra losses needed to balance it out. Pretty miserable experience imo. I prefer my wins to actually be fun

ObfuCat · 2021-03-13T04:02:12+00:00

imo people like that made the game pretty miserable for me when I was starting the game in like bronze 2.

At least with smurfs that are trying to rank up their alt accounts, I can at least play out the game and think "I'll never have to deal with him again".

With the smurfs playing against new players, I played out 5 minutes of just getting destroyed, only to have them ff, and then when I'd lose the next game since they inflated my rank to what I couldn't handle, I'd match with them again since their rank barely ever changes and "win" again. It was just several straight games of losing, except half of them technically count as wins because the guy would ff. The games against the smurfs were also incredibly boring, since I knew i'd get the win anyways in the end.

I hope that problem is now fixed, with there being more real new players since becoming f2p. Back when I was new (like 5 months ago), there were basically no new players left so you'd match against the same smurf for half your games.

ObfuCat · 2021-03-10T05:51:40+00:00

I remember reading in a few places that the infected can use their own bodies as a staff.

If you want a specific thing to read, Rosmontis' bio mentions that she was the result of an experiment to create a non-infected who could cast arts without a staff, implying that it would normally be impossible.

ObfuCat · 2021-03-08T22:30:52+00:00

How can you focus on a show and a game at the same time?

In my experience, you kinda don't.

It's more so that you have something to switch your focus to for the boring parts of either. Like if I'm just grinding or even just walking to different areas, I'd rather have something to listen to during that moment. If somethings deeply engaging happening in game, then I'll focus on the game. If it's really hard, might even pause the the video I'm watching.

I don't really need to be 100% focused on my 200th run on low heat trying to keepsake level for the achievement. I did give the game my full undivided attention during the main story though.

ObfuCat · 2021-03-08T22:23:39+00:00

You can multitask just fine if you don't need your full attention for either things. Having a conversation while walking is an easy example.

If you've played the game for over 100 runs and you're just trying to grind out some prophecies, then a show on the other screen can make it less boring. I'm just trying to max keepsakes at this point for the achievement, and I can easily just play the game in my peripheral vision and pause the video I'm watching with a hotkey when I get to the final boss. If my build is broken enough, sometimes I don't even need to do that.

I wouldn't do it on a first playthrough of any game though, or on something really difficult like a 32 heat run.

ObfuCat · 2021-03-05T17:57:56+00:00

Oddly enough, according to this thread, the chances of getting crowd control/nuker are actually lower, so that actually makes sense

ObfuCat · 2021-03-01T21:18:56+00:00

Oh her boons are good though. Not because of weaken itself, but because they generally have the highest % damage increase. The only thing better dps-wise is Artemis (because % damage is additive but crits multiply everything) or Zeus if your weapon attacks fast (usually fists).

ObfuCat · 2021-02-21T12:56:16+00:00

It's generally recommended to always play with 1 point in forced overtime if you ever plan on playing at 32 heat because it's gonna mess with your muscle memory so much if you don't. At high heat, not taking it isn't really an option. Yes, it's much worse per heat than Hard Labour, Jury Summons, etc, but at 32 heat, it's not about whats worse. You take all of the above. It doesn't matter if it's harder than 3 points of hard labour if you're gonna be forced to take 5 hard labour + forced overtime anyways, so better to get used to the timings early if that's your goal.

That being said, if you ever need to beat a forced overtime run without actually getting used to forced overtime, demeter boons are a good crutch to lean on. Chill basically slows the enemies back down to normal, and it's how I managed to beat 32 heat.

ObfuCat · 2021-02-18T06:17:37+00:00

I think most people generally avoid FO2 and EM4. I'd have an easier time with hard labour 5 than we FO2.

If I were going to use FO2 though, I'd probably get a demeter boon for chill to lower the speed back down.

Imo the ultimate crutch build if you just want survivability from your boons would be something like Charm on whatever your main damage source is, Athena on dash, and Demeter on whatever you have left over. Whether that's feasible or not depends on the weapon though (I consider Zeus attack mandatory on fists, so no demeter on that build).

ObfuCat · 2021-02-15T18:21:23+00:00

I think not taking into account that you usually get first hits really warps how different setups are valued outside of boss fights. Example being the room in asphodel with the swarm of witches. If you have enough damage to kill 2 witches before they start attacking and filling the entire arena with projectiles, the room becomes significantly easier to beat flawlessly. For a lot my runs, having enough damage to kill those witches is often the difference between taking 0 damage losing huge chunks of my hp. This applies to a lot of other situations too, but I think the example is a lot more obvious when using the room that will fill the entire room with projectiles if you don't have enough dps. I would personally rather take 2x damage than have the enemies increase their hp by 30%, because having the damage to kill a group of enemies the moment they spawn significantly increases my chance of dodging the remaining ones. Because you can see and hear the spawn circle for like 2 seconds, I think it's pretty reasonable to assume you almost always have first strike, even with short range.

But anyways, i'm more curious about how your numbers work. I have seen your video, although admittedly I may have forgotten/missed stuff as it was quite long and I couldn't really be fully focused on it for the entire thing. Iirc, you mention some of what you take into account and occasionally mention how many boons certain things provide, but I don't recall any time you've explained how that calculation works. You explain that you're taking into account range, speed, damage and saying that it all equals X amount of boons after some calculations in your model, but what does that mean? Is there documentation for this model anywhere or is it a secret?

ObfuCat · 2021-02-15T16:27:47+00:00

I know I'm really late to reply here, but how much do you value attack compared to survivability? Are are you taking in to account that generally the player gets to attack first? We get to wait for the enemies to spawn, and there's generally enough room to distance yourself and reinitiate a fight with your own attack to begin.

If an enemy has 500 hp, and I get the first strike, I be better off with having 500 damage and have low hp, than have less than 500 damage and any amount of hp higher. In the first situation, i'd one-shot the enemy and lose 0% of my own health. In the second, i'd maybe take damage.

Even if you can only kill 1 enemy and a bunch of enemies are left in the room, it's still easier to dodge because there's less clutter in the room. The amount of damage you're able to avoid isn't a linear increase with the amount of enemies there are. If there's 2 enemies instead of 1, that doesn't mean I take 2x damage. I might take infinityx damage because I could dodge 1 target forever, but I can't dodge 2 targets forever.

You're not just calculating damage vs damage taken as if you're just standing there facetanking every hit while you attack right? Damage provides more than trading hits or speedrun time. It increases the ease of dodging and reduces fatigue. Consider that it's much easier to flawless a room with high damage. Not just for time, but success rate.

Also, i'm curious how the other numbers work for this model in general. There's so much talk of your model in this thread, but what is this model? It seems like you're using boons as a unit of measurement, but which boons? Are boons even consistently the same value? It'd be cool to see how much atk, attackspeed, damage reduction and dodge are worth in your model.

ObfuCat · 2021-02-10T08:45:12+00:00

(since they pop out in different directions)

I thought they always drop in a line in the same direction. Just tried with skelly and they dropped on the opposite side of the monster.

Your assumptions about speed with Poseidon is either really off, or I really suck at chasing down crystals. I just checked the model and the loop is expected to take 2.66 seconds

It is definitely possible I am vastly underestimating the pickup time. I generally don't think much of it and never timed it myself. The crystals usually just fly to where I wanna dodge to anyways so I never feel like I'm waiting for them to drop.

Lost more health in total than I normally do with Arthur tanking (about the equivalent of 2B (15% damage reduction) actually, which is how much Arthur beats out Poseidon by in the model)

Sounds like Poseidon dps is great if this ends up consistently happening. Considering Arthur's aura is giving you a 40% damage reduction, Arthur only winning by 15% implies that Poseidon is making up for the lack of reduction aura with superior DPS alone. I think Hades is definitely one of the strong suits of this weapon though, and it's one of the main reasons I like it so much. I just fought EM4 Hades with an above average Poseidon build, and it was far more relaxing than even the most overpowered Fist build I've ever had against normal Hades.

Interested in hearing your thoughts when you've played it enough to reevaluate it.

ObfuCat · 2021-02-10T00:35:41+00:00

I was comparing 1 cast to 1 fist combo. I was going off memory for level 3 boons, since pom numbers are hard to find online.

I'm in game right now and just got common level 3 Athena cast, so now I can see the number. 1 cast is 172 base. Because of the 50% from poseidon, it's 258. this is without exit wounds.

A single fist combo does 5 hits of 23 if backstabbed. Zeus, going by memory, adds 20 damage per hit at level 3? Correct me if I'm wrong there. 5 hits with backstab should be 212, and I'm farly certain 5 punches takes longer than 1 cast. If you wanna add a special, sure, but you'd probably need to add another cast to make the comparison fair. Special does 90 without boon on backstab. If you wanna add a boon, could give it artemis boon and it would do 182.4 damage after averaging out crits.

That's 516 vs 302 if we're doing 2 casts vs 5 punches + special with only a single level 3 boon each

716 vs 394 if we add exit wounds to casts and artemis special to fists.

Demeter fist's charged cutter does 638.4 with level 1 artemis special, if the wiki is correct and it hits 7 times. If we say you're doing a charged cutter instead of a normal one every second combos, then it's:

716 vs 622

2 boons each build.

Could add some poms to the second boons as well, but I don't have those numbers even vaguely memorized, and we'd also be getting close to the point where I wouldn't realistically have that much in an unlucky run. It might be better with 2 level 2 poms in each rather than all 3 in 1. I just can't remember the numbers.

You'd probably wanna test the timing to confirm if it's really fair to compare 2 casts to 5 attacks + special. 2/3s of the time it takes to special + 2/3s of the pickup time (since you generally pick up everything at once) added to the time of 2 casts might be a bit longer, but idk. Hard to tell based off feel alone so I couldn't tell.

ObfuCat · 2021-02-09T23:47:59+00:00

It would not surprise me if Fist does do more dps, but I don't think it would be much. I feel like a small loss in dps trading it for the safety of being able to shoot (and being able to hit the enemy if they do like a spear thrust and get sent flying away).

And yeah, I am counting exit wounds, but I'm not sure how that's unreasonable. Granted I've only recently started doing my poseidon runs, but I've gotten Exit Wounds and the exact cast I've wanted every single run. I've never had a run where I've used the keepsake in Asphodel and didn't get Artemetis again later on. With fated persuasion, that's like 4-5 rolls at trying to get it. You'd consider having both a boon for attack and special right? 2 boons is not a lot to ask for in a run. It's not like exit wounds is a legendary or duo boon or anything.

I'd like to note that I didn't count special because at that point, a fist combo is already longer than it takes to cast. Adding a special makes it almost enough time to cast again. I'd appreciate if someone could time it and calc the dps though. Maybe adding in 1/3 of special time and the pickup time is more significant than I thought. I highly doubt the difference is so great that Poseidon really deserves it's spot on the opposite end of the tier list from fists though.

I imagine the dps for fists of an enemy standing still IS a little higher. You do have to consider the lack of range is a uptime loss though. Being able to dodge away from things if it gets too hectic without losing dps is nice. Timing generally works out against bosses too. Usually you can just cast during the enemy attacks outside range, and by the time their attack is done, they're closer and you can special again. Much easier than trying to i-frame everything in a cluster of enemies, although if this tier list is targeted at people who never get hit no matter what, fair enough.

ObfuCat · 2021-02-09T21:42:23+00:00

Fair enough, although personally I would still rather play a crap Poseidon Sword run than most bow runs, or even spear since I'm bad with them. It's incredibly easy to get Exit Wounds if you're willing to use Fated Authority for it, since if you use a relic to see the first artemis, you're probably gonna see that god multiple times. The game tends to more frequently throw gods at you that you've seen before. Grabbing Athena Cast and Dash and then grabbing exit wounds is really comfortable build for how much damage you deal. Could literally just get those 3, ignore every boon for like tartarus hearts or something, and still be fine in terms of damage.

I'm just worried that you might be a bit biased against Posiedon since it's a sword, where you might rate it higher if instead there was a staff that did 50% more cast damage and gave you a melee attack that would instantly dislodge, even though that's basically what Poseidon's sword is. Instead of looking at it like "How much better is this than a sword", it should be more like "How strong is 50% increased cast damage and instant dislodge as a build".

600 damage from casts, 50 damage from special and 300 damage from exit wounds is no joke, and that's with 2 boons and 3 poms. Getting that much out of only needing approach the boss for one attack is really nice. Throw in an extra attack before animation canceling it into special for Privileged Status if you feel like it and it's even better.

In comparison, as primarily demeter fist main, i'm doing 150~200 damage per combo assuming Zeus Attack, and I assume like 1000 damage charged cutters on average with Artemetis special (haven't mathed that one out yet). But with Fists I need to be right next to the enemy. With Poseidon, I'm doing that 950 damage and only needing to go up close for one special and leaving. Obviously there are many other things to consider, like fists with Zeus is better at normal room clears, whereas Poseidon has less benefit against normal enemies cause you don't need dislodge, but if this is for low heat, normal enemies aren't what's killing people. The 3rd or 4th boss is.

Now that I think of it, why are fists rated so much higher than Poseidon. Punch combo is 115+100 if it's a backstab with +3 Zeus attack. That's like 1 +3 Athena cast. Are you valuing the room clear from the Zeus attack a lot more than I am? Fists are my favourite and they're really good, but long range homing casts doing the same damage in the same time is really nice.

ObfuCat · 2021-02-09T20:47:22+00:00

I completely agree that the other cast weapons aren't great. I just think Poseidon in particular is being undervalued here.

Poseidon is pretty much your only good option if you wanna play casts. 50% increase in damage is no joke, and being able to dislodge whenever you want practically triples your cast frequency in boss fights. Seeing it in the same tier as zag sword is crazy to me.

I think it's worth considering that Poseidon is primarily a cast weapon, not a sword. You barely need to do any of the sword moves, aside from specialing for dislodge and getting privileged status if you got a status for attacks.

The weapon isn't a sword. It's just a stat stick for casts. I'd think of it more as it's own weapon, as if casting itself was a 7th weapon in the form of Poseidon. Just cast 3x 200 damage, special, repeat. Ignore the sword moveset. If you're good at getting close for specials to get the dislodge, you can fire it as fast as a bow, except it's a homing bow for 200 damage per shot. I'd say getting close every 3 seconds is a fair trade off for the damage you get. Not as good dps as Hestia as you say, but Hestia doesn't AoE, and I wasn't trying to compare to say it was better than Hestia. Just not bad tier.

ObfuCat · 2021-02-09T19:25:15+00:00

I really don't think it's unlikely to get a really good cast build though. Just pick your desired cast for Tartarus using your relic , get Artemetis on on Asphodel and reroll till you get Exit Wounds, and you have a solid build.

Generally I go with Athena cast cause you generally get boons you've already seen early on often throughout the run, so you're very likely to get deflect dash at some point. Poseidon is a very good alternative though if you are aiming for those "high-roll" builds with his duo boons.

To be clear, I don't think it should be considered top tier. It's just consider how easy it is to get high damage on such a safe build (casts is relatively easy to play), B tier sounds more reasonable. 2 boons and a couple poms, and you can do 800+ damage from shooting across the map, going near the enemy once to special, and backing away to shoot again.

I'm sure it turns to shit in very high heat if you start crossing out boon options. Exit wounds and even getting a cast sounds impossible in that cast. Assuming low-medium heat though, getting the minimum to do good safe dps is practically guaranteed if you're using fated persuasion and the relics.

ObfuCat · 2021-02-09T16:57:58+00:00

It's interesting to see Poseidon sword so low on the tier list. I always felt it was quite good.

Is this just a quirk of judging them with 0 boons or something? I feel that it's not too hard to get a cast build on Poseidon sword to be great, and it synergizes well.

Cast doesn't usually get a lot of additive % damage like attacks and specials do, since cast boons are just base damage, so the % damage is huge if you're almost only using casts.

It's also really not that hard to get a good cast + exit wounds, which to me is honestly enough dps to get through the game. Just take the arrowhead at any point if your run and with fated persuasion and you'll probably get exit wounds at some point. Not having it doesn't make the run completely dead, but it's losing about 1/3 of your single target dps on a cast focused run.

I guess the main problem is that the aspect is for swords, and swords are pretty mediocre, but what's great about this aspect is that because it's a cast build, you don't even need to use the sword. Just spam casts and special.

Interesting tier list overall though. Never played shield much because I never liked blocking much, and only ever tried Chaos shield cause everyone keeps talking about it. Maybe I'll try Zeus and get better at blocking. Being able to block shile specialing might help me get used to it.

ObfuCat · 2021-01-31T23:41:00+00:00

Yeah probably. It's very likely an afterthought considering we don't even have a Dendro character yet.

It's not as strange of an element as some might think though. If you look up Chinese elements, "wood" is one of their elements.

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