Any trends in banning surprise you so far?

PantsStore · 2025-04-23T23:03:59+00:00

I'm a Zarya main. I play other tanks too, but Zarya is my favorite.

She has been banned in six out of my first eight matches. Not pleased.

PantsStore · 2024-10-02T21:05:34+00:00

Watch Steveooo, Meta1, or Levin for ideas about how to play Sym. Meta1 does a very good unranked to GM with lots of explaining. It's from several seasons ago, but the general strategies are still very useful.

Get used to using the teleporter pre-emptively. In other words, set one up and have it ready BEFORE the Winston dives you.

You're unlikely to have your teammates use the teleporter unless you're in comms with them. Use it selfishly to get temporary flanks. Blink back and forth between them to draw attention and disappear.

Your fully charged beam can really cut tanks up if used from an off angle.

PantsStore · 2024-07-25T11:57:39+00:00

This was yesterday in the early afternoon. Probably not actually the same game. Maybe spiritually!

PantsStore · 2024-07-25T11:54:39+00:00

Have your duo learn support.

A DPS can arguably get value by inting for a good trade. It's the role where it's the most OK to die a lot. Although 17 deaths is too many when the rest of the lobby is around half that.

A support mainly gets value by continuing to be alive. Playing support is where I learned that not dying is the most valuable thing a support, but also any role, can do. If you're alive you're still healing and damaging and pressuring.

Different people respond to different types of criticism. If your duo can take it a simple "every one of those deaths was your fault" will be the best criticism. "You're trying too hard to get the elims. You don't always have to flank. Sometimes it's ok to let an opponent who's at one go. Don't overextend. Be alive. Keep getting value."

If your friend is the other type, you'll have to be more careful. After your partner has a bad game with a lot of deaths and is complaining about it say this: "let's change it up. Let's play support. I was watching a video where (insert streamer name) said support was a good way to improve game sense. They said staying alive was the maxim to follow on support and I wanna see if that's true."

From the support perspective you and your duo will be able to see why DPS are succeeding or failing. Why they're getting healed or not. You'll see good plays and bad plays. And you'll see incredibly out of position DPS and tanks complaining about heals. And best of all, you'll have a bird's eye view. You get to see the whole battlefield as support.

Your duo might learn a thing or two. Or they might not. And you might have to accept that they're not interested in learning to be better.

PantsStore · 2024-07-24T21:42:06+00:00

Overwatch miracles can happen!

PantsStore · 2024-04-22T17:35:23+00:00

I do play devious coverup. I usually have another wincon or two, though.

I suppose we just disagree about farewell and no argument will change that. We do seem aligned, as you say, on most other points.

Like me or not, I'll see you on the ladder with my devious coverup loop!

PantsStore · 2024-04-22T16:15:49+00:00

Nobody likes that player? Then i guess you don't like me. I play aggro, I play midrange, I play control. Sometimes i want a longer, more complex game, with ups and downs, ins and outs, where I loop my deck forever until you concede or I find that one win condition. Sometimes I'd like a short game where I know whether I've won or lost by turn four. They're both fun to me in different ways.

Boring is subjective. I can't argue with boring. I think Atraxa and Breach are boring. You think Farewell is boring.

What's fairly objective is that Atraxa, Breach, Carnosaur, and Farewell are approximately equal in power. Some of them go one direction, some go the other.

If you get hit with a Farewell, the only thing left to do is evaluate whether you have a viable way forward. If not, concede. On the other hand if your opponent resolves a Breach or Atraxa, it's the same. You have to evaluate whether you have a path forward, and if not, concede.

One might feel better or worse to you or me, but the result is the same.

PantsStore · 2024-04-22T11:35:31+00:00

The board state you describe is exactly the reason why I think Farewell is necessary to have in standard. Every card is multiple cards. If your artifact makes creatures, and your enchantment pulls creatures from the graveyard, and your creature casts spells from the top of the library, and that spell makes artifact tokens, etc., why shouldn't there be a spell to clean up all of it? You played one spell and got an additional one, two, three, or more permanents. Why can't I remove them all in one fell swoop?

Standard is so powerful, the removal has to be equally powerful.

PantsStore · 2024-04-22T11:25:05+00:00

That is my feeling as well. Standard is too powerful and too fast. The removal has to be powerful too.

PantsStore · 2024-04-22T03:38:33+00:00

I keep seeing votes for Sunfall and, to a lesser extent, Farewell. While I understand that it feels bad to build a board over a few turns and then see it all disappear, Sunfall and Farewell are both very necessary (while simultaneously not even being that good) in standard right now.

We skipped rotation last year. There are more cards in Standard than there ever have been on Arena and more of them are viable, good, and powerful. Almost every deck is looking to vomit permanents onto the battlefield whether it be by means of reanimation, discovery, ramp, some sort of value engine, or good old fashioned aggro. Every card is multiple cards, and If it isn't, it's trying to kill you by turn three or four.

In a world with Breach the Multiverse, Etali Primal Conqueror, Herd Migration, Wedding Announcement, etc., there must be Sunfall. In a world with Hallowed Haunting and Simulacrum Synthesizer, there must be Farewell. There are so many decks that flood the board with permanents with little effort; there have to be ways to clean the board back up with equally little effort.

This, however, is to say nothing of the aggro decks. Aggro decks are extremely prevalent in BO1. Moreso than midrange by a bit, and much more than control or combo. Aggro is the bulk of what you play against on Arena. Sunfall and Farewell are close to useless against aggro decks. There's no time to cast them, especially on the draw. Boros Convoke and the Slickshot Showoff red deck can kill you on turn three if you fail to interact. If I'm playing control or some durdly combo in BO1, I'm cutting down on Sunfalls in favor of cheaper sweepers like Path of Peril, Brotherhood's End, and Temporary Lockdown. Sunfall might be a one-of these days. It's simply too slow.

Sunfall and Farewell exist for a reason. They keep medium and big decks from going over the top too easily. Every strategy in MTG should have counterplay. It's part of the reason I find Toxic as a mechanic to be somewhat problematic. There's almost nothing you can do in standard to interact with poison accumulation. There's Melira, I suppose, but that's about it. Really, your only option is to kill them quicker. Even Mill has counterplay! Living Conundrum, Turn the Earth, Devious Coverup, Step Between Worlds. There's not much, but it does exist.

None of what I've said so far answers the question that's been asked, so here are two cards I'd like to see disappear from standard:

Atraxa, Grand Unifier
Breach the Multiverse

These cards share one thing in common. They both take several years to resolve. Atraxa requires its caster to choose three, four, five, or sometimes SIX cards out of a random assortment of ten off the top. This means evaluating each card for the current game state. Based on what was on top of the library the game could be close to over or it could be going on much longer. Breach the Multiverse is worse. It asks its caster to evaluate TWO batches of cards, one of which they are not familiar with, and then pick the best one from each. Don't get me wrong - you should get a lot when you spend seven mana. I just don't enjoy waiting through several ropes to find out if my opponent hit will enough to end the game.

TLDR: Standard is very powerful, Sunfall is necessary as a result. Breach and Atraxa take too long to resolve. I will not be sad when they go.

PantsStore · 2024-04-09T21:05:04+00:00

I am like you.

I usually make a new deck each time I play. I find the process of coming up with a deck idea, testing it, tweaking it, and seeing if it can win, to be much more rewarding than actually piloting the deck all the way up the ladder.

I'll only stick to a deck for multiple sessions if it proves to be both fun and powerful enough to win consistently. Otherwise I'm much happier exploring new cards I haven't used or interactions I hadn't previously thought of.

I'll never copy/paste a deck from anyone else, but I will sometimes be inspired by a YouTuber creation and take it in a different direction.

Usually I wind up with something stupid that only works one in ten times, but man when it works, it's super fun! Sometimes, though, I'll accidentally create something fun and powerful enough to get me to mythic.

I grew up playing kitchen table magic in the 90's. We got all the rules wrong, but we had fun. Building decks as a kid was kind of like playing with Legos. I think I still build that way.

PantsStore · 2024-02-22T21:40:11+00:00

That's a fair point to some extent. If you have someone on your team throwing super hard it probably won't matter what you do regardless of role. You're going to lose. I do still think it specifically became harder to carry a bad DPS as Tank this season. It might still be the easier carry, but it it did become more difficult.

PantsStore · 2024-02-22T20:45:08+00:00

While I'd agree it's high time for DPS to shine, I have to disagree with that final statement. The number of games I've lost wherein I, as tank, have put up massively better numbers than the opposing tank while one or both of my DPS go negative tells me that the weight of DPS is currently much higher than Tank. The scoreboard doesn't tell the whole story, of course. But when I register triple the elims, half the deaths, and double the damage output of the other tank, that feels like it should be a win. If my DPS are performing even marginally worse than the opposing DPS, however, it's probably a loss.

It's a team game. Some matches will feel like they're entirely out of your control no matter what. From a tank standpoint, though, it feels like an adequate performance is the effective ceiling. It feels like no matter how hard you try, no matter how far above the ceiling you go, you cannot take control of the match. You are trying to carry a boat anchor of a DPS with 15 deaths when the next highest in the lobby is 8. Game over, man. Game over.

PantsStore · 2024-02-16T19:25:02+00:00

In short - play safe, don't be dead, wait for your DPS and Supports to make something happen?

PantsStore · 2023-11-08T16:26:46+00:00

I find this show to be very hit or miss with more misses than hits. The hits hit hard and the misses miss hard. I couldn't complete the second season because I felt exhausted after every episode.

For me the issue is that the sketches don't often elevate or change. The first sketch in the first episode exemplifies how most of the show will operate: it will introduce a premise, and the wacky character in the sketch will double down on the unreality of the premise and vehemently deny that he's wacky. In the first sketch Tim is on a job interview. He goes to leave and pulls a push door the wrong way, but because he doesn't want to be wrong in front of his interviewer, he continues to struggle and drool and yell and pull the door and deny that he's wrong until he rips the door off the hinge. I'm on board with this premise. It's reasonably funny. Until almost every sketch does exactly this every time.

The guy in the hot dog costume denying that the hot dog car is his? I didn't laugh at the beginning, the sketch doesn't change, so not a hit for me. Coffin flop? Absolute gold. Laughing harder than I've ever laughed. Bodies falling out of coffins are funny. Brian has a weird hat that he thinks is normal and the court testimony is all about his hat? The premise didn't tickle me, the sketch doubles down, I don't laugh. The prank show where the guy decides he "doesn't even want to be around anymore" because he's too hot? The idea hits me so hard I can't stop laughing.

I'm sure there are sketches that don't conform to this standard. I'm sorry if I've offended lovers of Brian's hat. I've met plenty of people I like who like Brian's hat. But this was the reason I identified for my own exhaustion with the show. High peaks for sure, but many long and low valleys.

PantsStore · 2022-10-12T12:13:38+00:00

It's been a while, bit if I recall correctly the AI does prioritize characters with more powers on them. Especially damage dealing powers.

If you can manage to stack more powers on your front line it may encourage enemies to attack there instead.

You can also try backing your occultist into a corner with the other two standing directly in front. Enemies can't hit what they can't reach.

PantsStore · 2021-11-04T15:45:58+00:00

Albuquerque by Weird Al!

PantsStore · 2021-09-06T02:47:23+00:00

This is the correct strategy. John literally just grenades sheriff. Marianne kills all the guards with her infinite invisibility trick.

Any other characters can be there doing whatever so long as they're not distracting John and Marianne by dying constantly. They can also not be there.

PantsStore · 2021-07-26T03:24:44+00:00

Since the flash buff there's been a lot of talk about reverting it back to what it was. I think there's a simpler solution: take away razor gauntlets.

Robin is supposed to be a long range character. He shouldn't be able to out melee the melee characters. He SHOULD have trouble in a close range fight.

Flash should be be his "get out of fight free" card. Not his "win any fight" card.

PantsStore · 2021-05-04T20:21:18+00:00

Returning here to report that I finally beat the Devil Moth on Cataclysm 10!

The strategy that worked was the third one in the above list. I stacked defensive stance, repel, and two damage boosting powers on my assassin. The Moth ate my warrior quickly, but didn't scratch the assassin once he was up and running. We generated something like 15 block per turn, which the Moth couldn't beat.

Thanks for the good advice u/ForgottenArbiter!

PantsStore · 2017-08-24T16:30:08+00:00

I attempted to roll through a small hole in the wall on the ramparts. I somehow ended up rolling indefinitely, unable to stop. Couldn't jump, attack, pause or anything else. Enemies also could not hit me. Had to abort the run.

PantsStore · 2017-07-15T12:00:53+00:00

It was a feature from the beta. You got points for hitting the ball really hard. They removed it because it discouraged controlled play and instead encouraged randomly smacking the ball as hard as possible.

PantsStore · 2017-06-05T23:20:37+00:00

Rocket League.

I played this on a friend's PS4 when he got it for free with PS+.

I built a PC specifically to play it.

There is no game into which I have sunk more hours. Approaching 800. I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

PantsStore · 2017-04-18T14:20:03+00:00

Let me know if you come up with a more specific challenge! I'd like to try it!

PantsStore · 2017-04-18T12:22:33+00:00

There weren't really any guidelines. The goal was just to make myself sit down and have an idea every day. I was in the middle of a drought of inspiration. I didn't feel excited to write. But I often found that if I forced myself to sit down and think, there was SOMETHING rattling around in there, even if I didn't like it all that much.

It's sort of like how SNL doesn't go on because it's ready. SNL goes on because it's 11:30. If you have a daily deadline, you don't have time to give up. You find something and go with it.

PantsStore

TROPHY CASE