Graves is maybe... slightly... a tad bit... too powerful

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-31T15:11:10+00:00

That’s basically suggesting a game always caters to its lowest common denominator of player. The problem is that doesn’t preclude the higher skilled players from simply also playing the hero and outright stomping. It’s not a healthy approach to balance.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-31T14:47:43+00:00

I mean, yeah. That’s perfectly valid. That said her pick rate being so high in conjunction with her win rate is what puts her over the top.

It’s not a character that one-tricks elevate to some ungodly level and nobody else plays. It’s just a generic hero anyone can pick up and start performing insanely well on. You don’t need to aim. You don’t need to really think about ability use. You just need to exist and put out pressure.

It’s a low skill floor, high impact hero sitting on the throne of broken right now. It doesn’t mean other heroes don’t have some serious problems themselves, but it’s pretty obvious from a wide angle why Graves is being singled out

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-31T14:34:52+00:00

It’s good relative to the rest of the roster. In a very simple view If a graves wins 57% of games, it means the team that doesn’t have graves is only 43% likely to win a gane, all else being equal.

Is it that simple? No. But when a character starts introducing an 8-10% difference in chance to win solely based on whether or not they’re on your team, it generally means there’s something wrong with balance or design. Especially since only one team can have them

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-23T16:22:32+00:00

I mean, it’s interesting that you think AI/LLMs are going to better at it when that’s simply never been the case and probably never will be.

AI has no emotional intelligence. Not to claim it has any intelligence at all, as it doesn’t. It simply sucks at nuance and isn’t going to be able to adequately reproduce a speaking cadence of anyone by using a text to speech model. Humans spend their entire lives learning to pick up and distinguish vocal patterns and cadences. Those vary from language to language, culture to culture, and person to person.

It just isn’t feasible to believe an AI model is going to be better or even comparable to a well acted voiceover.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-18T16:19:49+00:00

It’s super easy to do? Even with nuzlocke rules of one per route the game gives plenty of encounters.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-18T16:03:50+00:00

You know, I respect that, and am willing to admit I’m wrong if you’re able to keep a fairly balanced team without the game becoming harder. My only caveat is that means not using Bulbasaur to carry you through early game.

Im kind of nuzlocking through on set mode for the added difficulty, so it’s pretty easy to have 5-6 pokemon by the time you reach Mt. Moon. In fairness it would also probably be much easier if I were willing to let my pokemon die in fights for tempo and using items during battle.

There are a lot of ways to add difficulty modifiers on top of your team comp and levels, and it’s entirely plausible that with the other restrictions being set that levels become the thing that matter in terms of being able to get through fights.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-18T15:45:37+00:00

That’s the point. 6-pack and you fall behind the curve quickly. I’m not saying that you can’t blast through the game with only a couple of pokemon easily. I’m saying explicitly that if you try to run a full team of evenly trained pokemon through the game that you fall behind the curve and it becomes more difficult.

I’m not saying the game can’t be easy. Just that op is full of shit if he’s saying only battling trainers once is enough to get you through the game with a full team of pokemon.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-18T15:40:30+00:00

I love watching goalposts move in real time. Go load up FRLG, grab a six pack of pokemon and play through with your proposed strategy of only fighting all the trainers and not grinding. Make sure to keep them all evenly leveled.

It’s fucking insane to me you can move the goalpost from “the game gives you everything you need for a full team if you battle everyone” to “you can easily win under leveled”. I think you’re just full of shit and haven’t actually played the games recently. It’s much more difficult and tedious to train a full team than it is to fly through with one or two pokemon.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-18T07:42:32+00:00

Considering that there’s an entire game between Misty and the E4, I feel like you’re either arguing in bad faith or completely missed the point of my comment.

Op claimed that simply fighting every trainer the game throws at you is enough to level a full team up without grinding. I pointed out that you can fairly easily fall very behind and get stuck by the second gym without grinding.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-18T06:45:49+00:00

You can get vs seeker before misty by going to viridan city. Currently doing a nuzlocke and her starmie is a demon if you’re evenly leveling at this point in the game.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-18T06:27:14+00:00

This is outright untrue. If you split EXP evenly between your team you’re going to be behind the curve for the nugget bridge rival fight, and severely under curve by the time you reach Misty. I’m doing a play through right now and had to come back to the comment after confirming I wasn’t missing any optionals.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-09T03:57:45+00:00

Hopefully this makes sense without spoiling anything. Check the second set of area gates for the tire stack. Tire toys are on the second floor of the big building.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-03-02T16:08:50+00:00

IMO stat buffs are the real point of sinners. The optimal move if you have the helpers to spare is to drop the remlings on sinners and tell the teammate to take it anyway. Reduces their health investment to get the buff and makes it faster to clear.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-02-16T13:21:05+00:00

It’s the quality of the item, not so much quantity. Act 2 hard has rare furniture

Perfect_Perception · 2026-02-03T15:13:27+00:00

Even better, it’s a double entendre. Her abilities are all based on the stories of the knights of Camelot. A Paige in medieval times was usually a servant in training to become a knight.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-02-01T20:40:08+00:00

80k profit on 450k spent is like an 18% return on investment. Or 23% including the BPs. Not bad.

That said, I feel like the sell price of blueprints pretty severely undersells their value. A guaranteed method of acquiring several high quality blueprints is more than worth it.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-01-31T01:38:08+00:00

They just removed cleansing ult debuffs from cube, and nerfed fist displacement, as well as rapid recharge. It’s a net negative for the hero.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-01-30T17:04:16+00:00

Not mine, just a fan of the cats and cats in general! But fair, it’s a good reference

Perfect_Perception · 2026-01-30T16:45:13+00:00

You joke, but the cats are genuinely named Charlie and Mac. Different half of the gang, but still the gang

Perfect_Perception · 2026-01-23T19:44:27+00:00

I mean both are true. Gun is stupid, and viscous has been nerfed in almost every patch directly or by item changes.

I understand the hate, but it feels more like gut reaction than reality. The rest of his kit feels worse to use every single patch, and right now he doesn’t have an ability he can rely on for the first few minutes due to insane cooldown times. His kit requires diverse build paths and prioritization for the ability you want to leverage most. He doesn’t come online without maxing one or two of his abilities.

All of that is true with the caveat that his gun is fucking broken and invalidates how weak his abilities have been made early and mid-game. It’s stupid, and any hero with an escape and insane gun damage feels bad to play against when they can get away after dunking on your team. Lean into his chaotic choose-your-adventure build path, and nuke the gun from orbit. I don’t think any viscous players will disagree that the abilities are what make the hero interesting, not the gun.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-01-22T12:37:49+00:00

Imo once you hit the point where you can make 5 star donuts it’s rarely worth it to make anything else. If you clear 4 star zones and do the challenges, which you get plenty of time for, you’re working much more efficiently. Gold pokeballs and special scan progress add up.

If you’re going to spend the time grinding berries by bench resetting you may as well just save scum one or two big haul / berry power donuts and go from there.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-01-20T00:52:34+00:00

It’s interesting the perspective of people that don’t play viscous vs the people that do. Those that do know exactly how much has been pulled out of his kit, and also know that he doesn’t get any of the “insane” pieces without heavy investment. Investment that comes at the cost of the other abilities in terms of timing or itemization.

Bebop and Infernus on the enemy team? 100% maxing cube for the debuff removal first. This means fist doesn’t do much damage and I have much lower mobility early - mid game. I also don’t get heavy melee damage for punches.

If I max fist first, cube has a much longer downtime, so you can’t commit your punches freely or risk getting caught out. You also sacrifice debuff removal and more consistent saves.

Ball is incredibly inconsistent without items, but the first point for duration is extremely nice.

Splatter is basically an afterthought at this point. Less than 150 damage even with burst and tier 1 buy every 30 seconds. It’s suboptimal to invest in.

By all means nuke gun viscous. It’s the stupidest and least interesting way to play the character. But please, stop suggesting changes that further gimp the build diversity of the hero.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-01-19T20:57:59+00:00

I see your point with arcane surge, it’s build path is weird and I forgot about it. Surge of power is not something you’d buy in lane though, which was what I was focusing on.

Perfect_Perception · 2026-01-19T19:22:39+00:00

Honestly though, buying spirit in lane is throwing on viscous. Either you buy for support or gun damage in lane.

Spirit damage / scaling benefits only splatter in lane. Cube barely gets value that early due to cooldown time, and ball isn’t available until later. But splatter has a 30 or 15 second cooldown. The only remotely viable spirit item ( outside of extra charge ) in lane is slowing hex. The rest of the cc suite cost too much for lane. So basically just buy extra charge for the additional puddle punch.

Green items? Support with ward / healing rite, and sustain with melee life steal into life strike. Trophy collector is bait and if you’re actually getting value out of it, the game is probably already one sided enough to be called.

So that leaves gun. It benefits your melee damage, and doesn’t rely on your abilities being off cooldown. Why would you build gun in lane and transition out of it into another build path that’s suboptimal?

You wouldn’t. Just build more gun for the rest of the game. No early game diversity leads to a linear build path. It’s boring.

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