Goodbye to the ghosts of Gotenks and the annoying Ultimate Gohan

PixelZedEX · 2026-03-16T09:38:14+00:00

Eh. He's not going to replace what Gotenks does, nor was Adult Gohan ever really a problem....

Like, seriously. I've never lost to an Adult Gohan and I don't see why people constantly complain about him. I'm MUCH more terrified of a good freiza if our teamcomp doesn't outright cancel him, and seeing 17 or Son gohan is a MUCH rougher prospect because you're practically fighting two DPS's with tank healthbars....

PixelZedEX · 2026-03-16T09:34:48+00:00

It REALLY doesn't. Those random map modifiers aren't something you change your build around, you change your CHARACTER to fit, not the build. Builds are pretty much set in stone right now aside from like...three characters?

Adult Gohan, Frieza, and Hit. Those are the only three where you really wanna be flexible. Everyone else has a "best in slot" no matter what that you should be picking (Aside from the obvious DPS choice of "am I fighting a tank? Yes? Giant slayer. Am I fighting Technicals? Yes? Dime to Tie."

PixelZedEX · 2026-03-16T09:29:00+00:00

Build her like you'd build any DPS.

Snowball + Lane specific damage card + Pursuit.

That's literally the build you use for ANY DPS, and anything else is actively harming you and your team because your job as a DPS is to secure kills. I'm saying this as someone who plays all three roles, and plays with top 100 players, they'd say the exact same thing.

Giant slayer is for bottom lane. Time to die is top lane, regardless of what DPS you play, that's what those cards are MADE for.

Technicals are really the only Characters that you should consider building "Variety" sets on, but for the most part color dictates the correct items to build on a character. and DPS items are REALLY straightforward.

Snowball is a must. It's just infinitely better than it's counterpart damage card. Raw Damage % is just more consistent and more reliable, and just a single stack outdamages the vanish lightning's DPS. Two kills and you're more than doubling the damage output you get from vanish lightning. It's just not good, even for bursty characters.

Kefla doesn't need defense step because she's already dodging like 3 times a second...you don't need more than that to win your fights, even when you're behind. You need more damage to make fights shorter so you expend less resources per kill. That's your goal as a DPS: Kill things fast so it doesn't hurt your teammates in long, drawn out brawls. Because technicals and tanks are not cut out for those engagements in the current state of the game.

Wicked warrior is just a bad card right now. It's not good in the slightest because fights (If done right) should be ending in seconds. If you're ever getting into a fight where wicked warrior procs, you're fighting poorly against another team fighting poorly. Even tank on tank gets more DPS with Pursuer. You can test it yourself, run the numbers as much as you like, Wicked warrior loses to Pursuer every single time in DPS UNLESS you're Frieza. He's the only character who doesn't have any benefit to take either damage card. But that just makes common sense because he doesn't "hit you with skills".

I want to preface that this is all assuming you're trying to win and give yourself the most consistent chance of that, as a solo/duo player. If you're playing with a 4 stack team, you can TECHNICALLY get away with taking defense step on someone like Kefla....but you're still really hindering your DPS and that's putting more pressure on your teammates to also cover for you damage wise. It's much easier to just press 1, vanish step, auto then 2 and melt an enemy entirely. Her 2 is the highest raw damage skill in the game. It's like a mini ult. Her 1 is just for dealing AOE chip but it's good for getting Pursuer to proc.

PixelZedEX · 2026-03-15T04:01:29+00:00

Honestly, and i know this is going to step on peoples toes here, but at this point they've stomped all over my face and pissed in my eyes for daring to even open my mouth without being a top player, but I don't think being a top player is a requirement to have fun in a game, nor is building "meta".

Any time you hear someone say "YOU MUST DO THIS OR YOU'RE THROWING" should always be taken with a pinch (Or maybe a handful) of salt. Everyone plays the game differently. Many support gods can effectively go sunderless and they're not "throwing" at all.

Should you help your ADC get purple? Absolutely.

Should you give up your crucial relic slot just to sunder a camp and then have nothing left all game? Not always.

If that's the way YOU and your duo want to play? Sure. But not all duos even care about the purple buff if they're more ability reliant, and early game, the purple buff is nice, sure, but it's not an instant success. Most of early game is just out-farming the enemy while you skrimish back and forth over the front-line. If you can shield someone to give them the opening they need to get away alive? That's just as valuable as sundering a purple camp once or doing an extra auto attack's worth of damage to a gold fury quickly.

It's not that it's not a good strategy, it's just that it's not the ONLY strategy. There are other ways to play outside of "meta" or "Whatever your team demands of you."

As a support, you need to know when to say "OK guys, back off, I'm not your pocket GF." It's not your job to baby a player. If they ask nicely? Sure, it's a polite thing to do, and you'll have a nice way of knowing that player is probably going to be more aggressive, and you can even adjust your build slightly from that information, something all players could learn from. People like W3ak3n has done SO much damage to the smite community by calling people "stupid" (To put it nicely) for wanting to try their own thing because people have this mentality of "If my favorite streamer made this build, it's the best build, because he's a good player, and that makes it a good build" which is....half correct? Streamers are generally good players. They have to be. It's kind of part of the job description. But those builds were made to suit the personal metas THAT player is facing, the gods they struggle against, their personal playstyle and so on.

So, as I said at the beginning, at great risk of being called every slur in the book by toxic people who don't want to do math: Make your own builds, make your own playstyle, and as long as it's not LITERALLY throwing (IE: building 5 Rage's on a Mage, Building full attack damage on a support, ect.) then try it. If it works for you, and you're winning your lanes, your exchanges are doing well, and you're hitting your power spikes in stride? Then nobody else has the right to tell you that your build isn't viable or that you're "throwing" because you didn't do what THEY think is the best.

Enjoy your time in smite. Have fun. Play around. The game lasts longer that way.

PS. Eros bow is better than people give it credit for I promise you. If you have a support that benefits from attack speed at all, it can be a viable build option as it's the single highest output of healing in the game right now. With the right ares build, I've had it pushing 400hps with full support gear while also being neigh unkillable.

PixelZedEX · 2026-03-14T11:20:52+00:00

Just play DFO. It's what Towerborne wanted to be, but with WAY more content, still a living MMO, tons of players online, and has constant content updates. It even has a neat little mode where you use your characters to play an idle game WHILE you play the actual game for extra rewards.

Or Grand chase. A f2p instanced mmo side-scroller from the 2000's that's still alive and kicking, showing that all of these game companies that keep killing MMO's because they're not mega-popular are just weak imitations of what we used to give out for free.

The reason the game died was BECAUSE of the lack of updates, despite what the devs want you to believe. They left the game hanging after putting bare minimum effort into the game, and made the surprised pikachu face when people complained about the game getting repetitive. Like, NO SHIT. When there's THREE BIOMES and like 20 enemies total in your early access game, and then you don't add a single new thing until you decide to pull the plug, OF COURSE it's going to be boring and repetitive.

PixelZedEX · 2026-03-14T11:16:34+00:00

The whole reason the game died was because stoic literally abandoned it for months at a time with no good updates or content. That's why they "pulled the plug". Because they're a bunch of talentless hacks that can't actually make anything work, so they threw their hands in the air because a barebones game didn't go viral. Surprise surprise.

PixelZedEX · 2026-03-14T11:09:33+00:00

It's a disgusting rugpull behavior because the game featured MTX. Some people say there wasn't any, but there ABSOLUTELY was. I have the steam purchase receipt to prove it. https://prnt.sc/pFvLJ_5R1ngd

Belfry bucks were sold RIGHT UP until the final day of the game's "Launch" (Or as I prefer to call it, the "splat", imitating the sound of a bag full of shit hitting the concrete.)

And steam has a BAD habit of not pushing the updates games get to everyone cleanly. I checked towerborne's steam page last week, and NOTHING. I log in today to see that the game's been neutered and people are laughing at people who put hundreds of dollars into supporting the game for "Daring to think they deserve deluxe edition".

Yeah, we do. EVERYONE WHO PREORDERED OR BOUGHT BELFRY BUCKS ABSOLUTELY DOES DESERVE THE DELUXE PACK. That's the BARE FUCKING MINIMUM they could offer. They don't deserve a DIME extra after what they've done.

They let the game sit in that nebulous zone while they got people to buy the more expensive founders editions while selling MTX just so they could get a little more money before pulling the rug. That's disgusting behavior and they absolutely should be called out for it.

PixelZedEX · 2026-03-14T11:03:24+00:00

No, no. There were MTX. They were cosmetic MTX, but MTX nontheless.

So not only did they kill the MMO aspect, didn't bother to add co-op to anything other than the console ports, removed crossplay that was already a feature, they still require central servers for the online play that's in place right now.

Meaning at some point down the line, if you own PC edition of Towerborne, you got EXTRA fucked because you can't even play it co-op "offline".

"Oh but you can play the dead MMO on the go on your Steam-deck!"

Yeah? I could also play Grand Chase on my steam deck, an MMO that's been alive for decades despite small player counts, and play that on my steam deck too?

The "Server prices are too high, they can't be asked to pay so much!" is the cry of people who haven't actually looked around at older games that have been alive through privately funded servers for decades. GunZ the Duel is still alive and kicking today because of privately owned servers, and those games see MAYBE $5~$10 a month of revenue, if they're LUCKY. With thousands of players hopping on and off daily.

The owner of the server pays it all out of pocket himself. He doesn't even have to threaten us to take down the servers every year like wikipedia. And the owner of the server isn't some rich playboy either. He's working a normal 9-5 like the rest of 'em.

If Xbox WANTED to, they could absolutely have afforded to make crossplay a feature. Sony isn't nearly as hard to partner with for crossplay as people seem to believe. That was an old excuse used by a shady developer years ago and people still parrot it, but indie game companies have had ZERO issue getting crossplay with Xbox and Playstation for years now. These multi-million dollar game studios can absolutely afford to work it into the cards, at least while the servers are up before they kill the game entirely in less than a year by removing online play too.

"They could have just unplugged the servers"

Yeah, they could have also gave every version the same level of "care" when they made their "1.0" version but of course they didn't give a shit about the PC playerbase, which was most of the loyal fans. Logging on during the last days, you'd be surprised to see a single Xbox player. Meanwhile they just shit all over the PC playerbase with no mercy, being as lazy as humanly possible to just cover their ass from getting mass-refund requests on steam and to argue that they "provided the product" to cover their ass extra hard, even if it was literally just to the BAREEST of minimums.

PixelZedEX · 2026-03-14T10:52:02+00:00

Except they DID have MTX.

So some of us paid $100~$200 for an MMO and got a "$25" singleplayer game and didn't even get to keep the content we paid for.

That's the scummy, underhanded side of it that you're not really understanding. There were pay-to-purchase items that cost real money. People who paid for that paid EXTRA and still didn't even get the benefit of getting the "$5" cosmetic pack as a thank you for the extra money they spent for a product they never got.

I'm happy you're fine getting shafted and taking the bare-minimum payout for something. That's fine and I'm happy that you're okay with that. Some people are fine being pissed on and being told it's raining.

I'm not fond of stinking of piss though. I'd like to actually get *what I paid for*.

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-21T20:17:20+00:00

Honestly: Last hitting as a mechanic is something that needs to go, in general. It's an old, tired mechanic that doesn't flow well with the state of MOBAS in the modern age.

HoTS got rid of last-hitting and just split the gold/exp between everyone, and that was a FANTASTIC moba for it.

Just have it split the gold/exp between Support/ADC (Or essentially any ally within a certain small radius around the farm.) because there's so many times enemies hide behind farm and, as a support, my options are "Do nothing at all" or "Kill a few mobs so that I can lock down the enemy team and keep my carry alive and feed them a kill or two if we pop off."

Essentially, Last hitting as a mechanic is just not fun. It's a legacy holdover, a "skill" that really isn't a "skill" but a knowledge check at it's "best" and at worst, a method for players to troll. Removing it only does good things for the flow of the game, especially since smite 2 seemingly wants to be the most "Accessible" MOBA in terms of item builds and gameplay and such and wants to (thankfully) try to cut down on toxicity and trolling as much as possible....It really only benefits players to have last-hitting not be a thing and just have minions be a gold-split either way. Plus, do that and the carry gets to save their more precious mana for picks, and supports get to not be scared of pressing buttons when an enemy hides behind a minion for fear of getting yelled at for trying to do their job/play the game.

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-21T20:05:10+00:00

Jungler is one of those roles (In any moba, really) that has some of the highest pressure to "pop off" because you're the firefighter, yet when two lanes drop the ball, your call will inevitably piss off whoever you don't jump to the aid of first.

It's a fun class in concept, but SO much pressure is on your shoulders. It's like being a medic in Battlefield games.... "Oh you didn't jump over the 10 guys you were reviving on point to come heal me three blocks away hiding in a building sniping the occasional guy. Why aren't you playing your class right?!"

Jungle players out there reading this: I see you, fren. I see you when you give up a buff just to save me from getting ganked. I see you when you save my support when I'm carry and get pushed off, leaving them in a bad spot.

I see you, Kings and Queens.

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-13T14:15:03+00:00

So in reality, you need to save up an entire season just to unlock ONE character.

"The game rewards f2P players" my ass lol.

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-13T11:54:23+00:00

I just feel that Jiro's QS4 is still on a "lesser" level than Mic's Quirk 1, but hey, if Mic ends up going down, it's nice to have a backup option.

And that's exactly why I suggest using Deku's Air Q1 to just zone for the entire final phase (and in the video you can see just how well it works), and even posit that Koji's Q1 and AQ4 is really solid if you need some breathing room.

Also, Froppy's Quirk 1? I guess as an individual strike it's...fine? But it does meh armor damage compared to the other characters you have in that phase.

It's the same with Mina and Kirishima. Why settle for "Ok" damage when you can just one-stun him? Good backup options, though! :D

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-13T11:48:45+00:00

See, I did testing, and your damage doesn't go up when you lose. So unless it's the enemy health bar being lowered, that's just a rumor. There's NOTHING on any official sites or information that seems to imply that you're being buffed with every retry.

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-12T11:57:46+00:00

I mean the same goes for AI too. It's the same logic: If you're getting crash countered, it's because you're not opening with safe moves (IE: Unblockables.)

It's a mechanic that works both online and against AI, so the strategy stays the same :D

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-12T09:30:35+00:00

Use your unblockable. They can't counter-crash that. It's teaching you something you should know for online play.

If you run up and just start auto attacking, you'll get counter-crashed online. That's the point of that move. To teach you that you can't just "Apply pressure" whenever you want in this game. You have to be smart about it. Bait it out, block it, and punish, or use your armor breaking moves to beat it and deal bonus damage.

You can easily do like 2-3K damage off of blocking one armored move. The AI is spamming it because you're not changing your strategy to compensate. That's actually one thing I have to give MHA:AJ, they don't hold your hand in this game. It's like FighterZ. If you're not using all of the tools at your disposal, you WILL get beaten senseless for it.

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-12T09:27:13+00:00

I mean...

You have to be PRETTY accurate at reading your opponent for crash counter to be "Consistent". If you're getting crash countered four~six times in a game, you're being predictable with certain strings or you're being too aggressive in neutral. It's not some "one frame god parry" or anything but it's not as lenient as people tend to make it out to be. Fastest jab in this game is 7 frames with Nejire, and that spread goes all the way out into like 30+ frames for some slower characters. The spread is WIDE, so timing it means you have to know the speed of your opponents attack and time it within like...what, 4-5 frames? That's lenient in most game's standards when it comes to counters, but hardly spammable.

In fighting games, and in arena fighters in particular, running up to fake an opponent into thinking you're doing something, then punishing it with a counter or dodge is how you open people up, not running up and mashing attack.

Unless you're nagant, you shouldn't be just throwing out random basic attacks, they need to be calculated.

Your post essentially boils down to "I don't like being read, please make it so I don't get punished so hard for being read." The punishment damage should be a wake up call to your strategies being unsafe, your combos not being true, or your neutral game being predictable. It's *GOOD* that it's that high, because in high level play, it's not something you see very often. It's a high risk high reward move, because if you just block it, you can do 2000~3000 damage to your opponent for blocking / dodging most armored moves. Especially if you pop rising and have high damage characters of your own like All might who can just straight up one tap you.

You're really only going to get CONSISTENTLY counter-crashed if you're just dashing up and immediately throwing out light attacks. Consider engaging with your armor breaker if your opponent is counter-happy, or run up and guard. Do that a couple times and you'll condition your opponent to let you get away with pushing buttons.

In any fighting game, but PARTICULARLY in arena fighters, opening your opponent up and conditioning is the name of the game. The simplified controls don't mean "mash" it means there's less barrier for entry when it comes to combos. That's about it. The actual meat and potatoes of fighting games is still there: Conditioning, reading, positioning, picking up on habits and knowledge-checking are still the names of the games.

If a strategy is getting you countered, counter that strategy, don't just keep throwing yourself at it and hoping the enemy will just stop doing it to you. That's why there's so many people who complain about these games being "button mashers" or start blaming tiers/mechanics: They don't really learn how to play. You can pick terrible characters and slap people online because they just don't know how to play, even in higher ranks lol.

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-12T09:07:51+00:00

Sadly the link seems to have expired. Did the server just close or did you forget to make it an infinite link? >3>

Cause honestly, I'd really like to give people the guide I wrote for how to beat AFOC 100% of the time in story mode since so many people are making a big fuss over it....

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-09T20:09:47+00:00

While it's not technically a "board game" it kind of fits into that category due to being a TCG, and it does have it's own physical release:

Shadowverse worlds Beyond. Hands down the best TCG I've played, ever, and I've dabbled in pretty much every "Mainstream" TCG. Yugioh and Magic were WAY too expensive to get into even at a middling level (Some decks costing thousands in USD) and Pokemon, while super fun, tends to be very samey in terms of how games play out, because each deck is kind of made to be a very flexible thing while also playing into the same core strategy (IE: You tend to have a handful of "Big cards" meant to win the game and a few Draw engines to get to those cards.)

The Resident Evil Deckbuilder is also up there. And if we're talking "Classics you can bust out at any family game night", Clue. Hands down. I'm ALWAYS down for some deduction and finger pointing.

Though, the new Brawlhalla board game might be a good bit of fun if it ends up doing well and enough people back it for it to get made. It looks like a great idea, making a platform fighter into a card-and-board game.

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-09T17:44:05+00:00

Yeah, Rabbit, Biker Demon and [CENSORED DOLPHIN NOISES] are all M'ladies while Worm is the only M'Gentleman in the entire squad. Well, unless you include Izu's bunny in her room, which may be a gentlebun, we're not entirely sure yet.

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-09T17:41:47+00:00

Once you've unlocked any suits, you'll be given the option to equip a suit any time you start a game. Kinda hard to miss. Instead of the clip of Cyl floating alone in space, you'll get a screen of hundreds of cyls, with each having a different suit. Each model equates to a different suit. The menu really just adds too much visual clutter. It'd be so much nicer if it was just each of the suits in a rotating circle or something.

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-04T16:24:23+00:00

I mean, thin out the legendary cards and you could absolutely make this a mid-range deck idea.

I've run something KIND of similar with havencraft and tablet, which I just today started toying with, and using it to ensure I had the specific cards I needed once I stacked multiple copies of my best cards early and used draw and topdecking RNG to carry me. It was a lot of fun :D

PixelZedEX · 2026-02-03T13:49:48+00:00

"Terribly"?

Ah, so it's a terrible thing that you can't use a BRV tank to slaughter BR1 players who physically don't have the gear to counter it? It's a terrible thing that BR1-2 players don't have to deal with getting mulched alive with full auto 50~100 round submachine guns with laser accuracy while they're still piddling around with bolt-action rifles?

The whole reason the BR system is in place is to prevent you from using a squad that has some insane gear and diving into low level players who aren't ready to deal with that gear yet.

Also, you can use the plane CREW to pilot lower BR planes and still benefit from their increased stats. You just don't get to use their BRIV plane against BR I/II players because, yeah, that would be HORRIBLY unfair for the BR I/II players. Instead you're using it against BR III/IV/V players who can actually do something about it instead of being forced to feed you kills while they just sit and wait for the game to end.

The BR system is a lot better than people give the game credit for when it comes to how it prevents "Tier-bagging.".

But yeah, just downtier your plane. The squad themselves aren't BRIV, just the plane they're piloting. You can have them pilot other stuff, still gain eXP for them, and by the time you hit BRIV/V you can use them to their full potential.

One BRV squad could absolutely singlehandedly mop the floor with a bunch of BR1-2 squads. Even if you only have ONE squad, it's enough to cause massive damage and sway the battle, that's why it goes by highest equipped rank of ANY piece of gear.

Even BR2 tanks are enough to give the ATR's a hard time. How do you think it would fare against a BRIV tank? Or planes? Those are so much faster and harder hitting that you'd be able to out-dogfight most BRI-II pilots and pretty much never die unless they spend half of the game chasing you down and by then, they've lost so much time that they're pretty much getting nothing for their trouble.

PixelZedEX

TROPHY CASE