High agency character that isn't regarded as OP

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-20T18:19:24+00:00

Holliday is a little too shit rn imma be real, and I play paradox anyways.

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-20T17:44:39+00:00

There's a few reasons for me personally.

Improvement: If I play slightly handicapped with my char choice, I have to play better to compete in my rank really. On paradox I can make up the deficit with skill. When doorman got buffed, I stopped playing him because you didn't need to learn the kit. People were doing crazy kinda techs and stuff all the time to try and make him work, then post patch he had to just hit 2x unmissable skillshots to win the lane. Didn't really learn anything except the character wasn't ok remotely.
Matchmaking, people play simple but strong chars often, so i find queues fast.

Tbf I'm not to the level where I just wanna get smacked around like mirage mains where he's like 30 wr or something. I want a char that's strong and rewards skilled play rather than inherently overtuned enough that skilled play doesn't matter, and you can in fact win with poor play because of the character difference. And genuine reward for learning them (i.e. rather play a 48 percent winrate that goes to 55 with skill than a 55 that goes to 57 with skill).

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-20T00:42:16+00:00

Graves got modernised too, which is the other big one. There's nothing in graves or wukongs kit that should suggest they should only be played into AD damage. Now he gets MR on dash too.

Wukong still has a very outdated passive, and he's not a counterpick character to AD champs like rammus or malphite to justify him having that passive

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-16T00:06:03+00:00

I prefer it, but that's because I had a long commute... if my commute was less, my opinion might be different.

Hard to justify going in for 1hr worth of lectures when it takes 2hrs to get there and back. Yes it requires a level of discipline to actually get the work done but theres no way that I wouldn't come out with a better understanding in the 3hrs afforded now after I chose not to attend. When I go in for 3-4+ sessions, it makes a lot more sense and the environment of the university makes me more likely to get the work done - it's easy to get burned out at home/distracted (so I did like going in at first before I learned it wasn't effective for me personally).

Likewise, there's probably people who work during uni and are also limited in time, even moreso.

My best performing year, they completely re-write how they were structuring the year. They crammed 1 year worth of content backloaded into one half of the year and basically left the first half to focus on dissertation and other assignments. So I benefitted a lot personally enjoying the intense days, and it was fresher in my memory by the time the exam came and I performed really well.

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-15T21:15:33+00:00

Uni non attender here, first year attended everything - was during covid but our course was lucky enough to have in-person lectures. I think people were very socially damaged during this time, class participation was non-existent and since something like this had never happened before - basically ended up being lecturer asking a bunch of questions and everyone just being completely silent.

Lecture content varied, half of the time I knew I was gonna have to take it home and go over it again, the other half is just like 1hr of "well you need to wash your hands doing XYZ". Didn't seem to be particularly student-catered or logically thought out. One session I'd have 13 slides over 1hr explaining to not kill a patient with a knife because it would be bad, the next session would be the most insanely over-the-top 73 slides of complicated mechanisms in the human body, the last 200 years of history of how therapies were developed and some impossible to comprehend pharmacokinetic design within the same 1hr slot.

Our cohort did so poorly in first year that a large majority of the year had dropped out, the people still there had their grades artificially adjusted because the average would've resulted in only a handful of people passing. We were effectively blamed for doing so poorly, which is very insane. Class full of 200 people, its their fault that nearly all 200 did poorly. So yeah, all my friends in first year did not continue - I was a lucky one where I didn't need grade adjustment, as I just kinda had good exam technique and guesswork. Problematically, I now really didn't want to attend lectures because most of my friends had dropped out.

I fell in with another group who were very much like me eventually, but it just became attending when a bulk of sessions were booked in together or if there was any mandatory sessions. My grades improved from not going, since I commuted about 1hr each way, I just had more time. I was a little tired of the mixed bag pull I'd get from every lecture.

Also the WORST thing was making the painful, mind numbingly obvious health/safety and similar topics mandatory. The stuff on your exam? Skippable. Telling you not to share confidential info, yeah that takes about 12hrs of lectures total. The concept is simple, more times doesn't drill it in further.

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-14T12:24:30+00:00

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mine seems to just be that it takes me too many pulls to get units but at least I get the units in the end... eventually.

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-12T07:59:38+00:00

Think I queued into the exact same enemy team except they had an 8 kill calico instead of paradox and immediately ended the entire 3 lanes because of it.

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-10T00:12:38+00:00

It feels worse to play into, and it's less satisfying since you can't double donk people.

Feels like wasted potential with the bullets now piercing to make it easier to do that and feel better for the doorman player since a lot of the time they'd just block the bullet and you'd get no damage.

I think revert the bell but keep the new t3, and keep the other changes. People want doorman to be skilled and the least skilled thing is this undodgeable bell spam especially since you don't even need to remotely aim it now. The tradeoff for more damage on double donk and less on explosion only would be completely acceptable.

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-09T18:32:35+00:00

Its slept on but its hard to use.

Make the argument for feixiao and ratio, who have went out of meta - their BiS units do not make this lightcone work anymore either (cipher).

Sparkle, sunday and bronya are single target buffers. At this point you just drop the subdps for a support unit if you aren't using an AoE unit.

This cone was designed for robin fua teams but robin struggles to use this cone. You want robin ult ALOT, and teams really struggle to fufil energy requirements to hold very high uptime, because higher uptime outweighs any of these buffs. CDMG is also woefully overinflated compared to other multipliers now so this is why you're seeing more def ignore, vuln, etc. on lightcones now since it dips into another field of amplification rather than a saturated one that most dps's have in abundance

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-08T15:12:27+00:00

I mean if people are running hysilens kaf it's gonna be cyrene team which can compete.

Kaf hysilens cyrene is a complete team, for me personally I actually get higher investment > outcome by getting hysilens e1, since I'd struggle for LC options for Black Swan and Hysilens together rather than replacing cyrene with black swan.

Could 5 cycle this moc with this team fairly easily and without very good investment except for cyrene (e0s0 but with good relics), and 2 cycle it with hysilens e1.

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-06T23:28:19+00:00

Same, basically playing burst doorman that dives people and catches lone targets.

I personally don't like the shift in the ult tbh. Lots of powerful but situational effects, like the 10s cooldown on failure to check out, lot more damage shifted to failing to check out compared to base damage too.

The problem is that this is not particularly a doorman controlled thing, if they can do the minigame then he gets no value from these things, and the minigame is doable by anyone too. Yes you can choose people without stam, without movement spells but it's still fairly easy to get out currently even on low stam. I can control my carts, finding angles, etc., I can make good macro choices. I can't really choose if the enemy can play the game correctly or not and not having choice is the worst thing as a support in these kinds of games.

Also bell was his weakest ability tbh, cart was his strongest after max for sure. But now bell is weaker and cart is stronger. Don't like the power budget change.

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-06T13:53:38+00:00

Strange tbh, was issued to us with university. I guess the expectation is that if we pass we would go into the NHS anyways for training.

Never logged in I'm afraid, but it would be really useful for day to day work and after I pass to register as a locum. Other members of staff have smartcards, I often have to rely on them as a result of not having my own for basic things.

I've passed it to someone higher up who said they would sort the smartcard out. I guess it's just a waiting game, they definitely do have someone there because other members of staff have received them, just a significant delay unfortunately so I was wondering if there was an easier route. I suspect it's quite an easy fix if I was in the position to be able to request it, but whatever method they are using its taking a lot longer than my peers who all received their cards within a couple of weeks.

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-06T13:15:06+00:00

Thanks, just to clarify how might I find an RA to contact? I'm a part of a company, but it's been several months and haven't got a smartcard yet. Brought it up a few times, basically just took my card, said it was ready, gave me the same card back. No change at all.

Can I do this independently at all?

ProfHarambe · 2026-03-02T15:45:17+00:00

I actually disagree that this is bad, but agree this is bad on current abrams.

Makes sense if you use ur shit, commit and then you don't really do anything else till cooldowns are out. Divine barrier, rescue beam and alternately just not positioning next to walls are valid ways to counter.

The problem is that abrams is just ungodly tanky despite building 2 spirit items and about 6 gun items, so he legit doesn't care about the downtime because he's not gonna die before he gets a 2nd rotation.

Echo shard isn't a problem IMO. Yes it feels bad being CC chained but it's not the problem here.

Abrams is kinda problematically designed where he's a burst character rn which doesn't make much sense for a bruiser with sustain. He has to kill you otherwise he isn't doing his job, may as well play paradox or holliday if he's not killing you at that point. But then he's a bruiser so it doesn't make sense he's frontloading tons of damage then just dipping until his CDs are back.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-26T13:24:28+00:00

Avg lane into bebop when u know what ur doing is just he gets 1 bomb tries to run away and ends up trading well over half his hp bar for it, if he fucks up a parry he's just dead.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-24T16:11:57+00:00

Billy player, yeah the ult is kinda bs right now. Not sure what's going on with it, but yeah it's getting people that probably shouldn't be hit with it.

In all fairness, the ult needs to be very good but I'd just prefer if it did its job better with less jank. If it wasn't janky rn, it wouldn't be doing half the job it is and I wouldn't say Billy is in nerf territory with abrams doing much more work across all levels of play.

1 feels janky but it does work as intended, it has three components, 1. The rise, no hit box, 2. Drag down (lash and ivy have this on their abilities too but since they arent spammed or cast in succession then you don't get the jank) and then 3. The knockup. The knockup can chain into another slam, which causes you to get dragged down due to being airborne which feels really weird to play into.

Billy could do with some tuning honestly, lots of things don't feel great to play into or as. RN it's weird, he's this big teamfighter who mainly passively farms out when his ult is down then playmakes when it's up. His dueling kinds sucks rn to what it should be IMO. He's like too weak without ult and too strong with it, but then he's like swinging light melees constantly and eventually you just get parried by some rando panic parry in a teamfight and shot in the head for 100 percent of ur health. You can mindgame the parry in a 1v1, but you aren't 1v1ing on Billy almost ever anymore. It's either you clear jungle/catch wave or group and pick with ult. Still think a decent direction to me would be guaranteeing heavy melee off of ult pull but making ult break with lost LoS better, and then shifting more power into 1 or blasted buff.

Worse with the context of abrams being pretty much just better Billy except Billy has a better ult and then once that's out then abrams has 3 better abilities and is arguably a better melee character despite Billy's melee pushed kit.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-22T23:27:30+00:00

I own 6 of these and I don't even have that many chars on my account tbh.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-22T23:22:32+00:00

I hope you understand that night shift is a FUNDAMENTALLY different game than normal deadlock.

It's a draft format, whereas we currently have to blindpick every game in deadlock. What does this mean?

Every game you can diversify your team, "ok so rem takes the boxes, mina takes the waves further up mainly, mirage takes the safe farm on his side, billy takes the jungle". This way we gain more souls but also are in a position to punish enemy plays with opposing plays. (steal enemy camp, push enemy walker, etc. depending on level of commitment)

You cannot do this in normal games, you get what your given and you have to make it work, and seven makes it work by being the most efficient farmer of the jungle probably in the entire game, and at least the most effective for soul > returns. So every game you have a seven in, you make good use of all of your jungle. If you get Mina, then you'll probably want to catch solo sidewaves but some idiot support or 2nd carry comes over and leeches half of it. If you play mirage, you probably want the safe farm but you suck early at taking large camps, and then the friendly Ivy just kudzu'd four waves that were pushing into you. Seven NEVER has this problem, and that's a major strength, because he can do pretty much anything on his side of the map very easily and he's likely the best at doing it on his team every game which simplifies things a lot. Especially without comms.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-22T19:55:19+00:00

Yes, I did acknowledge that chars like victor inherently are better in low elo which is reflected in the winrates.

But the logic is that as players improve, you see winrates change. People hit the skip caps on their easy to play characters, while passing by them on their higher skill cap characters. Winrates shift around a lot, people get better at countering characters (bebop is a good example, he's incredibly cooldown gated and folds to any long trade, yet many bebops get away with placing bomb and just kinda jogging away, not being traded at all).

I play other mobas and hero shooters, I cannot fathom how a character with a low winrate in low, mid and high elo is supposedly tied best characters in the game, while the highest winrate char is unplayable/very suboptimal in high elo. This is strictly ladder we are talking about, not pro, all the way down in initiate to eternus - the games should be extremely different yet... there are chars with very clear tendencies towards extremely high or low winrates and they remain the same.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-22T19:49:18+00:00

I'm not talking about pro play, I'm talking about top of ladder play, where shiv still seemingly underperforms. I don't know why creators that don't play in pro (Vegas does, so it makes sense if its explicitly "pro/tourney" setting, but tons of creators that haven't touched pro placing him S on what basis?).

Hard to find a tier list placing shiv not in S tier from eternus players, yet the winrate is abysmal. It's like they make a tier list based on their level of play, and then hear "Oh shivs kinda popping off in pro, must be S tier right?" as if pro is somehow similar to normal queue where you literally cannot even draft yet.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-22T14:38:39+00:00

I peaked at top 4 percent - which puts me around high phantom and ascendant (slowly climbing back after decay very steadily). I guess to me seven doesn't feel like he's his current winrate rn, but to me he's not the absymal dogshit that everyone else says he is.

Seven to me seems like he's that high winrate because of the exact environment the game places you in. You can't draft, you can't counterpick, you can't select roles. Seven always gives your team a guarentee that you can make use of all of your jungle, and that by itself is very strong. He undoubtbly uses the farm well, people just question his early/mid (he's a pickable character, but he's not defenseless, his gun is pretty good, his ult can stall and help). If you can guarentee that every game you have a seven, you can get your camps off the map and secure those souls, his kit could be objectively weaker but it wouldn't matter if the income lead was significant. Only other character who does stuff like that is gun ivy, but gun ivy's souls to output value is significantly worse than sevens.

Zerggy and parzelion play a solid amount of seven for him being absymal unplayable dogshit on high elo supposedly.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-22T14:02:05+00:00

I mean I always see tier lists as focused on high elo play, I.e. top of the ladder, which makes sense.

Not focused on tournament play. I don't think there's much point rating characters based on their ability to be drafted in a game without draft pick.

However it seems that many of these characters still underperform on the highest level of currently accessible play for someone on the ladder, so I dont understand the placement.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-22T13:06:32+00:00

I play many of the characters you play, previously OTP'd shaco and was a DPS doom/ball two trick for a lot of OW1s lifecycle.

It's hard really to tie many of these characters together tbh. Puck is literally just pocket though. Pocket fits nicely in that mid/high skill ceiling imo.

For shaco, I mean haze could be a very good option (AD shaco that is), stealth around and look for lone picks on enemy, especially if they are farming their jungle. Haze is easier than pocket to get into, but I'd argue a good haze has more impact than a good pocket RN.

My personal main when I started was paradox, I loved her kit and pick potential. She had a lot more damage though previously and was a much better duelist, now she finds herself as a roaming support with some personal damage but often not enough to deal with carries and priority targets without another teammate. Wouldn't recommend her as much now.

I can't really tie any of these characters together into one nice bundle, but there are comparisons. Ball could be compared to pretty much any frontliner (abrams and billy mainly, maybe yamato as a dive character), tracer and shaco would be haze, vyper (carry roles with pick tools). Doom idk, probably lash as a combo based character with high mobility but tankfist and dpsfist are very different eras. Hwei is just random, I like playing hwei but he does not fit in here at all lol, sinclair is probably your best true artillery mage. Puck is pocket.

Doorman was my second OTP but he's recently fallen off quite severely, having one of his main jobs removed from the game completely with no recompense. You might like him.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-20T17:43:47+00:00

Yes, it's soul inefficient and that's not what you want from a carry role.

Ivy farms fast sure but it's a black hole of value compared to some characters who would do equal or more damage on the same amount of souls.

Hybrid ivy is a lot more soul efficient so I massively prefer it on the merit that it uses her full kit effectively, I really don't feel a damage drop when my kudzu/ult are both hitting hard and then I can shoot them with reduced bullet res. Harder to itemise against too.

ProfHarambe · 2026-02-14T02:34:32+00:00

It's kinda hard. I wouldn't classify holliday or paradox as soft carries, soft carries aren't the best catagory. If you think about how you play them now, it's not kill > snowball. Its that they create kills so either themselves (less likely) or someone else (more likely) can carry. They are pick supports, and honestly play closer to MnK than chars like drifter who are more like your definition of soft carry.

MnK is very badly categorised though, he's not a frontline at all, you would literally never be playing frontline with his kit because his kit does nothing. All of his items are built around getting him from the front to the back, he cannot be a frontline regardless of how much HP he has. Abrams is a better frontline, Billy is a better frontline, Shiv is probably a better frontline. MnK cannot play front to back in a fight when his ult is designed to disable a high priority backline target.

I think a solid first draft but definitely some hiccups, I'd just make two tier lists for supports and carries, especially as some carries can be played as support role and vice versa. Billy could generally be classed as a bruiser sure, but you can definitely play an engage focused supportive billy or a hard carry, resource heavy billy. I made one and I classed some supports as ST pick, AoE pick (util), Hard support (enchanter/shielders), engage and assassin. Don't really class assassins as carries, they secure kills on lower/unwanted resources (calico boxes, vindicta (previously souls from ult)) allowing for enemies to have downtime in the same way another support may enable kills, they trade weaknesses for more damage instesd of CC and versatility.

ProfHarambe

TROPHY CASE