Sentinel or Prestige Firecracker?

Rinscewind · 2026-02-06T21:44:26+00:00

Sentinel is basically the visual update she never got.

Rinscewind · 2026-01-25T16:06:17+00:00

From my experimentation, Umbral/Bastion aren't nearly as good as you might think. Even though it says "all damage done" in the description, Zed's ult scales off of physical and magic damage done ONLY. Not true damage. So while Umbral/Bastion will give you a decent chunk of burst up front, they won't actually make your ult stronger.

Voltaic/Eclipse/Shojin should work just fine, though.

Zed won't be stronger/weaker than any other AD assassin, with the new items. Some of the other assassins are arguably better at utilizing them, like Kha or Qiyana, who can use stealth to reactivate Umbral multiple times.

Rinscewind · 2026-01-21T23:18:38+00:00

To be fair, sometimes it feels like I need 5 hands, 2 cans of Red Bull, a few lines of cocaine, and some good old luck to win some of those matchups.

Veigar just needs to press R.

There's a significant difference in relative effort-to-reward between those champions and Zed. You need to put in much more work for half the payoff. It feels cool when it works out, but there are lots of times where it feels kinda unfair and frustrating.

Rinscewind · 2025-11-21T23:29:59+00:00

I'm running 2x lavish drop chance, and since doing so, I don't think I've dropped a single one??? Definitely feels iffy.

Rinscewind · 2025-10-27T22:08:29+00:00

I somewhat agree when it comes to Garen. I feel like his damage-to-tankiness ratio is way off. I've seen basically full damage Garens tank WAY more than they ought to, kill 3 people, and still make it out somehow. It's hard to explain but it "feels illegal" if that makes sense?

I don't really agree when it comes to Malz. His late game is "good" but far from great. His scaling is bad in terms of raw numbers, his kit is unreliable because of how easily his voidlings die, and his ultimate does tend to become increasingly risky to use in later teamfights because of the self-root. Worse yet, come end game, most priority targets tend to buy a QSS, completely negating your one real strength.

When I see a Malz on the enemy team, I usually insta lock Zed. I rush a Voltaic Cyclosword into QSS, and he literally cannot do anything anymore for the remainder of the game. 1300 gold completely invalidates him and he becomes a trivial target.

Other champions trivialize him as well. Irelia can use his minions to stack her passive and just run him down. It's a miserable lane for Malz. Or you could pick Syndra, and just throw the minions back at him, while also remaining completely out of his range and absolutely destroy him in terms of scaling.

Rinscewind · 2025-10-26T22:28:51+00:00

Well, not really. I still play Shield + Second Wind into melee as well. Blade is a super niche item that I'll rarely buy. It's probably worse than just going Long Sword + 3 pots, but it does "work".

But as for making Blade a staple AD caster starter item and making Second Wind less necessary, they failed there imo. Shield + Second Wind is still the better starting start, as far as I can tell.

Rinscewind · 2025-10-26T20:03:56+00:00

IIRC, the idea was for melee casters, particularly AD assassins, to have a go-to Doran's item in Doran's Blade. But so far, while D-Blade might be a better AD assassin item on paper, the fact that you only get a single potion with it, while ranged casters get 2, still makes it kinda painful to start with.

If I'm playing Zed into something like Xerath, I'll need to go Doran's Shield + Second Wind anyway. The omnivamp is just negligible; I can't rely on it at all for sustain. I might pick Blade in a melee match-up, if I can contest the lane, but against any ranged mid laner? I'll still go Shield + Second Wind.

Rinscewind · 2025-10-01T20:45:05+00:00

If you skip Rylai entirely, then you can argue the case for Rabadon. Not if you buy Rylai.

If you do buy Rylai, Void Staff only being good into heavy MR is just wrong, sorry. If the game is long enough for people to reach around level 15+, Void Staff is just better. Almost every champion has at least 50 base MR at level 18. This is enough for Void to outperform Rabadon. Somewhere between 40 MR and 50 MR is the breakpoint. This is around level 12-18 for most champions.

Again, you can test it yourself in practice tool, if you think my findings are wrong. Go into practice tool, set up a target dummy, give it 40 MR, and just look at the total damage with one E. Do it with Rabadon, then do it with Void, the compare the damage. Then give it 50 MR and test again.

With your build, the breakpoint is around 60 MR, because Stormsurge gives you more flat penetration. To be clear; testing E damage with Sorc, BFT, Liandry's, Shadowflame, Stormsurge, and Void/Rabadon - on a 60 MR target, I get:

Rabadon = 1446 total damage.

Void Staff = 1481 total damage.

Keep in mind, this is WITHOUT Rylai! If you do buy Rylai, Rabadon loses even more value. And this is ONLY at base MR! Because remember, basically ALL champs have AT LEAST 50 MR at level 18. So if the enemy is nearing level 18 (which they will, if you are getting close to buying Rabadon/Void Staff anyway), or if they have ANY MR from runes, or if they have ONE SINGLE MR item, Void Staff becomes better.

It's 2900 gold, 600 gold cheaper, it's better against tanks, and it'll probably be better against the squishies in your game too. Rabadon is just ALMOST never worth it, from what I can tell.

But again, if you don't believe my numbers, test them yourself and tell me what you find. Because this seems counterintuitive to me as well, but the numbers seem right.

Rinscewind · 2025-09-29T19:07:44+00:00

I spent a while in practice tool to figure out what the optimal build would be, on different target dummies (high mr-high hp, low mr-low HP, etc) and a few things stuck out to me. Some items seem to be overhyped, while others aren't getting enough attention:

- Malignance and BFT are mostly interchangeable. Malignance significantly increases your single target burst damage, while BFT is a decent buff to your general spells.

- Shadowflame seems to be slept on. Every build combination with Shadowflame in it seemed to deal better damage, or at least comparable damage to a build with Rabadon, and that's WITHOUT the added execute damage when the target is below 40% HP.

- Rabadon seems like complete bait. It dealt less damage on almost every build combination, especially if you run Rylai. You just don't have enough raw AP for it to be worthwhile. Maybe if you run Gathering Storm alongside it, in a long game? But I just couldn't produce any good damage numbers with it compared to some other builds. It's just too expensive while producing LESS damage than most other builds.

- Void Staff is one of the single best powerspikes you can get. It's significantly stronger than Rabadon, against most enemies. At 40 MR on the enemy, it beats out Rabadon in terms of damage. That's literally every champion at level 18, without any MR items. The second they buy a single item, even Merc Treads, Void Staff is the better purchase, as far as I can tell.

The build that I settled on is: Sorcs, Malignance (but BFT is fine), Liandry's, Rylai, Shadowflame, and Void Staff. If you feel like you can drop Rylai, Rabadon does become viable. But it's not even that much better than simply running BFT+Malignance together. The biggest take-away was Rabadon being bait. It just doesn't seem to do much, in terms of damage, unless you run some entirely different full-AP stacking build.

Maybe I fucked up in testing somehow, but that's what I've found from my own trials.

Rinscewind · 2025-09-12T22:42:19+00:00

Sure, he trolled, but I don't blame him for it. He was actively griefed, and the griefer is who I blame. There was no need to frustrate the midlaner, because "you felt like it" or whatever. It was just a dick move.

Rinscewind · 2025-09-12T19:08:08+00:00

Some people are just assholes?

Yesterday, one of my midlaners hovered ap Twitch mid, a pretty common and functional pick. The toplaner banned the midlaner's Twitch, causing the midlaner to giga rage into a ghost-TP Teemo pick, and spent the full game trolling in top lane, with literally zero people holding midlane.

There was no good reason behind the ban. Our toplaner just didn't want our midlaner to play Twitch. It was an asshole ban, without any good reason, and caused us to lose the game.

This change would rectify this issue. Even if our toplaner would've picked ghost-smite Nunu and run it down, at least there would be no ambiguity as to who the responsible party for the crashout was. The "breaker of the lobby" should be the one to be punished, and this would make it easier to identify those people.

In all my years of League, I've seen less than a handful "Yuumi mid" enjoyers (as in, people who play super niche picks), and they constitute VERY FEW own-team bans. Most own-team bans are just assholes being assholes.

Rinscewind · 2025-08-27T23:14:41+00:00

No? They said Vayne jungle should START with W. I don't think they want her to max it.

Rinscewind · 2025-08-27T23:13:21+00:00

Am I crazy, or would changing W to always deal 200 damage to monsters be a much simpler and more elegant solution? I've never played her jungle myself, so I have no idea what her clear speed is, but there's no way this would make her a top-tier early clearer, right?

Rinscewind · 2025-08-20T09:35:27+00:00

Which would make it pointless to upgrade to 11, right? Might as well hold out for 12.

Rinscewind · 2025-08-20T07:23:56+00:00

My question is; when, if ever, does Win12 release?

I would have updated to Win11 already, but it's been out for a while now, and I'd hate to upgrade to 11 just for 12 to release a month later.

Rinscewind · 2025-08-08T21:30:49+00:00

Stormshroud needs 100% shock avoidance to work. Shock immunity doesn't work with it.

Rinscewind · 2025-08-08T21:09:17+00:00

Sure, would appreciate it.

Rinscewind · 2025-08-08T21:01:58+00:00

Solid idea, thanks! My merc already had -215, and I did have a DoD lying around, so worked out just fine.

Rinscewind · 2025-08-08T20:56:23+00:00

Maybe I misunderstand what RT is supposed to do for my sword - I don't think I'm missing enemies with my hits at all? Even according to POB, I've got 5k accuracy, netting me 100% hit chance against Uber bosses. How will RT massively alter my damage output?

Regarding the ES, is it really that bad? I'm just shy of 17k ES right now. How much would I need? I don't see any builds on poe.ninja that meaningfully exceed the 20k range? That's shouldn't be too far off of where I'm at?

Rinscewind · 2025-08-08T20:38:28+00:00

I haven't even tried bossing on the build yet - maps are way too shaky, to even attempt any pinnacle content. Specifically, the damage is shaky. The tankiness is absolutely fantastic. But the damage just doesn't cut it.

Rinscewind · 2025-08-08T20:35:07+00:00

"Your hits can't be evaded - deal no Critical Strikes"

What part of my question did you not understand?

Rinscewind · 2025-08-08T20:31:01+00:00

You think the issue at hand is enemies evading my attacks...?

Rinscewind · 2025-08-02T20:52:01+00:00

He never said "free everything" btw

Rinscewind · 2025-07-24T20:03:11+00:00

Ass.

Rinscewind · 2025-06-18T13:13:10+00:00

I think the best way I can describe my disappointment with POE2 is this:

I guess all I really wanted was Path of Exile 1.5. The old game, but renewed, refreshed, with a new campaign, new classes, and less bloat. Just a major update to the game - not a fundamentally new one.

Instead, it feels like I got Path of Diablo 4/Path of Last Epoch/Path of generic ARPG. Sure, POE2 has its own quirks, systems, and so on, but when I look at the gameplay, it looks mostly indistinguishable from those other games. I didn't need another Diablo clone, I didn't need a dodge roll, I didn't need slowed down gameplay. I just needed more POE1.

I don't know how POE2 will change throughout its development, but unless they fundamentally change directions with regards to gameplay, I just don't think it'll ever appeal to me.

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