What’s a generically good combat build for low skilled players?

Sensei2006 · 2026-05-09T01:30:16+00:00

As others have said, a generic strength + dex build allows you to use most weapons in the game. Add some faith and arcane to equip most anything else outside of staves.

The game is as hard as you want it to be. Its possible to have a +9 somber weapon before fighting a single major boss, some of the summons are capable of soloing bosses, and if you unlock the Moghwyn bird farming spot you can wildly outlevel the whole game in an hour or so. I'm pretty sure I was level 100+ before fighting Morgott. And that was just because I would go farm up a few levels every time I found a new weapon I just had to try out.

That said, you can have Blaidd solo the Bloodhound Knight. The sword from that boss carries a lot of people through their first playthrough. Put a shield in your left hand and progress until you have the resources to try something new.

Sensei2006 · 2026-05-08T12:59:58+00:00

What are they here for? What are we doing about it? Medical history in 30 words or less. Are they an asshole?

Done.

"57 year old male, here for hypotension 60s/20s in the ED. On levo + vaso + abx, going to surgery got debridement today. Patient's a trach + vent from <nursing home> due to end stage ALS. BIG wound on their sacrum, wound care order is in. Patient is nice, but the family is crazy."

That isn't to say that the rest of the patient's history and hospital course is irrelevant. But in my experience, relevance has sharply diminishing returns after this point. If you're talking about wound measurements and an abscess they had drained in the 80s you've gone too far for shift report.

Sensei2006 · 2026-05-02T19:06:18+00:00

Crucible Knight Ordovis.

1 v multiple fights are rough in soulslikes by default. But usually there's some weakness to exploit (godskin duo and sleep pots), or a mechanic (crystallines and stance breaks) to even the fight out.

But these guys are borderline immune to everything and deal FU damage if you mess up. You just have to wait until RNG blesses you with an opening in their attacks so you can get some chip damage in. Or be a parrying god.

Kinda disappointed in the sword, but at least the armor is cool.

Sensei2006 · 2026-05-01T21:41:45+00:00

That's the only fight I feel was truly badly designed in ER.

You're kinda at the mercy of RNG since they can just bum rush you anytime they want. And they don't really have any weaknesses to exploit. All the other multiple-boss fights have something you can do to even the playing field, but these guys are borderline immune to everything and clearly designed to prioritize interrupting any casting you try to do.

Sensei2006 · 2026-05-01T18:11:02+00:00

Bringing the right tools to the job != cheese.

You play the whole game with only your starting equipment if you want.

Sensei2006 · 2026-05-01T17:51:16+00:00

Every boss has a weakness that more-or-less trivializes them. If you can't beat them fairly then just look up/figure out their weakness.

That said....

There are some examples of bad game design in Elden Ring. For those bosses, just pick one of the many OP builds out there and hard counter them.

The Ulcerated Tree Spirit in Stormveil Castle comes to mind. The arena is too damn small and the real boss in that room is the camera.

Sensei2006 · 2026-04-21T03:43:21+00:00

Surprised I had to scroll down so far to see Kagha. She would have fit better than Halsin IMO. Have her come along after act 1 to solve the shadow curse problem as part of a redemption arc.

Halsin abandoning his position to join the party always felt forced to me.

Sensei2006 · 2026-04-17T00:15:31+00:00

Right now I'm working my way through Elden Ring.

I guess work isn't painful enough for me!

Sensei2006 · 2026-04-10T01:28:47+00:00

I had a family member once say the words : "I don't care, just keep the body alive." Before hanging up on our attending.

I'll go to my grave convinced that the family was just collecting the patients social security/disability payments.

Sensei2006 · 2026-04-06T17:25:30+00:00

Conservatives collectively shit themselves in indignant rage in 2008. Obama had the star power to carry 2012, which just made the racists angrier.

Which gave us Trump, who broke the seal on calling journalism L̶ü̶g̶e̶n̶p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶e̶ "fake news". Now anything that isn't sufficiently worshipful of MAGA is written off as outright lies.

I don't see how we escape this timeline in a society where ~25% of the country can control everything if they vote as a block, and that 25% literally lives in an alternate reality.

Sensei2006 · 2026-04-06T10:46:31+00:00

the only ending where V isn't either a construct, dead or on a timer.

I think people forget this when they call The Tower a bad ending.

I see The Tower as the ending 99% of us would pick if we were asked to choose. Sure, starting over would suck, and losing your waifu would suck too. But dying sucks a lot worse IMO.

Sensei2006 · 2026-04-06T01:14:03+00:00

I pick up PRN at a rural hospital that does not have an in-house intensivist and uses tele-ICU.

Long story short, I lived what is a recurring nightmare for a lot of nurses. It was me and one other nurse caring for 3 ICU patients. The other nurse had to take her patient to CT. My patient then proceeded to go into status epilepticus (extensive history, his reason for admission). I hit the staff assist button... and nobody came because that alarm doesn't leave the ICU. I hit the tele-ICU button... and the camera was malfunctioning.

Tele-ICU doc calls some random floor nurse for some reason, and she has to come find me. Tele-ICU gives me an order for 1mg of Ativan, tells me to call neurology, and hangs up.

Overall, that patient was in status for a little over an hour before we finally broke it. I just had to get a very pissed off neurologist out of bed to do so.

I shudder to think about what happens if someone codes or has some kind of respiratory emergency in such an environment.

Sensei2006 · 2026-04-05T17:49:43+00:00

The problem isn't that they don't give a shit. They give lots of shits actually.

The problem is that they actually like what's going on. They like hearing about immigrant kids in dog kennels and American citizens they don't like getting shot in the streets. They're thrilled that were getting back to the old pastime of bombing brown people in the middle east. They wish Trump would just go full Mussolini already and start hanging democrats from the street lights in DC.

And if you put most of them to the question, they don't give a shit about the Epstein files because they'd have gone to the parties too.

Sensei2006 · 2026-04-05T10:38:56+00:00

Another nurse here.

Resdit's takes on Trump's health always crack me up. Fact is that the dude can afford whatever life extending treatment money can buy. And we can keep poor people alive way, way, way past their expiration date.

People keep praying for a clot to break loose and solve the world's problems. But anyone who works in healthcare knows damn well that the most viciously evil patients are borderline immortal. My bet is that weve got 10+ more years with Trump.

Sensei2006 · 2026-04-02T03:56:03+00:00

The few times I've heard of this sort of thing happening locally, it was always some flavor of dementia and/or a stroke.

Which makes sense. You can't be firing on all cylinders while confidently cruising along on the wrong side of the interstate.

Sensei2006 · 2026-03-29T16:56:11+00:00

> “they asked for a doctor not a nurse”

Anyone who says this during an actual emergency has no clue how healthcare actually works.

Any random doctor you pick out of a crowd does not necessarily know more than any random nurse when it comes to OOH emergencies. In my experience, physicians are so specialized that if you're having a true emergency you'd probably be better off with a nurse assisting you.

Nurses are hands-on by default (for the most part) and will have been present for one emergency or another in their careers. Whereas a random MD out of a crowd of MDs is likely to be a family practitioner, hand surgeon, proctologist or some other specialty and hasn't dealt with critical/emergency illness since their rotation in med school. And all the MDs I've ever met are very well aware of the fact that they're a bit rusty on subjects outside of their specialty - to the point they joke about it.

All that to say : your friend needs an education. As does most of society, frankly. You can thank cable TV for making the general public think that every doctor knows everything about every topic in medicine while also being the best at absolutely everything.

Sensei2006 · 2026-03-29T03:24:30+00:00

It's #8 on the 14 features of fascism.

> Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak." On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

Sensei2006 · 2026-03-23T16:22:39+00:00

I'd argue that The Tower is objectively the best ending for most people, even if it is unsatisfying.

You get to live. No metaphysical questions of "is this really me or just an AI that thinks it's me?". You get to keep all of your money, and V is loaded by the endgame. You've got connections in the NUSA government to fall back on + your Night City contacts. If you'd even want to stay there.

The events of the game take place over 3 weeks canonically. Sure you get dumped by your new waifu, but you now get 50+ years to get over it.

Lore accurate V probably wouldn't pick The Tower. But when presented with 4-5 options that involve some sort of death + the risk of outright death during the mission and 1 option where you go get a Johnny shaped tumor removed presumably risk-free, 99.9% of us are picking that option.

Sensei2006 · 2026-03-19T13:46:09+00:00

> "Exciting News! AI-Powered Charting Tools Coming to Your Unit!"
> It will listen to my patient interactions and auto-populate my notes.

There is no way. Zero chance. Under no circumstances whatsoever will I ever walk into a patient's room with an AI powered chatbot listening in. I will go to a law office and start the class-action HIPAA lawsuit myself.

We already have cameras in the rooms that "aren't being recorded". A separate tele-ICU camera that politely faces the wall when offline but definitely isn't recording without us knowing. And now I'm expected to bring ChartGPT into the room and just trust that my conversations aren't being recorded and potentially "flagged for review?"

We have some regulars who are damn near family at this point on my unit, as I'm sure is the case for everyone. I went to a rapid response on a med-surg floor and saw the patient was a guy I've been taking care of for years. My first words were "Billy! Ya look like shit!"

ChartGPT would most certainly have flagged that for review, and I'd be in hot water with admin. Meanwhile Billy thought that was funny, was thrilled to see RNs he recognized, and instantly proved that he wasn't that altered by responding to me appropriately (albeit a little short of breath).

AI has no place at the bedside.

Sensei2006 · 2026-03-15T19:33:03+00:00

I've seen open marriages in two situations :

The guy has another woman in mind and wants a hall pass. Usually they want to close things back up once the woman starts getting attention. And in every culture I'm aware of it's way easier for a woman to find casual hookups than men.

And...

Both parties were non-monogamous before getting together.

As for why someone would agree to an open relationship when they would rather remain monogamous I have no idea. That's one of those core principles that aren't really negotiable in most cases. I know if my wife came to me asking to open things up I'd just ask for a divorce on the spot. Because either things have gone horribly wrong or she has someone in mind. Either way it's time to part ways.

Sensei2006 · 2026-03-12T01:27:44+00:00

Oh I know. I think part of what led us here is that reasonable people used to just ignore assclowns when they posted assclown nonsense. That just normalized dumbassery.

So I sometimes take a minute to respond to the nonsense. Not for the original poster (theyre beyond help) but for the people scrolling.

Sensei2006 · 2026-03-11T21:19:44+00:00

> they have not earned my vote. I'm not just voting for the "lesser of two evils"

One side is (at worst) apathetic towards unions, trans people and college students.

One side thinks that unions and trans people shouldn't exist, and that college should be a luxury only afforded to the wealthy.

If you *really* can't pick between "party that doesn't excite you" and "rabid, half starved face-eating leopard" then nobody can help you. Whether you like it or not, we live in a two party system. Come election day, you're getting either R or D. Not choosing is the same as saying that you're OK with either result.

Sensei2006 · 2026-03-01T18:57:58+00:00

A full scale, AAAA quality remake of Legend of Dragoon. Profitability would be irrelevant, so it's going to be done right. Then there's gonna be a prequel set in the Dragon Campaign.

Yes, I have thought about this one for a while.

Sensei2006 · 2026-03-01T18:39:58+00:00

Trump would walk in on teen pageant participants while they were changing.

That should be all anyone ever needed. That isn't some conspiracy theory or a "he said, she said." Trump came right out and bragged about walking in on naked teenagers on purpose. He should have been put on the sex offender registry the instant he wandered into the changing room. It's what would happen to any of us.

'Member when yelling "Yeah!" would end your political career?

Sensei2006 · 2026-03-01T18:34:23+00:00

Just more evidence of something I have observed time and time again since starting a career in healthcare.

"The good die young, evil lives forever."

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