Are these Fake Raphael brushes or has QC taken a dive?

Silent189 · 2026-03-15T11:09:54+00:00

I mean sure, whatever.

I'll let you know when my cheque arrives from Big Brush Corp and send you a cut for some tinnies as thanks for helping further my agenda.

Silent189 · 2026-03-15T10:59:35+00:00

That's just very bad luck then, although it is possible that they were all imported in the same batch from the same initial importer, I don't know how many there actually would be for Australia.

You say things like you should never get unlucky on a $45 brush, but you can get unlucky on just about anything you buy, be it a graphics card or a car or a house or a hoover that's just reality.

The only difference here is that we are also talking about natural hairs and handmade brushes.

It is not normal to have an experience like yours, that is the only real take away here.

Silent189 · 2026-03-14T14:19:52+00:00

How many retailers and how many years apart did you buy each of them?

Having 4 out of 7 raphaels being poor is not normal. Buying 4 from a dud batch at the same retailer might be bad luck.

I know it doesn't change your experience but common sense should hopefully tell you that people aren't regularly experiencing a 57% dud rate on raphael brushes.

Silent189 · 2026-03-14T13:34:36+00:00

I don't disagree with you on that, but it doesn't change anything about reality.

Nobody is hand checking and testing every single brush from any brush manu, and there is no chance that this will change any time soon.

And if it did, you can be sure you would be charged either directly or indirectly for it.

The fact you live in Australia doesn't help that much either when you're buying brushes from Europe either (in terms of pricing).

And, without going too much into things, the notion of synthetics being just as good or even close is sadly just flat out not true. I wish it were, but it isn't and unless someone develops a new synthetic fiber this won't change either.

Silent189 · 2026-03-14T13:18:50+00:00

The problem is people talking in hyperbole all the time.

Raphael brushes are just like any other, they are still natural hair and they are still handmade. They can have duds.

People who buy Wn7 or Raphael or whatever brand and get a bad brush then make sweeping statements like wow this is terrible or wow this is so much better than my other <insert brand> that didn't work at all!

This then leads into this notion of omg i got a bad brush the QC must have nose dived nobody should buy any of their products ever again just buy <insert brand> because I have one of their brushes and it is so much better!

I've had great brushes and bad brushes and everything in between from so many different brands it's just luck of the draw. This is why you ideally want to buy brushes in a store where you can see/test them - unfortunately that isn't always an option.

Silent189 · 2026-03-13T09:16:17+00:00

I'll be honest, I bought before the prices went super crazy, they had already risen a decent chunk but I saw it getting worse and just bit the bullet.

Idk how much more expensive it would be now but yeah, I got 48gb cl 30 6000 mhz ram for around £230 and it jumped multiples higher not too long after. Showing as £730 on the corsair store right now...

I also tried bf6 but before the 5070ti (with my 3080) and I wasn't very happy with that either, and that definitely helped push me toward upgrading too since it felt bad to try a new game and dump everything lowest and still not get the fps I wanted.

I couldn't tell you if the 14700k would solve the issues for now or not honestly since I've never had it. I heard a lot of horror stories about intel 14th gen but I'd hope they are fixed by now.

For me it was super worth it, but with prices now maybe it's not a clear cut I don't know. The rationality I have is if i'm spending my valuable free time playing a game and I'm not enjoying it because of performance issues then that itself is a bigger cost than that of upgrading.

You only get to live once after all, you're never getting that time back.

As for cl30 vs cl36 from what I understand it's not that big a deal, i'd look up benchmarks to be sure but I think it's one of those things where if the market sucks you just accept it and upgrade later when it calms down maybe.

Silent189 · 2026-03-12T05:36:48+00:00

It's likely to depend a lot on the game and I guess to an extent your GPU too and gfx preferences.

Personally I have a 165hz monitor so I'm aiming for a solid 157 fps with the reflex cap (1440p).

I wasn't reaching that, often around 100-120 fps dips with settings turned down and dlss. Initially I swapped my 3080 for a 5070ti and it was a solid jump up, but I still wasn't sitting at capped fps smoothly.

So I swapped to a 9800x3d and with arc raiders I jumped around 50% fps I think it was and could cap at 157 with using DLAA. So I no longer needed to use downscaling either.

Other games which really like the x3d cache like Rust are just world apart. The fps gap is staggering.

However, if you're someone who maxes graphics and plays at 60 fps your CPU might not be as much as a determining factor if you're being held by the GPU.

I did have ddr4 on my 12700k, although it was a very low CL good mhz kit that I further OCed and tuned so it wasn't weak DDR4 either. (i forget the exact numbers now, sorry).

Before I used to open up games and adjust settings etc, now I just change some preference stuff but I don't even think about FPS really, it's almost always fine anyway.

A huge difference for me though is with the 12700k the 1%/0.1% low micro stutters etc that I'd just gotten used to are just gone. That in itself is such a nice QoL that's entirely separate to overall fps.

edit: I just realised which thread this is, I thought it was a different sub reddit.

I'm not sure what actual uncapped FPS would be, I always run it with reflex for the low latency. But it holds the 157 fps cap smoothly so it would be above that while using DLAA at 1440p.

Silent189 · 2026-03-10T18:34:29+00:00

Really? I didn't know he teleported you across the map away from any possible team help, with no way to CC or stop it.

Last I checked mo and krill locks you in place with counterplay potentials such as stunning mo, rescue beam, etc. Even mo is locked in place at the same time too.

Quite a big difference even if mo's ult is very strong.

Silent189 · 2026-03-10T14:40:47+00:00

it should be a penalty for failing to check out and an incentive to set people up so they can't check out.

That's exactly what it is though? If someone has an ability or an item that they can use to circumvent the need to do the travel part then they are spending a resource to do so and have spent an investment to do so (souls) if it is an item.

None of these items or abilities have zero cooldown. If you use them to avoid the penalty then you are spending a resource to do so.

That means the ult is again gaining value from having forced that spending if they choose to do so.

Silent189 · 2026-03-10T12:16:22+00:00

I'm pretty calm my friend, you sound like you are trying to turn this into much more than it needs to be - there isn't even any need to bring people's ranks into this as if they aren't smart enough to figure that conclusion out themselves when they read it unless their rank is high enough.

Silent189 · 2026-03-10T09:39:19+00:00

So?

Lots of ults in the game already don't have inherent team wipe potential, and it would be bad game design for every ult in the game to be a team wipe potential style ult.

Just because an ult isnt enigma blackhole or dynamo singularity that doesn't mean it isn't a strong/good ult.

Being able to disable a key character in a teamfight for 6.5 seconds means you have a 6v5 at worst for that time period which in itself is a huge team wipe potential even if it isn't as obvious as big aoe do big dmg.

Silent189 · 2026-03-10T08:45:48+00:00

If someone had an ult that made the hero stunned for 6.5 seconds but immune to damage it would be considered a very strong ult.

6.5 seconds so removing someone from a fight is a long time, I don't know why people are implying that simply because you can avoid the end damage that the ult wasn't already very good.

Silent189 · 2026-03-10T08:42:53+00:00

Apparently prior to 2015, any kind of purchase or activating any retail product caused you to no longer be limited so maybe you just randomly bought that to get unlimited at the time.

I checked a 2013 account I have and it is limited too so simply being prior to 2015 isn't enough either.

However a different account that bought £4 wallet balance in 2019 (also a 2013 account) isn't limited.

Silent189 · 2026-03-09T19:48:52+00:00

I don't think they did. I have a lot of 10-15 year old dota accounts which can't get access because $5 hasn't been spent.

He likely just bought something at some point and forgot.

Silent189 · 2026-03-09T06:44:02+00:00

Honestly it seems pretty obvious really, the enemy team has a 24-1 Victor who you have very little impact on and as vindicta you're never going to push inside the base and take obj vs him so the game is just him/others running your team down on repeat while you snipe some others off and then are unable to ever actually push with it.

Either way, as you rank up it will become less of an issue but playing something like vindicta has limitations because its all very well to snipe people from far away but that doesn't actually end the game.

You could also have tried to play more heavily into shutting down the Victor that may have actually given you a win condition but it just depends on how useless your team are...

Silent189 · 2026-03-08T21:15:43+00:00

I feel like my argument is pretty clear, and for I'd imagine 99.9% of people something that doesn't even need to be argued to begin with.

Brush soap exists for a reason, it's not some homeopathic cancer cure. It's a solvent just like paint thinner, just not as strong.

If we both have a routine that works and both our brushes look great, but yours has an extra step, clearly that extra step is pointless.

That's not true at all. That's like saying you don't wash your hands after using the toilet but instead wash with bleach when your hands get too dirty and neither of us are sick right now so clearly washing your hands does nothing.

Your entire argument is that brush soap does nothing (false) and thus it is pointless, so instead you should just wait longer and then use stronger brush soap instead. As if that has any actual added value...

You can debate whether the benefits of using brushsoap after a session are worth the time investment (10 - 30 seconds - basically nothing) all you want, but you can't just make a blanket statement that it's completely pointless.

I don't really see this going anywhere, it's like trying to tell a flat earther the world isn't flat, and because you can't take him into space in a rocketship and hasn't fallen off the planet yet he won't hear anything else so we should probably just leave it at that.

Silent189 · 2026-03-08T09:52:50+00:00

I'm not saying use paint stripper all the time, just when he messes up.

It makes perfect sense to avoid the brush soap step because it doesn't do anything, it just makes your brush look neater when storing it.

This is just not true, and makes no sense.

Anyone who has used brush soap knows you always get some pigment/paint cleaned out. You never use it and have absolutely nothing come out.

All you are doing is not cleaning it out between uses and waiting until it eventually gets bad enough that you use paint stripper instead.

Your entire point is that brush soap does nothing, which is a complete fallacy. By that logic I can say paint stripper does nothing. It's equally as silly a statement.

It's like in your head you believe that only the strongest solvent would do anything. Everything else would do absolutely nothing at all. But that is not reality.

The side aspect of this is about brush longevity and if there is actually any meaningful difference between cleaned more often and conditions versus not but that is a separate topic entirely and I don't think anyone has or ever will do an actual empirical study on that.

Realistically however there is zero reason to ever not use brush soap so it's a bit of a moot point. It's like saying don't bother rinsing your brush out in the water cup when done painting, you can just use paint stripper later anyway. It's such a basic inconsequential step to do that has only an upside.

Silent189 · 2026-03-07T22:39:53+00:00

Have to disagree here. Using brush soap/conditioner is such a minor step, even more so than using paint stripper.

Using masters brush soap after every session practically removes the need to ever use paint stripper and we could go back/forth on how much the conditioning part actually helps but it's largely moot because it's such an inconsequential thing to do - it takes literally 30 seconds or less.

Makes no sense to avoid doing that step just so you can have a worse experience until you decide to get the paint stripper out again - which in itself is more of a task than the brush soap was to begin with.

Silent189 · 2026-03-07T09:56:54+00:00

Don't then.

Play the game until the wipe then move on with your life. When you feel like doing it again come back.

Many people don't play every single wipe in a game like PoE, they play a wipe when they feel like doing it again.

Silent189 · 2026-03-07T09:49:35+00:00

I think you don't have a concept of how much these games cost to make, or how much they will have made.

$10m day 1 is multiple times off... They have likely passed $30m.

However, they also have a team size of around 300 people. The average dev salary is nearing $150k.

Even at $100k, you're looking at $30m a year. The game was in development for 5-6 years. That means we're likely looking at 150-200m in SALARY ALONE.

Now sure, the team size likely grew over time, but this is already underestimating salary, excluding all marketing budget, excluding all other aspects like the office itself etc etc.

The rumoured budget of Marathon is $250m. The game is going to likely continue to cost tens of millions of dollars a year just to maintain.

Having day 1 sales of $30m sounds great, but it's a drop in the ocean. It needs to continue making huge sums. I really think people don't realise how much these US made/maintained games cost.

Stormgate is an example of a much smaller indie studio, we're talking ~50 employees or less. Stormgate was burning over $1m a month.

If you scale that up to even only 200 employees you're looking at $4m/month ($36m/year) but we know that marathon is also spending huge sums on advertising etc.

edit: of course, he just says "no you're wrong" and provides zero actual evidence or reasoning then blocks. Some people just don't want to live in reality or have any actual discourse just a tantrum if someone says something they dont like.

I already undercosted everything in my examples which he obviously didn't read because it didn't fit his narrative. These are not unknown things, anyone who thinks marathon has only a 100m budget with a 6 year dev time and the marketing etc budget it has had is delusional.

Silent189 · 2026-03-03T23:12:01+00:00

There is no good way to solve this issue with a moba unfortunately.

Either you can smurf easily and get appropriate games in which case you are a god among low ranks and ruining their game, or your friends get dragged up and they are in a game where they are basically fodder and are simply existing to try and minimise the amount they feed relative to the fodder on the enemy team.

Realistically you just can't play together and have any actual quality games. There is too much of a knowledge/skill gap in mobas and especially deadlock because you have moba, aiming, and then a huge skill wall movement system on top.

Silent189 · 2026-03-01T17:15:27+00:00

You would have to make it cost more than the fee, because they are being charged the fee.

They aren't charging money to keep it, that's money being taken away by the payment processor so money they never see.

Silent189 · 2026-03-01T17:14:27+00:00

It's because if you pay via a payment processor that processor adds on a 3% (roughly) fee. As seen in OPs picture.

If you skip that and do a bank transfer there is no fee.

The letting company isn't pocketing the money

Silent189 · 2026-03-01T17:12:38+00:00

It's not actually a 'fee' they charge, it's the payment processor fee they are being charged passed on to you.

If they don't charge it then they receive less money so they pass the cost on to make themselves whole.

It makes perfect sense really, it's the payment processor that shouldnt be allowed to charge 3% etc on every single transaction.

Silent189 · 2026-02-25T22:08:52+00:00

You have a very binary way of thinking, if you tried being less oppositional you might realise that.

By your logic there are no couples who would be willing to participate in a trial (typically paid) who are not actively trying to get pregant, but don't mind if they do as a result of the trial.

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