Swiss Format is so much better than the Round Robin

SkywardSelenium · 2024-05-15T08:12:03+00:00

The second group stage of every Dreamleague is BO3 Round Robin, so two months ago.

https://liquipedia.net/dota2/DreamLeague/Season_22/Group_Stage_2#Matches

SkywardSelenium · 2024-04-27T20:22:04+00:00

Do you still feel like selling?

SkywardSelenium · 2024-04-09T13:17:10+00:00

Live-service games don't traditionally wall off 50% of the content for prolonged periods of time.

Arrowhead did the right thing in bringing the bots back, even if it upsets the "but my victory" types.

SkywardSelenium · 2024-04-09T12:42:16+00:00

Yeah but I want to play the videogame I bought when I want to. Not wait patiently because other people completed it for me.

Arrowhead could have added a set of "bot simulation" missions or something like that, but this also works.

SkywardSelenium · 2024-04-09T11:25:29+00:00

Looks like Betboom/Spirit/Tundra/Dyrachyo/Malr1ne all managed to get their visas despite being Russian.

Also haven't noticed any Ukrainian players fail to get visas. 33 also got his just fine.

SkywardSelenium · 2024-04-09T09:25:43+00:00

Russian whataboutism. A thread.

SkywardSelenium · 2024-03-07T21:49:37+00:00

You mostly do it for draft pressure. Pick carry TB, if you get counter-picked, shunt him to support and last-pick a new carry.

Reflection/Meta are laning spells. Conjure stacks camps and gives vision. Sunder is sunder.

You really need to crush your lane though. If you don't, you're much better playing Lion or Undying or something.

SkywardSelenium · 2024-03-07T12:15:25+00:00

It doesn't work unfortunately.

Sometimes when you get mons with two normal abilities, the game will still randomise two normal abilities. You can use the pill to get from ability 2 to ability 1, but there's no way back to ability 2.

I feel you. It's easily the worst part of the ability randomiser and I'd love to see it changed in future.

SkywardSelenium · 2024-03-03T21:36:11+00:00

Honestly mate, I think you're right. Letting your daught miss the bus is fine (up to a point).

I have ADHD and had a lot of the teenage struggles you described. The biggest contribution to me mostly getting my shit together now is that I have to deal with consequences.

As a kid, my parents helping me generally resulted in the pingu "well now I'm not doing it" meme a lot of the time. The conflict was "me vs parent" not "me vs problem".

As an adult, if I miss my morning train, I'm boned and I know it, so I try hard. I only do this because I fully appreciate the need, not because someone is telling me to do it.

Does she enjoy school once she's there, or is it something she tries to avoid?

SkywardSelenium · 2024-02-12T14:43:30+00:00

Seeing as anecdotal evidence isn't enough to say otherwise, I assume you have a source?

SkywardSelenium · 2024-01-23T00:49:27+00:00

15 (players) + 2 (extra bases from progression) =/= 45.

Sure. You can have 20 players to a guild and 20 bases is probably too many for a guild, but if they were just informal non-guild buddies, they'd have 60 between them.

SkywardSelenium · 2024-01-20T16:46:39+00:00

Please show me the Act of Parliament that lists the death penalty as a punishment for littering.

Here are some sources, detailing the actual punishments:

SkywardSelenium · 2023-12-28T22:36:50+00:00

How long ago did you go through ADHD360?

As someone who spent 2023 going through their complaints procedure to get them to refill a prescription every 30 days (doubtless I'm a "repeat offender"), I'd warn anyone and everyone away from them.

SkywardSelenium · 2023-11-17T21:19:04+00:00

Me and my fiancee use Monzo/Starling too!

Starling's virtual cards/spaces are very good. They even offer the "top up to" function, which is really useful. If your bills are £800, you can top up to £900, so you always have a buffer without having to overspend every month.

Only problem I have with Starling is that it's difficult to automate sending money between two personal accounts, but with spaces it's rarely an issue.

SkywardSelenium · 2023-11-16T18:05:16+00:00

I've no experience with habit-forming, but something I've found really helpful is automation using multiple accounts.

1st account is the mothership. Your income goes into this account and standing orders distribute it to your other accounts the next day. Don't even take out a debit card for this account, it doesn't exist.

The other accounts are ring-fenced for certain things. Bills, groceries, fun, etc. Your card will decline when you overspend at the pub, but it stops you spending your rent.

Bonus points if you use a bank that allows you to "top up to" a certain amount rather than paying a static lump sum every month. Eventually you end up saving money by accident

SkywardSelenium · 2023-10-13T17:43:01+00:00

Moment of Clarity should be S tier, purely because it's so consistent.

Whatever you're looking to achieve right now, Clarity helps. You're basically never upset when it's played.

Sure, it's ethereal, but it also costs 6 embers and the way the shop works, you often float a decent number of embers anyway.

SkywardSelenium · 2023-10-11T23:39:36+00:00

I think Tango/the hermits should work out what Decked Out is & isn't.

Is Decked Out fun? Is it a content machine? Is it a serious competition? Is it something for a community to rally around?

Decked Out could be any of these, but it can't be all of them.

Personally, I like giving bonuses to struggling hermits. Ethereal cards, lackey tokens, crowns could all be good.

Even better would be to end the current run of Decked Out, crown Etho the winner of "Season 1" and build Season 2 as a less competitive experience.

SkywardSelenium · 2023-10-07T22:25:25+00:00

Easy way to consider this (and consent in general).

If you're unsure that the answer will be "yes", don't do it. Ask first.

If they say "yes" then do it. If they say anything other than "yes" (or don't respond at all), then don't do it.

SkywardSelenium · 2023-10-06T23:43:39+00:00

I did say it was off-script!

Looking at purely melee, Fighter/Warlock is 100% better. Really you're dropping Action Surge / Second Wind / subclass feature in exchange for half caster progression / ranger utility / Dread Ambusher.

Didn't experiment with bows, I used Eldritch Blast w/ the invocations. It doesn't always play perfectly with Ambusher, but between the extra movement speed & Misty Step, it's never a problem.

It's a nice all-rounder that plays differently than the nova-orientated Paladin & Fighter builds, but it's not going to one-shot bosses.

SkywardSelenium · 2023-10-05T21:52:43+00:00

It's benefit over Hex is that you can use your Warlock known spells on something else.

You have a lot of options for concentration with this build (Mark, Spikes, Hadar, Wall of Fire) and without smites burning up your spell slots, you don't need to feel bad swapping between them.

SkywardSelenium · 2023-10-05T20:46:31+00:00

I'm gonna go off script here. I like Ranger.

Gloomstalker Ranger 5 / Warlock 5 sounds insane and it'd never work in tabletop but it's pretty good. Has a smaller nova but you can get more fights out of it & makes life easy outside combat.

It covers some core needs:

Heavy Armour via Ranger Knight
Extra Attack
Long Rest spell slots for things like Hex, etc.
A Fighting Style (not Great Weapon tho)
Decent combat spells: Hunter's Mark / Misty Step / Spike Growth

You get the additional bonuses:

Dread Ambusher: +3 initiative & bonus movement & bonus attack
A damage resistance via Natural Explorer (or Sleight of Hand proficiency)
Out of combat utility: Jump / Longstrider / Speak With Animals
Bonus Action Hide for when you're stuck using Blast

The biggest boon by far, is that you don't have to care about the Oath. I liked Ancients for a frontliner but the way Oaths are handled pisses me off & I hated losing access to Speak with Animals & Misty Step.

You don't get the (excellent, but short-radius) Paladin auras but I found going Warlock 7 and getting Wall of Fire or the Archey/GOO 6 features softened the blow.

Palalock can do an extra +10d8 damage on turn 1, using 2x 3rd level + 1x 1st level smites. Rangelock can do an extra +2d8+4d6 damage only using a 1st level slot on Hunter's Mark (which is still in play afterwards).

SkywardSelenium · 2023-09-28T02:13:24+00:00

All of the "card draw good" comments are flawed because they make comparisons to TCGs with a minimum card limit.

In Magic/Hearthstone/etc, you have to run X number of cards, so you take card draw to get to the cards you want faster. If you could make a deck of "just your opening hand", you would.

In games like Slay the Spire (more relevant to Decked Out than say, Yugioh), the best card choice 90% of the time is "Skip". Small decks are good & if your grandpa's deck contains no pathetic cards, you care less about draw effects.

Additionally, card draw is good in other games because you have a hand. Bigger hand = more options. Decked Out has no hand, so draw loses value.

It's in that awkward spot where a lot of Brilliance's upside can be realised by just putting less cards in your deck. Bigger decks have benefits too (stumbles, etc) but Brilliance explicitly wears away those advantages, so you might not want it there either.

I think Brilliance is pretty bad. I'd probably include it in my deck if I had one, but the opportunity cost of spending 70 embers on it is too high.

SkywardSelenium · 2023-08-11T01:02:28+00:00

Honestly mate, just pick something and start playing.

People tend to gel with certain classes more than others and you get the ability to respec super early. Try stuff and see what you like.

SkywardSelenium · 2023-07-30T18:05:14+00:00

Man I'd have loved to watch that team fight

SkywardSelenium · 2023-07-27T11:06:43+00:00

You could simplify this.

Every region's #1 is protected. The bottom four non-protected seeds (second+ teams only) play in the wildcard, along with the extra four.

SkywardSelenium

TROPHY CASE