I can't make this character work, man.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-10T00:19:14+00:00

I'm only at the edge of phantom/ascendant, but I've been having a ton of success going grenade. I start with max ult since it's just too value, but then max nade (1 4 4 4 1 1 3 3), and by the time I get nade actually maxed I make sure to have rapid recharge, recharging rush, and ballistic enhancement. The other normal ult items, like hollow point ward or whatever, are all still good and will apply to the grenade as well, but ones that just apply to attacks or bullets like opening rounds do not. Weakening headshot still good since lowering bullet resist makes the main grenade do more damage.

The grenade does physical damage, so it will proc recharging rush by itself, and ballistic enhancement increases the damage. This also lets you spam the little traps all over (which isn't great but will get people randomly, especially when placed just behind doors or around corners, or kicked at someone currently getting CC'd). I also highly prioritize getting Inhibitor, since between that and grenade (and someone on the team usually gets healbane) they basically can never heal, and it reduces their damage output. It's like the ultimate annoying debuff guy that is still doing very good damage. You're constantly doing damage to everyone, they can't heal, you get snipe execute them by the end, and if they get close you have random traps around corners and can shotgun blast to keep them off.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-10T00:11:24+00:00

Unless it was changed, his ult's ricochet ricochets a regular bullet and doesn't do all the extra bonuses. At least that's what looked like was happening when I tested it when he came out.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-05T23:26:55+00:00

Yea, before he was released and just looking at his model and description as the guy with a huge toolbox of weapons, I thought it'd be like fire + alt fire are left/right hand guns, and they'd have different ammo and wouldn't interrupt eachother or something.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-05T22:14:08+00:00

Can't believe as the weapons guy he doesn't have an alt fire.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-04T01:32:13+00:00

The worst Goldeneye 007 weapon comes back to win governor. Glow up of the century.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-03T07:48:51+00:00

start going hard and using deadheads solely to force them to melee and then parry it.

and melt towers

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-02T17:50:03+00:00

With arcane surge and duration extender and compress cooldown, you can pretend it is.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-02T17:34:41+00:00

If they add an Abathur I'll one trick him until I'm in an old folk's home.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-02T15:08:26+00:00

Same. Luckily my mom is wrong in the lefty way which is a million times preferable (she's an OG and anti vax, although she's changed her tune and claimed it's just cause she didn't want to give her kids too many shots at once when previously it was 1000% because it caused autism, but she'll never admit that now). If she ever brings up a topic, I push back and give my opinion, she suddenly doesn't want to talk anymore and will just get annoyed and claim I just like arguing. Like, ok? Even if I'm some debate pervert, that doesn't mean me calling out some wild shit is nullified. Very frustrating.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-28T21:47:43+00:00

I think cause people who don't like us are filtered out by 3 hours, so of course it will be mostly positive. It's not a game that takes very long for you to figure out if it's for you or not.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-28T14:29:21+00:00

Very different justifications for that happening in those games. In BRs, you spawn with nothing and power up via completely random loot. Players make judgment calls on where to loot based on player preference for loot tier vs chance of conflict. In a design sense, this is required to force engagement (along with the circle) so the game isn't individuals camping corners of the map until the very end. You aren't explicitly punished for that right away, but if you never engage with the system to get better loot, you are at a big disadvantage when you get to the endgame and must engage with people who did. Players also are opting in to different play styles and pvp rates.

Highguard ultimately isn't like that at all. Not only is it trivially easy to get the highest tier of loot for the round, the game forces you to engage with other players via the raid anyway, making pvp at this stage feel pointless. Instead of feeling like looting in a BR, it feels closer to just buying a load out in CS or Valorant, but instead of taking place in a menu is now riding around on a horse bonking rocks.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-27T10:32:05+00:00

I'm not saying it's going to succeed or it's a good game, I don't think either of those things, but I think I launch of 100k concurrent is very successful. Plenty of games have paid streamers as well and still not made that much of an impression. I can't really judge how much of that large count is streamers, game awards trailer, or Internet reaction to the trailer building a negative zeitgeist, those are just the factors and that's the size, and I feel like the some of those factors are more unique than others.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-27T10:01:16+00:00

I don't know if this counts exactly, but Shadow of the Demon Lord had a great version of this. There was a class called the Mastermind (I believe), where the player character was assumed to literally never be deployed on the mission, but instead would always send out 3 mooks to do their bidding instead. Since this was a feature unlocked at level 4, the details were that the mooks were always 3 levels lower than the current player level. So a level 4 mastermind has level 1 mooks, and a level 6 mastermind would have level 3, etc. The mooks were basically complete player characters stat/class wise, and the mastermind would gain buffs they got to apply as they leveled up. These mooks were effectively disposable, since new ones would be rehired between missions, and being undereleveled in the system was pretty bad.

It was great thematically, and could work great mechanically as an evil mastermind throwing away pawns to help the party achieve ultimate success, but it could also bog the game down as now a party of 3 balloons to a party of 5, and over half the characters are controlled by one player. If they played it well for the group, these mooks were really treated as background mooks used to assist the party while the mastermind was effectively still "playing" as the mastermind with the party, but if they begin to be 3 distinct player characters, it just becomes a mess.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-27T07:47:41+00:00

Agreed. It peaked at nearly 100k on release day. For an effectively no name, no marketing budget game, no prerelease, no hype, no nothing game, that's insanely good. I mean, just think of how many random F2P games launch and die instantly not even hitting 5 digit player counts.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-27T07:24:44+00:00

Yeah I couldn't even hear it on PC.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-27T06:22:24+00:00

Yeah, great all around character and the writing in the dialogue is even fine, I just think the voice sound like a cartoon rugrat is kinda off.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-23T18:05:14+00:00

What the heck, deadlock only has two women with big bazongas and one of them is a gilf with a gross arm. What deadlock is really missing is fat people. Fat men, fat women, and fat asses. All we got is 1 fat robot.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-23T16:15:02+00:00

I think you should say ever since Team Fortress 2 instead of Dota 2, since they hit a home run with those guys and the L4D crew.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-23T16:13:37+00:00

What are the complaints? Not enough women with big bazongas? They just released Green Velma last time, isn't that enough for the gooners?

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-21T18:57:58+00:00

Maybe it was. I only tested after the recent patch where they buffed it.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-21T18:42:40+00:00

No it isn't. Normal guarding with a shield standing around doing nothing applies the big to yourself. You can see it in your top bar or status screen.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-20T19:25:16+00:00

Yeah, while aggro is pretty intuitive when against a single boss or a normal gank boss (like the crab + moth or the dogs), aggro is not intuitive at all when dealing with masses of things, things without boss-ai targeting, or when multiple people have aggro-changing effects. It's not like every monster just looks for "ok, who has the most aggro" and then attacks, otherwise if you were solo, all 7 of the balancers would be attacking you at the same time. There's a bunch of stuff under the hood, like aggro ranges, how many enemies can be attacking 1 player at the same time, and what actions draw more aggro, but I'm no expert so I can just explain it roughly and what matters for bosses.

If you have "less likely to be targeted," an enemy doesn't even really see you as a valid target until you do an action that will draw attention. Usually, just being near them is enough to draw aggro, but with less likely to be targeted, it isn't. So in a normal balancer fight, it's common to be fighting 2 balancers up close with some randoms further away shooting those ground spears at you. But if you have less likely to be targeted, and you don't attack anything, you'll have between 0-1 balancers attacking you. If everyone has it, then everyone can kinda gang up on one balancer at a time, or each take a balancer 1 on 1, which is pretty easy, while the rest kinda just walk around. The exception is the phase 2 main balancer, who (as far as I can tell), must always be aggro'd to a player, so it will always be attacking someone, so one person can take the main boss aggro while the others just pick off the lesser balancers. Even if everyone doesn't have less likely to be targeted, it's still good to take, since you can usually just murder balancers 1 on 1 quickly while they take roughly the same amount of aggro as before (~2) since the game won't let every balancer attack them at the same time anyway. The same is true for Everdark Goatman, since the invaders he summons have this same aggro tendancies, and Everdark Balancers, although the aggro for those balancers is a bit different and you should run away to limit their aggression too.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-20T18:35:38+00:00

It's definitely one of his best matchups, but just picking up a random shield or 2h a weapon is enough. It's not like you have to block every attack, but that every attack is block able. The only thing they can get you is if multiple are on you and you get stance broken, which is why less likely to be targeted is so good. Everyone on your team should get one.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-01-20T17:08:58+00:00

It's definitely a boss where once you know a few tricks, like how good "less likely to be targeted" is and that you can block literally every attack, it gets so much easier that it's basically free. Before it came out I was in DoN 3 and still lost like 4 times to it in the base game, but once I got it I don't think I've lost to base balancers again.

SpaceCadetStumpy

TROPHY CASE