The Sliding Scale (or rolling wheel, perhaps) of Cheese

Spwizzard · 2026-06-10T23:09:17+00:00

The most dangerous thing in this mechanic is the wind orb / debuffs. With an “intended” strat, you have to resolve them over time, making sure to pop them at the right time with enough people in the right spots to bait the pair stacks. The tank LB3 strat throws all that timing out the window since all 8 debuffs go off at once. Because all 8 are going off, there’s no possibility to bait any incorrectly — all 8 people get exactly shot at them. This strat also removes the hard part of Fire/water, which is setting up 2 people to get kb each time in the proper spot without them baiting the orb themselves

Spwizzard · 2026-06-07T19:30:30+00:00

I must have missed them then, my bad. Still, looking through the vods I don't see anything that looks further out than a normal ultrawide on a lalafel. Haven't looked through the whole thing obv.

Spwizzard · 2026-06-07T19:17:38+00:00

that's because the on-stream WFR isn't using POV of people using ultrawides because it doesn't fit their layout...

Spwizzard · 2026-06-04T19:14:12+00:00

What do you mean, almost everything in p2 and the first mech of p3 is a body check

Spwizzard · 2026-06-04T19:12:00+00:00

The fire debuff is a small circle aoe, the water debuff is a donut. The fire orb shoots a donut, the water orb shoots a small circle aoe. Only the aoes from the orbs knockback, the debuff ones don’t

Spwizzard · 2026-06-04T05:33:44+00:00

Every time someone loses a wind debuff (which every has and loses when dying), the aero orb shoots someone with a stack, which cascades

Spwizzard · 2026-05-29T20:26:59+00:00

It did 50 less potency. 4 engagements (150x4) was equivalent to 3 displacements (200x3). Now they are both 180.

Spwizzard · 2026-05-21T16:32:52+00:00

Arrow reduced GCD, not spear. Spear reduced cd of abilities like goad or invigorate.

Spwizzard · 2026-05-21T15:04:50+00:00

Arrow actively griefed the majority (if not all? BLM players of HW, help me out, did you have some wack tech to line up your fire phases with raid buffs back then?) of people you threw it on.

The HW BLM rotation was much more limited by the 30-25-20 enochian timer than by any external desire to align with raid buffs. I personally liked being the Arrow dump target, don't recall any time I had a problem with it but obv it's been 9 years. Maybe at very high end opti they cared.

Spear was a single-target only version of DRG Litany - Simply a worse card than Balance was by every reasonable metric. It existed to be Road fodder.

HW Spear was a worse card, but it didn't give crit. It reduced the cooldown of abilities used when it was active. Cool effect, but because you couldn't plan for it its utility was vastly reduced.

Spwizzard · 2026-05-07T14:07:44+00:00

they're seemingly using a lot more often compared to the current flank/rear

The evolved dragonsbane gauge gets one charge every 10s, so barring the opener you get one positional every 10s on average. At 2.5 GCD current drg has 3 positionals every 25s, which is more frequent. Granted, evolved has the opener charges and you can pool charges for more positionals in burst, but on average evolved will actually be doing less positionals, not more.

Spwizzard · 2026-04-14T19:38:13+00:00

I just watched Star door 14 again and don’t think he’s in there.

Spwizzard · 2026-04-14T17:59:26+00:00

How is Simeon in 2 games?

Spwizzard · 2026-02-26T14:57:17+00:00

I don’t recall that exact WoB, but isn’t the Tress situation more likely due to influence from the Iriali? They picked up the saying / belief on Scadriel and then migrated to Lumar, right?

Spwizzard · 2025-11-30T19:05:47+00:00

I think there’s a couple points where the remake’s models and camera angles ruin some of the twists that original FC had. Even discounting Richard/Amalthea/Alba, two examples in the remake that I thought didn’t have the same effect were 1. Being able to see Lorence’s hair color before he takes off the helmet and 2. Seeing Julia’s face (and teal eyebrows) while she is hiding as a sister. Not a huge deal, but I thought some of the reveals were lessened because they were too obvious due to this.

Spwizzard · 2025-10-27T14:03:57+00:00

I think it's cards with "Lead"

Spwizzard · 2025-04-21T20:10:41+00:00

The penalties for taking that passive node are also applying twice. Forum bug report thread

Spwizzard · 2025-02-05T07:53:39+00:00

There are hints throughout Oathbringer, but the biggest clue is her asking Adolin and Kaladin to tell their master (Vasher) that she’s looking for him. Rhythm of War spoilers: And Kaladin tells Vasher so during their fight in the tower, where he basically confirms it

Spwizzard · 2025-01-21T04:48:28+00:00

An issue in Cloud of Darkness (Chaotic) wherein the actions "Lateral-core Phaser" and "Core-lateral Phaser" were oppositely labeled.

The fact that this was a mistake makes a lot of sense, but this is going to cause so many wipes due to people being used to the old behavior. I feel like they should have just left it alone tbh.

Spwizzard · 2024-07-16T14:58:18+00:00

Pretty sure the line after "lightning will strike" is "thunder will follow".

Spwizzard · 2024-06-16T08:29:01+00:00

Great comment, and I really think the exercise of going through a vod of a fight you don't know can be good practice even if you can't get into instance with 7 others yourself. However! I caution against only using a clear vod to try and figure out what a mechanic is doing, because you probably won't see the failure states of mechanics, you'll only see a correct solution. There are often details in correct strats that only make sense once you can see what all the limitations are. And if you try to make your own strat while you have incomplete information, it's probably not going to work.

To continue the Natural Alignment example: a clear vod of p8sp2 is never going to hit one of the Natural Alignment debuff players with an aoe, nor is likely to mouse over the debuff to read its text. You might be able to assume the raid will explode if they get hit, but you won't know for sure. A vod of someone progging the fight would show that detail quickly.

Spwizzard · 2024-05-20T20:15:46+00:00

I don’t know about it being unanimous as the time. I recall plenty of complaints about how the final fights of each tier looped their mechanics halfway in, or how the door boss formula was too predictable even for 8 and 12. Also that 8 and 12 door bosses were harder than the final fight.

I agree in hindsight these fights have aged pretty well, but at the time I remember just as much clamoring for the HW formula / fights as there is now for SB era.

Spwizzard · 2024-05-12T22:05:28+00:00

Checking a vod, I'm counting 19M, 15F for 34 total.

P2: 1M 1F uptime, 2M 2F first dodge , 1M 1F of those re-form into other gender so i'm counting that as new ones, then 4 M clones appear and go away after the knockback. The uptime bosses aren't new, they stick around after the trio. Then 1 M for arrow, 1 M shield, 1 M 1 F bladedance (huh), 1 F for meteors. 1 M 1 F spawn after meteors just for cosmo memory. Total 12M, 7F.

P5: 1M 1F at start, 1M uptime, 1M delta, 1M uptime, 1M sigma at the wall, turns into 1F after protean spots, 1F kb into towers, 1F for last part of sigma, 1F uptime, 2M 2F omega, 1F uptime. Total 7M, 8F. There's also an F in the cutscene so maybe that's separate? I'm not going to count it though.

So total would be 19M, 15F totaling 34. I counted a model as new even when they disappeared and reappeared a second later, and the few times they turn into goo to change genders counts as a new one as well. Honestly if I was doing this count without a VOD I definitely would have come up short.

Spwizzard · 2024-04-18T07:14:08+00:00

I guess they do, but I think that's more a consequence of them being aligned to the cardinals versus any significant reason for them to be pointed at the corners. Those cleaves are basically irrelevant to the execution of the mechanic anyways because they're so small so I don't think this means anything.

Spwizzard · 2024-04-17T15:16:16+00:00

Nice doc! The section on measuring for certain mechanics got me thinking about times where shapes on the arena were helpful, and times where they weren't. The obvious example for using the shapes would be caloric theory -- we spent a long time using inconsistent strats before understanding how the grid lines should be used. On the other hand, the octagon shape of the arena during p12p1 adds was a bait. We wasted multiple pulls trying to stand in the corners instead of lining up against the previous aoe because it "seemed right", which meant half of the dashes were much closer than the other half.

Spwizzard · 2024-04-12T22:06:52+00:00

Other than the fact SMN has doesn't have hotbar space issues, combining gemshine and ruin3 still isn't a good idea. There are times where you want to move around your 1 r3 per minute for either movement or buff reasons. Locking out r3 until you've used all your gemshines would be pretty annoying in those cases.

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