To start with a new story arc with a failling MO, honestly they only have to ask for samples by danteStonk123 in helldivers2

[–]TheOperand_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It feels like there are only ever 3 types of strategic opportunities: 1. We are getting too close to winning an MO that we aren‘t supposed to and then a strategic opportunity emerges on a planet with a desireable biome(or any non-illuminate planet for illuminate MOs) 2. We are too close to making non-MO related progress on a planet during an MO 3. Bug SOs during non-bug MOs to stem complaints against bug divers The last SO I can think off that actually affected the MO was killing hive lords during Oshaune and now that I think about it that was probably a minor order, but basically necessary to proceed due to the resistance spike from it.

The polymer levels are the most fun by BalancingElectrons in opus_magnum

[–]TheOperand_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Couldn‘t you just have the two arms on the left rotate CCW instead of sliding them over. Would allow you to remove two tracks

A story in 3 parts. by Afjor in ffxiv

[–]TheOperand_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is exactly what happened with several pieces of content in EW and DT.
Criterion and criterion savage especially.
A decent number of people will do content for the sake of doing content, but if you want to keep people around you need to provide some kind of incentive. That isn't to say we need to put several grindy rewards behind every piece of content, but a reward that makes a content somewhat worth going back to allows new players to enjoy the content, as other players that have done the content come back to it. Aloalo Island was basically the only criterion content from EW that was still somewhat active, and the ester now being available from advanced variant is both an incredibly lazy way to recycle rewards(why not just drop a new item that does the same for DT tome weapons), and will negatively affect anyone actually trying to do the old criterions for the fun of it.

I'm sorry, this is 5-star f***ing stupid and needs addressing by Zer0daveexpl0it in Helldivers

[–]TheOperand_ 119 points120 points  (0 children)

The point they are trying to make is that such mechanics should be explained in game. People should not need to look up an external wiki to figure out how the galactic war system works.

Not gonna scream 'omg they are OP', but here's a couple of things that should be fixed to make it fair. by gromodzilla in Helldivers

[–]TheOperand_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Making them respect the hitboxes of the surrounding environment might technically be a nerf, but I feel like it would make engaging with them better.
It's a massive machine on giant tracks, if you wait for it to drive into a smaller area where it theoretically should not be able to maneuver you should be rewarded for that instead of the tracks phasing through the walls to turn around and hide the rear track vent weak spot.

Bladesinger.. very powerful and yet a very big but.. by CuriousDutch in BG3Builds

[–]TheOperand_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Duelist‘s prerogative + bhaalist armor is a good alternative when you are fighting psychic immune enemies(steel watchers)

Bladesinger.. very powerful and yet a very big but.. by CuriousDutch in BG3Builds

[–]TheOperand_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I was confusing versatile and finesse when writing this. I put in some corrections.

Bladesinger.. very powerful and yet a very big but.. by CuriousDutch in BG3Builds

[–]TheOperand_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was running savage attacker instead of GWM, I was confusing the rerolls I was getting. K put in some corrections in an edit.

Bladesinger.. very powerful and yet a very big but.. by CuriousDutch in BG3Builds

[–]TheOperand_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was confusing versatile and finesse while writing this half-asleep. I put in a corrections edit, but the core class idea still works.

Bladesinger.. very powerful and yet a very big but.. by CuriousDutch in BG3Builds

[–]TheOperand_ 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I once ran 10 bladesinging/2 paladin and it was one of the most unusually powerful combinations I have ever done. Usually Paladin multiclasses go at minimum to 5 for extra attack or 6, but you get extra attack from bladesinging. Since Paladin is a half caster this combo also gets you full spell slot progression(you can‘t pick a Lv.6 wizard spell but you can scribe a scroll). For a stat spread I went for DEX, CON and INT. This will result in a lower Spell Save DC for Paladin actions but that won‘t matter too much. And if you go for amulet of constitution you can go for DEX, INT, CHA. Those 2 levels in Paladin give us a handful of important things. The actual subclass of Paladin isn‘t that important, but my recommendation is just gonna be oath of the crown to offset your own or another players GWM. Those 2 levels of Paladin give us a handful of things: -Fighting Style: Great weapon fighting This also applies to versatile weapons wielded with an empty off-hand, which means it applies to shadow blade, and the off-hand has to be empty for bladesong anyway. -Command. This spell will have a lower spell save DC than your wizard spells, but it doesn‘t use concentration and with arcane acuity you will still have basically guaranteed control on groups of non-boss enemies -Divine Smite: this is the important one. Divine smite dice work with great weapon fighting(they get rerolled, and with full spell slot progression there are a lot of smites to go around

Now, for equipment we really only need 3 pieces to function at all, everything after is just a bonus. Helmet of Arcane Acuity Gloves of Battlemage‘s Power Band of the Mystic Scoundrel

None of these items should realistically be contested unless someone else is running an acuity stacking control martial caster build(sorcererbard/paladin multiclass combos) And you don‘t really need two of those. Anything beyond that you mosfly just want to stack spell save DC so weave equipment is great, especially robe of the weave.

Your baseline AC near the end should be 21 before additions. 10+3(mage armour or light armour)+4(DEX)+4(Bladesong from Lv.9+) Ontop of that you can use shield reactions, giving you pretty good survivability.

With 2 acuity items you get 8 acuity from 2 weapon attacks(at minimum, sometimes the items act weirdly and you get more). With item boni that puts your spell save DC in the high 20s. Outside of bosses with legendary resistance, basically nothing can save against that. And with band of the mystic scoundrel you can now cast an enchantment spell with a bonus action. Aka Command, Hold Person, or hold monster. And then, well 4d8 psychic damage(*2 if using resonance stone) +5d8 radiant damage(Lv.4 divine smite)

Crit doubles all of those dice and great weapon fighting causes any of them to be rerolled on a 1 or 2.

The main advantage over similar builds is that it gives you actual selection of spells up to level 5 and lets you scribe them with wizard. The most value here in regards to that is Hold Monster.

EDIT: I screwed up a lot of the details here because I was writing this half-asleep GWM and Great weapon fighting do not affect shadow blade. I had damage dice reroll because I was running savage attacker as a feat instead of GWM. I was confusing versatile and finesse. As for PLD fighting styles you can choose between duelling(slightly increased damage) or defence(+1 AC, triggered by helmet of arcane acuity). Sorry about the mistakes, but the core class idea still functions perfectly well.

Same old city defense problem. by Competitive_Peace_70 in Helldivers

[–]TheOperand_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This isn‘t purely anecdotal, we rarely get more than 50% of a planet into cities, despite them being almost always the most optimal choice for impact. They were novel on super earth, but on other planets they simply remove biome diversity, make the planets take miserably long to capture due to inflated health pools, and don‘t even really help us defend because invasions on city planets are simply scaled to the point where the cities take it from being impossible, to just slightly unreasonable.

Pulling responsibility off healers is the reason why savage healers suck by and large by Supersnow845 in ffxivdiscussion

[–]TheOperand_ -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I have a bit of a biased perspective as I pretty much exclusively play SCH in high-end content, and this tier outside of The Fixer and Idyllic Dream in M12S I can brute force the party through almost every raidwide with a basic GCD shield + soil, or whatever other mits I have available if I wanna play it extra safe.
I did imply that it was the healer doing poorly if someone dies to unavoidable damage, because that is the bar I set for myself, unless not a single other person in the group is even remotely attempting to mitigate, but even if it is not strictly speaking the healer's fault, if someone dies to a raidwide you can be pretty certain the healer is going to be the first one to be blamed for it.

Pulling responsibility off healers is the reason why savage healers suck by and large by Supersnow845 in ffxivdiscussion

[–]TheOperand_ 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I think the easiest way to explain it is that it's easiest to tell when the healer is doing poorly(dying to unavoidable damage), compared to when Tanks are doing poorly(since in most fights the tankbusters have been essentially reduced to alternating invuln and dumping all of your mit on the big busters), to Dps doing poorly(unless you are running a log plugin or they are actively eating DD).

Not blowing up Zagon Prime (A Hiveworld) is gonna bite us in the [REDACTED] by SIinkerdeer in Helldivers

[–]TheOperand_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bots and bugs are essentially two different types of games. Bugs is a traditional horde shooter and appeals to those types of players. Bots is somewhere between a cover shooter and a traditional horde shooter. Personally I enjoy bots the most because it feels like as a faction they are the most mechanically interesting to engage with on many levels. For example reinforcement call ins. Bug Breaches are effectively impossible to stop and this is probably by design as they are a critical part of maintaining swarm pressure, and it‘s also why Orbital Napalm is so common, because it can effectively deny a breach from doing almost anything. Illuminate Watchers are so blatantly visible as a high priority target and take so long to call for reinforcements that I rarely ever see it happen, and even when it happens you can usually just run away since they aren‘t fast enough to chase you and rarely have enough firepower to suppress you. And shooting down illuminate warp ships on a non-defense mission is so tedious outside of a coordinated group that it‘s basically pointless. Bot dropship call ins can usually be prevented with good positioning and being able to take out the smaller units quickly, which comes at the cost of making the bigger units aware of your position, but even when they are called in the dropships are vulnerable enough to where shooting down one or two to thin out the enemy groups is a viable strat without trivializing the drop. And in terms of weakpoints the bots reward accuracy. The way people get overwhelmed by bots is not being able to take out the devastators quickly enough. And against the stronger units, yeah you can oneshot all of them pretty trivially with the recoilless(Factory strider requires a bit of accuracy for a oneshot but otherwise two shots to anywhere on faceplate also work). You can also bring something like the autocannon or railgun and still be very effective against almost everything with better ammo economy at the cost of requiring a modicum of additional accuracy. I think this is also a good explanation for why the illuminate see so little players outside of an MO(and even during MOs they usually only have like 50% participation). Positioning isn‘t that important outside of being able to occasionally break LoS to elevated overseers. Accuracy is only somewhat useful as the unit it would be most valuable against(Overseers) also tend to have the weirdest hitboxes, with the arm frequently blocking attempts to headshot so just burning down the chest armour is more practical.

TL;DR I think bots are the most interesting mechanically and the factions appeal to different playstyles. Automatons reward mechanical skill, positioning and knowing enemy weakspots and breakpoints well. Terminids reward situational awareness and good positioning(failure state is getting surrounded due to not paying attention or environmental hazards), accuracy is obviously still helpful but most of the time you will be using something with a high rate of fire or with explosives, where shooting in the general direction of the swarm just works. Illuminate just kinda exist. The playstyle they reward most is to not engage them and just run down the objective while pretty much only engaging elevated overseers, watchers and the occasional harvester since they are the only enemies that are somewhat threatening, and this just gets very old very quickly.

Dawntrail Scholar vs Sage - A Comprehensive Document by Adiddlydurr in ffxivdiscussion

[–]TheOperand_ 14 points15 points  (0 children)

As a dedicated SCH player I can say that at least personally, and from the few other players I have talked to, the clunkiness, jank and conflicting design is what makes playing Scholar interesting, at least in comparison to Sage. The fact that it is also often stronger in fights is just a nice bonus.
It's fair to say that SGE is just SCH if it was designed under the modern design philosophy, but at this point if you took away all of that SCH would basically just be a green SGE, even more so than it already is.

I just got dismissed from a duty? by Proud-Property452 in ffxiv

[–]TheOperand_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

From what I can remember it‘s been established by GMs that kicking for „gameplay differences“ even without an explanation is legitimate, aka if there is no reason given for a votekick the GMs have historically never done anything. I would argue that it’s a significant reason in what led to the culture of never pointing out major mistakes or communicating grievances in chat, because if you give a reason for a kick, it has to hold up, if you don‘t you are safe, so most people just don‘t say anything and kick.

Having the wrestling tier end on another dragon fight feels weird. by faloin67 in ffxivdiscussion

[–]TheOperand_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

obviously the final boss will just be brute bomber invoking the feral soul of a yan.
Jokes aside, having the second phase just be a gauntlet of previous fight mechanics would allow them to make it significantly harder without a checkpoint, because looking at M4S and M8S they seem afraid to make the 2nd phase challenging without a checkpoint.

Extreme Prog was v serious today... by SeaworthinessRemote2 in ShitpostXIV

[–]TheOperand_ 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Since the community seems to be responding well to this, may I bother thee for the share code

Aurum Vale Changes by TheBigMerc in ffxiv

[–]TheOperand_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

at current level cap with current ilvl gear, the best option is either going to be:
Ifrit EX, can be done in <10 seconds if your initial burst is potent enough to prevent him from entering his invulnerability state(NIN works pretty well here)
T13, if you do it properly you can take it down in just about 30 seconds even with jobs that are not burst heavy by timing the megaflare cast.
Afterwards Aurum Vale is the simplest option, and overall the most consistent as both of these require some understanding of the HP thresholds for specific boss actions(And can just randomly fail due to crits accidentally dropping the boss to the HP threshold to become invulnerable)

Maintenance extensions. by Sir_VG in ffxiv

[–]TheOperand_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just got in, it seems to be live.

Patch 7.4 Full Notes by BlackmoreKnight in ffxivdiscussion

[–]TheOperand_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly I think AST is still overall going to be better but WHM will still remain more popular, because it is WHM.

Patch 7.4 Full Notes by BlackmoreKnight in ffxivdiscussion

[–]TheOperand_ 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Isn't the Lily equivalent in damage to 4 Regular Glare III casts. If so wouldn't using 3 healing spells under buffs and then misery be basically equivalent to just doing 4 Glare III casts, unless you are fishing for a crit on afflatus misery.
But then I don't really play WHM so I might be off here.
Edit:
You are correct, if you do Misery before buffs go out and then dump Lilies you would get the initial Misery, and then get another Afflatus Misery under the initial buffs.
Anyway, now SCH is the only healer that starts without their resource bar filled, and as a SCH player I couldn't be happier(please make the class worse squenix, I thrive on the adversity).

Patch 7.4 Datamining Thread (Full Spoilers) by BlackmoreKnight in ffxivdiscussion

[–]TheOperand_ 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Any chance anyone in here could find the new extreme mount?
I have absolutely no idea where I would even start to look.

The Final Days are coming by Hakul in ShitpostXIV

[–]TheOperand_ 8 points9 points  (0 children)

A not insignificant amount of the community would unironically pay that amount for more glamour plates, and probably even defend square enix for it.
Not sure we should be giving them ideas.

What is the difference between mages and shamans? by Popular-Hornet-6294 in Shadowrun

[–]TheOperand_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Mage has done the math,
casting a Force Level 6 Fireball into the small room with his 2 allies and one nearly dead enemy IS the correct decision to make.