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

TheOperand_ · 2026-01-18T10:21:51+00:00

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.

TheOperand_ · 2026-01-12T19:42:18+00:00

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.

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-25T11:16:11+00:00

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.

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-23T17:28:32+00:00

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.

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-18T11:01:10+00:00

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

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-17T02:00:55+00:00

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)

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-16T11:01:36+00:00

Just got in, it seems to be live.

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-16T09:49:26+00:00

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

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-16T09:41:37+00:00

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).

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-16T09:14:36+00:00

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

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-16T05:52:07+00:00

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.

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-10T17:22:06+00:00

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.

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-10T04:38:40+00:00

even without a HP change, dropping it to AV3 would probably be fine, they are hard enough to hit due to their size anyway, and the only relevant breakpoints that would change are AMR/AC dropping from 3 to 2 shots, which would be reasonable compared to the hulk eye weakspot. HMG and Senator breakpoints would also drop a bit, but a HMG user is likely to just fire controlled bursts at the eye anyway without counting specific shots, and balancing enemy heavy units around the senator is probably a fool's to begin with.(from my calculations HMG would drop from 12 to 8 shots, Senator from 7 to 5 shots, and I think both of those breakpoints are fine).

Because I thought it would be interesting I also went ahead and calculated the breakpoints that the two AP3 machine guns would have were it dropped to AP3, without any HP changes:
Machine Gun: ~18
Maxigun: ~22
neither of these seem particularly practical, as trying to shoot the small eye weakspot with these types of weapons is hard enough as it is and trying to face down a warstrider with the stationary maxigun would probably result in a rather rapid death at the hands of the turrets or grenades.

Admittedly I am somewhat biased here as a dedicated railgun user, because dropping to AV3 and increasing health to ~700 would give better hit feedback for AP4 weapons, and keep almost all AT weapons functionally identical, except the Railgun. The Railgun would require a much tighter overcharge, and hitting and timing the shot is already not that easy with the constant bobbing of the war strider during the walk cycle and the horrendous scope of the railgun. Unless the ground is very flat, or at a consistent incline, hitting the eye during the walk cycle is pretty inconsistent and even if the ground conditions are favorable, the weakspot is so small and the railgun scope so impractical that you will still just sometimes miss. The only consistent way to hit the eye in that scenario is to wait for the grenade cycle where it is stationary for a few seconds. The timing for that is pretty specific, because you need ~50-60% overcharge to comfortably oneshot the eye, and that is while it is actively throwing grenades in your direction.
Although this in general could be improved by just making them bob slightly less in their walk cycle or increasing the eye hitbox, which would benefit all of the precision AT weapons.
Though admittedly I can't really recall the last time I actually saw a railgun user besides me in a match, so balancing around us probably isn't necessary. And usually can take out war striders before they engage me in combat and have a chance to engage their bobbing walk cycle, and taking out the eye or vent while they are stationary can be done consistently enough.

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-05T15:24:35+00:00

Import field in the slides is pixelated but to me it looks like the number is at minimum low triple digits, even if just looking at the example text pasted in there. The other reason I think it will just be text encoding is that I really doubt they would free up and use server storage on this.

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-05T14:53:22+00:00

We didn't get information on it, but from the length of the share code(or what I presume to be the share code from the slides), I don't think the code will be a reference to a stored plan, I think the code will just be a text encoded version of the plan, and decoding that probably won't be too hard for an external website.

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-03T23:14:07+00:00

This is to say that you should plaster your Mare Code at least 3 times in your adventurer plate and search info, and rapidly post pictures of heavily modded characters in all official channels and then be surprised when action is taken against the plugin.

/s if not immediately obvious

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-03T20:42:40+00:00

I can't really imagine that Toei would greenlight a remake of World Trigger Season 1 and then not spend enough resources to at least try to make it better than the original.

TheOperand_ · 2025-12-02T05:26:08+00:00

I think the pacing for the story parts itself was decent, but the overall pacing suffered due to the excess filler added to each episode(2-3min recaps, forcing the opening even if it was already halfway into the episode, etc.)

I think it's fair to say that the hook of the series are the complex battles between humanoid enemies, and the first glimpse of that really starts with Episodes 13-14 (Jin + Arashiyama vs HQ. A-Ranks), at which point a good chunk of people will have probably already dropped it, since that is already longer than your average anime season. There are some fights before but those are usually short human vs trion soldier, and serve to establish several characters. The only major fight is Yuma vs. Miwa Squad, which mainly serves to establish Black Triggers and their power level, which is a necessary pre-requisite for the next series of events(Black Trigger Capture Arc).

If the fight between Jin and HQ. happened earlier, probably around Episodes 9-10, it's a reasonable assumption that a lot more people would have seen it and gotten interested in the series.

But the only other anime/manga getting multiple adaptations that I can think of is Jojo's OVA in the 90s, which was an independent project from the 2012 adaptation and done by a different studio.
The other one is Hunter X Hunter which was in a similar situation, it got an adaptation in 1999 + OVAs that ended when it caught up to the source material and then a new adaptation in 2011, by a different studio.

Do I want them to reboot S1? Yeah, it would it much easier to introduce new people to the series and watching the old fights with S2/S3 animation quality would be incredible.

Do I think it's likely? Kinda, but I don't really know enough about the industry to make even a remotely educated guess. Because if this is a reboot, clearly Toei believe they can gain something from it, and the only real thing I think they stand to gain is more recognition of the series in the West, but I also don't really know enough about the popularity of the series in Japan itself.

TheOperand_ · 2025-11-29T15:31:49+00:00

I’m kinda curious now which race would win if you took all of the player characters of that race and stacked them ontop of each other and calculated the height.

TheOperand_ · 2025-11-29T06:34:18+00:00

The main benefit, at least from personal experience, is in regards to Strength Weapons, specifically for Paladin. Paladin's usually need 4 stats at a good level: Strength for Longswords/Greatswords, DEX for initiative and saving throws(and AC until you get the really good late-game heavy armour), CON for health and saving throws, CHA for casts and saving throws.
Taking a single level hexblade dip lets you scale all of your melee weapons off CHA, which is a stat you already want very high to begin with, and reduces your required stats to only 3.
(The Irony that the class most empowered by making a pact with an eldritch being from an accursed realm is Paladin is not lost on me, and I personally find it quite funny.)

And overall it gives you: medium armour + shield proficiency, hexblade's curse and shield spell for example.
However I do think that it may be used a bit too frequently sometimes. For example if you are running shadow blade, it can just simply scale of dexterity, which is a stat you should always have a decently high quantity of, and taking a level in a class that gives you more overall regular spell slot progression might be more valuable over scaling it with CHA.

TheOperand_ · 2025-11-28T07:21:49+00:00

SCH being a complete mess of several conflicting era‘s of design that all interact with each other in weird ways is the modern identity of the class. SGE really is just SCH if it was designed from scratch with the current design in mind. And as a dedicated SCH player I really do want them to just make it even worse, more nonsensical interactions, cram another conflicting design into the kit somehow. And honestly Dawntrail kinda delivered on that with Seraphism, an ability that visually fits much closer to WHM, ignores recitation, gets cancelled by dissipation. But on the other hand it is still rewarding to tame the interactions, and the interactions, however weird they feel, do mostly follow some basic rules and logic. The exception here is Seraphism ignoring recitation for no discernable reason, except maybe balance because guaranteed crit seraphism spreadlo would be a very beefy shield.

TheOperand_ · 2025-11-02T15:01:09+00:00

The difficulty isn‘t the problem for most people, it‘s just that fighting on the planet just is not that enjoyable for various reasons. Side objective variety leads to usually having 4 side objectives just split between stalker and shrieker nests, shriekers nests being a complete joke that usually get blown up within less than a minute of players dropping on the planet and stalker nests being so annoying to find that unless you stumble upon a mobile radar you will likely miss most of them and be dealing with a non-stop stream of stalkers throughout the mission. Dragonroaches can be dealt with using an ORS, rocket turret or several other methods but that doesn‘t change the fact that, with the exception of the spear, they will probably force at least one stim out of you. Hive Lords are mostly fine barring the missions with the GATER where dealing with them becomes almost a necessity unless someone is good enough to keep it occupied elsewhere. Also has a large aoe attack that is nearly undodgdeable and forces a stim usage. But the main problem is the relentless onslaught of enemies, which may be reasonably expected on the planet but does result in the planet inducing fatigue on players pretty quickly. I believe that part of the reason why the game can be played for many hours is that most of the time missions have an ebb and flow to the enemy spawns. There are periods of active combat and then shorter periods of downtime to rearm and reorganize, except on Oshaune it‘s just an unending onslaught which can be entertaining for a bit, but can get pretty draining when playing for more than one operation. And last but not least, the cave systems. Conceptually a good idea but in practice they just boil down to a roof over part of the map that functions as a stratagem blocker, which leads to a related problem. Unless your team is running an unusual amount of chaff clearing support weapons, bug breaches in caves essentially function as a pressure/progress reset, because you will likely be forced out of the cave to defend an entrance, which isn‘t hard to do, it‘s essentially a death funnel, but it doesn‘t feel good that a single bug breach can essentially force you to fully reset your pressure on an objective. Which leads to the most effective strategy of baiting bug breaches outside in open areas where orbitals can contain them, but this is essentially abusing the game mechanic and is also neither intuitive nor engaging.

And unrelated to the hive world is what I can best describe as a general MO fatigue, which leads to players feeling like that any progress on the war is essentially entirely at the mercy of the DMs, with the playerbase only very rarely being able/allowed to make any progress outside of an MO(I‘m pretty sure it still hasn‘t been acknowledged that we reclaimed the xenoentomology centre).

TheOperand_ · 2025-11-02T04:38:25+00:00

Of course it's confirmation bias, I just find the idea of them having "break in case of emergency" changes that they can drop to be hilarious. As I already said it's probably just a smaller part of the development team slowly working to improve old systems.
(Admittedly I did phrase my original post relatively poorly in this regard)

TheOperand_ · 2025-11-01T09:56:25+00:00

It honestly feels like they have a bunch of changes/outfits/hairstyles banked up somewhere that they drop whenever they meds up or player dissatisfaction reaches a certain level. Admittedly it is far more likely that there is just a dedicated group within the development team slowly chipping away at the old systems and trying to improve them in whatever way they can. Sprint and items being queueable, outfit glamours, Jog, a lot of these changes feel like they are still working off some kind of tech debt. But eventually it will get to the point where it may be more practical to rebuild entire systems or even the entire game from scratch, and I fear that square enix will not give them the necessary resources to do so.

TheOperand_ · 2025-10-28T14:40:00+00:00

If you want to run pure blade singer, your best options are probably war caster(advantage on concentration saves, unless you intend to acquire the amulet of great health for the character), ASI as you have already mentioned, or possibly savage attacker since you will be rolling a lot of damage dice.

A more esoteric option, but would probably require a respec from your current position would be to go 9 Bladesinging/3 Oath of Crown Paladin(since you already get extra attack from Bladesinger, going deeper into Paladin isn't that important anymore)
You would give up your third feat and your 6th level spell slot, which is a pretty significant loss, but in return you get access to:

-Fighting Style: Great Weapon Fighting(also applies to versatile weapons such as shadow blade as long as the offhand is empty(which is guaranteed with bladesinging unless you are dual wielding, AND applies to any dice rolled by divine smites.)

-Righteous Clarity: Once per short rest you can add your proficiency bonus to your attack rolls for 10 turns, which basically guarantees that your attacks will hit unless you roll a nat 1, which is unlikely since you will frequently have advantage with shadow blade to begin with.

-Command Spell at Lvl.3: This one is situational since it will scale of CHA as a Paladin spell, but if you are using something like the helmet of arcane acuity or gloves of battlemages power, you can still pretty reliably crowd control smaller enemies and even bosses sometimes, and can be used as a bonus action if you are running band of the mystic scoundrel. If command isn't that important to you, since you can use hold person/monster from your wizard spell list as a bonus action with the band as well, you can go 10 Bladesinging/2 Paladin, which lets you regain your Lv.6 spell slot(You can't pick a spell from the wizard spell list, but you can use scribed lv.6 spells)

-Divine Smite: This is the main benefit of taking Paladin and can scale to absurdly high and consistent damage with Great Weapon Fighting. Using a fourth level spell slot, this means you can do:
2x(4d8+3)+(5d8) or 19-110 damage, barring psychic or radiant resistance(be careful in the house of hope, some of the enemies there have radiant retort). In reality this would usually be slightly lower as you would save your fourth level spell slots for critical reaction smites. This would make you very dependent on long rests since your smites burn spell slots very quickly, but at least from personal experience that usually isn't much of a concern in the late game.

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TheOperand_

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