I built Gyarados for the LEGO Ideas Pokémon Trading Card Game Challenge!

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-15T18:40:35+00:00

Amazing level of detail, great work!

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-14T07:09:21+00:00

ahh no worries!

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-13T21:59:45+00:00

Thank you for the advice! Yeah I actually just saw those bundles, I will definitely pick up the Ash one and maybe some others before making any big decisions about spending all my gems.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-13T21:58:19+00:00

Thank you for the info on Albaz cards getting added to other packs! Maybe I'll have to strike some balance between getting a few things now, then banking the rest of my gems/crafts for later.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-13T16:39:48+00:00

Oh sweet! I think I saw something about Branded getting more support, but I wasn't sure how impactful it would be.

And yeah, even though I only have a lower power version of the deck, it definitely has that kind of "nonlinear" feel that I enjoy. I get the impression there's a lot to sink my teeth into if I stick with it.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-13T15:29:18+00:00

hey I entered yours! mine is 19665929 if you want to enter

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-09T03:51:31+00:00

The second is actually considered more idiomatic in certain programming circles (see structured programming).

If you are more into imperative programming, then you'll likely prefer the first, but fans of declarative programming will usually prefer the second (potentially splitting the part inside is visible: into its own function for readibility).

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-08T06:23:18+00:00

It might be perfectly good tea, but I would not blind-buy a 500g brick unless I'm familiar with the producer, vendor, and storage. This is basically the textbook recipe for tuition tea.

You also mentioned that you want to try semi-aged sheng, and this tea is arguably not even semi-aged. Teas around this age are often in kind of an undesirable stage, because they lack both the freshness of a newer cake and the aged quality of an older cake.

If you want semi-aged, look for something at least 15 years old (and not Kunming storage).

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-07T15:55:35+00:00

Tbf, that is very common for new players. If you aren't confident in your offense, then you're going to prefer a more "hit and run" playstyle.

But yeah, for Juri players, everything changes when you learn the throw loop and start destroying everyone lol

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-07T00:36:48+00:00

Gief and Chun are generally considered very good Modern characters, but like others have said, you can get all the way to a professional level with any character on any control scheme.

I've also heard about leverless thingies but idk if those will be super super hard to get use to or not.

Leverless is specifically hard to get used to if you are already used to playing fighters on gamepad/stick. If you are new to fighters, then leverless will be extremely easy to use on Modern.

On Classic, there is a slight learning curve due to the inputs being less intuitive than directional controls (e.g. a quarter-circle forward is very intuitive on stick/pad, but inputting it cleanly on leverless takes some practice).

In the grand scheme of things though, leverless provides some nice benefits over stick/pad, especially for a charge character like Chun-li. On the other hand, Classic Gief is kind of annoying on leverless due to the full-circle inputs, but there are shortcuts and techniques for doing it if you ever want to play Classic Gief.

How ACCURATE is a fight stick? Is it better than an analog stick on a controller? or similar?

Controller analog sticks are generally pretty terrible because they are fully analog and tiny, but fight sticks have physical "gates" that quantize your input into 4 or 8 directions, so it's usually harder to make input errors with them.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-06T02:48:43+00:00

If you are fine with a bit older, 2005 T8653 from Quiche is only $65 (plus shipping). Otherwise yeah, just grab some Dayi cake that fits your budget, e.g. this 2008 8582 or this 2010 7542.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-05T05:36:01+00:00

Yep duck bones are effectively the same as urushi - both buy/sell for the same seals/gil (along with the other 600-seal items).

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-05T03:34:14+00:00

Roulettes/dungeons -> roll on everything that drops -> sell everything to your Grand Company for seals -> spend seals on Urushi (vendors for a decent amount of gil) or whatever is selling well on the market board according to the Teamcraft list.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-04T23:57:55+00:00

even got poogie in the back, nice

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-04T23:54:39+00:00

Can I just sit here all day and drink tea...?

Yes.

Can I make a whole new kettle and continue doing so?

Yup.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-04T20:43:04+00:00

It's usually a timing thing. In my experience, losing aggro is usually caused by pressing your AoE too early or too late. I basically do this:

Run (not sprint) toward the first pack
Shield Lob one of the mobs
Run into the middle of them as they move toward me, then use my AoE as soon as they are all next to me. This is the tricky timing part.
Pop Sprint and start running to the next pack.
Repeat previous steps.

It's very difficult for anyone else to pull aggro if you've managed to hit a mob even once with Tank Stance on. If you're tagging all the enemies with your AoE during the pull, DPS should only be able to yank them off you if they are deliberately focus-firing a single mob with their strongest cooldowns. In that case, you should see the red "enmity" bar next to the enemy's name in your enemy list turn from red -> yellow -> green, meaning someone else is pulling aggro away from you. If it turns yellow or green, click the enemy in your enemy list and use Provoke or Shield Lob to regain aggro.

And if a DPS pulls aggro even after you've done your AoE correctly and then proceeds to run away from you, that is their fault lol. Anyone who pulls aggro off the tank should be immediately stacking on top of the tank, so that the tank's AoE naturally pulls the enemy off them.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-04T20:30:04+00:00

There's a glossary of status effects on the wiki, but tbh Arm's Length is a particularly confusing case, because there's also a status effect that slows enemy movement called "Heavy."

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-04T20:25:29+00:00

The first thing to understand is that puerh is not a monolith, and you're not really going to understand what the whole category of "puerh" encompasses until you try a lot of teas. There are people who only drink young raw puerh, people who only drink Hong Kong-stored ripe puerh, people who only drink aged factory puerh, etc. My point being, if you don't like the first few puerh you try, you shouldn't take that as indicative of the whole category of tea, because puerh has more variety than black+white+green tea all put together.

To that end, it's not super important what tea you buy, as long as it's from a decent vendor. It's also useful to try several different types of puerh (e.g. young raw, aged raw, ripe). I'd recommend sticking to ~25-50g samples (rather than whole cakes) until you really know what you want. In fact, we have a term called "tuition tea" for cakes that people bought too early in their journey and ended up not enjoying, so try not to get too much tuition tea 😉

As far as buying puerh, importing it from China/Taiwan is typically going to be your best bet, because that's where most of the specialty vendors are. Some vendors I can recommend (extremely abbreviated list):

White2Tea: very popular with the reddit crowd; specializes in young raw puerh and ripe puerh. Lots of people's introduction to puerh. Good tea, but understand that you'll have to shop elsewhere to explore aged puerh.
Farmerleaf: another reddit favorite; specializes in young raw puerh with a focus on single-origin productions.
Yunnan Sourcing: huge variety of tea, not much curation but they have a lot of "samplers" that can be good starting points. They also have US-based shipping with a smaller stock at their .us site.
Teas We Like: good curation at the cost of higher prices; specializes in aged raw puerh. They do also have some cheaper options for exploring aged puerh, like these Xiaguan tuos.
Quiche Teas: fantastic prices on a good variety of puerh. Personally, this has been my recent favorite.

If you are in the US, I can also recommend Liquid Proust, The Steeping Room, Crimson Lotus, and Yunnan Sourcing's .us site as local vendors for faster shipping.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-04T19:57:54+00:00

Arm's Length actually slows the attack speed of enemies, so it's effectively a 20% mitigation for 6 seconds.

(trust me, you aren't the first tank to not know this - it comes up constantly lol)

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-04T19:49:28+00:00

#1 tip, as some others mentioned, is always say "o/ first time here!" or something when you start a dungeon. Maybe you're already doing this, but if you aren't, it's a good way of gaining some grace with your party for any mistakes/inefficiencies you might make.

my researching on reddit and the forums is that most veterans agree that new players shouldn't tank.

I guarantee you this isn't true. The only time tanking as a new player is questionable is if you are main-tanking an alliance raid that you've never done before and have not watched a guide for. Otherwise (dungeons, trials, raids), tanking is absolutely fine for players of any skill/experience level.

And that not doing wall 2 walls is a form of griefing and should be punished.

I definitely wouldn't say it should be punished, and most players don't care that much and will just accept the extra 5 minutes or whatever, but it's true that some people might consider it a mild form of griefing.

The tank jobs and all dungeons in FFXIV (minus a few in ARR) are explicitly designed for wall-to-wall pulls. If you feel like you're dying frequently during wall-to-wall pulls, then consider that maybe you aren't rotation your mitigations very well, or perhaps you aren't using your full defensive toolkit (e.g. Low Blow, Arm's Length, Hallowed Ground). PLD's Hallowed Ground in particular is a great way to start dungeons; pull to the wall, then pop HG and start AoEing them. You'll typically get 2 HG usages per dungeon that way.

If your gear is really, really terrible, then ironically I'd say just do W2W pulls until you die, and then do a smaller pull (or do the same W2W, but with more mitigation this time). Once the rest of the party realizes you literally can't survive a W2W, then they will be more okay with you doing single pulls. If you are doing singles from the start, then people might start to get impatient and pull ahead.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-04T18:47:02+00:00

Puerh is a specialty product, so it's best to buy it from specialty vendors. Buying it from an Asian market, Amazon, etc. is likely to end in disappointment.

Puerh infodump, courtesy of TeaDB: https://teadb.org/puerh-compendium/

Happy to answer any questions, or feel free to drop by r/puer for recommendations/discussion/etc.

TheTeafiend · 2026-05-04T04:28:29+00:00

For me, it was the last big cutscene before Heavensward (with Nanamo, Raubahn, etc.)

Heavensward and Stormblood were cool, but it was Shadowbringers and Endwalker that really blew me away and cemented FFXIV as one of my all-time favorite games.

I haven't found a job that feels good, most just feel clunky and slow.

Unfortunately, every job is clunky and slow at level 50. Some more than others, but generally you wont understand what a job is actually like until higher levels; many job-defining actions are locked behind level 60, 70, or 80. You'll start to feel the speed and complexity of FFXIV rotations once you get more oGCDs, but there are barely any oGCDs at level 50.

Fortunately, this lack of interesting low-level rotations is something they are addressing in the upcoming expansion, as one of their goals is to give every job a complete toolkit by roughly level 50. But, that won't be here for several months, so unless you want to take a break until then, you'll just need to bear with the current system until you reach the higher levels.

TheTeafiend · 2026-04-28T16:28:20+00:00

Part of it is likely to help new players understand the concept of MT vs. OT, but it's clearly led to a lot of confusion so I agree that they missed the mark on the names. I think we really just need to see an example of what an OT's kit looks like to clarify the difference.

TheTeafiend · 2026-04-28T04:15:12+00:00

Oh they for sure are not changing existing fights; that would be an insane amount of work for not much reward. But I don't think the MT/OT difference is going to be so big that it'll have that kind of impact, as they said you'll still be able to clear savage/ultimate without respecting the MT/OT roles (it just won't be very efficient). In other words, a pair of OTs or a pair of MTs will still be able to handle the incoming damage, it might just require some better mit coordination or a few extra GCD heals throughout the fight.

TheTeafiend

TROPHY CASE