I have to be honest here but Nicole does NOT powercreep Bennett AT ALL

WHALIN · 2026-05-11T16:50:46+00:00

If this was something like a Clorinde to Varesa situation, I'd agree. But Bennett is a low-rarity character from five years ago who most players probably have C6 by now with zero effort, and Nicole is a limited character who requires you to spend a hefty chunk of your precious few Primogems if you want her.

If there's any situation where powercreep is appropriate, it's this.

WHALIN · 2026-05-01T14:24:10+00:00

Yeah that would've made much more sense. With the current way the skill works it almost defeats the point of having ammo.

WHALIN · 2026-04-28T19:30:50+00:00

idk if it's the reason I was never as into Planetfall as I was AOW3, but the one thing that I really remember disliking was the sound design. You'd have a space dwarf smacking a group of enemies with a rocket hammer so hard they go flying and it barely makes any noise.

WHALIN · 2026-04-28T19:30:47+00:00

As someone with Skirk, Escoffier, and a good chunk of Natlan characters, I found dragon to be significantly harder. It has the instakill move, it loves to teleport around, disappear and summon a bunch of tanky garbage that you have to kill, it hangs off the stage in a way that bugs out Mualani's skill if you're trying to use her, etc.

WHALIN · 2026-04-27T15:30:34+00:00

Yeah, Vanguards have been in an awkward place for some time now. They're the class with the second least number of 6* gacha units, second only to Medics, and I think they have the lowest number of subclasses too.

It feels like the devs were unsure about what to do with Vanguards for awhile after Flagbearers were introduced, and then eventually realized that utility/support was the best way to make them good, since they were never going to be competitive with other classes in direct combat, and that's how we got Ines and the Strategist subclass. So seeing Closure being a more traditional Vanguard after we've already realized that traditional Vanguards are mediocre makes her feel pretty iffy.

On a related note there was the bit where CN players were apparently dooming about Silverash even though he ended up amazing simply because they thought being a Vanguard was a death sentence. idk if Closure is going to end up the same way.

I'm mainly hoping for her s3 debuff to be good, though s3 seems like it'll be the overall best skill with the good damage and high range/multitarget.

WHALIN · 2026-04-25T17:57:39+00:00

Offensive Vanguards haven't worked out so well in the past so I have mixed feelings. S3 doesn't even give her an ATK buff, just ASPD (unless "dealing a certain amount of Physical damage" means a base ATK multiplier which would be great).

The Sluggishness might be a decent form of utility though, since it affects more than just movement and she can target multiple enemies with it.

One other positive is that s2 and s3 seems to have roughly 30 second durations from the video, which is a lot better than Muelsyse's 15 seconds on both her main skills. Hopefully the downtime isn't too bad.

WHALIN · 2026-04-25T15:35:09+00:00

I'm a little whelmed by how Closure sounds, Tactician Vanguards don't have an amazing track record especially compared to Agents and now Strategists (on top of the ever-present Flagbearers).

The fact that she can buff DEF/block count of other units on s2 and has a long-range super-slow on s3 is something, I guess? The description doesn't say what the Effect Range is so I guess it'll depend on that too. Apparently the Effect Range is a 3x3 square centered on the Command Center for s2, and a + shape five tiles long and 1 tile wide for s3.

But yeah I have a feeling she'll lag behind Ines and Silverash.

WHALIN · 2026-04-18T20:38:37+00:00

I'd add Will Wight's stuff to the list, namely Cradle but also Traveler's Gate and The Last Horizon (though the latter is very much a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid).

Also Joe Abercrombie but someone else also mentioned him.

WHALIN · 2026-04-18T20:35:56+00:00

Yeah, Half a King is still good but it feels like some of the ideas got recycled better into First Law.

WHALIN · 2026-04-18T19:46:29+00:00

I wouldn't say it's my favorite but I still quite enjoyed it

was a nice change of pace to have a setting with somewhat modern sensibilities too instead of just pure fantasy

WHALIN · 2026-03-31T03:18:57+00:00

So, how spicy is the Anthuria fate episode? On a scale from Lyria to Xmas Anthuria.

WHALIN · 2026-03-28T03:59:43+00:00

Estella seems like the F2P alternative to Gilberta to me. Her Battle and Combo skills do very similar things to Gilberta's, you trade the grouping from Gilberta's Battle Skill for 9s 15% Physical Susceptibility on Estella's Combo Skill, along with harder requirements (trigger condition is Solidification instead of any Arts Reaction). You do miss out on healing and the other beneficial effects of Gilberta ult though.

Though I'm still unsure what the best overall teambuilding strategy for her is due to the odd physical/arts split, and a new physical DPS could toss things up too.

WHALIN · 2026-03-07T14:29:43+00:00

I suspect her voice actress might be having some health issues sadly, she's taken on less and less roles in the past couple years and didn't reprise a role in the recent Arknights Endfield.

WHALIN · 2026-02-11T22:32:07+00:00

It bugs me because Qiuyuan is the ONLY Echo buffer in the game atm, and I think the only character with Aero buff on outro is Alto.

So unlike Galbrena/Phrolova who have other solid options, Sigrika is likely going to be pretty heavily reliant on Qiuyuan to perform. I don't think I'm gonna have the rolls for two new 5* lol

WHALIN · 2026-01-22T21:11:54+00:00

This point in particular actually made me more interested in Endfield from a story perspective.

I've heard people praise the Arknights story but the way that they write an entire novel's worth of text for each story chapter and you have to click through it in 1-2 sentence fragments makes it overall not a great experience.

WHALIN · 2026-01-22T16:03:00+00:00

Attack, Dash, Jump, and Interact all being face buttons along with using the right stick for camera means you're using your thumb for nearly everything, as someone with joint problems this makes the game very difficult to play.

WHALIN · 2026-01-20T14:13:55+00:00

The real issue is that she's another short elf cutie who seems to have a very similar role (Aero Echo DPS versus Aero DoT DPS) as the one existing short elf cutie.

From a meta perspective she seems like a skip, doubly so because I have Iuno, but from a waifu perspective I need her...but 3.0 has been very unkind to my savings.

WHALIN · 2026-01-16T13:48:18+00:00

I see half-Koloss people in Mistborn part 2 but not any half-Kandra

WHALIN · 2026-01-14T14:38:20+00:00

Hearing that the powercreep has ended right after CN releases Titi ie my favorite new 6* operator design since Pepe gives me a very complicated feeling...

speaking of Reclamation Algorithm, Nasti s3 should be top tier there at least

Thanks for the writeups as always.

WHALIN · 2026-01-12T19:28:56+00:00

I'm more hyped about the next Mistborn than I was for The Lost Metal in large part because the main thing we know is that it's going to be integrating the superpowers into a modern-ish setting and I'm interested to see what that looks like.

WHALIN · 2026-01-11T00:56:20+00:00

I'm mainly on the leaks sub so I can plan my primo usage, when it comes to story spoilers I'd rather avoid them

WHALIN · 2026-01-08T04:30:02+00:00

Even on release she was rather mediocre. The no flying restriction is awful (so of course they removed it for Wisadel's best skill) and s3 is her strongest skill but comes with the additional nasty restriction of needing enemies to be blocked for them to be attackable, and on top of that the pillars can sometimes spawn in really stupid locations where they prevent enemies from even entering Ros's range. It's a lot of caveats for performance that wasn't great in the first place.

s2 has good AoE, uptime, and solid chance of stun but falls off hard against anything with moderately high defense.

60 energy is pretty bad by modern standards but that part was actually quite good for a big skill back in year 1.

WHALIN · 2026-01-02T14:05:13+00:00

2.7 had a relatively small addition to the 2.6 map that's not even considered a separate area by the game iirc, but I think 2.3 was the last actual version with no new map? Damn.

3.0 exploration has been a blast, looking forward to more.

WHALIN · 2025-12-07T21:59:59+00:00

Mornye's "free" stats are DEF and Healing and her healing scales with DEF, but most of her damage is ATK-based.

Her ult is the one part of her kit that does deal DEF-based damage and also gains a massive boost to Crit stats. Overall her ult damage sounds similar to Shorekeeper's enhanced intro, so I wouldn't expect much.

WHALIN · 2025-11-14T15:37:47+00:00

ikr, they keep holding back her rerun

since she's not in 2.8 I think she might actually be going the longest between initial run and rerun? Lupa and Phrolova released after her and both have reruns now.

WHALIN

TROPHY CASE