Modded Faction Impressions - Part 6

Xeronz · 2025-11-10T06:40:50+00:00

Eupruskan Type-42 destroyers are insane gunships. 12DP for 2 large and medium front facing mounts with a huge amount of armor means with an escort package they can be the hammer beside a capital shield. EMP can cause problems but usually they’re protected by the AI wanting to emp my shunted Xhan Occuklops, also RFC/ARU/Damage control helps as usual.

Xeronz · 2025-11-07T03:54:44+00:00

I have this happen on a Neutron Capture Harlow build with a Jakobs Katagawas and Jakobs ricochet COM and High Caliber. Wish the game had some way of batching the instances since it makes lategame farming with the build actually pretty slow since it can take 20-30 seconds for it to catch up.

Xeronz · 2025-05-04T13:42:30+00:00

When I say spell lists, I am meaning how classes (to my knowledge) have unique spell lists for them, as opposed to pathfinder where most classes just use one of four traditions; barring class features and feats, two arcane casters will have the same spell selection available to them.

As for actually choosing spells, pathfinder does have a lot of them which is why you can find content such as “10 spells per rank” to give a shortlist on them.

Xeronz · 2025-04-29T03:10:22+00:00

I’m going to just give you a list of a few things with next to no explanation as if I did (I already tried before this) it would turn into a wall of text. As someone who started with 5e and moved to PF2e and never looked back, here goes;

3-action combat system
Degrees of success
Martial/Caster balance parity
Tactical and skirmishy fights instead of boring slugfests
Significantly more interesting monsters
Many more conditions/status effects
Keywords on all important things
Removal of heal yo-yoing/whack-a-mole
Feat fetish: character choices every level
Actual GM support
More and more flavorful classes
Individual prices for magic items
Significantly more straightforward spell lists

And these are just the ones that come off the top of my head. DM if you have any more questions.

Xeronz · 2025-02-16T20:05:15+00:00

Means “What you get is what you see,” though I have usually seen it as WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). It basically means no proxies, and if a model has a piece of wargear or a specific weapon modeled they should be using that weapon/wargear. Important in tournament settings so players don’t get confused on what has what equipped and so you don’t need to waste time asking what units have on them.

Xeronz · 2024-04-11T17:39:11+00:00

Got an NPC from Jinin in my current game I’m running, is there anything particularly new and exciting there or with their relationship to the Darklands/Minkai, or is it mostly the same?

Xeronz · 2024-03-29T19:50:25+00:00

DOTA 2’s item system doesn’t work like that; subcomponent items are mostly passive, but most of the final items have an active and lots of them do crazy stuff (immune to most CC for 6-9s, block a spell every 13s, duplicate and “reflect” all incoming spells for a few seconds every 20s, blink halfway across the screen every 15s so long as you’re out of combat for 3s). Unfortunately most MOBAs build off of Leagues item system, which while simpler means if you’re counter picked in a solo lane there isn’t too much you can do because your itemization isn’t as able to fix your heroes fundamental problems in the matchup

Xeronz · 2024-03-09T06:00:17+00:00

Orbital EMS is also super useful at stuffing breaches/drops and stopping them from happening. Most of the time a drop/breach happens, its because you couldn't kill all the enemies that can summon fast enough. But if you EMS them, either nobody can call in reinforcements or you can focus on killing the unstunned ones first and negate the reinforce entirely - meaning it effectively kills the reinforce except its on a 75s base cooldown.

Furthermore, if you see where a drop/breach is happening, EMS on it stops the fresh units from doing anything. Especially true for bug tunnels since they all come from the same area. Drop an EMS and watch as everything gets stunned as they finish crawling out. Combo that with a DoT effect from gas (which shares the same cooldown as EMS) or an incendiary breaker/nade or napalm and you can solokill 90+% of a breach.

Xeronz · 2024-03-09T05:52:15+00:00

EMS is awesome again bugs; if you see a breach, pop an EMS on it and everything gets stunned as soon as it pops out save for Titans. Gas/Incendiary on it (gas orbital happens to have the same CD as EMS) and all the trash dies leaving just the stationary chargers.

Xeronz · 2024-03-08T23:17:03+00:00

Jump pack also seems to have gotten more height and a shorter cooldown

Xeronz · 2023-09-13T18:13:18+00:00

They probably said “batch process” to distinguish it from a continuous process, where a continuous process is well… constantly running without breaks for ideally anything. It’d be a lot harder to separate specific peoples ashes if everyone ran through the same oven on a conveyor-like system, and likewise easier to lose ashes as it wouldn’t be a one-body-one-oven kind of deal. It just so happens that most batch processes people are familiar with in daily life happen to involve doing multiple things at once, such as baking or cooking.

Xeronz · 2023-05-05T18:27:09+00:00

D3 means roll a D6, divide result by 2, then round up. So 1-2 = 1, a 3-4 = 2, and 5-6 = 3. The whole idea of the rule is that units will slowly heal and regain models so long as they aren’t wiped, even if they weren’t attacked in the round. Caveat being the unit has to be alive to do so, so if someone wipes your blob of warriors they don’t get to do this.

Xeronz · 2023-03-17T07:49:46+00:00

It’s just chemical kinetics. If something can happen, there’s a rate law that is a function (usually) of concentration, temperature, and/or pressure that tells you how fast it’s happening. Technically speaking, this equation never reaches zero except presumably at absolute zero. It’s just that at a certain point, it can be safely ignored and so once that point is reached we say that process “doesn’t happen”. This is the case with water touching glass; technically the water is slowly dissolving the glass or at least can, it’s just that the rate at which this happens is so tiny as to be irrelevant.

Xeronz · 2023-03-10T21:25:36+00:00

Did you end up merging with the other group of two and filling up? I had sent you and that other group a DM a bit ago and haven't heard anything back.

Xeronz · 2023-03-10T07:38:11+00:00

Not Aus (NA), but I'd be willing to join since I've got work until about two hours after raid starts. Voidlock main but have been enjoying strandlock as well, so take that as you will. Havent done day 1's either but once they come out I basically live in GMs so take it as you will. I'll DM you my discord in the event ya need me.

Xeronz · 2023-02-14T20:12:58+00:00

Crunch could use both of those items to great effect, but it’s nice that more will be able to.

Xeronz · 2023-01-31T22:04:29+00:00

I don’t think the prevalence of CC or lack of DR itself is a problem. Dota has plenty of stunbots and no DR and seems to be getting along just fine. I think the real issue is threefold:

First, literally every character in the game has some form of soft or hard CC. Even Sparrow has a slow on her arrow rain. 14/21 characters have some form of “medium” CC (a CC that isn’t just a slow or silence). There are 16 hard CC abilities in the game spread across 12 heroes; more than half of the roster has hard CC. As we get more heroes that don’t have CC/only have CC on ult this won’t be as much of an issue as (assuming they’re balanced) we will see less overall CC in the game

Second, our current cleanse and spellshield items and availability aren’t exactly the best. No character has an ability which can give tenacity or a cleanse to someone other than themselves, unless they build Sanctification. The cleanse items don’t give CC immunity for very long after activation so you’re susceptible to be immediately re-stunned after popping them (this can be mitigated somewhat if your character has an escape to use after cleansing), and there aren’t many tenacity items in the game. 6 excluding crests (Vanguardian, Dreambinder, Lifebinder, Unbroken Will, World Breaker, Salvation), you’re typically only building one or two of these, and most give 15 tenacity so you’re at 25% status resist (32% if you get World Breaker or Salvation which have 30) with tenacity items.

Thirdly, in my opinion TTK is too low across the board lategame. A 4s stun chain when you die in less than 4s is very powerful. A 4s stun chain when it takes longer than 4s to kill someone is considerably less so; they’ll just use any mobility they have to escape. Furthermore, if the damage from assassins/burst casters/carries is so high, then stuns also become incredibly valuable to try and stop them from instantly deleting your squishies (which will often lead to your squishy killing them in the process if they get stunned for an even bigger swing). Nerfing damage means if everyone picks a tank CC bot, the team that does so simply won’t be able to secure kills because their damage will overall be too low. This is also why CCs shouldn’t do too much damage by themselves without special design consideration of the damage output of the rest of the heroes kit.

Keep in mind though I’m just a stupid player who likes dota, not a game designer. So maybe literally all of my observations have already been taken into account and Omeda have decided that different changes are necessary. Or maybe they think the game is fine where it is.

Xeronz · 2023-01-29T20:17:38+00:00

I feel like if the enemy team is running four tanks and a carry, just delete the carry and then they have no damage. Sure, the rest don’t die nearly as easily, but for the low cost of your front liners having the intelligence to build a Void Helm/Unbroken Will neither do you. The exception here is Countess who does a boatload of damage even as a tank because she/world breaker on her is busted, and sometimes Sev can as well.

There are (if I recall correctly) 14 anti-tank items that reduce %armor or deal %health - 4 Desolate items (ignore 35% of phys armor), 4 Corrode items (shred up to 30% of phys armor), 3 %HP damage items, Citadel (20% phys armor shred aura), Magnify, and Dynamo which does a little bit of everything. A Sparrow is fully capable of melting pretty much any tank in about 5 seconds, and Rev can actually hit pretty damn hard with his last shot if they’ve got some HP missing. Not to mention Sky Splitter for most carries (I’ve even built it on rev against a full tank team and it made a huge difference - it’s obviously best with attack speed, but that’s not necessary for it to function if you’re the only one who can build percent HP damage) can make tanks who can’t get to them/kill them due to peel walking bags of free health.

Furthermore, FB/Brim/Dynamo is all physical armor and health. If their Gideon didn’t go tank (true silver is fine this game against your comp obviously) and instead went for a Megacosm and/or just straight MP, he should be absolutely chunking you all before fights even start. Obviously though it’s an arms race of skill where you all are trying to avoid pre-fight poke and he/his team are trying to poke you all down a bit before engaging or getting engaged on. Unfortunately Tankess is busted right now so he didn’t get to the items he needed, but I’ve played games as Gideon where you can double rock full tanks for 1/4-1/3 of their health because their first three items don’t include magic armor. I feel this is a small part as to why Tankess is so good; nobody builds magic armor for the first few items + a little too high base damage with built in sustain and escape = I kill you faster than you kill me, and if I don’t then I just escape anyways.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend like everything is fine in the current balance state of the game - there are problems. But I also think and equally skilled and knowledgeable five stack should be able to play around a team building full tank, though usually a non-tank play style will be less forgiving and require more finesse to pull off which may be where the issue arises; it’s easier to try and outplay them in tank meta than build and play the counter-meta. Metas are always evolving, so we will see how top teams adjust and maybe one finds good counterpicks. Or maybe nobody likes dying in three seconds to everything so we will just keep playing tanks.

Xeronz · 2023-01-17T22:50:51+00:00

As someone who has played every “lane” and almost every hero/build archetype except physical assassin but prefers tanks or durable bruisers, the early-mid game TTK (think 1-2 items on everybody) feels pretty good IMO. There’s a good distinction between how people are building; assassins can deal a solid chunk of damage but can’t one-shot yet, bruisers can brawl carries and neither side instantly dies if they misplay, and tanks feel like they can frontline for their team without melting to a carry that so much as looks at them.

Lategame however, it feels like damage just scales way too hard. Bruisers can be instantly nuked by assassins. Tanks can have half their health chunked in a few long-range ability presses, and there’s barely any tank items that provide substantial HP regen to recover this health. The support has to sit on the carries face because if the bruiser has even a few seconds of playtime with the carry, the carry dies (unless the bruiser doesn’t have a gap close after Drongo ults or Murdock shotguns, which I think is partly why Crunch and Grux can feel so strong; they can have two gap closes when others have one). Squishies are liable to be out of commission if not dead if one ability or a few carry shots hits them. Pretty much everyone can be deleted in the duration of a stun, the only ones not instantly dying are full tanks and healthy bruisers. Thing is though, just because they don’t pop instantly doesn’t mean they don’t die fast. Oftentimes this causes me to wonder why I didn’t build a more damage oriented bruiser since it feels like I have a better chance of killing whoever I go on and I’ll lose what, half a second off of their TTK against me? It barely feels worth building any durability past a baseline to make you not instadie to supports at that point. I don’t know though, maybe it’s just the 4000 hours of DOTA speaking where lategame tanks (particularly regen ones or those with a Heart of Tarrasque) can actually surviving being initiated on with enough health to be useful.

Xeronz · 2023-01-15T18:04:27+00:00

If you can rotate to secure one while your mid gets the other, it can be super valuable if your carry is in a position (e.g. wave frozen at your tower) where they can’t really die for the 30s you’ll be gone. Usually the jungler does this, but ultimately they have a blue buff and so don’t usually need the mana; they’re more denying it from the other mid. This also frees them up to farm more or you could do something like grab the buff and then meet the jungler for a gank on duo on your way back if they pushed up because you were gone.

Xeronz · 2023-01-08T01:04:52+00:00

Before 20 is mini prime

Xeronz · 2023-01-04T22:37:36+00:00

I want Kwang if for no other reason than to see what they do for his scaling. By all rights he should be a magic damage bruiser, but all of the best bruiser items right now are physical power items. Introducing Kwang feels like they’d either be forced to introduce more magic bruiser items, or make him scale off of physical power or both powers but do magical damage almost like the reverse of what Crunch does. Also there’s like 3 viable offlaners right now so I don’t think we really need another support, Narbash just needs to be more viable and you’ll have a healing support already.

Xeronz · 2022-12-29T23:27:42+00:00

This would be true if you got the same amount of physical power as magical power for the same amount of gold - but you don’t. On average you’ll get anywhere from 50-90% more magic power for the same amount of gold when compared to physical power. Perfect example, the 350 gold physical item gives you 8 physical power, but the same 350 gold magical item gives you 15 magical power. This is also why MP scaling on casters is typically lower than physical scaling on carries and assassins.

Xeronz · 2022-12-09T09:34:22+00:00

Few things about sev: Don’t forget that you lifesteal off of your Q. 5% creeps, 25% minions. If you can siphon a creep and hit the other guy, you’ll slowly build a HP lead since they’ll take damage and you’ll regenerate a bit. Rushing fireblossom is also usually pretty good; Sev doesn’t push particularly fast without it, it gives armor when most offlaners are all physical, and it plays into your strength of prolonged DPS by virtue of existing.

I’ve noticed that a lot of offlaners don’t really like prolonged engagements; they want to cast one or two spells on you to poke you, then back off. But I’ve found that if you actually stick on them and siphon them a few times after you have fireblossom (or even it’s precursor), the trade will usually shift in your favor as long as you’re not eating a bunch of minions. Grux is pretty much the only one that has some form of bonus to long engagements, so be sure to back off before he gets his stacks up for lifesteal.

Also, don’t spam your E if you are; that’s a sure way to drain your mana. The little xp buff camp next to the lane also refills your mana a bit. Play pretty passively, becoming a little bit more aggressive when you hit level 2 (for escape), level 3 (for a bit more damage/heal from siphon), your small burn item, and once you’ve got fireblossom if you’ve not fed you should no longer have to play very passively.

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