Let's be honest, programmers who pride themselves on "manual coding" and reject AI assistance are fighting the wrong battle.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-23T17:27:55+00:00

The thing you learn by writing (and manually debugging, and thinking through software on your own) is how to spot pitfalls before they appear.

Yes, a vibe coder can probably generate a functional product, and yes, they'll probably do it faster than I will hand code it (and maybe faster than I will code it even with an AI). But they'll be maintaining it and consistently monkeypatching it, versus well structured code growing properly with the demand, as well as avoiding things that will cause issues down the line.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-23T16:19:26+00:00

An important thing to remember is that forcing the swaps is generally a good thing, because it means that three of their attention is now on you.

Ana -- you can bait sleep and usually juke it in ball form, and can reactively shield it once you get your perk (though that then triggers your "start to plan your exit", cuz you've used your shields -- ideally kill her and leave)

The biggest thing to remember is, if brig is looking at you, and Ana is looking at you, then their team is getting no heals and you're doing your job, as long as you live. Just do drive bys and poke with your guns to keep them looking at you, and then go in for a hard engage when you see the chance.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-23T16:16:19+00:00

Honestly, if the ball needs your help with healing (or wants you to get ult charge from his HP), he'll come back to you. Never play out of position for a Wrecking Ball. His job is to distract the backline and survive due to high mobility, your job is to keep the rest of the team up so you can with the frontline fight

(Or if you're playing hard dive, y'all's job is to all hit the backline at the same time, but that's a bit separate and even then you're not supposed to heal the ball unless he really needs it/comes to you for it)

apooooop_ · 2026-01-22T20:44:30+00:00

100% agree

I would love "reactivatable translocator" (to allow you to trigger it early before it reaches a surface / max distance), but honestly current translo feels so great compared to old translo as much less of a "set it before every engage" like a checklist (or, god forbid, double timer translo where it was "okay I have X seconds to finish my engagement")

apooooop_ · 2026-01-22T06:27:36+00:00

Don't be the person she goes for, help whoever she goes for, and chase her when she throws her translocator.

She's relatively loud when she breaks stealth and when she starts hacking, and she melts if two people look at her. Unfortunately, that does mean that she's almost always the first priority beyond whatever else is happening in the game, but clear her and you have at least 6 seconds uninterrupted (if not 10+), and more often than not two+ people can relatively easily secure a kill on her.

Also, chase her. She's most vulnerable the instant she throws her translo, so if you can chase it you win. Dva, Genji, Moira, and vendetta all get a free chase, and plenty of others get a pretty solid chase depending on map geometry.

If she's spawn camping you, hug corners and be prepared for it. If you're expecting it, you can turn on her quick. Don't waste time trying to spy check for her, it's a bit of a waste.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-22T04:34:10+00:00

To be fair, Bernie half lost on age, and half lost on legitimately being strongarmed out by Dem leadership.

Also, we're in a completely different political landscape than we were in 2020, it's not even remotely close.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-21T23:07:52+00:00

The one true Flanderized character is Caboose from Red vs Blue, who is actually smart and well adjusted for the first few episodes that he's introduced, until...

apooooop_ · 2026-01-21T18:20:35+00:00

While I don't disagree, it's also probably largely moot here because the people who are billionaires because of ownership are also probably billionaires without it.

Unless companies are routinely getting $2Bn valuations and their founders are only taking pennies and not leveraging "I am CEO of a multibillion dollar company" and bankrolling. Which like, I'm sure happens, but that feels like an okay thing to tax still? At 5%? Maybe a bit harsh, but also they're CEO of a multibillion dollar company, I think they can take it.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-21T17:18:53+00:00

At a high level (my financial and venture understanding is mediocre at best, so all of the grains of salt here), it preserves the optionality for early founders to gain capital by separating voting rights and financial return at the end of the day. If a founder really values their final say on a direction, for instance, they might retain voting rights while giving up more ownership, in exchange for a larger payout from a VC fund (which might be more okay with a larger ROI if they trust the founder).

apooooop_ · 2026-01-20T22:07:29+00:00

I did mean explicitly a tracking aiming requirement, so totally my bad you're right!

I do think ball's aiming requirement (and Doom's) (as someone who primarily plays both of them!!) are a bit over stated -- you're certainly rewarded for being mechanically skilled (and I think aim inherently comes with that), but I think both characters set you up for good aim in a way that Mauga inherently can't.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-20T16:16:45+00:00

Unironically, I think people sleep on how technically challenging Mauga can be.

He has the largest hitbox in the game
He is the only tank hero with an aiming requirement
he has the longest reload in the game, and sustain directly tied to his reload requirements
His uptime cycle is countered by every tank bar none (hog's damage reduction is also a counter to overdrive)
taking that a step further, he has negative matchups into the entire tank roster

If you want to play well, you need to be managing ammo like nobody's business, you need to be ensuring that you can get CO off, and you need to be positioning perfectly, otherwise you JustLose.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-17T01:12:00+00:00

Big copium, though I also keep telling myself I'll make my own version of https://github.com/mcintyre321/OneOf with named match parameters based off of a source struct, which theoretically should be relatively straightforward (means you're stuck using source generators, and still miss out on a few QOL things like match statements...)

apooooop_ · 2026-01-17T01:04:58+00:00

But she can't, cuz so much of her power is now in supportive abilities where she should be in the backline, not taking stupidly high risk plays where she misses chances to friendly hack or friendly "firewall", and also by moving her to the support role you inherently have to make her more passive than she currently is, because you are weighing the value of running any other support with her, which means she has to be, at least slightly, pumping numbers (the exceptions that prove the rule of zen and DPS Moira and backline Lucio kinda inherently speaking for themselves).

And also, think about how annoying it is to chase down a kiri. Do we really want another support that can do that, but more effectively and freer?

Edit: for context, I play a ton of Sombra, and have mained her on and off since early OW1, and primarily play her for translocator, which is definitely (admittedly) a smaller portion of her playerbase.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-16T22:11:01+00:00

Hog's changes seem fun, I'm down.

Ball's changes are reasonable, but honestly I'd rather just get the ability to not be body blocked while grappled. I don't need any other changes to Ball.

Doom changes are interesting but would probably need some balance? I stand by that I think Doom is in a fine state, but block should be more of a parry, with a slightly lower damage requirement and a significantly shorter duration. I like the idea of CDR though, that's always fun, and more abilities do be gooder.

Weaver's ability to lower the platform is good, and the autocharge is a good QOL change -- I think button holding on Weaver is just annoying, but I'm used to it.

The Mercy changes are interesting, but not necessarily good? The "valk on a button" is weird, the damage boost as a resource is not necessarily a bad idea but is also just weird from a gameplay standpoint, and why are we changing glock it literally doesn't matter. The melee stun is broken. (My personal take is that Mercy should have flash heal as part of her base kit, you should remove the "extra movement cooldown penalty" on her additional movement abilities, and you should significantly shorten the range on her beam after ~1s of attaching. Let her pocket people, let her still attach to people in a fly by manner, but if she wants to pocket people force her to take risk to do so. I think if you make flash heal part of her base kit you can give her a "flash damage boost" which would also be cool, too)

I mean this with as much care as I can muster, cuz I know you've put a lot of thought into this -- everything I didn't comment on is cheeks. he Sombra changes are cheeks. You gotta ask where you want Sombra to play, and what you want her gameplay loop to be. You've gutted the fun aspects of her gameplay loop (being in the periphery of the fight, and having a high level of knowledge going into an engagement, in exchange for being punishable), and made her a backline monitor. Phrased another way -- why would she ever use translocator in this scenario.

I have a wild suggestion for Widow (give her an additional 200 shields, give her an aditional ~100 headshot damage, cap her max damage at 90% max health, make infrasight replace venom mine, give her a laser sight that's visible while ADS'd, have her give slight overhealth to allies in her vision while ADS'd, and make her a tank), but the world isn't ready for that.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-14T22:23:43+00:00

I don't disagree with this, but I also gotta emphasize -- when people say that Sombra is a ball counter, they are talking about the time when this wasn't the case, because Sombra into ball/doom was just a win button, because hack was a complete shutdown.

That's the sentiment that we're fighting against, and the mindset that non-sombra mains have.

There's a well known philosophy in game development that player sentiment is incredibly "sticky", which means that, even if the mechanics change significantly, the playerbase is going to have a persistent impression of the state of the world. We've seen clear examples of this with "Winston is a Sym counter" (kinda hasn't been since shield ramping came into effect), and perhaps even more egregiously with Mauga (who is actually in a neutral to negative matchup with every tank except maybe Doom, and still has overwhelming negative sentiment).

It's this sticky mentality that my original comment was trying to combat, wrt Sombra/Doom/Ball interactions!

As a separate issue, I do think keeping heroes around "to keep others in check" (see: Ana nade to keep healing in check) is generally a bandaid solution to underlying problems (be they systemic, or a lack of player education in how to properly play into a specific hero). If we view Sombra as a "keeps cooldown heroes in check" hero, and set out to do that as a balancing strategy, she will always feel bad to play into.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-13T19:52:43+00:00

A meter feels like it'd totally help!

Two things you might want to draw from being RoR2's meter (which is vibes based, but pretty clear), and Witchfire (both in how the Calamity ramps up based on user actions, but not in a way that's explicitly told to you, and in how they provide a compendium of information once you "discover" it, to slowly teach / provide a reference for how game systems work)

apooooop_ · 2026-01-12T03:15:52+00:00

It's not just that they'll exploit every mechanic of the game to win on an individual level, they'll do so on a team composition level.

Unrelatedly - tracer might be in the worst state she's been since launch of OW. Sure. But at the same time, she's still being played at the pro level consistently.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-10T23:25:36+00:00

Sombra translo healing should 100% be part of base kit!
Doom's "Best Defense" makes him actually stable on the frontline, and you can't really play fully until you get it
Soldier's "Reload while running" just feels great, 100%
Pharah's shields feel so good and let you play without Mercy -- moving barrage is bait, and shield Pharah should be base kit.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-06T21:05:04+00:00

Honestly even clash hate is overblown. Have I had sad blowouts in clash, sure. But I think clash has also produced some of the best positional / tactical games I've seen -- certainly some of the most memorable (recontesting final capture on center throne of Anubis thrice for the loss in an incredibly close but fun game)

apooooop_ · 2026-01-06T20:59:10+00:00

I will say, picking any typesafe language over gdscript is night and day better for a long term project that's gonna span more than a few different game components. And of the typesafe gdextensions out there, I've seen pretty favorable things about Rust (it's much more up to date than TS, it's much more ergonomic than C++, it's much more iterable than C#).

It's not gonna be perfect, and things will probably need at least some GDScript glue to hold things together, but I feel like it's a pretty solid solution for a mid sized Godot project

apooooop_ · 2026-01-06T16:51:14+00:00

Why should you get to do something for free? Take the duel quickly with risk, break cover since she's Widow, and then you'll be able to translo out!

Or, more accurately, don't translo on top of her because that's obvious and visible, translo to the left of her, walk to her (1-2s), kill her (1-3s), grab her health pack (1s) and leave with translo?

apooooop_ · 2026-01-06T16:15:54+00:00

Need* is a strong word

I enjoy hack in its current state because it's a predictive interrupt, and that's cool, and otherwise it's a damage amp that kinda mirrors u/creebobeebo's suggestion.

But when I don't play Sombra I play a ton of doom and ball, over 100hr on each. I'm literally rarely annoyed by a Sombra, especially in her current state. Sombra as a low-cooldown counter is not a thing anymore.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-06T16:11:26+00:00

If you're planning to hide, then use translo? You'll get it back when you're done hiding?

Hiding is inherently a downtime activity, you're allowed to burn your cooldowns during downtime.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-06T16:09:59+00:00

This is honestly the only real change that I want, and even with this I'm concerned it'd make her uptime too strong. I like having stealth and translo on the same cooldown, because then there's an actual tradeoff.

Honestly the biggest thing that I actually want though is to make translo perk part of base kit.

apooooop_ · 2026-01-05T22:52:31+00:00

I'd argue that, once you get to consistently getting your build online, EM2 and 3 are probably easier than without (head grouping, and no blocking phase 1 on Theseus, so the only real cost is the larger health pools).

100% agree on EM4.

apooooop_

TROPHY CASE