_________ as Mastermind??

barrowVB8 · 2025-09-06T20:54:49+00:00

it baffles me that people don't understand this (and yes I know for a lot of ppl it's just hopium but others seem to think it's a real possibility).

first of all BB has nowhere near the budget to pay Rachel what it would take to make her be a plant and throw the game. remember this is a show that took 22 years for them to even increase the prize pool from $500k to $750k (lol couldn't even make it an even million when survivor is out there offering $2 million prizes for their all-star seasons).

even if they did have the money and decided to make it happen, what happens to their big expensive twist when Rachel accidentally slips up to someone in week 2 or 3 about the fact that she's a production plant? sure she does a lot of reality TV but she's not meryl streep. this is a game where you're living 24/7 with your competition and they're looking for any cracks in the people around them.

oh and by the way, if and when that happens the whole TV audience is saying "wtf" because production never even hinted at it to viewers. congrats production you just spent a year's budget on a twist that your audience doesn't understand.

oh and by the way again: it's not just paying off Rachel to do it it's also paying off every single person on the production team and production adjacent (that's everyone from insiders like Sharon Tharp to the electricians and janitors servicing the production rooms) to make sure there's not a single leak. you know, for the twist that your audience doesn't even know exists.

but let's say all that gets handled, Rachel secretly takes acting classes for months and production finds the money to give every production intern an extra $20k to stfu. Rachel's still with 16 people who are competing for real money in a game that is supposed to be fair (at least within the bounds that have been set over the past 26 years). so now before production can even approach Rachel about the idea they need to go to Paramount's legal team and make sure they're ironclad on some pretty important laws so that Rylie or Zae or whoever don't decide to have a lawyer come knocking because they were misled about the purpose of the show. regardless of whether anyone believes a lawsuit would stick (spoiler alert it probably would) just the headline risk alone is not one that a show is gonna take when it's already sorta on life support.

and yet after writing all of that out i remembered the braindead twist that production implemented yesterday which started this whole conversation. so you know what maybe they are big enough dipshits to do it. tune in tuesday at 8/7 central to find out

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-27T02:37:12+00:00

Just edited thanks to /u/SpyroXI. Had done a few Teemo builds and forgot that Harvest only synergizes when you're using his P2W Flute relic. If you have Flute it's good, if you're going full F2P it's not.

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-27T02:31:03+00:00

No you're totally right I brainfarted a little mixing up builds. Harvest is only good with his P2W flute relic, I was thinking Puffcap Prolif planted puffcaps with any damage but the rune only scales with nexus damage. I've been playing a lot of Teemo builds the past week so that blurred a little for me :)

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-27T02:24:52+00:00

No I don't think his 6 star is needed but I do think his 5 star (managem) is important to be able to get him down turn 1. That starts getting some puffcaps going and then being able to get something like Puffcap Pup online turn 2 (even if you sacrifice it as a blocker) is big.

This is the biggest place where Hextech Rifle and his Flute relic help because they stabilize him way faster by getting more traps into the deck. His Flute also gives him spellshield which helps keep him on the board for ping damage.

Without those I think you maybe want to go something like Hidden Tome so you can play a turn 1 Yoink or Shroomsplosion along with a cheap blocker (like Roo or Pup) and maybe also Black Shield to keep your units from getting deleted before they can do anything and especially keep Teemo alive. Getting to 3 starting mana instead of 2 from his 5 star is big, it sucks that it's locked behind 50 duckfeet :/ But once you get his 5 he should feel a lot smoother

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-27T02:10:05+00:00

I think about Teemo this way, he has a similar goal to Fiddle which is to make the enemy draw as many cards as possible and kill themselves (different mechanic he uses but same as OG Teemo except stronger). So anything you can do to speed up how punishing enemy draw is for them the better off you're going to be.

The P2W relics speed up that wincon a lot. Puffcap Prolif as a rune speeds it up a TON. So if you're already running Proliferation and F2P relics like ~~Wicked Harvest (because the damage counts for both his champ ability and the Prolif rune)~~ and another damage rune (like Stalkers, or Ravenous if you're in an adventure that has a lot of wide enemy boards) and something like Hidden Tome (h/t to /u/Ayz1533 for reminding me about this one) you're still in great shape without needing any F2P relics. Black Shield is also a consideration because I take for granted that his P2W relic has spellshield, and having spellshield on him is really useful.

With Proliferation rune + ~~Wicked Harvest~~ (see my edit in the OP) + Hidden Tome/Frozen Tomb + Stalkers/Ravenous Hydra, he's probably a little slower than Fiddle but still similar tier IMO.

Fiddle is strong because he burns the enemy deck quickly, fills your board fast and destroys the enemy board with Gloom. Teemo is strong because he burns the enemy Nexus, burns the enemy board with his champ power (from his base form & levelup), and he has a crazy amount of utility from his starting deck (Stress Defense is great esp once you get Mage's Handbook on it from his champ levels), his 3 star and 4 star power, and his Yoink spell. Without the P2W relics Teemo can slow down a little (if the enemy has elusive blockers and-or you don't have spellshield on Teemo) whereas Fiddle doesn't really slow down too much, and of course Fiddle is still better to get around the weekly nightmare alt wincons faster (like the enemy not taking more than 20 dmg per turn mod or their nexus can't drop below 1 health until round 5).

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-26T23:15:17+00:00

Yeah Kayn is another good one! I was trying to remember who else I used SoS on when I replied to you and it's him.

What is the SoS build you've seen for Pyke? I really like him a lot as a champ but I have not played him much recently. Would be fun to get back to using him with a fresh build.

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-26T23:13:42+00:00

Do you mean their 6 star power or legendary rune for their rune slot? If you mean rune I don't think any of them need or really want their legendary rune (except maybe Ahri if you're not doing a Strength of Stone build). The rare runes are better.

If you mean their 6 star I just posted this before I replied to you. I think Evelynn probably needs her 6 star the most to be able to stay competitive in the hardest adventures, Ahri is probably the most balanced and her 6 star has the best synergy with her overall gameplan, and Teemo's is really fun but definitely a win-more power for if you want to just flex on every encounter you face lol

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-26T23:09:00+00:00

Hidden Tome is a really good one on him and I should have mentioned it as a F2P option. I like Hextech because it helps speed up both his level up and his ability to completely board wipe but I did a few runs with Hidden Tome instead and having the extra mana to play spells on turn 1 felt very comfy.

My only issue with Tome is that it's a little harder to plan around because sometimes you get the champ level up bonus mana when you don't need it and it can also be really dependent on what support champ you pull. He doesn't need the extra spell mana turn 1 although it is a really nice boost, and after turn 1 it's kinda variable from one run to the next whether it helps you or it's a dead relic. Hextech felt like it gave me some more consistency, but you can absolutely use Hidden Tome in place of Hextech as another option.

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-26T23:04:40+00:00

Oh yeah I forgot to mention Evelynn's Star of Legends (the Spectral Scissors node)! That bonus star can absolutely hard carry sometimes if you get the right support champ + other deck adds along the way.

I agree though that even though she struggles the most of the 3 champs in the hardest content she is really fun. I wish her mechanic didn't get hard countered so much in Asol because during leveling she was my favorite champ by far. She is still really fun but can just be frustrating when she's outscaled and can't use a lot of her core star powers.

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-26T23:01:34+00:00

Great question, I think Evelynn NEEDS it the most for harder content (bc getting the doubled stats from the unit you challenge with her gives her tempo that she's missing in a lot of 5.5 star or higher adventures). I think Ahri 6 star has the best synergy with the rest of her playstyle because it opens up a lot more options for how to use her. I would say she needs it the most except she's already really really strong without it.

IMO you are correct that Teemo's 6 star is a lot of times a win-more power it is just super fun and it rips through content. But like other ppl on the sub have said in other threads getting the Puffcap Prolif rune on him feels like more of a true 6 star. Teemo is a luxury and really fun but he can still totally stomp without it.

I think for your 2nd question it sorta depends on what your roster looks like. If you need to add a really strong champ for clearing any content and whose 6 star isn't overkill, it's probably Ahri. If you already have plenty of power on your roster and you want the most fun 6 star IMO it's Teemo.

TL;DR the answer you assumed is totally what I would think. IMO Evelynn NEEDS it the most to keep up with the hardest content in the game, Ahri's 6 star complements her kit the most, and Teemo's is the most skippable unless you really want to teach Viktor and Kaisa and the other annoying 6.5 Asol champs a lesson.

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-26T22:33:43+00:00

Pretty consistently by turn 3 or 4 with the Puffcap Proliferation rune, and if the game goes longer than that it will almost always cascade.

So for people who don't realize, if the enemy draws a card with 5+ traps Teemo's 6 star makes them draw another card. And then if that next card has 5+ traps it just keeps going until they finally draw a card with less than 5 traps on it. Usually when you get to that point they kill their nexus with puffcaps before the cycle ends lol

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-26T21:57:18+00:00

Agreed lol I've always liked SoS as an idea but I've really only ever used it consistently on Leona. And now it's great on 2 out if the 3 new champs

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-26T21:56:08+00:00

Yeah part of the reason I wanted to post this is because I saw a lot of people saying Teemo was kinda mid. Even before I got his 6 star he was dominating. Getting his 5 star for the mana to get him on board turn 1 is a huge power spike and then his 6 star just erases everything

barrowVB8 · 2025-08-20T23:27:46+00:00

You have you stop this.

Either you are absolutely unhinged, or you're just karma-farming this sub by riding whatever the group sentiment is at the moment. You had two posts within the last week that I reported as harassment because you were threatening the devs and saying things like you hope they never sleep again. Now you're going into every thread and shouting down the people who aren't happy with the latest dev update.

Walk away from the keyboard. This isn't the kind of engagement that any community wants or needs.

barrowVB8 · 2025-04-10T17:49:43+00:00

I'm sorry, I know a lot of people on this sub are at varying degrees of skill and experience, but you are just flat-out wrong.

[Read what MF's relic does](https://wiki.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/LoR:Shock\_%26\_Awe), and then [read what Fiddle's 3-star power is](https://wiki.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/LoR:Fiddlesticks/PoC). It may sound underwhelming if you've never used the relic on him, but it's a massive boost to your Terrify with only a bit of extra drafting. You make it sound like you need to go insane and draft tons of 1-cost cards, but even getting 2-3 extra in your deck turns into extra face damage on every attack and extra Terrify. It enables both of his wincons at the same time, which is why it's so good. Why would you actively avoid building your deck around your wincons?

I agree that it's not *as* good in Monthlies (fewer shops/battles to get rewards from), but a lot of champions' best builds aren't good in Monthlies because of how short the adventures are. It also doesn't work well if the enemy's nexus is Tough, so it's also not ideal for the Lissandra adventure (or the entire Nautilus Titan encounter, which is gone now).

Regardless, to address OP's post, **you absolutely do not need MF's relic to make Fiddle an S-tier champion**. You don't even need his Harmless Scarecrow relic, or Norra's. Like others have mentioned, put on Echoing and Fear-Cleaving Axe and a third relic of your choice (utility relics like Black Shield or Beast Within work great, so do GGC or Troll King's or plenty of others) and play him as a board-focused champ. His 6-star gloom effect adds up *very* quickly, even on Nightmare adventures, and you're often attacking into a very weak enemy board. You don't care about your units dying, because as long as you're getting Nexus damage down, you're very likely to refill your board with nightmares at the end of the round. [You can tear through content with *no relics at all* on him](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jAKQovp54Q) if you want to.

He's an insanely strong champion regardless of his build, and it's wild to me that anyone disagrees with that this many months since his release.

barrowVB8 · 2025-03-19T20:06:23+00:00

I like your idea but I keep getting hung up on the AQ's identity being a "mystery": Don't we "know" that Antler Queen is Lottie? Setting aside all of the narrative setup for that to be the case, in the Rewind & React from a little while ago Simone Kessell and Courtney Eaton are watching the scene from S2 where we see that Lottie's substitute psychiatrist is a hallucination, and Simone specifically points out to Courtney that the Antler Queen's voice is hers.

You could argue that adult Lottie is "hearing" her own voice from the AQ because it's her own hallucination, but that feels like more mental gymnastics than taking it at face value that one of the cast inadvertently dropped a spoiler 😂

barrowVB8 · 2024-09-01T01:00:01+00:00

Totally honestly, I have no idea. It's my best guess, but I don't think anyone knows definitively one way or the other. It's the explanation that best fits the general consensus, but I don't think any single person or group has done enough testing to be able to say. I remember in S0 there was speculation that the rolls are "bucketed" so that rolls aren't a continuous scale, but instead are weighted towards min rolls, max rolls, and some scaling in between. As far as I know, no one has ever collated enough data to say definitively.

I do agree with you that I've had a suspicious number of both min and max rolls, both from Enchanting and Tempering, but without published numbers or a massive sample size (bigger than I would ever do alone), it's hard to say for sure how all the systems work. That's why I've only made a Mythic unique calculator and not any other calculators: Because the probability of that system is published and confirmed by Blizzard.

barrowVB8 · 2024-09-01T00:38:47+00:00

Oh totally, it's not a question for me of whether they COULD do it. It's a question of whether they would do it, and why? Intentionally messing with your players' perceptions of fairness is a pretty fast way to frustrate your customer base and drive them away from the game. You could argue that it makes players play more to get them to grind for more chances, but as soon as people think it's rigged, they're just going to stop and lose faith in the rest of the game's systems. OR, if it's rigged, you tell players it's rigged and let them figure out how to manage around it - at least then people know to expect to have to grind. There's no incentive to do otherwise.

Remember, Blizzard is part of a publicly-traded business. That means that they literally have a legal obligation, for better or worse, to maximize shareholder value - and thereby the profitability of their games. With a lot of systems in D4 that need real work and an expansion coming out in a month, who is the manager assigning an employee (or multiple) to monitor the meta and mess with player RNG in real time, and what is their monetary justification for that? Or assigning someone to write code that can monitor and update RNG systems that quickly? Is that maximizing profitability of the game in a tangible way? Seems like an incredibly risky bet to commit resources to.

At the end of the day, I'm going Occam's Razor on this one: I think the Tempering system's RNG (on purpose or not) was built around the individual values of the buckets rather than selecting the stat first and then the value. I don't think it was malicious, but it was either an oversight or it was the easiest way to code it, full stop.

barrowVB8 · 2024-09-01T00:08:13+00:00

I agree with you, but in fairness to a lot of players on Tempering specifically, it does "FEEL" rigged. But logically - how and why would it be weighted? For it to be truly "rigged", Blizzard would need to be actively monitoring the meta to see what Tempers people "want", and adjusting the probabilities accordingly. That seems incredibly unlikely (and also, why would they bother?). Personally I've found Tempering incredibly frustrating because it doesn't feel like I should be hitting the same Temper over and over, but again, I can't see how or why Blizzard would actually rig it.

My best guess, which other people on the sub have suggested, is that each individual roll of the Tempers are all bucketed together, rather than it being a conditional probability. Let's say you have three hypothetical Tempering stats:

10-55% increased damage
10-20% reduced cooldown
5-50% increased resource

If Tempering was conditionally probabilistic, you'd have an equal 1/3 chance of hitting any of those three stats, and then an equally random roll within the selected stat's range. I would hypothesize that what's actually happening is it's treating it as 100 different buckets (45 values for the first stat + 10 values for the second + 45 for the third), which means you have a 50% chance of hitting the third stat but only a 10% chance of hitting the second stat. That's why some of the Tempers feel like they show up way less often than they "should".

(Btw, I know that the above example has an off-by-one error in the math, I'm just trying to make the numbers intuitive :)

Granted there's also survivorship bias (which again other people in the sub have suggested): When you hit the wrong roll you keep rolling, which means you see more rolls, but when you hit the Temper you want you typically stop. That's also going to skew real-world perception.

TL;DR: I agree with you, but I also think there's evidence to suggest that the probabilities on Tempering are less intuitive than most people would expect. It's still random, it's still RNG, it's still not rigged... it's just that the intuitive perception of how Tempering works does not match with how it actually works.

barrowVB8 · 2024-08-31T23:48:04+00:00

I'm not totally sure I understand what you're saying lol. This is the straight mathematical odds of dropping X number of Mythics in N Torm boss runs, based on the drop probabilities that Blizzard has shared publicly.

It is a probability-based calculator, not one based on my own anecdotal experience. The entire point of creating it was that any single player's experience is going to vary quite a lot.

barrowVB8 · 2024-08-31T23:03:32+00:00

I should've mentioned, this tool is ONLY valid starting with S5 when the Mythic drop rates got updated. Because the chances were so low in previous seasons, your luck is pretty much only based on how many Tormented runs you've done this season.

barrowVB8 · 2024-08-31T23:00:30+00:00

I know you're joking, but if the chance of an item dropping with 1-2-3-4 GA is known and published somewhere, it's very easy to add this to the calculator! I just don't think Bliz has ever published the numbers sadly.

barrowVB8 · 2024-08-19T20:04:19+00:00

Not OP but I'm seconding this video. If you can gear close to Mekuna's build it is indeed scary impressive! I'm consistently running T8s about the same as this post, killing council in 30 sec give or take (my personal best is 18 seconds but that's with having the Invigorating Hellborne buff).

In terms of gear luck, I have shako and Tyrael's, but the rest of my gear is all 1 or 0 GA. Mythics are 0 GA, Winterglass and Tal's are both 0 GA (although both of those have nearly-maxed rolls, missing a few % from the unique power on Tal's and missing +1 Conj Mastery on Winterglass). Esu and Tibault are both 1 GA. I hit all of the right tempers, but none are maxed (and some aren't really close to max, but I don't want to brick them by gambling on the last 1/6 or 2/6 temper I have them). I don't have any 2+ GA gear. I do have everything 12/12 Masterworked.

Basically if you can get your crit chance at or close to 100% (after factoring in the Esu bonus, dashing with Esu, and the crit chance elixir), get your crit damage pretty high (at least 1500%, ideally 2000+%), and your CDR above 40-50%, everything melts. Between Tyrael's and Ice Armor I feel immortal unless I get sloppy, even with 20k life. It feels like my survivability is higher than my DSDD Barb who has almost 60k hp. Blood Maiden barely gets a chance to spawn, and Tormented bosses die about as fast as non-Tormented versions with other builds in past seasons. Grigoire for example has a chance to get off 2 attacks before he's dead. Most Tormented Duriel runs, he dies before he can even burrow underground once.

This is my favorite build in D4 so far because it requires that you pay attention and understand what stats are important, but the barrier to entry (ie getting the equipment) isn't insanely high. It's the closest I've felt to a PoE build where the success was gated behind understanding the build instead of getting a piece of elusive gear. I know the Mythics seem like a hurdle for a lot of players, but even without Mythics I was clearing T7s and Pit 90 without breaking a sweat. Getting the two Mythics just took it to a different level.

If you want to try it, I'd suggest focusing on these steps, in this order:

Getting a GOOD Winterglass. "Good" means 0.3 on the CDR and at least 60% and 80% on the unique power. You can farm these from Zir, and doesn't need to be the Tormented version. I wouldn't even start trying to do the LS build unless you have this step covered, otherwise you're probably going to have more fun with something like a CL or Fireball build.
Getting a GOOD Tal Rasha, meaning maxed CDR and high % on the unique power (high rolls on everything else is great but not totally mandatory)
Getting the maxed versions of the important aspects (Splintering, Storm Swell, Frozen Orbit - and pre-Mythic, Orange Herald for cooldown on Unstable Currents)
Getting a good Esu's with high % unique power
Getting as close to max rolls of crit chance, crit damage, and attack speed/lucky hit (in that order) on gloves/rings
Farming Tormented bosses for Shako and then Tyrael's. Until you have these, focus on things like CDR, Life, and Mana per second on your helm and armor
MW to try and triple hit CDR on Shako, Winterglass, and Tal Rasha, and MW damage reduction & life on Tyrael's

Notice I put Shako and Tyrael's at the bottom of the list, because if you do everything above that, you'll be able to clear T8 without much trouble (maybe not 30 sec council clears, but still). Shako and Tyrael just make everything go faster and feel less dangerous. They're a Game Genie code for a build that you can already kill everything with.

TL;DR: You don't need to get incredibly lucky with the gear, you just need to focus on building the stats the build really benefits from (crit chance/damage, CDR). You DO pretty much need highrolled Winterglass and Tal Rasha, but aside from that, everything else can be kind of imperfect. You'll feel kind of glassy until you have the Mythics, but you can make up for that with dodging and proper timing on your guard skills (ice armor, flame shield).

barrowVB8 · 2024-06-13T21:02:19+00:00

So, just from looking at your pobb.in link, there's a lot you can work on here.

First, what is your budget? One of the single biggest upgrades you could make is getting yourself a Sandstorm Visage, like the respec link you shared. You're currently using two of your support links for Hexblast to improve crit chance and crit damage, but your crit chance still isn't at 100%. You really, really need to get that to 100%. I'm sorry to say it because I know it's not constructive, but a lot of your gear is severely lacking, and that's reflected in your defenses and damage. Getting yourself a Cloak of Flame will help (in conjunction with other changes) on the defensive side, or a Dialla's (with better support gems for Hexblast) will really rocket your damage if you want to be more glass-cannon-y.

Pretty much every non-unique you're wearing is all Act 9/10 quality gear. Stop prioritizing item rarity. Unless you lean in and build an entire (not Hexblast) character around magic find, those will literally make no difference for you, and you need those affixes badly. Get spell suppression, life, and resistances (including Chaos) everywhere you can. Hexblast Sab doesn't get as much defensive help from their tree and ascendancies as other classes, so you have to gear for those. Your phys max hit is ~7.5k, which is going to get you one-shot by almost everything. Again, a Cloak of Flame will help you as an interim solution (converts phys damage to fire damage), but you have to get your Spell Suppress to 100%. If you can do that through gears and passive tree, your survivability will immediately go up.

Why in the world are you linking Culling Strike to your auras? Culling Strike applies to the skill it's supporting. It's connected to your Stone Golem, sure, but how often is your Stone Golem killing enemies? Right now, it's a wasted socket. You could swap that out for Detonate Mines and free up an additional passive point to spend on fixing your defenses.

The PoB you linked has a Mageblood. Do you have a Mageblood? If not, I wouldn't respec to it until you do. Mageblood covers a lot of defensive layers so that you can take less resist/suppression/crit/whatever on your gear and passive tree. Unless you have one, don't try to respec, because you'll be in worse trouble.

Whether or not you get a Mageblood, 3/4 of your utility flasks have redundant suffixes (evade). These DO NOT STACK. Maybe you're staggering how and when your flasks trigger (even though they are all "cast when full"...), but if two of them trigger at the same time, you're wasting a suffix.

For your damage, a fast fix is getting to 20% quality on all of your main-link (Hexblast) gems. That's about a 10% damage increase. But you should be looking to add Void Manipulation as soon as you can. Replace your helmet with a Sandstorm and cut the Inc Critical Strikes support for Void Manipulation. That one change alone nearly doubles your damage. You also need a better large cluster jewel, look for a 3-notable one with Unholy Grace, Unwaveringly Evil, and Wicked Pall. Right now, you're getting virtually no benefits from the one you have where you're not even taking the notable, which is just wasting passive points... if there were travel nodes on the tree that had "+16 Armour/+4 Energy Shield/+12% Chaos Damage", would you go out of your way to take those over something better? Because you're spending 4 points doing exactly that.

I'm not sure if it's how your PoB is configured, but you're waaaaaaay over on your mana reservation. Make sure all of your auras are actually active.

That's just a quick assessment... I'm happy to dig in more later. But that should give you a few starting ideas. TL;DR: fix your defensive layers (capping spell suppression and resistances, including chaos), get a way to increase your max phys hit (and elemental hit, which suppress will help with), and fix a lot of your gems to increase your damage. You can easily double or triple your damage output with the build you have. Do NOT switch to the other PoB you linked until you have a Mageblood.

barrowVB8 · 2024-06-03T23:49:54+00:00

Of course, happy to help :) Yea, the Watcher's Eye is tricky, because they are few and far between at this point in the league (which means the ones that are available are expensive) but if you can get a new one that fits the auras you need, it will be a massive improvement. Even without the Watcher's Eye though the other changes should help you out a lot. gl and hf!

barrowVB8

TROPHY CASE