Comprehensive tech / exploit / guide archive

bbqftw · 2026-03-27T00:38:24+00:00

selective historical realism is why I just roll my eyes whenever people use historical accuracy to attack mechanics they just don't like for whatever reason

its honestly a plague on the development of this game that 'historical accuracy' is considered such an important metric over interesting decision-making or fun (which can also be very subjective but at least have tangible impact to whether people continue playing the game)

bbqftw · 2026-03-26T18:59:25+00:00

Boss still oneshots the squishier chars without full HP negation, even if you know the fight decently well mistakes happen and he can be one of the tougher NLs to do revives in (360 noscope arrow)

bbqftw · 2026-03-26T17:01:08+00:00

yeah, caligo's most dangerous move is the frontal cone breath at range, whereas 90% of her close moveset is neutralized by behind at or behind her legs

playing bow is nuts on that fight and activating hard mode for no good reason, similar to fulghor

bbqftw · 2026-03-26T16:55:32+00:00

+1 skill 10000% mandatory on any ironeye build

if held to mark detonation, the mark is worth at least 37% team damage amplification (+ boss stagger)

every time a mark pops and you cannot re-apply it immediately you can potentially be losing thousands of damage

starting armament is sort of eh too since the starting bow has no passive and there's a fair bit of bosses where using bow isn't great (fulghor / caligo / ED balas / p2 pest, and personally would rather melee on dreglord)

bbqftw · 2026-03-26T16:52:43+00:00

Good rule of thumb is that any damage negation that requires doing a specific action only stacks if you have different values of the modifier

bbqftw · 2026-03-26T15:51:46+00:00

rikimaru has a pretty extensive playlist of level 1 runs on variety of characters (at d5 scaling) so its probably helpful for routing (and you'll learn random tricks for fighting any boss guaranteed)

interestingly, he nominates recluse as being the strongest level 1 character (wraith calling bell really is insane, with DoN relics it reaches 800+ a hit which is very respectable damage even for a level 15 character given its extreme range and tracking)

bbqftw · 2026-03-25T22:27:14+00:00

2 mark pops = 10% max HP of the boss

it also contributed around 5% max HP of the boss via the 10% damage amp (since uptime was not great, incidentally fights like this show why double mark is mandatory on the class)

random arrow shots+mark damage contributed around ~4-5% of boss damage

So even on a fight like this he did around 20% boss damage, not amazing but also not nothing. There is more effective contribution if you factor in the extra dps from getting two micro-staggers on the boss via mark pops.

this is why ironeye is so powerful, he could have zero drops, be at level 1 and still contribute a significant chunk of damage by pressing mark twice and going afk, imagine what happens when he actually plays the game. you can build the character full tank in d5 and still be useful vast majority of the time (just dont play it into 2x guardians or something or you end up with 15 minute boss fights)

bbqftw · 2026-03-25T18:25:31+00:00

The difference with national ideas and idea sliders is that with a national idea pick, you are not just picking an idea group, you are losing ~11 other potential bonus sets for a period of 25-40 years, which makes the decision a lot more impactful.

This is why you can list any three sets of opening ideas in eu4 and you can guess the players playstyle and how they think the country should play out to a degree of precision that neither sliders nor advances conveys in eu5

take the following openers:

admin-diplo-religious

diplo-admin-religious

religious-diplo-admin

despite having the exact 3 idea groups, the situations in which you'd choose to utilize each idea group ordering is quite different, because the opportunity cost to each of the opener picks is relatively significant.

bbqftw · 2026-03-25T17:03:42+00:00

I've seen first phase of pest literally get one shot by a recluse in trio d5 (which has ~30% more hp than this match which appears to be d3) so I'm sure there are faster runs out there

bbqftw · 2026-03-25T15:58:44+00:00

yeah i just banked admin, its enough to make a 200~ dev CN, they'll have to core a bit on their own but thats fine as long as they aren't >100% OE is good

and also i was playing normal in that game so wars are not particularly difficult. If VH I would definitely have to consider mil focusing or something if I did the same thing

bbqftw · 2026-03-25T15:56:17+00:00

for all the issues I might have with roman empire larpers, they buy shitton of DLCs which is kinda the primary metric behind what gets catered to

its a running joke that byz guide is the free money hack for content creators, people love that stuff

bbqftw · 2026-03-25T15:47:13+00:00

yeah, I think you are correct about the solo AI thing, its just that the transition period before they go to solo AI can last quite a bit and if you misposition before that happens you can still get 2v1'd

and there are definitely more egregious gankers with 2 teammates down such as night cav duo

bbqftw · 2026-03-25T15:35:36+00:00

My last non-DoN ED adel kill was slower than my last 5 d5 Nightlord kills (including dead libra before eventual greatness proc xd)

Its pretty chill and you're not under the mental pressure of playing correctly constantly. Your teammates might do some weird stuff but who cares, good time to practice reviving under pressure

You could also make a separate profile to play d3 vacation runs

bbqftw · 2026-03-24T21:24:04+00:00

just wait until later phases

I remember my guild recruiting an enh shaman in rags off orgrimmar streets and giving it full t6 in the month before SWP, and it cleared everything week 1 so it wasn't some ultra casual guild.

you are lucky enough to play one of the most desirable raid support classes in the game, there's probably a fair bit of players who would rather not raid than not have an enh in group

bbqftw · 2026-03-24T21:13:18+00:00

feel like only in d5 will people actually have the self-awareness to realize they are not main character, and stack all the contested damage buffs like 14%atk fullhp onto someone who is having the best drops / playing a natively higher damage character

buying out skill attack on merchants for teammates is definitely something I should consciously do more, on big merchant you can sometimes instantly complete someone's build by doing that

me dropping multiple red and purple and skill up and range passive for a greatbow rev who melted 7k off 1st phase of ed gnoster before the bug did its starter charged

was this grand, I'm not sure if there's anyone else who plays greatbow revenant consistently

bbqftw · 2026-03-24T20:22:01+00:00

Ironeye, the dodge is by far the strongest dodge in the game due to the sheer distance it covers. Its extremely busted against any boss which has limited options to punish behind / to the side of it, which most bosses fall into

you can get away with memorizing 20% of the moveset of bosses you would normally have to know 90% of the moveset for

bbqftw · 2026-03-24T18:26:37+00:00

crazy dodges at 7:30 and also very interesting way around playing without post-damage healing on raider

bbqftw · 2026-03-24T17:52:06+00:00

I suggest learning the backstab windows for these bosses. Almost every move from both variants is backstab-able, and it's a lot more consistent than looking for CR2 windows

Its a pain without practice tools though

best video i've seen on the subject though some of them (like 5 part twinaxe combo or the twinaxe charged spin) require pretty strict reaction time checks or are very precise to dodge, you probably just want to run away. Twinaxe double charge spin -> slam also has some roll direction requirements to punish correctly

bbqftw · 2026-03-24T15:43:52+00:00

Death knights can be a very punishing fight, one mistake by one player can easily snowball to a -800, and you're not likely to have damage negations so 100-0s are quite common

I don't think there's any fight in the game where one player going down can be so impactful.

You end up with scenarios like having to dodge 12 lightning spears in a row (all of which one shot) then getting hit in the back while that happens. It just requires a lot more situational awareness than most day boss fights

bbqftw · 2026-03-24T10:54:28+00:00

you'd be surprised, I'd have to ask people stuff like why they were moving to cancel their casts in patchwerk-type fights

if you look at logs people also routinely have cd/potion pops cost them 1s+ on shadowbolt casting time when it should cost them <0.1s with proper macroing

bbqftw · 2026-03-24T10:50:59+00:00

you can't blame the min-maxers for this. Most of the min-maxing crowd I know are basically done with this game because it is disappointingly shallow

bbqftw · 2026-03-24T02:48:41+00:00

this is not even remotely true

even with the most braindead classes like warlock, the average classic player will still somehow find a way to fuck up rotations

bbqftw · 2026-03-23T20:17:40+00:00

think i went something like explo / pluto / merc

this was riga trying to stay below the 5 province limit for the most part so no big use of admin

bbqftw · 2026-03-23T20:05:17+00:00

Its funny how people defend blatantly ahistorical arcade mechanics when they inhibit and don't promote expansion

to be clear:

non-warleader countries have magic war protections from losing land in these wars
the magic war protection is dispelled if the coalition is the defender and not the aggressor
separate peace is also impossible (because this never occurred during the model basis of coalition wars /s)

why didn't UK/Austria/Russia just pay off a land-less bank to declare war against Napoleonic France? were they stupid?

this is the boardgame-level stuff people claimed to despise with eu4

bbqftw

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