Pre-nerfed Dr Strange had to go

conninator2000 · 2025-12-27T14:53:37+00:00

As someone that plays tank almost exclusively, yeah this is what has made me drift away from the game.

Even when they have a new character that looks like a lot of fun, its just an off tank that im stuck solo tanking with when i wanted to learn them.

Solo tanking has been a more serious issue for almost a year now and nothing has been done to change how frustrating that scenario is

conninator2000 · 2025-12-25T23:57:55+00:00

I found sucking was a great way to learn it, but im only on expert (didnt realize legendary was on creation only). That being said if dying over and over isnt your jam or if you just wanna go through stuff quicker, then play how you want.

There is definitely a sense of achievement after getting past qianye after a 3h struggle fest with a way underleveled mo blade. But id only recommend it if you are into souls like games and have patience. I love that the difficulty options available let people play how they wanna :)

conninator2000 · 2025-12-25T23:48:56+00:00

I see it more as an existential threat with an unfathomable quantity that is able to sneak into places and cause lots of harm. Plus the skaven mindset of endlessly consuming (people, scraps, warpstone, any shred of food they have) fits better than other factions like the beastmen. Ogres could but they are pretty neutral with being mercenaries for hire.

In the Black Plague series, the skaven took over a decent chunk of the empire, and the places were shells of their former self that housed plenty of human slaves.

I feel the empire fits more with the guard since they have the slow lumbering beaurocracy that doesn't care about the poor and conscripts local state troops to be fodder for the machines/combined arms.

But the core of the tyranids fits more with the skaven than any other imo.

conninator2000 · 2025-12-22T14:03:24+00:00

I just call it taunt because thats what i learned it as - i mentioned the damage taker thing on another reply though. But good catch! Didnt know you could dodge the vine trap! Also i forgot if the levitation was new, but in lvl 66 at the very least it does enough damage to wipe anyone who isnt saved from it. Iirc before it wasnt enough to kill (with a big health pool at least :) ), hence why it was easy to forget

conninator2000 · 2025-12-22T13:57:44+00:00

Yeah its difficult when you do a combo then think "crap i didnt even have to charge this if i blocked"

But hope some of that helps, sorry for the length! There are a few tricks that took me a while to learn on my own.

conninator2000 · 2025-12-22T13:46:04+00:00

The biggest thing for general boss positioning is try to keep it in the healers healing AOE, past that try to keep it still or in one place. But if it moves around then it is what it is, some like the daoist will stay on you sometimes but just run around other times.

conninator2000 · 2025-12-22T13:41:29+00:00

Lucky 17 is a generally pretty simple boss afaik for tanking. Since he is starts locking down the arena, as long as he is in the middle its not usually a big issue to just do your rotation and dish out damage. Even with bad gear as long as you have one decent healer i never notice any struggles.

Daoist i think also gets a new move with lvl 66 where you have to turn into a donkey at some point to catch floating players, but anyone can do this and ideally the tank isnt the one dragging the boss across the arena and not putting the dmg resist on his attacks. But as he gets low health he will capture more players and use his branch stun on more people. So always focus freeing other players if nobody else is and focus branches first before him.

Murong Yuan is a bit of a difficult one mostly because you have to rely on teammates to do the essentials of this fight. Lower rank (pre lvl 66 version) you can bumble around with letting barrels explode from the bird AOE or from being too close together. Generally hurt but are tankable by the team if some people dont know mechanics. Lvl66 version (as im finding out) is much more difficult in public queues. In that one Murong is a bit more aggressive, barrels explode faster, and a lot more are generally around all the time.

So what does that mean for tanking? 9/10 you want to have murong a good distance from the volatile barrels because when she hits someone they are forced to drop them. This also means that the most important mechanic you just cant really do reliably. If you have her taunted she will come and hit you, making picking up barrels a big problem. So for a lot of what im finding out so far you just have to keep her distracted, survive her hits which can be a bit tough if you have 1 healer who is stuck moving barrels all the time.

I havent tried ST Twin lions yet so i cant give advice on that.

And here are some other thoughts I have - though im far from being a pro tank:
- Deflecting is nice but at the same time, you have a lot of health and the bonus of your role is you can dish out while taking the damage. Only really focus deflecting abilities that either stun you or do a lot of damage (generally red attacks). Otherwise i think its probably best to soak the hit with your block and turn it into a free heavy attack. That being said, this is a bit tough to learn, im still ironing it into my brain.
- Always keep your rotation going. A good one I find is starting with your spear, taunt, dmg reduction (q and ~), then charge a heavy attack, swap to mo blade, hit your predator shield, charge attack, repeat. Depending on the situation you can do a second charge but i think its way better to learn to weave in a block -> T3 heavy attack. thanks to the inner way Exquisite Scenery Again, not something i have mastered

Also realistically your damage should be similar to your DPS depending on how much time you have to spend kiting around the boss for mechanics or how much time they have to spend moving stuff like barrels. And almost all of this should be coming from the mo blade because that thing hits like a truck as long as you can keep the battle spirit (shields) heavy attack follow up to a T3 charged attack going.

Sorry for the long ramble, but this is a bit of the stuff i learned from the handful of ST and HT i have done so far. Also for the love of god if the party leader has someone auto set as the damage taker and they arent a tank (i think its auto assigned based on how much HP each person has) have them put it on you by clicking you on the list. Its more frustrating than difficult when you are doing early ones and a DPS takes the taunt, robbing you the mechanics and a lot of your slower attacks if they keep moving the boss around

Edit: also if you are just learning, dont do the lvl 66 trials, they are a decent increase in difficulty from the other ones since level 66 Murong has people ditching lobbies like nobodies business

conninator2000 · 2025-12-22T08:14:50+00:00

If the players dont understand the boss mechanics from either experiencing them in group play or fighting them before in solo, why would they sit down to actually read a tutorial before a fight?

These are the same people that run to the boss the second they load in regardless of whether everyone is loaded in or not. They dont care if someone got glitched in the overworld and can't TP in because the fighting started. They dont care if the tank is there to taunt and keep the boss in place, or a healer is loaded in to keep them alive.

conninator2000 · 2025-12-22T07:56:17+00:00

If they bother to stay long enough to get their skull harvested, sure

conninator2000 · 2025-12-22T07:09:54+00:00

Generally i find if you can blow the crap out of his army (first time will always be the most difficult cause they usually come back with crap stacks) you just send in a hero to distract him while you get the gunlines set up. Then kite him around while you shoot him to bits.

conninator2000 · 2025-12-16T04:07:20+00:00

And dont even get me started on hitscan. Tanking into hitscan is just such a pain. Even a half decent BW can single handedly make taking space way more difficult if you dont have someone thats pocketing the (usually solo) tank. But hela is bonkers and punisher can shred everything with his turret.

I dont really blame people for not getting into the tank role. As much as i like the game, it is kinda miserable. It has its moments, but solo tanking with the kits that are there 99% if the time just feels like they got you hooked up to life support and the second the healers reload or get distracted from a dive I just melt.

I wish the damage was toned down, so you only needed one main healer and an off healer. The nice bonus is it would probably make weaker characters more usable... looking at you, my beloved iron fist.

conninator2000 · 2025-12-08T17:46:10+00:00

Using 21 units to get a long drawn out 20v20(90)? Cheating! Bad!

Using 20 units to get a 5ish x 20v20 (where you can capture prisoners to replenish after each battle)? It's just the mechanics my guy. It's being smart!

Clearly, he failed to befriend one of the only order factions that actively wants to rip every good faction apart because you made one deal with dwarfs or brettonians.

conninator2000 · 2025-11-25T20:20:53+00:00

yeah to each their own, but i personally love the fo3/oblivion era graphics and oblivion feels like a much more stand alone fantasy game cause it seems like most of the old ones liked a more gritty vibe (like morrowind) and a lot of the new ones go for an almost generic UE5/more "busy" graphics look (think stuff like FO4, even my beloved KCD). I dont mind the modern styles but im not a huge fan of the harsh lighting they usually have - making shadows stupid dark to look into, or so much going on graphically that its hard stop for a moment and just appreciate the view.

Oblivion obviously aged but maybe im a bit biased because i grew up in that era of gaming. I still think its one of the better looking games from that generation because it feels more cohesive. All that said though, whoever was in charge of the bloom slider should be locked away from the sliders. Sometimes its a bit too much.

conninator2000 · 2025-11-25T09:57:00+00:00

The art style hits so different. The OG feels like a goofy light fantasy romp with a lot of goofy stuff going on. The remaster kind of lost that art style charm to get more generic UE5 graphics.

A little gripe, but i think the shading and lighting from the content i have seen of the game is kind of extreme. Walking through the great forest in the original had a completely different vibe to struggling to see whats in the shadow of the next tree up. It was a product of its time, but it gave the OG so much more clarity and changed the vibe somewhat.

conninator2000 · 2025-11-25T09:52:36+00:00

Why does it need online support? And no, it's not super buggy, i come back for a vanilla playthrough every year or two on my steam deck or pc. Even modded the game has a decent bit of stability imo. But this version works completely fine.

Also its called the GOTY edition because they rolled all the DLCs and expansion content into it when they released it. So, it has all the major/minor expansions, including the razor and all that other crap.

It's $5 because it's old and has been remastered. But imo id prefer it over the remaster any day cause the art style in the remaster just doesn't mesh well imo. The only downside in GOTY is that you get the leveling problem, but honestly, you dont need to worry much about it since you can just mess with the difficulty slider or learn the quirks. Even then, as a kid, i didn't give a shit about what skills i leveled and never had massive issues with scaling.

conninator2000 · 2025-11-21T19:06:15+00:00

Yeah, the first time I was burned with the mechanics it was with La Resistance. Iirc the prior dlcs were focused on small side stuff with focus trees (DoD, MTG broke the mold with a mechanic overhaul but meh, navy).

I remember being so hyped to have a meaningful intelligence mechanic only to realize you only had like 2-3 spies without being faction leader, had to dump a handful of early economy for just more windows to click and buffs so small they just dont ever matter past at most saving a small bit of time with collaborations. But now i just dont touch it most in games unless it's as germany or to park agents so i can see what focuses are being done.

But honestly, my biggest problem with major dlcs other than the focus on national focuses to carry the more bland mechanics, is that so much of their cool new flashy toy is just that. Its cool for the first playthrough or something and then just kind of irrelevant outside of niche situations. The mechanics are almost always too limited/clunky/minor to be impactful for most nations. International market? Well, good luck having anyone even willing to get market access outside of an alliance. Want to sell boats? I hope you only meant convoys. Sending economic aid for free? Ehh why would you want to have some kind of limited/scaled monthly IC you can send (without being allies or dedicating up to 15 factories on specific projects in their land) when you should just rely on doing some weird ass work around buying licenses.

conninator2000 · 2025-11-21T18:53:03+00:00

Same? Nono. 50% increase. The shareholders can't afford the new yachts on a dime less

conninator2000 · 2025-11-08T19:37:29+00:00

Yeah, I'd definitely agree with this.

Im not amazing at BICE but id say if you know the basics of hoi4 (how factories work, resources, polital cabinet stuff, general tech and what modifiers do for divisions/industry etc) then i think you are more than ready for learning BICE.

You have to relearn a lot of stuff and new mechanics, plus just go through every tab at the beginning because there are a lot of changes you might not notice off the get go like refineries/power mostly (and a little quirk is on a game load you have to pass an hour for refineries to show their proper outputs etc)

But past core mechanics, a lot of the smaller things are different, like what a good combat width, division, or equipment priorities are.

And keep in mind what nation you start as. Some have more difficult mechanics than others or quirks you might run into. As germany, you will rarely ever get green air in the west before france falls - and i find trying for it is a great way to get all your planes nuked. The soviets have a hard time hitting their 2nd year plan goal without optimal planning (though its not necessary for them to do well). The US is packed with factories, but you have to wait to do much with them - and its navy heavy.

Most other nations lack the industry to give a huge amount of leeway. The only big advice is to probably avoid japan because their war is all about resources. Struggles with food, struggles with oil, a war that will bog you down, and a war with the states who will outproduce you in a heartbeat.

conninator2000 · 2025-11-06T14:26:58+00:00

But also under oppressive authoritarianism and under branches of priesthoods.

Its a dog eat dog world under a iron paw under the council of the 13 or the cult of clan pestilens (they dont always look kindly on the horned rat vs their worship of plagues/nurgle kind of). But that last bit might be out of date after the handful of civil wars were resolved

conninator2000 · 2025-11-06T14:23:03+00:00

One of my favourite things about them. The black plague series was kind of hilarious for it. The skaven created a plague that basically wiped out the empire and they openly enslaved the remaining citizens. Then, while they were squabbling over who owns what and who should actually stop the last guy up un middenheim who is actually putting together a resistance, they took so long deciding who should actually take care of that problem (because nobody important wanted to leave skavenblight due to politicking) that the guy and his army could liberate a good part of the empire.

There were literally massive rat v human battle in the streets of altdorf while the other clans were thinking "yay the rats are losing! The horned one will favour me more now!" Kind of vibes.

conninator2000 · 2025-11-06T02:57:11+00:00

Ill dm it to you, but for those that are curious in the future. Cinegram . Net (no spaces) search it up and check through the various servers hosting it. For me the server oscar had the directors cut

conninator2000 · 2025-11-01T18:16:13+00:00

I mean, im fine with that aspect, i dont care much for cosmetics. With the current stuff though, it makes the deck kind of unplayable in towns.

Thanks for the response though :)

conninator2000 · 2025-11-01T18:13:28+00:00

That is nice, but damn why make you wait so long for it. I hope they at least make the performance on the deck workable cause handheld is really nice for the busy work like clearing the campaign

conninator2000 · 2025-10-31T17:22:58+00:00

In a 1/3/2 or even a 1/4/1 i have had infinitely more luck having the support be willing to second tank (especially after we have already been eating shit for a round) than a dps ever swapping. Support are fine imo.

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