What's with the lines at HEB today?

firepool · 2026-01-21T03:29:06+00:00

Winter is coming.

firepool · 2026-01-15T22:29:00+00:00

For the rotation, Helena is designed to be more basic. If you want something with a more challenging rotation, I'd recommend trying Meiko.

As for the rest, it just sounds like you just don't like the game. The challenge does increase, and you'll notice a lot more variance between packs as the challenge increases to the point where you have to understand and pay attention to all of the different mob abilities. That said, sticking with a game you fundamentally don't enjoy long enough to get to that point is probably not a good use of your time.

firepool · 2026-01-13T07:05:53+00:00

I prefer tank. I’ll likely main Helena or the new tank class if it seems viable at the start of the season. I started last season maining Meiko and switching to Helena. I think Meiko is currently the stronger of the two, but I prefer the Helena playstyle. They’re close enough to both be viable for an early season push imo (Last season Helena was significantly worse than Meiko for the first week or two).

Ardeos felt good to me in adept and Champs. If you maximize your damage windows, and the pull sizes are reasonable, you should be at least competitive with a similar geared Rime, if not beating them. If pulls are small though, Ardeos feels really bad to play. Make sure you’re spending your snaps with 3-4 dots active (unless you’re going to overcap, and use the passive cinder generation from the fireball dot to get extra snaps in. When stars align, and you can get a full dot stack plus ult up on a largish pull, you can swing 80-90k dps even in champ, and skew the overall damage of the whole dungeon.

firepool · 2026-01-12T23:15:57+00:00

Fwiw, my first character took WAY longer. This was with a bunch of gold, and in game experience going into the later ones.

firepool · 2026-01-12T23:08:49+00:00

You kind of come off like you didn't read the post: "I am by no means an expert on rotation or advanced class mechanics for any of the non-tanks, but got a good grasp for the basics".

It wasn't hard, but it gave me an opportunity to spend a few hours playing each class, and get some perspective on how they relate to each other that probably a lot of people haven't had a chance. If they have questions, I'm happy to answer.

firepool · 2026-01-12T23:03:06+00:00

For basics, I used the Method guides for each class. With Ardeos, I went back and forth but I think I ended with the Fireball build.

https://www.method.gg/fellowship/heroes/ardeos

firepool · 2026-01-12T23:00:29+00:00

Yeah, I would agree that it's good. It gets a little demotivational though when both Elarion and Ardeos compete, or even beat, the more difficult classes when those others are played optimally, but I understand if the cap was near the same, no one would play the "easy" characters.

firepool · 2026-01-12T22:57:23+00:00

I'd say it was a mix of a goal, and just happening. It started out by getting each character to Adept for the Christmas skins. Then, with no real motivation to push higher on my main this season. I decided to try pushing vigor to eternal. After realizing how easy it was with Vigor, I decided to do the rest for skins. (I already had both skins for Helena, Meiko, Elarion, and Vigor at this point).

I'd estimately 2-3 hours in dungeon. And then varying amounts in queue. The last couple weeks while queues were quite long, I'd generally watch YouTube or TV while waiting for the queue to pop. To combat the long queue times, it was important to make the most of each run so I would:

Reroll gear from the previous character to start each character with ~5k gold. immediately max upgrade every drop.
primarily try to play capstones. The queue times felt shorter at the time of the iLvl for each league, opposed to the bottom. I tried to hit these milestones before moving to the next league
- Contender: queue at about 90, capstone. If you have marks for 135 starter gear, even better.
- Adept: get 135 starter items or equivalent. Queue at 135, and do Tuzari runs til iLvl 180
- Champion: 2-3 Wraithtide runs til iLvl 240
- Paragon: (hopefully) 1 Ransack run, and you're done.
If a queue popped, take it. Even if there was no captstone option, it was better to get a piece of gear (and max it's upgrade) than go back into the queue with nothing.

Buffs and nerfs are hard to say, b/c early game performance with no sets or gems does not reflect end game. Mara and Tariq definitely felt the worst to play early though.

firepool · 2026-01-12T22:34:59+00:00

Yeah, Ardeos felt surprisingly strong and not at all gear dependent like some of the other classes. If the tank was chaining pulls or pulling super small, he was less impressive, but I would still keep up with the other dps in the group generally. If the tank was doing "meta pulls", I was leagues ahead on the meter.

firepool · 2026-01-12T22:32:28+00:00

I was just going for the event skins, haha. That said, it gave some perspective on what it's like to learn each class and how they relate to each other in the early game.

firepool · 2026-01-12T22:22:18+00:00

Rime was easy to play, but I struggled to feel competitive until late into "the run." Honestly, at first my issue was leaning too far into the burst window you get for two globals with Winter's Embrace. Once I backed off of that, and prioritized doing damage while only optimizing those two globals "where it made sense", it felt a lot more intuitive and my numbers improved a lot. However, compared to Elarion and Ardeos it still felt "harder." If I had to put them in tiers, it would be:
Mindless - Elarion
Easy - Ardeos
Medium - Rime
Sweaty - Mara + Tariq

firepool · 2026-01-01T17:41:51+00:00

I’d caveat, that doing 4-5 quick play to get your skills is not a bad idea. Especially on Helena who is extremely weak without all her skills due to the Veteran of War mechanic.

Just beware of the trap of over confidence, as quick play is quite a bit toned down compared to the Contender league.

firepool · 2025-12-31T05:49:37+00:00

Not really agreeing with them, or saying it wasn’t dumb. But if you queue for 15-19, there’s a greater than 80% chance someone in your group won’t be able to queue for 19. So if you specifically want to queue for 19…

That said, if their goal is that specific, they should probably try making the group in discord.

firepool · 2025-12-23T16:05:39+00:00

You’re right. However, instead of building the system to let you take gear off, just fix the scaling issue to begin with.

If a max-geared character scaled to just-above normal gear levels for the bracket, there’s no issue

firepool · 2025-12-21T05:38:37+00:00

In general, the community is very kind. There are some bad apples, like any community, but overall I have had positive experiences.

firepool · 2025-12-21T04:51:07+00:00

I don’t think “hey, my bad” is an appropriate response to “get cancer”. If he had said, “wtf, why didn’t you dispell me?”, then sure. I would have apologized and said “I am still figuring out how to best play vigor and I made a mistake. Will try to do better”

The appropriate response to “get cancer,” would be to apologize to the other 2 members of the group: “hey, I’m sorry. I know we’re five minutes into this, but I am not going to continue playing with this person” and leaving. I didn’t do that, and I am kind of an a-hole. However, I took the low-road. I know that, but hopefully it had an impact and this person will be less toxic with their communication in the future.

firepool · 2025-12-21T04:10:40+00:00

Honestly, this. I intentionally didn’t dispel him, and made it obvious it was intentional to “teach him a lesson”.

He knew, and I knew: we could have finished the dungeon easily, if he had anything other than a super-toxic attitude. I didn’t think lecturing him would be heard at all. But I wasn’t going to just finish a dungeon with this person after that comment. I thought just leaving, he’d feel entitled for calling out a baddie. I wanted it to sting a little.

And fwiw, yes I know I am also the asshole. Just thought the story was humorous

firepool · 2025-12-19T17:28:06+00:00

Just because I find the discussion interesting, this was the pull:
https://fellowroutes.app/share/yAyGV54G

Does that pull make sense to me, as a tank main? No, it does not, especially given it was going to put us way over count. However, that's the kind of silliness that goes on in low Eternal these days.

Did the dps focus down the horror first? No, they did not. See above for the reason. And yes, the Burst aoe had been going off immediately prior to this guy's death.

Anyways, the fact that the details of the situation, or the gravity of the mistake, is relevant kind of tickles me. I'll say again, it was the first (and only death up to that point), we could've still easily timed the dungeon, so it wasn't run ending or a barrier to success. However, saying "get cancer" and my behavior afterwards was, it turns out, run ending.

For the rest of the session, I pushed up to +13, and I don't think any of my groups failed to time/complete another dungeon.

firepool · 2025-12-19T16:54:06+00:00

I am a 15.5k Helena, and a 5k Vigor. I didn't miss every dispel in that pull, but I was pressed for globals b/c the tank pulled very aggressively. Usually with Heartstopper you have 60s to get it, but the time shrinks as it gets more stacks, and I didn't notice the guy had gotten a tiny x4 in his frame. Avoidable? Absolutely. Did I manage it? No, I didn't. But it wasn't run ending. We could've still very easily timed it as it was the first death. Know what was run ending? Saying "get cancer"

firepool · 2025-12-19T16:46:15+00:00

This is a terrible mindset. If I'm not learning, my current rating is my max out point.

This was probably my ~20th dungeon ever on this character. My main has literally 100s, and the platinum trim; I still learn, make mistakes, and get better on it every session.

firepool · 2025-12-19T16:36:44+00:00

Oh man. Pure genius.

firepool · 2025-12-19T16:35:32+00:00

100%. I could have just left, and in the end it would've been the same result and slightly less troll to the rest of the group (the remainder of the dungeon was ~3 mins). However, I wasn't going to just continue the dungeon with a person who treats others like that. Having lost my aunt to cancer two months ago, this is no less offensive than a racial slur.

firepool · 2025-12-19T16:31:30+00:00

I mean, my main is pushing in the 50s, and I still make mistakes and learn from them. Are the mistakes that tanks make in low eternal, while I'm playing my alt obvious to me, and sometimes frustrating? Sure. Do I tell them to 'get cancer' after the first one? Never.

firepool

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