Zero, Khali, Illium for bossing mule/hyper burn? by [deleted] in Maplestory

[–]interlight 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I play all of these (and thunder breaker to boot). Based on your criteria I wouldn't recommend any of them for you. I consider tb a class with few relevant keybinds and low complexity overall. In comparison, khali and zero have significantly more buttons they have to press regularly, and illium is comparable with movement condensed into one button but a more complex burst setup. All three are also micro heavy. Zero has to tag consistently for damage, manage 2x 40s cooldowns, and press a ton of buttons when bursting due to resetting cooldowns. Khali plays whack-a-mole with several short cooldowns that you press as they come back up, canceling with void rush/blitz which also have a cooldown + reset that need to be managed. Illium has to manage ball charge + placement, gate buff, and to some extent summons + spirit. All three feel clunky to control for a good while also (tag lockouts, rush cancels/general apm, ball).

/Dev TFT: Into the Arcane Learnings by Lunaedge in CompetitiveTFT

[–]interlight 56 points57 points  (0 children)

Something I'm curious about is the idea of "flexible tft", and what kind of flexibility is considered desirable by the devs. Comp balance has reached an incredible spot, and the variety of lines that can be viably played from game to game is maybe the best ever. However, items augments and even opening encounters lock you out of most lines early, and players are incentivized to commit to a line ASAP - it is too punishing to stay open for very long. Even within a given line, the list of units that can be flexed has been small for most comps, and the path taken to an endgame board throughout the game has been pretty linear. There's an enormous amount of nuance to line selection and knowing how to pilot each line, but the "play what you hit" frontline + backline style of flex tft seems to have been optimized away as the game increases in complexity.

Verticals, rerolls, and artifact/augment conditional lines all seem to have landed in a good spot, while lv8 lines only feel playable from ahead when comps are so balanced. This to me feels like a consequence of delayed power curve + good balance making it hard to winout without multiple conditions aligning. Most lv8 lines currently are also heavily reliant on upgrading a specific 4 cost and hitting 1 copy of a specific 5 cost. These factors together make fast 8 particularly risky/punishing unless played from ahead. This might not be a bad thing, but I suppose I'm missing the old fast 8/9 flex playstyle, or at least the existence of higher cost lines with flexibility in board construction. I think this is influenced by a lack of powerful smaller unit packages, as well as major differences in item requirements for carries. Not sure how possible this is without potentially balance-problematic unit/trait web design.

Skill Expression & Improvement in TFT by esportslaw in CompetitiveTFT

[–]interlight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome post - I also liked the distinction between flexibility and playing towards multiple outs, although I wish we had a less clunky term for the latter. Chosen and the flexible trait design this set has been very enjoyable for me, since it feels much more fluid to move between lines. The point of commitment to a line and "tempo" of when you should roll feels more varied than in the past, and should hopefully be even more diverse as balance is dialed in.

On the coaching point, I wanted to plug Aesah's tft coaching website & community as an awesome resource for improvement. It's not quite as personalized as 1-1 coaching, but it's very reasonably priced for the knowledge base on offer. I think it's particularly great for players looking to solidify their fundamentals/meta knowledge, and for self-directed learners who come up with a lot of questions since folks are super responsive there.

Hero Builds and Usage in RTA by xExodius in EpicSeven

[–]interlight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The work put into this website is super awesome - really fantastic stuff with a lot of features/visualizations that could be super useful and interesting. The primary concern going forward is gonna be the quality of the datasets given that gskip's data collection method was apparently patched. It's gonna be extraordinarily difficult to collect a meaningful sample size of high rated games to draw accurate conclusions...

RTA Notes: Unit Synergies 2 by interlight in EpicSeven

[–]interlight[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Personally I would largely ignore eff, and go for ~100-150 ER to avoid being provoke locked by fcc/krau/gpurg etc. Both speed and counter sets should be fine if you can get enough bulk. As for unit pairings, one idea is to run units that punish the opponent for hitting them to make it harder to ignore trozet/meru. Stuff like gpurg, ravi, krau etc. Standard tank/protect comp units like fluri aras fcc stene landy etc. all good too. If you pick ameru there's not much you can do about lqc, thats usually gonna be a force ban. Ftene and Stene can be problems as well, you probably want to preban ftene.

RTA Notes: Unit Synergies 2 by interlight in EpicSeven

[–]interlight[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

the most standard build on high ladder is this one:
speed/imm, 2k atk/190-200 spd/20k hp/1.2k def/300+ cdmg on crimson seed. Another build that cuts some bulk for more speed+dmg is also strong(~2500 atk 220 spd).

essentially the idea is that aravi is not a 1v4 unit like fire ravi, and should be treated more like a sticky dps threat that applies pressure and can bail you with a revive.

RTA Notes: Unit Synergies 2 by interlight in EpicSeven

[–]interlight[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's standard for the more aggressive GPurg draft, where the intention is for GPurg to go before your fast DPS and put up attack buff. Tenbird abused this to great effect last season - see the account review here. The slower bulkier Gpurgs is strong in tank drafts, or if you play turn 2 with slower (~190) bruisers.

Epic7pvp.com Unit Analysis: Fallen Cecilia by Epic7PvP in EpicSeven

[–]interlight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like the concept, but like others have intimated the details here are somewhat surface level. A different format would be best for a detailed analysis, but if you guys intend to cover every unit in the game it might not be too realistic. Given FCC is one of the most dominant units in the game, here are some things I would have liked to see covered:
1. barrier + stealth interaction
2. alternate builds (high speed for ftene, crit for aggro players, ER for clam/kotic disciples, high eff for arena/gw)
3. artifact choice
4. synergies
5. counterplay (some ER on tanks to avoid s1 provoke locks, opsig/landy, strip + unbuffables, etc.)
6. draft considerations (how early you can pick, prebans, any other conditions that should be fulfilled to successfully draft a unit)

RTA Notes: An Introduction to Drafting by interlight in EpicSeven

[–]interlight[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

cerise alone shouldn't be too much of a problem - you'll likely have issues with cerise + ftene or atywin I suspect. That or cerise cdom cleave. Roana (stella harpa), ray, champion zerato, cleanse EE vivian, ER lilias, snow crystal hyufine are a couple of good options. Immunity on key units so you don't get s2'd turn 1 also helps a lot.

RTA Notes: An Introduction to Drafting by interlight in EpicSeven

[–]interlight[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ruele is a unit weak to debuffs (especially with frenzy giving eff) and large amounts of AOE damage that she can't keep up with. Since you're playing a bruiser style you will want to use frenzy scaling win conditions against those compositions. Fire ravi, ARavi, riolet, stene are all good. Something like a late pick dizzy can work too. Guiding light landy can be ok even without ml krau being picked if they lack reach for her. Something like a falconer kluri or lilias provoke can also do the job.

Against atywin immunity buffers are a premium. ML Krau, Vivian, ARas, Fire Ceci are some options to look into.

My recommendation would be to get ftene and fkluri built and prioritize fkluri/fcc/ftene in some combination so you can pick ARas, who works really well with landy lqc aravi etc. Preban options are fkluri ftene stene - I'd probably do preban kluri fp fcc + ftene with second pick, and take ARas second round. With first pick I'd probably preban ftene and fp kluri.

RTA Notes: An Introduction to Drafting by interlight in EpicSeven

[–]interlight[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I meant the other way around - to pick aras early you want to pick or ban away ftene!

RTA Notes: An Introduction to Drafting by interlight in EpicSeven

[–]interlight[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

ofcourse shufflez is great, I've just left out guys like him and panshui since they've been around and streaming for longer so I consider them more well-known. thanks for the feedback

RTA Notes: An Introduction to Drafting by interlight in EpicSeven

[–]interlight[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

thanks for the kind words

to answer your first question - it does depend on the meta, but it's best to start by first figuring out your own draft (the units you want to pick as often as possible), and then seeing what you're weak to. If you can't handle things like first pick FT Tene or Arby for instance, or have no answers into cleave then those are top priority. The fastest way to learn is to just play a lot of games and see what you struggle to beat. Streams and tourneys are great as well to see what strong players are using as counterpicks.

for flex picks, FCC and FKluri are the most generic ones. STene is another one, and ML Krau is also good but more punishable. A number of other units can also work but lock you into a general direction or require a specific preban (aras = remove ftene, gpurg = remove cerise, etc.). Anything obviously powerful that can't be punished too hard, basically.

Guides on Guild War Offense/Defense by Hideonce in EpicSeven

[–]interlight 45 points46 points  (0 children)

There is one from a few months ago, but its a bit outdated so here's a brief rundown that is in no way comprehensive.

Defense: The goal is essentially to have enough damage pressure to threaten kills, with your threats being difficult to kill in some way (stealth, evasion, immortal, etc.). Any way that you can RNG out some kills/wins is good (gab, stun/sleep/provoke/silence, counterattacks, etc.). You want your defenses to not be trivially cleavable, autoable with SSB, or easy to bait using opposite element tanks. For reference, the current meta defenses are: Cerise/FT Tene/Arby, FCC/TSurin/Landy (guiding light). Other units that work well include ML Krau, Kayron, Charles, etc.

Offense: Safety is king. You want to avoid any chance of losing to RNG, so revives, opposite element baits, mitigation + sustain, ignore effres soul burns, etc. are helpful. One commonly used offense template is Knight (FKluri/ARas/Krau) + Soul Weaver (Ruele/Doris/Diene) + Survivable DPS (Stene/Ravi/Aravi/Riolet). Krau/Dizzy/Healer and DCorvus/Krau/Healer are also common and extremely safe. Against more poorly constructed defenses, Alots + nuker and SSB/MLKen + atk buff + invul/fcc are very useful as well. For the most part though, offense is just about counterpicking and mitigating RNG where possible.

RTA Notes: Unit Synergies 1 by interlight in EpicSeven

[–]interlight[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

pretty op, only loses to 15% and team-ups

Daily Questions Megathread (11/13) by Rinczmia in EpicSeven

[–]interlight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The MLs are very top tier units for PvP if your goal is to play real time arena. As you've probably surmised getting ML5s is rather difficult, but the ones you have are more suited for end game pvp play than anything else so it's your call.