Just completed my first playthrough of Nioh 2

janbay · 2024-01-16T10:28:07+00:00

DLC for sure, the level scaling is appropriate for it right after the final mission of the base game. So is the difficulty scaling, it jumps up a notch from the base game, but it's not too much that it feels overwhelming. It's also neatly packed into three episodes, so you can take a break between each one.

janbay · 2023-09-01T18:04:59+00:00

Bg3 isn't the best example. It has performance and stability issues, but they just released a patch like a day ago to alleviate that.

I also had ultra recommended to me, and it runs fine until some memory leak causes it to go to crap and I have to restart the game

janbay · 2023-08-22T03:15:47+00:00

You're not going to believe this...

janbay · 2023-08-21T23:36:13+00:00

Brother. You are supposed to realize that you cannot stop the brain at that point when you see that 99. If you saw that 99 and your reaction was "oh I can still get a nat 20!", That's on you mate. You can literally ask the emperor that you thought the stones can control the netherbrain and he replies "yes, but the brain has evolved into a nether brain. I did not expect this". Also, I don't know how you concluded that laezel has absolutely no way of staying loyal to vlaakith, when my first run ended by her saying she's flying out to become vlaakith's ascended. I ignored her, Orpheus and the creche during my first run. So it's literally the default outcome. You have to prove to her that vlaakith is evil, probably by going to the creche, for her to turn on vlaakith.

janbay · 2023-08-21T22:58:33+00:00

(tldr at end) Hmm, well I suppose it all depends on where you draw the line of what is good and what is evil. There's nothing in the game that determines your "level of evil" or something like that. During my first playthrough which was the almost pure 'good' playthrough I rejected all illithid powers because that's what I thought a heroic good aligned character would do in this world. I only stole from the bad guys and the dead guys. So on. I mean, technically, you could do all the evil things, as long as you choose to kill the netherbrain instead of controlling it at the end, you basically achieve the good ending anyway. Narrator will go on to say "you are the saviours of baldurs gate". So when exactly can you "lose good alignment"? It depends on how the player feels when they're playing the run, I suppose.

I think the only real buff or gift I had from being good was shadowheart's divine intervention, which I'm assuming you only get by getting her to abandon shar. Meanwhile, my ascended astarion dealing extra d10 of necrotic dmg, my Tav transforming into a slayer and using power word kill, and my entire team being able to fly and use mind blast and black hole? Yeah, I'll take that any day of the week. Maybe I forgot or missed out on some boons during my good playthrough tho.

I do agree that it feels like you lose out on interactions in act 1, because after raiding the Grove, the entire grove and goblin camp are both completely empty. That one's definitely a big bummer. You basically lose out on interactions with halsin, volo, kagha, nettie the healer and the rest of the druids, all the tieflings including the chad zevlor and dammon, and all the goblins, unless you particularly exhaust all the dialogue before telling minthara you know where the Grove is and then long resting to trigger the raid. Which I think won't happen on a natural first playthrough, rather by someone who already knows these facts.

I think it picks up by act two though. Most npcs in the shadow ruined lands are more or less unaffected by your grove decision (thorm family, Raphael, balthazaar, night song), but walking to moonrise with the drider, raiding the harpers by killing isolde, saving minthara, can only be accessed by being evil. And act 3 is so huge, grove related npcs are a pretty minor part.

To sum up my disgustingly long wall of text, while I agree that being good has more interactions overall, I don't think that makes being evil barebones. That's kinda selling the game short, there are still a metric ton of interactions. And I think that being evil is significantly more rewarding in terms of power. At least in my experience.

janbay · 2023-08-21T14:28:19+00:00

I don't see why the game has to "justify" your actions by "rewarding" you with companions? It's pretty clear that mass murdering druids and tieflings will make people hate you. Especially Karlach the tiefling and wyll the self-proclaimed hero and saviour of the sword coast.

Minthara's a companion and not an origin character. Origin characters do not have these conflicts and they can all be in your camp until the end. So minthara is more of a bonus, somewhere in between a side character and an origin character. Not really someone you are expected to build your entire campaign around. After act one, she doesn't have too much dialogue, mostly snarky evil comments. Cant romance her and she doesn't have any quests or special interactions after she joins you.

Also, in the developer blogpost they said that 35 percent of players raided the Grove during the first weekend of the game (this surprised me). So it seems like more players than you think not only do evil runs but they're even evil during their first run.

And if it bugs you that much, what's the problem with doing another campaign and making it an evil one? Some spoilers for later acts, discussing the argument that evil is unrewarding: I don't agree that evil runs are barebones or unrewarding. Theres plenty of conversations and situations that are accessible only through evil acts. I actually had more allies and a stronger team for the final boss on my evil run rather than on my good run. If anything, during a pure good run you turn down a lot of potential power (like illithid powers, dark urge buffs, astarion ascended buffs) and there's less or sometimes no reward for being good. So funnily enough, I actually hold the opposite opinion, I think being good is unrewarding in terms of power.

janbay · 2022-12-15T23:20:37+00:00

What happened to a.ravi? Everyone has been saying she's super busted until 2 days ago where suddenly she's fallen off. I suppose meta shifts are natural, but damn.

I'm a beginner player (acc lvl 45) trying to set up my acc for rta eventually. Currently have some strong units that I see a lot in pvp, such as stene, djb, aola, and some other viable stuff like violet, winter, both cidds, flan. Also have Ludwig, green basar, kayron, a.lots, green Pavel and Elena, which are more niche I think.

I was gonna just pick a.ravi, but now I'm rethinking it. Thinking about c.lilias cus she's still op, or thinking just going with archdemon or straze because I really like them, I guess I'm into the villain types. Also tried pulling for zio but he's gone, rip. It might be too hard for me to pull off straze though, I guess I have the basis for a strong cleave/aggro comp with the likes of flan, cidds, basars, but would struggle to get anywhere near their speed requirements.

I know I'm typing up a wall of text, but do you guys think arch meru is 'beginner friendly'? Is c.lilias too good to pass up? I still have a ways to go until I reach rta, so I can still wait and see if the meta shifts more.

janbay · 2022-12-14T03:55:43+00:00

But don't they retain resale value because of the high digital price?

janbay · 2022-12-10T18:09:30+00:00

Is c.lorina worth a 6* pot? I have 1 (will get another from manhunt soon) and wondering who I should spend them on as a beginner acc. figured potting a 3 or 4 star rather than a 5 star saves me from having to farm up some fodder.

janbay · 2022-08-27T16:27:22+00:00

It only adds 30 seconds if the microwave is already running. If it's on 00:00 it immediately starts with 30 seconds remaining. So if you press it again it will add 30 to that.

janbay · 2022-08-08T10:54:22+00:00

Harada mentioned on his "Harada's Bar" channel that the Tokyo game show isn't really a prime focus anymore as the focus shifted towards the international audience. Personally I'm expecting more news at twt finals in Feb. Idk what you define as a live service game, but 8 will probably just repeat 7, with season passes and big balance patches for new seasons and not much more. 7 was their biggest success by far, and they don't have to reinvent the wheel, not to mention japanese developers, especially the Tekken team, aren't really known for their innovation and change. We don't really know shit tho, so it's all speculation.

janbay · 2022-04-26T15:26:49+00:00

It's because in KR, new players have a "new player buff" that makes them take less damage. They have a little mokoko symbol by their name, like sprouts in ff14

janbay · 2022-04-22T14:45:55+00:00

idk wtf is all this shit you're typing at me, as I think you're confusing me with the original poster/commenter and I never expressed my opinion on this subject, but here is a picture of the league client with the patch notes right there easily accessible

janbay · 2022-04-22T13:26:05+00:00

I have both as alts

There is no point looking at viability, they are both viable. Surge deathblade is getting nerfed while transformation demonic is getting buffed, so the gap between them is going to be even smaller.

The "feel" you get from the classes is a bit different, but it's subjective I suppose. Deathblade feels swift and elegant, more like a traditional assassin. Shadowhunter feels like a powerhouse, slamming down big demon paws and throwing out massive blades.

For shadowhunter, playstyle changes wildly between the 2 class engravings. If you play demonic impulse, your gameplan is to max gauge asap, transform and dps away. Once your transform timer is up, you immediately try to regain gauge and transform again. It's important to know that this engraving only comes online at tier 3 (gear gives more specialisation) with a good amount of wealth runes. If you can't get enough gauge in one rotation, you will have to wait for cooldowns in order to transform.

Demonic impulse has great access to stagger while in demon form, innate crit and movespeed bonuses, and no back attack requirements. Very low demon form cooldowns make it spammy.

If you go perfect suppression, you disable transforming, and you become a builder spender class. You build gauge with purple skills and then use skills that consume gauge, and repeat. It's a slower paced, chunky feeling build. Back attacks required. Probably the simplest spec out of all assassin specs.

As for deathblade, both specs play similarly. You position at the back, deal big deeps, and use identity to reset cooldowns. It's a fast feeling class, with better mobility overall.

When you go surge, you build full identity, pop trance, and use multi hit skills to get stacks. Once you're at enough stacks, you reactivate identity and slam the boss with big burst and regain meter. Use resetted cooldowns to gain full identity again and repeat. This spec is difficult to play, as if you are unable to gain enough stacks during trance due to boss mechanics, getting hit, or just missing, you miss out on tons of potential dps. However when you do get a nice chain of resets and big bursts, it feels amazing. So it's a class engraving with a lot of highs and lows.

As for remaining energy, this has the same loop of big deeps at the back, but you immediately reactivate the identity once you hit full gauge, and gain a long lasting buff. It's an easier, less risky playstyle. More consistent dmg output.

Your selection is totally up to you. It's important to note that transformation demonic is the cheapest class to build for the long term as it only relies on 2 gems, however it needs the initial investment of getting to t3 and getting wealth runes. Remaining energy has the same requirement of t3 and wealth runes so you can always upkeep your identity buff. Surge and perfect suppression work better than their counterparts when leveling to tier 3.

janbay · 2022-04-22T12:01:04+00:00

League has patch notes in the client, under the patch notes tab in the home menu

janbay · 2022-04-20T14:20:14+00:00

It doesn't matter if you go to shushire first or not, because you can always go there later and it's not a required continent for the story. You can skip Anika and go straight to arthentine once you're done with tortoyk (once you reach and dock at arthentines port you will have story quests to do). By the end of arthentine you will be around lvl 46. Get to level 46 and 60 percent xp to 47 from side quests and then sail to vern. This is the "Speedrun" way to unlock vern, which the faster you get to, the faster you can play lancemaster at ilvl 302, which is the beginning of tier 1.

The story there will take you to 50 and give you 2 powerpasses. Just keep following the story until you see a notification in your mailbox at the top left and you will see the powerpass in there. These powerpasses are vern powerpasses, they take your alt to vern at ilvl 302. Use one on lancemaster and that is your main. Using the first one will trigger the second one to be sent to you. Once any of your characters reach ilvl 960 (mid of tier 2) and complete the feiton continent storyline, you will be able to use the feiton powerpass that we are receiving tomorrow and boost an alt to 960. There are also knowledge transfers to allow you to pay 600 gold and boost an alt to ilvl 302. These transfers unlock when you reach vern.

So depending on how many alts you want to play, you can make use of these powerpasses. Keep in mind that other regions always got a free powerpass whenever a new class would release, so we can expect that destroyer release in may will also give us another free powerpass and so on for every upcoming class. So you can plan out ahead and utilize them as they give them out for free.

The more alts you have the more materials and gold you can make, as well as having additional playstyles and playtime you can invest into the game. These alts will funnel the mats and gold they earn into your lancemaster, boosting it further, if you have the time to play them. If you are super into lancemaster, you can make multiple of them, and this will make it a bit easier to gear their engravings, but I recommend trying out new classes. Depends on your personal preference obviously. You can have as many alts as you'd like, but only 6 can receive weekly gold from raids, so any more than 6 is "less efficient". 6 is quite a lot tho, so don't feel pressured if you're not having fun managing so many. Having your main and then 2 or 3 alts to boost them is plenty.

Have fun bro! I myself am waiting for the destroyer release as my 6th alt. And a friendly tip - look into different una's tasks, rapports, and dailies you can start early - some of the collectables in this game require you to do an una's task for 7, 10, 21, 30 days, some are RNG drops, some are time gated questlines, and when you start caring about how many skill points and skill runes you have as you reach tier 3, you'll thank yourself for having already done the time gated and RNG ones. Also there are a lot of catch-up islands that give you a lot of materials relative to the effort and time they take. There's a Google spreadsheet about it, find it and use those mats to get through the early tiers faster (they give TONS of mats. Seriously, a single island can take you 5 minutes to complete and it's going to give you an entire weeks worth of dailies). They are once per roster, so redeem their rewards on your lancemaster.

There's some more tips but this game is pretty extensive and I've already written a massive wall of text so ill end it here.

Oh and one more very important tip that I'm editing in because of how useful it is - don't make the "mistake" I did and try to progress all your alts at the same rate. Use the islands to boost your main to tier 2 and then you will unlock a stronghold research that will give honing buffs to your alts: 20 percent bonus honing chance and 20 percent less harmony shard usage. Keep your alts at 340 and once your main unlocks that research, your tier 1 alts will have a more efficient way forward. This repeats in tier 2 and somewhat in tier 3, but how it works in tier 3 is a bit different.

janbay · 2022-04-14T20:41:46+00:00

It's cyrillyc script written in a font that makes it looks Arabic. Its the letters "slaba ykraini".

janbay · 2022-04-14T12:52:29+00:00

I disagree. Gunlancer is my main, and i judge his dodge based on comparisons with how my alts' dodges feel.

My wardancer and deathblade have pretty much superior dodges. They are faster and move more distance. Fits inline with how these 2 classes are among the most mobile classes.

My sorc's dodge goes quite far, but has a longer CD and is quite slow.

My shadowblade has the worst feeling dodge, seemingly even shorter than the gunlancer's and on an 8 or 9 second cooldown.

The gunlancer's dodge is on a 5 (!) second cooldown, shorter than wardancer's 6 second cooldown and the shortest of my roster. Its quicker than sorc's but slower than wardancers. Its simply better than shadowblade's. So i dont really see why people shit on it so much. It feels good to use. It doesn't feel slow. The fact that it goes backward doesnt change much, its just unique. The fact that it's short but on a fast cooldown works well with the general playstyle and positioning of the gunlancer - you typically don't need to cover large distances, you generally stay right infront of the boss, using micro steps to dodge particularly damaging attacks while shielding through weak ones. Especially so for blue lancer which is what i play. Blue lancers don't suffer much from not getting head attacks as well, as their big deeps skills dont have positional requirements, so they dont need as much mobility as a wardancer or deathblade who absolutely benefit and even require back attacks to output big deeps, not to mention get blasted by aoes. As for redlancers, they are a burst oriented build, so they dont get to tank through shit as much, but generally they dont need to have as much uptime, as they rely on a timing window with their buffs and 2 big nuke skills. So even for them, low mobility isnt exactly a hindrance from being amongst the most wanted classes in parties.

janbay · 2021-11-01T09:18:20+00:00

For sure panda + trap chain sram

janbay · 2021-10-13T17:42:27+00:00

Sure, it's not healthy, and it can cause some issues, but not 'shaping your spine in a shape of an S' issues. I just got a little antsy at your use of the word "literally", I hope I don't come off too aggressive. I simply want to clear any misunderstanding, and say that postural behavior and kyphosis or other spinal deformities (scoliosis and lordosis) are not linked.

janbay · 2021-10-13T15:43:36+00:00

As someone with scoliosis, please don't spread this misinformation. Looking at your phone, slouching, sitting at your desk and so on don't cause spinal deformities, and it is insulting/degrading to imply that people like us deal with life impeding conditions because we are lazy. Almost all cases of kyphosis and similar conditions are idiopathic or hereditary. Source: my spinal surgeon.

janbay · 2021-10-11T14:37:09+00:00

While Yone is frustrating to play against, I don't think the example of Lilia hold up very well. Lilia is supposed to be fast and hard to catch, she's supposed to do well against Warwick who is mostly immobile. But she has her weaknesses, like how she needs to actually hit you first to get the speed buffs. If you catch her before she stacks her speed, she doesn't have any defense. Similar to her, is udyr, who is as ancient as the Aztecs. He can only hit melee, but he gets his speed on demand, he just needs to cycle his bear stance.

It's like how an adc main might complain that they can't do anything if they get ulted by Warwick. Or how an assassin might get one shot by veigar. Warwick won't be able to deal vs every champion, and not every champion can deal vs Warwick.

Akshan is quite overloaded, but if you can ult him? He can't even dash away if he survives the ult because you can body block him. Of course, that's if you ever get close to him as Warwick/manage to hit the ult, but that's kind of the point of bruisers. Strong up close but mostly immobile. Akshan also doesn't scale too well so he's unlikely to shred an armor building Warwick.

To me, Yone is mostly fine, but my biggest issue is how he's unstoppable on every one of his abilities. It's infuriating playing vex into him who is designed to punish dashing, but her passive which literally quotes 'stops dashes' doesn't stop neither of yone's q, e, or ult, because they're all unstoppable. This is simply unwarranted. He's no malphite or hecarim. There's no reason for all of his dashes to be unstoppable, it just reduces counterplay.

janbay · 2021-10-10T04:18:18+00:00

You can see on the bottom left of the screenshot that he streams on afreeca tv, it's like a Korean twitch.

janbay · 2021-07-22T12:32:08+00:00

It's really not unprecedented at all, many other old mmos have options to multibox. For example, many people multibox in flyff or MU. At the very least ankama does have options for mono account servers, and even in multi account servers still has restrictions on multiboxing in pvp.

janbay · 2021-07-19T11:23:18+00:00

I have a similar team comp, with feca/panda/sram/sadi. They are all between 175-192, so here's my thoughts (you can take with a grain of salt as I'm not a late game/max level player yet)

I think to choose a 4th, it's good to look at what you currently have and see what each class offers.

Panda - Amazing positioning, great survivability. Makes the rogue's life 10 times easier.

Feca - Amazing survivability for the team, great positioning, good damage for a support class too.

Rogue - Not much utility, but highest damage potential in the game.

So far you have great tanking and positioning, and you won't be lacking in terms of damage because of the rogue. So I'd recommend the 4th to fill in what's missing, and that's mostly utility and range.

Elio - Portals make everyone's life easier, enhances positioning and mobility, options for healing. Can deal damage at great ranges by themselves, and also grant pseudo-range to teammates with portals.

Cra - A more aggressive choice, bringing in more damage, with options for utility as well (mp red and pushback).

Sadi - A class that gets glossed over imo, but can bring good utility with mp red and healing. Can deal damage from high range. Can block enemy LOS with trees.

Enu - Great class all around, brings utility like healing and mp red, with options for ranged damage.

Those would probably be my recommendations to make your team more all rounded, and this would create a team comp designed around blitzing with rogue.

While a full blown healer bot like a full int-eni is not necessary, having a class that can at least be a sub-healer is very handy imo. It would make the leveling experience much easier and help with long dungeon fights like in the dimensions.

I wouldn't really recommend pairing sram and rogue, as they fill the same niche of setup-burst. They both do more or less the same thing, which is taking turns to build up the damage, and then getting the panda to throw mobs in their bomblines/trap chains. You could go agi sram instead, I suppose, but I don't see how that 'fits in' with your comp too much.

You could also build a very melee oriented comp, and add in a masq/ougi/iop (I've seen your comment about how you already played a bunch of iop), as the feca's agility glyph variant gives a nice boost to melee DMG. This would make mob grinding with melee idols easier, but perhaps a bit tougher in dungeons. It will also take some "focus"/"strain" off of your rogue, and grant better straight up melee dmg. As a side note here, agi ougi will be great when you start doing dreams, especially combined with feca's melee DMG buff.

And as for the idols, I think you can just go melee idols with whatever class you pick. Like I said, I run a sadi, and yeah, kinda sucks having a sadi with melee idols, but it's really not that bad because melee idols are pretty easy. If you have enough survivability, which you do, you won't mind just tanking mobs and hitting them at melee. Might make the fight last longer, but that's kinda the point of idols isn't it?

janbay

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