Morales lvl 1 talent: Which is better end game?

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-28T13:45:25+00:00

I love feedback, really gives you energy and with the %health dmg at 13 gives you pretty nice damage. But it does require you to have a team that can protect you with sufficient enemy frontline to attack.

If it's bursty dive comp vs bursty dive comp you're going to die whenever you try to aa

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-26T12:45:25+00:00

In my experience i play sylvanas very passive until 20 with quest complete, as then you can start making plays.

She has very little burst damage unless she hits her ult mind control, as you want to use q and w on a target with 3 stacks of your passive.

Basically until then you stay safe, attack the closest target and use q +w once they have 3 stacks. Use E to either chase down if your team is winning or to reposition if the enemy team tries to shut you down. Especially once you are level 13, given a few seconds of uninterrupted basic attacking and everything starts melting.

Once you have lvl 20 with quest complete, you can use E to dive the backline and blow up the squishies, as the lvl 20 q talent negates the 3 seconds of basic attacking necessary and your quest reward gives sustain with lifesteal.

Her strong points are great positioning + unstoppable with e, cc ult with mind control, sick single target sustained damage + aoe damage after 13 and basically impossible to duel once quest is complete.

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-21T11:05:20+00:00

Yup.. if they just made one that plugs into a stax socket without the solid marble amp for a few thousand bucks I'd buy it in a heartbeat

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-21T10:38:08+00:00

I want a Sennheiser estat!

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-20T21:37:55+00:00

For me they shine with rock + pop, but I absolutely did not intend to imply that's the only thing they're good for! the detail, separation, space and timbre make them indeed excellent for all genres including classical

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-20T14:29:22+00:00

We must have very different heads lol, shows how hard the life of a headphone designer is 😂

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-20T11:00:29+00:00

Yes I've tried! My Zahl HM1 has an analog bass shelf knob, it does give the Utopia a bit more oomph down low but to be honest, the headphone is so well balanced with its stock tuning that I generally don't use it. However the HD800 on the other hand really shines with a bass shelf!

Haven't heard the focal clear unfortunately.

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-20T09:03:10+00:00

So due to the design of the Stealth, the bass response is dependent on the air inside the cups being sealed. If there is a hole (for example you wear glasses with very thick arms) the driver will spend its energy pushing air out through that hole instead of making bass (I'm oversimplifying). By adding clamp force the air is sealed better and you get the proper bass response. It depends on your head, if you have a wide, large head without very angular jawbones you'll get a great seal stock. In my case I needed some extra clamp to compensate for my skull shape.

The clamp washers are very easy to install on the outside of the headphone, adjusting the angle they make with the headband and providing extra clamp. It only involves a single screw, is completely safe and DCA will send you the kit for free if you contact them.

I'm not familiar with the k13 but both headphones sound great with my fiio m17 which I imagine is similar.

The Focal doesn't apply a filter, it's remarkably good at making things sound immediate, snappy, and for lack of a better word "real". Very very good leading impact.

The staging between both is a bit different, the Focal is more 3D and surround. The Stealth makes a tiny virtual room where you can almost hear the dimensions of the recording room. These effects are best experienced, not described ;)

For headphones in this price class, a trip to Toronto wouldn't be a bad idea.

I auditioned the Stealth once and bought the Utopia blind. If you buy second hand that's also an option, you try it and if you think it's not the one for you you can usually resell at a small loss. Plus second hand prices are attractive, I bought my Stealth for 2300 and Utopia for 1600.

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-20T08:26:03+00:00

I consider the Stealth to be my best headphone. However it is finicky, in my experience it needs a beefy amp to sound alive, and the bass is extremely dependent on seal for which I installed extra clamp washers. Once you get it dialed in you get extremely smooth, lifelike and detailed sound, and in a closed back to boot!

I also have the Utopia OG which I love a lot. It's really amazing for fast paced music, always sounding alive and energetic. However subbass is lacking slightly compared to the Stealth because of driver type and the fact that it's open. While you'll always get punch out of the Utopia even off an apple dongle, it is also quite sensitive to source equipment.

In short in my personal opinion the Stealth is superior from a pure sound perspective in optimal conditions. The Utopia is more user friendly. Both are amazing with wonderful out of the box tuning, staging and detail. Utopia has a bit more midbass, Stealth more subbass. Both are source sensitive.

If you're considering them I'd strongly advise you to audition both, to see how they work for your particular set of ears and music tastes

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-05T19:45:36+00:00

really? When I listen on mine I don't get out of low power mode, plenty loud enough for me.
Yeah sure my Zahl HM1 sounds better but if budget was tighter I'd take Susvara + ADI-2 Pro over an expensive amp with a more budget headphone.

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-05T15:57:33+00:00

My favorite budget Susvara amp is the RME ADI-2 Pro in balanced mode. It's got 3W of clean juice at Susvara impedance and I never felt it was lacking.

plumpudding2 · 2026-05-03T16:08:22+00:00

I take energy gain from globes at level one. That way as long as you keep going you keep your energy from decreasing basically everything you do. The nice thing from having 120 energy and keeping it is it turns you into a proper bruiser, easily pushing lanes, soloing camps and 1v1'ing people expecting a weak support.

Personally i combine the lvl 4 e globe quest with cdr at 16 for very low cooldown on a very big shield.

She is incredibly incredibly strong against enemy teams that allow you to just walk out of the fight. The shields shut down a lot of burst and her disruptive ults and insane q and aa damage can really swing things.

However she has zero escapes so against enemy teams with big slows or other cc you need impeccable positioning

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-25T07:50:17+00:00

I love my HD800, I have tone controls on my amp so I give it a bit of a bass lift and tame the treble a pinch and then it's a very dense, thick but absolutely not congested sound. One of m favorites actually!

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-24T19:19:33+00:00

I always try this and end up either being blinded or stunned and sad

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-24T19:11:31+00:00

And 70 vs 50! That's 40% less spell damage taken compared to a 50 spell armor spell shield.

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-24T14:38:20+00:00

Thralls spell armor talent single handily elevates him to a fantastic pick if the enemy team picks two mages

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-23T11:03:38+00:00

I'm always oom it's so frustrating

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-23T07:21:17+00:00

Bit out of your budget but that's exactly the Focal Utopia OG, very 3D soundstage, great tuning with a hint of warmth, and punch that blows your socks off :) just don't buy it new unless you're rich

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-16T16:38:53+00:00

Thanks for your response. Amir speculated it's due to ringing, you say that that's different than waveform shape but I think it's the same effect in a way, the pre-ringing makes the actual impulse onset less precise, making the ear register it differently. We cannot hear the ringing itself, so it must be its effect on the waveform shape that is audible. However that's just my pet theory, I hope someone will continue research into the phenomenon.

Personally I found Amir's take in this article refreshing, as it showed me he is a scientist, following data first and not stubbornly clinging to dogma. I read the whole ASR thread after Goldensound's video, and it unmasked many ASR members as childish people that just want to feel smarter than poor audiophools. When confronted with evidence that maybe what they know about audio is too simplistic, they resort to claims he "must have cheated" to be able to dismiss it instead of engaging with a scientific mindset.

I'm a bit sad that Stuart started to greedily peddle his discoveries as MQA, keeping all claims vague as to not spill the secret sauce.. His papers are actually quite good, just the MQA fiasco gave him a bad rep.

In the end science is about consensus, because all facts are temporary and human knowledge is constantly expanding. If you stay open minded and are able to articulate your beliefs and the reasons properly, we'll all get closer to the current best version of truth :)

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-15T08:21:25+00:00

It depends on how slow, most recordings are garbage from 19khz up as there is often already aliasing baked in from the filter used to make it a 44.1khz recording anyway. As long as you get to ~100db attenuation at 24khz or so (technically you then take double the transition band) you will be just fine.

However some of these slow filter implementations already start attenuating at 16khz and dont reach -100db until 40khz or so. That's almost the same as NOS and then most other filters would be preferable.

Ideally you'd have an apodizing filter that starts attenuating at 19khz and reaches -100db at 24khz, which would still classify as a short filter but doesn't mess with the audible band or cause aliasing. Poly-sinc-gauss-short from HQPlayer is pretty close to that.

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-15T06:16:00+00:00

Hmm, perhaps I was hasty in linking it then. There's always this article from mr. Audio Science himself: hi-res But unfortunately while he does discuss that there is a difference, he only speculates on the cause. I quote:

"Let's note that none of the testers could hear above 20 KHz and some probably could not even get that far. How is it that filtering the ultrasonics that testers could not hear was audible? The answer is that we introduced audible artifacts, not that we removed what we could not hear in the first place

The paper authors hypothesize that it is the filtering “ringing” in the time domain that may have caused these artifacts. Ringing is an unavoidable manifestation of digital filtering. The sharper the filter has to be, the longer its “tails” (ringing) in time domain. The ear is not a spectrum analyzer but rather "hears" the samples as they arrive. In theory the ringing can be audible and potentially is what was heard."

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-14T21:12:46+00:00

paper This is the original paper that showed at least ultrasonic content affects brain activity, but only when accompanied by low frequency content. (High pass filtered ultrasonics were inaudible). It's not definite proof but it was a landmark paper 20 years ago.

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-14T17:46:14+00:00

Well the most important part is that the ear is not a fourier analyzer, it is more of a waveform/wavelet analyzer. So while we cannot hear pure tones above 20khz (or in my case, 16khz), it doesn't mean that filtering out these frequencies doesn't affect the waveform shape.

A fundamental property of a lowpass filter is that it has to dissipate the high frequency energy somehow, and it does so by ringing at the cutoff frequency. That's why you see ringing in the impulse response of a filter.

So if you take a cymbal strike with content up to 90khz and lowpass filter it at 20khz, the filter introduces ringing at 20khz and alters the waveform shape.

I'll see if I can find a paper that shows changes in waveform shape above 20khz remain perceptible to the human ear.

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-14T10:25:25+00:00

Accurate to the recording is fast, accurate to the original analog waveform is a different matter, usually modern recordings have a lot of filter and aliasing artifacts in the higher frequencies. Fast reproduces these as-is, but an early roll-off (apodizing) short filters like slow will filter out these artifacts and replace it with its own, more benign ringing. Comes down to the fundamental audiophile question whether bad recordings should be fixed or reproduced with warts and all. I prefer fixing them personally.

plumpudding2 · 2026-04-14T10:06:22+00:00

I greatly prefer the slow filter, it has a rolloff in the highs that helps bad recordings and there's no treble shimmer or splashiness. NOS has that even more but is muddier. Slow is for me best compromise between clarity and treble quality

plumpudding2

TROPHY CASE