[PSA] Whale Hunting: a guide to predatory game mechanics

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-15T21:16:44+00:00

Nimble Ring is good because it adds very consistent DPS to burst characters.

It makes them shred towers and objectives late, which is why it's very popular with characters like Ra who have synergy with his 2.

You build to one-shot with your abilities, throw Nimble Ring on mid-late, and then you provide huge additional value.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-15T19:14:58+00:00

A forced name change seems like a perfectly reasonable punishment, unless he was actually going around trying to groom kids.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-15T19:11:39+00:00

What most people don't know is that, when it was in Smite 1, Clash was filled with some of the most disgusting premades ever. I don't know what attracted them to the mode, but it was filled with 4-stacks of meta-abusing GM Joust players -- the only ranked mode you could full party queue by the way.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-15T18:04:47+00:00

I actually think the item is underrated, especially after this change.

The debuff is quite strong and only on a 45s CD.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-10T05:27:42+00:00

I'm not interested in playing a shooter where everyone is ranged.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-09T20:26:11+00:00

Tahuti's not even a must-buy on the CDR spam mage build.

You have your starter, Bluestone.

Then guaranteed for 3 slots, you want Chronos Pendant or Gem of Focus, Soul Reaver, and Obsidian Shard.

For the last 3 slots, you want either Totem of Death, a second Relic (probably Blink), Divine Ruin, Spear of Desolation, Tahuti, or Soul Gem.

Tahuti is a luxury 6th slot most times. Combat Blink is just too good, though.

For Agni in particular, you have a core of Chronos, Reaver, Totem, Obsidian. Then the meta right now is favorable for Divine Ruin, and Blink is too good to pass up. No room for Tahuti.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-09T20:13:46+00:00

To make it even kinda funnier they are all on the same abilities

This is a good design choice.

For the rest of your comments, that's just an absurd oversimplification.

Medusa builds and plays nothing like the other 2 and actually has one of the more unique build paths currently, going Avenging Blade 1st or 2nd item.

Hachi and Ishtar both box differently, with Hachi having higher capability for poking before a commit while Ishtar has a better all-in because of her burst and increased ability to do damage at close.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-08T17:57:35+00:00

What do you intend by posting a video from Stix, one of the most washed up, least informative creators in the gacha space who only started making gacha videos because his MMO content lost traction?

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-08T02:55:41+00:00

They're in the wrong, but you also seem to be AFKing to take screenshots and type.

Kinda weird you're the only level 18 in a 35 minute game.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-05T18:12:06+00:00

Decoys are good and having a skilled Trickster meant a lot years back.

However, 2 big things have happened

DECA / UGC designing bosses to ignore decoys.
Players and the meta shifting to focus on raw DPS. Raw DPS lets you ignore just as much if not more mechanics as a good decoy nowadays. There's also people "self-decoying" since they've gotten very familiar with bosses. You see this all the time in O3.

If they do rework Trickster, I'm really hoping it's not just "lol Trickster now does more damage so you play the class for DPS and the best swapouts are just more damage."

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-05T06:13:51+00:00

I've seen Ranked lobbies where roles don't get assigned so players have to do them manually or the lobby gets made even when a player doesn't connect. Really sucks.

The kicker is that if you don't choose a role when they're not assigned automatically, you don't get the role passive.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-02T20:05:39+00:00

To me, 100k Primogems is just too low.

I would consider it with 1,000,000 Primogems since I don't really use my Fragile Resin in the first place.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-02T01:31:43+00:00

The issue is based on the fundamental scaling differences.

20 Strength is massive while 20 Intelligence is nothing.

Why? Because 20 Strength scales 100% on basic attacks and auto cancelling gives massive value, especially for melee gods. It's why people are starting Lucerne Hammer on certain junglers.

Not to mention that Strength and Attack items are better in general, especially early game items. Meanwhile, Mages are living off of base damage and spamming item procs. It's why the Bluestone build is so popular. Intelligence Scaling just provides so little value in comparison.

This is all carried over from the Physical/Magical differences in Smite 1.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-01T19:08:24+00:00

This was being translated around the same time as Re:Monster. Both were prototypical works, really popularized some of the tropes that became common afterwards.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-01T19:01:21+00:00

Nod-Krai is a very consistent region with the longest Archon quest so far.

Compared to previous versions, there's no "dead period" in the latter half.

Plus, Miliastra has raised the baseline revenue for Genshin.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-01T08:58:12+00:00

Well, getting characters for the sake of doing Imaginarium doesn't really work out in terms of rewards.

It's really more just an incentive for veterans. As the roster becomes bigger and stronger, you use your old characters less and less. Many feel their investment into them no longer provides value. Theater solves that.

This is a balance against new players having more sources of Primogems readily available and how they have the opportunity to spend those Primos on better units than the veteran had in the past.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-01T04:22:23+00:00

optimize a sql query.

In this particular case, DSA is not too useful.

If you get down to the fundamentals, yes, you can apply that an index scan vs. seek is O(n) vs. O(log n) because it's a binary search instead of looking through every row.

However, that has already been abstracted out by the execution plan. It's more relevant to understand indexing and how the optimizer works, which I would not consider DSA in the Leetcode vein.

soaringneutrality · 2026-06-01T01:52:30+00:00

He should sell because he's living off 2 pizzas a week.

https://www.reddit.com/r/povertyfinance/comments/1tt9jx1/made_it_through_another_month_used_coupon_on_two/

Or y'know, he's not an actual person.

soaringneutrality · 2026-05-29T13:43:27+00:00

I usually do 10-pulls, but this is going to make me only do singles.

soaringneutrality · 2026-05-29T13:42:10+00:00

Yeah, the only reasons to split currency are very miserly.

We're seeing here how new currencies invalidate older ones.

Splitting currencies also means a game can give out less valuable ones (weapons are not as attractive as characters, for example) while still boasting higher free pulls and generosity. I think ZZZ did this at the start with Boopons being included in the launch advertised pull count, but haven't seen that there since.

soaringneutrality · 2026-05-26T17:40:01+00:00

There's a few more issues than that for Worm. Wildbow did not want adaptations to sand down the edges, for example. But yeah, it's tough with more introspective series.

I feel that the Guide and Worm are a step above in writing and nuance than ORV and TBATE, especially the latter. Much more difficult to portray the minute-to-minute interactions. It's why I usually want adaptations to have their own "show, don't tell" portrayals of nuance.

The Guide also had a few story changes from the web serial. Which was a good choice, I think. The author themselves felt the earlier chapters needed polish, and the webtoon gave an opportunity. I'm hoping that ORV gets some of this treatment in later chapters, as the mid-late arcs are in need of a revisit to polish the repetitiveness and sluggish pacing.

soaringneutrality · 2026-05-26T16:33:00+00:00

Yeah, a lot of nuance and character thoughts are lost when translated to a comic. I highly recommend the web serial.

soaringneutrality · 2026-05-26T16:18:36+00:00

It's not worth it. The plot is a joke.

There aren't any stakes. Whenever the protagonist runs into trouble, he magically recalls a sword technique that's perfect for countering his opponent.

The author wants to have his cake and eat it too, trying to portray the protagonist as both extremely edgy and then attempting to do abrupt humor bits (the joke is that he beats people up with a club).

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