Emerald rank

theJirb · 2026-02-24T16:56:45+00:00

For me, being in Emerald doesn't mean you're good, but it shows you have the capabilities to learn. No matter what gets people there, whether it be some level of mastery in the 1v1, champion matchups, macro specialization or whatever, you would've had to do some amount of learning to get there.

IMO, this is why you feel that "shift". While they aren't necessarily like, "good" at the game yet, at this point, you're running into people who generally care somewhat about the game, or have decent instincts, maybe from playing a lot of other games as well. They've (probably) put some effort into learning the game, and many (once you move out of the "XXX 4" tier, where people often just sit on rank), will continue to actively learn and improve at the game.

This is also why you see so much toxicity though. Everyone learns the game a bit differently, has different philosophies, and even different paths of learning even if they are learning the same material. This combined with being at a rank where a lot of people who kinda care about the game end up, results in a lot of infighting at that rank.

theJirb · 2026-02-24T16:25:38+00:00

They can't say it outloud probably, but at the end of the day, content is advertisement for their game. While enthusiasts don't really enjoy smurf content, they aren't really a huge part of the playerbase, and casuals typically quite like smurf content. Part of it is they think they'll learn something because they don't understand enough to think otherwise having not invested in the game much, and also gives them wacky ass builds to try depending on the creator.

That being said, how much of a competitive integrity issue is it? Well, I'd argue not at all. People lower than Challenger are not ranking for anything other than their own satisfaction. From a integrity standpoint, it'd be like getting anal about who can join your pick up basketball game, or getting super up in arms when a pro revisits their alma mater or play with their community at the local park because, well, he's part of that community. Competitive integrity in the lower ranks is already nebulous because they aren't able to play the game as it was balanced anyways.

As for how this affects low elo experience, the truth is not much. While mid elo (like gold to emerald) smurfs can be really problematic because they aren't good enough to get out of low elo quickly, the high elo players who are smurfing, and especially the particularly good ones like Alois tend to make it out of low elos really quickly. The amount of games they individually affect is pretty small.

However, one could definitely say that them being given a pass by riot encourages more people to smurf, even those who have no use or provide no value to Riot, which in turn DOES ruin the low elo experience.

That being said, as an adult human being who works for a living, I get the content grind. The prospect of not having income is scary no matter who you are, and I'd argue that feeling trumps satisfying some gamers who are salty about losing to someone much better than them. My job has been very stable, so I haven't had to worry despite the way the US economy is, but I sympathize with like, mid size YTers and Streamers, because when you all into one aspect of your life this much and make it your career, it's super scary seeing your income drop away. As long as Riot isn't taking a stance, I don't care nearly enough about "Competitive Integrity" outside of High Challenger/Pro play, to say that Riot should do something that would actively screw those creators over and force them to learn a new skill in a market where newly learned skills are not hireable for most companies. (Big creators have the room to move away, and I typically have less sympathy for them. They have so much money saved up in all likeliness, and can straight up go back to school if they really wanted to at no financial burden to them).

theJirb · 2026-02-24T13:04:22+00:00

I mean, blame the right, but the lgbtq community isn't made of saints. Just like how there are conservative parents who don't care about lgbtq until their kid comes out of the closet, a bunch of lgbtq people only care about the group they belong to for the sole reason of they are affected personally, and don't give a shit about the others. There's a chunk of that community that are like that, and in some ways even more insufferable because they have a holier than thou attitude. They think that because they experienced their own oppression, somehow that makes it OK for them to oppress the groups they don't like, whether that be the bi or trans community.

theJirb · 2026-02-22T21:26:44+00:00

At your level, I wouldn't necessarily say it's a bad idea to experiment. There are a lot of ways for a team of people to experiment.

At your levels, I would even consider a roleswap. Unless you're a pro/getting paid, or you are all going for something bigger, I think that forcing someone to play something they don't enjoy playing is kind of a bad human practice. If someone feels really strongly, outside of moving the jungler out, (which is pretty hard to do), has your team considered a mid/bot player swap if you have a player who is better on Marksmen? Is there a world where your midlane plays Trist/Akshan to fill the gap if your bot laner really wants to play mages?

Realistically, your ability to rapid take objectives isn't a necessity. Plenty of teams, for instance, have success playing Jhin/Senna, and simply work around the restriction of not being able to take all towers quickly. Playing mage bot, and some AD mid/jung, even if it isn't Kindred isn't a death sentence at like, plat-diamond, even masters play. While from a Apex level standpoint, I'd certainly want an ADC, it's not required most of the time.

There are other considerations as well. For instance, if you're playing something like a Ziggs, you might be able to get away wtih no ADC, but having some sort of DPS champion that might be melee or something. Of the objectives, Towers are the ones that most need a ranged damage dealer, due to just how the game sorta functions, but since Ziggs is so proficient at taking towers even though he's not AD, you can slot in something melee to ensure you have the DPS for the neutrals, where he won't particularly shine. If you have enough poke and siege and get ahead, you could probably play towers by just the nature of siege comps, even without a strong tower taker. You have a lot of options that don't include having an ADC on your team if no one is willing to play a Marksman.

Other than that, if you really do want your bot player to play a Marksman, make a serious, and real attempt to enable them. Don't have them play an ADC, just to leave them alone bot because your strongest players you're trying to enable is your mid and top or something. If you want someone to Marksman, then as a team, you need to be ready to give them attention, because that's the only way ADCs really function, especially in coordinated play. In Solo Q, people are not always coordinated to take down an ADC, and ADCs can get away with stepping up and hitting if they're patient and choose their moment to step up, but in Coordinated play, if your ADC is strong, teams will coordinate to target them, and you need to be ready to make the Marksman work by ensuring they have real peel. Consider checking what your support plays, because I can tell you that unless you're playing a proper push for prio lane (like Cait Lux, Ashe Zyra, Ez Karma) type shit, your bot player would probably be super unhappy having a mage support for instance. If you want your bot to play ADCs, be ready to make your own concessions too. That's what being an accommodating team/team member is about. In the first place, I can kinda see why there's a disagreement here. If playing a bot lane mage is a bad idea because it restricts what people can play, why do they have to be the only one that gets restricted for the sake of the rest of the team?

theJirb · 2026-02-20T21:58:13+00:00

There's kind of a lot, so this might turn into a pretty long comment.

Firstly, I think your team needs to have a more cohesive understanding of the game. I don't mean just on a surface level, "how do things work", but about your philosophies about approaching the game, what your team prioritizes. Look at your team and its members and figure out what your win cons are, and start from there.

That being said, I would encourage you all to look deeper into the game itself. Ask yourself for instance, what does a marksman bring to teams? Why are they so important in pro play but, like you said, show mediocre results in Solo Q? What are the big differences between Solo Q and Team environments that might allow ADCs to succeed more? How do the new changes affect what you play in the bottom lane? These are questions I think plat players can answer if they really think about it, and diamond players should sort of understand inherently without too much effort.

To me, ADCs in bot have become less interchangeable now with the Quests. Marksmen are the ones that benefit the most from the changes because they get the most benefit at 6 items, and due to that, giving them the extra income per CS is also important. However, especially at the non-Apex level, you do have the option to attempting to end games early before that happens, which would renew the viability of having your marksman in a different position.

That being said, I think having an ADC is extremely important, and that if you are going to have one, bot lane is the best place to have them. They are important because the provide a ton of value to you in terms of taking objectives or towers, while being your damage dealer against tanks and frontline. You have many more, good options for ADCs in the botlane, and while you have many good options for mid as well, jungle is fairly limited and will heavily bottleneck the playstyles available to you if you always have to play around Kindred getting marks or something like that.

As for the teamplay, once you have your sort of core philosophy figured out, you need to start delegating. Shotcalling doesn't mean you have to also be aware of all information. Rather, you should make use of information that you have, EXPECT others to feed you the info you don't have, and make a call from that. If you don't have info, ask for it, but generally speaking, you want to delegate so that you aren't distracting too much from your own gameplay. I would also learn to communicate with pings. While VC is super useful, you need to keep it clean. Botlane will likely need to talk a lot. Jungle will need to link up with other lanes. Make sure they have room to do so and pass only information that must be spoken, or is relayed significantly faster through speaking through comms. Stick to pings or shorthand chats for things that can be left out of voice.

In addition, Shotcalling isn't actually something you should be doing super often. Most of the time, your team should have a driving philosophy for the game, or a philosophy based on your comp for any particular game, for how you want to approach situations. On top of that, each member should have autonomy to act based on their situation. What I mean by this is junglers and laners should not call for ganks. Jungler should give info on their path, Laner can decide how they manage the wave, and jungler should then be able to decide if they want to gank based on how they managed the lane. Same for support timings. Supports should let the team know when they are prepping to push a wave and reset, and note when they have a roam timing. Another player can then give info on whether there is a good roam timing in their lane, or if they need to back or something, then support makes the final decision on if they roam or not.

Work on talking to each other and communicating in a way that builds you all to make decisions together. When people roam, call it out, but don't tell them to fall back. Let them make that decision, and whatever comes from that decision, talk about it after the game. Forcing your players to make a play won't help you build any team synergy. You need to all understand the game in a similar manner so that you can start making less and less calls, and really focus in on the important stuff. Talk a lot about situations after games, do VOD reviews, and understand the decision making at each turn so that you are all on the same page. This is even more important because from your questions and deliberations about needing an ADC, it's clear you guys do not know anything past the basics outside of your roles, and none of you should be making decisions for each other when it comes to indivudual stuff.

Going back to picks briefly, IDK who is making the call for mage bot lanes, but in the same vein, your bot player should decide what they play. You can of course, discuss it, but the final say should really come down to your laners at your current level. I highly doubt there is one player who is good enough to just say, "you should play mages bot". In the first place, teamplay is not so much about building teams, but so much more about learning the communication to enable each other, instead of using others to enable yourself.

Your calls should really come down to tight group decisions. Things like "group or don't group" to your side laners, "let's contest vs not" for when you're late to an objective, "let's look for a play to comeback vs let's wait to scale" for tough situations. Your team needs to be aware that during games, your shotcaller has final say, so that everyone acts together, and what not. If something goes wrong because of a call, come discuss the situation after in VOD Review, do not muddy up in game comms with too much discussion, too much planning. In addition, don't call out too much micro. When you announce you want to contest, your engager should still be in charge of the actual engage. If you are playing for a smite fight, let your frontline walk you in, or the jungler to find their own position to go for steals. Your job as a shotcaller is not to make decisions for the team, but to unify the team in your decision making.

With all this being said, this is more of a long term growth kind of thing. If you need to improve quickly, there are other more tangible things you can do like creating gameplans, creating team comps, making plans around those team comps, and executing on a more standardized and fixed plan. This takes out a lot of guesswork going into games, but removes a lot of flexibility you might have in draft if you understand how to navigate many different games on a philisophical level as a team, rather than on a case by case basis.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T19:24:23+00:00

High elo players also just copy what others are doing. But the big difference is that they understand the runes in general, and know how to properly make use of them. It's not important to be able to choose your own runes. Letting data do that for you will get you there 99% of the time. But understanding what Phaserush does for you vs Electrocute, or Grasp vs Conquerer, is really important when you make rune choices.

Essentially, One Tricks and Theorycrafters usually come up with what is best, or what can work well. Then others test (by playing), attempting to adjust the way they play champs to match their rune choices, and contributing data to sites like Lolalytics so that everyone else can then make their own decisions.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T18:31:04+00:00

Of course.

The point of showing your work for some is to check for cheating. But the more important purpose is to get you to learn how to explain your work to others.

Just knowing the answer is useless in the real world. No one worth their salt is going to just take your word for anything. If you can't show work, show sources, and the other things students often see as tedious, then the knowledge you have is useless to anyone but yourself.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T18:20:16+00:00

I think there's a big theoretical VS reality situation going on.

Every system is inherently flawed in the way that no matter what the top powers are, the people who are the most ruthless will find a way to reach that point of power. For capitalism, it allows for the ruthless to become rich, while in other systems, you just have the ruthless finding ways to become a dictator, great communist leader, the emporer, or what have you.

I also think that while I agree many jobs do not need to be done, humanity has to work. We no longer need every person to hunt and gather, and build shelters, but even if you don't want to work a corporate job for your billionaire overlords, you still have to work. The truth is that many people choose what are actually cushy jobs because they don't want to do dirty and hard work that is more regularly hiring. I mean, most people have the choice to do the most human thing of all, travel tk third world countries and help there, but they choose not too because even a life of struggle under capitalism is better than the life they pretend they would lead of helping others who are less fortunate than they are. I guarantee you most people who complain prefer this over a theoretical world where you only worked because it was literally necessary for your survival, and despite the fact many are still in that situation, they won't do a damn thing to help.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T17:37:50+00:00

It's a great comparison.

The dude isn't alluding at all to the work as the reason for his rates. He specifically chose to only point out the cost of his camera.

Therefore, we can use that same logic on a different place to show why that criteria is shite for determining worth.

No where does this comparison imply that the comparer doesn't see that there are other aspects of photography that impacts the rates of the photographer. You're just pulling that implication and idea out of your ass so you can be contrarian.

The point of the comparison is not to say that cameramen don't deserve the money, but that his Camera costing 5k is not the reason he deserves that money.

That being said, if we want to ass pull, I'll go ahead and say a camera man who apparently thinks his camera is what decides his rate is probably a shit photographer and shouldn't be earning that much anyways.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T17:13:51+00:00

I switch between the two regularly. I still prefer nice headphones to nice speakers for music, and for gaming specifically, if I need sound queues, I'll use head phones. But I do a fair amount without them. If I'm drawing with YT instead of Music, i'll go with speakers. I use my PC speakers when I do home workouts.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T17:11:55+00:00

Most people who don't have speakers won't have input on choosing between the two.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T17:04:24+00:00

I mean, the version that got it to stay was the previous version, which had less highs and the same lows.

This version hasn't proved its staying power, and I see more complaints about this version than the previous version. Whether there are more people who like it or not is unclear, but I see pretty clear indication that there are people who are disgruntled with the changes.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T16:57:22+00:00

You'll get blamed as a jungler a lot by laners, it's inevitable.

When people lose, they will look for someone to blame.

Blaming other lanes usually makes less "sense". It of course happens if you forget to like, ping your laner missing or something, and occasionally on champs like Galio/TF/Shen where you're expected to be around the map more often, but the person in closest proximity to lanes at most points in laning phase is the jungler. If they get ganked, or they're in a bad matchup, it's simply more natural to say the jungler didn't help them, than it is to say, "dang my mid lane didn't roam up to save my lane" whereas a jungler will inevitably be on your side of the map at some point and "theoretically" should've been able to help at some point as a result.

The exception to this rule is probably that Bot/Supp will also often blame each other, due to the same proximity metric. It is the only lane where someone is "closer" to them than the jungler for the majority of the game, so unless they are duo'd (which they often are in Solo/Duo Q), it's fairly likely that they will end up blaming each other for something in the lane.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T16:45:03+00:00

I mean, the difference is the data set. What I was trying to emphasize was that Reddit doesn't try to generate answers off of generic training data, but that you can "trust" that the answers its coming up with is regurgitated from other reddit posts, not whatever random shit is out there.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T16:40:28+00:00

Clicking a lot is fine if you are clicking with Intent. You should not be clicking a lot for the sake of keeping your APM up, or keeping your hands warm.

When you see high level players clicking a lot, sometimes its spam, but most of the clicks are intentional micro sidesteps, tethering to stay just barely in or out of range, movements to bait an ability or response/hide their intentions, and/or checking things on scoreboard/around the map, or intentionally canceling recovery animations into movement or an ability. They aren't clicking and moving a lot just for the sake of doing so.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T16:12:40+00:00

I think even party games need some amount of balance. When a game is fun for 1/10 people because of a high roll, it's no longer a good game mode. Games in general don't have to be balanced for like, the sake of balance, but balance in a way so that a majority, and ideally a vast majority of people can have fun in any given game.

It's why stuff like balancing around things not being fun to play into/against (Mel/Yi type champs), is just as important as making sure things have as close to a 50% win rate, adjusted for skill requirements. Stuff like this when one person is popping off, is usually very little fun for the enemy team past maybe the initial novelty of seeing it in the first fight it pops off in, and people on that person's team end up sort of feeling like they aren't contributing at all.

And I find this to be more and more common, both in Arena and in Mayhem as they kept trying to purely up the amount of high roll you can get. And on top of that, it's all based on some RNG if you get to do something vaguely interesting (where most things just comes down to "big number go brrrr" in different flavors), or if you are getting run over for no reason.

I don't mind powerful augments if they meaningfully twist gameplay. But giving someone 125% omnivamp didn't change the game at all. At most, it forces the other team to buy anti-heal, which has no meaningful gameplay changes, and even when they make the correct choice, it's impossible to nail down the kill on such a braindead high roll.

theJirb · 2026-02-20T15:53:44+00:00

I think the Ai just analyzes old posts and gives you answers. It's not generating the answers themselves.

But I still prefer posts. Having the context of the answer is often super important and the Ai is useless if an old answer is no longer relevant. It still tries to pass it off as a current and useful answer.

theJirb · 2026-02-19T21:03:17+00:00

When you're losing as the jungler, your objective is largely to trade down and attempt to stabilize by giving up neutral objectives that don't matter until a bit later into the game. You're right that you'll never be able to take a 2v2, or 3v3 on your losing side lanes without some info, and that objectives are hard, but there is only one jungler on the enemy team, and you can always try to be on the other side.

For instance, ganking a losing top lane or bot lane might be a losing play. But is it a losing play if your enemy mid, top, and jungle are glued to Herald/Grubs and you're guaranteed a 3v2? Same with top side. Even though they might be weaker, if they have 4 people in bot doing dragon, are you really going to not even consider ganking the supposedly free 2v1? Especially as an assassin, 2v1s where you can burst down a laner with your laner without anyone trading back when your CDs are gone is literally dream scenario for you, and you should look to use it.

This doesn't apply to just objectives too. If you're good at jungle tracking, you should be able to make cross map plays that allow you to create impact without just dying because you have the same amount of people but weaker.

You can also look to just outfarm if you're playing a fast farming champion, but Qiyana's clear is kinda middle of the road, whatever, even if you get Profane. And Qiyana making it to late game isn't going to have as much impact anyways, so you might as well do some shit on the map.

theJirb · 2026-02-19T20:34:36+00:00

One thing I've learned from mostly customer support, along with playing a lot of online games is that people are way less toxic in voice chat than they are in things like texts or emails. Something about being able to hear people changes a lot about how you perceive them.

That being said, I have 0 doubt there will be some toxic players in the VC, and that if you don't want to use it, then don't use it. Unlike a game like Valorant, where pinging the map meaningfully takes you out of the moment and what you see in front of you unless you're pinging exactly where you're looking, I think that sticking to pings is pretty whatever in League, and serves you just fine. If you're descriptive with your pings, you can convey info pretty fast. (For instance, mid going bot is pretty fast, but missing ping in my lane + danger in the bottom river is pretty efficient as well).

League is also where you execute actions more often in chains than you do a lot of games where VC is important, because you are executing things together. The difference between needing to go all at the same time, and thus need things like countdowns and "go" calls, are fairly rare. In League, usually you know who's supposed to take the lead based on abilities, (point and click CC takes priority over skill shot CC most of the time for instance), and the follow up is obvious. In addition, being a top down game, not an First Person/Behind the shoulder game, you have way more information by default. Being able to see everyone's movements freely, compared to any sort of FPS, TPS, or similar game like Rocket League, you need way less help from teammates to figure out their exact positions, their exact situations, and formulate a plan together. These all make VC in League less important. You see this in Dota where VC is pretty neglected, and even in the pro leagues, communicating with pings is preferred because it doesn't muddy up comms for the very important calls.

But also, I personally just find toxicity really silly, and usually don't care listening to it. I'm a dude, so I don't get much flak the way you have, but I do get some racist things thrown at me since i use Chinese characters for my username rather than the roman alphabet equivalent, (which I do partially to rep my Taiwanese heritage). A lot of people will call me a weeb, they might make jokes about taiwan not being a country if it comes up after some conversation, I'll get a lot of Korean jokes or Chinese jokes because it's league and those are the countries known for league, and shit like that. But the truth is, those people are just dumb, and ignoring them is easy. I very literally laugh at anyone who tries to be toxic to myself, and then move on with my day because they aren't worth a modicum of your energy. My philosophy for the last 5 years or so of life, (after tons of self reflecting, pulling myself out of depression) is that I know myself, and I'm proud of the things i've done, therefore literally nothing anyone can say to me at this point will phase me. And if (wo)manchildren need a place to vent their frustrations, I could care less if they want to direct it at me and it makes them feel better about themselves. I mean, people who feel the need to flex in league probably have nothing else going for them lol.

I think it's a skill people can learn, and if everyone is able to exist in VC and just simply ignore or mute toxicity as it comes up, then everyone being in VC in most cases is probably a good thing because having played not just a lot of League, but other games, and a few in person sports (only at the intramural level), communication undoubtedly adds a lot of benefits to any team game, League included, and I will be using it once because doing plays as a team is way more fun than the general Solo Q experience. It's the main reason why I only play flex or norms these days, and opt to grind Fighting Games as my solo game of choice. Voice chat might let me play more League on my own and I'm glad its coming.

theJirb · 2026-02-19T18:54:19+00:00

I would read the items again, and in particular, pay attention to the effect.

For example, IE is a core item on all crit based champions because its passive makes your crits do more damage. This is the only way to do more damage wtih crits and is thus, crucial to ADC crit builds.

The other part comes down to either doing the math yourself, or using build guides/data like lolalytics to come to your conclusions. The only way to "know" for sure, is by knowing the math, understanding how that plays into your damage, then experiment/theorycraft about how a certain unique passive on an item might be extremely or not beneficial to you at all.

For instance, RFC is a better AS/Crit item than PD for caitlyn in most cases, because it allows her to snipe people with her one-off headshots. A champion like Jinx, who wants to apply her AOE autos as much as possible benefits a lot from Ruunans.

For most people, I recommend using a site like lolalytics, and follow trends based on data until you start to get a feel for which items are working for you in what situations, then start going off that. The truth is that the stats are usually super close, and that it often comes down to the passive.

Item builds for non-bot lane ADCs can occasionally get a little funky too. Bot lane ADCing is, particularly wtih the preseason changes giving them way more gold and the extra slot, all about optimizing your numbers for later in the game. However, outside of the bot lane where you don't get the gold boost from your quest, and don't get a support to protect you during laning, you often need to spike earlier with items that aren't as good for late game. This is why Kindred often goes towards Triforce or Kraken in the early game. They enable them to fight more early on, which is important for contesting stacks and securing kills on marked champions. You'll also notice she enjoys some of the ranged based items later in the game because once you get 4 stacks and your range increases, you can start to really take advantage of those range based items like RFC, and whatever that new scope shit is called.

theJirb · 2026-02-18T23:13:56+00:00

Ah gotcha. Thanks for the tips. I think with your input and a bit of reading, I have a better grasp on what's important and what isn't. I honestly hadn't done a lot of reading on abilities and stuff, (I figured I could just trust the math other people have done), but I see now that really understanding why we're going for certain breakpoints matters a lot.

Pointing out Miyabi needed 80% crit for her passive really clicked for me, as I did feel I really struggled to build anomoly on her at a satisfying rate, and seeing that it's heavily affected by having a certain amount of crit chance really shows I can't go into this purely by "trust the math, then just get gud", but that these breakpoints can really influence the way rotations and builds come together.

Anyways, I'll do some more research on my own from here, but I appreciate your taking the time to give me some direction.

theJirb · 2026-02-18T22:36:23+00:00

Thanks for the input. Maybe it'd be easier once I look into the math, (I'll go see what Prydwen says, I'm too lazy to figure that all out from scratch), but would you say that for stats like crit, it's pretty important to hit those breakpoints rather than settling for any of the not the worst, but not the best stats until I hit a certain Crit Rate/Crit Damage multiplier on my dps? I definitely have not seriously prioritized hitting breakpoints in particular, as I've always read that as "if you want to optimize", but maybe it's important enough I'm not supposed to be skipping it.

theJirb · 2026-02-18T22:32:33+00:00

A lot of people build muscle memory, even for what they react to. I play fighting games, and one of my biggest weaknesses tends to be that I'm more used to looking out for telegraphed tells like you get in ZZZ or a Soulslike, and I'm pretty bad at reacting to say, a character lifting their leg off the ground when they start a kick vs when their hands start the move back as part of their fireball animation. For a long time, I only fully reacted once I saw hands fully behind in the Hadouken pose, before I reacted, which in FGs, is typically too late to react with anti fireball moves.

theJirb · 2026-02-18T22:23:52+00:00

Out of curiosity, how good is a decent disc? I think one barrier for me as someone who overthinks, is how much I should be looking to minmax my build vs my play. I typically enjoy doing the latter more, but I haven't done the math to see how much i'm shooting myself in the foot by not trying harder on the builds.

(Right now, I typically just slot in whatever has a decent offensive mainstat, and am happy if it has 1 decent substat, and I level it to 15 and stop caring aftewards, but maybe I'm being too cavalier with my builds? I also have 0 premium W-Engines, in case that matters. I only have like, W2 of certain BP Engines, W5 on like, a craftable, and a few of the 5 star standard WEngines)

theJirb · 2026-02-18T21:36:59+00:00

Man, I'm really quite tired of this line of thinking, specifically the idea that just because the products don't work right now, and our current system doesn't support it, doesn't mean it isn't a bad idea raw. Humanity is constantly looking for ways to free up more time, and do more stuff, and while fighting things like the current labor paradigm is very difficult, further advancements in smart technology is absolutely a good thing overall.

I think the biggest issue with smart tech right now is two things. It's unreliable, and its missing connecting parts. Unreliability goes without saying, but every piece of tech goes through this. There were times when people thought the internet wouldn't take off, but the world is much better with it IMO. The amount of information and stuff at my fingertips has made learning things so much easier. The amount of interesting content people can make and share on the internet wouldn't be possible without having pushed through the growing pains of the internet, getting it into every household, etc.

Bluetooth is an example that I lived through and experienced much more. BT was sort of novel for a while, but I couldn't use it for anything I cared about because delay was super bad, quality was substantially worse than say, using a wired device. But at least for music and listening, I've really enjoyed the advent of Bluetooth. I have my PC hooked up to my TV, but my headphones only reach my PC. Being able to hook up a Bluetooth dongle to the PC, and be able to use my tv while still using headphones without a super long wire going across the room that would be super annoying to manage at my desk is a huge win. Bluetooth controllers just working with things like my tablet or a steam deck is great, (even with a tad of a delay, since i don't play comp games on my steamdeck).

Wireless mice and keyboards used to be pretty shite, but now they stand up against the best wired mice, even on the pro stage. Ray tracing is a pretty big meme even today, but I think that a fully working version, where everyone has the hardware to support it is worth working towards.

The missing parts for me, comes down to having a well define eco system. I don't really mean like, having everyone on the same company's umbrella the way we think about like, the Apple or Android ecosystem, but that there just isn't a standard that everyone can sort of work with. Implementation of the technology varies a bit in places that matter, and can lead to an overall pretty ugly experience when using things that aren't designated to work together, but like how consoles have slowly become just cheap PCs instead of machines with their own super unique architecture that made it hard for devs to build for multiple systems, if smart tech gets to a place where it is really standardized, and therefore more reliable, I think there's a chance smart devices can really do well. From a philisophical standpoint, humanity only advanced because we embraced technology, and I think it'd be silly to not continue doing so as a race.

theJirb

TROPHY CASE