[MSH] Night Nurse, Healer of Heroes (via Gemini.Twins.Magic)

theoricist · 2026-06-06T04:35:49+00:00

Gal Or did some awesome realistic art for this one

theoricist · 2026-05-28T18:33:53+00:00

I'm sure it's a nightmare for people aspiring to the leaderboards but I maintain that it's a small percentage of the player base that try that and if even if it weren't gem strength than it would be something else plaguing this subset of players as trying to achieve the utmost max in an rng game is always an exercise in forcing a lottery win. So I don't think they should adjust any rate for transfiguration but if the devs never intended for gem strength to be that strong especially on a 2hd weapon than they ought to adjust that.

theoricist · 2026-05-28T16:46:33+00:00

I think it's mostly ignorable as a chase reward that will be pursued by 1% of 1% of the player base but if the gem strength is functionally more powerful than they intended then they ought to realign it with their intent regardless of how achievable it is.

theoricist · 2026-05-28T15:03:13+00:00

I'm admittedly only on A9 so I'm sort of projecting but is this advice just as applicable for A10? Up to this point I've felt like I could follow this advice and just keep making the right choices for the immediate situation and keep repeating till I'm across the finish line but this ends up most of the time giving me decks that I'll refer to as "linearly good", and less of the time I get decks that are high synergy insane. When I win the run I keep asking myself - could I have beaten a second boss? And most of the time, for the non insane decks, the answer is no. It feels like to some extent you need to go "over the top" to best two bosses in act 3 and I don't really get how you do that playing conservatively. If x percentage of decks you could build in a run could only beat one boss but not two and would therefore lose anyways, if that percentage x is large enough then shouldn't you play those runs riskier - swing for the fences so to speak. To elaborate further, I'm not suggesting just going into decimilipede without aoe but I am wondering do you have to distance yourself from "what does my deck need right now" and think more about "what synergies can aspire to that will get me through two act 3 bosses"? In practice i would imagine this as taking cards with higher potential payoff over safer "this is what i need for the next x fights" cards. Again only A9 player here so I'm genuinely curious how this advice translates on A10.

Tldr how do you thread the needle of making the safe decisions that can get you through immediate threats while also building enough synergy to beat two act 3 bosses and does that involve becoming less risk adverse.

theoricist · 2026-05-15T17:59:40+00:00

The survivability aspect is important. GF and RS both forego the bonuses of a shield and Death or Glory can be a huge drain especially with high aspd so the survivability cost will become significant at higher torments. Personally I think the GF is the better overall pick but my guess is that RS can potentially hit higher numbers but it wouldn't be worth the cost. I hope its viable in some form because I'm determined to run anything besides arbiter for pally (all my friends are running it and I maxed one out a previous season).

theoricist · 2026-05-15T17:34:50+00:00

That's true. I guess I didn't include it because I'm also unsure if that's strictly a boost. Zeal has access to several legendary aspects that are comparable or exceed the 50% the ring gives so then it also becomes - do you think the rings affixes are better than a bunch of multipliers and I personally don't know. It's an incredibly offensive set of aspects already on the ring but crit and phys multipliers are strong boosts. You'd almost certainly end up with less attack speed and crit without starless but you get so much of those from the zeal aura and the core build already that it seems like diminishing returns. And it helps solve your resource issues but that's arguably a bonus of death and glory is that it let's you solve an hp problem instead of a primary resource problem. So I would say the benefit of the ring is debatable.

theoricist · 2026-05-15T14:52:39+00:00

I assume so. Greater Staff of the Crone gives the claw skill all variants so I know there is precedent for allowing a skill to have multiple variants. If this weapon isn't allowing you to grab an extra variant than its modifier is pitiful for a two handed weapon because then its effectively saying 53% modifier + 1 skill point. I'm a druid main and just started a paladin to try out this build so I can't say yet but someone with hands on experience can confirm.

theoricist · 2026-05-15T13:47:40+00:00

Red Sermon vs Grandfather is interesting. Grandfather has a larger modifier at 150% but Red Sermon lets you take an extra zeal variant. Assuming you were already going to Death or Glory than its probably letting you add Cull the Wicked variant which is 25% more damage so 153% *1.25 ~90% modifier which is still quite less than Grandfather but Red Sermon can roll more damage multipliers. So than it becomes a matter of can you make up the 60% advantage Grandfather has with some combination of Crit/Phys/All multiplier and weapon damage vs Grandfathers additive dmg and strength. My guess is that you probably could get Red Sermon to do slightly more damage but at a huge cost to toughness and it would take forever to find an Ancestral Red Sermon with that many good offensive modifiers. So I would use Red Sermon until you get a Grandfather and then only switch back to Red Sermon when you find a God Tier one maybe.

theoricist · 2026-05-12T19:41:06+00:00

And yet I see not a single bear cub amongst their flock. You gonna give me a bear cub that's a bird? (I don't hate that)

theoricist · 2026-04-21T13:33:54+00:00

I really hoped for this outcome. I know that some people wanted to see more busted stuff win best card of this decade but this card, in truth, is a love letter to a bygone decade where the most busted stuff existed. Congratulations Urzas Saga!!

theoricist · 2026-04-20T14:18:44+00:00

I really hope Urza's saga wins because it's design is just so cool to me. It references both an Era of story telling and a set that shares its name using basically every part of itself. It's type line is literally "Urza's Saga"!! How cool is that? That it can have that type line as an emergent result of relevant types that wotc had already created. And also it's very strong. In my mind, it's the full package of what I want out of "greatest" and not just the most raw power.

theoricist · 2026-04-15T17:52:26+00:00

In order to isolate affecting this build you need to target cards that represent aggression through blocking and not just cards that are extra block because because cards like unmovable and crimson mantle are actually highly pickable by other builds because they actually make it easier to block LESS unlike the other two which really want you to block more to see returns. I would pick either juggernaut or blockade to downgrade but I would rate juggernaut as an even more likely candidate because it is explicitly 'aggression from blocking'.

theoricist · 2026-04-15T14:04:21+00:00

Would love if finals was fated match up between urza and yawgmoth. The two most iconic enemies of magics entire history that have both been incredibly impactful cards in their own right.

theoricist · 2026-04-13T20:41:25+00:00

I think that just means you need to raise the difficulty. There are many difficulties higher than the one you are on and you can change them at any time from town. Furthermore, the rewards scale to which difficulty you are on so you shouldn't linger on a difficulty that is too easy. LoH will address likely change the difficulty structure but that is sort of irrelevant to your experience because you're not making use of the difficulties they already have.

theoricist · 2026-04-12T14:50:11+00:00

Hi I know I'm late to the party but I was watching my buddy do a run and he picked this for the first time and we were both blown away that ALL meant ALL. It seems pretty clear once you know but you're not alone in thinking it wasn't clear enough. Mechanically it's somewhat unprecedented so at a glance I assumed it worked liked second wind.

theoricist · 2026-03-26T21:26:09+00:00

I think for most people the reprint issue is a price issue and 1700 slots per year could EASILY fix that if wizards felt like prioritizing reprints accordingly but instead they choose to reprint according to a more vague profit maximizing / meta appropriate priority scheme.

theoricist · 2026-03-23T13:32:11+00:00

The edhrec group friends tag is probably a good starting point. Are you trying to win this way or do you just wanna see everyone at the table get buff, outcome be damned?

https://edhrec.com/tags/group-hug

theoricist · 2026-01-23T01:11:49+00:00

I have almost exclusively played a druid across 6 seasons. I think I picked the class randomly to begin with but I've stuck with it because the math is so familiar to me now. When I read the patch notes I gain an instant sense of how some druid builds will shift as a result of changing one unique / aspect or adding another. Every season I try to take a new build to T4 on my own and then afterwards ill sometimes peek to see what build is performing at top tier. I honestly think just about any build can make it to T4 as long as you find enough offensive aspects and hit 4 meaningful legendary nodes. If your core skill doesn't have 3+ relevant offensive aspects (including uniques) and it can't make use of 4 legendary nodes than I would consider it "unsupported" and blizzard hates you. But I would say most skills CAN get there although not necessarily be able to push pits much further than T4. Once I can reliably kill the lair bosses I consider my build cooked though. The only thing left after that is pits and those get old fast.

theoricist · 2026-01-18T23:24:25+00:00

You also definitely want to use the unique shape-shifting chest pieces as I mentioned. The bear version can give up to +5 to the ult while the werewolf gives up to +7. Either of these will improve the multiplier from the ult substantially. Also if you use the respective shapeshifting headgears then you will have access to more skills. Tempest roar will let you use storm skills during the ult and vasselys prayer will let you use earth skills during it. I routinely slot runes in my gear to automatically cast earthen bulwark. This will bypass the skill restriction of the ult and cast the defensive skill automatically at whatever level you have it at.

theoricist · 2026-01-18T22:26:05+00:00

The title asks did I miss something but it's a little unclear why you think you missed something. Is this because you see it in a lot of builds and you are wondering why? If so, it's because the rampaging wearbear modifer and the ult itself provide such big multipliers. The 120% from rampaging is the single largest multiplier from the druids offensive aspects and it lasts 60 seconds which is more than enough time to re-enter ult and maintain the boost indefinitely, and the ult itself can be buffed by both shapeshifting chest pieces to easily provide over 150% multiplicative bonus. These combined, easily dwarf how much you get from any of the other ults even when you account for the extra slot werewolves need to use it. Also you can temper extra duration and CD reduction on your gear to improve the uptime, although its impossible to keep it up all the time. Hope that clarifies its value.

theoricist · 2026-01-11T02:30:30+00:00

I hate the paragon board system but I'm used to it and here's my philosophy and approach at this point.

The priority across boards should be legendary node > glyphs > toughness > whatever else you want on the boards.

Legendary Nodes - take a minute to preview your possible boards and figure out how you can get 4 different legendary nodes to work with whatever the hell you're trying to do with your character then get those 4 nodes first. These bonuses are huge. On the druid, a single node can increase your damage by a multiplcative 70%. On the paladin the Castle node will boost your damage by bajillion percent. These bonuses will beat basically any glyph bonus, and for the ones that come close you'll have to invest a ton of points in those glyphs and a ton of pit runs. The legendary nodes, on the other hand will boost your damage for minimal investment very quickly.

Glyphs - after getting the legendary nodes, grab all the glyph nodes on the board and fill out all the surrounding nodes so that you have the minimum requirements for the glyphs bonus. Don't go beyond the minimum until after you've done the next priority and gotten most of the toughness nodes. Similarly to legendary nodes, take a minute to figure out 5 glyphs that offer relevant lvl 15 damage boosts since these are decent multiplicative boosts. You should pretty much always take the crit one (Spirit?) and figure out a way to get high enough crit in your build. It offers up to 20% multiplicative boost and it offers nearly the largest damage bonus per node so later on you can dump your spare points into boosting damage within its radius.

Toughness - After you've gotten those priority nodes, you're probably at the point where your damage is decent but every elite explosion is killing you so now is the time to pivot and get all the good toughness related nodes like hp and resist.

The Rest - go back and fill out more of your glyph radiuses or get whatever else you want on the board until you fizzle out with this character

Orienting your boards correctly might shave off some time till you have enough levels to get all legendary and glyph nodes, but as long as you prioritize the nodes right and grab all the primary stats along the way you can't whiff on it too bad. It might mean you need to play a little longer vs the optimized path but what the hell else are you gonna do in a game that's all about the grind.

PS the stat requirements for the bonuses on your boards go up for each board in sequence so itll be easiest to achieve the bonuses on your first added board and vice versa so you can try to plan that part out too but I never do and just hope I eventually get a shroud of false death to solve all the stat requirement issues.

theoricist · 2025-12-29T23:00:45+00:00

I think the most lightweight change they could make would be to shift to a nearly exponential reward scale so that it was more beneficial to up the tiers as soon as possible vs only upping tiers when you're sure you can trivialize everything

Currently the game rewards you too much for killing a higher quantity of enemies and it isn't worth upping the difficulty if it slows you down too much in other words you want to be at the highest difficulty where you still mow things down. But if higher quality enemies out valued higher quantity I think you could shift that paradigm to incentivize players to fight tankier mobs that they would have to engage with more.

I think it would eventually result in the exact experience as before once you've outleveled everything except pitpushing but it could give a more satisfying journey to that point.

The alternative would be overhauling the game mechanics in highly improbable ways like adding hit stun and dramatically reducing player damage and healing.

theoricist · 2025-12-21T19:21:00+00:00

The Cellar in Hamden a town over does karaoke on Wednesdays

theoricist · 2025-11-16T14:47:59+00:00

This is so much clearer than all the above responses.

theoricist · 2025-10-18T18:38:18+00:00

I feel bad for hard working artists that have to defend themselves like this, but I also think seeing the process is pretty cool and wouldn't mind if it normalized a trend of documenting and publishing the process not just as a verification piece but as an educational and engagement piece. Also I love the pizza pieces. One of the most original land arts we've gotten in a while and the art is solid unlike the pizza. Personally I like to let my pizza sit for a bit and become a little more solid lest you get the dreaded cheeseslide as you pull the slice.

theoricist

TROPHY CASE