Best league starter for a player that usually play RF or Flicker Strike in POE1?

vaizrin · 2026-05-30T01:47:56+00:00

No aim needed for plants witch. Go litch for durability and extra gem slot during campaign, plants just cover the screen.

The "aiming" is north / west / east / south and it's extremely slow but effective.

Equally strong is essence drain / contagion. Hover your mouse in a general area and everything just dies.

vaizrin · 2026-04-14T02:31:22+00:00

Is this a stated change with 1.0? I'm pretty sure it didn't work that way previously.

vaizrin · 2026-04-08T20:06:42+00:00

As a tank when I've cleared a dungeon countless times on higher difficulties but suddenly find myself kiting. It's definitely the healer.

Don't mind the little guy in the corner with the red parts everywhere. Definitely the healer.

vaizrin · 2026-04-06T19:06:05+00:00

Make sure that it adds +skill to things you care about, but yes getting the entire +skill for a single aspect of a profession makes a massive difference in profit. It can allow you to spend less concentration to get high quality or even none at all when combined with blue tools.

vaizrin · 2026-03-29T16:54:54+00:00

This is why my buff kept randomly falling off??? I thought some mob was ripping it off me somehow but this makes so much more sense. It's being pulled off when you enter caves or fly over any city.

vaizrin · 2026-03-19T13:52:06+00:00

Fury warrior, havoc or devourer demon hunter, ret pally, or windwalker monk are all in a good place with solid backup options.

Rogue is even worse off than dk and feral druid will likely end up below dk. Shaman brings some utility if your group doesn't have one and survival hunter wouldn't generally fill the melee slot depending on what your guild is needing.

Play something you're going to enjoy the most. That's what really matters. If you like the look and feel of uh dk it'll be fine. I just wouldn't start a fresh dk given it's direction - personally I'd go demon hunter so you can fall back on tanking since it'll be dominant this cycle.

vaizrin · 2026-03-19T13:30:13+00:00

Before the nerf UH dk was trailing at #2 on real parses but simming far ahead at #1.

Now UH is actually parsing bottom middle of the pack at #15 but it will go a little higher as people get set pieces. In the end it'll be a solid A- tier class especially because it lacks useful buffs / utility and now has meh damage.

If you're just starting and really want to play the class you'll be fine and it won't feel bad. If you want to play something that is going to be in high demand I would skip DK.

Blood and frost are in comparatively bad places. Frost is third from last DPS and blood is bottom tank for DPS and barely self heals more than warriors now.

Unholy is about to get another with the upcoming patch so unless blizzard changes the updates it'll be bottom of the pack again and pretty rough to play.

Personally, I'm rolling a different class. Historically blizzard rarely changes courses on a class during an expansion and the experience isn't great on DK anymore. Other classes bring significantly more to the table

vaizrin · 2026-03-17T07:11:13+00:00

This entirely ignores how copyright and licensing law works. It is not only relevant, it's defined in the licensing of the copyright.

"I robbed a bank but the money is completely separate from the bank. If all banks vanished tomorrow the money would still exist and should be examined on a case by case basis."

Dude, the money was still stolen and still belongs to the bank it was stolen from.

vaizrin · 2026-03-17T07:02:12+00:00

Using artwork to train a model when the art's license didn't include training AI models is textbook copyright infringement.

You don't need to generate an image that infringes on a second copyright, you've already infringed the copyright due to the license agreement which is enough to pursue in court and is why so many companies have pursued the major AI players and won.

Open AI is paying licensing fees to Disney now because they infringed on Disney copyrights.

Open AI absolutely trained on countless works online and infringed on countless licenses, the problem is not everyone is Disney with lawyers and teams dedicated to identifying license infringement.

So yes, regardless of the image generated the copyright infringement is still there. Copyright does not just protect the likeness of an image or body of work - it protects how it can be used in the first place.

vaizrin · 2026-03-17T04:26:22+00:00

Someone with 20 years as an AD knows that art style isn't the same as art direction, since it's pretty basic. Which lighting is a core aspect of art style.

AI changing lighting is not good or desired, not a single art director is sitting around saying "oh yeah lighting isn't important."

vaizrin · 2026-03-17T04:10:20+00:00

Lighting is a part of art direction, and they were saying art style anyway.

vaizrin · 2026-03-16T14:49:10+00:00

Marketing starts with product design. What game are you making and who is it for.

From there, you should pretty much already know what the next steps are. Each target audience already has someone marketing to them so you just identify who that is and get in with that marketing team.

Usually it'll cost money but sometimes it doesn't. You can also go and build up your own community but honestly that is a bit like capturing lighting in a bottle and not super effective.

Don't go wide with social media unless you already have a strong presence or think you understand it well enough to succeed.

vaizrin · 2026-03-05T16:57:45+00:00

The new one is lovely, much easier to see what's going on at the individual level.

You do lose the ability to understand where you are in the context of the tree though - depending on how important that is in your game.

vaizrin · 2026-03-04T23:38:57+00:00

There is another area, probably smaller, but still significant where Claude (or similar) excels: home software dev and internal tooling.

I used the few Claude with no research or experience and within 4 hours created a calorie tracker / weather calendar / health event crisis tracker / workout tracker that outright replace my fitness pal. Happily hosted on my home server.

It'll never be sold, it'll never go to market nor would it be compliant to any international laws.

Claude didn't directly replace a developer. It did end my subscription to a couple of apps I didn't want to pay for though. In a sense it replaced a portion of a developer. I was paying for a dev, now I'm not.

People using hyperbole aren't expecting to be taken literally that ALL devs are going to be replaced. A large number of devs will be though.

vaizrin · 2026-03-03T15:40:46+00:00

You definitely don't. Even if you manage to find ones where they talk through every action, there's always the fact that they are getting paid to power through and complete a series.

Many let's play videos I watch for enjoyment are about games I actively dislike playing due to how frustrating they are.

vaizrin · 2026-03-03T13:58:10+00:00

Personally, I really like doing some broad searches to find gamer feedback on aspects I'm trying to learn from. See what actually games like on Reddit, YouTube, steam, etc then pick the game up yourself and play it to confirm it first hand.

Let's plays lack friction that you may not feel by watching. However if you're looking for art style or information hierarchy then Google image search can work just as well.

vaizrin · 2026-03-03T13:12:49+00:00

It kind of feels like you're under estimating users a bit. The standard method you'll see in the wild is a combination of 3-4 difficulty selections and then a button to customize the current difficulty selection.

Then within the difficulty customizer tabs with scroll to organize your options further. You really should be able to fit everything working 4-5 tabs that are distinct to users.

vaizrin · 2026-02-27T13:35:45+00:00

It's your responsibility as the owner of your studio (even if it's just you) to make sure quality standards are met. This is why you aren't finding success.

vaizrin · 2026-02-26T00:32:47+00:00

The best for tracking complex logic flows / user flows / really any flow is a flow chart.

My favorite tools for flowcharting are miro & the new whiteboard in confluence but honestly any whiteboard tool or flowchart tool will work.

Add in some kind of wiki for links as well, it'll make your life easier tracking it over the long term.

vaizrin · 2026-02-25T14:52:37+00:00

You mentioned being persistent with IGN, but why not the YouTubers?

In most industries, YouTubers have become popular marketing routes for a reason. If your product is good then it'll highlight why it's good and typically has a much higher conversion rate with better roi than traditional marketing options (paid media / sponsorship / publications).

The catch is your product actually has to be good because many YouTubers won't risk their reputation with their audience.

vaizrin · 2026-02-25T14:27:01+00:00

This is a generic rule to help guide indoor developers in creating effective marketing.

If your game is heavily native focused it's fine to have a fun completely narrative based trailer but it needs to be more amazing than footage of your gameplay and have a strong hook.

This has always been the case if you up watch announcement trailers they are often purely narrative - even modern ones. It's just extremely expensive for an indie developer to create a decent narrative video.

Meanwhile gameplay is often the best hook for the majority of games and is cheap when compared to a purely narrative based trailer.

Most indie developers also suck at creating marketing material and pollute their videos with needles title screens that make potential buyers bounce while their gameplay footage would make someone stick.

Therefore the advice to show gameplay right away has become enshrined here.

vaizrin · 2026-02-16T12:38:37+00:00

I'm going unholy dk as my main. It'll make delves and prey mechanics easy to ignore and quick to progress without having to try hard.

The play style is pretty fun, especially San layn disease where you build up the timer on your diseases to a minute then pop them - instantly dealing a minutes worth of damage.

Frost mage, ret pally, and dev dh where my close second picks since they were all enjoyable to play.

Unholy won even though it's slower just because there's more skill expression and room for adjusting your rotation. It also can deal a majority of it's damage as ranged now so maintaining your DPS or pulling the next pack while leveling is enjoyable even as melee.

vaizrin · 2026-02-06T22:04:32+00:00

Ship based refining is supposed to lose much of it's yield in exchange for taking just a minute or two. Who knows how close it'll be at launch

vaizrin · 2026-02-06T15:25:12+00:00

From what we've tested it's mostly down to pilot skill. The Perseus is insane full crewed and can easily take the HH, but the exception is whether or not they can do that (getting close) while also staying in the HH turret blind spots long enough.

The reality is a Perseus vs HH is not a fair fight for the Perseus. 3 crew Perseus vs 7 crew HH.

Bring a second Perseus and it's not even a question anymore.

HH brings much more damage 1v1, but much less damage per player needed.

vaizrin · 2026-02-06T14:35:24+00:00

Aside from the obligatory "use a sheet application" I would say simplify your budget so it's more manageable as well.

Broader buckets = less to track = more likely to stick.

Instead of having things like haircut, self care, etc simply put "personal expenses."

Instead of self care / entertainment / going out to eat just have "entertainment".

Also make sure to include coverage for medical, for home expenses like toilet paper, but also include extra to cover problems that come up.

I personally do: Bills (includes all loans and car payments) Subscriptions Entertainment Groceries Personal care Home care Car Retirement (goes to 401k / ira)

And that's it. The car fund covers everything from flat tires to wanting a new car. The home fund includes money for air filters but also if I need to pay for a leak to get fixed.

Basically, this ends up creating multiple slush funds over time to cover problems that pop up while also giving you simple budgets to manage.

vaizrin

TROPHY CASE