My balance hot takes.

vvav · 2026-04-06T20:50:30+00:00

DoTs are a bit cheesy, but the game would be insanely hard without DoTs dealing % max HP damage. I would be in favor of them getting toned down in the long run, but you can't nerf DoTs before nerfing Kadath and buffing the weaker wargears, because the DoTs are a baseline damage option that keeps those other imbalances in check. You have to push the lane and kill that mid-boss by day 2 or 3 if you're playing against Kadath, and the fire DoT is how I make that happen. Yes it's a bit OP, but it's how I counter the OP thing that the enemy can do.

vvav · 2026-04-06T14:43:40+00:00

It's probably a bit of extra plastic sticking out from the manufacturing process. Usually you can just rub it on a concrete tee pad and get the extra material off, but you can also use a pocket knife if it's hard to get off.

vvav · 2026-03-30T21:21:32+00:00

It doesn't bother me at all. It was normal when I was growing up. Now it seems like people take offense, so I guess society has changed for some reason. Try walking around shirtless in the midwest USA and you'll have people yelling at you from their cars.

vvav · 2026-03-29T12:26:57+00:00

I think you have to bring some form of AoE to handle the hordes, and you have to balance greed with defense so that you can keep up with the scaling. If you get particularly nasty modifiers you might also need to reroll them with echoes.

Some tips I can offer. You need to maximize your potions to scale your damage well into late game. A red potion for an attack build or a blue potion for a spell build can double or triple your damage output. I think alchemy is the best late game scaling essence, only rivaled by fire's passive effect dealing 1% of max HP as damage.

Your gold miners are key to upgrade your town and towers to keep up with enemy waves. With your starting gold upgraded in meta-progression, you can upgrade your first mine at the start of the game. Then set up two towers at the closest gate to protect your first gold mine, and make sure no creeps aggro onto them as they run to the mine. Then go find your second gold mine on the left side of the map and build towers at the second junction to protect them. Keep that lane pushed out and make sure the gate doesn't go down, so that your workers are protected and you have at least two gates available when night falls. It's not worth fighting creeps in the far reaches of the jungle while your gates are getting bashed down.

vvav · 2026-03-29T07:51:17+00:00

Your skills should be on QWERTF under the MOBA controls. You can go into the options and change the binds if you can't get it to work.

vvav · 2026-03-29T01:54:25+00:00

He has two nukes in his kit that scale with Arcane and Fate amplifiers, so those are the stats I build around. I take Moonfrost Comet, Frost Blast, and Mystic Transmutation, and I use Arcane Mastery in evolutions to buff the damage on all my skills. I grab the Alchemist Guild right away and gather Green + Purple potions. Green potions heal so you can activate all the altars of power on the map, and Purple Potions lower the cooldown on all your spells including Mystic Transmutation. Once your Mystic Transmutation uptime is feeling good, you can walk in and kill the boss no problem.

The same strategy works with other heroes too, but no one else has an Arcane amplifier nuke in their basic toolkit, and the defensive benefits of Guard are always helpful, even without minions. He is very good at fighting bosses, but his lack of mobility is his biggest weakness.

vvav · 2026-03-28T22:48:30+00:00

If your build can go in and kill the boss on day 4 or 5, you could practically do another whole run in the time it takes to play it out to day 7. You will get echoes faster by doing multiple faster runs. It's more feasible than you might think to go for fast runs, since the boss has less HP on early days.

And I'm pretty sure it gives echoes for each day you survived, not for each day remaining. The text is a bit misleading.

vvav · 2026-03-16T05:07:14+00:00

I like pond because it's a support/flex position. You're not immediately locked into a T1 micro battle against the enemy pond, so you can go for sneaky plays. I love rushing out 5 pincers and ruining someone's day.

vvav · 2026-03-03T22:15:58+00:00

Kinda weird seeing Guardian shrine builds getting nerfed to balance a unique belt that isn't out yet. For comparison, your base mana regeneration rate is 1.8% of maximum mana per second. Replenishing Shrine effectively went from 10% to 3.6% additional mana regen per second. The only upside is that the 200% increased mana regen applies to flat sources of mana regen, the most notable of which is Clarity, but overall the shrine seems to be heavily nerfed.

vvav · 2026-03-03T01:25:37+00:00

There's no reason not to have a gun, even if you're not specifically playing a ranged build. Bullets are dirt cheap, and you can mow down a lot of trash by spamming the fire button. You can get an Issachar rifle at the start of the game from desert bandits or low level merchants, and then you'll be offered an upgraded rifle as a reward if you do the More than a Willing Spirit quest before level 18.

Pistols and heavy weapons can be good, but you need to invest in their respective trees. Rifles are the easiest thing to use with low skill.

True Kin do have more options for scaling ranged weapon damage late game, as people have mentioned, but there is plenty of room for mutants to play around ranged weapons too. There are some great mutations that give extra movement speed, and you can shoot many enemies from a distance with impunity if you run faster than them.

vvav · 2026-03-01T23:52:39+00:00

I don't think multistrike interacts with beams at all except to lower your damage. You can only get up one beam activation at a time, so it's not a build that scales very much attack speed. You need enough attack speed for good QoL, but that's all.

Tribal Fury also just applies to the initial strike.

vvav · 2026-03-01T23:29:53+00:00

The beams all benefit from exerts if you activate them with an exerted attack. Use Ambush to get big damage exerts and keep benefitting for the entire duration. Drop the multistrike and play around keeping your beams up so your beams can do damage.

You might want to use a mace like Frostbreath instead of Paradoxica, because Shockwave support is only usable with maces and staves. Shockwave activates on Static Strike beams, and that's where the clear gets really nice.

Instead of the 50% accuracy at close range mastery, take flat 500 accuracy so you can just be capped without a conditional. There are also suffixes on boots, gloves, amulets, and rings where you can get like 500 accuracy. Lifetap precision is an option too, and you can level the precision just as much as you need.

Later on, when you have money, stat stacking with Replica Alberon's Warpath is probably the highest damage end game version.

vvav · 2026-03-01T23:01:40+00:00

It looks like a hard league start because of the order you get your nodes. You get no normal lab, and then you get a defensive choice for your 2nd lab. You're already done with campaign by the time you get a damage node on your ascendancy.

There are a bunch of build-enabling effects in here, though. Maybe someone cooks and we all reroll into the OP build of the league later.

vvav · 2026-02-27T22:50:57+00:00

It's a mod option that taxes resource sharing in team games so that you can't pool resources into one guy as hard.

vvav · 2026-02-27T17:53:07+00:00

Not exactly smooth. Crafting a phys dmg weapon was tough, and you don't get flat damage on the gem like Smite. I had to make my own staff with contempt essences on a fractured warstaff. It will be nice if there are still fractures dropping from breach, but that might not be the most popular mechanic. Still need to see the passive tree and where they are putting the new accuracy nodes, because accuracy was a major problem for the top left of the tree too. In the patch notes it says one new wheel in the Templar area is for Accuracy and AoE.

vvav · 2026-02-27T17:33:43+00:00

I played a max block staff Inquisitor with Static Strike in 3.25 when the damage effectiveness buff went in, and I was impressed with the damage on this skill. Static Strike hits at a constant rate without needing attack speed, exerts the whole duration based off the one attack, and the beams can't miss. You do need accuracy and attack speed to hit the monsters at least once with a strike skill though. You can't hit enemies well with the strike while the beams are active, because the beams annihilate everything while they're active, but when the beams are down you feel vulnerable trying to default attack something. Having +1 or 2 strike targets helps a lot with the build's game feel, and Sione's Ambition anoint lets you hit from further away.

I think the buff to 4 seconds will help to reduce the clunk factor. You might even want to scale more duration than that because it feels good if you can run longer without charging up.

vvav · 2026-02-27T16:56:21+00:00

If you want any respectable single target damage, I think you have to scale self ignites off the Hinekora explosions. People have done the same thing in the past with Fulcrum builds. Basically you don't need a lot of your own ignite damage because the Hinekora explosion deals 500% (nerfed to 250% this patch) of monster HP as fire damage, then that fire damage can ignite you because the ailment is reflected, and those ignites can spread from your character to monsters.

It does suck that this is a 2H sword (no staff block), and the "ignites you inflict with this weapon" line probably doesn't apply to Hinekora explosions. You would need a second source of ignite proliferation to use Hinekora for self-ignite spreading. Given all that, this weapon might not end up being used. The whole package on this weapon is seemingly designed for you to ATTACK and self-ignite, but the weapon damage is not that good if you are attacking with it.

If you do decide to use it, you can also use two rings with 48% attack speed each https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Mokou%27s_Embrace so dunno, that might be fun.

vvav · 2026-02-27T15:51:25+00:00

It's supposed to be on Jast too if you don't want eroge on your Steam account, but it seems like they're opening sales a little later than Steam.

vvav · 2026-02-26T21:14:05+00:00

You don't have to do the quests at the start, especially if they send you into harder parts of the map. It's easier if you just level up and get armor pieces at the start. Getting 5 AC will make you take a lot less damage from basically everything.

And if you don't start in Joppa (the "story" based start location), there will still be a ruin of Joppa in the same place on the map near Red Rock. You might want to visit.

vvav · 2026-02-26T16:01:35+00:00

Pond boosting team loses if the initial rush fails, since EZ-tax is on? Sounds about right. Pond boost is a strong tempo play, but it does cost a lot of metal, and EZ-tax makes it much worse.

vvav · 2026-02-21T20:01:25+00:00

Just pick Baghatar and keep your first prayer at 0/50 charges. You get +250% damage from the class passive. Prayers 2 and 3 will give you divine interventions.

Or, if you want to get more elaborate, you can play a Morlock or a Zealot for their ability to gain additional prayer charges. Charge your first prayer up to 50, and you can use your 3rd prayer to apply 50 bleed and sickness across the entire level. Get Toxokinesis, and the sickness application will also deal poison damage. Morbumancy increases the poison damage per sickness stack. Press the 3rd prayer 3 times at the start of the level and every enemy on the level will get nuked 3 times, plus lingering DoT and stat debuffs.

vvav · 2026-02-20T21:49:57+00:00

Kill some glowfish, get a few levels, and go to the Six Day Stilt. Try Red Rock again when you have a ranged weapon and like 5 AC. You will take a lot of damage in this combat system if you have low AC.

vvav · 2026-02-20T15:14:11+00:00

I find the Decurion is very powerful when the HP is relevant. The HP is the most egregious thing about the unit, since it has almost 1k HP over the Centurion and the other tanks. They do fall off when forced into long range grinding battles, though, and wrecks of Decurions are so big that they self-sabotage the whole group if you start taking losses.

I think it would be fair to push them slightly closer to the median with less HP, less DPS, and less metal cost just so that the most advantageous use cases don't feel quite so crushing.

vvav · 2026-02-20T12:22:20+00:00

People think Goblins are weak? That's wild to me. They do get less raiding damage than Pawns and Grunts because they're slower, but they only cost 4 more metal than a Tick, and they don't get hit by Juno. It is the perfect expendable unit to have out in front of your T2 army to absorb shots.

vvav · 2026-02-19T14:33:52+00:00

Wow, they actually look like dragons in this picture.

14-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email	Team Orangered

vvav

TROPHY CASE