I wanted to type this out to consolidate the general feelings of myself and maybe also the player-base into a singular post.
The balance this year has been seemingly all over the place; it has been disheveled and abrupt at times, or even just straight up late to the party. I wanna give a few concrete examples of examples of things that to myself are non-sensical and damaging to the perceptions of the Balance team.

1. In the past, TitanForge has raved about True Damage being a problematic stat due to it's inability to be mitigated by protections, and how that can power-creep tanks if it isn't handled properly because penetration as a stat is not necessary to deal damage. Yet, they add more True Damage in 10.1 by introducing Tablet of Destinies, which was bad upon release, but subsequently over-buffed in the 10.1 balance patch, almost DOUBLING it's damage (which they said they don't do buffs in Bonus Balance unless absolutely necessary AND they said they are usually small), until it became a must buy on every mid mage and Solo Guardian (even sometimes support). Then they nerf it and Book of Thoth an appropriate amount in 10.2 Bonus, before they nerfed Book of Thoth and Tablet of Destinies AGAIN in 10.4 (Ix Chel release) for seemingly no reason as it had fallen out of the meta, and was getting virtually no play in the Pro League. The general response to this was that it was generally unwarranted, and it is not clear why they nerfed it a second time. It is still rarely seen. Those items IMO were balanced in their 10.2 Bonus state, and the fact that they buffed it so much on a Bonus Balance only to nerf it back almost to its original state just doesn't seem healthy for the game.
2. Cyclopean Ring for some reason got nerfed alongside Telkhines ring in 10.2 Bonus, even though people were only building Telkhines. Cyclopean was already extraordinarily terrible compared to it's physical counterpart, Qin Sais, and this item's DPS is not noteworthy enough on tanks, plus it costs 350 gold more than Telkhines which offers more DPS to squishies with the added benefit of Lifesteal. Cooldown also seems like an odd stat for that item to have as I don't think Magical ADCs really prioritize that, it should likely be 8% Penetration instead, or both. And at its current cost, it would maybe be balanced. Just the fact that they touched Cyclopean when it wasn't problematic is bizarre, especially when they knew that Gilded Arrow was bugged, and Purple Buff was literally providing more Basic Attack damage early game to Mages than Hunters.
3. Crit Chance has also been a problematic stat to the point where they altered the crit chance algorithm to be pseudo-random. They even removed Crit from Artemis passive, Jing Wei 2, Ne Zha passive, and Hun Batz passive in the 5.13 update to prevent from early crits because they were frustrating. Yet, in 10.4 they add passive crit chance to Serqet's ultimate, which is not only a lazy, uninteresting balance change, it does a couple things: it makes her more viable as a bruiser because she can deal more damage for free without having to itemize into it (which is something they literally partially reworked her and Fenrir away from) so she's now a hyper-mobile one-shotting bruiser god, and it also reintroduces the problem of BS early crits when she hits level 5. Adding a stat to a god as a passive I think can cause issues further down the line when it comes to balancing around items/roles because it allows the god to forgo certain stats in their builds in lieu of something else, such as protections.
4. In a very similar vein to #1, Mitigations are another set of items that were overly nerfed only after they had fallen out of favor to a point where they were seen as balanced by the community. They also made the change in possibly the worst fashion, which was to completely nullify the mitigation build-path for any god with % Damage Mitigation barring Osiris by making ability+item mitigations not stack. My biggest gripe with this is that they immediately did a much better change in the 10.5 Bonus Balance a week later, which makes me wonder why they didn't do the current state now in the first place. Why would they purposefully make a stat non-valuable to a specific group of gods? It just doesn't make any sense when the current implementation is much more equitable to those gods.
5. Healing is yet again another hot topic for debate, especially when they completely removed the brawling debuff and changed all the healing or self-healing gods (barring Cliodhna for some reason...) the same patch. One of my biggest gripes with this is they didn't catch all of the healing gods in the first go-around which is sloppy balance IMO, and then they also crazily over-buffed certain gods, like Aphrodite and Hel. Aphrodite got to grant 25% of her prots with a god in perpetuity, which on paper is just a ridiculous amount, and I'm surprised they ever thought that would be balanced and not problematic. I feel that the balance team should be experienced enough to look at that number and be like "yeah, that's probably not ok." That same sentiment is something I share with the Tablet change to 0.14% from 0.08% as well, AND the Envenomed Deathbringer change this patch, too. That item stayed bloated from 10.3 until 10.4 Bonus Balance when it was finally nerfed. Crit was finally killed off once Spectral was buffed, too, which took way too many patch cycles to do IMO. I also think the healers that have AoE team heals were not adjusted appropriately and have been bloated since 10.3, especially since Anti-heal is capped at 80%, or 50% against people with Rod of Asclepius.
6. Vamana's change to have his healing on his ultimate shifted from healing to lifesteal completely removed his counterplay (Ankh), making him impossible to deal with. This, coupled with many buffs, has made this character which was already frustrating to play against in some cases, much more powerful and frustrating, even to casual players. They have no way to out DPS him or escape him if Vamana plays right in most cases. The balance team should have known this would eliminate his only true counter-play, yet it seems that they either didn't care or didn't think about it.
   
7. Class-scaling attributes are another thing I think that completely missed the mark by decreasing average TTK back to pre-9.5 levels and also furthering the squishiness Tanks have late-game. I think giving Assassins 5 flat pen at level 1 was reckless and nonsensical given that they should know that flat-pen is the best penetration stat in the game against people with low protections - which everyone has low protections at level 1. That, and Guardians got the worst stat as their scaling attribute, CCR, while other classes get things like Power, CDR, Pen, or Attack Damage.
   

One other thing I want to shout out are how the Penetration Changes were also sloppy, and some items/text were entirely missed (or in the case of Dominance, were not changed at all even though the text says it was). Also, Aura prots have been a topic of discussion for several patches due to how boring they are as a mechanic, and they haven't really been touched at all. I am hoping they do so next patch though. And finally, Erlang Shen has been a mess of a character with seemingly no end in sight to being either overpowered or totally trash, and I hope they change that soon.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While all these things above are negatives, I wanted to give a quick shout to some positives:

1. Shielding changes to no longer stack shells and such was a good change.
2. I like where we landed with the mitigations change ultimately.
3. The Anubis change was very interesting and fun and I would love more changes like that.
4. I like that the antiheal items are no longer 1-dimensional stat sticks.
5. I like that Hel can heal mana now, including her own, and the stance switch cooldown change was nice.
6. I like the changes to Fire Giant timer to be more fast-paced, 180 seconds with 60 seconds downtime; I think that is interesting.
7. I like that they removed the Gold Fury bug abuse.
8. I like the Pyromancer bomb as a mechanic.
9. I like that they are trying to make historically bad gods viable again in conquest (Ah Puch, Anubis, Arachne, etc)
10. I like that they're willing to change-up the meta drastically with large sweeping changes, but I wish they were executed more carefully.

video of the glitch: https://streamable.com/ququks
I have tried:
- reinstalling XPMSE
- running Nemesis
- Reinstalling Skyrim
none of it works to fix it.
If I run FNIS at the same time as Nemesis the jump works, but then I can't use MCO, wich for me doesnt work.
Modlist is here:
(Part 1) SSE Engine Fixes for 1.5.39 - 1.5.97

1. Ultimate HD Fire Effects SSE - Ultra Resolution

A Quality World Map - Classic with All Roads
AC Valhalla Inspired Animation For All Races
AC Valhalla Inspired Animations For Player Only
Achieve That SE English
Address Library
Animation Motion Revolution
Apachii Divine Elegance Store
Apocalypse
Ars Metallica - Smithing Enhancement
Better Jumping SE
Better Third Person Selection (AE - SE)
Beyond Skyrim - Assets
Beyond Skyrim - Bruma
Beyond Skyrim DLC Integration Patch
Billyro's OldSwords
Billyro's Weapons
Bruma and Other Patches for Convenient Horses
Caliente's Beautiful Bodies Enhancer -CBBE-
Cannibal Draugr on Solstheim
Complete Crafting Overhaul Remastered
Complete Widescreen Fix for Vanilla and SkyUI 2.2 and 5.2 SE
Convenient Horses
Crafting Categories for SkyUI
customEbonyValkyrie1_2.7z
dTry's Key Utils SE
DynamicAnimationCasting
Elden Power Attack
Elden Rim - Weapon Arts English 1.9.9.2
ENB Helper SE 1.5 for SSE 1.5.97
Enhanced Blood Textures
Equippable Tomes - Belt-Worn Books - Special Edition
EVG Animation Variance
EVG Conditional Idles
Faster HDT-SMP
FSMPV
HD Reflective Ebony Armor and Weapons
Home in a Hat updated
Immersive Armors 8.1 SSE Test
Immersive Equipment Displays for 1.5.39 - 1.6.353
Immersive Equipping Animations
Immersive Interactions
Immersive Weapons
Interesting NPCs 3DNPC
JackGa's Pub - SE
JContainers SE
Kozakowy's Falka Armor UNP - SSE
KS Hairdos - HDT SMP (Physics)
KS Hairdos SSE
LeanWolf's Better-Shaped Weapons - All in One Installer
Legacy of the Dragonborn
Legacy of the Dragonborn Collectors and Vendors
Leviathan Animations II - Sprint
MCM Helper SE (1.5.97 BACKPORT)
MCO Universal Support
Nordic Faces - Complete Version
NORDIC UI - Interface Overhaul
Nordic...ish - A TrueHUD preset based on Nordic UI
Oblivion Camera
Ordinator 9.31.0
Ordinator Beyond Skyrim Bruma Patch
Papyrus Ini Manipulator
PapyrusUtil SE - Scripting Utility Functions
Payload Interpreter
powerofthree's Tweaks
Precision
RaceMenu Anniversary Edition
Realistic Water Two SE
SCAR - Skyrim Combos AI Revolution
Scriptfree Behavior Staggerlock
SkyHUD
Skyrim Unbound Reborn
Skyrim's Paraglider
SkyrimSE HD Reworked Horses
Skyshards
SkyUI_5_2_SE
Smooth Magic Casting Animation
Soaking Wet
Sonderbain's Chevalier - Randomized One Handed Block Animations
Spell Perk Item Distributor
SSE Display Tweaks
Static Mesh Improvement Mod
True Directional Movement
TrueHUD
Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch
Valhalla Combat
Veydogolt Trees
VioLens - A Killmove Mod SE
Visual Animated Enchants 2-023 Se Ae version
Weapon Styles - Draw-Sheath animations
Witchhunter Spells and Prayers Pack - Special Edition
1three-eyed swallowSE
[immyneedscake] BDOR Berserk SSE (Cloth SMP)
Abyss
ABYSSAL BLADE MCO One Handed Moveset and Weapon
Adaliya - High Poly Female Redguard Presets for Racemenu - 2 Versions
AddItemMenuSE_114_SKSE2019
ADXP I MCO Berserker guts Animation
ADXP I MCO elden rim moveset collection (SCAR)
ADXP I MCO ER Katana (SCAR)
ADXP I MCO ER Mixed Scythe (SCAR)
ADXP I MCO ER rapiers (SCAR)
Aldamar - Druid Mushroom Home
Alpha Jab -Unarmed Combat Sounds Rework-
Amber Guard
Amol Village
AnathemaStudio's Elf Ears (Enchantable)
Ancient Land
Ancient Land Patches
Animated Armoury - DAR Version - New Weapons with animations
Animated Armoury - New Weapons with animations SSE Version
Animation Queue Fix
Apachii Divine Elegance Dynamic Outfits For Nobles SPID
Apocalypse - Balance Patch
Armors of the Velothi Pt. II
ARTFUL DODGER - Dynamic Pickpocket Cap
Awesome Potions Simplified -ENB Lights
Awesome Potions Simplified by Revoith
Base Object Swapper
Beast Race Bodypaints SE -Khajiit and Argonian Themed Bodypaints Facepaints RaceMenu Overlays-
Behavior Data Injector
Better Dialogue Controls
Better Falskaar and Wyrmstooth Map With Roads
Better Vampires 8.7 SE
Bijin Skin - CBBE
Bloodborne Pack by Team TAL SSE
BodySlide and Outfit Studio
Bone Colossus- Mihail Monsters and Animals (SE-AE version) (''undead'')
Bow Charge Plus
Bow_Rapid_Combo_V2_1.4_I_Full
Bright Waterfall Fix for ENB
Campfire - Complete Camping System (Supports Skyrim VR)
Capital Windhelm Expansion
Cathedral - 3D Thicket and Dead Shrub
Cathedral Weathers and Seasons
CBBE SMP (3BBB)
CBPC - Physics with Collisions
CBPC Equipment Physics
CG4 Trees and Bushes SE
Citizens of Tamriel SE
CL's Rapier
Clean up the physics outfit - Collision Reset
Cleaned Skyrim SE Textures
Combat Pathing Revolution
Compass Navigation Overhaul
Comprehensive First Person Animation Overhaul - CFPAO
ConsoleUtilSSE NG
Controlmap.txt Fixed and Cleaned
Convenient Carriages
Corvus - Swords of Nocturnal
Cosmo-War Scythe
Crouch Sliding
Crouch Sliding TUDM Patch - Slide with Your Weapon Drawn
Customizable Camera
Daedric Armor SE
Daedric Shrines - All in One
Dark Brotherhood Armor SE
Dark Souls Pack by Team TAL
Deadly Spell Impacts
Delux ArchMage Quarters plus Mages Kitchen
Detection Meter
Dodge MCO-DXP
Dovahkiin can lean Sit Kneel Lay down and Meditate etc too
Dragon Slayer - Berserk
Dragonbane - Replacer
Drifter Armor and Outfit - My version
Dwarven Colossus - Mihail Monsters and Animals (SE-AE version) (''dwemer'')
Dwemer Colosseum SE
DX Cassandra Frost Witch Outfit - UNP
DX Celes Nightingale Armor SSE - with Optional Heels sound and UUNP Bodyslide - Physics - UNP UNPB 7BB DreamGirl Seraphim and More
DX Druid Armor - SSE CBBE BodySlide (with Physics)
DX Druid Armor - UNP
DX Witch Hunter Armor - UNP
DX Witcher Swords - SE
Dynamic Animation Replacer
Dynamic Bow Animation
Dynamic Female Wall Leaning
Dynamic Impact - Slash Effects X
Ebonblade War Axe SE
Elden Power Attack Fix for MCO DXP
Elemental Fist - Brawler weapons
ELFX Shadows
ElSopa - Quivers Redone SE
Elven Silver Daggers by ClipsyMoon
Embers XD
Emeri's Presets All in One
ENB Light Inventory Fix (ELIF)
Enhanced Lights and FX
Eternal Flames
EVG Animated Traversal - Patch Collection
EVG Animated Traversal Addon for Windhelm Capital Expansion
EVG Animated Traversal Skyrim Integration Patch
Eviscerate
Experience
Experience - MCM
Expressive Facegen Morphs SE
Expressive Facial Animation - Female Edition
Facial Piercings SSE
Faction - Pit Fighter
Falconer Armor SE
Falskaar
Female Makeup Suite - Face - RaceMenu Overlays of Eyeliner EyeShadow Contours and Highlights - Special Edition
Ferrum Nibenis
Festus Krex Insideout Spell
FileAccess Interface for Skyrim SE Scripts - FISSES
Footsteps Sounds Overhaul
Functional Fearsome Fists - Innate Unarmed Boost
God of War Leviathan Axe
Goetia Animations - Magic Spell Casting
Granite Hill Village
Gravelords- Mihail Monsters and Animals (SE-AE version) (''dark souls'')
Griffith Armour SSE fixed and updated
HDT-SMP Infantry Armor Patch
HDT-SMP Three-eyed Swallow Armor Patch
HDT-SMP Traveler's Backpack
Hearthfire multiple adoptions - Now with custom home support for kids and spouse
Hellblade - Timed Block
High Elf Archer (Goblin Slayer) - Jinxxed Followers SSE
High Minotaurs - Mihail Monsters and Animals (SE-AE version) (''eso'')
High Poly Head SE
High-Poly Inigo Replacer
Highly Improved Male Body Overhaul
Hogwarts in Skyrim
Hot Key Skill
House Cats- Mihail Monsters and Animals (SE-AE version) (''pet'')
Hydra's Reversed Daggers
IFrame Generator RE
Ilieh - Cry of the Damned
Immersive Diving Animation
Immersive World Encounters SE
Imps SE
Infantry Armor SE
Infinity UI
INIGO
Inquisitor HDT-SMP Armor
Inventory Interface Information Injector
Ish's Respec Mod
JaySuS Swords SE
JK's Whiterun V1.4b - SSE
JS Unique Utopia SE - Daggers
Judgement Cut End - ap05's Remake
Khajiit Eyes Extended - Khajiit Heterochromia and More
Khajiit Has Wares - A Caravan Camp Overhaul
Khajiit Overhaul SSE Unofficial Port
Knight Winds
Kurone Bell Bodyslide Preset (CBBE 3BA) And (3BA V's Cut)
Lamenthia's Marks of Beauty
Leather Armors Retexture SE
Legendary Alpha Shields
Leviathan Animations II - Female Idle Walk And Run
Leviathan Animations II - Male Idle Walk And Run
Light and Shade SE
Lupus - Swords of Hircine
Mage Backpack SSE
Magical College of Winterhold
Maleficus' Traversal (EVGAT)
Master The Summit
Max's Season 2 - RaceMenu Presets - High Poly - Low Poly - Male - Female
MEMOSPORE - UI Sound Effects
Menu Maid 2 - MCM manager
Mikan Eyes - SE
Missives
Missives - Notes Retexture
monster race crash fix
Moon Monk's Robes
Multiple Followers Framework
Mythic Dawn armor SE
Natura
New Weynon
Nicos Craftable Arrows SSE
No Recoil
No Thieves Guild Grind
Nocturnal Moths
Northern God Armor SE
Oakwood
Odium - Swords of Molag Bal
Ogres SE
Old Gods of the Hunt- Mihail Monsters and Animals (SE-AE version) (''the witcher'')
Opulent Thieves Guild
Particle Patch for ENB
powerofthree's Papyrus Extender
Project ja-Kha'jay
Quality Over Quantity - KS Hairdo's Reduced Plus HG
QuickLoot EE
RaceMenu High Heels (Height Fixes)
Raven HDT-SMP Armor
Realistic Aspen Trees SE
Redguard F Hair Grouped and Replacer
Relationship Dialogue Overhaul - RDO SE
Reversed Daggers Moveset for MCO
Ryn's Dragon Mounds Collection
Ryn's Sleeping Giant Inn
s6o6t LORE - Dark Anchors Ruins and Dolmens
Security Overhaul SKSE - Lock Variations
Security Overhaul SKSE - Regional Locks
SG Female Eyebrows
Show Player In Menus
Silver Armor SE
Simple Dual Sheath
Sindora's Hidden Hearth
SkyALERT - Detection Meter Redesign
Skyland AIO
Skyland Blacksmith Texture Overhaul
Skyrim Immersive Creatures Special Edition
Skyrim Search SE - Simply find your missing followers
Skyshards Offer Skills - Boss Containers Grant EXP
SmoothCam
SmoothCam - EasyEase Preset
Sons of Skyrim
Sprint Sneak Movement Speed Fix
Sswaye's Revenant's Sword Moveset ADXP I MCO DAR
Stave Church of Skyrim
Store Entrance Doorbells
Storm Golem- Mihail Monsters and Animals (SE-AE version) (''atronach'')
Storm Lightning for SSE and VR (Minty Lightning 2019)
Strange Runes
The Eyes Of Beauty SSE
The Welkynar Knight - Quest
To Your Face SE - AE - VR
Triss Armor Retextured SE
Triumvirate - Mage Archetypes
TUDM - Script Fixes
UIExtensions
Unarmed Moveset for MCO
Unique Bows Collection
Valkyr HDT-SMP Hairstyles
Vampire Beasts- Mihail Monsters and Animals (SE-AE version) (''the witcher'')
Vanguard - Bash Behaviors Overhaul
VIGILANT SEAE
VIGILANT Voiced - English Addon
Way of the Monk -Unarmed Combat - Extended
Whiterun Horse Statue
Wild Witch
Wind Ruler Armor SE
Wind Ruler Armor SE - hdt-SMP Patch
Windhelm Bridge Revived
Wyrmstooth
(ESL)HDT-SMP Daedric Armor Patch (4thUnknown Version)
3D Junipers - Trees and Berries
Adventurer HDT-SMP Armor
Air Dash Whirlwind Sprint
Airgetlam - Shouts SFX -
Airgetlam -Modern Magic Sounds Rework- 4.1 Redesigned
Better Ferns
Cabbage - A Cabbage Mod
Calling of the Conjurer
Cathedral - 3D Clover Plant
Constellation Magic
Dear Diary Dark Mode (warm text)
Diverse Dragons Collection SE (DDCse)
Dragon Animation Replace in Special Edition
DX Witcher Armor - UNP
Dynamic Fus Ro Dah
Dynamic Random Spell Idle
Dynamic Whirlwind Sprint
Elden Equip
ElSopa HD Shields Part I
Flame Atronach SE
For Honor in Skyrim I Centurion
For Honor in Skyrim I Gryphon
For Honor in Skyrim I Warden
For Honor in Skyrim I Warlord I Sword and shield I MCO Animation
Frankly HD Masque of Clavicus Vile
Frozen Electrocuted Combustion
Fuz Ro D-oh - Silent Voice
GoT Dragons (A Game of Thrones)
HDT SMP beast race tail
Instantly Skip Dialogue NG
Izba - An Herbalist's Cabin in the Woods
JK's Arcadia's Cauldron
JK's Belethor's General Goods
JK's Bits and Pieces
JK's Blue Palace
JK's Dragonsreach
JK's Palace of the Kings
JK's Radiant Raiment
JK's Skyrim
JK's The Bannered Mare
JK's The Drunken Huntsman
JK's The Winking Skeever
JRC's Witcher Style Sword Pack
Jump Behavior Overhaul SE
Jumping Attack
Kharoxia Armor
Landscapes - Cathedral Concept
League of Assassins Armor
Less Boring Loading Screens - SE-AE
Lux - Via
Markarth - City of Stone
Mysticism - A Magic Overhaul
Nirnroot by Mari
NPCs React To Invisibility
Rainbows Remade
Realistic Skin And Hair Shaders - Giants
Realistic Skin Shaders - Falmer and Hagravens
Remote Interactions
Ryn's Western Watchtower
Skyrim Platform
Spaghetti's Palaces - Dragonsreach
Spaghetti's Solstheim - Raven Rock
Spaghetti's Solstheim - Tel Mithryn
Spriggans SE
Stellaris
Storm Calling Magic
Stylish Dodge Chaos - DMCO
Taunt Your Enemies - Taunting Matters
The Forgotten City
Untarnished UI
Yggdrasil Music and SoundFX
XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended
Attack MCO-DXP
Magical Jumping
Frankly HD Thieves Guild Armors
Desecration
Flames of Coldharbour
Vulcano
Nemesis Unlimited Behavior Engine

Patch 10.1.5 Patch Notes - World of Warcraft
Classes:

• General:
  
  • Adjusted the damage scaling of several abilities across all classes to provide better balance in both PvE and PvP content.
  • Various quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes have been implemented for all classes.
• Death Knight:
  
  • Unholy:
    • Apocalypse (Talent): The cooldown of Apocalypse has been reduced by 30 seconds.
• Demon Hunter:
  
  • Havoc:
    • Eye Beam: The damage of Eye Beam has been increased by 10%.
    • Chaos Strike: The Fury cost of Chaos Strike has been reduced by 10%.
• Druid:
  
  • Balance:
    • Celestial Alignment: The cooldown of Celestial Alignment has been reduced by 20 seconds.
  • Restoration:
    • Lifebloom: The mana cost of Lifebloom has been reduced by 10%.
    • Swiftmend: The healing of Swiftmend has been increased by 15%.
• Hunter:
  
  • Beast Mastery:
    • Barbed Shot: The Focus cost of Barbed Shot has been reduced by 20%.
  • Marksmanship:
    • Aimed Shot: The damage of Aimed Shot has been increased by 5%.
• Mage:
  
  • Frost:
    • Frostbolt: The damage of Frostbolt has been increased by 8%.
  • Fire:
    • Pyroblast: The critical strike chance of Pyroblast has been increased by 10%.
• Monk:
  
  • Mistweaver:
    • Vivify: The healing of Vivify has been increased by 10%.
  • Windwalker:
    • Fists of Fury: The damage of Fists of Fury has been increased by 7%.
• Paladin:
  
  • Holy:
    • Holy Light: The healing of Holy Light has been increased by 10%.
  • Retribution:
    • Templar's Verdict: The damage of Templar's Verdict has been increased by 5%.
• Priest:
  
  • Discipline:
    • Power Word: Shield: The absorption amount of Power Word: Shield has been increased by 10%.
  • Shadow:
    • Mind Flay: The damage of Mind Flay has been increased by 7%.
• Rogue:
  
  • Assassination:
    • Envenom: The damage of Envenom has been increased by 8%.
  • Outlaw:
    • Dispatch: The damage of Dispatch has been increased by 10%.
• Shaman:
  
  • Elemental:
    • Lava Burst: The damage of Lava Burst has been increased by 5%.
  • Restoration:
    • Healing Surge: The healing of Healing Surge has been increased by 10%.
• Warlock:
  
  • Destruction:
    • Chaos Bolt: The damage of Chaos Bolt has been increased by 5%.
  • Affliction:
    • Agony: The damage of Agony has been increased by 8%.
• Warrior:
  
  • Fury:
    • Raging Blow: The damage of Raging Blow has been increased by 7%.
  • Arms:
    • Mortal Strike: The damage of Mortal Strike has been increased by 5%.

PvP:

• Battlegrounds:
  
  • Various adjustments have been made to the capture mechanics, respawn timers, and overall balance of objectives in various battlegrounds.
• Arenas:
  
  • Crowd Control (CC) durations have been adjusted to provide more balanced gameplay and counterplay opportunities.
  • The cooldown of trinkets and other PvP-specific abilities has been slightly increased to promote more strategic decision-making.

Items:

• Several new items have been added to various game activities, including dungeons, raids, and world content. These items offer unique bonuses and effects to enhance gameplay diversity.
• Existing items have undergone balancing changes to ensure better class and spec representation in various content.

User Interface:

• The user interface has received various improvements, including updated visuals, streamlined options, and additional customization features to enhance the overall user experience.

Bug Fixes:

• Multiple bug fixes have been implemented across all aspects of the game, including classes, items, quests, achievements, and user interface issues.

Note: These patch notes are speculative and not based on any official information. Actual patch notes may differ significantly.

Part 18 A Delicate Situation (Part 1) (Part 17)
​
"Aho, Zim, ni je na?" Msko was the first to notice and greet the relatively short, stout, and furry being that just waddled into The Hammer’s Control Center.
​
"Ah, Administrator Zimuzari, I am honored you could join us." Atxika's eyes quickly shot up from the holographic display being projected from the table she was leaning on and landed on Kyim'ayik colony leader. "Have you had an opportunity to read through the initial report we sent you?"
​
"Hello there, Mkso, Admiral Atxika. It's…" The reddish-brown ball of fur paused his adorable squeaking, half covered his mouth with one of his paws, and let out such a tremendous yawn that Atxika could see both the massive front incisors as well as the not quite as large, but still impressive, set of canines behind them. "My apologies, I woke up less than half an hour ago. But it is good to see you both, as well as an honor and privilege to join you in your Command Center, Admiral."
​
"The honor and privilege are mine." Atxika bowed slightly with her pleasant smile still wide. "And I would like to apologize for waking you. It will still be a few days before we arrive at our destination and this strategy meeting could have waited."
​
"No, no, no, that's alright." Zim quickly replied with his species' high pitch and chirpy version of galactic common while stretching out and flicking his long, shiny whiskers as he approached the military leaders. "I've already gotten about nine hours of sleep. Skipping the last hour or two has killed me yet! And I’d rather get started on this sooner rather than later.”
​
Admiral Atxika had to put in real effort to prevent herself start cooing at the delightful manner with which Zim made his way over to the holo-table and climbed the stool-like chair designed for his anatomy. The long, wide, and flat tail distinctive of the Kyim'ayik was lifted just off the ground and stretched far back to balance the rest of the being’s body weight while the relatively short hind legs carried him along in an awkward, though comfortable, bipedal gait. With the limited range of motion in the squat, fuzzy man’s leg-like arms as he stretched, it was clear his species was more intended for quadrupedal locomotion. Despite that fact, the posture of the Kyim'ayik Administrator while he walked was far more similar to her own, or a human’s, than what she had remembered from her previous interactions with the species. However, as Zim stretched out his back to its full length, adding good chunk to his overall height, and began climbing the stool so he could have a proper view of holographic display, Atxika was suddenly reminded of a domesticated species of vermin-hunting musteloid from her species’ homeworld that were quite popular pets. Even though she knew this furry little man was a well respected guest on her ship, and a being from an Ascended species, she couldn’t get over how adorable he was.
​
“I hope you didn’t wake the misses.” Msko commented with a sarcastic tone while shooting the beaver-otter a cheeky wink.
​
“Nah, that woman could sleep through an atomic detonation.” Hearing the galactic common word for ‘atomic detonation’ be said with such an endearing squeak was pushing the Admiral to the absolute limits of her self control.
​
“I can have some food and refreshments brought, if you like.” Atxika interjected while doing her best to keep her smile from growing too wide and showing all of her teeth.
​
“Oh n-” Zim was about to politely decline before Msko interrupted him with a bit too much energy.
​
“Yes, please!” The War Chief blurted out. “That restaurant Tens took me to in your Amenities Section was amazing! I knew this ship had a huge manufacturing capability, but I didn’t realize you’d have freshly grown food.”
​
“I’ll have the private command facilities prepare something.” The Admiral quickly replied to ensure that Zim couldn’t refuse. “How does a zetloxoni platter sound?”
​
“What are-” Zim began to ask before Atxika realized her mistake and explained.
​
"Zetloxoni are fish fillets, rolled in a semisweet and highly nutrient-rich grain, and occasionally topped with more fish or other ingredients." The Admiral replied while typing into the display to bring up a holographic representation of the sushi-like dish she was describing. "This is what I was thinking."
​
"That actually looks amazing!" The Kyim'ayik ears suddenly perked up and eyes grew wide with delight.
​
"Wonderful! It's settled then." Atxika pressed in a few more commands to place the order then tried to redirect the conversation to reason for the meeting. "I find it is often easier to address delicate situations with a clear mind and full stomach."
​
"Delicate?" The squeaky reply carried a noticeably sarcastic tone as Zim shifted his attention towards the holographic representation of a planet and saucer shaped ship orbiting it. "That looks like Arnehilians. Ain't nothing delicate about the Grays, except maybe their physical forms."
​
"Well, they're definitely Arnehilians but…" Msko interjected with a hesitant tone that caught his Kyim'ayik friend off guard. "We don't think they're Grays."
​
There was a second of confused silence as Zim stared into the War Chief's eyes to see if this was a joke. Before Nishnabe could bring himself to explain, however, Atxika chimed in to give the proper explanation.
​
"What I am about to say is Level 8 classified information from Military Command and should be treated with the appropriate amount of secrecy. Do you understand?" After an incredibly professional and understanding nod from the Administrator, the Admiral continued. "We have confirmed the existence of a non-aligned, neutral-standing collective of decentralized Arnehilian groups who refer to themselves as, quote, 'the Greens', or the Free People of Sundered Arnehil. According to all reports, they are an ecologically-minded, nomadic, agricultural society who regularly travel in such a way as to avoid any means of tracking or detection by their… less peaceful cousins. However, there are a few who regularly check in with Military Command to avoid potential confrontations. There have been no indications that any of their groups discovered so far are violent, nor even capable of galactic standard levels of self-defense."
​
"I thought those rumors were just misinformation or propaganda." Zim was now much more earnest as gazed upon the holographic saucer floating above the planet. "And you say they're even ecologically-minded?"
​
"Our drones haven't detected any significant environmental disruptions." Msko sounded far more nonchalant about this situation than his long-time friend was expecting. There was no aggression or anger in his movements as he indicated towards a highlight portion of the holographic planet floating above the table and prompted the display to project a new hologram. "Their settlement is using solar and wind energy to operate their infrastructure and accumulate power reserves. From what we can tell, they're only a week away from finishing their agricultural harvest and two weeks away from their power reserves being fully recharged. If we had been delayed a month, there's a good chance we would have missed them completely."
​
“What kind of resource impacts would I have to account for?” The Administrator quickly followed up.
​
“Maybe a couple hundred tons worth of basic elements and organic matter.” It was clear Msko had already scoured everything and couldn’t find any reason to be concerned. “But the drones' sensors can’t detect any real difference between now and six months ago. Like I said, if we were delayed a month, we might not have even known they were ever there.”
​
"I see…" There was a moment of pause as Zim stared at the highly detailed holographic representation of a temporary settlement located only a couple dozen kilometers from where he had been planning his own colony.
​
The two military officers remained silent to give the Kyim'ayik Administrator all the time he needed to think about what he had just been told. Each species, without exception, had some unique form of architectural design and aesthetic, and the variety of buildings Zim was looking at were no different. The extensive use of cheap, easy to produce polymers, the simple, module construction, and rounded, nearly circular, aesthetic to all of the building were all clearly Arnehilian. However, there was something humble, almost intentionally so, about the lack of silver-metal detailing combined with the way the structures simply flowed into the untouched trees around them. Rather than a budding slaver-colony run by beings who thought themselves entitled everyone and everything, this looked like the respectfully maintained dwelling of a temporary guest who wished to remain discreet. Though the Administrator knew his duty to his people would normally demand he evict these uninvited squatters from his land, he couldn’t help but feel something almost kindred in what he was seeing.
​
"Have you made contact with them yet?" Zim flatly asked, though he could already guess the answer. "Do they know we're coming?"
​
"No and no." Atxika promptly answered, while letting her smile fall into a more professional expression. "Their ship is inactive, seems to be in a state of disrepair, and is currently in a free-floating, low orbit. According to our scans, their ground-based sensor systems are incapable of detecting our reconnaissance drones. However, they would absolutely notice our fleet entering the system."
​
"Well, we don't wanna scare them." Zim finally squeaked out with a slightly giggle that sounded more like a chirp. "Reptiles always freak out when you startle them."
​
It had been nine hours of working in the greenhouse when Mayor Harideth noticed the young dark gray-skinned, olive-drab clad messenger running towards him at full speed. Though he had known this young woman her entire life, she was a member of her community after all, he had never seen her running this fast. It wasn't the speed of her approach that made him stop what he was doing, rather it was the unadulterated fear plastered across her face. As Nalhilum sprinted down the path between the vertical hydroponic racks, a few of the Arnehilians in the greenhouse took notice, though didn't stop their work. When the young woman came to a sliding halt just in front of the Mayor, it looked like she was about to keel over from exhaustion and stress.
​
"My dear, please." Harideth had a genuinely concerned expression on his scaly face as he quickly moved to brace the young woman and prevent her from falling over. "You are too young to give yourself a heart attack running like that. Whatever is happening, you don't need t-"
​
"Mayor, we've been detected." The dread that came out of Nalhilum's voice and the tears in her eyes as she looked up at her community leader shattered the man's soul.
​
"Do not fear, Nalhilum, my dear. Please sit and rest. We will be fine. I promise." Harideth helped the young woman slowly lower herself into a seated position, plucked a just-ripe fruit from a vine he had been tending, and handed it to her before turning towards the closest other people in the greenhouse. "Maricha, please see to Nalhilum and ensure she recovers. I am needed in my mayoral duties immediately."
​
In the few seconds it took for the worker to be at the young woman's side, she had already begun nibbling on the sweet treat, savoring it as this was her last opportunity, and the Mayor had given her a gentle kiss on the forehead then began running out of the greenhouse. Though Harideth felt he had a personal duty to stay at his messenger's side until she had fully recovered and ensured she wouldn't need further assistance, he had a greater duty to his community as a whole. Despite feeling the same fear that he saw in Nalhilum’s eyes, and wanting to ball up and hide with every fiber of his body, he charged as fast as he could towards the town hall building. Though he knew running this fast was not good for his health, especially in his old age and after working all day, the only thing on the Mayor’s mind was the safety and future of the people who trusted him with their lives.
​
“Please don’t let it be the Oppressors.” Harideth muttered to himself as he ran as fast as his legs could take him. “By the Gods of Old, please don’t let it be them.”
​
For nearly a millennium now, his people had been free of those who flew the red and gray flag and, despite the many hurdles and setbacks, they had found their own form of happiness. After the Dynastic family who had kept his working-class ancestors in literal chains had been dealt a devastating blow when their capital ship was overrun by a group of abducted, pre-Ascension beings, it sparked a revival of the Free People’s ideology in the slave population. Stories of people living together in mutual aid, love, and respect once only told in hushed whispers were shouted from the rooftops as most of the surviving members of the Dynasty were thrown from them. Once all of the slaves of the other species were freed and on their way back to their respective homes, the budding groups of Greens scattered into the interstellar winds to avoid reprisal from other Dynasties which were sure to want revenge. There was even a dream that they would find other groups of Free Arnehilians living among the stars.
​
It was a blessing that their rebellion had initially gone unnoticed by the rest of the Arnehilian Dynasties and the greater community as that gave his ancestors time to disperse beyond the ability to be completely tracked down. Even if a few scattered communities eventually met their death or worse, the end of their freedom, there would be some who were able to survive and thrive. Though Harideth had assumed his nomadic village may eventually run into someone, he put a great deal of effort into minimizing that potential. In fact, he chose this very planet as their temporary stopping grounds specifically because it was far out of the way of most civilizations and people. After spending nearly a full season on this beautiful world, he had even started to grow attached to it and was looking for an excuse to postpone their migration in order to facilitate repairs to their ship. Being detected after so long, and with only a few weeks until they would have been ready to leave on their own, was something the Mayor could have never been prepared for.
​
“Make a hole!” A person wearing a dull green cap shouted down a rather cramped corridor that Harideth was barreling towards at full speed before quickly pulling back and nodding towards the man as he passed.
​
“Thank you, Chuzikum.” Harideth faintly mouthed while darting past the person and into the now cleared passageway that led outdoors.
​
Finally outside, the man only slowed his sprint to turn a few corners and avoid running into the few unwary people who had failed to notice him coming. He was less than a hundred meters away from the town hall building housing his destination, the command and control room, and he couldn’t stop now. Regardless of how hard his heart was beating, how much he felt his body overheating from the strain, and how much he wanted to just collapse, he couldn’t fail his people. As the building got closer and closer, Harideth tried to think through all of the possibilities of who it could be that had detected them. Though none of the options that came to his mind were particularly pleasant, from Bendari pirates to Qui’ztar law enforcement or even the Oppressors themselves, he was already trying to work out contingency plans as he finally approached the already open door and his assistant waiting for him beside it.
​
“Please close the door behind us, Marlati.” Harideth’s request was just barely audible as he crossed the threshold of the door and was quickly followed by his assistant who did as she was asked. “Who is it and what do they want?”
​
“The communication signal we are receiving registers as the Qui’ztar Third Matriarchy, Mayor Harideth.” Marlati quickly and quietly replied as she followed the man towards the command and control room.
​
“Oh, thank the Gods.” The Mayor stopped mid step and placed a hand on the wall next to lean and catch his breath for a moment. “This could still be very bad, but it could have also been so much worse.”
​
“Um, sir?” The Mayor’s assistant watched him with a hint of concern as she could see how much he was overheating. “Would you like me to get you a cooling pack?”
​
“Oh, no, that’s alright.” Harideth stood back up straight and continued towards his final destination, though a bit slower than before. As he turned back to his assistant, he gave a compassionate nod of approval. “You are too kind, my dear. This is just a…” The man’s voice trailed off as his thoughts began to concentrate on a plan of action.
​
“A what, sir?” Marlati nervously in a manner which caused the Mayor to look back at her. “I’m sorry sir, but this is the first time this has ever happened in my entire life.”
​
“First time for me too, Marlati.” Harideth admitted with a hit of nervous laughter. “But I do know enough about the Qui'ztar to not be issuing an immediate emergency evacuation order.”
​
“That’s not very reassuring.” Though the whine that just came his assistant would have been grating in any other circumstance, she was right and the Mayor knew it.
​
“That is the name of the game you help some of the children play, something of the magical planets?” Harideth stopped at the door to the room which separated him from his responsibilities as a Mayor.
​
“Adventures of the Magical Worlds, sir?”
​
“Yes! I believe there is a moral alignment chart in the rules somewhere.” Though it was clear that his assistant didn’t quite know what he was getting, it became incredibly obvious as he explained. “If I remember correctly, everything I’ve read about the Qui’ztar would put them roughly in the ‘hierarchical neutral’ category.”
​
“Ah…” The assistance was quite hesitant as she knew what that actually implied. “That still isn’t very reassuring.”
​
“They’re here to do a job. And as long as we comply and don’t get in their way, we’ll be fine.” The Mayor was doing his best to hold up his mask of confidence and not let this young feel what he felt.
​
“And what if their job is to kill us?”
​
“Then they wouldn’t have made their presence known. They would have simply shown up and sent us all to the next life.” However morbid that statement was, it actually did give the Marlati a small sense of real relief in the fact they weren't already dead as the door to the command and control room opened and the pair slowly walked in.
​
"Sir! Thank the Gods you're here!" A communications specialist shouted from his seat in front of a terminal towards the Mayor as he quickly approached.
​
"Of course, Telucima, I wouldn’t make you talk to them all by yourself." Harideth tried to crack a joke to the young woman behind the terminal in a vain attempt to calm her obviously flustered nerves. Though Telucima’s dark gray skin was never as shiny as a royal's, her face was especially dull and pale at the moment and the Mayor couldn’t help but empathize with her. “Now, please, give me your report. What do we know?”
​
“Well…” Telucima made a gulping sound as she swallowed some of the semi-poisonous saliva that had been building up in her mouth as a fear response. “There is a fairly substantial colony fleet headed our way being escorted by the First Independent Fleet of the Third Qui'ztar Matriarchy. They have stated that we are inhabiting an unregistered settlement on a planet that has already been claimed by the Kyim'ayik. However, they have not yet made any demands, claimed our settlement is in violation of any laws, or even made any threats. I am absolutely sure they know who we are, but they didn’t explicitly identify us in their message. I’m not exactly sure what it is going on, but the signal strength and delay indicate they are still a day or two away.”
​
“Interesting…” The Mayor commented with a more curious than scared tone while rubbing the top of his head in contemplation. “No demands, threats, or attempts to justify the use of force through galactic law… Is there any way we could get a real-time communications link established?”
​
“Sir? You want to talk to them?” Marlati could barely contain her fear as she interjected. “I thought every species hated us, and you want to talk to them?”
​
“They hate the bastard Oppressors, Marlati, though maybe not as much as we do.” Harideth knew this would be his one and only chance to make a good impression on what could otherwise be their impending doom and he was doing everything in his power to muster the inner courage needed for this conversation. “They may not know the difference between us and… them… yet. But something tells me they might.”
​
“Sir,” Telucima had redirected her attention back to her terminal and was running through the system to facilitate the Mayor’s request, “I can establish a quantum link, though it would require me to activate the relay on the ship. If there are any oppressors nearby, there’s a chance they could detect our presence and attempt to use the trace to track us down.”
​
“Do it.” The Mayor ordered with a tone that implied he knew the risks. “I want to see if these Qui’ztar would be willing to allow us to stay for the few weeks required to complete our harvest. Worst comes to worst, we’ll have to start packing everything up early and delay the repairs for another season.”
​
The next few moments were nearly silent aside from the sounds of a tapping keyboard and the occasional digitized ping from the terminal. Telucima had begun the task of awakening the ship, configuring the communications channel, and activating the relay through text-based commands on a simple, monochromatic screen, while the other two people clad in simple olive-drab clothing could do nothing but fester in their thoughts. While Harideth was busy planning out how he was going to grovel and beg for permission to finish his people’s desperately needed harvest of fresh food, Marlati was simply doing everything in her power not to shake in fear. When the final confirmation ping came from the terminal and Telucima began pressing her headset tightly to her ears, the faint whispers of a translated voice could be heard.
​
“Yes I can understand you…" The communications specialist, though lacking much previous experience in speaking with a member of another species, seemed to be focused solely on her job and not her fear. "Oh no, I'm sorry, this terminal doesn't have that function. It's… Yes, I can absolutely do that. Just give me one moment to set up the connection and I'll be right back with you."
​
In a flash, Telucima had taken off her headset, stood from her console, and was moving to a nearby bag resting on a table, much to the shock of the other Arnehilians. Before either the Mayor or his assistant could question the young woman, she was triumphantly holding up her personal data-tablet and was returning to her seat.
​
"What-" Harideth began before the young woman cut him off while pulling her tablet into the terminal.
​
"Ope, sorry about that, sir." The specialist cut off her mayor and began to explain in a rush. "I was speaking to a communications officer and she wanted an audio-visual feed to link to her commanding officer. This terminal doesn't haven't that functionality, but I can just just patch a link through my tablet. It's got a mic and camera and we can use it as the display."
​
“Good thinking, Telucima.” The Mayor laid a gentle, compassionate hand on the woman’s shoulder after she had placed the tablet at a good angle and sat back into her chair to type in the commands. “I knew you were the right person for this job.”
​
“It was the communications officer’s idea, sir.” Telucima couldn’t help herself but to be honest regardless of the praise. “I’m just glad there were instructions for this kind of patch in the training manual. It should just take a moment to load.”
​
When the relatively small screen came to life in front of the Mayor’s face, he saw three faces looking back at him with expectant eyes, and he froze in shock. Though none of the expressions looked out right hostile, he could tell none of those individuals would tolerate anything less than submission. Despite only ever seen descriptions of the being he was now looking at, all three could easily be identified. Even without his tail being visible, the furry, large-toothed person on the right was clearly a Kyim'ayik. The large, mostly-hairless, blue primate with pronounced tusks in the middle was, without a doubt, a Qui'ztar of particularly high rank. However, the not-as-large, similarly hairless, but copper-brown primate on the left was a species Harideth had a special fear, and particular reverence, for.
​
“Are… Are you a Nishnabe?” Harideth stammered out before even introducing himself or allowing these beings to introduce themselves, which prompted the Qui’ztar and Kyim'ayik to turn to the now confused human.
​
“Yes…” Msko replied hesitantly. “I take it you are aware of my people?”
​
“Aware…” Harideth couldn't stop the heartfelt smile from forming across his scaly face. “You… Your people… the Vanquishers of Tyrants, the Bane of Oppressors, the Unstoppable Rage, and the Saviors of the Oppressed… Your people are the reason my people have been blessed with a thousand years of freedom!”

GW2 really hasn't had anything noteworthy happen since EOD launched aside from maybe the cm strike. There's been no real shake ups in wvw and pvp balance aside from hard-core strip nerfs which has been smoothed over by re introducing the more popular 5+ year old builds with slight tweaks. Scrapper being replaced with a slightly more technical tempest is really the same old minstrel nonsense etc... The new pve map meta is one of the least well received in years, and pvp is basically dead to the devs.
We're still in the early beta phases of alliances, pvp is a stagnant game mode without a single mention by devs aside from patch notes for almost 2 YEARS now, and pve has mediocre map metas to look forward to considering the studio road maps and recent new cave boring design.
Without substantially NEW builds, not tweaks to popular 5+ year old pof/hot fan favorites, gw2 will have been entirely stagnant for about a year now.

What makes the Abyss hard?

There are many complaints about the Abyss. One particular complaint that commonly appears is the Abyss being “hard” or having “unfair mechanics”.
Tackling difficult content requires players having an understanding of how game mechanics and how players can express skill. Without this, players cannot actually engage with the challenge game designers come up with.
I believe many (but not all) complaints about Abyss combat are due to low player understanding of skill expression. This is due to several reasons:

1. Outside of Abyss there's very little actual content that requires you to be good at the game

• This means there are very few places for players to actually practise game mechanics
  • Event combat is often designed to be facerolled to avoid players being locked out of Primogem and Event currency rewards
  • The game also does a poor job of explaining the technical details of game basics such as elemental reactions

2. Genshin gives you very little feedback when you fail in the Abyss

• When you get stunlocked by something, do you know why?
• If you fail a Floor by just 2 seconds, do you know where you might have made a 2 sec mistake when playing the game?
• The Abyss therefore becomes frustrating because people don’t know what they have done wrong or how to improve
  • People are willing to take on frustrating repetitive tasks and find it fun doing so (e.g. roguelike games learning from failure)
  • But this requires either players to be good at identifying their own mistakes, or the game giving you clear feedback about what those mistakes are

3. Content creators don’t focus on this topic enough

• The level of understanding within a playerbase is dependent on the content created around the game itself (i.e. paratext)
• Many content creators don’t discuss gameplay skill in detail (potentially for many reasons such as lack of their own skill, inability to explain it, or lack of popularity of this type of content)
  • For example, most discussion about being a “good player” is about knowing what the right team compositions and artifacts are. But not fundamental gameplay skills such as AI manipulation
• The result is the equivalent of people trying to be a good player in League of Legends / DotA by knowing what the best character to pick or the best items to buy, but not knowing the basics of last hitting and wave management
  • Or not knowing how to play neutral in a fighting game but obsessing over knowing every single combo for a character

So let’s talk about what some key gameplay techniques are for Genshin. And then I’ll walk through Abyss design and how to think about beating the Abyss.
I will assume you are already familiar with basic techniques such as funnelling energy particles, and using I-Frames from Bursts / Dashes.

Key gameplay skills to learn

1. Grouping

Key idea: Killing multiple enemies is often as fast as killing one enemy if they all stand in the same place, saving you time
Even when using an Anemo character, the AI can be manipulated to group themselves together. This makes killing them much faster.
The core idea is that if the enemy isn’t in range to hit you, it will try to walk forward to do so. Therefore, you can position yourself in a way to encourage the AI to move together. This avoids you having to chase them around and waste time.
How to do this: When a pack of enemies spawns, move to one extreme side of them. The enemies on the opposite side will walk closer to get in range and bunch up together.
An easy trick: The first time you do an unknown Abyss layout, just load and don’t even try to fight it. Watch where enemies spawn, and how long their attack range is. This lets you observe if there are any grouping tricks you can abuse.
Example: Spiral Abyss Patch 3.4 Floor 12-2-2 (2 min 28 sec onwards)
After blowing up Wave 1 with Raiden, the player runs to the far left side of the Abyss. This causes Wave 2 of the Husks to begin to group up.
Running to the opposite side of the Abyss then gets the Husks to all stand right next to each other perfectly. This zig-zag manoeuvre means they can be extremely efficiently AoE’ed down much faster.

2. Camera Angle Management

Key idea: Always stand in a position where you can see all enemies. This means you can never be surprised by an attack from off-screen.
If the enemies are always in front of you, you can watch for the most important attacks to either Dash or cast Bursts to immune the damage / knockback.
You should never be in a position where you are hit by an attack you did not see coming.
How to do this: The easiest way to do this in the Spiral Abyss is to stand with your back towards a wall and the enemies in front of you.
Example: Spiral Abyss Patch 2.7 Floor 12-2-1 (1 min 50 sec onwards)
The player immediately runs to the back wall of the Spiral Abyss. This means despite enemies spawning in a circle around the starting point, everything can be seen by the player camera.
This has the benefit of grouping everything up to eat AoE and die efficiently.
After Wave 1 dies, the player always looks at the Cryo Slime facing the Frost Lawlachurl. Always keeping the Lawlachurl in front of them means every attack is extremely telegraphed and can be casually dodged for a clean kill.

3. Stamina Management

Key idea: Keep enough Stamina so you can always dodge important attacks.
Melee characters must trade their Stamina for distance and speed to clear fast. Therefore, you want to position carefully in the Abyss to minimize the distance you have to travel.
(This is also why Yoimiya is sometimes favoured over Hu Tao at very high levels of investment. If you are strong enough to one-rotate things anyway, the range advantage means you spend no stamina attacking enemies that spawn far away from each other instead of needing to chase them down)
How to do this: Know where enemies spawn. Kite towards spawn locations so you don’t spend time and stamina chasing up with enemies.
If you face enemies that charge you, stand with your back to a wall. The enemies will charge into a wall. This way you don’t need to chase after them.
Example: Spiral Abyss Patch 3.4 Floor 12-1-1 and Floor 12-2-1 (1 min 40 sec onwards)
On Floor 12-1-1, the player knows where all enemies are spawning. They move in a way that minimizes stamina usage and can spawn camp the enemy.
On Floor 12-2-2, the player stands with the wall at their back when the Consecrated Beasts spawn. This means they charge towards the player. Camera angle management means the attack is extremely obvious and easily I-Framed.
Keeping both Beasts near the wall means they can be easily AoE’ed down for a quick kill.

4. Pre-cast long animation Skills / Bursts

Key idea: Bursts take up time. Cast the ones with long animations when enemies have downtime so you don’t use up your DPS window.
Enemies that are targetable can also be cheesed by hitting them for some extra Energy from skills / Favonius procs.
How to do this: Many enemies have animations for spawning into the Abyss. Instead of waiting for them to spawn in, use the time to set up things such as Nahida Burst so you minimize the time not spent doing dps.
Example: Spiral Abyss Patch 3.4 Floor 12-2-2 (3 min 55 sec onwards)
By the time Dorito King ASIMON has even fully loaded into the Abyss, the player has already set up Yae turrets, Nahida E and Burst, and funnelled energy on Yelan to get back her Burst.

Learning the 3.7 Abyss specifics

1. Overview of Abyss design

Mihoyo creates Abyss layouts to encourage or discourage a specific type of gameplay, or put pressure on team compositions.
The most common approach is creating one side with an AoE mob focus vs one side with a Boss killing focus.
However, more recently Mihoyo has been introducing specific challenges to target specific ways players play teams.

• Patch 3.4 Abyss Floor 12-1-1 has 4 waves of single target enemies. This is designed to target Burst focused teams such as Ayaka Freeze.
• Hyperbloom and Nilou Bloom are broken because the base numbers are too high and Mihoyo knows this. So we have seen an introduction of many Dendro-resistant enemies to slow down low investment teams.
• The Wenut punishes teams with long set up times by having on / off DPS windows. This rewards players to move towards more flexible rotations or teams which have more front loaded DPS windows.

The reason Mihoyo does this is because it's one of the few ways they can balance content in the game. They can't retroactively buff / nerf things. So the primary lever they have is to create Abyss designs that encourage or discourage certain types of play.

2. 3.7 Abyss Design

The 3.7 Abyss is structured as a team composition building test. It rewards players who have built a variety of characters they can flex, and punishes people who have narrow character pools.

Right Side: The Shield Breaking Challenge

• If you want to use the same team for all Floors and not do the method where you rerun the Abyss with different teams to get 3-Stars per floor, the Right side pretty much demands a Hydro, Pyro, and Dendro char
• Bennett is the premier Cryo shield breaker thanks to 2U Pyro application on both Burst case and Press-E spam standing in Burst. Therefore the double Cryo Lector right side is designed to be a Bennett “sink” for players.
  • This means you are pressured to play Bennett-less teams Left side
• The DPS check on the right side is fairly low. Therefore, it is worth breaking up “traditional” teams to fit in a dedicated shield breaker
• The most popular teams in CN therefore include wonders such as:
  • Hutao with yolo Nahida
  • Nahida National
  • Hyperbloom with yolo Bennett
• The challenge on Right side is therefore about player skill and execution. The lollygag of random teams allows for significant player creativity (e.g. Yanfei Hyperbloom).

Left Side: The Time and Character Pool Challenge

• The Right side forces high demand characters such as Nahida and Bennett to be broken up and used in dedicated shield breaking roles
  • The Left side therefore asks: “Hey, who do you have left to run the DPS gauntlet?”
• The multiple Dendro resistant enemies (Dendro Chicken and Dendro Tigers) are here to prevent you from answering “My low investment yolo Hyperbloom team made from random F2P chars”
  • There are otherwise few constraints on team building here. Ideally you should just play whatever your strongest remaining characters are.
• The split of AoE mobs Floor 12-1-1 and a Boss on Floor 12-2-1 partially punishes players that cannot group efficiently or have a very strong team
  • However, because you can just rerun the Abyss with different teams and the game only looks at your best clear per Floor, this is not that big of a deal

3. Floor specific advice

Floor 12-1-1

• This Floor is designed as a time killer floor to make you feel pressured on Floor 12-1-2
  • By making you chew through 4 waves, it challenges your potentially crippled team (if your good chars were Bennett / Nahida / etc. and are stuck Right side)
• The difficulty is not the enemies, but using time saving techniques to efficiently clear each wave

Grouping techniques:

• If you have a team that can stay in the middle (e.g. Ayaka Freeze) you can just Kazuha or Venti everything and yolo this floor
• If you want to play it safe, turn 180 degrees and run to the South wall to lure the Whopperflowers all to you and AoE both waves down
  • The first wave of Dorito Robots spawn at the South side. So running South at the start means you walk a very short distance North to then kill them when they spawn. Better for Stamina management than doing grouping in other directions
  • Second wave spawns North of you, but will also filter in one by one as you kill the robots. So preferably want to kill first wave all in one go so second wave spawns in a nice Kazuha groupable bunch rather than wandering around
• If you don’t have Kazuha, run to the East / West
  • The Whopperflowers will still chase you. But the Dorito Robots will spawn in a line in front of you, causing the far back robots to move forward and group with the Robot closest to you
  • See this solo clear as an example for positioning

Floor 12-1-2

• Shield breaking floor does shield breaking things
• This floor is designed as an execution challenge
  • The biggest problem on this floor is Stamina management.
  • The Cryo Lectors will reduce your Stamina so you can't just mindlessly dash around or else you end up with zero Stamina, Cryo on you (reducing your speed), and then the Lector fun house bouncy castle spin ride will stun lock you
• If you get stun locked, this is 100% your own fault and a skill issue
  • Use camera angle management to never be hit by something off-screen
  • Lector moves are actually very telegraphed. So you goal is to keep them on-screen, and watch for any dangerous moves
  • Bennett is very clutch here because the self-Pyro application on your Ult will clear away any Hydro / Cryo on you preventing you from getting frozen
  • Jean is also good here for that reason, and with Bennett can Sunfire down the Lectors very fast
• Abyss Mages are whatever. They spawn in front of you and you just nuke them
  • Lectors spawn behind you. When you face backwards to run to the Lectors, Hydro Lector is on the right (mirror-ing the Abyss Mage Left / Right)

Nahida National comments:

• Cryo Lector shields have 56 Cryo gauge units. This means you need 28 Pyro units to break them fully.
  • Xiangling Pyronado is 1U Pyro with no ICD and hits 13 times for nearly half your Pyro needed
  • Guoba applies 1U Pyro in an AoE with no ICD. 3 hits = 3U Pyro
  • Bennett Burst is 2U + 2U per E in Burst for up to 5x2 = 10U extra Pyro for 12U more Pyro
  • 13 + 3 + 12 = 28 so just a single National rotation here deletes both Cryo Lectors from existence
  • So ideally you want to position so that both Cryo Lectors to sit on your face and eat AoE Pyro for a fast double kill
• Hydro Lector shields have 28 Hydro gauge units. This means you need 14 Dendro units to break them fully
  • My preference is to run to the right and fight the Hydro Lector first to put it into shield mode fast so then Nahida E procs while you’re killing the Cryo Lectors will auto-kill the Hydro Lector for you
  • Nahida E applies 1U on skill application and 1.5U per Tri-Karma proc per 2.5 sec
  • Nahida N1C is another 2U
  • So a quick E N1C means you only need 7 Tri-Karma procs over 17.5 sec to erase the Hydro Lector
  • Completely doable while you beat up the Cryo Lectors since a Xiangling rotation is 20 sec so it lines up very cleanly.

Floor 12-2-1

• Mushroom Chicken is mushroom chicken
• This is a big dumb boss with highly telegraphed moves and you’ve faced this before
• If you're using a yolo team Right side for shield breaking, saving time here is huge to give you more time breathing room for fk ups on Right side

Floor 12-2-2

• Thunder Manifestation returns. Does Thunder Manifestation things.
  • It has a set attack pattern where it does set up -> Collapsing Wall -> Beyblade x2 -> Homing Cage -> Repeat
  • Take advantage of this and don't waste your Stamina chasing after it if you don't need to
  • It takes a pause before each move. This is your DPS window if you are melee / short ranged

Floor 12-3-1

• Consecrated Beasts x4 doing what they do best
  • Stick to the Hydro beast. The Tiger will try to keep leaping towards you, but the Crocodile does not really care / its targeting doesn't track you very well
• You can wall hug for better camera management as well as less chasing by making them charge into the wall behind you
  • One approach is to lure them towards the wall by positioning yourself in between the Crocodile and the wall and kiting backwards and letting them chase into the wall
• The key to this fight is careful positioning
  • Good positioning = Don’t die to something you can’t see = Easier to dodge attacks
  • Keeping them close together = Easier to DPS down
• The Hydro Crocodile will spawn on the East on Wave 1 but West on Wave 2
  • However, if you’re hugging the East wall when the Crocodile spawns, its first move will be to gap close towards you anyway
• Iniquitous Baptist is a pushover. So you can afford to spend 2 min (or even a little bit longer) on this Floor if you need to

Floor 12-3-2

• Iniquitous Baptist is basically Simon Says Shieldbreaking
  • Pattern is always Cryo -> Hydro -> Pyro -> Repeat
• Shield Gauge Units:
  • Cryo Shield is 12 gauge units requiring 6U Pyro or 12U Electro
  • Hydro Shield is 12 gauge units requiring 6U Dendro or 12U Cryo to break
  • Pyro Shield is 12 gauge units requiring 6U Hydro or 12U Electo to break
• Use the initial spawning in animation to funnel some energy or pre-case Bursts if you need it since it is targetable
• It has surprisingly low HP… just match damage to its shield type and the fight is pretty free
• The Iniquitous Baptist has about 4 sec vulnerability after each Shield phase, and then about 10 sec after all Shields are down before it repeats the Shield cycle

Nahida National comments:

• You can delay your full rotation until it fully spawns. Xiangling can snapshot Nahida Burst EM buff so that’s the big one to pre-cast
  • Bennet 2U Burst -> 2U E -> Xiangling Burst + Guoba almost instantly crushes the Cryo phase
  • Nahida Charge Attack can be animation cancelled quite early if you want to really shave like half a second every Normal Attack pattern
  • You can also delay casting Xingqiu Ult until after you've done Bennett + Xiangling. You don't need Hydro to break the first few shields, and it will give you some extra uptime to clear Pyro shield faster
  • Stand close and hug the Lector so Xingqiu orbiting Rainswords can also eat elemental gauge for you while you attack
• Don’t hold your skills after the first Cycle. Just go to town and DPS it since the Cryo phase dies so fast to Xiangling Pyronado + Guoba + Bennett E anyway to get to the post-Cryo Shield DPS window to fill it faster

GL HF clearing the Abyss~! (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

WHAT IS THIS?

This is a writeup on the best ship designs in Stellaris v 3.8.3, and yes I know it's quite long. There is a Synopsis with the conclusions at the end of the post. It’s not going to include the best fleet designs, though I think we might be able to make some inferences. It is going to be focused on PvE, but a lot of these designs will also be a very strong starting point for PvP designs. These designs are based on personal testing in-game, calculations via spreadsheets with numbers taken largely from the wiki, and videos such as Montu’s ‘Early Corvette Design’; as such, there’s plenty of ship configurations I have not tried and tested. Please add any you think I missed!
After watching Montu’s 3.8 weapons tierlist, I was theorycrafting ship designs with some friends again. I fondly remember some of the pre-3.6 ship and fleet design discussions, and there has been enough time since the combat rebalance that I think the meta is beginning to settle. I’m going to break up the analysis into 3 parts: Early game (Corvettes and Destroyers/Frigates, one or two weapon type upgrades researched), Mid game (All the above + Cruisers and more weapon types researched), and Late game (Above + Battleships and Titans, most if not all weapons have been researched to the highest tier, minimal repeatables).

EARLY GAME

This borrows most heavily on Montu’s Early Corvette Design video. In it, he describes the absolute best Corvette design as 3 missiles in S slots. There is a 4-design Rock Paper Scissors hierarchy that goes 3 Missile < 2 Missile PD < 2 Kinetic/Laser + PD < 3 Kinetic/Laser < 3 Missile. The 3 Missile will beat any design that does not have PD in it, which the AI is likely to use, hence being the ‘best’, and where you probably want to start. The early game after that initial design requires you to be adaptable and has probably the greatest emphasis on needing Intel on the enemy’s designs if you want to gain an edge in ship design. You will generally want to research higher tier Missiles for a few reasons as well, so this is a great time to start.
Once you roll Disruptor tech, the early game shifts and you must immediately outfit all your ships with these bypass weapons. It is actually hard to overstate how powerful Disruptors are in Corvette vs Corvette battles; I did the math on this one, and the time to kill with Disruptors will be up to half the time with kinetic/laser weapons. In my experience and based on my math, Disruptors are the final word in the early game.
For defensive slots, it is also dependent on what tech you roll, but Armor is the most useful defensive slot in the game. Discounting Archaeotech, there are extremely few weapons that bypass armor or deal bonus damage to it, and most of those are found in the mid-to-late game. For Aux slots, I recommend afterburners.

MID GAME

Once Cruisers start to come online, the best weapon to outfit them with is the Whirlwind Missile battery. Even before then, Cruisers with Disruptors still are not to be scoffed at, or G slots are also great for taking down starbases. Once SwarmeWhirlwind Missile tech is researched, I strongly believe that the best ship design in the midgame is the “Macross” Cruiser design. As many M slots as possible, with 2 S slots at the tail end for 3 Aux slots. Every M slot is filled with SwarmeWhirlwind Missiles, and the 2 S slots have either regular missiles or the Archaeo Nano-Missile Cloud Launcher. The 3 Aux slots all have Afterburners, and the Combat Computer is set to Artillery. The purpose of this design is to kite away from the enemy with a fantastic 120 range weapons that ignore shields. The 3 Afterburners make Cruisers surprisingly fast, all the missile weapons have 100% accuracy and solid damage, and these missiles are especially effective against targets with low Hull points, meaning Frigates with Torpedos are a very unreliable counter despite doing lots of damage with their G slots. This design is not perfect against strong Starbases with their loads of Armor and solid Hulls; if you find yourself struggling with those, consider adding Cruisers with G slot weapons of your own. I recommend Torpedos and more missiles.
If your opponent is using a design like this, the best counter is to get on top of them. This design relies on dealing constant damage that cannot be avoided while kiting the enemy. Cruisers with equal speed that get the jump on them with Torpedos and Disruptors will tear them apart, but rely on starting the battle in close range already, such as attacking the Macross Cruisers while they are entering/leaving a system or are otherwise already near the edge. If you notice your opponent has pure Armor defenses, you can also get cheeky with Neutron Launcher Frigates, which have the same range as Swarmer Missiles, but no travel time and deal huge damage in an alpha strike.
My recommended Torpedo Cruiser loadout is very straightforward: use the same defenses and Aux slots as the Macross Cruiser, but use Torpedos in all 3 potential G slots, and Disruptors in the other slots, set to the Torpedo combat computer.

LATE GAME

Transitioning from the Mid Game to the Late Game is essentially about what ship designs can contend with the Macross Cruiser and which designs can complement or surpass it. The Macross Cruiser dominates the midgame, but there are things it struggles with; in particular, targets with high Armor and high Hull. Starbases were mentioned previously, and as more Starbases get upgraded and Defense Platforms are built, the Macross Cruiser will struggle more. Additionally, Battleships and Titans seem to fair reasonably well against them, as both will have high Armor and solid Hull. Therefore, Battleships and Titans still serve a role in Late Game fleets. Additionally, Battleships are capable of 2 or 3 designs that I think can be quite strong.
The first Battleship design is based around long-range Bypass weapons. In general, bypassing shields and armor is a strong mechanic, and abusing it at long range can mitigate the trouble Battleships can have against ships with large amounts of Armor. It utilizes the Arc Emitter X slot weapon and Cloud Lightning L slot weapons. Cloud Lightning is fairly weak, however, dealing only slightly more damage than a T3 M slot Disruptor while taking up an L slot. In exchange, you get 50% more range (40 vs 60). The trouble here is that Battleships simply cannot field many M slots, so I believe Cloud Lightning is still the best choice for this build. Overall, I think this is the weakest of the Battleship designs that I will be covering, but if your fleets are built for full bypass, then this Battleship may still provide a niche as the longest-ranging ship capable of full bypass.
The next two designs come as a pair: a Carrier and an Artillery design made to complement each other in a self-sufficient manner. The Carrier Battleship fields Ancient Driller Drones, which have a -50% penalty against shields, but ignore armor and have a 25% bonus against Hull. 3 can be fit at maximum onto each Carrier Battleship, along with 4 PD, 1 L slot, 1 M slot, and 2 S slots. I recommend utilizing primarily Guardian PD, both to attempt to stem the tide of missiles, and because, if necessary, their high armor damage will complement the Driller Drones in battle. For the L slot, I went with Kinetic Artillery for bonus damage against shields and overall high damage at very long range. For the M slot, I recommend Whirlwind Missiles for their high range. For S slots, Ancient Nano-Missile Cloud Launchers are the perfect synergy, ignoring shields and armor and dealing 25% extra damage against Hull, similar to the Driller Drones. A Carrier combat computer will do its best to keep this ship as far away as possible from danger, allowing the strike craft to fight for as long as possible, as that is the main source of damage for this design at 34.78 avg damage per tick each. For defensive slots, I recommend a 5:1 mix of armor and shield to prevent being hard countered by Neutron Launchers (I’ve done the math on that, and Battleships of just about any design will actually lose to Frigate/Cruisers with Neutron Launchers in equal numbers, if they have only armor). For Auxiliary slots, there are a number of potential options: Afterburners to allow for a small amount of kiting and speed your fleets up somewhat, Shield or Armor hardening against enemies running full Bypass weapons, and Regenerative Hull Tissue for a small boost in sustainability during battle, as the .5% daily Armor regen will restore about 44 armor per Armor slot each tick in combat for each RHT (for where this math comes from, see this thread).
Finally, we can discuss the 3rd Battleship design, the Artillery Battleship. This one is much more simple by comparison, with a Tachyon Lance X slot and 4 Kinetic Artillery L slots. The purpose of this ship design is to ensure that any targets with large amounts of Shields will not counter the Carrier type Battleship. The Tachyon Lance itself is extremely good against high-armor targets as well, particularly targets with only armor, as none of its damage is wasted against Shields, which it has a -50% penalty against. Once targets have had their Armor stripped away, the Kinetic Artillery does full damage against Hull, meaning that this design also relies on the other ships, such as Torpedo Cruisers, to help remove the Armor of its targets, as the low firing speed of the Tachyon Lance is not enough to be self-reliant. This ship design should have the Artillery ship combat computer, the same 5:1 Armor to Shields ratio as before, and two Auxiliary Fire Control Aux slots.
As alluded to before, Titans can also keep a niche in the modern meta. These behemoths are not excellent in direct combat, and are mostly used for 3 tasks: providing useful auras, beginning engagement at maximum ranges, and instantly destroying Starbases. As the Auras have not changed, the most beneficial are the same as in previous patches, with the exception of -20% Shields being less impactful than before, given the prevalence of Shield Bypassing weapons. However, if your target has a high amount of shields and you are using the Carrier+Artillery Battleship combo, this one can still be very useful. The 3 other Auras I run in order of importance (I feel) are Quantum Destabilizer (-10% enemy fire rate), Subspace Snare (-20% Combat Disengagement Chance), and Inspiring Presence (+5% friendly fire rate). For weapons, I have gone with Kinetic Artillery and the traditional Perdition Beam rather than the Ancient Ruination Glare, though I have not done a lot of experimentation with this design in combat. It retains the 5:1 Armor to Shields defenses, a Carrier combat computer, and 3 Auxiliary Fire Controls.

BRIEF FLEET DISCUSSION

I have very little grasp on the balance of economics and firepower for balancing fleet compositions, but I can suggest which ship designs should be used in a fairly basic fleet pattern in the late game.
A Titan, whose purpose is to instantly annihilate the Starbase you might be attacking into, or destroying enemy Titans while staying at long distance.
Artillery Battleships, who will then fire and strip the enemy of most, if not all, of their Shields.
Carrier Battleships to then start whittling away at the Hull of ships that no longer have Shields
Disruptor Corvettes, which serve as low-cost chaff for absorbing high-damage weapons, and which contribute to Hull damage done by Carrier Battleships. In combination, these two ship designs should quickly eliminate low-Hull targets, leaving larger targets like Cruisers, Battleships, Titans, and Starbases behind.
And Torpedo Cruisers, which will help by eliminating the Armor of the remaining ships, which will probably be taking huge bonus damage thanks to their size.
The optimal number of each ship type that should be contained within a fleet is unknown to me; there are too many variables for me to test via spreadsheet, it will require testing in-game, which I haven’t tried yet.

SYNOPSIS

The perfect ship changes through the course of the game. Early designs are built around what tech you have rolled and the designs of your enemy, and must remain flexible, though there are some generally good designs to try and roll the tech for. Disruptors dominate the game once they are unlocked, until the Midgame, where Cruisers stuffed full of missiles and the occasional torpedo kite most other designs to death flawlessly. By the lategame, all the tech and designs begin to converge, but the previous designs are not totally obsolete. Instead, new tools are unlocked that help reign in the previous designs. Battleships with a mix of Driller Drones and Kinetic Artillery can quickly destroy threats like the Macross Cruiser, and Titans will annihilate Starbases in the path of your conquest. I fully recommend building balanced fleets in the Late Game, with a mix of several of these designs. As always, keep in mind that the best ship design is the one that counters your enemy’s, and that these designs are not as cut-and-paste as in the previous meta. Even in the lategame, there are builds that might surprise you and counter your fleet, and being a generalist means taking at least some losses in every fight.
I want to end this by thanking the Stellaris devs for their hard work and the knife’s edge they have managed to balance combat in the game on. I am so much more interested and intrigued by ship design post-3.6 than any other time, and it’s a breath of fresh air! It’s not perfectly balanced still, but nothing is more “Stellaris” to me than spending 5 hours with both the Ship Designer and a spreadsheet open to find how to break that balance. To them and anyone who managed to read this whole post: sincerely, thank you.
EDIT I don't want to make this post longer than it already is, but there is a lot of very useful discussion in the comments about when to change these designs to take advantage of what your opponent is doing! If you want an even better understanding of how to make the best designs possible, please read below.

Since the announcement of the devblog "Spring Update 2023" I observed the community reception on the dev branch, live servers and here on reddit.
There is already a comprehensive list of the most upvoted and discussed topics:
https://www.reddit.com/foxholegame/comments/13xxnfm/compilation_of_highly_upvoted_andor_highly/
This list is already a very nice reflection of what the community would have liked and not liked to see in the upcoming patch.
While map changes could spice some things up and seem to be a necessary precursor for the naval update, the overwhelming focus of negative community reception is the general nerf of the BMS-Mineseeker (small gauge locomotive). In a different post (https://www.reddit.com/foxholegame/comments/13y6zwy/yup_the_entire_community_is_in_ruins/) Markfoot answered on why this change is coming.
​
The answer is: Anti griefing because pre alpha tests have shown that pull times decrease griefing.
​
... REALLY?
Here is my problem with the change and the given explanation. As a veteran since war 96 who clocked in 2000+ hours by now I know this answer isn't true. The real reason for the nerf are shirtports. Shirtports are a fairly new invention first popping up around war 101/102. You take a structure at a safe location close to factories and submit shirts from crates into it. You pull the shirts from that structure, stack them to 100 per slot and all of a sudden a normal truck transports 1500 shirts instead of 150. This shirtport system is only viable with multiple BMS-Mineseekers pulling from one structure. But if you have lets say 4 you can fill a truck in 10 minutes.
The BMS-Mineseeker is used by both factions. Its not unique and it takes resources and effort to put them in place. It is a vehicle that leaves entries in the logs of buildings that have one and since recently you can see who used it last. While not intentional or the most elegant, it is still a solution to a problem the player base suffers from - the time intensive and boring process of pulling resources, materials, shells and more.
So whats a better solution Siegecamp? Extra tech for every building to have increased pull speed? A separate rank for every war that enables players who contribute more to pull faster? Why are you taking away without having something to replace? We had to fight for more anti-griefing and now you even expand on logs but still argue this is for the purpose of protecting the shared resources?
This kind of action is what creates or at least implies the rift between playerbase and development. I really hope you guys will have a change of heart because these "little" things for you are the "big" things for the community that make you lose the hardliners of this game.
Here is your simple solution: Just change the max stacks of shirts in vehicles to 10 or disable the ability of the BMS-Mineseeker to pull shirts at all and call it a day. No new building, tech, vehicle or development time to achieve a comparable solution.
On a personal note and while I have your attention... Disable the Stygian Bolt and Silverhand Tank Destroyer altogether for some wars and look how that works to revisit 94.5mm balancing.
o7 Cloud
​
tl;dr: Don't take away the BMS-Mineseeker and create a problem with reasoning that isn't plausible while not offering a solution.

For anyone in town for the summer who's looking for events to enjoy this weekend, here's 25 local events you can enjoy and participate in on Saturday & Sunday.
1. 2023 Pulaski County Spring Flea Market New River Valley Fairgrounds, Dublin Saturday, June 3, 2023 and Sunday, June 4, 2023, 7:00 AM - 5:00 PM Admission: $2.00, Kids 6 and Under: Free The Dublin Lions Club presents the 2023 Pulaski County Spring Flea Market celebrating 48 years. With over 20,000 visitors and 700 vendors spaces, more than a dozen different food vendors offering varied food options and the chance to eat a few of the famous "Lion Dogs", you will not want to miss this event. Check out vendors with crafts, antiques and more at the semi-annual Pulaski County Flea Market. Although over 100 spaces are under roof, it is a largely an outdoor event. The terrain is varied from asphalt, gravel and grass. Parking is free. All proceeds go to the Dublin Lions and their numerous community causes such as eyeglasses for the needy and hunger relief in the community. The event is rain or shine. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708165
2. Kunga Fest 2023: Two-Day Donations Yoga Festival In Balance Yoga Studio, Blacksburg Friday, June 2, 2023, 4:00 - 10:00 PM and Saturday, June 3, 2023, 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM Yoga classes and events are by donation. In Balance Yoga Studio presents their 10th Kunga Fest, a two-day Donations Yoga Festival with 100% of the donations donated to directly support the Homes of Hope Orphanage in India. Homes of Hope is a safe space for orphaned, abandoned, or trafficked young girls in India. In Balance Yoga is offering 15 donation-based classes throughout the two-day event. Hot yoga, ariel yoga, yoga classes with live music and gentle flow, are just some of the options offered. A silent auction will also be offered with bidding open until 6:00 PM on Saturday, June 3rd. Over 20 items are in the auction including a private ariel yoga session, a one-hour reiki session, an acupuncture session and more! Yoga classes and events are by donation though registration is required. Membership is not required to attend however new students will have to create an online profile in order to register. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708207
3. National Trails Day: Appalachian Trail Volunteer Trail Work Pearis Cemetary / Appalachian Trailhead Parking, Pearisburg Saturday, June 3, 2023, 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM Admission: Free The Outdoor Club at Virginia Tech is hosting Appalachian Trail Volunteer Trail Work for National Trails Day meeting at the Appalachian Trailhead Parking at Pearis Cemetary. The first Saturday of June each year is designated as National Trails Day, a day to celebrate our National Trails. There are a variety of volunteer opportunities available throughout the Trail. Essential trail maintenance helps protect natural resources and improves the hiking experience. Activities planned for the day include removing tress that have fallen across the Trail and are obstructing its path, cleaning out water bars and other trail tread structures of debris so that they can effectively divert water from the Trail and continue to help reduce erosion, as well as trimming back woody bushes that might be encroaching on the sides of the Trail. This work will be taking place on Hemlock Ridge, the stretch of Trail between the Celenese plant and Clendennin Road. There will be a shuttle planned to allow for a 3-mile hike through, performing work along the way. No previous experience required and all ages are welcome. The club will provide tools, training, and personal protective equipment. While it is free to volunteer, registration is required to ensure enough supplies will be available. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708056
4. American Red Cross Blood Drive with Brunch Meadowbrook Public Library, Shawsville Saturday, June 3, 2023, 9:00 AM - 2:00 PM Admission: Free Meadowbrook Public Library and the Meadowbrook Center hosts an American Red Cross Blood Drive. Help save a life by donating blood. Brunch will be provided for donors and they may select a used book to take home. Books compliments of Friends of the Library-Meadowbrook Chapter. The blood drive is sponsored by Craighill Masonic Lodge and Meadowbrook Library. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708083
5. CIMA Open House Christiansburg Institute Museum and Archives, Christiansburg Saturday, June 3, 2023, 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM Admission: Free Christiansburg Institute Museum & Archives staff will lead museum guests on a behind the scenes tour of our archives and explain the digitization process. Explore the history of Christiansburg Institute and African American history in Southwest Virginia. No registration is required. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708171
6. Survival Skills Workshop Series: Part 2: Edible and Medicinal Plants Pulaski County Library, Pulaski Saturday, June 3, 2023, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Admission: Free The Pulaski County Library continues their Survival Skills Workshop Series with "Part 2: Edible and Medicinal Plants". Learn about edible and medicinal plants and enjoy some pine needle tea. Join them to learn important survival skills from a Claytor Lake ranger. This is the second part of a four-part course that will help you to brush up our survivalist knowledge and skills. All are welcome but these will be gauged for adults. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=707463
7. 2023 Gospel Sing St. Luke and Odd Fellows Hall, Blacksburg Saturday, June 3, 2023, 12:00 - 4:00 PM Admission: Free Blacksburg Museum and Cultural Foundation presents the annual Gospel Sing. The afternoon will be filled with singing, dancing, and fellowship as six local groups including Simple Gifts, Indian Run, Glorylanders and soloists perform their favorite current and old-time gospel favorites. Food and beverage will be available for purchase. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708172
8. Historic Smithfield's June Crafters' Stitch Along Historic Smithfield, Blacksburg Saturday, June 3, 2023, 12:00 - 3:00 PM Admission: Free Historic Smithfield presents June's Crafters' Stitch Along. You don't have to stitch to participate. Bring whatever craft you would like to work on and feel free to bring your paints, pencils, hooks, yarn, needles or fabric. This event is free to attend though pre-registration is appreciated. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708189
9. Music at the Villa with Craig Vaughn Villa Appalaccia Winery, Floyd Saturday, June 3, 2023, 1:00 - 4:00 PM Admission: Free Relax and enjoy some great music along with great wine and food. Craig Vaughn is a musician that combines extraordinary musicianship with heavy-duty fun. His high energy blend of rock, blues, pop and acoustic music equals unforgettable moments for audiences. He seamlessly goes from playing Bob Marley to The Eagles to Johnny Cash to Tom Petty to Ed Sheering to Journey to Newgrass to The Steve Miller Band without missing a lick. Kids and well-behaved dogs welcome. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708180
10. Genealogy Saturdays Alexander Black House & Cultural Center, Blacksburg Saturday, June 3, 2023, 1:00 - 4:00 PM Admission: Free Ancestry experts will be on hand to assist you as you explore your family tree. Come with questions about research and discovering your roots. Join them on the first Saturday of every month for Genealogy Saturdays. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708173
11. Puzzle Swap Christiansburg Library, Christiansburg Saturday, June 3, 2023, 1:00 - 3:00 PM Admission: Free Bring your puzzles to swap for new-to-you puzzles. Please make sure that all pieces are there. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708134
12. June 2023 Cruiser Night Scoops Arcade, Pembroke Saturday, June 3, 2023, 5:00 - 8:00 PM Admission: Free Scoops Arcade continues their Cruiser Nights on Snidow Street in downtown Pembroke, VA. Show off your classic, modified, or new cars, trucks and bikes. Ride in style down the street and/or park and enjoy the atmosphere and oldies music. All vehicles and spectators are welcome. Hotdogs, corndogs, pizza, nachos, drinks and Scoops old fashion hand dipped ice cream and shakes will be available inside Scoops. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708196
13. Bobby and Blake Parker in Concert Rising Silo Farm Brewery, Blacksburg Saturday, June 3, 2023, 6:00 - 9:00 PM Admission: Free Rising Silo Farm Brewery presents Bobby and Blake Parker playing cozy folk music, blues and ragtime on 6- and 12-string guitar and more. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=707876
14. Chico and Willie in Concert Outerspace, Floyd Saturday, June 3, 2023, 6:00 - 9:00 PM Admission: Free Chico & Willie perform Americana music to make you smile outside at Outerspace. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708185
15. John McEuen & The Circle Band in Concert Floyd Country Store, Floyd Saturday, June 3, 2023, 7:00 - 10:00 PM General Admission: $38.00, Reserved Seating: $45.00 John McEuen has performed for 50 years worldwide with his banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin. Often referred to as ‘the String Wizard’, he humorously weaves stories of his travels and family life (he has raised 7 kids), taking us on a multi-media show through where his musical path has taken him. A founding member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1966, John realized his teenage dream: to record with Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson. When he initiated the 1972 classic "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" album with his band the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Earl and Doc with Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter, Jimmy Martin, Merel Travis, Vassar Clements, Norman Blake gathered for an historic week in the studio. The album has been inducted in to the Library of Congress as "one of America’s most important recordings" and the Grammy Hall of Fame. John has continually performed since 1963, doing over 11,000 concerts, 300 television shows, 10,000 interviews and flown more than 4 million miles. McEuen’s rich history of creating, producing and preserving original and traditional folk music earned him the 2013 Charlie Poole Lifetime Achievement Award. He has made over 46 albums (7 solo) that have earned four platinum and five gold records, multiple Grammy Awards and nominations, CMA and ACM awards, an Emmy film score nomination, IBMA record of the year award, and performed on another 25 albums as guest artist. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=707453
16. The CC Coates Band in Concert Dogtown Roadhouse, Floyd Saturday, June 3, 2023, 8:00 - 11:00 PM Admission: $8.00 The CC Coates Band performs blues, soul and rock n roll. Sung by the real deal and backed by a hell of a band. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708190
17. 2023 Check Farm Trail Downtown Check, Check Sunday, June 4, 2023, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM Admission: Free Floyd Country Tourism presents the 2nd Annual Check Farm Trail at seven participating farms and businesses throughout Check, Virginia including Lil Valley Farm, Weathertop Farm, Grateful Produce, I-Tal Acres, Seven Spring's Farm and The Soup Shop. This family-friendly experience is an up-close chance to learn about agriculture through demonstrations, tastings and farm tours and more. Food and/or products will be available for purchase at most of the farms and businesses. Times and available hours vary by farm and tour stop. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708205
18. 2023 Rotary Club of Floyd Dog Show Warren G. Lineberry Memorial Park, Floyd Sunday, June 4, 2023, 12:15 - 3:00 PM Dogs: $5.00 entry per class, Spectators: Free though donations encouraged The Rotary Club of Floyd County presents their 4th Annual Rotary Dog Show. Bring your dog, puppy, and/or faithful canine friend to compete in one or more of the dog show classes and ribbons will be awarded for each class. Classes for Dog Show include Best Tail, Best Treat Catcher, Best Smile, Best Owner-Dog Look-a-Like Contest, Best Trick, Cutest Puppy Under One Year Old, Best Bark, Best Mixed Breed Dog, Best Purebred Dog, Best Child Handler Under 12 Years Old and more. All dogs must should be on a short leash and up to date on vaccinations. The Humane Society will also have a table and possibly dogs to adopt. Adults and children ages 9 and older are welcome to participate with their dog in the various classes. Proceeds will be used to help build a dog park in Floyd. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708176
19. Music Jam and Car Cruise-In Wildwood Farms General Store, Floyd Sunday, June 4, 2023, 1:00 - 4:00 PM Admission: Free Enjoy a cruise-in with a variety of classic cars, motorcycles and other vehicles from 1:00-4:00 PM. All are welcome to bring their vehicles. And, bring your instruments and join in the music jam from 2:00-4:00 PM. Admission is free and all are welcome including non-musicians. The event is weather permitting. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708018
20. Clay Blevins in Concert Buffalo Mountain Brewery, Floyd Sunday, June 4, 2023, 1:00 - 4:00 PM Admission: Free Clay Blevins performs a signature mix of old and new country, pop and singer songwriter tunes. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708153
21. Book Club Meeting: Corkscrew Blacksburg Wine Lab, Blacksburg Sunday, June 4, 2023, 1:00 - 3:00 PM Admission: $40.00 Blacksburg Wine Lab presents their June Book Club Meeting featuring the book "Corkscrew" by Peter Stafford-Bow. Josh from Well Crafted Wine has picked this book specifically for the book club and will be hosting the event. The book includes a whole chapter on South Africa and Josh is inspired to share a tasting of his favorite bottles with participants from this region, along with a selection of crafted bites from Chef Bryan. The ticket price includes the wine tasting, book discussion and crafted bites to accompany the wine. RSVP is required. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708208
22. Matt Mullins in Concert Rock House Marina, Pulaski Sunday, June 4, 2023, 3:00 - 5:00 PM Admission: Free Matt Mullins performs multiple genres of music and now resides from Beckley, West Virginia after a stay in Southwest Virginia. A loud and sometimes profanity filled personality, you can't help but love to hate his shake, rattle, and roll nonsense. By spending the better part of the last decade creating songs with some of his favorite artists, (in particular The Boatmen) it has helped shape this songwriters methodology. Relating to back porch memories, and moving listeners to undoubtedly feel that he's got music in his bones. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708090
23. Sunday Mountain Music Series with Kris Hale Mountain Lake Lodge, Pembroke Sunday, June 4, 2023, 4:00 - 6:00 PM Admission: Free Kristopher Hale is a native of Roanoke, Virginia. Currently a Adjunct Professor of Music at both Radford University and Lynchburg College in Virginia, he also teaches guitar and music theory privately throughout the New River Valley and Roanoke areas. He is a sought after performer, appearing in public and private events throughout Virginia playing classical music to The Beatles. Stop by Salt Pond Pub every Sunday starting Memorial Day weekend through Sunday, August 20th for live music and delicious food and drinks. Perfect for relaxing with the whole family (furry friends welcome too). Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=707866
24. Open Mic Night (Family Friendly and 18+ Segments) The Beast of Blacksburg Pizzeria & Bar, Blacksburg Sunday, June 4, 2023, 4:00 PM - 01:00 AM Admission: Free The Beast of Blacksburg Pizzeria & Bar kicks off their Open Mic Nights with two segments offering a full evening of local talent. From 4:00-8:00 PM, family friendly material will be performed and then from 9:00 PM - 1:00 AM, the open mic is open to adult material for ages 18 and up. Note: Any group acts of more than two performers should message them on Facebook to make the necessary arrangements. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708201
25. Mist on the Mountain in Concert Palisades Restaurant, Eggleston Sunday, June 4, 2023, 5:00 - 7:30 PM Admission: Free Mist on the Mountain is an Irish Traditional Music group based in the New River Valley of southwest Virginia. From lively jigs and reels to heartbreaking laments and rollicking ballads, Mist on the Mountain provides great Irish music for any occasion. Reservations are not required, but recommended for dining area seating. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708177
Have a great weekend and thanks for reading!

Class Tuning Incoming – June 6 - General Discussion - US - Blue Tracker - World of Warcraft (wowhead.com)
----
As we continue to monitor class performance in instanced group content as well as PvP, we regularly adjust classes that are over- or under-performing. Based on recent data, observations, and feedback from players, we intend to make the following adjustments during scheduled weekly maintenance (on June 6 in this region).

Classes

Death Knight

• Blood
  • All damage abilities increased by 8%.

Druid

• Feral
• Developers’ notes: The following set bonus changes will increase the average number of stacks of the (2) Set Bonus and cause the (4) Set Bonus to trigger less often, but provide more Agility when it does.
  • Aberrus (2) Set Bonus: Chance for Shadows of the Predator stacks to reset reduced by 15%.
  • Aberrus (4) Set Bonus: Now increases Agility by 8% (was 5%).

Evoker

• Preservation
• Developers’ notes: We would like there to be more of a reward to using Disintegrate over Living Flame as a Preservation Evoker, since it has a high Essence cost.
  • Disintegrate damage has been increased by 15% for Preservation Evoker.

Hunter

• Beast Mastery
  • All damage dealt by you and your pet’s abilities increased by 5%.

Mage

• Fire
  • Pyroblast damage increased by 5%. This does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Fire Blast damage increased by 10%. This does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Fireball damage increased by 10%. This does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Phoenix Flames damage increased by 10%. This does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Scorch damage increased by 10%

Monk

• Brewmaster
  • All ability damage increased by 3%.
  • Rising Sun Kick damage increased by 10%.
  • Blackout Kick damage increased by 30%.
  • Tiger Palm damage increased by 30%.
• Mistweaver
  • All healing abilities increased by 3%. This does not apply to PvP Combat.

Rogue

• Assassination
  • All ability damage increased by 5%.

Warlock

• Developers’ notes: The high frequency of Amplify Curse has been problematic in PvP combat, so its cooldown has been increased. These changes are also noted in the PvP section below.
  • The cooldown of Amplify Curse is now 60 seconds (was 30 seconds).
  • Teachings of the Satyr now reduces the cooldown of Amplify Curse by 15 seconds (was 10 seconds).

Warrior

• Arms
• Developers’ notes: Arms Warriors are not performing as well as we would like in single target or low-target-count situations.
  • All ability damage increased by 4%.
  • Fatality Fatal Mark damage increased by 15%.
  • Deep Wounds periodic damage increased by 5%.
  • Rend periodic damage increased by 5%.
• Protection
• Developers’ notes: Protection Warriors are not currently performing as competitively as we would like compared to most other tanks in terms of damage and survivability.
  • All damaging abilities increased by 8%.
  • Auto-attack damage increased by 10%.
  • Spell Block’s duration increased to 30 seconds (was 20 seconds).
  • Thunderlord now causes each enemy hit by Thunder Clap to reduce the remaining cooldown of Demoralizing Shout by 1.5 seconds, up to 4.5 seconds (was 1.0 seconds, up to 3.0 seconds).

Player versus Player

Druid

• Balance
• Developers’ notes: Balance Druids have been overperforming due to their ability to generate so much Astral Power and deal high damage by applying dots and casting Starfall repeatedly. We’d like to reduce the effectiveness of that playstyle since it’s difficult for opponents to stop. Goldrinn’s Fang also became much more effective in Embers of Neltharion, and includes some randomness and ability to score kills unexpectedly. Finally, Owlkin Adept has been a locked-in talent for a while now and has been propping up their control a bit more than we’re comfortable with.
  • Moonfire and Sunfire generate 4 Astral Power when cast in PvP combat (was 6).
  • Stellar Innervation increases Astral Power generation of Moonfire and Sunfire by 50% in PvP combat (was 100%).
  • Star Burst grants 8 Astral Power (was 15).
  • Owlkin Adept reduces the cast time of Cyclone and Entanglng Roots by 20% (was 30%).
  • Goldrinn’s Fang damage is reduced by 50% in PvP combat.
  • Wrath and Starfire deal 60% increased damage in PvP combat (was 50%).

Hunter

• Marksmanship
• Developers’ notes: Marksmanship Hunters have been underperforming in different forms of PvP content.
  • Aimed Shot damage increased by 25% in PvP combat (was 15%).
  • Rapid Fire damage increased by 25% in PvP combat (was 15%).
  • Arcane Shot damage increased by 25% in PvP combat (was 16%).

Priest

• Discipline
• Developers’ notes: Discipline has been more reliant on shields this season than we’d like. We’re increasing Atonement healing while bringing down the power of shields, with the goal of the preferred playstyle being an offensive one. We’re also targeting the mana reduction from Inner Light, as Discipline has been more mana efficient than we’d like.
  • Power Word: Shield now absorbs 15% less damage in PvP combat.
  • Inner Light now reduces the mana cost of the affected spells by 10% (was 15%).
  • Atonement healing is now 50% more effective in PvP combat (was 40%).

Mage

• Fire
• Developers’ notes: Glass Cannon is intended to have high risk and high reward with its gameplay, and we feel the risk is too low for the benefit it provides, especially when paired with Flamecannon.
  • Glass Cannon now decreases maximum health by 20% (was 15%)
  • Flamecannon now increases maximum health by 2% per stack (was 3%).

Monk

• Mistweaver
• Developers’ notes: Mistweavers have been overperforming compared to other healers, especially due to their mana efficiency.
  • Soulfang Infusion now regenerates 75% less Mana in PvP combat (was 50%).
  • Zen Spheres now cost 0.5% base Mana.
  • Enveloping Mist now heals for 5% more in PvP combat (was 20%).
  • Mistweaver Monks now regenerate 15% less Mana in PvP combat (was 10%).
• Windwalker
• Developers’ notes: Whirling Dragon Punch has felt underwhelming and we’d like it to feel impactful to use without being a major portion of a Windwalker’s damage profile.
  • Whirling Dragon Punch damage increased by 80% in PvP combat.

Shaman

• Enhancement
• Developers’ notes: There are a few talents that are leading to fast kills that can feel unfair when facing an Enhancement Shaman. We’re aiming to bring down the burst potential from cooldowns and increase sustained DPS.
  • Forceful Winds is now 75% effective in PvP Combat.
  • The damage increase to Lava Lash from Ashen Catalyst is now 33% effective in PvP combat.
  • Lava Lash now deals 35% increased damage in PvP combat (was 15%).
  • The Physical damage increase from Feral Spirit is now 33% effective in PvP combat.
  • The Fire, Frost, and Lightning damage increase from Elemental Spirits is now 50% effective in PvP combat.
  • Stormstrike now deals 75% increased damage in PvP combat (was 50%).
  • Windstrike now deals 75% increased damage in PvP combat (was 50%).
• Restoration
• Developers’ notes: We feel Restoration Shaman is in a good spot. Rain Dance wasn’t as valuable as we were anticipating, so we’re aiming to increase its viability.
  • Rain Dance now increases the healing done by Healing Rain by 30% (was 20%).
  • Rain Dance now reduces the mana cost of Healing Rain by 45% (was 30%).

Rogue

• Subtlety
• Developers’ notes: Burst damage from Subtlety has been higher than we’d like this season. We’re looking to keep the spec in a strong position while toning down their burst potential in short windows.
  • Secret Technique damage is now reduced by 33% in PvP combat (was 25%).
  • Shadowstrike and Backstab damage from Weaponmaster is now 50% effective in PvP combat.
  • Flagellation’s Mastery bonus is now 80% effective in PvP combat.
  • Dark Shadow is now 67% effective in PvP combat (was 80%).

Warlock

• Developers’ notes: Inquisitor’s Gaze has been dealing a sizeable portion of Warlock damage this season, and we’d like damage to come primarily from active spells.
  • Fel Barrage from Inquisitor’s Gaze now deals 40% reduced damage in PvP combat.
  • Developers’ note: The high frequency of Amplify Curse has been problematic in PvP combat.
  • The cooldown of Amplify Curse is now 60 seconds (was 30 seconds).
  • Teachings of the Satyr now reduces the cooldown of Amplify Curse by 15 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• Affliction
• Developers’ notes: We are increasing the damage of Unstable Affliction’s backlash effect to lessen the value of dispelling Affliction’s damage over time effects. It’s been lower than we’d like, in addition to healers gaining extra health this season. Additionally, we’re increasing Shadow Bolt damage as the reward for casting it is lower than we’d like.
  • Unstable Affliction backlash damage increased by 50%.
  • Shadow Bolt damage increased by 30% in PvP combat.
• Destruction
• Developers’ notes: Destruction’s sustained DPS has been high and we feel this is mainly due to Shadowburn’s high multiplier. We would like for instant casts to be strong but not be the primary way to land kills.
  • Conflagration damage is now reduced by 15% in PvP combat (was 9%).
  • Shadowburn damage is now increased by 15% in PvP combat (was 45%).
• Demonology
• Developers’ notes: Demonology’s healing reduction effect from their Felguard was one of the best healing reductions in the game, which didn’t feel appropriate given the class identity, how easy it is to apply, and how it can be applied to multiple targets at a time. Along with Affliction, we’re also increasing the damage of Shadow Bolt in PvP, as the reward for casting it is low.
  • Legion Strike reduces healing taken by 20% in PvP (was 25%).
  • Shadow Bolt damage increased by 30% in PvP combat.

[Chapter One]
Prev and Next
​
Late at night, in the back of a warehouse.
Grigory squirmed against his restraints. The rope binding his hands was coarse and too tight, causing his hands to lose feeling. A bored council guard stood nearby, but was mostly ignoring him. He wasn’t going to get far with his hands and feet tied together. It was worse than he had thought possible. They are very much going to kill him tonight. This was even worse than either Stanisk or Aethlina had speculated, and he just knew that they would use his role in this disaster against him in future disagreements. However, he might be overly optimistic worrying about a future that might not include him.
Grigory thought over what he had left in his notebooks, contemplating if it would be enough for someone to continue his work. He wasn't sure. It was a lot more than he started with, but there weren't a lot of qualified scholars looking to follow his footsteps. The best outcomes for a lot of different paths all need him to survive.
Grigory tried not to be distracted by the ropes digging into him, and frantically wracked his mind for any sort of escape plan. He had a single imp totem on him, and they left him with his satchel nearby. That’s something. He would need to be untied to invoke it, and a single perfectly safe imp wouldn’t change the balance of power much. Perhaps if everyone but the four executive members left, he and Stanisk might have a chance to overpower them. Well he could at least be distracting while Stanisk overpowered them. They also hadn’t checked his satchel yet, so maybe he could bribe them with the ten thousand glindi engraved gold bar he brought to pledge his support? Bribes are a type of negotiation, and being tied up while they already had the gold put him in a frustratingly weak position to start negotiations. Not getting executed by the organised crime successor to the Council of Demonologists wasn’t on his list, but he still felt it was important.
Grigory could clearly see and hear the meeting continue in the centre of the warehouse. A small detail that he noticed was just how small the sums were. Robberies of a few hundred glindi? The value of a business protection racket being ten glucks a week? Had the runaway success of his imp-made goods distorted his value of money? Pandemonium Partners profited a few hundred thousand a month, and the big safe in the workshop’s basement held about a million glindi, mostly in heavy gold bars. That was after the expenses, taxes and salaries had been paid. Maybe bribes will work here.
Another trend that emerged was how cheap lives appeared to be. Stole a knife from the boss? Death. Miscounted the take? Death. Didn’t show up to the job? Finger loss. How they attracted or retained any talent at all was its own mystery. On that note, we wonder if he enormously overpaid his people? These goons were killing each other over sums of money close to what he paid each of his security goons a day, which in turn was a fraction of what he was paying his partners. All the people he hired seemed excited when he told them the starting salary, and not a single one asked for a raise. Not the time for that! Focus on the matter at hand! Grigory continued to look for anything that he could use to escape.
All too soon the business part of the meeting was concluded. Two of the Council's guards wheeled out a cask of beer, and a crate of cheap clay mugs. Not great news for plans that require being left alone. In singles and groups the ‘Demonologists’ started to come over to where he was tied up. To drink cheap beer and look upon true evil in his demon summoning face.
“Hullo gentlemen! This is all a silly mistake, I’m sure we can work something out,” Grigory said with a calmness and pleasantness he didn’t feel.
A gangster in a threadbare tunic and patched leather pants started going through his coat, and then his satchel. His notebooks with neatly written titles were thrown on the floor, and the minor spell reagents placed on top of a nearby crate.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed far too loudly, ensuring everyone saw him pull out the slim gold bar, about the size of a knife handle. “This can’t be real?!” The gangster saw how everyone near him stared, mouths agape at the bar in his open hand. The bar’s engraving of the Royal Mint of Hiruxia glinting in the flickering rushlight.
“Back off! I found it!” He held the gold tight in his fist and drew his dirty, nicked knife from his belt with his free hand. Quicker than a blink of an eye every member had their blades out and the men at arms from the edges moved towards the commotion.
“PUT IT AWAY!” boomed Arcanist Devorio. He reasserted control of the situation with palpable menace. “The prisoner and all his goods are the property of the Council! Put it down on the table, Tricky Tupo!”
The gangsters grudgingly resheathed their weapons, and Tricky Tupo passed the bar to the Arcanist without making eye contact.
“Holy shit, it is actually real gold!” Devorio muttered after inspecting it for a second. “Where the hell did you steal something like this?”
Something in his phrasing crystalized a plan in Grigory’s mind. An insane, reckless, dangerous plan. Grigory tried not to smile when he replied, “Not stolen at all, well not from our plane of reality.”
“You summoned it?” the well dressed head of the council asked incredulously.
“Oh no, not at all! I stole it from the treasury of Hell! You see that’s the point of having a perfectly obedient demon, it does what I say, and not what the Lords of Hell say,” Grigory lied. The Hellplane wasn’t organised like that at all. There was no such thing as a treasury there. He still wasn’t sure how to sell it, but he hoped there was enough ignorance and greed in the room to do the heavy lifting for him.
“Demonologists have never stolen from hell! As far as I know. I think?” The arcanist was in uncertain territory.
“Mostly true! But we steal minor things all the time, like magical energy, or arcane secrets, but the exciting advance I wrote to you about was stealing things like minerals or artefacts and sometimes regular boring gold.” Grigory was hoping he was priming their greed enough. He worried he was being too subtle.
“Well, it looks like you have a new job! You steal Hell gold for us now!” The Arcanist-turned-crime-lord was back in familiar territory of coercing people into giving him what he wanted.
“Oh I couldn’t!" Grigory feigned reluctance. “I don’t have the right equipment, I haven’t done the full balancing equations for today’s planar alignments! I should go home and get what I need, and I’ll be happy to come back tomorrow and we can get a fresh start on this.”
“Not a chance! You’re doing the ritual this instant, or your blood will cover this entire floor!” Davenio countered.
Grigory, aware that excess blood could damage goods, decided against arguing. “Alright, you win, I’ll have my imp steal another dozen gold bars tonight, I guess. But that’s it! I’m leaving after that!”
“Hah! We’ll see about that!” The arcanist cut Grigory’s bonds while staring straight into his eyes.
Grigory rubbed his sore wrists, and looked at the fifty or so people that had gathered around him. Cruel smiles and the stink of cheap beer surrounded him, but he had a plan. “First I’ll need to summon my imp, to help me set up the ritual!” Grigory found himself speaking like a showman at a fair, with exaggerated gestures and in a loud clear voice. The assembled thugs, goons and crime lords backed up to give him some space. Aethlina suggested obscuring the details of invoking a demon, which was a great idea. He slowly and rhythmically chanted in demonic detail how he likes his tea, with lots of hand gestures and steps and ritualistic looking movements. After a few long seconds he pulled out the imp totem from his vest, waved it around like a wand for a bit before doing the quick gesture of invocation to actually invoke the imp. With two small clicks the tiny imp landed on the rough floorboards of the warehouse. Several goons gasped, and one of the lady goons even shrieked a bit. Truly a sad state of affairs when someone calling themselves a demonologist is startled by a tiny perfectly safe imp!
Grigory picked up his notebooks from the floor, and found the one titled ‘Charts, Formulas, and Tables.’. Doing some mental maths, and modifying a few old spells and rituals on the fly, Grigory gave his imp simple directions in demonic. He could have just spoken plainly, but he was aware he was also putting on a show. Keeping everyone’s attention was important for the next part.
“Ahem, is there any furnace ash, or the like? I’ll need to create a circle in ash or wax or sand.” A few people turned to look for what he needed, and Grigory returned to working out the planar alignment in his notebook. They returned with a canvas bag of stove ashes, he looked them over and nodded. “Does anyone have a silvered steel blade I can use? Anyone at all? No matter, I have one!” Grigory pulled out the small pocket knife he used to cut his food with. It actually was silvered steel, since that also came up from time to time in his line of work. Besides it was interesting to learn that was the only silvered steel blade in the room.
Grigory passed the bag of ash to the imp. He gave detailed instructions on the shape, symbols, and spacing of the elements, all crucial to the huge circle taking shape in the middle of the warehouse floor. The assembled crowd of dirty, dangerous, and desperate deviants started to look concerned. What had started as a bit of mean spirited fun was fast turning into the exact thing they knew was evil incarnate. A path to Hell was being built in front of them! A few moved to leave, but the others called them names and threatened their reputations, forcing them to stay and watch. There was a good reason to stay, there was about to be a lot of gold for everyone. In theory.
At last the preparations were complete. Grigory slowly walked the entire outside of his circle to make sure it was unbroken. He had done similar rituals before, but always with hours of double checking, and never with an audience. His hands were sweaty and shaking as he tore a page out of his notebook. Quickly, he scribbled down a final set of instructions in demonic script and handed it to the imp.
“Merp!” it said in agreement.
Grigory turned to address everyone. He saw a very worried Stanisk standing off to the back, and he subtly gestured for him to wait. Steadying his nerves for a second he addressed his gathered kidnappers, “Soon you will see a small tear in reality! Plug your ears, lest the screams of the damned drive you mad!” Grigory looked around, to make sure everyone was properly alarmed, and activated the ritual.
With a crack of thunder and a hurricane blast of dry wind that reeked of hot iron and sulphur Grigory’s surprise appeared in the centre of the circle. A towering rage demon, its black armoured hide covered in dancing hellfire, its wolf-like face filled with jagged fangs, and its shoulders brushing the rafters of the old warehouse. The assembled criminals looked up from the floor and saw the bipedal nightmare towering over them. They stood stalk still, not knowing how to react, nor sure what exactly was happening.
Grigory stood up straight and turned on the crowd, in a commanding bellow he condemned them, “What kind of idiots let a master demonologist do any summoning ritual he wants?! Look upon the true power of hell and despair!! Your petty schemes are –”
Grigory’s gloating was cut short by a foundation shaking roar from the demon. It started grabbing people at random, and biting them in half, throwing hunks of torso against the wall with splattering force. In accordance with the note, Grigory’s imp hopped up on the table, grabbed the bar of gold from where Arcanist Devorio put it, and sprinted figure eights between the demon's legs. With everyone’s fear AND greed now focused in the same area, Grigory took his stuff and ran for the door. Most of the so-called ‘demonologists’ were trying to escape, but a few were focused on the imp running with a gold bar held over its head. That was as much as a labourer would make in a year, and they couldn’t just walk away from that. The massive demon continued to kill and dismember with glee. The sound of tearing meat and snapping bones was even louder than the screams of the dying. As far as distractions go, Grigory was pretty proud of this one.
Grigory started for the door they had entered by. However, it was jammed with people trying to escape. He stopped at the edge of the chaos, trying to gather his thoughts. As he did, a better solution appeared to him. The demon grabbed one of the cutthroats that dove at the imp’s gold, and threw him at the wall with enough force to vaporise him. The impact filled the whole side of the warehouse in a steamy red mist, and sprayed meaty chunks over everything. The demon howled with laughter when he saw how people popped when thrown into walls.
The important part for Grigory was that there was now a second exit. An exit covered in gore and bone fragments, but entirely clear of goons. Signalling Stanisk, he made his way out through the wreckage. Slower than he’d like, and getting blood and worse on everything, but a clear path. The demon had stopped feeding entirely and was just throwing people as hard as he could, first at the floor then at other people. Its roars of rage were now peals of terrifying laughter. The air in the warehouse was thick with a mist of blood from the high energy impacts.
“I assume it knows not to kill us?” Stanisk asked in a ragged voice once he caught up to Grigory.
“Yes, but only not to kill people in purple. So don’t take off your tabard! It was the best I could do!”
They struggled out into the cool night air of the yard, free of the stenches of hell, gore and terror.
Stanisk looked down at his tabard, so soaked in fresh blood that it looked black. He ran even faster to the wagon.
“So this thing is just going to destroy the city until someone slays it then?” Stanisk asked, as they ran to the cart while frantically gesturing for his two guards to turn the wagon around and get it rolling.
“Oh no! Just until midnight” Grigory explained after he dove into the moving wagon. He wiped his blood soaked hands on his blood soaked robes, to no benefit.
Stanisk stared backwards at the destruction unfolding behind them. The demon had brought the warehouse down around himself and was clearly visible from the road. It was still energetically killing and smashing. “That's more than an hour! You reckon it’ll come for us?”
The single horse dragging a cargo wagon with four men on it was maddeningly sluggish
Grigory fumbled around for something to get the blood and bone fragments off his glasses. Finally finding part of his undershirt clean, he wiped them and he replied,“Oh my no,It’s bound to the summoning circle. Within a hundred paces.” They both watched as a few people fled on horseback, and a wagon rattled away at a gallop. Mostly it was a mess of shouting and terror. Knife fights broke out as people tried to commandeer the remaining horses. Horses were panicking and bolting without riders. Some survivors just ran away on foot. With every fresh kill the demon laughed so loud that Grigory felt like it was coming from his own skull.
“What the hell happened in there, sirs?” asked the terrified guard driving the cart.
Grigory turned around to answer, but Stanisk put a hand on his arm and answered instead, “Those filthy witches in there tried to kill us with a demon, but Grigory outsmarted them and turned it on its creators. Keep driving Kedril, we should be safe in an intersection or so.”
“Light preserve us all!” Kedril the driver said. “Is that a real demon Sir?”
Grigory watched the demon grab one of the goons fighting in the yard and threw him in a high arc towards the city centre. The demon’s arm cracked like a whip as it threw. The ragged corpse left a trail of blood mist as it arced far overhead.
Grigory answered calmly, “Yes.”
Grigory pulled out his demon totem from his robes, and devoked the imp, causing a gold bar a block and a half behind them to clatter to the blood soaked warehouse floor and slide into some debris. He was surprised how calm he felt. By all accounts his plan was in shambles and he’d stirred up a dozen hornets nests. Facing certain death and prevailing did wonders for one’s perspective.
Grigory looked over at Stanisk, and he was looking less calm. Which was entirely fair. A lot of uniquely horrific things happened tonight. Stanisk’s mouth was a tight line, face pale and eyes bloodshot. That might have just been blood from before, that got in his eyes.
“We can’t go through town looking like we bathed in the blood of the innocent, take us to the Golden Anchor’s warehouse on Glibstone Street. We own that place, we can clean up and change there,” Stanisk tersely told the driver.
Grigory countered, “First off, the previous owners of this blood were far from innocent, and secondly that’s across town, let's just lay in the bed, throw the rainsheet over us, and go to the main workshop.”
Stanisk groaned and tried to rub the blood off his face while he thought it over, but just smeared it around.
“Fine, Kedril, Remember to do a few triple left turns to make sure we aren’t being followed, like we discussed last month.” Stanisk undid the oilcloth on the side, connected it to the mounting points, and slid underneath.
“I think we need to review our plans!” Grigory whispered.
“Shhhh, cargo don’t talk.” Stanisk whispered back. The soldier cupped his head in one hand, and covered his eyes with the other and tried to get comfortable enough to sleep. Grigory rolled onto his back and stared at the cloth in front of his face. He tried not to dwell on the odd whip crack sound coming from behind them, nor the horrified gasps of the two guards on the driver’s bench while he mentally updated his plans.
****
A few hours later Grigory was bathed, wearing fresh clothes and feeling much better. He sat contemplating at the kitchen table in his workshop. He was troubled by what this was going to mean for his business and for himself. Stanisk was still in the tub cleaning up, and the two guards had been dismissed for the night. It was shortly after midnight now, and that meant more to Grigory than it did other nights. He hoped no one innocent died tonight, but he was also a little surprised how little he was bothered by the destruction he unleashed this evening. Considering it was the first time he took another human’s life, albeit indirectly, he expected a stronger emotional response. Part of this was a clear case of kill or be killed. Another part was these people were awful people. Grigory worried this might mean he had more subconscious bias against the value of the lives of the economically disadvantaged, but that’s probably not it. Being biassed against people that were willing to kill him made more sense, but also he knew the coming years mean that will become the same as willing to kill most of the world.
Grigory put on some fresh tea, and set out another cup for Stanisk when he was done washing. He couldn’t shake the feeling that his worst fear, being mad with power and using that power to violently kill everyone he perceived as an enemy, wasn’t as far-fetched as it was before. These were the goons that might have killed his mentor, Archmage Willoford. Avenging a mentor was a reasonable rationale, at least in songs and plays. Grigory knew that wasn’t his motivation tonight. And besides that was the inquisition from the sounds of it, these ones just celebrated his mentor's execution, which isn’t really moral grounds for demonic dismemberment. He also knew he could have summoned a stench demon or a screaming demon, or just non demon based rituals he could have used to escape without violence. He didn’t even offer to bribe them, just straight to violence. Grigory wasn’t sure he liked finding out who he really was when lives were on the line.
His introspection was interrupted by a sound coming from his workshop door, and he sagged with relief when he saw it was just Aethlina. Relief that was short lived, because the questions started immediately.
“I assume you had something to do with the demonic giant that threw seventeen people into the side of the Cathedral of the Light?” the elv asked, without reproach or scorn.
Grigory took a second to answer. “I had something to do with the presence of that demon in our plane of reality. I had a little to do with either the people it chose to throw. Nothing to do with where it chose to throw them nor its accuracy. Interesting it threw them at the Cathedral, you’d think it would have some kinship with the church? They both love burning people.”
“By all accounts the accuracy at least, was excellent. All the bodies hit Cathedral Square. The Cathedral itself requires extensive repairs to the nave, and two flying buttresses collapsed. At least according to the terrified lady I ran into.” Aethlina paused for a few seconds in case Grigory chose to share more details.
Aethlina asked mildly, “How rude of me. I meant to ask, how did your meeting go tonight?”
Stanisk came out from around the partition wearing fresh clothes. “The fucking witches weren’t even witches! They were just shadow blighted gangsters what stole the demonologists reputation! Broke as shit, and twice as dumb!”
Stanisk grabbed a bottle of whiskey off the shelf and sat down at the table, ignoring the cup and the pot of tea. After drinking right from the bottle he continued, “It hit the actual main Cathedral? The one right in the centre of town? That’s like an hour walk from where we were! A catapult wouldn’t have thrown a person half that far!”
“The one and the same, The Grand Ubrafadter’s residence is in that square, so I assume what follows will be the sort of witch hunt the city has never seen before.” Aethlina turned to Grigory, “May I also assume your reasons for staying in the city are weaker and your reasons for leaving are stronger than they were yesterday?“
“There were definitely survivors, and I was introduced by name. I can’t stay here, probably not in the empire at all. I don’t think they know the name of the company, but Stanisk and I were wearing the company’s sigil, so it might not be long for them to work it out.” Grigory rubbed the bridge of his nose without taking off his glasses. “I guess we should start planning our exit immediately.”
In a rare show of emotion Aethlina smiled for a second, “We are leaving on a ship named the Widow’s Remorse, it’s provisioned for us and departs on the morning tide, in about nine hours. The captain agreed to wait until we were in open water to hear our destination. He and his crew also suffer from a rare medical condition where their memory fades entirely anytime they are given a bag of money. The ship can carry thirty-five passengers, so the guards can bring their families. I’ll describe the places I think we should go, after we are in open waters.”
Grigory was both very impressed and a touch alarmed. “Did you know what would happen at that meeting? Did you know what I was walking into?”
“No, I had mistakenly assumed you were on top of that, and took you on your word about them. The odds of them being what you expected were poor. I also had a detailed plan in case they kidnapped you.”
Stanisk burst out laughing, “Imagine if they kidnapped you, Boss! All trussed up like a rotisserie chicken! Hah! I guess I’ll get packed and meet back here to get everything organised! I’ll miss my townhouse, but I’ve had enough of living in Jagged Cove, it's loud and crowded.”
Stanisk stood up, and turned to leave, but paused mid stride. “Miss Aethlina, how big of an investigation do you reckon it’ll be? Reckon they could keep after us after we leave?”
“Likely.There are cases where the inquisition spent entire centuries on the trail of heretics and their descendents. Those heresies were vocally opposing an aspect of doctrine. This may be the first heresy in which a building-sized demon flung citizens into Cathedral Square. I assume yes, they will be interested in following up.”
“Alright, I’ve got an idea that might buy us some time. Grigory, are there any specific numbers that are significant to demons?”
“Um, not actually, but the older texts are filled with references to threes and eights I guess?” Grigory said with a shrug.
“Perfect!” Stanisks' smile strengthened and he turned to Aethlina. “Can you think of eight nobles, eight businessmen, and eight clergy the city would be better off without? Here, write 'em on this!” He slid her a notebook page when she nodded.
Grigory leaned forward,”I’m not sure what you are going for?”
“In the army, there was a famously clever bird that would trick soldiers, called a red heron. We are going to make a whole flock of ‘em!” Stanisk excitedly explained. “Oh, draw a demon circle on this page, doesn’t have to work or anything, like the one from the warehouse”
Grigory began his sketch. “I don’t think red heron is quite right, but I’m catching your drift.”
While they wrote, Stanisk went to the carved chest where all the imp totems for the workshop were stored, and invoked twenty four of them. Taking Aethlina’s list and Grigory’s sketch, he ordered each imp to sprint across town and use hellfire to scorch the circle into the street in front of the home of a specific name.
After the final imp bounded out of the building and was leaping along the rooflines Stanisk returned to his partners. “Now they’ll have too many leads! Hopefully folk see the imps and hellfire, that’ll be even better!”
“We can just outvoke them in an hour or so, that's easy enough. Great idea, Stanisk!” Grigory said cautiously, still thinking through the plan.
“If your big demon didn’t cause a public panic, I can’t imagine a better way to finish the job.” Aethlina replied.
Stanisk smiled and shrugged. “It wasn’t my good looks alone that kept me alive this long! I’ll send some runners to gather the lads and get this show on the road. Human runners I mean!”
Prev and Next

Disclaimer. I am currently master ranked offlane player who has been playing the game since launch competitively & casually, on all ranks between gold and GM. I took a bit of a break after the last guides but upon several requests to continue making these, I was inspired to continue making them again. This particular guide got extremely long due to concerning a fairly complex hero and I like being thorough with my explanations. Links to other guides can be found at the end.
​
Dehaka is one of the ‘’big three’’ bruisers of high rank bruiser play (The unholy trinity of HoggeBlaze/Dehaka) and while other bruisers do also see play, its difficult to find a game where all of these 3 do not exist in either bans or picks. Dehaka, while not any weaker than the other two and situationally stronger, he does have a bit more counterplay to it than the others.

Drafting Dehaka

Synergistic heroes
Dehaka works really well with things that can quickly kill a drag target that often rely on short range. Some examples below;

• Greymane
• Tychus
• Jaina

Additionally, heroes that have high duration powerful AoE effects that Dehaka can reposition people into with his Drag and his level 4.

• Malf
• Stukov

Heroes Dehaka can struggle into
​

• Junkrat Using steel traps in bushes near a fight makes for a miserable time to play Dehaka. You cannot really rely on Z flanks the same way you could otherwise since you might risk a 2.5 second silence + root.
• Lucio - Hard to drag with too many cleanses. The Q also interrupts drags and makes it much more hard to get to a position to drag. Lucio and Junkrat are by far the two worst partners in crime for the lizard to face.
• Brightwing - Cleanse and high range interrupt to a drag with polymorph. You usually have to bait out the poly on someone else before attempting to go for a Q.
• Ana - After 13, having a stun removal that gives 50 armor with a 2s CD is pretty nasty, and so is the ability to deny all healing from essence with a basic ability. Thankfully, Ana is fairly vulnerable to getting ran down herself by Dehaka by a good brushstalker. Just be ready to use E quickly to avoid the sleep.
• Deathwing - Not only is he immune to drags, but his massive hitbox is fairly efficient at blocking drags on everyone else either.
• Cho’gall - Dehaka doesn’t have the greatest single target damage to burn him down, and Gall can interrupt drags with his stunning orbs even as he is being dragged himself. On the flipside, Dehaka can focus more on macro and punish the inflexibility of chogall draft to deal with him.

Heroes Dehaka is good into
​
Just to be clear, there are not many heroes that like being dragged for 2.25 seconds into bad positions. There are some standouts regardless that he is extremely effective against.

• Diablo - Into Diablo he is amazing. He is the easiest target to hit with a drag in the game with his aggressive playstyle, and he is fairly easy to blow up in a drag if you have any of the heroes that Dehaka is typically great with. After level 4, Dehaka himself is practically immune to Diablo himself because of his stealth.
• Imperius - The level 4 talent destroys him in all the ways possible. No spears, no E, no nothing.
• Kerrigan - She is extremely easy to drag due to her telegraphed back to front movement, and you can use your E to protect any allies from her combos while avoiding those aimed towards you entirely.

Maps

To cut it short, what makes for a great Dehaka map:

• Lots of bushes
• Large size to utilize global
• Macro focused maps
• Camps that are easily defended with Drag
• Maps with split objectives

S tier maps

Dragon Shire
​
So Dragon Shire is great for several reasons. The nature of the split objective is one such. The bottom shrine is positioned in such a way, where the only ‘safe’ way out of the shrine is usually by walking through a bush which is also known as the lizard territory. Another is the quantity of maps on the bottom side of the map that are relatively easy to invade for your team, and with burrow you can make it an easy 5v4. It has a lot of bushes for Dehaka to easily rotate and collect essence between lanes. Its great.The only downside for Dehaka on DS is that winning the shrine on top also matters quite a bit and while he is not bad in 1v1s, there are good amount of offlaners who can destroy him in a 1v1.
​
Cursed Hollow
​
Macro focus, siege giants, a lot of the same as in Dragon Shire. The objective does not split the team the same way as it does on DS but during curses having global is extremely valuable since your team can push very hard on a lane and threaten keep, while the quick rotation speed of Dehaka on sidelines means you are not losing xp and the global means your team isn’t left alone in a 4v5 if they commit everything to defending the push.
​
Towers of Doom
Might be, in my opinion, Dehaka’s strongest map. The presence of global enables a solid amount of invasion plays on enemy sapper camps, and the split objective means that every time an altar spawns on two other sides of the map, Dehaka will be there to make the objective fight 5v4 way before the global-less enemy offlane can do anything about it.
​
Sky Temple
Really, most of the things that can be fitted into DS can also be applied onto Sky Temple aswell. It is slightly worse on Sky because Dehaka struggles a bit on capping temples alone due to low single target damage and conditional sustain but his global is even more important since all structure damage matters on the map, and pushing out a lane can be just as valuable as getting an objective.
​
Garden of TerrorMostly he is awesome here. Lots of bushes, large size, macro heavy gameplay etc. You just want to make sure you have another hero in team who is effective at taking camps because Dehaka is not one, and camps are what often decide Garden games. At least he is very good at clearing the enemy camps.

A tier maps

Infernal Shrines
The map has lots of bushes, 3 lanes to soak and moderate macro relevance. One thing that makes Dehaka still a star on the map is his ability to drag shaman camps into towers to instantly clear them. Just because I took him lower than on some others doesn’t mean he isn’t great here, the reason I didn’t put him in S was mostly because he is not the most effective in clearing the extremely impactful objective alone, nor is he very good at dealing with it if enemy gets it.
Where Dehaka really sucks is when he has to fight on an open lane with no bushes, to defend against a punisher or such.
​
Tomb of the Spider Queen
Historically this is a bit controversial take due to the map’s small size. Which is true, it is against Dehaka’s global value. it doesn’t mean though it isn’t immensely relevant on the map, since it can be used to prevent the good old boss cap strategy of taking bot camp, and moving to boss as enemy has to deal with a siege camp.
Aside from that, due to its small size however Dehaka can stack essence extremely quickly, and the quantity of bushes makes him a danger everywhere on the map even without his global.
Dehaka is a very hard to gank offlane, which means gems collected by Dehaka are far more safe than on some other popular offlaners.

B tier maps

Battlefield of Eternity
​
Not the best map for him, but playable. The objective sucks the same way as it does on IS and it is more early game heavy. The distance between lanes makes essence management much more difficult.Things he does do well on the map though is defending shaman camps, which is more valuable here than any other map in my opinion. The middle of the map is also riddled with bushes, giving him a ton of opportunities to position properly and getting good drags in. The distance between lanes does also mean the bottom part of the team can play much more aggressively for camps since the global does threaten a constant 5v4.
Alterac Pass
​
I hate playing Dehaka on Alterac, but it could be worse. Little amount of bushes makes rotating extremely hard and dragging camps to towers is often of low value. Additionally, taking camps is of a high value and Dehaka really does not do it well on Alterac. The one thing Alterac has going for him is its large size, and the few bushes it has are around objectives so he can still sidepush and join for a fight.
​
Braxis Holdout
Dehaka typically isn’t awesome due to the difficulties of gaining essence, relevance of winning point on top lane and lack of siege giant/shamans. The bonus is, if you do win the point its fairly easy to win the bottom point aswell due to using global after bullying the enemy offlaner away from point.

D tier maps

Volskaya Industries
​
No bushes, small size, mostly item based camps. Unless Dehaka is the only hero you play, I’d not recommend picking him here.

Base Kit tips

Drag [Q]

• This ability is what most often will win games. Its the longest CC on a basic ability and it has a reposition to boot. Unfortunately, it is also one of the harder parts of playing the hero. Some tips regarding its use;
• While dragging someone, you can still auto attack even if it hurts your movement slightly. In 1v1 it is pretty much always worth it though since good part of your 1v1 damage does come from AAs.
• Drag cannot be cancelled, and you cannot cast E while dragging. Hence recommended to not do reckless drags on low hp while your E is still up.

Mercs
​
As I eluded earlier, you don’t have to be the one to deal the actual damage to mercs. You can also drag them into towers and forts for a faster clear. The damage of the drag isn’t high, 160 at a base (159% of one AA), but it is big enough that if you know you are going to base to get mana or you won’t be needing it any time soon, using drag for damage on PvE does increase your clear speed. It is mana intensive, which is why I excluded its use to the two scenarios above.
​
Landing drags on heroes

• You don’t have to fish for one. If you can start a fight with a clutch drag that is great. But usually if every other hero is just posturing, that drag is going to get interrupted quickly. It can be good to wait for a bit of chaos to happen so people are less focused on the Dehaka and will have harder time dodging it.
• In general, targets that are walking towards you are the ones that are easiest to hit. If someone is dancing sideways in front of me, I dont have to use it yet.
• Holding the drag: Sometimes not pressing Q when you have it up is more potent than pressing it. It happens quite often on offlane and in teamfights that people are so focused on dodging drag that they are walking in circles in awkward positions eating tons of damage. At some point, after they have taken enough they have to walk away in a straight line - which is when they are an easy grab.
• Use your E. I’ll go over more of this in talents, but you can set up an easy drag on anyone with the use of the level 4 talent ‘’Lurker Strain’’.
• While dragging someone, you can still auto attack even if it hurts your movement slightly. In 1v1 it is pretty much always worth it though since good part of your 1v1 damage does come from AAs.

Dark Swarm
​

• Mostly used for waveclear, but it does have a few other applications. Post 13 it also becomes your damage and your slow, and you have to use E less for drag setups.
• Against certain heroes like Leoric for instance being able to pass through heir hitbox has some significant advantages. The downside is, you cannot bodyblock while using the ability.

Burrow [E]

• A good bit of this one’s utility comes from the level 4 talent.
• If playing without the level 4, this is mostly the panic button to use in order to dodge a skill shot, or to buy time for your trait to regenerate you to higher health. Your W does deal damage while you are burrowed, so you can use it while clearing waves in order to dodge spell power reductions from Blaze Qs and such.

Essence Collection [D]
​

• Easily the most overlooked and most screwed up part about playing Dehaka. Using 50 essence restores about 61% of Dehaka’s max health. Going to fight without it is like entering one with 40% hp and the healer cannot even patch it up.
• One should never look to enter a fight unless absolutely necessary without essence. If an objective is on its way, it's better to not just directly trade into the enemy offlane just so you are not forced to use your trait before a fight. If I am low on health, I rather use HS and then burrow to the objective (or waddle back to lane first to force the enemy to play aggro on the objective).
• One minion wave gives 14 essence. Even if forced to use essence, if the map is small enough there is a shot you can collect it back before it's too late. Three waves are usually sufficient, getting you to 42 essence. If you are not double soaking in the early game (often due to having a bad lane match up or having to clear camps on a big map), around 1:30 you can use your essence and then unbind the ability until the next objective.

Brushstalker [Z]

• The other easily screwed up part about the hero is the use of global. It is not often correct to use it to get to a lane in order to soak, you have your movement speed for that. When used aggressively though, you can use it to start a teamfight from a position where your drags are much harder to deal with.
• Even when not used, it provides value. As long as your Z is up, the enemy cannot reliably invade your camps (or well, it isn’t smart), you can force the enemy to play objectives more aggressively than they would want to by remaining on side soak before burrowing.
• Situationally it can be used like this if there is a large wave and you know there won’t be an objective coming in the next 70s and the camps are down (especially relevant on ToD) but generally I’d advice learning to save burrows for aggressive usage, and shifting rest of the playstyle to be more macro focused.
• Using Z does remove you from the game for 1.5 seconds allowing you to cleanse most debuffs and avoid Chromie loop if your E is off CD.
• There is an odd interaction that allows Dehaka to clear Chromie loops and avoiding Dots without committing: If you self cast Brushstalker while in a bush, or click the bush location within your own unit radius, the ability is not put on cooldown when used but it still puts you in stasis / removes harmful effects. This is a fairly niche trick but useful when it comes up. I am not sure at this point if this borders bug abuse since blizzard is fairly unclear on what are intended interactions and part of the balance, looking at you Samuro and hearthstone teleport tricks.

Talents / Builds breakdown
​
To start off, different builds have different values on different levels of play. The build I pick most of the time is immensely powerful in diamond, master and GM SL aswell as competitive. It is equally powerful in lower ones, but some other builds also become better there (Such as the W build). The % mentions are just my rough estimates on how often I pick a certain talent.
​
The builds:
​
Standard/Recommended build: 3/1/1/1/1/2/1
​
BeginneLow SL build:1/3/3/2/2/2
​
Situational Braxis/Alterac build: 2/X/X/1/3/2/1
​
Level 1
​
Enduring Swarm - 2%

• This is a good talent. It does make Dehaka a lot more durable, it gives him extra duration on W which has some synergy with Hero Stalker.
• The downside is that it cripples his rotations and lethality of his burrow flanks somewhat substantially in comparison to Enhanced Agility. As it is, Dehaka is extremely durable already and while extra sustain never hurts, there is a point where other aspects should be considered.

​
Enhance Agility - 96%

• On every map where Dehaka is great, this is awesome. It enables all the rotations between lanes for easy essence gathering, it has great synergy with the 13 talent due to increased duration. In teamfights, this is what allows Dehaka to easily get into positions where drags are easy to land.
• Completing it early is nice, but it isn’t something to be too fussed about since the baseline version of it is already great.

Tissue Regeneration - 2%

• Technically the best for pure 1v1
• I consider this a bit of a training wheels talent, since it does make gaining essence much more easier and the increased. I do pick it still on Braxis just for the increased lane sustain to cover for lack of essence from double soaking. It is not bad on BoE either but Enhanced Agility is also really good on it for the amount of bushes.
• Has synergy with Primal Rage due to increased cap on essence.

Level 4
Lurker Strain - 95%

• This might be the most powerful talent on Dehaka, bar none. Not just the level 4. To paint a comparison, imagine getting E.T.C W with a massive slow, greater knockback, higher damage and stealth from just a level 4 talent. However, it is also the hardest talent to play since it helps you in no way in essence management and it is more complex in its use than the others
• Works extremely well against heroes that are weak against displacements and is very insufferable for several tanks such as Diablo and Varian. If there is ever a moment when Diablo sees a good wall stun, Dehaka can use E preemptively and just stay hidden for your team to reposition to a better spot. If Diablo charges, his Q (or if you miss it, his E) gets interrupted and he will be slowed with no mobility in a bad spot, ready to be dragged to his death. Into Diablo it has extra value since the stealth makes it so he cannot use Q on you.
• Onto heroes like Imperius and Thrall, it's good to use whenever they press their limited time window damage abilities (E’s on both of them). The displacement tends to ruin their effective teamfight window. Even getting a spear through to anyone as Imperius gets complicated. To Yrel, you can use it to interrupt jumps easily even if she is positioning behind minions. This is also one of the few ways to somewhat reliably get drags on the more elusive divers.
• The other good thing about it is that it really makes your kill pressure less reliant on drags. If you have Enhanced Agility you can often position yourself in places easily where you can knock one target towards your team while moving everyone else away. It is extremely potent with heroes like Stukov and Malfurion with powerful consistent AoE effects you can knock them into. On BoE, immortal stuns become your best friend.
• Akin to Mighty Gust, the daze duration as the opponent has no control over their character is always the same regardless of the distance travelled. It is not terribly long duration knockback, and characters have a few frames to press a button that would move them from the drag. However, if Dehaka does push them against the wall, even the slow missile speed of drag is fast enough to confirm a drag to land on any target before they can teleport away.

Hero Stalker - 3%

• A great talent, shame about its tier. This is often what wins games in lower ranks where teamfights last for a long time and using this alongside Symbiosis can grant Dehaka several health bars in a fight. This talent makes the hero a lot easier to play.
• While it is great in lower ranks, there is a bit of an unfortunate side effects to this; Very often when I see Dehaka’s play with this talent the idea that they can get essence without soaking leads them into not soaking. You still should not arrive to fights with no essence because they can still do a blow up before you can get enough of it, and you should still make use of your global presence and soak sidelines. The talent makes some bad habits far less punished creating the illusion that the other options are worse when they are tried.
• Great into Samuro for fairly obvious reasons

​
One-Who-Collects - 2%
​

• Used to be my go-to until Lurker Strain was buffed. The effect makes gaining essence much easier and allows making trades on offlane. I do recommend this one if you are learning to play the hero and managing essence isn’t yet your strong suit. It teaches less bad habits than Hero Stalker and gives him some extra merc clear which is nice.
• On Alterac I listed this as a situational pick since you are doing a lot of offsoaking and potentially have to be the one to split to defend the camps as an objective spawns. Enhanced Agility is not recommended on the map so its much harder to get into good positions for your E knockbacks in the early game. Lurker Strain is still very good on the map.

Level 7
​
Feeding Frenzy - 98%

• Drag is insanely powerful as it is, and this makes it so it becomes even stronger and more spammable. The extra 0.5 second duration is a long time to suffer when you are being dragged into a worse position. The CD starts immediately after landing a drag so you can already prep your next drag during the old one with AAs.
• If you miss a drag, you can hit walls and minions to get it back up faster. Without this talent I’d recommend skipping trying to do fish kills with a drag entirely since missing it gets heavily punished and confines you to being a standing duck for 14 seconds. This also applies to playing several lanes, you should always look to AA whatever you can safely to reset drag CD as quickly as possible.

​
Symbiosis - 2%
​

• The core talent of the W build. It makes your W spammable which has natural synergy with all the other W talents. Downside is, it doesn’t actually reduce the W’s mana cost and spamming W can quickly drain your mana bar.
• The upside of this build is that it gives Dehaka great damage numbers in games where focus fire is less precedent, it gives him much greater sustain which also matters more in games with less focus fire and it makes him reasonably useful with little skill involved. Its great into melee comps but…in order for it to be really good you need Hero Stalker and Lurker Strain also happens to be extremely powerful into melee comps. I do recommend this for beginners and plat and below SL.
• Into Samuro it is almost a necessity in order to be able to sustain the pressure, which is where I still lock it.

Paralyzing Enzymes - 0%
​

• This is terrible. Dehaka has reasonably good shot at holding on to gambit stacks but the damage over time in team fights is rarely more useful than the extra duration & fishing potential of Feeding Frenzy and less impactful in 1v1s than the CDR.

​
Level 10
​
Isolation - 100%

• High skill high reward skill shot.
• 3s silence and slow is often as good as a kill when used in a right spot. One easy way to land one is right after landing a drag when they are close and have to run away, but into some heroes I’d recommend the opposite. Especially into brightwing. If she doesn’t die during the drag she won’t die at all due to blinking away. While the drag stun and silence will mostly overlap, the isolation’s vision removal does have a side effect of being unable to press Z or Blink Heal for 6 seconds. The 30% slow on the isolation also makes drags a lot easier to land if you do manage to secure an isolation.
• The ability does have a high delay and moderate travel speed, which is why its often great as a follow up. Alternatively if you have trust on your aim, using Z to join a fight as your team is engaging and going straight for the Rehgar from flank for instance to put him of a 6s timer of no Ancestral is fairly effective if your team lacks the tools to kill a target before an ancestral would land.

​
Adaptation - 0%
​

• Too slow of an effect just to add more sustain to already a very high sustain hero.
• Low ranks and for beginners this can be great since the focus fire will often be more forgiving, allowing this to trigger on time.

​
Level 13
Ferocious Stalker - 93%

• Massive power spike.
• This allows your W to instantly clear waves. It allows you to do big enough damage to threaten a solo kill on a flank, and it gives you access to very easy slow so you don’t have to use other tools to confirm drags. If you are clearing waves, this it is almost always worth the detour to move to a bush and trigger this. Assuming you have Enhanced Agility that is. The talent isn’t worthless and sometimes even worth picking without it, but it becomes much more consistent with it.

Primal Swarm - 4 %

• If I am playing the hero stalker build , I might consider this. But on top of Samuro, it gains a bit of extra value against heroes that naturally have armor like Deathwing. It sucks enough to play Dehaka into DW but this makes it a bit more tolerable.

Primal Rage - 3%

• Need to still win point on Braxis? This is awesome. If you are in BoE and your team decided once again to draft 0 race and you don’t have enhanced agility? Great. But it is often the option to pick when you are in a situation you should not be in to begin with.
• Has synergy with Tissue Regen due to having a higher cap on the AA damage

​
Level 16
​
Elongated Tongue - 0%

• Potentially good,
• Most of the value of this talent comes from the fact it is not meta and people misjudge the drag range. The issue is that Drag has fairly slow missile speed and usually isn’t very reliable on max range to begin with - and it is even more unreliable on a higher range. Drag is still a powerful enough ability that this talent cannot be called bad.

Pack Leader - 0%

• A fairly worthless option.
• Has synergies with the AA build but it does also have some issues. You need to use bushes to get value out of this, and if you are able to do so you often want Enhanced Agility. Meanwhile the AA build is fairly reliant on Primal Rage that kind of wants Tissue Regen instead of agility to function. The temporary AA speed increase is fairly low, and while the armor is nice we don’t need to pump the hero’s sustain upwards much more.

​
Tunneling Claws - 100%

• An insane talent. It makes Dehaka much harder to kill and near impossible to gank (especially when combined with Lurker Strain). But on top of the defensive elements, the kill potential of being always able to move to a position where the knockback effect of E is just perfect is the greatest draw. My usual sequence when killing a frontliner post 16 often is Drag -> move back -> E to their other side -> knock the kill target back to allies and push everyone else away from helping.

Level 20
​
Contagion - 99%

• If Isolation is good, up to 5 isolations is also good. Tanks get a nasty habit of trying to peel for their backliners from isolations by blocking them and this puts a stop to that. You don’t need to hit many targets for it to be great, a single isolation effectively puts 1 person out of a fight for 6 seconds. If you hit it on even 2, you are likely to win the fight if you do it early and they cannot all just back away.

Change is Survival - 0%

• If you pick Adaptation, this is reasonably good.

Essence Claws - 1%

• The effect is nice, but usually just nice isn’t enough to compete with a threat to silence an entire enemy team.
• You do have other slows as it is, and requiring the AA targets to be heroes makes it fairly inconsistent to use. I pick this mostly if we are ending the game and Isolation happens to be on cooldown.

Apex Predator - 0%
​

• Just a worse version of Epic Mount of Falstad, and even that has fallen off the meta. The reason why Epic Mount is still situationally viable at places is that the talent is on a hero that is not vulnerable when threatening a core with no bushes around, one that has solid siege damage on structures and the global can be used to go to core aswell as for moving out of there.
• Meanwhile Dehaka cannot really do the same shenanigans as Falstad to the same extent even with this talent. He can move only away from the core, and he is extremely vulnerable to getting rotated there if the enemy has any interrupts to Z.

​
Laning tips
​
Do note that these estimations expect two equally skilled players, and playing with the talents listed above. Most of them do not directly improve the 1v1, so experiences may vary.Favored match ups

• Blaze
• Malthael (post 7)
• Chen (post 7)
• Thrall*
• Illidan*
• Gazlowe*
• Imperius (Post 4)

Fairly even match ups

• Leoric*
• Artanis*
• Yrel*
• Sonya*

Unfavored match ups

• Murky*
• Rexxar
• Samuro (Can be made into even with adjustments)
• Hogger
• Deathwing (No chance)

Thrall

• Thrall does not have really high clear, and his damage window is heavily limited by his windfury. If you use E and knock him back when he does windfury, or drag him, he will often be forced to tank minions while trading negatively against you.

Imperius

• Once again, the key is the use of E. His damage window is often limited to his Q + E window. If you knock him back as soon as he uses E, he loses his sustain. After 7 it gets much easier since you don’t just have to rely on your burrow to deny it.

Illidan

• For all his mobility, Illidan is fairly easy to drag. And I am not saying to try to drag him as he is attacking and jumping about, save it for when he uses Q. The windup on the ability is long enough that you can land if by aiming it on your other side as soon as he uses it.
• If he does not use Q, you can make the drags easier to land by backing off and forcing him to run into you for an easier target.

​
—--
Leoric

• Every second drain can be canceled with E and you just need to dodge half of them to come out ahead. Leo E has 10s CD while Burrow has 17s post level 4 so the time window is also limited for Leo to land the drain.
• As I alluded to earlier, using Swarm during this timer to stack with his hitbox makes it hard for Leo to land a drain, but admittedly it is not the easiest thing to pull off as Dehaka either.

Artanis

• Artanis' shields and Dehaka's low single target damage do not go well together. In order for Dehaka to do well on the lane, they need to count the CD left on Artanis shield and aim drags to land when he cannot get a shield up.
• Artanis cannot really recover from taking big hits due to lack of self healing mechanics, so while Dehaka is outtraded in the short run over longer period he can be taken down. Just don't trade with him right after his shields reset.

Yrel

• This is a match up where both need to play smart. Yrel can deny Dehaka’s clear by timing a D + W as soon as Dehaka presses Dark Swarm, and Dehaka can deny Yrel’s clear by using E and Q to interrupt jumps and Q casts
• E does have a mini stun to it so it does interrupt all the casts. The match up really comes down to who bothers the other more on the clear. Both of the two have fairly scuffed single target damage so the wave management is usually what makes the difference in clear

Sonya

• You can technically deny all her healing and clear if you are good enough with drags.
• Her hitbox is fairly small on bruiser standards (only 0.75 - for sake of comparison, Dehaka’s is 1.0 and Leoric's is 0.81) with extra movement speed and she can do the same to your drags as you can do to Leoric by spinning on top of your hitbox. In a pinch the E also does interrupt her spin.
• If she picks Wrath you are done 1v1’ing.

—------
​
Murky

• I am not trolling when I say this but a good murky is the bane of Dehaka on lane. Dehaka is very prone to getting kited by slows and his low single target damage doesn’t really put a dent on Murky’s hp regen, and he clears the wave slower than a murky does.

​
As per usual, hopefully someone got something out of this. It has been a while since I written my last write up on bruisers. If there are any other particular bruisers people would want to see me make a write up on, do mention it. (I had to repost this due to reddit markdown acting stupid).

Amsterdam or Remote We're Creative Fabrica, a fast scaling tech start-up from Amsterdam.
Our mission Enable creativity by giving access to everything related to the creative process: inspiration, learning, creating and sharing. The ‘Creative Inspiration Flywheel’
This creates a self-sustaining community that lives within the Creative Fabrica ecosystem. About the platform
We launched in 2016 as a marketplace for fonts with a subscription service. In the last 6 years we have been through tremendous growth, and we're just getting started!
We have scaled to 40 million+ monthly page views, viewing over 10 million+ listed products from 14000+ active designers.
Our focus is to create a platform for designers that enables them to offer exceptional high-quality content. We make their products searchable in unique ways. This allows our customers to speed up their workflow, allowing them to focus on what they love most: Creating.
We are growing. Fast. You will help us grow even faster.
In Development, we are responsible for building, scaling and maintaining the Creative Fabrica platform. We look for and work with individuals who are passionate about what they do, not just as a job, but as a craft. Our product is challenging and that makes it fun! We have TB of digital assets, we implemented our own video on demand solution, we process high volumes of new products being added every day, lots of transactions, api integrations, monitoring, etc. We believe our technology will make or break the company, and this is why we are hiring only exceptional talent.
Job description At Creative Fabrica we are developing the e-commerce platform of the future.
On top of that, we built and maintain a social network, tools for creators to manage their digital assets, CF Fans - an all-in-one platform for creators to manage their followers, CF Classes - online classes from experienced designers and crafters, and many more!
Responsibilities Improve our site infrastructure to keep up with the company’s fast growth and technical evolution Proactively monitor the infrastructure and propose changes Lead the design and building of a fully automated, developer self-service platform Research, develop and implement infrastructure management standards across our cloud accounts (AWS and GCP) Participate in pre-production and production site releases Participate in the on-call rotation and in the debugging of issues
Who are you?
Essential Skills: 4+ years operating and supporting a high-volume, high-performance, cloud-based distributed computing environment Proven experience with Terraform, containers and monitoring solutions Experience with wide array of AWS-based services (EC2, ECS/EKS, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, etc) Experience with Kubernetes and Kafka preferred Experience supporting and deploying applications and microservices written in Go, Python and PHP Experience developing automation solutions in a continuous deployment environment Can conduct deep-dive “hands-on” education/training sessions to transfer knowledge to other developers Deep understanding of Cloud Native architectures and approaches
Soft Skills: Natural problem solver with a positive attitude, solutions focused Hold yourself and others to high-quality standards and help people meet that level Proactive in seeking feedback and kind in giving it
Nice to have: Current AWS and GCP certifications Experience diagnosing complex production incidents in cloud-based applications and services Experience developing in PHP, Python, Typescript or Go Experience with performance and load testing
Let us take care of you. Competitive Compensation: We believe that hard work, skills and ambition should be fairly compensated. The best tools and stylish kit: Laptop. Check. Collaboration tools. Check. Killer accessories. Check. Work Remote OR in the office. For this position is it possible to: 1. Work from anywhere in the European time zone . 2. Work from our office in Amsterdam, with 30 remote days where you can work from anywhere. Working here means delicious lunches in the garden, Friday beers at our local, and access to our own CF library. TGIF: Work Life balance is important - we work hard together, and we have fun together. On Fridays we all gather at the bar across the street, and start celebrating the weekend.
Read more / apply: https://www.golangprojects.com/golang-go-job-gbm-Remote-Europe-Senior-Cloud-Platform-Engineer-Creative-Fabrica-remotework.html

I just got into raiding this patch. I found a great team learning the fights. I usually play rdps but I’m tanking for the team. Im pugging on my main, Balance Druid. Long story short I’m 8/9 N and 5/9 H on Druid and we’ll kill the final boss Saturday on Tank. Raiding is so much more enjoyable than M+ it’s unbelievable.

We are Azure Infinitum
Visit us at: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/)
You may have seen us in the Aether data center's party finder during our weekly events, or may have seen our recruitment shouts around the realm in-game in Midgardsormr, but there just isn't enough space in those places to really explain everything wonderful about what our Free Company and community is.
Azure Infinitum is an LGBTQ+ friendly community, and welcomes players of all experience level, play style, and availability. We're a warm home with a balance of online players, weekly optional activities, and flexible ranks from our membership, to our support & leadership categories. We have a 24/7 Support Team, a Councilship that governs each tier, seasonal events of our own, and many resources between the games we support and online services.
Who We Are
We are an established 9-year old community who's home is in Midgardsormr Server of Final Fantasy XIV. We are a structured, well-rounded, welcoming, friendly, and organized community that hosts daily events (check out our calendar: https://azureinfinitum.com/events/ ) that provide opportunity for members to excel. We work to provide an arena and opportunities to establish strong bonds and camaraderie between our members. As a community we are driven, we carry each other forward, and we are proud.
Our Name & Philosophy
Learn more about our global community here: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/aboutus/)
Learn more about our FFXIV Free Company here: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/ourffxivfc/)
Azure Infinitum means "Azure/Blue Infinity or Infinite Blue/Azure" and there is some mythos behind the name that stems from our guild-wide philosophy of kindness, freedom, vigilance, diversity and activity. We promote positive fellowship among members in an organized guild, with our sights open to our unending endless skies, full of possibility and success together.
Our motto is "As Free As The Azure Sky!" which stuck well when our FC was restructured from an old guild in 2014 as Azure was founded, and it was first shouted as we looked out at a clear blue sky above. has continued to be our electric victory as we continue to snowball in success and activity, our members soaring high through the Azure Sky, flying together!
Ranks
Click here to learn more about our community ranks: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/ranks/)
Our community has an organized ranking structure beginning with Members who comprise the majority of the roster. Scouts are our support team of Members who've stepped up to more officially support the FC, some work on obtaining a future leadership rank. Lieutenants and Officers comprise the proud Azure Council, a diverse group of players of different specialties and services to the FC, making up lower and higher tier leadership, seeing over the Scouts and the FC weekly events, aside from being admins. The FC Infinitum Master oversees all and leads the Azure Council and the company forward while always keeping the heart and vision of the community alive and in sight. Currently we are re-assessing ranks in the free company, giving more support permissions and duties to our Scouts, while the current council operates as a small team of Lieutenants lead by the FC Master.
Everyone Welcome and Who Fits Best
We have an open door policy. Whether you're casual, a returning player, a veteran, or a newbie, we have a vast array of players in our member roster. Our weekly schedule is organized and provides an array of activity for players of most levels, however we like to ask players who're pretty new or under the level cap, to be extra vocal about their needs while they're still unable to attend some daily events or higher level content that most of our weekly lineup focuses on. We want everyone to have as much fun as possible and have the most success. We find that most players enjoy Azure Infinitum, many have stated that they subscribed to FFXIV much longer than they ever would have imagined after they have been around in our community, as they've gotten involved and experienced all that we offer.
Our FC keeps a daily schedule (see here: https://www.azureinfinitum.com/events/) of events that are hosted by permitted Scouts and Council ranks, these range from 8-man and 24-man raids and map parties, to WT journal groups and trial clear parties or farms, and more- and attending anything isn't mandatory at all here. We're happy to have you, and its up to our members how much they'd like to get involved. Attendance is optional! There's never any stress to attend FC functions.
Savage Raiding Statement
We find that some hardcore raiders looking for free companies just to join their statics who don't already have one, might not fit well if savage raiding is their only or greatest focus, because traditionally Azure does not have a Savage Static, but focuses more on allowing members to organize their own groups and also provides resources to do so. Despite not supporting an official static for the FC, we hope that hardcore raiders enjoy the wealth of our community's wealth of harmony and overall fun, and that everyone may take initiative to seek out or build a raiding static within our community if they are interested, as opposed to missing out on experiencing Azure. Depending on the content season, we may have an Unofficial static lead by a leader, and routinely offer limited time Savage-learning events that may run for a number of months.
Rules and No Drama Policy
Please take a moment to look over our Rules Page at (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/rules/), we find that rude individuals and people who create drama are the outsiders here that don't fit well. We know its a big page, so at least visit the General Rules section before joining.
Recruitment Care & Activity
People of Azure Infinitum are often if not always good natured players who found their way to our community looking for a place with structure, friendliness, organization, and great activity, or they've been scouted during recruitment drives and have been well screened. Its a place where one can be social and attend everything, or relax in the background and enjoy the services and facilities of being in an active, organized, and friendly FC. We actively recruit periodically to assist with upkeep of community activity levels, and to meet new comrades. A community that closes recruitment can be doomed to stagnation. Its normal for a community to have an inner core of die hards who log in daily regardless of content releases, and also have an outer core of individuals that range from those with less availability to those who check in during Patches. This is why we take extra care in keeping the fresh blood flowing into Azure, cautious recruitment, and support our active model by always staying welcoming and sometimes running recruitment campaigns and other services. Like this ad!
Handling Online Drama
Because we keep a no-drama policy and have a strong communication network, it is leadership's ultimate priority to handle any issues that may come up as soon as possible, and most people appreciate our problem solving which has inspired many other communities. Between our Support & Leadership ranks, we use a number of report and resource channels to handle situations, and perform problem solving protocols & tactics to fairly address issues as possible. Drama is inevitable at some point for any online community, so its important to have a large and strong list of moderators (currently around 60!) and a council of leaders (15+) to quickly handle any problems. Luckily, we don't have a lot of drama, but we're always very well equipped and very prepared. Our community has been commended by game staff in the past for our methods, and we have worked with the FFXIV Special Task Force to ensure as much safety to our community as achievable. It should be stressed that it is up to our membership to report to GM's in-game, and to Azure Leadership should any issues or concerns come up. Its also highly recommended that our members appropriately document evidence that can be used to help us assess situations and make proper decisions. Documenation such as screenshots of harassment is a great example! Our members online safety is greatly important to us and is a number one concern of our leadership team. Our Rules Page at: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/rules/) describes a bit more in Chapter 3, including other entries on avoiding/ignoring trolls, playing while intoxicated, depression, and more.
Our Philosophy
We believe in our community and its people, how far we can go, how much we can do for each other, being an experienced community who's core values are positive fellowship, formation of bonds, and indomitable unity.
Azure Infinitum tightly grasps success and masters a casual and lucrative weekly play schedule while inspiring motivation and providing avenues for further success, friendships, and camaraderie among all who freely fly together among our Azure skies.
Founding on the principles of intricately forging a generally drama-free experience with keen leadership and a zealous and mighty membership, Azure has striven to guide and support many hundreds of players through every era of Final Fantasy XIV.
With an illustrious history, company lore, impressive statistics, and a model that is adaptable and blessed with innovative ability, Azure Infinitum claims a dominant presence of excellence and player growth that is possible in our community and extended services.
Estate Organization
We have the entire set-up at our estate, from gardens for members and Krakka Root production (free for members' chocobos), to our stables, nicely uniform clean lawn with hangout spots that are popular, with crafting stations, all available NPCs for simple mats and repairs, cut-scene viewer, toybox, triple-triad board, a fully operational and geared fleet of airships and subs, and our Azure Infinitum Assembly Chamber on the top floor for our meetings where announcements are made at our Grand Assemblies. Check it out if you like at Mist Ward 7 Plot 1.
We also have an organized form of gathering for weekly events in the yard, places to relax, food that is always available on tables at our Cellar, and hold a lot of special events and social games at our Hall. We're also conveniently located next to a Market Board and a Retainer Bell outside of our estate.
Communication and Extended Azure Services
We have multiple services of which none are mandatory, but we provide being (azureinfinitum.com) where our Forums, Event Calendar, News, Company Meeting Summaries, Seasonal Merch Giveaways, Contests, Rules Page, and more take place and can be found. We also have a popular and active Discord Server.
We also have a Facebook Group, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Steam Group, (Look us up! Or visit: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/socialmedia/) and Linkshells like our Infinitum Alliance LS for contact and aid from our allies if needed, our Azure Hunters LS for Hunters, and our Azure Industry LS which connects our members to our inner crafting/gathering community for newbies to pros.
Also worthy of mention is our big Company Meetings in-game, known as Azure Infinitum Grand Assemblies. Even though we have several avenues that keep people connected, our live assemblies gather the FC in unity where announcements are made first, and all proposals, ideas, and more, can be decided together live with the Azure Council present.
This network ensures a lot of information and communication gets around and has been exceedingly useful to us.
More On Events
One part of our reputation that often precedes us is our event crafting and hosting.
First, let me make sure its clear that attendance is never mandatory, but those who can make use, when possible, of what we provide each day, benefit from our events each week.
Since our beginning, traditions like our Thursday Treasure Thursdays events have run each week. Our weekly line-up presently begins on Tuesdays post-weekly reset, and consists of Raid Tuesdays, Wondrous Wednesdays (WT Journal Parties, often doubles as Trial Clears and Pony Drops), Treasure Thursdays (Endwalker's timeworn maps with groups of 8 doing up to 3 rounds of maps allowing for up to 24 maps ran), 24-Man Tuesdays (full pre-formed Azure 24-member alliances are made and raids are cleared, will be returning upon the release of EW's 24-man), Super Azure Slayer Sunday (our weekly meetup to do all sorts of PVP content be it Rival Wings or Frontline), and Monstrous Mondays (helps clear the current and previous patch extreme trials).
Special, Seasonal, and Quarterly Events
More info here: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/azureday/)See the latest event news & more at: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/news/)
We also have what we call Special and Quarterly Events. These types of events are Weekend-Long-Events that usually consist of a theme or celebratory social events we craft. During these events we hold big Riddle Races, Costume/Glamour shows and contests, 3-Story Mansion Maze Races, Speedrun Dungeon Races, Hide and Seek games, Custom Quest Events, Discord events like Cards Against Humanity nights, Comedy events, PVP Tournament Circuits, and more.
Our Special and Quarterly events are Azure Day Weekend (Takes place 3 times a year across a weekend, celebrates the FC), Azure Summer Festival (3-days at the end of August in partnership with Child's Play, raises money for children in long-term care, anniversary of historic FC event called the Lunar Rebellion), Anniversary Azure Day (a big weekend event in November that celebrates our Founding), Azure Day Saint's Wake (celebrates Halloween/All Saint's Wake), Azure Starlight Day (celebrating Starlight Day/Christmas/December Holiday Season), Azure Grand Melee and Duel Tournaments (PVP Circuit series crowning our PVP Champions) and more.
Azure Day Weekends
If you've been around our server you may have heard of our Azure Day Weekends. Our Azure Days take place quarterly as mentioned just above, with four evolved editions called Azure Summer Festival, Azure Day Saint's Wake, Azure Starlight Day, and Anniversary Azure Day. With Azure Day Weekends and related events traditionally occuring quarterly our members are always excited to see the next big weekend of crazy and fun social games, and our showering of the free company in gil and prizes galore. We go all out when we celebrate the free company, and Azure Days are another way we find for leadership to give back to the community. 2023 and beyond is now host to additional seasonal Azure Day events!
We're always giving our members a chance to have fun, win big, and make some great memories in the in-game family we've become. Something fun is always on the horizon in Azure.
Community
I almost can't stress enough how friendly our community is. We have a vast variety of members from hardcore gatherers and crafters, social butterflies, chill veterans, experienced raiders, level grinders, support teams, PVP aficionados, mechanic specialists, and mentors. We're also very friendly to all casual players as well and we keep an open door so long as recruits are always aware that we have a no-drama tolerance here.
​Evolution into a Gaming Clan & Network
Plans are in the works and foundations are being laid that is slowly turning our community into a larger gaming network, with our first established Azure Wing with regular occurring activity being founded in Monster Hunter World, this has led to a successful Destiny 2 clan and more. Becoming a member of our Discord and/or Free Company now means access to things like our huge discord, Azure Wing membership in other games, and being able to join in on any of our other activities in the general community. Azure Network as its being called at the moment, is growing with an all-new website and community features for playing together across Final Fantasy XIV and to Azure Skies beyond!
Activity
We rank high as one of the top FC's in Worldwide Activity on lodestone, and have for a long time. Most of our players are divided between the US East and West Coasts, members in East and West Canada, and a few outside the US or in EU or Aus zones. Because we do have an activity policy (mentioned below) we keep a standard flow of people, and have crowds in the early morning, late morning, early afternoon, afternoon, evening, and late night crowds.
Elitism isn't our style. Our community boasts a broad range of characters, great personalities, the proud, and also some silly goofs. But elitism isn't welcome, no matter how successful we are or how large we grow. We're always welcoming towards fresh faces interested in joining our guild, and the in-game activity ranges between 30-60+ online at once during prime time hours, sometimes around 70+ on patch days, and usually always with half the roster logging in throughout a 24 hour period, and around 15-30+ during the night.
Activity Policy
We ask that our members do not go missing without logging in for more than 60 days straight. If we hear word from someone or have some kind of decent excuse, we place our members on our On Vacation rank, which lasts presently until 90 days have passed. Exceptions are made for military deployments, hospital stays, financial issues, disability/health related issues, moving, or other reasons that might fall on a case-by-case basis.
All members not heard from in 60 days (roughly 2 months) or currently 90 days (roughly 3 months) are discharged. We allow 3 joins to Azure Infinitum in total, but exceptions can be made due to reasons listed above. If removed for inactivity, or you've left our FC for another reason and haven't already joined 3 times, you're always welcome back, but please remember, we are not a revolving door.
Keeping our roster full of members who have been online and presently play the game actively ensures an active environment for our players who play often. It also keeps our credits and clerical processes balanced across our network, and allows space for new faces to join our big happy in-game family of comrades.
How to Join
Quick Instructions here for joinin us in FFXIV & more: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/howtojoinazure/)
If you are interested in joining our Azure Infinitum free company, please register an application at our site and/or FC in-game. You can also seek any of our Scouts, Lieutenants, Officers, or the Master of Azure Infinitum in-game and ask for an invite. You can find their names on the roster page at our website.
If you read everything on this page, you are awesome, and you should let anyone you talk to who recruits you know that you read everything on this page which will greatly expedite your invitation to join.
If you have any questions whatsoever feel free to send a /tell in-game to me or any of our Scouts or Lieutenants listed on our official roster here: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/freecompany/9232519973597911137/membe
You can also message us at our FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/AzureInfinitum
Discord here: https://discord.gg/azureinfinitum
Twitter: https://twitter.com/azureinfinitum
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/azure_infinitum/
Main Site: https://www.azureinfinitum.com/

A Necessary Preface

To start things off, some baselines need to be set for the sake of sidestepping a lot of talking points. This post will come entirely from the perspective that fighting games are a multiplayer genre first. There's a lot of very valid criticisms of the genre's single player aspect. I am actively choosing to ignore them for this post. When these discussions occur, it's meant from the perspective of the fighting game community trying to convince people to play and stick with the genre. For hundreds or even thousands of hours. In the same way that people would League of Legends, Apex, Rocket League, etc. The single-player aspect ultimately have very little bearing on the multiplayer aspect since it only increases impressions and not retention.
I'll also make a deeply arbitrary distinction between accessibility and accommodations for the disabled. They're two very different issues where the latter needs to be tackled in ways that I, or most people, am completely uninformed in. I am going to be addressing the layman's accessibility concerns.
FGC-heads, I know many of you have also thrown in the towel and now sing the virtues of gatekeeping due to not wanting "intolerants". But don't be an ass about it and remember there's a lot more wiggle room than you think. This post already comes across as condescending despite my best efforts, so cool it.
Finally, you don't have to read all of this. Just keep an eye out for the bolds that catch your eye. I'll try to keep things as simple as much as I reasonably can, but things will ultimately be technical. You will likely need a passing familiarity of the terms I'll be using, and I'll try to assist you in that by linking to a definition when appropriate. I will avoid requiring rigorous knowledge of the subject matter though, so don't get too caught up in the details.
This conveniently segways to one common criticism.

There is too much terminology for me to learn

There sure is a lot of them. But they're not used to make things esoteric. They're words meant to concisely convey otherwise intuitive concepts for the purposes of discussion, learning, and troubleshooting.
In other words, you don't really need to explicitly learn them. Eventually, you'll implicitly learn all the terminology. Just not the words to express them. Think of it like how many of us trying out chess will start games by moving a pawn to allow the Queen to move around, completely unaware of the fact that what we're performing is likely a Queen's Pawn or a King's Pawn opening. In the same vein, many are likely already familiar with certain popular concepts in fighting games. You're just unaware of what they're called, or know them by another name.
Take for example, spacing or neutral. You're likely familiar with snipers in a multiplayer shooter. If a sniper is uncontested, they completely own or dominate the "space" they're looking at. Running in full view of a sniper is a terrible idea because of it, and hiding behind cover is a solid idea because they don't "dominate" the space behind cover. To shut down a sniper's control of an area, you need to either physically overpower them (kill them), approach from a space they're not in control of (ambush them), or to force them to move else where (flush them out) via grenades or simply shooting in their general direction. Or in fighting game terms, whiff punish them (kill them), by playing footsies (ambush them), or by zoning (flush them out) them out.
Frame data deserves a special mention. The simplest way to put is that they're measurements of time. If you play any game somewhat seriously, you're already familiar. Reload speeds, fire rates, attack rates, and even movement speeds. Hell, something as simple as not wanting to use Knights of Round on generic encounters due to the long animation is a decision rooted in frame data.

There are too many things I need to learn

That's fair. There's no way around it. Fighting games are so far removed on a physical level that most people will have to learn everything from scratch. But it's not for the sake of it. There's too little overlap for you to rely on to draw experience.
I'll try not to bore you with the details by delving deep into stuff like Razbuten's series about gaming for non-gamers. But there's an inherent language to video game conventions and how things control or happen. It's all very learned behavior and not all of it translates to every game. For fighting games in particular, almost nothing translates unless you play exclusively 2d beat 'em ups, spectacle fighters, Monster Hunter, and Soulslikes. And even then.
And that's all okay. We all have a finite amount of time in our lives, with responsibilities to attend to. We can't invest the time to learn everything we need for everything we have a passing interest in. We all pick our battles.

No, seriously, it's all really overwhelming even when I'm trying

It sure is. And there are lots of ways the on-boarding process could be significantly improved upon. These days, the games with the most renowned tutorials are from French Bread or Arc System Works. And they're very excellent... at being a reference. Primary learning material they are not. I could talk about all about the ways things could be improved, but I'm not part of the industry. Waste of character limits if you ask me.
Until things improve drastically, my only advice is to take things slow. A lot of the things you're tempted to learn are cool combos, special techniques to make people stop blocking, or every single move your character has. Maybe all at once. Don't. Pick one or two things to focus on. Play against people where your only goals in life are the one or two things. Move onto new things when you feel that you're comfortable. Rinse and repeat until you've had enough.

The controls aren't intuitive

There's a funny thing about intuition. Despite it being rooted in instinct, it's entirely learned behavior. If you've used mnemonics before, you probably know that some just aren't very useful no matter how hard you try. It's kinda arbitrary. Things being intuitive or unintuitive also don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. Like mnemonics, intuition only go so far to help you remember or learn something.
Movement tech in other genres is often brought up as an argument for intuition. They're typically a "logical" sequence of inputs that the player is already familiar with. Smash Melee's Wavedash actually gets brought up as an example time to time. It's jump then air dodge directly back onto the platform. On paper, it's very simple and easy to do.
It's not. The dexterity required to do it is a lot more than you'd expect it to be. Then there's frequency of its use, which causes a very real, physical strain on you. No matter how you look at it, you'll spend several orders of magnitudes more learning the rhythm than you do remembering the sequence of actions. The sequence themselves are a very minor step.
Not to mention, there is a language to how fighting game controls. Most people aren't used to it because most games aren't anything like fighting games. Take for example the quarter circle forward input. It's also known as the fireball input. Why? Because the average QCF input is a fireball. If not, it's probably a move that lunges your character forward. The fact that it ends in forward usually indicates that it's designed to control space in front of you. Hey look, a made up mnemonic. It's also probably useless!

Motion controls are superfluous and should be simplified

A very popular misconception, no doubt due to the widespread popularity of Smash. But the matter of fact is that motion controls are not superfluous and have momentous consequences. But at the same time, the consequences kinda don't matter. It creates a different type of fighting game for people to enjoy, which people do. The problem comes when people assert that it should be mandatory across the entire genre thinking that nothing would change. It's the same as saying that every FPS needs to have parkour mechanics or every action game needs to have animation canceling or every RPG needs to be real time: it's incredibly short-sighted. There's a reason why Smash has poor cross pollination or why not every TF2 player likes Overwatch.
If you're willing to accept the previous paragraph at face value, skip to the next checkpoint. The following will be dense.
The simplest example of the consequences of simplified inputs is the single input invicible DP. Their existence completely redefines how offense is structured and how it is played out. In particular, it heavily emphasizes true gapless blockstrings because the ease of the DP make it so that any unintentional gaps are fundamentally bad pressure. Because of that, pressure becomes more telegraphed and rigid, to the point of turns becoming almost concrete. Or in other words, homogenized and potentially requiring study at all levels.
I also need to stress the word unintentional here. There are entire series and subgenres that thrive on forcing chaotic, ambiguous situations that neither player is fully aware of but have to place their bets anyway. But with a one button DP, intentionally causing mutually ambiguous situations will almost never be in your favor because doing anything will lose out to a DP.
There's some other reasons why the ease factor can cause new problems that need to be addressed, like how most motions don't end in a blocking input which means you must forgo blocking or how some inputs assume that you forgo your ability to move forward. But there are ways around this with surprisingly minimal effects on gameplay or even cause novel situations. But I'm ready to move on.
See, simplified inputs have a very inherent and significant design cost to them. Grapplers in fighting games historically have insanely fast grabs. It's not uncommon for a grappler's command grab to be tied for literally the fastest move in the game, while simultaneously being 2-4x the range of other similarly fast non-grabs, and typically leading to much more advantageous situations post-grab than fast non-grabs. As seen here. Not only are they incredibly strong offensively, but also incredibly strong defensively. Almost as strong as a DP generally, and sometimes stronger than DPs in very specific (but potentially common) scenarios. This is often balanced out by the motions tied to these moves have an associated time cost to perform them in most but not all situations, ontop of the fact that it requires some modicum of effort to perform. Combined, this results in a surprisingly low margin for error to utilize this move effectively, and even players at the highest levels fail it every so often in stress-free, at home in their boxers, scenarios.
Think of it like the choice between slamming on your brakes to minimize collision damage or swerving to avoid it entirely. With enough of a heads up, everyone would choose to swerve. But sometimes you don't realize that you have enough room to swerve and by the time you did, it's too late. You have to pick the next best option. Mental burden is the concept I'm stressing here.
Of course, we can adjust how one button command grabs work to minimize the differences. The most common answer to this is by making the command grab themselves slower. But by doing so, the command grab is now a fundamentally different move. It cannot be used defensively. It is offensively neutered and the scenarios where it is a good idea to use is significantly reduced. The alternative answer is by tying the command grab to a resource. In turn, it's no longer a move that you always have access to. It's something that must be built towards and then managed alongside all the other mechanics that likely share the same resource.
Nothing mentioned so far are inherent downsides and won't make games bad. You can even omit more nuanced moves like command grabs and DPs entirely and people can still like it. The problem is that these would be the only kind of games that could exist if motion controls would be permanently retired. My preferred solution would be not to remove them, but to add more characters who don't have motions.
Anyway if you've read all that, then you might think I'm making up assumptions. That I can't know for sure that this is how one-button specials would affect the game. Except they're not assumptions. They're real world observations of games that already have one-button specials.
Games with one button specials: Fantasy Strike, Smash, DNF Duel
Games with simplified-but-still-motioned specials: Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Dragonball Fighterz, Skullgirls
Games with both: Granblue Versus, Street Fighter 6, Idol Showdown

Combos are too long

This is a really interesting complaint that comes up a lot. But what it means is one of three very different concerns that all need to be addressed in their own ways.

...because I keep getting stuck in one and dying to them

A very common and popular problem that is unfortunately born out of complete and total ignorance. Allow me to demonstrate with a clip.
Do you believe this was one combo? A really long infinite? A 100% to 0% combo? If your answer to any of these were a yes, then you are wrong. That was about six separate combos. I try to not get caught up on definitions as a rule of thumb and focus on the meaning instead, but this is a pretty big deal for this concern. Because people don't actually know the language, they misuse words all the time. They don't actually know how to express their concerns in an immediately understandable manner. This is... a huge can of worms that I won't get into for this post.
The thing about combos is that combos only work if the recipient of those combos have failed. One failure = one combo. Therefore, six separate combos means that the opponent has failed six times. But if it's the result of failure, then that must mean that success is an option, right?
Yes. It's called blocking, or more accurately, having good defense. Really focus on this bit here:

Players and characters with strong defense tend to be able to survive long offensive sequences from their opponent and take little overall damage

This leads into the next separate concern expressed in the same way.

...and there's nothing I could have done

Here's a clip. The player with the long whip (P1) looks really oppressive, right? The player with the hat (P2) had nothing they could do to stop the onslaught of combos coming their way. It was a miracle that they didn't take more damage from all of that. There's a bit of a hitch to all of this though:
None of those were combos. It wasn't oppressive at all. In the context of that clip, P2 willingly chose to do nothing but exclusively block because they wanted to see if P1 was capable of doing anything else.
What do I mean they weren't combos? They just aren't. For this specific concern, it's a simple misunderstanding of term. A sequence of attacks in quick succession are better known as strings. Not all strings are combos, but all combos are strings. What makes a string a combo is if it makes a character start physically reeling from an attack. This is a very important distinction for reasons that are irrelevant to this concern.
Okay, they're not combos but strings. Why does that matter? It still doesn't seem like P2 could have done anything. The thing with strings is that they must inevitably end. When and where they end is highly game and character dependent, but it's one of the few constants of the genre. From Street Fighter, to Smash, to Fantasy Strike. One of the most significant aspects of the genre is figuring out when someone is actually done so that you can take your turn. How a fighting game handles "the end of offense" is one of the most common ways to distinguish itself from other games. The clip I linked is a game that likes to keep things intentionally vague for the defender. Tekken famously requires you to know frame data to know when it's your time. Some games like to simplify things with rules of thumbs. Some games make it extremely short.
In the clip I shared, there were plentiful of solutions that P2 could have done that didn't require much thinking. Ignoring the DP that character has access to or any of the other moves they had, they could have ran forwards. They even had a second point to run forward.
What's really being complained about in this concern here is actually more along the lines of this:

I don't know what's going on and there's nothing I could do

This has a multitude of solutions. Some of them are tough pills to swallow. Some of them requires an adjustment of how information is conveyed. Some require slowing things way down. They all work, all with their own caveats. But you can't remove the problem entirely. It's not how video games work. It's like how you know it's safer to move while the enemy is reloading or charging or whatever.
Technically, you can make it so that it's theoretically always your time to shine regardless of what the opponent is doing. There are two games I'm aware of where this idea has been played with. A character named Baiken from Guilty Gear XX, and the Touhou games' Typhoon condition.
Nobody likes playing against Baiken. Typhoon is not a good time for anyone involved.

...and I can't be bothered

We're finally here. A complaint that actually means what it means. And it's 100%, completely, unarguably, fair. This a common complaint of fans from different series/subgenres too. There are games I love that have really long combos and I still have a limit. It's actually so common that it's been very consistently addressed:
Games with short combos exist. Games with almost no combos exist. We can go a step further: there are specific types of characters common to the genre that don't really do combos. There's usually at least one of them in most games. If you're okay with seeing them but not doing them, that's an option too.
One sidenote. The length of combos make a large difference in how games are played at a very fundamental level, beyond the combos themselves. Like everything else mentioned so far, short combos or long combos aren't better than the other. They simply offer different experiences. The problem is being shoehorned into a specific experience were one implemented genre-wide.

...and do too much damage

A bit distinct from the other concerns. It's suggesting almost a touch of death, but not quite. Fighting games do have an informal equivalent to time-to-kill from FPS that is measured in how many "touches" until you lose a round but that's a little too nuanced and tangential to get into for this.
Combos that do a lot of damage exist. This is true. There are lots of long combos. Also true. Here's one for example. It's a 30 second combo, where 17 seconds of it involves the P1 pushing buttons and then 13 seconds of watching a cinematic. You're probably not having a good time if you're on the receiving side of this.
There are some very, very important caveats. One, this particular game has an above average combo length in the first place. Two, that combo is an especially egregious example even in that game. Three, that combo is a culmination of a multitude of mistakes that required being hit by a very specific attack from P1 while P2 tried to attack, when P1 has at least 80% super meter, while P1 has nigh-max character-specific resources, while P2 is backed into a corner, while P1 has won a minigame. And it barely does enough to do 65% of a life bar. It's pretty rare for a combo this damaging to happen in most games. In some games, the opportunity can only occur once a match.
There's also the cinematic we need to talk about. Personally, I believe that the cinematic could be shorter. Especially in games where cinematic stuff happens all the time such as in Guilty Gear Strive or Tekken 7. One really big problem though:
Cinematics push copies. A very significant portion of a fighting game's marketing strategy is to showcase them because most people see something cool and think it's exciting. Think about how every time a new Mortal Kombat or Injustice comes out, gaming social media is flooded with supers and fatalities for a while. It just works. It also unfortunately has a very real effect on your personal experience when you're playing a game for >10 cumulative hours.
Games that try to make it obvious you didn't get the right answer: Guilty Gear Strive, Street Fighter 5, Skullgirls
Games with short combos: Fantasy Strike, Granblue Versus, Samurai Shodown
Games where combos don't exist: Divekick
Games that try to make it easy to do combos: Every fighting game released after 2014

There are too many buttons and it's too hard to keep track of

A pretty specific complaint that pops up time to time. And again, it's fair. Low button games do exist and actually in fact are more frequent than high button games, but that's besides the point. Let's address the primary purposes of more buttons:

• More actions/options can be mapped
• Pressing multiple buttons can be fun
• Actions are more clearly delineated

I'll focus on the final point since I think the first two are self-evident. There are ways to make low-button games have the same amount of actions as high-button games. The problem is that no matter how you do it, the chances of input errors get increased. A clear delineation of input options makes being in control a lot more accessible. Which is a pretty big thing in this genre.
With a low button game, there are two choices: maintain a comparable amount of actions compared to higher buttons and accept we'll get more input errors, or accept that we'll have fundamentally less actions.
Games with two buttons: Smash, Divekick
Games with three buttons: Fantasy Strike, Granblue Versus, Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Soul Calibur
Games with four buttons: Touhou IaMP, Touhou Hisoutensoku, Persona 4 Arena, Melty Blood, Under Night, Samurai Shodown, Blazblue, Dragonball Fighterz, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, etc

Combos have no bearing on strategy

Another complaint about combos, but a lot more directed. It's a complicated concern, as misguided as it may be, isn't without reason. Doing combos at some point can feel dialed in, and getting comboed is the equivalent of getting stunned in other video games. Except it can happen multiple times in about 30 seconds, which is frustrating to a lot of people.
A previous section already covered the idea of low-combo or comboless games, so I won't repeat myself on that front. I'll instead try to make a case for combos and why they shouldn't be removed entirely.

...because it is an exercise in rote memorization

This sort of complaint comes up a lot from very specific crowds. Primarily people who have experience in platform fighters like Smash or people who are very interested in the other aspects of fighting games but specifically dismiss combos.
I'll get the elephant in the room out of the way first: what's wrong with rote memorization? There are entire genres of games pretty much dedicated to tickling that part of the brain. If you were there for the 2000's rock band/guitar hero boom, you probably took part of it too. There are competitive rote memorization games. Jeopardy has been a worldwide phenomenon for decades. There's nothing wrong with it, and it's okay to acknowledge they're not your thing. Games that deemphasize combos exist.
Okay, there's still another reason why this complaint exists. People hate losing agency when playing video games and being comboed definitely takes it away. A very common example is brought up as a solution: Smash's Directional Influence. While a player's typical agency is gone, they do gain a new form and a new "game" forms between both players with it.
DI is pretty cool, and can be fun. Not everyone likes it. Some fighting games try to add agency in their own way through a combo breaking mechanic called Burst. Killer Instinct is famous for having a very specific way of handling combos through their combo breaker mechanic. Not everyone likes these either. There are likely other ways that agency can be added that haven't been done yet. And not everyone will like them. And that's okay.
Now, let me try to sell you on the idea that losing agency while being comboed is okay. Fighting games can be a lot. Some of them relish in being a lot. They can be overwhelming to absorb everything that's going on. Not to mention the whole part where you're trying to outwit the opponent.
You need time to breathe and get your bearings back in order. And that's exactly the window that being comboed provides. You can take a mental step back and look at what's going on. How many more times can you get hit and still survive? What is everyone's resources at? Are you winning that weird tug of war minigame? What has the opponent been doing? What's the chances they're going to do the same thing when they're done with the combo? Do you have a response to that thing?
Breathers are really important. People aren't built for full-throttle thinking and action for long stretches. Video games have realized this decades ago. It's why even the most spastic, twitchy of monsters in Monster Hunter will stop in place and roar. Why bullet hell games constantly swap between hyper dense, rapid patterns and patterns where you can kinda veg out for a moment. Why plenty of Zelda/Mario bosses will make you do some slow paced jump roping before they expose their weakpoint again.
This all also applies for the person performing the combo provided that they are at total comfort with the whole sequence. It won't always be the case, but it's worth mening.

...because nobody drops them so why not cut out the middleman?

A very modern take due to the prevalence of accessible high level footage, the massive growth of fighting games overall, and due to evangelical efforts for the genre. Not to mention, the vast majority of games these days have made it very easy to do very simple combos that everyone has access to and is practical at all levels. From more lenient input buffers, to simplified and standardized motion inputs, to autocombos, and an overall philosophical change on how games address damage, it can feel like having to perform combos is unnecessary work.
But people still fail combos. Even players at the highest level when there are zero stakes. The simple increased likelihood that one can fail doing a combo affects their decision-making. If they fail, the opponent can completely turn the tables. It creates tension. It opens up wiggle-room for the defender. It gives people hope. Allow me to paint a picture:
Both players are at low health and will die in about 1.5 "average" combos. P1 gets hit first, and is getting comboed. P2 has two choices: they can do their standard combo that has little chance of failing and place their bets on winning the next interaction after the combo ends. Or they can do their more damaging combo that should kill, but if they drop it (or even if the combo is carried to completion), P2 will be significantly disadvantaged for the next interaction. Or in some cases, even potentially the rest of the round. What do they do? What should they place their chips on?
This is such a popular aspect that certain content creators take this whole concept to its logical extreme and make a game show out of it.

Fighting games need no strategy beyond button mashing and combos

This opinion has largely died out in the past decade among the more dedicated video game communities, but it does still persist. Especially among the mainstream crowd.
Ignoring everything that has already been mentioned in the post so far, let's look at this clip. A very typical and basic interaction in the genre. It may be a little reiterative to what I've already said, but here's a twelve page explanation breaking it all down.

...because everyone picks the most optimal solution

This is a particularly strange complaint. It kind of arbitrarily ignores the fact that fighting games are primarily a real-time genre. Which fundamentally means that fighting games have imperfect information. Ignoring the real time aspect and 4head game theory stuff that most people — including myself — don't actually understand aside, fighting games at their core are sort of like weighted rock paper scissors.
A single dominant strategy doesn't exist, because every strategy loses to something. You know what always picking the most logical strategy in any given situation makes you?
Predictable.

I don't have the reaction time for them

This is a really fun complaint, because addressing it actively involves understanding what reaction times are. Most people will not want to be convinced that their use of it has been wrong their entire lives.
What is commonly understood as reaction time is as follow: how quickly one is able to respond to stimuli. Simple enough. The thing is that this is not actually how most people respond to things except as a very last resort.
There's an excerpt I like to share. It's not at all a formal study and it's pretty anecdotal. You don't have to read through it all, but I do recommend it. This is the relevant part though. The rest of the excerpt then explains how people are hitting something that is physically unreactable with the human body: because they're reacting to something else long, long, looong before the ball goes airborne.
This is what good reaction times really are. People recognizing a situation long before it happens, and reacting accordingly by adjusting their rhythm. Trying to rely on pure stimuli to react is ignoring the entirety of a countdown and only responding to the "Go!" There's a reason why basically every track event starts with a countdown through the words "On your marks".
This is actually such an age old argument that someone made a flash game to make a point back in 2011. You can get it going through an emulator if you'd like, but that's optional. I'll be explaining under the assumption you haven't touched it at all.
The two moves that you are meant to block here is the weird flip kick and the moon. There's something really important to note here: both moves take about 256/288ms (moon/flip) before they can actually hurt you. On a technical level, they land squarely within the average human reaction time.
Millia Blocker is really fucking hard. Most fighting game players can't actually react in time. But in the actual game these moves are from, blocking them isn't that big of a deal in most situations. You only ever really see these two moves in very specific situations that often occur a mile away. It ends up becoming a fairly binary "are they gonna use them or not" sort of situation where you're already blocking with whatever you decided to go with, sort of like pre-firing, or by blocking both. Defending against them is so little of a deal these days that more experienced players tend to opt for more complicated options instead.

...because I'm too old

When I first started playing fighting games ten years ago, the top players were in their mid-thirties. Most of them are still top players in their forties and the young rising stars of the time are now in their thirties and top players as well. Something like 40% of the current top 100 tennis players are over thirty. Baseball and soccer both have very significant 30+ year old representation at the highest levels. 20% of the NBA is comprised of dudes in their thirties.
You can go out to your closest metropolitan community park or gym where random people meet up for a game of ball once a week. You're probably going to find an older person playing and keeping up with the rest of them, if the group isn't primarily older in the first place. And they'll steamroll the average high school senior who only play sports for gym class. They could probably keep up with the average HS sports club too.
Why? It's not that they're physically built different. It's because they decided to continue giving a damn about a game of ball in their older age. It's a conscious decision they've made to balance ball on top of whatever responsibilities they already have. This whole reaction time business ultimately boils down to a lack of experience, not actual reaction times.

...because too much is going on

It gets easier. If you decide to stick with it that is. When you're brand new to something, you're at a total sensory and information overload. It's difficult to parse through all that and you get decision paralysis, but it gets easier. This is known as cleaning up your mental stack. Or more concisely, turning the unfamiliar into familiar, into routine.
If you have a driver's license, remember when you first learned how to drive. There are 2-3 pedals for some reason, you need to keep track of what's behind you and to your sides, what's up ahead, the traffic laws, how the fuck a steering wheel works, etc. Forget trying to have a conversation or turning on the AC, you're way too focused on trying to not to crash the car. But eventually you get used to it all and now you do something very complex almost automatically. Some people are so used to it that they think texting during it all is no big deal. Please don't text and drive.

I don't like how you have to take out your credit card to unlock characters instead of unlocking them like you used to

This is a really interesting complaint born from yet another misunderstanding. In the overall microtransaction discourse, this can be valid regarding things like cosmetics. The good ol' SFxT DLC fiasco during the early days of DLC really does not help things either. But I'm going to spell it out in absolutely no uncertain terms:
You always had to pay money to get new characters in fighting games. The "unlockable" characters were not new characters, they were always part of the base roster.
When most people look back on history, they look at the character roster a game ends with and compare it to a post-DLC era roster and note the differences. But it's missing such a fundamental detail that is always conveniently forgotten in these complaints: fighting games used to have an insane amount of rereleases. Consider the age ol' meme of Super Street Fighter 2 Super Championship Turbo Edition.
Ever considered why that was? It's because fighting games were console ports of arcade games, where changing updating the game was relatively "trivial" on the arcade's end. Consoles? Consoles couldn't patch games until the 360/PS3 era. Which is around the time DLC started being a thing outside of PC games. And do you know what one of the main selling points of new patches/editions were? New characters. Compare Street Fighter 2's original roster of eight eventually growing up to a total of 16 in its final version. And you had to fork over money to buy the same game again to get those new characters.
To obfuscate things even further, each franchise had their own nomenclature to refer to patch versions. Street Fighter did "editions", reserving new numbers for actually brand new games (ala Alpha/Zero and 3). Tekken just increased the number. King of Fighters used the year they came out. Both franchises didn't properly distinguish whether it was a brand new game or a new patch either.
Anyway, it's 2023 now. Companies usually don't sell patches for $60-70 a pop anymore. Balance updates are entirely free these days with characters being the only things you have to purchase.

Fighting games are too expensive to get all the characters

Yup. Fighting games don't exactly have a better monetization method yet either, so we're kinda stuck with it.
In practice, it surprisingly doesn't matter that much. Even with the entire roster available, the vast majority of players don't actually play more than 2-3 characters. For most games, learning new characters can be really difficult for people. A new character can feel like playing a different version of the game in of itself. Combined with the fact that most people have struggle readjusting muscle memory, a lot of people put very little effort in actually playing new characters.
Alright so learning them is hard, but surely people need to study new characters because matchups are important, right? They totally are. But most people don't actually bother since the community is far more casual than people outside realize. That said, most people do agree that we should be able to try out characters for free. And hopefully that becomes standard in the genre. In any case, it sucks. But for most people, it's an inconvenience and not a money sink.

Fighting games lack progression

My personal disdain towards progression systems and love for abstract improvement aside, it's true. Fighting games lack engaging progression systems that are popular amongst multiplayer games. And I do believe that a well-made progression system would actually do wonders to resolve a lot of the misunderstandings found in this post. But forget well-made, most fighting games don't have any progression.
Until then, if your desire to play multiplayer games rely on concrete and highly measurable goals, fighting games are going to be a hard pass for a long while.

    Fog rolls up, wisping through and across her vision, gradually covering up the figure reflected in the silverbacked glasswork. For a moment, she stands hunched over, letting the water condense and run through hills and valleys between her cyan scales, liquid tinted by colour, traveling down her tail in a stream of droplets. Drip drop, streaming off the end into clear pools that reflect a shimmering clearer view. Water inches up the yellow walls, coating them with a thin film of liquid, that, when gathers enough, trickles down and enlarges the puddles dotting the floor, turning it into a nascent ocean. The last glimpse she has of the mirrored figure, before it's replaced with a cyan smudge, is the expression of unease, ever present, always concealed carefully behind grey fog.
    Her inner sanctum is soon left behind, doors closed, wet feet slapping against wooden floors scattering droplets, exchanging mental safety for physical sensibility. One arm slips past another, entering the wardrobe, fingers dancing across different shirts and jackets, tip tapping, stopping on the Torimine suit. Soon, tail slipping through skirt, arms maneuvering through shirt and jacket, shoes     slipped on, business-ready. Well-fitted, but a time away from being well-worn. There's not much left for her to grab  from the room, just a quick bite to eat, leftovers from yesterday, hidden away in a darkened cupboard, and then out the door into Salazsar.
    It's pre-dawn, sky  suffused by cloudly dark grey, smatterings of snowflakes whispering through the wind, backlit by lamps and magelight. They stick to her dress and scatter around her whenever the wind changes its aimless flow. She moves down a spiral-staircase, gliding to a lower, more mercantile, level. A much slower, clumsier, snowflake, crystallized by life, not temperature. Step-by-step I descend, until the bottom appears, stonework smoothed from the timeless passage of pedestrians. For a moment she pauses, deliberating, reflecting. Does she  really want to do this? She scoffs, no question about that, a false question, then followed by the real one. Does she really want to to this, today? Joints  grind back into gear, rust shaking off and flaking away, the answer apparent. She has to.
    
    
    "Revlii?"
    She looks up from the paperwork on her desk, staring in the direction of the concerned, male, voice, that softly rumbles through the doorway into the dim office. The light outside is brighter than  inside, making it hard to see a clear figure, instead he's more fuzzy silhouette, eyes glinting against the darkness.
    "Yes?"
    My eyes meet his for a moment, before he glances elsewhere, pretending to stare at the other objects that litter the room, like the paperwork splattered over her desk. They don't stick to any one object for lengthened time, afraid any errant gaze will be imprisoned into eye-contact if it lingers.
    "Listen, are you doing alright? If you need to take a day off you  can, okay?"
    She gives him an exasperated look, accompanied by a smirk. A hint of teeth poke through the gap in her smile, scales at the corners of her eyes crinkle, head tilts.
    "I'm fine. Trust me on that. If I needed a break I would take one."
    A perfect smile, happy quick exhale, through the nose, fingers clutching a quill delicately preparing to be put to page, documents to be signed. The Gnoll looks mollified turning to leave, but not
    "Well, just remember. If you need to take a break I'd be happy to cover for you, it's no issue."
    The last word is rhetorical, he leaves without leaving room for reply. Just her in the office, alone, once again. The only sound the sounds of the paperwork rustling when she places and replaces documents. Lots of paperwork to do, organized into three sections ,one pile growing taller than the others, a combined mix of them.
    In the air is a stale smell that sticks to me, seeping into her clothing, into the chair, into the documents. It's unclear where it comes from, not smelling like ink or paper, but something other, not foreign, however. It's all she smells, nothing else, not the pungent ink, not the dusty office, not perfumed Drakes or mouth-watering foodstalls. But it doesn't matter,  work  to do. Quill reappears against page, drawing lines of ink, curved, straight, forming letters and then words. On this page the final words appear, her signature, always signed, "Revlii Darktongue", exactly the same every time. She places the sheet into the tallest pile, and then places claws upon another and draws the paper over. And then writing again, and signing again.
    
    
    It's
    
    
    Street slowly winding upwards, Drakes and Gnolls huddled close together, trying to fit further into the crowd, but also struggling for warmth, this close contact being secretly treasured by many. She aswell, is huddled with them, skirt scraping against other garmets, head covered by wayward snowflakes, face made wet by foggy breath, all     their faces wet. The kind of cold misery that forms bonds, and strengthens friendships Her shoes carefully step over small patches of ice, and once or twice a member of the crowd helps her catch her balance when she slips, and she too, for them
    The sky is a brilliant orange, beauty magnified by the spires and towers that surround  me, distant rooftops glinting orange reflections, eternal burning away of daylight into night. Her path travels upward s, stairs passing beneath her, railings caught, shoes ever click clack and stomp when a slip threatens. The spot appears, between two spires, an opening where the city can be seen down a line, sunset perfectly positioned in the middle.
    Revlii takes a minute to take off my shoes, placing them on the ground, and then carefully clearing a clean patch to sit on. A  white exhale slowly comes, relaxed, as she gets into a good mental position. The sun slowly falls, distant orange chased by coming clouds that arrive from faraway lands. Work was okay today, she thinks, more of the same, but sometimes lack of change can be  good. I might even Level soon if I keep it up.
    Another exhale, tension leaving her body, flowing into the air, quickly washed away by cold winds and burned through by the orange light. Her daily routine is to sit here and watch the sunset, regardless of the weather. There are many views like this one in Salazsar, but this one feels personal, only belonging to me, and her alone. More snowflakes fall, amount increasing, wind also getting colder.
    She dislikes Winter, her favourite  season being Spring, but Winter always brings a calmness with it. Maybe it's how sounds seem to be dampened, the world almost still, vibrations sucked away into snowfall. Maybe it's how the sky looks, blues darker and more inviting, oranges brighter and more vibrant, vying for dominance and turning the sky brilliant shades with the rise and set of the sun. Tommorrow is the weekend, which is nice, I think. Soon the  solstice will  come, and she'll be back on track towards more favoured seasons less inclined to snowfall and chilly air. Another     exhale. Life is good.

We're now in that sweet spot after A-Day and before Summer OVs/Camp Season where it makes sense to take note and reflect. Remember that camp season likely changes this board dramatically and we'll see a good # of decision (both to Alabama and elsewhere) throughout June and early July.
Rankings Note: Every comic is someone's first so here's how to read/interpret/understand the rankings listed below: Commits and Top Targets will show their 247 Composite Rank, their On3 Composite, and their Comp² Ranking, which is just the raw average of the 2 composite ranks, rounded down. This overview will just reflect the pre-summer top targets/names to know and not the full list. Summer camp season will drastically change this list (new big board in July/August)
# of 4/5* change each year but I like a little consistency so here's generally how I arbitrarily split it, based on the average year-over-year data:
5*: #1-#32
4*: #33-#350
3*: #351-#2000
​
QB (1 Needed/1 Commited)
Overview: Barring something crazy, a team's QB will be the most important player on the field 9 times out of 10. Bama's looked around for a potential 2nd option but is pretty content with their 5* QB of the Future already commited

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 5* Julian Sayin	Carlsbad in Carlsbad, CA (SoCal)	247: #11 , On3: #14, Comp2: #12	One of the most "ready" prospects in the 2024 class, Julian is very skilled at every facet of QB play - might not be the highest ceiling from an NFL perspective but very likely the highest floor. Julian commited to Alabama somewhat out of the blue but has been locked in since and the Tide's primary leader on offense in this class. This is your QB of the Future.

RB (1-2 Needed/0 Commited)
Overview: Alabama has good RB depth heading into 2023 but could very likely lose both Jase and Roydell at the end of the year so 2 RBs again this cycle feels right. It's doubtful it'll have the star power of the Haynes/Young duo from '23 but I would not sleep on the 2024 targets.

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Top Targets
1. 4* Kevin Riley	Tuscaloosa County in Northport, AL (Tuscaloosa area)	247: #97, On3: #102, Comp2: #99	A homegrown talent, Riley does it all, running with great balance, breaks contact and gets going in a hurry. Top 3 of Bama, Auburn, UGA - this should end up being an Iron Bowl battle that Alabama wins, though it does appear Riley might take his time. If Alabama pushes hard, he could be a summer commit.
2. 4* Daniel Hill	Meridian in Meridian, MS (E MS)	247: #196, On3: #194, Comp2: #195	One of the more unique RB prospects, Daniel Hill is a big bodied guy but plays a ton of receiver as well - not a comparison but could have a Najee Harris-esque roll. Alabama is battling South Carolina here, with the Cocks having some buzz after an early Bama lean. Bama is not done here but might need to press harder.
3. 4* Nate Frazier	Mater Dei in Santa Ana, CA (SoCal)	247: #76, On3: #74, Comp2: #75	One of the nation's top RB prospects with some of the best long speed, Nate Frazier will push for #1 back status in 2024. Frazier is pretty wide open currently, being highly desired by both the local west coast school and the SEC powerhouses. I'd have trouble projecting him anywhere yet but it would be really cool if it was Alabama.

WR (2-4 Needed/2 Commited)
Overview: Alabama has taken 10 non-transfer WRs over the past 2 cycles so while I think they'll take a normal # in 2024, I'd lean more towards 3 than 4 total, unless a 'best available' type wants in

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 5* Perry Thompson	Foley in Foley, AL (Mobile area)	247: #27, On3: #29, Comp2: #28	A taller receiver, Perry thrives with straight-line speed and a suprising ability to weave through space - Thompson earned his offer last season in camp routing up 2023 5* DBs. As a high-ranking prospect, Perry is somewhat keeping his options open and will likely take visits but has repeatedly reaffirmed his commit - Alabama's steady pursuit should allow them to hold on.
2. 4* Rico Scott	Bishop McDevitt in Harrisburg, PA (Cent PA)	247: #372, On3: #289, Comp2: #330	A real smooth operator - plays RB and WR and is at his best going up the field. A bit of a suprise to some, Bama had seen him previously in camp and then watched his fall progress and saw what they needed to pull the trigger. I think we'll finish in the top 150-170
Top Targets
1. 4* Amari Jefferson	Baylor School in Chattanooga, TN	247: #270, On3: #288, Comp2: #279	My favorite realistic WR addition - his vertical and lateral speed POP off the screen, looks like a top 75 guy. Currently a Tennessee baseball commit, football is his likely future, as Alabama and Georgia battle it out. This will be a tough battle but one I very much hope the Tide wins.
2. 4* Aeryn Hampton	Carthage in Carthage, TX (E TX)	247: #116, On3: #126, Comp2: #121	More fast than quick, Aeryn runs like a RB, weaving through traffic and hitting the jets. Aeryn has been up-front about his love for Alabama and has narrowed his list to Bama and Texas, his former commitment. Aeryn has the green light to commit but seems like a guy who could go back and forth so unclear where this ends up.
3. 4* Cam Coleman	Central in Phenix City, AL (E AL)	247: #54, On3: #25, Comp2: #38	This guy's the real deal - big bodied but with slot speed and one of the best high-pointers in the class. Alabama's been trying to get him on campus and he's been uninterested, so the communication has been laid back. Cam and Perry Thompson kinda fill the same role so it's not a huge concern but Auburn is leading here and would give Hugh Freeze a real weapon.

TE (1-2 Needed/0 Commited)
Overview: I think *how* Tommy Rees constructed/called his ND offenses is a bit overblown in how his Bama offenses will look (you play with the talent you have) but Bama has been trying to find their Kyle Pitts/Brock Bowers/Michael Mayer for years now - really since OJ Howard/Irv Smith with a brief detour into Jahleel Billingsley. Alabama would like multiple bodies here if available but would really like a least one really good on in 2024

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Top Targets
1. 4* Caleb Odom	Carrollton in Carrollton, GA (W GA)	247: #85, On3: #69, Comp2: #77	A true mismatch nightmare, Odom is a true receiving threat TE, big bodied with room to grow but a little slender currently. Caleb is kinda wide open at the moment but this feels like one where Bama should start to push, with UGA snagging two of their targets in Jaden Reddell and Colton Heinrich

OL (4-5 Needed/0 Commited)
Overview: Alabama brought in a big OL class in 2023, which is already living up to expectations behind the scenes. They'll try to repeat the process in 2024, as they continue to re-tool their OL room

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Top Targets
1. 4* OT Daniel Calhoun	Walton in Marietta, GA (Atlanta Metro)	247: #86, On3: #106, Comp2: #96	A mammoth of a prospect, Calhoun has the look of a SEC lineman, able to play on the left or right side of the offensive line. Top 3 of Bama, UGA, and Texas but suprise suprise, this looks like another Bama/UGA battle. Feel better about Bama in this one but it's close and OVs will be big.
2. 4* IOL Casey Poe	Lindale in Lindale, TX (E TX)	247: #142, On3: #134, Comp2: #138	One of the most coveted interior prospects, Poe boasts both a mean streak as well as the ability to move the center, making him about as A1 as you can get for an interior OL prospect. Top 3 currently would be Alabama, Oklahoma, and UGA. Will be a tough battle but Alabama is the perceived leader heading into visits. Bama REALLY wants him.
3. 4* OL Jordan Seaton	IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL (Originally from Washington DC)	247: #41, On3: #42, Comp2: #41	Big, athletic frame who could end up playing inside or out - Seaton prefers OT but somecurrently leaning towards IOL. Ohio State was and is very involved but Bama/UGA feel like the primary players since making the move to IMG. I believe he visited for the A-Day game and it certainly seems like Bama will be an option until the end here.
4. 4* OT Marques Easley	Kankakee in Kankakee, IL (NE IL)	247: #263, On3: #240, Comp2: #251	A longer and leaner tackle prospect, Bama and UGA are again involved with Tennessee being the 3rd team in the mix, as well as the possible leader. Despite the Vols' early lead, this one can really go any direction after visits.
5. 4* OT Weston Davis	Beaumont United in Beaumont, TX (SE TX)	247: #180, On3: #124, Comp2: #152	A basketball-first prospect with high-upside as an OT, Davis has some interest in Bama but local programs like Texas A&M are getting some good recent buzz. Think it'll be paramount for Weston to camp.

DL (3-4 Needed/1 Commited)
Overview: Another unit Alabama's been trying to step-up, talent is a necessity in 2024

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 4* DE Jeremiah Beamon	Parker in Birmingham, AL	247: #103, On3: #98, Comp2: #100	Alabama's most recent commitment, Jeremiah is a FORCE rushing the passer, a little undersized with plenty of room to grow before a potential reneissance. If that sounds like Quinnen Williams, it's because that's the comp he's been getting. Many thought he'd be a sooner or later kinda commit and he went ahead and stopped messing around.
Top Targets
1. 5* DE Eddrick Houston	Buford in Buford, GA (Atlanta Metro)	247: #15, On3: #15, Comp2: #15	High upside, athleticism, and flexibility - bit of a tweener for the Saban defense who could slim down to an Anfernee Jennings role and add some weight to try and emulate Jonathan Allen. Another prospect that I think comes down to Bama and UGA, I feel better about Bama's chances here than with Eddrick's Buford teammate, KJ Bolden.
2. 4* DT Terrance Hibler	Holmes County Central in Lexington, MS (Cent MS)	247: #281, On3: #368, Comp2: #324	A bit undersized, Terrance makes up for it with violence, punch, and pure 'want-to'. Alabama has made a great early impression, alongside local Miss State, and the Tide are in a great spot if they choose to push here.
3. 3* DE Utah Commit Isaia Faga	Central in Phenix City, AL (E AL)	247: #733, On3: #676, Comp2: #704	Alabama has seen some recent success with Pacific Island players but it's rare to have one so local. Isaia excels at getting through traffic and getting into the backfield. Isaia's uncle is the Utah DL coach, leading to the early commitment, but Alabama is interested in seeing him camp and who knows where it could go from there.

EDGE (1-2 Needed/1 Commited)
Overview: The highest star rating per capita, talent is hardly a problem here but we'd love to have more.

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 4* Cayden Jones	Christ School in Arden, NC (W NC)	247: #147, On3: #171, Comp2: #159	Alabama has been looking more and more at hybrid LB types who could end up on the EDGE or off-ball (Jihaad Campell, Qua Russaw) - Cayden Jones is another, playing a ton off-ball and walking down to the edge and will likely project into a Terrell Lewis/Dallas Turner - type role. Since last year, Cayden had been up-front about wanting the green light to commit and jumped on it when he got the chance.
Top Targets
1. 5* Dylan Stewart	Friendship Collegiate Academy in Washington DC	247: #10, On3: #9, Comp2: #9	Maybe the top pure Edge guy, Dylan reminds me of Keon Keeley from last cycle; similar build, bend and length. Visits to Alabama, Ohio State, Miami, South Carolina and UGA have put all 5 in contention, similar to Keeley. I'd give the Gamecocks and Hurricanes the edge going into the summer but Alabama is RIGHT there and another visit to campus could flip the script.
2. 4* Jordan Ross	Vestavia Hills in Birmingham, AL	247: #38, On3: #33, Comp2: #35	A high-end Edge, Jordan flashes natural talent that can only grow with development. A little undersized, Alabama has told him to gain weight and camp prior to a serious pursuit, giving UGA and Tennessee an early lead. This could change quickly this summer, as Jordan finds his way onto campus.
3. 5* Colin Simmons	Duncanville in Duncanville, TX (DFW Metro)	247: #4, On3: #3, Comp2: #3	One of the Nation's top athletes, Simmons effortlessly flies around off the edge. LSU and Texas are battling it out thus far but Alabama will continue to work here.

LB (2-3 Needed/1 Commited)
Overview: There's somewhat of a logjam of older player at the LB position so I would expect attrition after 2023, which will need to be replaced by incoming players.

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 4* Sterling Dixon	Mobile Christian School in Mobile, AL	247: #188, On3: #164, Comp2: #176	Similar to Cayden Jones, Sterling is another hybrid type - beginning as an edge type with some off-ball experience, Sterling will transition to ILB this offseason for Mobile Christian and then at Alabama. A long-time commit, Sterling will take some visits but there's not a huge concern there.
Top Targets
1. 5* UGA Commit Demarcus Riddick	Chilton County in Clanton, AL (Cent AL)	247: #25, On3: #38, Comp2: #31	Demarcus is an excellent example of a modern LB and exactly what Alabama wants from the position: excellent weaving through traffic, sideline-to-sideline movement and can shade down to rush the passer. An early UGA commit, the strength of that commitment has wavered significantly and while there's still some work to do, the feeling is he could very likely flip to Alabama over the summer.
2. 5* Justin Williams	Oak Ridge in Conroe, TX (Houston area)	247: #13, On3: #12, Comp2: #12	Similarly archetypal LB prospect: a bit slight at the moment, he makes up for it with WR-level speed and burst, making him a real weapon against a high-powered offense. Oregon, Alabama, and UGA are the likely top 3 - Bama made a good impression this spring but needs to get him back on campus ASAP - feels like UGA could swoop in here if Riddick flips.
3. 4* Bradley Shaw	Hoover in Hoover, AL (Birmingham area)	247: #176, On3: #139, Comp2: #157	More of a traditional ILB, football IQ and sure tackling give him a Shaun Dion Hamilton feel. Alabama, Auburn, and UGA are the top 3 schools and this feels like Iron Bowl battle, where Alabama will win or lose based on how they push to reel him in.

DB (4-5 Needed/1 commited)
Overview: You gotta take a solid # of DBs every cycle but CB is one of the most important/most needed positions in 2024 after losses to the transfer portal.

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 5* CB Jaylen Mbakwe	Clay-Chalkville in Pinson, AL (Birmingham area)	247: #19, On3: #17, Comp2: #18	A legitimate two-way player, Mbakwe, like Kool-Aid before him, could have been a 5* WR as well as DB but prefers defense. Jaylen is the defensive leader of the class and will be pretty instrumental in how the defensive class comes together.
Top Targets
1. 5* CB Charles Lester III	Riverview in Sarasota, FL (Cent FL)	247: #16, On3: #19, Comp2: #17	An all-around athlete with the ability to play multiple DB positions, CL3 could be commited or off the board at any moment. There's a clear interest in Alabama on his end but the Tide have yet to really push, leaving the door wide open for FSU. He OVs on June 3rd so it's likely that we'll have a better idea of where Bama goes after that.
2. 4* CB Jameer Grimsley	Tampa Catholic in Tampa, FL	247: #230, On3: #195, Comp2: #212	Somewhat of the prototypical Saban corner, with a long and lean build and a wingspan for days. Jameer has seen his recruitment skyrocket this spring and schools like Bama, FSU, and Penn State are pushing. Bama's got a great shot for this prospect who should continue to rise.
3. 4* S UGA Commit Peyton Woodward	St. John Bosco in Bellflower, CA (SoCal)	247: #69, On3: #70, Comp2: #69	Peyton shows good play speed and flows to the target in run defense; a good balanced safety. Peyton has not been shy about letting other programs try to flip him from the Dawgs and his family is full of Alabama fans, making the Tide a very possible flip option.
4. 4* CB Zabien Brown	Mater Dei in Santa Ana, CA (SoCal)	247: #57, On3: #56 , Comp2: #56	Zabien is a physical pass defender who excels at getting in passing lanes and making plays on the ball - not a specimen but a true competitor. As a Mater Dei kid, the axiom has been USC most often has first right of refusal so we'll see how the summer visits go and if Bama can/will make a push here.
5. 5* S KJ Bolden	Buford in Buford, GA (Atlanta Metro)	247: #8, On3: #5, Comp2: #6	Likely the top DB in the 2024 class, KJ is how they come; a true 5* safety. UGA has a healthy lead thus far but Bama (alongside others) will have a chance to fight back during summer OVs
6. 5* CB UGA Commit Ellis Robinson IV	IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL (Originally from CT)	247: #5, On3: #7, Comp2: #6	One of the stickiest DBs in the class, Ellis was the other 5* CB alongside Alabama freshman Desmond Ricks at IMG in 2023. Alabama led early but UGA got the momentum and the commitment. It's likely Ellis will take visits, including a potential OV to Alabama, but I would not predict a flip to Alabama at this time or in the future.

Good day, Reddit. In response to a recent thread calling me a liar, I have decided to clear the air regarding some “dirt” I have on Wrel. I hate to disappoint those looking for juicy gossip material for personal attacks, but toxic interactions between Wrel and various individuals will not be discussed here. I leave those discussions to the injured parties. This is merely the history of an unfairly maligned collaboration between Wrel and a group of concerned players.

TL;DR

Early in 2021, Wrel asked a handful of vehicle players what improvements were needed to address the poor state of the vehicle game. This team collaborated with Wrel over a ten month period to propose solutions to these flaws and patch over many holes left by the Combined Arms Initiative (for the sake of comparison, the Escalation test group lasted 3 weeks and the Oshur group survived for just five months). RPG’s increased update cadence in late 2021 through 2022 and Wrel’s frustration with an increasingly hostile community meant that these efforts never saw the light of day, despite initial aims for implementation by summer 2021.

Introduction

The increasingly poor state of the vehicle game is something that’s become more widely acknowledged over the past couple years as the flaws from 2017’s infamous Combined Arms Initiative become steadily more apparent. Worse still, the past year’s content additions doubled down on many of the problems created by that update, which has significantly accelerated the decline of the enjoyment found in this domain.
 
But what if it didn’t have to be this way? What if Wrel had charged a group of talented vehicle players with creating a proposal to clean up the messier parts of their preferred domain? In 2021, these players rose above that mandate and delivered something special, and today’s post will tell their story.
 
Warning: The following story may sound incredulous at times. Where possible, I have provided proof both in the form of screenshots and links to publicly available discord messages. Where that’s not possible, I’ve provided screencaps of internal conversations. If you cannot access the Planetside 2 Community discord, that’s your problem.
 
I chose not to tell this story until now since it can be interpreted to portray Wrel in a rather unflattering light. He asked for feedback on the vehicle game, received an incredibly detailed proposal, gave its creators a window for publishing, and then walked back on that. At the time, he was receiving enough flak already for things like Oshur, Arsenal’s NC bias, and CTF, and I had no desire to add more fuel to the fire. With Wrel gone and no successor presented, it’s time to let the truth be free.
 
Some of you are likely going to read this and assume it’s a case of something minor that I’m blowing out of proportion due to ego, such as being angry over feedback provided and not acted on from a one-off conversation in a discord channel somewhere. This is not the case, and anyone wanting further evidence can DM me. There are practical limits to what I can share in a hastily written reddit post without it becoming prohibitively long.

Project beginnings

At some point between January and March of 2021, Wrel began a discussion about the state of the game with a notable Harasser driver named GroundTrooper (GT). I cannot find this exact discussion since Discord’s search function breaks down when the user in question has thousands of posts, but I do know the outcome. GT came away from that discussion with a mandate to draw up some resistance and directional armor improvements for the vehicle game.
 
On November 17, 2020, Wrel asked GT again about submitting a list of improvements. Click here to view the conversation in the Planetside 2 community discord. GT decided to create a discord discussion group open to anyone interested, with the caveat that they had the experience to back up their opinions. This invite link was placed in the #armor-club channel of the PS2 community discord and would remain active until the leak.
 
There were a handful of takeaways from this conversation, which starts here in the PS2 community discord:

• New resistances were not out of the question.
  
• Anti-infantry vehicle secondaries needed some rebalancing, particularly the Kobalt.
  
• Infantry AV was strong enough as-is.
  

 
We made a decision early on that participation would be semi-open to the public. Thought was given to opening this group up to everyone, but this concept was quickly shot down. At the time the prevailing community mentality regarding vehicles was summarized with this meme, and we thought that open invites would result in a flood of biased players seeking to argue in bad faith. As a compromise, the invite stayed pinned in #armor-club until the leak occurred in mid-2021. Players interested could eventually find their way to it, but we weren’t going to go out of our way to make the group’s existence known.
 
To get this out of the way immediately: Fully reverting Combined Arms was never an option. The legacy system handled edge cases better than the modern one does, but was needlessly complex and did a terrible job of telling players how much damage was actually being dealt by a specific weapon. In the six years since CAI first arrived on the test server, the resist table has almost doubled in size and nearly 50 new vehicle and anti-vehicle weapons have arrived. This makes the reversion process prohibitively time consuming since there is no legacy analogue for most of these new additions.
 

Project goals

I’m not going to bore you with the specifics of what changed. Instead, I’ll provide you with an overview of what the project was meant to accomplish. To be immediately clear: This was not Combined Arms 2.0, as the leakers feared. It was meant to be a merging of the legacy vehicle combat loops and the modern vehicle combat calculations, with a few improvements where necessary.
 
Among our goals were the following:

• Make attacks to the rear of tanks more potent
  
• Slightly reduce the baseline power of tank cannons and certain secondaries
  
• Reduce chip damage from infantry AV and reward skilled use of launchers with a skill curve
  
• Overhaul the resistance table to eliminate many fringe cases where certain weapons over perform against a specific target or where skill shots aren’t rewarded enough
  
• Improve the new player experience by buffing default weaponry for ground vehicles and adding stock loadouts
  
• Reduce the prevalence of high splash damage vehicle weapons designed for anti-vehicle roles
  
• Reduce the firepower disparity between MBT drivers and gunners
  
• Adjust anti-infantry secondaries as mentioned previously
  
• Revert the Harasser to its 2017 design, but with passive repairs instead of repairasites rumble seat repairs
  

The proposal was not merely a list of grievances and vague suggestions for improvement. We spent weeks debating various changes and their possible outcomes before committing pen to paper. I reverse-engineered the damage and resistance tables as they appeared in 2017 before Combined Arms. A team member used those tables to build a tool (the CAIculator) that compares weapon performance against most targets in that legacy era, live play and in our proposal. We used the CAIculator to test out our proposals before submitting hard numbers and the rationale for specific changes.
 
Here is an example of the CAIculator’s outputs. Our numbers were designed to match pre-CAI hits-to-kill wherever possible, as shown in that image.

The green light

GT, Stroff and I met with Wrel twice over voice comms to discuss the status of this project, and Wrel was happy with what we submitted. I will not link the recordings of the calls since they contain information about the game’s internal workings that is not meant to be public knowledge, and because people will undoubtedly weaponize statements against Wrel. This is a post written in haste, and as such I do not have an entire day to dig through the six hours of discussion to find relevant sound bytes. u/zani1903, in his role as project archivist and an architect of the Planetside 2 wiki, has heard them and can attest to their authenticity. The final document, when posted, will contain sound bytes and more conversation quotes to serve as additional proof of this project’s existence.
 
In addition to the calls (you can find some notes on what was discussed in the first call written at the end of the leaked proposal mentioned below), there was a ten month text-based dialogue between the team and Wrel. This was where most of the “small scale” changes like the HMG buffs and the lock-on damage type were discussed.
 
We were given a rough time frame of Summer 2021 for release , though this was subject to change. The New Player Experience overhaul ended up far larger in scope than originally planned and set the timeline back.

Mid 2021: Treachery and Silence

Almost exactly two years ago, a draft of the project fell into the hands of FedX, who posted it to this subreddit. I do not blame them for their knee-jerk reaction- many of us would have done the same thing. However, they did fail to understand the mathematics that underpinned our new system. Had they understood that, they would have realized I had simply converted the modern calculation system to an analogue of the pre-CAI variation. For anyone who visits that post, much of what's posted on that document is very outdated or incomplete.
 
The pilot (who will be referred to as Benedict Arnold Junior) who initially leaked the document chose that particular draft deliberately to sow doubt and misunderstanding. The version leaked was the first iteration, and we were on version five at the time. That first draft had been untouched since being used as scratch paper during the initial conversation with Wrel. Benedict Arnold Junior had gotten into a disagreement over minor adjustments to Hornet Missiles, and over time this had evolved into something that had paralyzed progress. I’d made the decision to leave the nerf as-is with the intent to revisit later, but the traitor wasn’t satisfied and leaked the proposal. Hilariously enough, Hornet Missiles would eventually receive a far more severe nerf in the Arsenal update.
 
The leak had no impact on Wrel’s desire to continue working with us, but the project was already on borrowed time. I’d made the mistake of continuing on with aircraft and anti-air adjustments instead of refining existing work, and this led to the drama and feature creep mentioned earlier. RPG was busy setting the stage for the Integration_ update, and A New Player Experience followed hot on its heels. Wrel was likely nearing the burnout point in an increasingly hostile community, and as such had little time to communicate. The “target window” moved backwards from summer to fall 2021 as RPG’s internal workload piled up and Wrel asked us to start trimming parts off . Attempts were made to restart discussion about the project, but the studio’s Oshur project and the roadmap for 2022 left little room for a large-scale vehicle balance overhaul that casuals would likely never realize the effects of.
 
Wrel walked out abruptly five months after the leak occurred, after an irreconcilable dispute with one member. The project was resigned to an untouched and incomplete state.

Lessons learned

If I could go back and do this all over again, I’d be fully transparent with the community to the point of providing weekly/monthly progress updates. Secrecy ultimately did far more harm than I would have liked, and a community aware of possible vehicle changes would have been far more inclined to fight for their implementation. Secrecy did not stop the traitorous pilot from leaking the information, and that leak only served to create undercurrents of resentment against “the chosen few”.

The state of the project in 2023

Wrel’s departure from RPG came as a real surprise, especially since he'd been talking to me about vehicle balance a few days prior. I had intended to complete the project and use it to drive discussion about what needed to be addressed in Planetside’s 2023 roadmap. While there is serious rot within the infantry domain, vehicles (and aircraft) are in worse states and I firmly believe significant iteration is necessary. Through discussion we may yet find success.
 
As it stands today, completion of the core concepts stands at about 70%. New content additions reduced this significantly, but many of the simple changes such as the HEAT velocity buffs made it into the game. Others, such as the G2A locks revision, were implemented in an overly aggressive manner and need further iteration. This likely will take two weeks to a month to complete.
 
Though Wrel is gone, and with it my point of contact with RPG, I will complete this project soon and post the final version. Perhaps his replacement may find the discussion it generates useful.
Edit: Formatting errors, and I forgot to mention the ironic Hornet Missile nerf.
Edit 2: Added in a time frame between the leak and the end of the project.

From The Designers

Thank you for testing out the revamped heroes on the Advanced Server these past few weeks. We're now ending the hero tests except for Layla. Thank you again for your support.

I. Hero Adjustments

The following uses (↑) (↓) (~) to indicate Buff, Nerf, and Adjustment.

[Yu Zhong] (↑)
We understand how important the Sha Residue eruption effect was to Yu Zhong and have reinstated the effect. We have also removed the Sha Essence effect to simplify his Passive and streamline his gameplay.
[Passive] (↑)
Reinstated Effect: Sha Residue Eruption. Removed Effect Sha Essence.
New Effect: Gains Movement Speed when Sha Residue erupts.
[Skill 1] (~)
Cooldown: 5-3.5s >> 7-5.5s
Base Damage: 220-400 + 100% Extra Physical Attack >> 250-450 + 115% Extra Physical Attack

[Odette] (↑)
Odette has the strongest AOE damage in the game, but her Ultimate is easily interrupted, leaving her with nothing else to do. Therefore, we're making it less likely to be interrupted, and increasing the casting range of her normal skills slightly to compete with other Mages. We'll keep an eye out on the changes and may make further adjustments in the future.
[Skill 1] (↑)
Cast Range: 6 >> 6.5
[Skill 2] (↑)
Cast Range: 5.6 >> 6.2
[Ultimate] (↑)
New Effect: The skill can now only be interrupted by Petrify, Freeze, Airborne, Transform, Suppression and other high level CC effects.
Removed the dash on the second use component.

[Valir] (~)
We've reverted some previous changes to optimize Valir's lane clearing experience.
[Passive] (↓)
Damage per Second: 1.2% target's Max HP >> 0.6% target's Max HP
[Skill 1] (↑)
New Effect: Grants 50% Energy Charging Time when hitting Minions.
Removed Effect: Restores a fireball after each kill.

[Paquito] (↑)
Optimized Paquito's lane clearing and jungling experience.
[Skill 1] (↑)
Hitting Creeps now also grants a shield.
[Skill 2] (↑)
Now deals damage to Minions along its path.

[Gord] (↓)
With the increased cast range, Gord's Skill 2 can be used to hit targets at the same time as his Ultimate, so we've reduced his Ultimate's damage to balance.
[Ultimate] (↓)
Base Damage: 135-225 >> 120-200

[Irithel] (↑)
Slightly improved Irithel's early game performance.
[Attribute] (↑)
Base Physical Attack: 118 >> 123

[Ixia] (↓)
Slightly nerfed Ixia's early to mid game performance.
[Attribute] (↓)
Base Physical Attack: 120 >> 100
[Skill 1] (↓)
Damage: 170-295 + 80% Total Physical Attack >> 125-225 + 60% Total Physical Attack

[Ruby] (↑)
Slightly improved Ruby's performance in the Exp Lane.
[Skill 1] (↑)
Damage: 80-180 + 65%-90% Total Physical Attack >> 90-215 + 70%-95% Total Physical Attack

[Benedetta] (~)
Based on the experimental and Lifesteal changes from the last patch, we have adjusted Benedetta's enhanced Basic Attack for new build options.
[Passive] (~)
Enhanced Basic Attacks are now regarded as Basic Attacks and can trigger Attack Effects from her equipment.
[Ultimate] (~)
Removed the initial slow effect. Continuous slow effect: 20% >> 50%.

[Aamon] (↓)
Thanks to his Ultimate's long cast range, Aamon can kill squishy heroes in the mid and late game from a very safe distance. We've reduced the skill range to expose him to more risk.
[Ultimate] (↓)
Cast Range: 5 >> 3.5

[Melissa] (↓)
Slightly nerfed Melissa's ability to pressure opponents in the early laning phase.
[Skill 1] (↓)
Attack Speed Boost: 50%-75% >> 35%-75%

[Badang] (↑)
Slightly reverted Badang's nerf in the last patch.
[Passive] (↑)
Stun Duration: 0.5s >> 0.6s

II. Weekly Free Heroes & New Skins

[Free Heroes]
8 Free Heroes: Server Time 06/02/2023 05:01:00 to 06/09/2023 05:00:00 (Tap the Settings button on the top-right corner of the main page to check.)
Kagura, Fredrinn, Hayabusa, Atlas, Granger, Bane, Yu Zhong, Paquito
6 Extra Starlight Member Heroes: Angela, Badang, Lancelot, Lylia, Popol and Kupa, Leomord

III. Battlefield Adjustments

[New Emblems]

[Attributes]
Common (↑): Hybrid Regen 12 >> 15; Adaptive Attack 16 >> 22
Tank (↑): Hybrid Defense 8 >> 10
Assassin (↑): Adaptive Attack 6 >> 10
Mage (↑): Magic Power 35 >> 40
Fighter (↑): Adaptive Attack 16 >> 22
Support (↑): Healing Effect 10% >> 15%
Marksman (↑): Adaptive Attack 3% >> 5%

[Talents]

Thrill (↑): Adaptive Attack 15 >> 16
Tenacity (↓): Defense Increase 20 >> 18
Life Drain (~): Restores 3% HP upon killing a Minion >> Restores 2% HP and 1% Mana if a Minion dies within 5s of taking damage from the hero.
Focusing Mark (↑): Cooldown 6s >> 4s

[Equipment]

[Haas' Claws] (↑)
Haas' Claws hasn't been seeing much use, so we're hoping that it can be used more in battle and make a new Attack Speed & Crit Chance trio with Berserker's Fury and Windtalker.
[Attributes] (↑)
Physical Attack: 70 >> 25
New Attribute: 20% Attack Speed
New Attribute: 20% Crit Chance
Unique Attribute: 25% Physical Lifesteal >> 20% Lifesteal
[Unique Passive - Insanity] (↓)
Gains 15% extra Physical Lifesteal >> Gains 10% Lifesteal when below 50% HP
[Unique Passive - Frenzy] (New)
Gains 20% Attack Speed after a critical strike.
[Price] (↓)
1810 >> 2010
Build Path adjusted accordingly.

[Scarlet Phantom] (~)
We want heroes that rely more on Crit Chance and less on Attack Speed to have better equipment options.
[Attributes] (↑)
30 Physical Attack >> 50 Physical Attack
25% Crit Chance >> 20% Crit Chance
Removed Attribute: 20% Attack Speed
New Attribute: 10% Cooldown Reduction
New Attribute: 230 Max HP
[Unique Passive - Insanity] (Removed)
[Unique Passive - Phantom] (New)
Basic Attacks grant 10% extra Movement Speed for 1s. If a Basic Attack critically strikes, the increased Movement Speed will be doubled.
Build Path adjusted accordingly.

[Other]

1- All of Hylos and Vale's skins have been temporarily disabled as we optimize their skills. They'll be available again when the optimizations are complete.
2- Optimized the status icon of Kaja's passive. If a hero takes skill damage from Kaja, the effect and stack count will now be shown below their status bar.
3- Optimized the trigger condition for Queen's Wings. The effect can now be triggered even if the granted shield isn't destroyed.
4- Optimized the visuals of Hylos' Skill 1. It now has visual effects for the start of the cast and for his weapon during enhanced Basic Attacks.

• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang

A while ago Riot decided to start making more specific champion balance changes and nerfs, and as part of this they slapped a -20 ability haste onto Ashe (as well as an attack speed buff) with the idea that this would push Ashe away from the poke build and into the adc build.
​
There's just one problem: Ability haste is a stat that is designed to have diminishing returns. Poke Ashe pre-nerf routinely hit 100 ability haste by the end of the game, while adc Ashe frequently buys 0 Ability Haste. The result of this is that counterintuitively, adc Ashe is punished more by losing flat Ability Haste. Running some numbers we have:
​
100 AH -> 80 AH = 50% CDR -> 44% CDR
0 AH -> -20 AH = 0% CDR -> -25% CDR (your cooldowns are 25 percent longer)
​
Now on the latest patch - in response to poke Ashe still being better than adc Ashe - they ship a -30 AH change instead. Just to run those numbers again:
​
100 AH -> 70 AH = 50% CDR -> 41% CDR (Still above the old cap)
0 AH -> -30 AH = 0% CDR -> -43% CDR (!!)..
This is absurd. Poke Ashe is still going to be better. Riot needs to ship either a flat CDR nerf or a percent AH nerf (or both) if they really want to do something.
EDIT: A bunch of you are misunderstanding how AH works. It only scales "linearly" if you are measuring in "ability casts per second" which is a misleading measurement tool - in terms of marginal seconds removed from the cool down ability haste has diminishing returns:
Level 9 Ashe @100 AH = 50% CDR = 2s cd on Volley
Level 9 Ashe @80 AH = 43% CDR = 2.2s cd on Volley
Level 9 Ashe @20 AH = 17% CDR = 3.3s cd on Volley
Level 9 Ashe @0 AH = 0% CDR = 4s cd on Volley
Notably the first 20 AH shaves off by far the longest amount of time between volleys. The idea that AH is linear is only theoretical - spell casts as a metric of strength is not continuous - 2.5 spell casts is identical to 2 spell casts.
To put it anther way, if a fight lasts 3.5 seconds then 20 AH is just valuable as 100 AH for example). What this means is that while the nominal value of AH increases linearly, the marginal value of AH is diminishing.
To put this yet another way - if you need 2 volley casts to kill (that is to say, if you are purchasing "time between casts" and not "casts per second") then the first 20 AH is much more valuable than the last 20.