Lurker > Lopen

James Ellsworth for #1 in the PWI 500 is what I'm gathering here.

Edit: Darn. 20 match minimum
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Teleport Draw Out Black Mage has always been my favorite. So stylin. (Honorable mention to Thief with Equip Spear, Speed Save, and Jump, which is my favorite Ramza build)

And yeah I love FFT but it is mostly for the gameplay, which NeoElfboy described as well as I could hope to. The plot starts great, then kinda descends too far into cliche Squeenix DEMONZ crap. The heroes of the story are fairly bland, and the villains while cool, are usually dead before too long, with the less interesting ones being the ones that stay around longer. It's fine from a storytelling perspective, but the gameplay is king.
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Also I pretty much never get any sort of urgent communications from email so it's like, yeah, being "hopelessly behind" is a non-factor. I could probably check email once a week and be more or less okay. I mostly do it every day because it auto-opens with my google chrome tabs. There are a lot of Saturdays or Sundays where I don't use my laptop at all though, so it isn't checked those days.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

I have two personal emails (one isn't one I explicitly check, but that autoforwards to my main one) but I can't quite say I check them daily. It's close to daily but I probably miss an average of a day a week.

The work email I check daily, at work
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Heroes of the Storm isn't too bad

https://assets.tentonhammer.com/guides/attached_images/000/010/915/medium/Vikings.jpg

It's kinda in the middle between the tower shield and the picture you posted. Anyway that's probably another thing to clarify in the write-up, size of the shield, since it's not too consistent it seems.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

That particular concept art is kinda bad

http://eu.blizzard.com/static/_images/games/legacy/tlv1.jpg

In the games and most of the older concept arts it's basically a tower shield. It would be a problem if he was as seen in Heroes of the Storm, which has a similarly small shield IIRC, but luckily he's not.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Yeah if we're true to the games, which the write-up kinda implies, Olaf should never flinch from getting hit

But yeah as Zeeks more or less said I think they're way stronger here because we're seeing so few actual 5v5s so the vikings number advantage they bring is actually relevant

I bet Vikings would've been solid in a teamcomp with a lowered roster size gimmick. That being said with a slight EXP cost reduction and maybe a bit of a buff to how reliable their triggers are and they could be good-- they're very close to a good merc despite the lack of interest.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

I wish the in game announcements would actually load in game for me. 90% of the time they don't
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

ScareChan posted...

Swap Armstrong for Lucina

You're a good man
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Tangle Wire is actually pretty cool for a lockdown card cause it's generally pretty efficient at punishing you and doesn't draw the game out super hard like your usual lockdown cards.

Friend of mine got one of those championship deck precons from Urza block and I had a lot of fun with it

Then again I also find Sensei's Top pretty harmless in casual play too so I wouldn't be surprised if there were obnoxiously slow decks with Tangle Wire too.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Kinda think Balthier can win with Olaf providing him cover from the two gunners. Tal'set is squishy enough that Balthier taking him down in a reasonable amount of time is viable, and Olaf is a hard counter to Selvaria that allows Balthier to eventually break through her flamey goodness. I kinda think Oil + Volcano would suffice to do that. D.Va and Tron provide distractions at the worst.

Mighty viking shield wins again
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

JeezyMiyagi posted...

Replace Lady with Alucard

Come my son. Let us embrace.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

I assume he just has seen me derail enough topics that he was getting worried

I was about done anyway though-- I have my limits with derailing. I like this topic so it would be poor form to keep going for too long.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

You fool going high would allow more Oak mercs to be shuffled in and more abilities to be used
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Sceptilesolar posted...

I think we will have to agree to disagree on that one! I always thought the draw was that the life was an alternate cost, rather than a way to bypass colored mana requirements.

Well you're closer to right, seeing the cards they released

I'm just saying that it's actually a fun and potentially useful mechanic if the ideal was what I'm saying, and it's available with the mechanic, just not most of the cards they chose to print with it.

The mechanic is fine just mtg's vision for it was bad so very few actual good cards exist for it

So I sorta agree with you I'm just explaining why I think as a concept I like Phyrexian symbols despite disliking most of the cards for it
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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Also Naturalize seems like a really weird card to blast the color pie for. Fight I would understand, but why Naturalize?

Before Naturalize became a staple white used to be the clear king of artifact/enchantment removal, and had the best options for both. Red was artifact focused, green was enchantment focused. That's not to say you wouldn't occasionally see an option for green to do it but there'd usually be some drawback or it'd be at higher cost and more versatile such as Creeping Mold. Unfortunately at some point enchantments weren't all that common, so Green took White's house because enchantment removal wasn't a cool enough specialization.

Naturalize itself isn't so much the problem as much as the change it signified-- white and green became a lot more homogeneous around the time Naturalize started becoming a staple release. There are still things that green or white are better at, but they share too much identity to be super distinct imo. Same is true of most pairs of colors. Certain niches are too weak or too strong to be left to a single color. I feel like the only truly unique thing a color does at this point is blue having counterspells.

It's not really the cause of blurred color identity or anything, and probably isn't the exact point where it started happening with higher frequency, but it's the thing my mind tends to associate with it, this random Planar Chaos card that wasn't actually a Planar Chaos card.
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Colorpie being a sacred thing to uphold died when Naturalize became a thing imo.

Don't mind colors dabbling in what other colors can do as long as it's not as effective or prolific.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

If you make the colorless cost appropriately costed like in your list, then the Phyrexian mana just becomes "lose 2 life" tacked on

Well splashing outside the color at cost should be considered the draw or gimmick to phyrexian symbols rather than "undercosted spells that make you pay life to play em"
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Bass.exe uses Get Ability on Samus, obtaining her Metroid Prime 3 Loadout

20 EXP on Kirby's Forms Character Upgrade, completing it.
10 BOUNTY EXP on KOS-MOS's Hilbert Effect, completing it.
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I think I agree with you. Poison counters were cool, albeit undertuned. Infect is just degenerate.

Btw I'm not actually saying that Phyrexia block was good I tended to dislike it more than not I think. Just saying phyrexian mana symbols were cool.
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Well that's on them.

If you don't want repeats the best choice, strange as it sounds, is probably The Hardyz.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Well, I think Birthing Pod is incidental and the phyrexian symbol is largely irrelevant for why it's banned but yeah.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

I tend to agree. Three types of potential buyers for this game.

1. Fans of the current product.
2. People who used to be into wrestling
3. Randos who are just bored and wanna try a game

With 1, Roman is theoretically worse, but the cover isn't going to be make or break for these types anyway.
With 2, Seth or Roman or Balor or whoever are equally bad. You want a legend or someone who has some history like Cena.
With 3, barring a super iconic guy, you'd want the most photogenic, of which Roman isn't really a bad choice.

So yeah if you must have a current guy that hasn't been around for a long time, it really doesn't matter who you pick.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

I choose to attack
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Like basically if you look at all the problematic phyrexian cards it boils down to "you can play this for 0 or 1 mana, usually as an instant"

If every phyrexian card

- Couldn't be phyrexian'd below 3 flat mana cost
- Didn't put more than one phyrexian mana symbol on cards unless they're fairly expensive or very weak at full cost
- If played at full mana cost would be a slightly weak to balanced card

What the ideal phyrexian card looks like is like, Tezzeret's Gambit. Sorcery so you can't abuse the phyrexian symbol as much. Assuming you pay the normal mana cost the card it's playing wouldn't see much play, but useful in a deck that can use the proliferate. Still costs 3 mana if you phyrexian it up.

I can sorta agree with you that phyrexian mana was bad because of how it was implemented, but that's on them for not realizing the implications in real play where life cost is only a thing that matters if you don't have control of the board and making a lot of it undercosted. The mechanic was cool. Stuff like Phyrexian Metamorph, Tezzeret's Gambit, Norn's Annex, Rage Extractor, . Fun cards. It's just the stuff that bottoms out at uber cheap mana costs that is dumb.
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That still boils down to "balance." No one would care about dismember if it cost more mana. Like it's not even that you can splash it anywhere as much as "you can splash it anywhere and it costs 1 mana when you do so"
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Well it's definitely important to limit it to keep it distinct from the graveyard to be sure, but I do think there are things you could do with it beyond what has been done without breaking the game in half.
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Sceptilesolar posted...

Phyrexian mana was bad design and actively hurt the game by existing, which is why multiple are now banned.

Not really. It was a fun idea it just wan't balanced properly. In particular not enough caution was shown with the cheaper stuff.

It's like saying Planeswalkers actively hurt the game because Jace the Mind Sculptor is banned.

Plenty of potentially fun mechanics in MtG have this problem though. Amusingly it's usually in the other direction, in that they make you overpay for the gimmick keyword. I wish stuff like cipher and tribute and heroic didn't generally suck.
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Turns out upon reading these are not ideas they had.

Yeah I feel creative.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Hm. Generic themes I think you could give a 6th color that aren't heavily covered in the 5 colors + artifacts.

- Heavy use of the exile mechanic-- colors dabble in it but I'm thinking more heavily exploring creative things to do with it along the line of "can be played from exile"
- Using the resources of the opponent to gain effects (but only on your turn)
- Using resources that aren't mana or life to gain effects
- Heavy use of creatures that debuff opponents creatures or spells
- Creatures that lose potency when you have more or stronger creatures than the opponent

So now I see we have a running theme building up that basically encourages neutrality, or void element.

Now watch this is what MtG was thinking with purple-- purple is a voidish color. Time to read some of these articles.
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So I'm doing the gathering event now

Do any of these battles get difficult at any point.
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Well I'm not really a fan of the "only play this with colorless mana" mechanic either. I've never seen it be relevant. Too many easily obtained colorless mana sources without needing to go out of your way for them.

Now phyrexian mana symbols those were actually cool.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

I honestly even hated the colorless mana symbol. I don't think I knew anyone who had any difficulty understanding how colorless mana worked. Seems like it'd just make the game have another thing to memorize for new players and not actually help but I dunno maybe I'm wrong here.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Should have 3 more GP as I did not roster Wrex.
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Skyridge87 posted...

I resent the insinuation that Lopen demoralized me. I was demoralized long before this.

I personally would have been fine with Lopen exploits Skyridge (forfeit)
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Yeah I enjoyed the ending.

Ending wasn't what got This Is Awesome! chants though
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

That match got "This Is Awesome!" chants. If anyone still thinks WWE fans are chanting for reasons that aren't for chanting's sake just note that
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

They are killing time so hard. This is awful.
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paulg235 posted...

Jey Uso and Erick Rowan

Seems correct. I guess this.
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DeathChicken posted...

Also yeah, that Chief stuff should translate to an On Purchase as far as this game goes. What do we generally do with those?

Pretty sure it's how ghetto customizations were done in m1 actually. Don't think Chief was locked into the same weapons every fight anyway.
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Well I don't think Archer would Kaladbolg vs frozen X-Death that'd be excessive (and if he does killing Lilith or Cloud would be possible too)

Upon meeting the enemy team, though? He's still got 40 seconds to go and I'd be surprised to see him not try for the AOE at that point
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DeathChicken posted...

Uh, I don't think any of them can even hit Grigori if he goes up in the air

This sounds like a job for Heavenly Potemkin Bustahhhhh!

Seriously though Team with a lot more and stronger dudes on it
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Although the thing with X-Death that's still gonna be a mindscrew. I don't know if it's a direct assumption of " I can't hit this guy so I can't hit anyone " so he probably wastes a lot of time shooting at the remainder of the enemy team till he realizes to swap ports.

Probably takes Kaladbolg straight out of his arsenal as that seems like a good opener and he can't trace that willy nilly, but it's gonna miss. Maybe even fatigues him for the main fight assuming he lasts 40 seconds, which he probably does
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Oh, yeah. Frozen X-Death is a good litmus test to sanity check him, to at least not rush in on Diablo.
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Yeah the more I think about it.

Mechachief could do this with grenades and literally any two weapons here and any one power up. Especially considering pretty much every power up he's allowed to pick would directly counter Tom's range strategy. Cloak, bubble shield, overshield, blinding flare. Think only one that wouldn't is the gravity lift.

Cloud and Crono are pretty capable backup too.
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The big factor here to me is how Archer reacts to all his stuff missing. I honestly think with his ego he's more likely to go in, running under the assumption of ' my range is missing but melee might work ' than support his team which could prove disastrous for him since he can't connect with attacks whatsoever.
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Tom Bombadil posted...

DeathChicken posted...

The searing painful kiss of M1 battle writeups

personally I like how he has like five different things "of his owner's choice" but because this isn't m1 eaed didn't actually get to provide a choice

Well how we ran it in m4 is you were able to. Honestly though almost think his weapons don't matter and literally any two Halo guns could do it here.
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They're okay to fill out the mod world a bit but you could just fill it out with people someone might possibly want to use instead.

Like any purpose I'd ever want to use an OS-Tan for a Touhou (or whatever other Kawaii~ series you wanna use) would be better I'd imagine
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FFDragon posted...

I remember the Maxwell trial being a complete bitch.

We also had like, nobody good to use so I imagine things will be easier?

God what even was my team at that point? Golbez might have literally still been on it.

I just remember I was using THE FLAMING AMARANT as my tank, having him use DEFEND to keep himself alive and Elixirs to heal him. What a great time to be alive
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Galio is new to me though and I'd research it if it was relevant and I cared enough to. Aurelion Sol is kinda past my time though so makes sense I'd forget him.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~

Nautilus is like small shack sized. Really big but not absurdly so. We've got a decent amount of mercs in that league.
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BK_Sheikah00 committed a cute and pop genocide of love against the gurus! Kyaa~