Lurker > azuarc

Too much slowdown, system crashing, and minions randomly inverting order on their own since the patch.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Game crashed before I got to see this one out, so I'm gonna ask everyone's thoughts on this board position:



Turn 11, 4 players left. I'm about to face first place.

Reminder:
The first minion, Omega Buster, will summon 6 microbots and give +1 to all mechs for each bot that doesn't get summoned. It's basically Goldrinn.
Middle minion, Pup Bot, is just stats.
The unshielded minions are Grease Bots. They give +2/+1 every time a minion loses a shield.
Right-most is Holy Mecherel, which gets a fresh shield every time something loses one.

Should I have moved the Omega Buster down? Would you put out the baron or the second mecherel over one of the existing minions? Wish I could have seen this one through.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Guys, you missed the biggest change of all!

Battlegrounds is no longer beta!

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Just realized I confused Tidecaller with Tidehunter. =x

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Okay, quick review.

Biggest removals:
Murloc Tidecaller
Toxfin
Faceless Taverngoer
Mythrax the Unraveler

Most of the rest that's going away is kinda whatever. I'll miss some of these cards, but most just ended up being filler that you didn't want in your tavern anyway.

New heroes:

Nguyen looks potentially fun, but also headache-inducing as you try to make a major decision every single turn alongside everything else you're doing. I think it has high-roll potential and a considerable skill gap, but my hunch is that it will ultimately be middle of the pack.

Cariel Roame looks pretty meh. Pay 1 for +1/+1 is usually not worth the cost early on. Later, it's like getting an Aggem/Charlga to the board for 1. The beauty of those other effects is that they're passive, and in Aggem's case, potentially very repeatable. While yes, once upon a time, we had...Bolvar? Uther?...some paladin that buffed neutrals +1/+1 and was decent, but I think that hero in a current meta even with the same support minions would perform terribly. My prediction is that Cariel is low tier 3.

Beasts:

Leapfrogger looks fun as a strong tier 2 if you have beasts. Sewer Rat is 5/5 in stats out the gate. Both of these are ridiculous by old standards.

Bird Buddy is obscene. Suppose you lead with a Sewer Rat, it dies, and then your opponent kills the turtle that results. Rest of your beasts get +2/+2. Other deathrattles, other taunts, etc are just going to rev this up even higher. I expect this card will be stupidly powerful out of the gate and has to be nerfed to Avenge (2).

Reanimating Rattler is also ridiculous, especially on a deathrattle beast like...Palescale Crocolisk, which is a guaranteed +6/+6 and maybe more (unless you have exactly 1 other beast, which dies first.) Give it reborn, though, and this can be a holdover until you can find Goldrinn. More importantly, it means non-Goldrinn builds aren't beholden to buff-on-play effects.

Demons:

Impulsive Trickster is whatever, but Icky Imp is potentially ridiculous. I see this as a good alternative to tokens on tier 1 because it's 3 packets of damage and later 3 demons to die or for effects like the infernal that grows on summoned demons.

Impatient Doomsayer is considerable generation potential if you're looking to spam-cycle demons for Wrath Weavers, which is safer now that Mal'Ganis has basically become a tier 4 minion.

The two eat-for-stats effects are hilarious, and Famished Felbat is going to be incredible free scaling. Even if we assume an average tavern minion at tier 6 is going to only be 3/3, that's still over 20/20 in stats per turn. If you're also cycling for an Insatiable Ur'zul, demons can have some legit growth potential. (Sidenote: you want to run one non-demon because there's only 6 in the tavern at most normally.)

Mechs:

Pupbot is adorable and probably more powerful than our current 2/2 reborn overlords given how powerful Divine Shield can be. Pair that with a Grease Bot, for instance for some routine scaling. Mechano-tank is kinda whatever.

However, the jawdropper here is Holy Mecherel. Didn't Blizzard learn their lesson before? Holy Mack didn't need poison to be an awful card. You get two of them and they just miraculously just keep trading off divine shields back and forth. Considering they can both inherit DS from other minions, too, and this is going to be a card that will be a fan of scam builds and will create tons of tension until Blizzard finally capitulates and takes it out of the game.

Omega Buster is amazing. Goldrinn for mechs, basically. This is a real reason to take mechs to 6. And since mechs thrive off divine shield more than beasts thrive off anything else, I dare say this is considerably better than Goldrinn. I sincerely expect we're going to see some mech builds with 2 mecherels taunted, a couple omega busters, a baron, and two other divine shield bots.

Murlocs:

Without Tidecaller or Toxfin, murlocs are in a little bit of a strange place. However, Saltscale Honcho is a great non-battlecry buff effect that the tribe very much needed. Even more ridiculous is Swolefin, which can be as much as 16/8, and a triple goes to 32/16+24/12 = 56/28. That's with no Brann. You better believe you're going to see this fish punching through some stuff in the mid game.

SI:Sefin is a powerful, if unreliable replacement for Toxfin. Murlocs keep their poison identity, but you have to keep this card on the board, which is kinda weak for a 5, and you have to get 3 things to die first. I suppose you put existing poison up front and hope that dies off first because it's not very clear if it can retarget an already-poisonous murloc.

I do not understand the point of Seafood Slinger unless you can use it on tavern minions. About the only minion this is good for is SI:Sefin or maybe King Bagurgle. It comes down way too late to be good for Saltscale or Warleader. Someone wanna explain the strategy here?

Dragons:

Some crazy stuff in dragons. The new tier 1 can become a 32/3 on its own if you keep it. It gains health if you also have a Whelp Smuggler on board.

Tarecgosa is interesting, but I'm trying to figure out which effects you want to apply to it. Are there that many in-combat effects that this benefits from? Whelp Smuggler + Spawn of N'Zoth? Or is it all about the new Prized Promo-Drake, which turns Tarecgosa into an early tier Razorgore?

Prestor's Pyrospawn is a fantastic card that says fuck you to divine shield mechs. It might be the only thing that keeps Holy Mecherel from becoming an obnoxious meta-defining card.

Pirates:

Defiant Shipwright is mostly just stats on board unless you're playing Patches. Briny Bootlegger is some nice economy, and you don't have to worry about it not dying. Two of these fuel each other, and keeping one around doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as a Warden of Old.

Peggy Brittlebone is a sleeper that is going to be very powerful. Think of this being run with a strong bloodgem generator. Think of this with some of the new generator cards. At worst, you can buy 3 minions a turn and get +3 in the process, but the real craziness starts when you've got Hogger in play. APM pirates are suddenly not just about buffing Salty Looter and waiting for a Southsea Strongarm to buff your other minions.

Tony Two-Tusk makes your pirates golden, which I see as far more useful than Seafood Slinger since pirates often have passive effects that are meaningful to double. It's also going to be hilarious when this triggers mid-battle and saves something from dying due to the small stat bump. The real question is...how realistic is it to have 5 minions die while keeping this and another non-golden pirate alive? Sans exodia build, I think this is asking too much.

Nosy Looter is whatever. It's the grand fucking prize if you're playing Galakrond, but under any other circumstances it probably materializes too late to do much good. Even a YOLO build is going to need something with stronger tempo than a 7/6 to stabilize. My bet is it gets removes with the next real update. Either I'm underestimating it and it's oppressive, or I'm right and it's useless. There really is no sweet spot for this card.

Others:

Smogger is great. Dazzling Lightspawn is mini-Nomi and probably partners well with him, even if you're only likely getting at most +2 per turn. (Maybe you can get to 3 with a Djinni.) Recycling Wraith is okay for cycling. Master of Realities is underwhelming compared to Garr.

Gemsplitter is a silly follow-up to Tough Tusk.

Budding Greenthumb will take some setting up, but could pay off nicely. Witchwing Nestmatron is decent value, but what do you want to be playing to capitalize off the battlecries? Murlocs? Elementals? Now pirates? Just hope for a mug?

.

Conclusion: I have no idea what I'm going to aim for tomorrow, but Bird Buddy, Mecherel-Buster, and Peggy APM all look like good options.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Geezus that's a massive change. Why does this have to be the same day as a major Genshin update?

And yes, Bird Buddy looks absurd. So do a few other new cards.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Mine is C4. I doubt I'm going to try for Sara constellations, but I fully expect Sucrose to be C6 by the end of tomorrow.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

That's her C6? =/

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Lately, maybe. Lisa had a quest to herself where you went around looking for unreturned books and Xiangling had a quest to win a cook-off. One could argue the prereq quest for fighting the wolf was Amber's or Razor's.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

There's a reason I'm playing mostly battlegrounds these days.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Just another 2 days before we say goodbye to Yoimiya. I'm looking forward to seeing some hands-on guides that actually explain Raiden and Sara rather than listening to a bunch of esoteric garbage from the tooltip descriptions. Seeing as I'm sitting on the pity line, plan is to trigger pity, pull until Sara, and then re-evaluate if I lose the 50/50 or if Sara doesn't come before second pity. I probably stop short in that case and wait for the reviews.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

https://youtu.be/NWM4ypTEqx8?t=247

Link because the discussion is a little nuanced. Stick around for the rotation discussion.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

NioraptH posted...

In a desperate bid for BAAAAAAAAL primos, I finally finished off the rest of the hangout events I've been putting off because of sheer laziness (only did Bennett (best boy) and Noelle Part 1(to unlock Part 2)).

Was ok. Even though I like him, Chongyun's was a pain to complete all routes since you had to repeat super long chunk of texts multiple times... The others weren't as bad as this.

Going off memory since it was a while ago, hang-out rankings:

1. Noelle
2. Noelle
3. Chongyun
4. Bennett
5. Diona
6. Barbara

Bennett and Barbara have some obnoxious game-overs, and the writing in Barbara's isn't even that engaging. I just don't enjoy Diona's character. I had literally no idea who Chongyun was before his event, but it was okay I guess? Bennett's was mostly better aside from having to restart it more. Noelle easily trounces everyone for hangouts.


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<Machine_Gun_Barbara.jpg>

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Sidenote: that bonus reset thing for the primogems is such bait for people who have never bought to get in on the action.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

So basically what I read your teams as:

Hu Tao + Xingqiu + anemo + shield
Ganyu + Bennett + anemo + shield

Obviously you deviated on 12 first half by bringing Eula instead with Fischl for superconduct. I would have asked how Mona might fair instead of Barbara, but Barbara slides in for Bennett as the healer.

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I mean, I had to guess that was what you were referring to just because it's good on Beidou and you obviously didn't mean Shimenawa's. So no, I didn't really.

You definitely aren't alone in having the HP/DEF blues. If I showed you all the sands, goblet and circlet pieces I've picked up from that domain, it's really sad how few of them are usable based on main stat alone.

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I had a meltdown moment at the end of nominations when I'd been through all the tracks that had locked and ranted about how unenthusiastic I felt about the field. That was before the second wave of tracks were a bit more to my liking, though.

Mr Lasastryke posted...

once you've gone through wed, gs and ll, you end up with rr

Uhh, you know that LL is the one finale track that isn't retired, right? Did you mean LEC?

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swordz9 posted...

latest electro artifact set

I wasn't aware my hydro characters were wearing an electro set.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Just played one of the most ridiculous battlegrounds sequences I've ever seen. I'm playing as the cat, so obviously some explosive potential is there, but this was insane.

Turn 8, 10 health, I'm limping along on a 2 macaw + spawn set-up with a taunt and a couple okay-ish minions. I'm expecting to die, but instead I defeat my opponent, who has a golden spawn. I figure I'll just upgrade it.

Two other opponents die this turn. I take the spawn from my opponent, a golden glyph guardian from the second, and a golden hyena from the third. I level to 5, play the spawn, and get offered two choices I didn't care for and a Goldrinn. I've got 2 macaws, so sure, Goldrinn. I play the second, joking to myself making I'll get running Goldrinns and get offered a second. I take it, but figure there's no way I'll get the third and I probably just screwed myself. Instead, I get offered a third freaking Goldrinn.

So I play my golden Goldrinn, grab something random, and sell off as much as I can to look for another beast. I find a Mama Bear. So board is now Macaw, Macaw, golden Goldrinn, random dude, Mama Bear, golden Hyena, reborn taunt. My stats get buffs to +20 and my opponent can't handle the board. We go from 5 players to 4. Except this opponent had a Baron.

So obviously I take the baron. And then I pick up second mama and a Defender of Argus. I taunt the two mamas, and I've got bird, bird, wolf, baron, hyena, mama, mama. I knock my opponent out. Pick up random junk. Down to 3.

This turn, I'm offered a hydra and a third macaw. Triple macaw into Maexxna. Play the hydra. Have a faceless in hand, so I hold the maexxna a turn. Instant +40/40 to my board when the macaw attacks. My opponent isn't even close to competing. Down to 2.

Wish I could say I also tripled the baron for the ultimate board, but I just rolled 11 times, played the Maexxna, and wiped the last guy, who was also beasts but was relying on one big hydra. Still, it was an obscene board out of nowhere. I've seen Bigglesworth snowball, but usually with some kind of menagerie comp. The fact that I just hit running golden minions that gave a series of relevant rewards into a baron was utterly absurd.

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This is one of the reasons why I have never bothered to try to 9-star floors 11 and 12. I've hit it on 11, but never on 12, and I have absolutely no desire to play 12-1 and 12-2 repeatedly just to try out a new team that might work on 12-3.

I mean, that, and they're always P2W dps checks.

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That's...really dumb. Either make the characters have a role or don't make them have a role. Someone who goes in with just their regular overworld team isn't going to understand why they can't do shit.

It's also kinda awful because you need to keep up with cycling through cards, which you can't do if you have to be controlling your character. I guess you can do some Korean Starcraft player-level multitasking, but waiting for the wave to clear means you're not getting any extra support during that wave.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

SockoressKnight posted...

Use Barbara from hydro application and Klee for any shields.

See, I'm not doing this, either. The towers are supposed to function on their own imo. I've certainly played TDS where you have a character you control -- Kingdom Rush, Sanctum to name a couple -- but given that most characters are relatively unable to affect the battlefield in any meaningful way, it seems strange that the game allows some characters to do so. The point of TM, as I see it, was to provide a minigame that doesn't rely on who you have on your account.

But maybe that mindset just makes me a scrub.

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I enjoy tower defense games, and I thought the only thing that was actively bad about the original Theater Mechanicus was the pacing (as well as the one-size-fits-all strats.) I was looking forward to its return, but I derive no enjoyment from this whatsoever. The player has no control over the outcome.

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SwiftyDC posted...

I cheated and watched KiyoStinV vids on YouTube. But after the first 5 they pretty much all take the same strategy and just have to keep track of what enemies are coming to make sure you set up the right towers; rolling for the right power up is key, too. Like the 1500 Pyro/Cryo, and the one that slows enemies within the charity.

I'd like to think I'm doing this, but some of the enemy configurations just run right through your towers. And that's ignoring that you'll sometimes get waves that don't give a shit what towers you have up. I'll put up hydro/cryo, and then get a ton of shield lawachurls that just block the cryo until they get through. Or I'll get a bevy of pyro slimes that refresh their pyro pretty much instantly and don't freeze (and apparently don't take enough melt or vaporize damage.)

Enemies just have stupid amounts of health, poise and resistance. If you don't manage to level your towers effectively -- and that's down to random chance, because the game insists on watering down the leveling up potential with useless crap like elemental mastery and buffs to auxillary towers you're never going to use. Then you get one you can use, but it's a fickle, and in going up by 1 level you also get debuffed by 2. Or it's in the final 500 you have before the new wave, and one of your towers gets destroyed. So you have to pass on all fickle effects, which further reduces your options.

I did have one hilarious run, which was how I got through the 8th stage. I took the bonus that all the cards have ominous effects, and then the one that gives all towers +1 level whenever you pick an ominous, and then I just spammed the cheapest cards in each set. For once, instead of being vastly underleveled, I was incredibly overleveled and completely wrecked the final wave.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

PIayer_0 posted...

Tell us what will happen in VGMC 16, oh mighty prognosticator! (protectedprognosticator?)

Retiree match between TBIYTC and RFTM, and they tie repeatedly until mycro and deo disqualify them both. liberatedliberater gets put in the retiree pool in their stead.

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Okay, I have to recant some of my thoughts on Theater Mechanicus from before. At the time I had only played 4 stages and found them all to be passable. I've done up to 9 now and they are completely stupid. I don't know how anyone's supposed to form a reliable strategy for these. That probably has to do with my refusal to block the path with geo constructs, but that shouldn't be required to be successful.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Warlock is still awful to play against. This patch did nothing to change that.

And apparently the ladder is still nothing but mage and warlock. I'm so glad they nerfed my paladin deck that could tech against them.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

While I get the basic idea of whatever this is, I have absolutely no idea who you're linking these songs back to or how.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

That was certainly a turn 10. Getting the dunk tanks corrupted off of prep was also pretty hilarious.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Interesting changes.

Standard:

• Incanter's was obvious.
• Il'Gynoth is now 6, which means less combo BS. But harder to remove now.
• Darkglare is basically the same nerf.
• Battlemaster didn't get the bonus stat treatment, but they could have taken it to 7 and it would still be played.
• Kolkar gets the Darkglare treatment. Don't know if that was needed or not. Pack Runner never bothered me.
• Granite Forgeborn is a surprise. Was it that oppressive?
• I'm disappointed but not surprised at Conviction. It was pay 1 deal 6. (Perhaps 9.)
• Flesh Giant feels like a baby nerf at best, given how much warlock plays with their health.

Battlegrounds:

• WTF is this Shudderwock change? Like, seriously? Dear god that has the potential to be broken. Especially if you get Brann. But just imagine you have a mediocre murloc build and then bam, you triple up on all the buffs you've played this game. Or you triple up on a ton of mug and cups and bloodgems and whatever else. Alternatively, you could just get a couple 1/1 tokens at the start of the game. It's possible Shudderwock might not be good, but I'm betting money this is going to be really freaking strong.
• Daryl - about time. 2/2 was simply not enough since elementals and quillboars entered the game.
• Flurgl - uh, excuse me? Like, really? Just spam the board with murlocs? That's insane. Flurgl will just put together whatever murloc hand they want now. They don't even need to get a good start because eventually they'll cycle out their one-drops for murlocs.
• Maiev - Extra stats on the dormant minion will not fix Maiev. The issue is that 3 turns is simply too freaking long to wait. Everyone's already moved on from that tavern tier by then and it still occupies too much of the board in the late game.
• Malygos - interesting change. We haven't seen a twice-per-turn hero power before, although I guess the stat swap is kinda like twice per turn. Still, I think having two shots at a swap like this might actually make Malygos playable.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Can we get a single tie so that it can be a nice even hundred? Id seems more than up to the task most days.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

SwiftyDC posted...

Look at these people and their cookie cutter teams. I just make up my teams on the fly based on looking at what I need to represent on each side. "Oh look, there's an electro hammer. Guess I need cryo." "Oh, there's machines in 12-3, lemme put electro on both teams."

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Can't *clear* the stage, or can't do it and get 100%? I had a couple leak through on my first try of stage 2, but I wouldn't have called it hard. Do you need a crash course in TDS?

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

The bottoms of those C and D lists are cursed.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

DeepsPraw posted...

does this game have unique, varied heros or is it just waifu shit like 99% of gachas?

What do you consider unique and varied? It's anime art style, so some people look at it and say it's waifu shit regardless.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

NFUN posted...

can we just throw out this year

toss 11 and 9 while we're at it

9 was good. 11 was not.

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R5 Viridescent Hunt
R1 Black Sword
R1 Deathmatch

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Third? I'm barely even getting the first one down.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

The biggest problem, tbh, is I have literally no experience with either of these cubes.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

I feel like Living in the City was the one track left that could have given Paradise trouble. Guess we'll see if RR or today's winner is powerful enough to combat a perfect 25.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

barreldragon88 posted...

Same. I also don't want to think of GB era as retro

Gameboy era? Not retro? (Unless you meant Great Britain era, at which point, yes, Britain as an empire is definitely in the past.)

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

I was playing a variant of elemental doomhammer shaman last set. Very different list, though.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

NioraptH posted...

What has everyone been using as background noise while exploring?

It varies. Sometimes the game music. Sometimes other game music. Sometimes a streamer that I've been following.

I used to just always leave the game music on, but I'm not nearly as enraptured now and I can't say if that's because the Inazuma music is less enchanting or if I'm simply used to multi-listening (as opposed to multi-tasking) at this point.

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Who's willing to take a prop bet that Id Purpose loses in the finals by 1 or 2 votes?

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I've mostly been playing an aggro paladin with anti-mage tech. It's mostly done well since so many decks in the meta are spell-heavy. One deck it really struggles with is aggro shadow priest, but it's not unwinnable. I also got really wrecked by a quest warrior that surprised me by being control.

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As hard as this sometimes is to accept, 2001 was 20 years ago.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

Why? It would just get tied again next year, at best.

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My coinflips have generally been ruined by Mona and Qiqi.

I wished 13 times. I was 60 into pity, so that was as far as I could go. I did not get Sayu.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.

For the non-discord crowd, I'm doing a thing similar to the old AIM snubs bracket this weekend. Feel free to submit (privately) one or two tracks you would've liked to have seen. Especially if it's something you've discovered since the contest started.

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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.