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tactician + priest of skaen. @Not So Clever Hound nails it. I saved my skin (and sometimes it was a necessary thing) to withdraw vela and myself, to trigger health gen and brilliant. enemy AI is a little wonky when it comes to berath's and invisibility, so sometimes even invisibility was not enough to de-aggro and trigger brilliant, but withdraw tended to be more foolproof if i could get out of range.

As far as I'm concerned, the Cowboys are always the heel. I just hate the whole "America's Team" BS. I never had a problem with the Patriots, but I've always been a Brady fan, since he went to Michigan. Anyway, looks like the Browns are sinking back to their natural level of being terrible (not that I think they're terrible this year, just kinda mediocre). Not really a surprise to me, even if all the "experts" thought they were going to be contenders this year.

Just in case you hadn' seen it, druid is a great MC for this because druid has tons of spells that proc a lot (wizard has a bunch too, but things like venombloom or nature's terror proc multiple times per tick). i would also recommend bombs and helm of the white void with an SC chanter. then you could use the "long night" chant at +10 acc which helps land the crits, and bombs give you a parallel way to crit and interrupt (some bombs trigger hazard effects that proc repeatedly for potentially more crits)

I wasn't being serious. Am against the death penalty for the dangers of incompetence and too many people get overrun by their desire for a revenge orgasm with it.

I hope I can play the next GoW on PC or the PS4. edit: PS4 not PC4...

Just a note connected to Withdraw and playing solo, regenerating resources etc. As @thelee illustrated in his Ultimate run IIRC, Withdraw is not just useful to take Vela out of the fight, if you're playing a Tactician/Priest and Withdraw yourself, you will trigger Brilliant (!). So you will regenerate Resources and Health at the same time. Sweet for a "war of attrition" type of strategy (like a true Tactician?). As we found out in another thread, Withdraw can also be used offensively if the caster is Confused, in which case you can take enemies out of the fight in a pinch with a guaranteed hit. This opens up new tactics in particular against the dreaded Hauani O Whe. A Tactician/Priest can use Withdraw offensively if they are flanked which triggers Tactical Dilemma (Confused + Shaken). They can get flanked in a pinch with Powder Burns and clear it when needed with a PER inspiration. Of course, a Berserker/Priest or Berserker/Blood Mage who used Minor Grimoire Imprint to steal Withdraw permanently or any Berserker or Tactician using Withdraw scrolls can also do it. So yes I do agree that withdraw is a really great spell .

Hi Sarex! My PS4 is gathering dust in my son's room. He prefers the PC and Switch. Honestly I can't see myself getting another console anytime soon, but who knows?

So if you like Swedish food does that mean you have...Stockholm Syndrome? ... ... ... ... I'll let myself out.

I think they need to remove certain collision physics from fallen objects, ie just let you walk through them if they are small enough like clover leaves, web fibers etc. Would probably stop things flying all over the place

It took me a while to notice that "Elmond's Field" was Emond's Field. Don't ask me why. You wanna know how big this series is? Youtuber Unravelling the Pattern showed this comparison:

You know what, HIP was great. Come at me.

The trouble I have is that I can finish a 300 page novel in 3 and a bit hours. That's my natural reading speed, not trying to push it or actually read fast. Having a thick series like the Wheel of Time can be broken down into a few weekends worth of solid reading. It's always amazed me when my friends talk about spending the better part of a month to read a book I finish in an evening. I find it really hard to grok that it takes time for a lot of people to read.

This thread wins the gaming forum. Won't get any better than that, I think.

First episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. So yes, not all must be how it seems. The devil is in the transformation sequence, where Nanoha is as nude as any of the Sailor Guardians were, or Princess Tutu is, except not nearly as stylized as the former, but not nearly as detailed as the latter. It does magically undress her, so that's... borderline dealbreakerish, even if it doesn't do anything differently than other Magical Girl shows. Nanoha looks a bit like a hybrid Sailor Moon / Cardcaptor Sakura. Her magical girl costume looks like a Cardcaptor Sakuraish version of Sailor Moon, except with a long skirt. Has a staff/glaive with a gem in the middle (currently looks more like a crescent moon than the image). Really... honestly, if there's one negative thing I would have to name for now, besides the transformation sequence, is that there's nothing original about it. Like... nothing. Looks a lot like a hybrid step between Sakura and Madoka. Some uncanny looking animation, but it's looking a bit better in motion than the stills do when you google it. edit: Nanoha's older brother catches her sneaking back into the house after a midnight adventure sealing magic a monster into a card jewel seed. You know show, if you keep doing this I'm going to have to compare you to CCS, and that comparison you will undoubtedly not come out ahead of. edit 2: Ferret-thing is called Yuuno and probably the origin for Madoka's telepathic communication with Kyubey. edit 3: The second episode thankfully opted to skip the transformation sequence. And the overly ridiculous transformation incantation.

I think it works because it's ludicrous and insane, rather than in spite of it. From the beginning it was hinted at that Gendo and Seele were up to something, and given the trajectories of Evangelion it being some nonsensical thing makes more sense than some standard thing where Shinji fights his dad in a robot or gets shipped with Asuka. A mind bending wtf was the best way to end it. Anyways it's time for Berserk.

A small shameless promotion of another game made in Slovakia (still in development stage) a psychological roleplaying game, in a style of choose your own adventure https://www.gog.com/game/sacred_fire_a_role_playing_game

I did not see anything that would suggest there would be any kind of ecchi content, so if there is anything, I'd guess it'd be very mild indeed. Curious that it is labeled seinen, though - things must not be as they seem on some level! I don't even remember what show you're talking about there, but it sounds terrible. Definitely no @ FMA: I saw all I needed to see with that 15 years ago when my sister was watching it, . And hey, I still have my one exception to my "no shonen" rule, which is the first season of Ranma...

‘History of the World Part II’ Variety Series Ordered at Hulu, Mel Brooks to Write and Executive Produce. OMG! *faints*

drphil.gif Yeah...I've always assumed that seinen has a better chance of working out than shonen, because shonen tends to be as stupid as anime can get. Any time I see a show strongly tagged/voted with "shonen", that is a huge red flag. As for josei, my 15 minute investigation of that particular category lead me to conclude that josei is very much like how "fiction for women" is really just code for being the most terrible and embarrassing form of romance you can possibly find. If we were to assume that Japan as told by anime demographics is actually accurate, I can only assume that Japanese boys are predictably quite stupid in your typical boy-ish fashion, Japanese girls will at the very least be pretty emotionally intelligent, Japanese men kind of average out over time by virtue of being all over the place, and Japanese women may possibly be even dumber than the boys. Obviously, that's not actually accurate, but these are the stereotypes these demographic labels are forcing my mind to notice! Nanoha: I looked over it quickly and was about to say "well, I don't see any significant warning signs based on what I'm seeing here besides the character designs/animation being less than ideal, but..." and then I saw that there was a catgirl (or maybe fox...girl?) "familiar" and, eh... Precure: 49 episodes + 47 episodes + three movies + 49 episodes + movie + 49 episodes + two movies + 48 episodes + 50 episodes + two movies + 49 episodes + three movies + 48 episodes + movie + 48 episodes + two movies + 49 episodes + two movies + 49 episodes + three movies + 50 episodes + three movies + 50 episodes + two movies + 49 episodes + two movies + 49 episodes + two movies + 49 episodes + 45 episodes + movie + 33 episodes (so far) + movie. Yes, I just counted all of that up - that's nearly a thousand episodes plus literally 30 movies. Just being realistic here, is there any chance that a show that has that much in it could ever possibly be good over such an extended period of time? Likely the absolute and completely unrealistic best case scenario, you get a couple of Sailor Moon-quality-ish seasons from people who knew what they were doing for a short amount of time in the show's run (but which still won't ever be able to match your love for the original Sailor Moon) before they moved on to better things and replaced so that the rest becomes somewhere approaching SuperS or the Nadia filler, if not worse. Would that be worth it? Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm bothered by the formula of these shows per se (okay, well, with Sailor Moon who so ferociously stuck to it, I think it had run its course by the end of S after 120 or so episodes, IMO), but it definitely makes them less creative and more predictable simply by their nature. If you're not invested into the show, its world, the characters, the themes, and then it doesn't properly accomplish what it's trying to do in a way that appeals to you...that's a pretty natural result. Well, at least it is for me - there are people out there who can watch a show and as long as it's viscerally entertaining enough can just go "this is wild lmao" and that's enough for them, but it never is for me, not even close. Wish I could do that...sometimes. It was a novel but insane and ludicrous idea that only somewhat came out of left field for NGE. ...It could've gone a lot worse, .

@Raithe I had a white cat once that would've loved to sit on your lap while you were wearing that. That's very cool tho, looks fantastic. ========= Saw two houses on Sunday. Both had a pool. The 2nd one was a larger lot, more of a blank slate, house was fine. Reminded us just a little of the house we rented in S. San Jose that we liked a lot. May need some $$ of fixing up a few concerns but nothing major. They'll probably get multiple offers but we'll put in the asking price, cash, offer. Never know. If we don't get it we won't cry. There's always another one. Anyway...it's weird how I can make fun of our current/main house, calling it a postage stamp and all, but after 12-13 years (I think?) it still feels like home. Point being, it makes it a lot easier to look at homes because (since we're not looking at 3 million dollar homes) I'm never "I want this house so bad." It's more like "this could work, I'm fine with it." Although even before buying anything ever, I think hubby gets more worked up/invested then I ever do - he's a lot pickier and has more "wants", whereas I start wanting to simply toss darts at houses to decide so it can just be over. *shrug*

That's... not wrong. I mean, it's perfectly true. At no point in the run of the 90ies Sailor Moon anime could you realistically think that it will end badly for any of the Sailor Senshi, except for Pluto whose time travel related punishment just gets glossed over when she just comes back. As silly as that sounds, with the way Crystal goes, you have more tension - if you wouldn't know what will happen and that everything will be all right, of course - because it's much serious and more focused. Even more so than the manga, because it really drops most of the lighhearted stuff that's already not very present in the source material. Of course Crystal is terrible from start to finish. I'll have take two helpings of formula please, thank you very much. CCS is even worse because right from the start everything about the show tells you it's going to be okay, even before Sakura literally tells herself that. Indeed. However, that might not be just because it's shoujo, look at X, that tried something different. It failed on almost every level, even I can see that when looking at it objectively. It is perhaps a function of its time, they're all 90ies shoujo animes after all, including Miyu, which also sticks to the same formula and just inverses it by making it the very rare exception for any of the random characters to actually survive. It's the primary reason I was able to take a shot in the dark: Part of the issue with Sailor Moon is of course that the episodes that do break the mold are usually the less interesting story episodes. Most others are concentrated in S, but still resolved in two parters at the maximum. There's something that I think I need to say though: If something is good but repetitive it takes a very, very long time to bother me. In SuperS, it really bothered me, but everyting about that season was wrong. Aside from that, repetition gives me a feeling of familiarity, and a sense of loss once it is over. That's just me though. I mean, it bothers me when a picture no longer hangs where it always was. Part of the formulaic nature was probably so the shows appeal to their target demographics, that we enjoy them ended up not entirely being an abberation, because both Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura had (and still have) adult fandoms, but an abberation of intent nonetheless. It's something I thought of while watching the end of Blood-C. I watched the first half rather quickly, and the second half increasingly slower. *shrug* Still pretty bingey, all in all, but for all its faults, it was more entertaining than Steins;Gate which sort of lost me along the way. Wildely different setup and premise too, not just because one is a mecha anime deconstruction and the others are magical girl shows. The intention for Sailor Moon was to have something like Pretty Cure turned out to be - a magical girl version of Super Sentai / Power Rangers. Something you can tune in when you feel like it, with ever changing casts in between seasons. Cardcaptor Sakura sometimes feels as if it was made specifically to ride on the success and popularity of Sailor Moon. Doesn't really matter though - it is great, after all. I keep bringing Pretty Cure up. I'm honestly curious how that is, and it could be possible that the discontinuity between seasons means that I could just watch one and stop. Or two, because the first series is two seasons. On the other hand, if that doesn't work, then I'm going to waste a lot of time. It's also part of the reason why I'm kind of loathe to try Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. On the one hand, it supposedly contains critical elements that make it sound appealing, but it also appears to be utterly full of a nerd's worst dreams about magical girls come true - a magica girl seinen* show. Dear God... 13 episodes wouldn't be so bad, but there's half a ton of spin-offs and movies waiting. So did I. How did we get to Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha? Yes, absolutely. The absolutely worst thing that you could do is an episode like Minako and Makoto fighting in SuperS. Hey guys, we need to wrap that up in the rest of the episode. Ideas? Hey, let's just have them make up for reason at all. They're fighting for no reason at all too. "Okay, great!" It's not that the girls shouldn't have a fight. Realistically, any group of friends will be at odds sometimes. Take a couple of episodes. Make Miyu be caught on camera, or something. Sakura got found out by Tomoyo though, but ultimately, that's about the only really surprising thing the show pulled off, and that was right after the start of the show. Indeed, there really should be a happy medium. I wonder if it exists. Human Instrumentality... yeah. I once saw a video that argued instrumentality is just Gendoh's version of sex, and that's because Shinji ultimately rejects it. Because he can't get a boner outside of staring at Asuka's helpless bewbies, or... something. I'll just leave you with that happy thought. Have fun with it! *I'm approaching a point where I'm more likely to watch something marked as seinen than shounen. The ecchi elements, if present, are similar, if not entirely the same, but at least seinen anime has a chance of not having an infantile storyline to accompany them. Every now and then I'm wondering if I shouldn venture off the beaten path and try something josei, but then I go through lists and read titles like My Lesbain Experience With Loneliness and I'm like "nope, I'm out of here" and just leave it at that. Just because something is written by women for adult women doesn't mean its necessarily less ridiculous than seinen. Just look at 50 Shades of Grey. Or rather, just don't.

<Jets fan. Will always hate the Pats, even when they suck.

Just execute the ones that fall behind.

I've always liked Belichick at least as a football mind and personality, while I've always hated Brady, so when the two split, it made it a lot easier to be O.K. with the Patriots winning...and doubly so since they've kept losing since he left. Additionally, the Cowboys are a solid-looking NFC threat - of course I was rooting for the Patriots. Still, I can take some solace in it being Mike McCarthy and Dak Prescott...though the team would suddenly get a lot more likeable if a certain cereal-gorging RB wasn't currently starring there, .

Beat LA is pretty much my mantra for the rest of the playoffs, so I hope not. I also think the Giants mentally wore the Dodgers out, so my team gets a bit of credit when the Braves advance.

What are you raving about? Both chess and checkers are turn based... I get that you are claiming that somehow turn based games automatically have more depth - but both RTwP and TB modes use the same system, have very similar depth and complexity. Really the only thing that changes is player bias, depending if you prefer TB or RTwP pace. I am also not sure what military training has to do with a story driven fantasy RPG. Most (some?) of us don't expect games to teach us how to kill people, especially that I can't cast fireballs in real life. Playing a tactics/strategy game is not exactly meant to be a military excercise, I don't think. I would feel guilty about playing them, otherwise.

So... you thought that making your entrance into a forum by posting presumptuous and insulting hot takes about a game mode would yield frantic applause? You might not be young anymore, but you're definitely not mature.

Really ruined his legacy with the presentation at the UN. Although I guess his involvement in covering up My Lai had it tarnished enough.

Why wouldn't it be able to crit in the first place? I thought the only thing that does a hit roll and can't crit is Carnage...?

But that's always a problem with "open world" approaches if you don't scale all enemies to party/char level. Which I don't like either. Sometimes you must be able to mop the floor with enemies else the player doesn't really feel any kind of power improvement. That's why I don't like truly open world games that much. At least break the open world up into separate "acts" - or however you want to organize it - so that your level designers etc. have an easier time balancing the game. Def. less complaints then. Also way easier for narrative and quest designers.

I don't care much whether a game is RTwP or Turn Based. Both works well for me as long as it's implemented well enough. As long as the game is fun and entertaining it's all okay. I prefer PoE and Deadfire in RTwP mode - but I slightly lean towards Turn Based generally. Why would you look down on people who prefer the one over the other? Or even worse: insult them for their taste? You prefer merlot over riesling? You barbarian! You like mac and cheese? Culinary vandal! You prefer RTwP? You must have too many chromosomes! Really? That's your assessment of the situation where it's about personal taste? Wow... It's sarcastically funny how some gamers steer away from divisive stuff like color of skin, religion, social status etc. but then show the same old zealous behavior as emotionally underdeveloped five year old crusaders when figuratively splitting each other's skulls over playstation vs. xbox, windows vs. linux, RTwP vs. TB and so on.

Thick Grew Their Tongue can crit thus proccing the Energized Interrupt. With a high ACC toon it will crit often since it targets Will.

Thanks @Exanos for the tip about Blightheart. Thanks @dgray62, indeed Energized with overlapping Chill Fogs and Freezing Pillars together with the repeating chant (and of course Eld Nary) would create so many interrupts that it would likely prevent anyone from doing anything will turning the area into a total killzone.

Yes. The pacing is awful and the ending felt very rushed (in a bad kind of way). A shame, because the slow build up the first half of the series was actually nice (imho). Sadly the second half, things starts coming apart. Finished watching Elfen Lied. What a great story. Definitely worth the price of entry (this is the version I got https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B00AF1H8G8/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?smid=A3JCEYBC5L8UJ8&psc=1). Some of us don't have netflix, streaming shows etc. so have to get what we can buy at affordable prices Not exactly a happy story, but very engaging and dramatic at times. I'll at that to Made in Abyss as my two positive (recent) Anime experiences. Attack on Titan fell by the wayside because it was to expensive if I wanted all seasons and the various standalone stuff, so I'll have a look at that magical girl stuff next. Looks like it's a self contained 12 episode series (i.e. wont break the bank) (edit: affordable prices, in case anyone clicks the link, translates into me paying around $13 us dollars + shipping for the set)

Guys, this is supposed to be a shoujo series, not an idiotic shonen...uh, wait a second... Oh, I guess it is a shonen. Whoops, that's my bad, I thought it was supposed to be a shoujo show this entire time. There are too many episodes in these shows - Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Miyu - that revolve around the same formula. In Sakura's case, the formula is a little more fluid than something as neurotically faithful as Sailor Moon, but still too many episodes were essentially... Early on, (X event) is mentioned as being something that is going to happen later. Often something relating to school, but could be familial, friend, or personal interest-related as well. Some lighthearted yet usually either meaningful or funny personal character stuff happens until then. Hint that some kind of mischief or threat on the part of something (i.e. a card) or someone is going to happen. (X event) actually occurs, and things are fine up until the problem that needs to be resolved suddenly appears! Problem gets resolved, wrap up the episode. How many episodes follow this same general outline? A lot...many...maybe most of them. Not all of them, but...probably most of them. It's not a bad formula by any means, but it is a formula that kind of keeps a show pretty safe and predictable, even if everything else about is great. And to me, that is the real problem of shows from...well, let's say specifically the shoujo genre? - they are safe and predictable, which kind of creates a...sort of void of tension. I know everything's going to be O.K. in a show like Sakura - she's literally promised it repeatedly, and nothing about how the show "speaks" to the viewer could ever suggest it could be anything but that. The great thing about Sakura is that it has lovable characters, interesting character-obstacle interactions, occasionally a new setting for an episode to take place, simple yet clever and effective resolutions, a world that feels surprisingly consistent and grounded and actually representative of where it's supposed to take place, etc...and the show expresses its "ideas" (everything that it is - characters, plots, themes, et cetera) in a way makes sense and is satisfying to me. The irony is that other shows can be way more unpredictable and have great potential for tension...but they do literally just about every single other thing between somewhat and incredibly wrong that there's literally zero chance of me ever caring. Art style and animation, characters and dialogue-style, appropriate tone, setups and payoffs, a setting that actually feels like a setting as opposed to a vague or fake nothingness where things just kind of happen, simply the way the show communicates to the viewer via the use of film language, et cetera. If you get one of these elements wrong in a large way, I'm going to be dissatisfied with your show on some level. If it does some of the other things well enough, I may eventually get over it...but when you start get multiple things very wrong, we get to the point where I can instantly tell that a show has literally zero chance of working for me. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a show I genuinely had trouble prognosticating, because it felt like it was all over the place in such a variety of ways. Even after watching it twice, I still feel that way - if I was to try to recommend it someone else, it would be difficult for me to tell who would like it and who wouldn't, especially because the show kind of undergoes some shifts as it goes on - shifts that could make or break the show for some people, or not even be a blip on others' radars, depending on what appeals to you most. I stuck with it the first time around because it didn't do anything outstandingly wrong even if I got frustrated and confused with it and how it did things. Something like Sakura or Sailor Moon is much simpler in comparison - if you're not deriving some kind of enjoyment from these shows within the first handful of episodes, it's 99.9% not for you and you probably shouldn't keep watching, because they are pretty much exactly what they're communicating they are right off the bat, and while they have some slight shifts and aberrations over time, they basically stay true to that all the way through. ...I forgot where I was going with this. I guess my overarching point is that it'd be nice if these shows weren't so formulaic. It would help elevate them even further if you could have some Sailor Moon episodes that that could eschew its neurotic formulas when appropriate (and there were so many instances where it would have been, where you could've really spent some time on our beloved characters and setting up and resolving meaningful issues over longer periods of time!), or Sakura episodes that could really truly present some darker or mature ideas (even without anything bad happening to anybody!), or Miyu episodes that really tackled the realities of being a semi-ancient vampire in an increasingly modern world...ideas that aren't necessarily completely novel in of themselves, but which would be when seriously pursued and presented within their respective shows and seeing how the show's characters would interact with them when not so incredibly confined and constricted by their own formulas. ...Of course, when you give the creative leads too much freedom, you get insanity like Human Instrumentality, but I feel like there's a happy medium between that and formula OCD, you know?

I suspect that the primary benefit of gifted programs is to avoid boredom by the students because they don't have to wait on slow kids. If a teacher spends 80% of their time instructing 20% of the kids, that's not an optimal classroom.

I always thought they called themselves "friends of the dark", while if you're not with them, you'd call them "darkfiends". You know, an easy way of verbally differentiating between them depending on what side you're on. I got to one of the last books and randomly noticed it wasn't spelled like that in one instance and was like "ha, they spelled it wrong here...and here...and here...wot?". Went back to one of the first books and found an instance of it again and just about 'd myself.

I have played solo with SC FF monk, which is overpowered as I know you know once you reach PL 9, SC bloodmage, and also multi classes with mixes of bloodmage, assassin, cipher, druid and chanter. Most of these classes have renewable resources, which help a lot. For the assassin builds I relied heavily on smoke veil as you discuss. I have never tried playing a swashbuckler solo; I imagine that it would be quite a challenge, unless it were an assassin/tactician. That would be fun I'm sure, although I've never tried it.

That reminds me of two funny ones: