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Problem is Mad Max convinced everyone to invest in assless chaps.

i missed this thread until i got tagged in it. thanks for the kind words about the FAQ in general, and also i fully am open that my guide may have big holes in it - i definitely cannot grab all the meta or interactions that might be really relevant, i just try my best, it is also now an extremely huge piece of text and it's not always obvious to me what might need updating. in addition, the SA was written really extremely early in the game's metagame history. while i still stand by it as a general thinking of the class, since then a lot more interactions and optimizations for it have been found (including simply just that it benefits from weapon damage bonuses, which wasn't obviously known at the time, which i updated to add but didn't really expand on the ramifications of) that can make specific approaches sing really well instead of just as a focus dump. i'll take the criticism and make sure to update the language a bit more thoroughly the next time i have enough pending changes to make an update.

yes, like i said the math gets very complicated when you start adding in bonuses. the inversion nature of -35% penalty makes the math non-linear. the penalty is really really severe if you don't have enough bonuses to cancel out the inversion (you need ~+50% of damage bonuses to cancel it out), it's a worse drag than a multiplicative penalty, but then once you overwhelm it you get 1 for 1 gain out of every additional damage bonus - a massive step change. it's also the fact that we're not comparing a 1h attack against a 2w attack in a real situation - i was using that just to illustrate what the net effect on a vanilla 2w attack after penalties are compared. in reality, you're probably comparing a 2h weapon to a 2w setup or (for a very niche or off-meta build) a 1h weapon to a 2w setup, and that adds more complications (a 2h has +1 PEN and effectively is a like 1h attack but with a 30% multiplicative damage boost plus a +15% additive damage boost, a 1h has +12 acc and a hit->crit rate). my head is starting to hurt. anyway it doesn't change the tl;dr that dual-wielding full attacks are generally advantageous across the board compared to alternatives for various reasons, and also damage is not really the main window one should be thinking about in terms of abilities, since OP was asking about ability selection. versus weapon styles; for weapon styles, i would dual-wield a rogue simply because i want to maximize the number of chances of landing a debuff or interrupting an enemy, versus trying to optimize the damage for like a handful of abilities you get to use throughout the course of a long fight. but for ability selection, i really don't think one should care whether or not an ability is a full attack or a primary attack. edit: rather, i think it should be the reverse - you pick abilities based on what they offer you and then you choose a weapon setup that complements it (e.g. if you use more full attack abilities, then weight 2w more strongly) versus trying to optimize abilities purely based on full or primary attack and what they might offer in terms of raw damage.

The image on the left is the Magellenic Cloud taken by the now retired Spitzer Space Telescope. The one on the right is the same thing captured by the James Webb telescope: Webb telescope's sharp views of the universe will change astronomy

bards tale 4

Parkinson played Ernest LeClerc, that video is his in programme brother Roger LeClerc (actor Jack Haig). That's a minor mistake though, like showing a video of René Artois, who was executed by the Germans, instead of his identical twin who survived the war. I do wonder how them being boys from Nancy would go down as a joke nowadays, guess they might get away with it due to Kaye being gay himself. I would be irremediably triggered by a Herr Flick video with Janson instead of Gibson though.

Thanks. The benefits of a traditional English garden... Or for when it actually does snow (as about 5 years ago last time)

Probably something about the black hole in the Milky Way: Astronomers to Announce Groundbreaking Result on the Center of Our Galaxy at Press Conference | Center for Astrophysics (harvard.edu)

The build details are below, and here are 2 videos to give a bit of flavor. 1) The Menzzago encounter in Splintered Reef and 2) the first encounter with Infested Librarians in Forgotten Sanctum. They're not the hardest fights in the game but they're good enough and you can see how the build carries itself all by itself when Menzzagouille la Fripouille and all his friends/tentacles go to town with Missile Salvos etc. to no avail. And when those pesky Lvl 22 Monks with Tier 3 Inspirations try something similar, without success.

I feel that the Ant head totem should repel ants, or at least, red ants. I enjoyed finding it, the cave looked creepy & was saddened when I found out that the totem was simply decoration. 😭

Maybe i just misread it in the guide, I thought the comparison shred to SA was made and then direct conclusion was to go a multiclass so SA is more useful in combo with sneak etc. Either way he answered further up.

I'm pretty sure the season finale will be the group taking a trip to Morioh and getting caught in the crossfire between Wonder of U and Soft & Wet. Hopefully Stalker Girl still has the heart attack or stroke though.

This is probably the optimal way to play a SC soul blade, using a ranged weapon with AOE procs like Watershaper's Focus, once you reach PL 9 and get shared nightmare. I agree that SA is the usually the best use of focus for melee MC builds.

Well, I can see a Soulblade who mainly uses ranged weapons to gain focus from rel. safety and use it for shred spells (because especially at low levels they are really cheap) - and maybe only use SA once an enemy appears in front of them or so. With this approach a Single Class Soulblade even makes sense because of Reaping Knives and also Time Parasite and also Shared Nightmare (bigger AoEs). When killing fast the Soulblade can reach high max focus (+10 per kill iirc) and then could spam fast, cheap, large shred spells. So maybe that (or something similar where SA isn't your most-used ability) is a fun way to play a Soulblade (no idea, never tried that). But if I'm doing a melee SA anyway it just feels ineffective to me to use Shred spells instead of just virtually cutting an enemy in half with SA.

Much the same thing over here, minus the wage standard, but I managed to luck out and find a catastrophically advertised apartment (the owners didn't want to post pictures on the internet), so I got it relatively cheap.

My thoughts exactly! I'm guessing from the responses that this really isn't as controversial a take as I expected it to be. I'm obviously new to the game, so I incorrectly expected the view expressed by what I assumed to be a popular guide to be more widely held. Regardless, it is still interesting to me to see what C.LE was missing, since they obviously understand a lot about the game and are very good at it. I had a feeling that relying on SA for damage was the better strategy, but it is true that Disintegrate is a much more efficient from a damage-to-focus perspective, and I wasn't sure why it was better when that is the case. I think we've gotten to the bottom of it now.

Honestly I find most (not all) shred spells pretty negligible, especially if they don't target a lot of enemies and cause about as much damage as weapon strikes would do in the same amount of time. Because why would I do weapon dmg in order to gain focus and then cast a rel. lengthy damaging spell that costs focus - instead of just keep attacking with the weapon and deal damage AND gain focus? It feels just like changing the way of dealing damage and paying for that non-improvement. Just generally speaking. I know that there are situations where it can be useful to have different dmg types and so on. The exception is the Psion of course because he has not motivation to use a weapon in the first place. Ascended Ascendant, too - because he can cast for free then and some shred spells are fast. Therefore I tend to mostly use CC and buffs even as Soulblade - if I'm not using the focus for SA. 🤷‍♂️ I find - even as Soulblade who has reduced shred costs - that a Whisper of Treason or Puppet Master is often so much more worth than Mind Blades and such stuff.

In the angular sense they are about the same size.

Diversion to try and draw away Ukranian reserves from the east. That was my thought anyway.

https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/define/define-7-xl/black/

several interrelated questions here: - it's been a while since i did the math, but iirc in general the dual-wielding full-attack bonus is a sufficient enough penalty that it brings the damage in line with a full-attack 2h weapon (which is the same as a primary attack w/ a 2h weapon), though there's still an advantage in that dual-wielding weapons have lower recovery time and you get two attempts to connect. so 2w is still arguably advantaged, just not as obviously as much as before. - compared to a primary attack, a 2w full-attack is basically a 1/3 damage bonus (w/ rounding) over a primary attack - you have a -35% damage penalty on each attack, which means if you just somehow duplicated your #1 weapon you get a 65% attack and a 65% attack = 140% net damage. so, a sufficiently high primary attack damage bonus would make up for not getting a full attack, but no, a mule kick's damage bonus alone would not do it. - keep in mind that the explicit damage bonus isn't everything. mule kick also gets an accuracy bonus. Accuracy also lets you do more damage over the long run, by increasing your crits, hits, and grazes compared to hits, grazes, and misses. i did some math a long time ago and in general (ignoring low/high extremes) each point of accuracy seemed to translate to ~2% net increase in damage (not the same as 2% damage bonus. for various reasons, a 3% damage bonus also translates into a ~2% net increase in damage, so in this way might and perception are very closely balanced in general). so adding on mule kick's +10 accuracy, its net damage bonus is closer to 36%, which is comparable to a vanilla 2w attack, but that math quickly gets complicated once you start adding in more bonuses and penalties. (complicated enough that when i say "back when i did the math" what i really mean is that i created a script that simulated the equations involved for thousands of scenarios to figure out what a general trend line was) - similarly, penetrating strike has a bigger damage bonus in practice than on paper, because you should really be using it when you need the PEN bonus. in that vein, +2 PEN can constitute as much as a whopping +200% damage bonus when it helps you go from -3 PEN to -1 PEN. it's getting so, so complicated. in the end i would argue though that just looking at damage is not the point to focus on for many abilities. Damage is just there to sweeten the cake a bit for spending a finite resource for knock down/mule kick. Ultimately the point of knock down/mule kick is a powerful interrupt (i almost don't even care that mule kick gets disorient, except as a way to get further +10 accuracy from helm of the white wind). Ultimately the point of penetrating strike is to help dps down a hard target in underpen situations, not just for the +25% paper damage + full attack. sap can be better if all you care about is interrupt and resource efficiency, but it's not supposed to fill the same role as strike the bell, so you need to be clear about what each ability is actually trying to accomplish. if all you care about is damage on a rogue, for example, you really have no reason to do anything other than spam crippling strike over and over, even compared to sap. but the rogue has plenty of other abilities worth taking for reasons other than efficient damage. (and it's worth highlightging that on potd, enemies end up with so much health in high-level fights that optimizing for damage on finite resource abilities is not a great idea imo anyway, so in that sense penetrating strike becomes kind of a trap choice)

Earnest Scared Stupid is an 80s masterpiece. Even if it came out in 1991. 😄

CP tweaked a bt Forbidden Fist ability (especially to make it work with Cipher) BPM didn't change it. BPM only buffed Forbidden Pie 🥧

Some people have an undying sense of humour...

So, in other words they were all bad?

The article doesn't mention it, but this object is called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*. I'll be curious to see how similar it looks to the SMBH in M87, since I suspect the accretion disk in Sgr A* may orbit close to the galactic plane.

So only the deserving ones can appreciate his genius. You can't have a good thing, and appeal to riffraff at the same time. I really liked first two books (short story collection), and even in my high school years I was more critical of the "saga". I won't try to defend the material though, as I haven't re-read the books in years, and I don't know if 32 years old me, would like the same thing as 17 years old me. As far as translation goes, my biggest concern would be the humor, and if it would translate well into english.

I unironically want Hunted: Demon's Forge 2

Soul Annihilation is one of the best damage abilities in the game for multiple reasons: has huge single target damage potential can be spammed targets deflection (the lowest defense and the easiest to debuff) does raw damage interrupts on crits it's a PL1 ability (gets a big dmg bonus from PL at high levels) From the way its damage scales it's obvious the rogues are the most suited for a MC soul blade. The streetfighter has the best dps potential but, without a priest with BB/SoT, it's difficult to play one. Besides dmg bonuses and speed the third way to increase the dps of a SB is by generating free focus. The trickster, besides better survivability, can trigger more easily ripostes and also disengagement attacks (when using Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage). Regarding the weapons there are many interesting options: Voidwheel - the champ of single target damage (best suited for a streetfighter under BDD) Whispers of the Endless Paths - the champ of AoE damage (having high deflection ensures also some free focus from Offensive Parry) Sun and Moon - the second head replenishes focus allowing continuous use of SA (can be used with a bashing shield for increased defense, speed and focus - Tuotilo's Palm can generate more Focus with Outward Spikes, Magran's Blessing can generate focus with the Fire Shield) Grave Calling - the damage from Chillfog proc generates focus too Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff - next best thing after Voidwheel and best dps option if you don't have BDD Engoliero do Espirs - the AoE proc is great (triggers often, generates focus and heals)

As much as I would love to see the next Fallout game from Obsidian, I can understand MS's reasoning. The longer nothing happens, the more the public "gets out of touch" with a franchise. Keep the hype up so to speak and Obsidian is still a medium size studio at best, with limited capacity. Edit: With the potential of nukes getting involved in the war in Ukraine, you never know, the next Fallout game may be more relevant in a central European setting

That was supposed to be sarcastic. It DID make him a bad guy even by the standards of the time.

have been perpetual kinda dumbstruck by how few lessons were learned from the great recession. HA! Good Fun!

Hell is other people... and we have entirely too many.

Truth told, I really don't want inXile to make a Fallout game. That said, Fallout "New Vegas 2" from anyone else but Obsidian would just be a crappy attempt to cash in on the hype around it. Either Obsidian makes a new Fallout game, or they can just **** off with that idea for all I care.

Many people hate the swamp, but I never understood why. It doesn't play any differently to the rest of the game. I didn't mind combat - I defenitely liked it more then W2. I thought of W1 combat more in terms of NWN1/KOTOR, but at least with some kind of reactivity, rather then action combat that later installements attempted. It's not that bad, but as far as RPGs go, or at least there are games with worse combat. I should also stress that I played the game more then a year after it was released so with all the enhancements, and in polish so I didn't suffer from what I understand was a rather dodgy translation effort. Couple months. I remember being very relieved when it was over. I was a big Sapkowski fan at that time (wrong my final high school essay on it) so I was eager to see how it was adapted. It was also first year of university and freedom from parental oversight. Some people do drugs and sex, while I did way too much gaming and did stupid stuff like watching extanded LotR trilogy back to back. 😁

At this point I suspect Avowed might have to be regarded as the closest to a PoE3 we're going to get any time soon. On the face of it InXile would look more likely for a fill in Fallout between Bethesda titles as they have a lot less on their plate as Obsidian has Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed already, and both must be in full production mode. I wouldn't know about InXile doing a New Vegas title though, their Wasteland games would suggest they should do a squad based RPG rather than a fps/ 3ps. So more Fallout Tactics 2 with a lot greater emphasis on talkie RPG aspects. If I were Microsoft I'd probably want to have a lot better spacing time wise between Fallout titles, something like 2-3 years, and keep the named series to the studios they're associated with, ie Obs and Beth. And while the more 'tactics' type of games aren't generally top dollar money spinners they can be very useful if you want people on gamepass and the like, since they'll attract a different audience and are long enough that most will take multiple billing cycles to complete them. So have InXile make Fallout: Arizona. They could just about reskin Wasteland 2 to do that anyway.

Hello everyone! First of all thanks for creating such a beautiful Game! I wanted to ask if u Guys could add a Filter System for the Waypoints in the Game. As we know we can put down a flag and give it a specific Picture like the Cave, House, Food and more. After a while the Waypoints gets more and more and the Screen is kinda full of them. It would be decent if there was a way to filter them: Like for example : add a tab for Food (only own marked Food Waypoints are shown), a tab to Caves (only own marked Caves are shown) and same for the other Types. Thank u very much!

Yeah, on the one hand, that Obsidian has so much on its plate right now with the games it's currently working on bodes well for Obsidian and for us Obsidian fans. But on the other hand, if it means a prospective F:NV2 gets farmed out to another Xbox studio, I don't know if I like the sound of that. It especially bothers me that this may effectively kill the idea of a PoE3, at least for many years to come.

My fond memory of The Witcher is that I was gifted it by a friend on Steam, I played about 3 hours of it, realized I hated almost literally every single aspect of the game (whether it was gameplay, characters, storytelling, whatever), and proceeded to feel terrible that a friend gifted me a game that I loathed. That was the beginning and end of my Witcher experiences.

How many social credits do you lose when you're outed as a weeb in China?

Timespinner.

You're Under Arrest: The Movie (1999). Somehow, when I watched the four episode OVA, I completely overlooked this - probably because I tried to watch an episode of the show and immediately noped out. The OVA is cute and sincere character-driven fun with a pretty light amount of not particularly dangerous action - it's really about the two main characters with their mostly non-police related issues, and I liked that. The fifteen minutes or whatever I watched of the show was just unceasing moronic slapstick and low-brow humor with flanderized doppelgangers of the characters that quickly enraged me enough to not spend another minute on it. In contrast to both of those, the movie is a dead serious crime/action flick - it does not have any of the patheticness of the show, but it doesn't really do much with the characters either because everything is so hyper-focused on the plot and action. It was your classic "a criminal mastermind is staging attacks from multiple angles across the city, and we have to figure it out before it's too late!" kind of police/crime movie. All three of these (the OVA, the show, and the movie) are set in the same location with the same characters, and yet none of them really feel much at all alike as a whole. At least the movie was a pretty good action flick (in actual HD too!), but...action flicks aren't really particularly my thing, so it was kind of handicapped in how much I could like it - it needed to do a better job of really using its characters. It's possible for action films/shows (see Samurai Champloo), but it's pretty rare. Bonus points: the soundtrack was by Kenji Kawai (Miyu/Ghost in the Shell/other stuff), and it was kind of like listening to the Miyu soundtrack fused with something else, which while kind of weird for a film like this, was nice, so at least there was that. Texhnolyze to be resumed tomorrow.