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It's 2 x PL. So 14 for MC and 20 for Prestiged SC. 14 per tick is a bit above what robust can regen, so isn't that big. Once more it has to be a significant drawback. SC gets arguably a harsher penalty which doesn't seem fair. PL scaling is annoying though since it makes any PL boost a drawback. I might be tempted to tune it a little to 3 + (char lvl x 0.5), up to 13 at level 20. 13 is a much more satisfying number than 14 (cause it's rounded 2/3 of 20). Not much of a boost but just cutting the PL boost drawback.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (2021). Growing up, I watched quite a bit of Anthony Bourdain because my mom followed most of his shows, though I was more familiar with No Reservations than Parts Unknown. Anyways, it was a nice documentary covering some of his humble beginnings as a chef, the way he and his perspective on life and people changed as he travelled the world and saw how the lowest rungs of society had to live and yet would still find ways to make it work and be happy - in a fairly direct comparison to Anthony being able to be anywhere he'd like whenever he wanted, not to mention all the wealth and privilege...and yet his perplexing inability to ever be content and happy. It's frustrating to see someone who just can't...ever let themselves appreciate what they have, but I suppose that's part of the human condition. The documentary provides a little bit of closure on his life, and I appreciated that it ended not with people just being sad and weepy about the whole thing, but also showed at least a little measure of anger as well: the final moment of the film is one of his best and lifelong friends destroying a beautiful public mural of the man, and why not? Those of us who live with the fallout, both public and personal, of a suicide have feelings about the whole thing, too. Being angry, being sad, feeling guilt, maybe even being relieved about it are all equally valid.

Berzekers isn't supposed to be a strict upgrade over barbarian though. +2 PEN, + 2 AR, and 30% Hit to Crit is top tier material. It has to have a significant drawback, not just one that forces you into Mowdyr/DoCB. I won't use Blood Storm with Zerkers cause you won't control the Frenzy duration as well. Voidward and BPM Moon Godlike help mitigating the damages as well. BPM Savage Defiance buff helps too. Also indirectly since it doesn't cancel/make redundant Hardy anymore since it is no more a Robust inspiration. At high level, you will have way more ways of mitigating the health loss, so the scaling is nasty but probably appropriate. But a Berzeker best interest may not be to be 100% of time under Frenzy effect. Basically you use it when you have health to spare, as for Sacred Immolation.

What do you mean? The Berserker's self damage from Blood Frenzy is not different from the Spirit Frenzy or non-upgraded Frenzy self damage. The Berserker's Frenzy base damage is actually fine imo (most players don't have a probem with it in the early game) - it just scales steeply which is very noticably at higher levels. This is fine if you raise CON and don't drop it. Then your health pool can grow in a somewhat similar fashion as the self damage rises. I did so with my latest Helwalker/Berserker build where I even maxed CON. Even with the "synergy" of Berserker's self damage + Helwalker's <=50% damage bonus (which grants you tons and tons of wounds) I had almost zero problems with knocking myself out. I didn't even pick Savage Defiance. But I used Voidward Ring and Death's Maw to get some Damage Reduction. I'm sure that helped, too. Anyway I was pretty surprised myself that the build was so relatively sturdy. With a pet that heals on kill (see Abraham for example) and a somewhat decent healer in the party this can become a no-problem imo. But maybe the scaling could be a bit less aggressive. After all it is pretty steep and climbs more quickly than the average Barb's health pool can keep up. You have to relaly know your stuff in order to not getting frustrated at higher levels. Maybe a passive that lowers the self damage could be introduced or something like that. Making it an option...? A bit like Fighter's upgraded Constant Recovery passive.

@Shai Huludno mods, Doru was "easy" on sc monk (naked) with long pain and resonant touch

I think that Blackjacket's Rapid Recovery should be buffed a bit, so that the marginal benefit of taking it to improve Constant Recovery is the same as a regular Fighter. It makes sense to have a weaker Constant Recovery because that's the subclass penalty, but I don't think it makes sense that you get less out of spending a skill point in one particular passive ability as compared to a normal fighter. i.e.: Currently Fighter Constant Recovery regen rate is A, with Rapid Recovery regen rate is A + B. Right now Blackjacket Constant Recovery is roughly A/2, and with Rapid Recovery it is roughly A/2 + B/2. I think with Rapid Recovery it should instead be A/2 + B, so that just like a normal fighter the benefit of putting a skill point in Rapid Recovery is B. IIRC this is how other upgrades to core class passives work, so that all subclasses benefit equally. So Ascendant Soul Whip upgrade gets you the same marginal benefit as a normal cipher does.

Hasbro Slapped by Bank of America For 'Destroying Customer Goodwill' - Bell of Lost Souls

Ahem, « somewhat » cheesy?

It's the "silence between"

Actually, with high CON and a bit of DR as described above, I use it 100% of times (vanilla version) at lvl 20 still. True, but don't forget that besides the Confusion you will always have concealed health which is a serious drawback for all unexperienced players, too. As I said I'm totally fine with the self damage personally - but I think it scales too steeply for "normal" players. Starting higher and scaling less aggressively might not be a bad suggestion I think.

GIANT ROBO "The Day the Earth Stood Still", Yasuhiro Imagawa's celebration of the works of Mitsuteru Yokoyama is a fantastic OAV series, IMO. I watched them on VHS when they originally came out; the wait for that last OAV was excruciating... I then watched the DVDs a few years later. Have the Blurays, but not watched them yet. 90S animation + classic 60s character designs + good story, imo. There are some great moments that I still think about from time to time even though it's been a few years since my last watch. There's an unfortunate issue that the production company ended the OAVs early, so the end sets up the antagonist for the next story arc that didn't happen, but you get a satisfying end to this story arc, I think even if the setup for the next arc is left hanging. I've not seen all the Ginrei specials (made between OAVs by the team using the Robo cast), though. Have them, just never sat and watched them yet (wanted to do it with my next rewatch of the OAVs).

I also think that the scaling feels too aggressive and maybe Base damage vs. Scaling damage could be readjusted. BPM, however, already buffs the effects of CON and savage defiance, which should make it easier too manage berserker's frenzy. In addition, mage slayer and corpse eater are also buffed and hence the draws of Berserker might feel more pronounced now.

The attack at Vuhledar is just few weeks old. If we do not count the RU failure at Pavlivka, there was aa stalemate since the summer. On the other hand, RU started to push hard at Luhansk - Kharkiv Oblast borders this week. Especially at Dvorichne area near the Oskil River, where it could be said, that they had partial success at few villages. edit: assessment of the situation at Vuhledar by Russian sources:

Why ya'll yakking in music thread without posting any music.

It doesnt concern me in the slightest even it true, the Russians have been pushing numerous false narratives and hyperbole that they " fighting the US\NATO" to justify there military failures and lackluster performance so the US helping with navigation coordinates is fine. But saying all that the article does say " Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said in the statement. “The Ukrainians are responsible for finding targets, prioritizing them and then ultimately deciding which ones to engage. The U.S. does not approve targets, nor are we involved in the selection or engagement of targets.” The senior Ukrainian official described the targeting process, generally: Ukrainian military personnel identify targets they want to hit, and in which location, and that information is then sent up to senior commanders, who then relay the request to U.S. partners for more accurate coordinates. The Americans do not always provide the requested coordinates, the official said, in which case the Ukrainian troops do not fire"

I beat Doru solo for the first time recently using a tried and true build, a FF contemplative, wielding Magran's Favor and Scordeo's, and using SoT to prolong Blade Cascade once it procs. He goes down very quickly with this build. I beat all the mega bosses with this build. Belaranga was the easiest and the Sigilmaster was the longest and most annoying of them. I've beaten them before with parties, but strangely it seemed much easier with a well-build and somewhat cheesy solo toon.

Yep, I tried out the ranger build, doesn't work at all. I misread the "hardy companion" description, thought the healing lasted the duration, if that were true you could keep up healing and use the boar as a tank, but the healing only lasts less than half, which with max INT is about 16 seconds, not nearly long enough for the potions of enlightenment to replenish. IDK why the duration is so short, savage defiance lasts like 60 seconds (granted costs 2 rage, but still lasts 2x longer per resource). I'd written a nice script to keep up shadowed hunters (the intuitive part) which you CAN keep up, and thought hardy companion healed for 39 seconds with max INT leaving a bit extra, hoping distraction training would replenish enough resources I could use an occasional hunter's fang (turns out melee only) or twinned shot, but...none of it works because you can't keep the pet alive. Shadowed Hunters it turns out doesn't even work when the pet is dead. You do gain perma-nimble and tenacious from vengeful grief which is okay but not worth the huge loss in accuracy and hit to crit on my hearth orlan (bonded grief, hearth orlan, distraction training, stalker's link) for a net -30 accuracy and -10 hit to crit (and -2 might -2 resolve). Nimble is unfortunately not good enough for running past dorudugan, he will brutal cleave you. Swift might work, for this part of the theory anyway. But there is no way in hell you can damage him fast enough, even if your bows didn't break, and I had to console in 4 legendary war bows to have a chance of them not breaking and having enough penetration (requires hot razor skewers overdraw and a dead pet to get 18 pen) You are indeed correct about the damage to health being unaffected by health-modifying stuff and as I suspected helfire iron is not even affected by dorudugan being weakened, he still heals 100% of his damage, making heart seeker a one-shot max health debuff for 4 bond (which *can* miss btw). I give this build an F for solo. Pretty funny how one little thing can make or break a build. If Hardy Companion had a longer duration on the healing I think this might actually have worked. You can't keep up hardy companion, the boar dies in tough encounters. He dies, your accuracy goes to **** and you get aggroed. And now you can't cast your nifty invisible / heal / intuitive ability shadowed hunters, so you die. Could revive him but that costs 2 bond, and you'll still run out of resources before you've even touched doru. To be fair it may not have worked anyway for this encounter because brutal cleave would eventually stack so high the boar could be one-shot in helfire barrages, but in general hardy companion is the lynchpin allowing the boar to tank while you DPS ranged. @Elric GaladBuff Heal Companion and Hardy Companion! 20 health per 3 seconds for 6 seconds is just pitiful. Needs to be at least 12 seconds to work with enlightenment potions at max INT. The pet buffs (resilient companion etc.) could also use a boost. Had most of them but he does 2 damage and gets crit every time with overpen. Just my 2 cents. This is the least effective solo build I've tried so far. Some MC ranger builds could have potential, like I've played seer before and it is pretty decent because Pain Block + Borrowed Instinct etc., the L8+ ranger abilities are just bad compared to the ability to get 7 levels of cipher goodies (or chanter, or whatever). For ranger builds to be viable the pet needs to tank, and it can't tank without help from other classes.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/what-russia-got-wrong-moscow-failures-in-ukraine-dara-massicot Interesting read on what the Russians screwed up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/09/ukraine-himars-rocket-artillery-russia/ Was wondering what gain is there in advertising the US' role being hands on to that degree with their long rang weapons, but was reminded that this is marketing for ATACMS.

As far as I have experimented, damage conversion to health is not affected by healing done or healing received, but it is affected by Might / % damage increase modifiers (on the outgoing end) and % damage taken modifiers (on the receiving end). So for example Shattered Vengeance, Assassin/Helwalker passive or Sworn Enemy (all on the receiving end) will increase how much health you convert from the (increased) damage dealt.

Oh, one more tech note re: Hogwart's - if you do get a CTD and then find the game won't load/crashes during the pre-shade screen when you try to play again, you can try going into the appdata/Local for the game. In the Saved folder (not saved games) there's a Config folder. I deleted that - the game just creates a new one - and it fired up perfectly again. You just have to redo all your video etc. settings again. So far only had the one CTD, over 8-10 hours game on. To get consistent fps outdoors as well as indoors (again, 4k) I had to lower a few more settings but outside of lighting looking slightly more flat sometimes, I don't feel the "look" of the game changes that much. At High/Ultra view distance I haven't noticed any distant pop-in, either. Maybe that doesn't show up until low or medium view distance, not sure.

Little bit more insights on alleged Russian offensive

Played a bunch of hogwarts on the Steam Deck, and it’s much more playable. Still stutters a bit but not as frequent. Everything is on low settings but that’s probably all that’s needed for a 720p screen

Ah, yes, I was being unclear here: the "without prior notice" part was not meant in the legal sense, i.e. firing an employee immediately due to egregious misconduct, but the way it was delivered, on stage, right after the final performance of the tour. That is a point in time picked precisely for one thing, to hurt as much as possible. It was payback - for slights perceived or real, well, that is something else, but you'll get no argument from me that Tarja most likely had it coming, but I did and do think that the public spectacle the firing became was unbecoming and unprofessional of the group. How they dealt with Anette later just compounded that impression. No, that is probably right, there has to be a reason why the rest of the group basically made it about "remove Tarja or we'll leave", but regardless, that is not a reason to do this in such an unprofessional manner, and from what I have read over the years, she wanted to pursue other interests and would have left anyway. It logically followed with the rumor mill endlessly churning on about how Tuomas fired her over unrequited love. Not that I doubt that he was actually in love with Tarja, as Ever Dream is as good a love letter to Tarja as any, but the firing was certainly not over that. Anyway, that Tarja did not really want to be a part of the group any more was fairly evident for me in two things, first, I watched the End of Innocence documentary, which contained a lot of rather subtle clues about what she was thinking at the time, and second her attitude at the concert I was back in 2004, where we actually managed to stumble upon the group after the concert on their way to the tour bus. Sure, it was a long day as there were ridiculous promotional events all day long prior to the concert (at which she appeared to not really want to be there, basically half-assing her performance for much of the show), but the guys were not bothered by being asked for another round of autographs, and even agreed to taking some pictures. Tarja? Rolled her eyes, scoffed, and ran off. Okay, I get it, that is exactly the reaction I would have had if that happened to me after a hard day's work, but still, short of directly stating it, it's hard to telegraph "I do not want to be here" any clearer, and if that attitude translated into her behaviour on the tour, which is undoubtedly has, then it is no wonder that she was removed from the group.

OH, OH, OH, Ansel photo works with this game! I don't have an distance-border/situation unlocker like I did for FFXV. but it works with my Ansel hotkey, no Experience install required. I wonder if any other games were like that and I never noticed/realized. Game fun-o-meter for me just went up three-fold! But more importantly! Sadly, no camera unlock script means I can't use it at certain times, like when you actually pet the cat. Probably won't work during combat either, is my guess. Good enough tho!

Her (2013). If you've seen Blade Runner 2049... In other news, I didn't see Joaquin Phoenix as being a creepy psychopath in a film for the first time since...well, ever. Admittedly, I've only seen about 4 Joaquin Pheonix films, so it's not the biggest sample size. I saw this one some years ago and thought it was fine-ish, and I can truly honestly say that I have zero memory of Kevin Costner even being in that film. I guess he's the main character. Well, I guess that's just proof on how utterly unremarkable he is to me, .

Note: the chr. creation felt generic vs. an ability to make a unique looking chr, but at least the creation screen wasn't a total lie vs. in-game result. This is the sorting hat thing, not an outfit, but I am looking forward to maybe finding silly wearables...

I've unfortunately seen both of those. Kevin Costner is the worst.

The Balloon Wars have begun.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/north-korean-balloon-briefly-spotted-over-south-korea-seoul-says-2023-02-06/

I'm pretty sure I already knew this from doing that stupid horse racing mission. I walked it once and raced it once and got the same time.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/dragon-age-inquisition-horses-sprinting-lie-creative-director-john-epler/ “When you ‘sprint’ on a horse in DAI(,) it doesn’t really do much because (Frostbite) couldn’t stream in levels fast enough, so we just added speed lines and changed the camera so it felt faster,” explained Epler.

Stunning Green Comet Will Be Closest to Earth Today, at Peak Brightness : ScienceAlert

Not surprising with XBOX going all in on their own digital showcase. BTW, the surprise release Hi-Fi Rush is very fun so far.

Oh man. Yes. Mimimi is a german Independent Studio that in recent years carved it's own nieche making Commando inspired titles. They appeared without nowhere with a really solid demo for Shadow Tactics: Blades of Shogun, that was "like Desperados but in Edo Japan". Interestingly enough the project almost killed the studio, as they went all in on the project - and came dangerously close to shutting down. Smart and clean interpretation of the forgotten genre, with some decent story: With how well they did the formula THQ Nordic hired them to do sequel to Desperados - they IP they were a holder off. Desp3 is pretty much a more polished version of Shadow Tactics, mostly using the same character kits and enemy archetypes with one new addition (which seems to be a jumping point to more fantastical Shadow Gambit). Both titles are very handcrafted in nature, with pre-determined mission order and pre-determined party compositions, so Shadow Gambits ambition seems to be to expand the underlying systemic sandbox those games have going for them. If they look like something you would like, I would recommend giving them a go. They are both excellent real-time tactics. Desp3 is a more polished of the two, with some welcome QoL improvemenets, but I personally prefered the vibe of SHadow Tactics - the M-Rated nature of Desp3 felt a bit off to me. There is also standalone expansion to Shadow Tactics - Aiko's choice, but it is a short DLC mission pack best played after original game. It is standalone, as it's been actually developed after Desp3 before going all deep on project Süßkartoffel, and team didn't want to mess with the old game, but it is best thought of as a minor DLC to the original - similar to the one Desp3 got.

After some more testing utilising the power of Apotheosis here are some fresh insights: Adding the Adventurer's GUID (this will be in brackets of the .character file of an exported Adventurer) to the CompanionGuidString of CompanionData seems to stop the Adventurer from being exported again. Adding progression tables to the linked CompanionData of an Adventurer, and using a script that does RemoveFromParty and then AddToParty opens the class selection menu allowing you to change their class in the same way as a sidekick/companion. By making additions to relevant .conversationbundles, an Adventurer can have party banter and comment on points of interest pretty seamlessly. While Companions will react and track their relationship to an Adventurer, reaction to topics and tracking of relationships isn't functional on the Adventurer's side for some reason. Quest creation is possible with Apotheosis, and while I haven't figured out all the aspects of it, quests that involve an Adventurer can be done. The following video of an adventurer based on Durance shows some examples of the above: Class and Quest Pop-up 3:45 and Companion banter at 4:15. Still can't figure out a way to get character to face each other during a staring contest conversation.

...what kind of game am I playing?

Having the same problem with a game with friends. Happens when you get into combat while having natural explorer, which normally resolves if you finish the fight (not always). Although, hitting a passive bug and letting it live or killing it, will lock this issue for a very long time. It's almost as if having natural explorer is giving the player its respective % move speed buff as a negative debuff instead (level 3 natural explorer -50% move speed). Tested it out with friends that don't have the mutation active, go into combat and run side by side, which looks like they are moving twice as fast as me at base move speed.