#like i did ntrk

[plsleafmelon]

so today in a sad attempt to show that i was a nearl simp

i max levelled them (uncle is in the room !!) (ntrk is already m9 !!) (defender nearl is s1m3!!) and now i am Poor like. what was i doing. why did i feel the need to do this ????

#arknights #nearls #ok see like first of all #i was such a loser i was going to m9 all of them #like i did ntrk #i was going to do blemi #and uh normal nearls masteries goes all the way back to like cc3 or wtv heat pump cc was #zofia doesn't exist...yet #and uncle is literally in the room soon to be m9 bcs i love him #but nooo i was like man #this isnt simp enough #gotta max level them to prove a point #TO WHO AM I PROVING THIS TO #i am not a whale #i just came back from a hiatus (dv) #and like.... im amazed #that i even have lmd #okay i should stop omg #also anyone who wants to add me can add!! #if u need any op on support just dm me ig

[shuttershocky]

One of my favorite things about IS3 using Slay the Spire's Difficulty system of an extra challenge per layer rather than Easy - Normal - Hard mode is that it actually makes you come up with new approaches, rather than attempt old ideas with greater difficulty.

IS2 calamity was ultimately the same as regular mode once you learned all the bad relics you could get. Sure enemies had higher stats, but ultimately you were still running Guardknights, Berries, ASPD snipers, Spinach carries, etc.

IS3 on the other hand, gradually changes your approach over 15 waves, to the point where you're not running even remotely the same team comps anymore. Wave 15 is a totally different environment than Wave 1, the latter of which is just IS2 but without even needing Berries. You can slap Thorns into your team and call it a day. The usual Casters will incinerate everything. You can simply overpower most enemies without needing to learn their mechanics (I cleared Highmore without ever learning what she did)

But by Wave 15 you're considering very different things. No longer are you able to simply overpower enemies you don't like, not when those damn Skimming Sea Drifter enemies have 60k health and a ton of DEF and RES. No, now you NEED sources of control, whether that's Bind, Stun, Sleep, etc. Hope's tight with Wave 4's +1 Hope Cost, so now even 3 stars need to be weighed for hope efficiency, which means suddenly Kroos isn't an instant pick, but Spot is now VERY valuable for being a Block-3 1 hope operator that can heal and has evasion. Marksmen are also in total despair mode from how tough enemies are, but Kroos the Keen Glint—normally overshadowed by other Marksmen— is THE strongest 5 star and one of the strongest picks overall, boasting a long ranged rapidfire stun source to deal with UFOs and interrupt enemies, has a crit to get over DEF humps, and still has the Marksman trait of prioritizing flying enemies while having a 5 star cost.

Thorns and Surtr the I Win buttons of IS2? They're fucking gone dude they can't handle this kind of pressure considering their Hope costs. NTRK, a strong pick in IS2 but overshadowed by Surtr, instead comes into her own with her True damage on S3 and stun on landing. Hand of Diffusion Passenger? He's... Actually he's still kinda viable but he's definitely no longer able to solo carry a run now that bosses are 90 RES monstrosities. Evasion? Very powerful now with the relics that give +ATK after evading damage, making Ethan even stronger than he already was in IS2 (where he was always a 2nd pick after Jaye).

Kal'tsit? Wait no I think Kal'tsit is still Kal'tsit, especially with her module upgrade making Mon3tr a fast redeploy 2x stun bomb. Scratch that. Still really expensive Hope wise though.

Did you know Mr. Nothing with S2 and his module upgrade can solo stall The Last Knight once the boss hits 50% HP? The increased cold duration at half health works in Mr Nothing's favor. By freezing himself for 4 seconds, Nothing can't attack and thus activates his stun talent, and with the module upgrade, his stun lasts for 5 seconds instead of 4. This means he stuns Last Knight, hits him again to freeze himself while the boss is stunned, unfreezes after 4 seconds, then stuns Last Knight again for another 5 seconds before the guy can attack. This is the CN playerbase's secret to defeating Last Knight's bossfight without relying on crowd control relics. When they aim for an Ending 2 run, they keep Mr Nothing (and his usual partner Erato, who helps him stall the first 50% HP) in their pocket ready to stall.

#arknights

[raisengen]

I did enjoy CC10′s permanent map, but I feel like it falls short due to how powerful spammable True damage was, which you’re only getting from the cannon + 3-4 operators.

Having looked at a few high-risk and nicheknights runs on youtube, they all feel like versions of the same solution, rather than different solutions entirely. Blow stuff up with the cannon as much as possible, milk NTRK and Mon3tr for all they’re worth (if you have them), and some sort of stall/manipulation of Manfred and his long walk. I enjoyed figuring out how to do it, but I don’t feel any real ownership of the strategy I used.

It did have other traits I’ve come to value in a CC, though. The enemy spawns and paths were pretty well broken-up and understandable, and there was never too much going on at once in different places, unlike my personal least-favourites of CC5 and CC8 (lots of enemies coming at you constantly, lots of different types of enemy in the same lane, multiple lanes active at once, two bosses at once...). You could also stall the boss’s first phase just by throwing down a few healers, which lets you control the pace of the map and rearrange your team as you like.

Still, having some actual battle music would’ve been nice.

#Arknights #Contingency Contract

[shuttershocky]

How do you cope with the disappointment of not getting a limited character you wanted? I really crave Omertosa, but I only have like 12000 orundum stocked up right now, so there's a good chance I never get her

Just like NTRK in Texas' banner, Texas the Omertosa will rerun in a future limited banner, where you can spark her if you really want to guarantee her, so never say never!

But that's not what you want to hear right now. Let me tell you a story of gacha disappointment.

Older followers will remember this happening in real time, but I've been burned really badly twice in FGO. Really, really badly. This is why they implemented a sparking system years later badly. My luck in FGO has always been bad, but this was astounding the statistics level of bad.

FGO JP has a two year difference with FGO Global, a much larger waiting time than the 6 month difference in Arknights, but also plenty of time to plan in advance. By the time FGO released in English, JP already had Hassan-i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, Grand Assassin. I thought he was cool as shit, and I had about 1.5 years to save, so I thought this was in the bag.

FGO back then didn't (or maybe it still doesn't) have a cheap option like Arknights' monthly card. You paid money for rolling currency with no guarantee whatsoever. Since I'm not a gambling sort of person, I went entirely F2P. I only spent tickets on the banner, and all quartz (the orundrum equivalent) I'd get from dailies, events, quests, etc. And even then, I started saving tickets too half a year before King Hassan was due to arrive.

By the time King Hassan arrived in FGO English, I had enough tickets and quartz saved up to do about 300-350 rolls (I had about 900~ quartz and a lot of tickets, but the exact number i no longer remember. Back then, 30 quartz gave you a 10 roll instead of the current 10 roll + 1 free, and this was already a big upgrade from the original 40 quartz for a 10 roll that FGO JP had).

I was SO ready. I smugly thought I would maybe keep rolling after I'd get King Hassan to try for extra copies.

Not only did I not get him, I did not get a single 5 star in over 300 rolls.

I was incredulous. What the fuck was that? My friend showed me the math and said I had an equal chance of getting King Hassan on my first roll, and in FGO the chance of getting a 5 star is 1%, with the rateup being 0.8% (i think it was even lower back then. 0.6%?)

That was painful. That was almost two years of saving and I didn't even have a spook for a consolation prize. The math was so ridiculous i should have just entered the lottery, but with my luck it would have turned out the grand prize was murder.

BUT, I had the thought that surely after hitting rock bottom this hard and this improbably, it was never going to happen again right?

Fast forward two years or so. FGO JP announces Demon King Nobunaga. Nobu is one of my favorite characters, so I was all over that shit. It wasn't going to happen again. I had two full years warning this time. No more spending quartz on the two years in between; I wasn't just going to guarantee Maou Nobu, I was going to NP5 (max potential) her.

Two years of savings later and I had 900~ or so quartz. As a backup plan, I had two emergency banks: I had saved up all quartz fragments in the last THREE years (i just stopped converting them to quartz after a while out of laziness until I had Maou Nobu as a target), and I did not do a single character's interlude (Paradox Simulation + story quest) or Strengthening Quests (you have to beat a quest to get a buff for your units in FGO) so I had all the quartz from those ready.

All in all that would have been something like... 420~ rolls? I also had a lot of tickets too that i just hadn't spent before.

I didn't get a single copy of Maou. I used the emergency stores. I got one 5 star character in the very last roll and it was someone I already had (Arjuna)

I thought nothing could have been worse than the King Hassan rolls. I was wrong. So very wrong. Massive pain. Two years gone to waste. I was so angry that I blew up at a whale friend commiserating with me by saying that at least it wasnt as bad as him, who also failed with about the same number of rolls but he paid money for all of those. I went into a rant that I had it way worse because I didn't spend money for it, I had patience and mastery over the urge for instant gratification that rich people like him could never understand. I should have been rewarded. I deserved better. I felt it so hard that I did what the King Hassan banner couldn't do to me and dropped money for the 100 dollar quartz pack. I got another 5 star. It was another dupe (Altera). I'd be eating less for the rest of the month (100 USD in Filipino currency is 5000+ pesos. It's a lot.)

Then I admitted defeat. It just wasn't meant to be.

And that's why I don't really fear the Arknights banners at all. I studied the orundrum income carefully for a F2P player and for someone on the monthly card and found reaching the 300 roll spark is quite doable via constantly using the recruitment system to get duplicates to buy tickets on the store and only getting the 5 star guarantee on every new banner. If there's ever someone I really, really want who is limited and I can't guarantee them on this banner, I can absolutely guarantee them twice, maybe even 3x over for the banner they appear in next year. It's a year's wait, and I've had plenty of practice saving for two. Having a free ten roll and a free roll every day on a limited banner also means there's always hope until the very last day. You can even manufacture your own orundrum stores by burning your orirock cubes and devices in your factories (Noooooooo you need those!) if you're truly desperate.

How do I cope with the disappointment of not being able to get what I wanted in Arknights?

I've experienced much worse.

#arknights

[shuttershocky]

just curious, but how do u decide who to raise? do u play meta or just build who u want?

This would be a good opportunity to flex my current E2 roster. Forgive the arrogance, it's been a very long time since I last posted mine.

I build meta units so I can curbstomp any event even when I'm feeling extremely lazy to actually make proper clears. However, I also make way too much LMD and XP to just spend on meta units so I also raise whoever I want on a whim, which is why I have a maxed Skyfire with a level 3 module, E2 Savage with masteries, max Tachanka, max Conviction, max Beehunter, and other fun picks that would be rather eyebrow raising for most Arknights players. Nearly all my E2 units have at least one skill M3d, and favorites like Dorothy and Tachanka have multiple (or even all) skills M3d.

Whenever I feel like engaging in an event, I'll play teams that will probably not be called "good" anytime soon, but what I find personally enjoyable. Tachanka, Mostima, and Carnelian are some of my favorite operators to have fun with, and within their niches or in the right strategy they're still very strong.

If I'm busy with work or obligations or maybe even other games and I just want to AFK farm, that's when Surtr and Ch'en Alter and Thorns etc all come out to play. 90% of the time, they crush stages with very little effort needed on my part.

If a stage turns out to be actually hard enough that I can't brute force with meta picks and im still too busy/lazy to play, that's what E2L90 Kal'tsit and NTRK are for.

Kal'tsit and Nearl the Radiant Knight aren't seen as the "strongest" of all operators due to having more limitations than the super meta ops, but their special mechanics like True damage or shields or ignoring Deployment limit are so good at cheesing high difficulty content that these two are the ones I consider Cheat units (might move Mlynar to this list actually even if he is considered meta, he's broken even for the godtier ops to the point of feeling unfair).

At a certain point though, once you get really, really strong, you kinda start curbstomping most content even without the latest in meta. I got Pozy and raised her to E2 with skill masteries, but I ended up not actually using her all that much when either buff army Exusiai or Schwarz with S3 did what I would have used Pozy for, and did it just fine.

If you're at the point where you're clearing all content without a problem, I truly do recommend raising whoever you find fun instead of always chasing after the tier lists. You'll have a much more enjoyable time.

#arknights

[shuttershocky]

Shutters. NL-EX-8. How do I without resorting to stuff like ling.

Blood Knight's weakness is that his boss mechanic makes him susceptible to sandwiching him between operators like so

Since Blood Knight can stun operators, what you can do is trap him between two tanks (labeled T) where he will be blocked by the first tank, stun them, walk headfirst into the second tank, and get trapped between the two tanks' collision boxes where even if he stuns one tank, the other will wake up and continue blocking him. Since the guy hits really, really hard (at Phase 2 he has 3,300 ATK) you will need really tough Defenders like Hoshiguma, Nian, or Saria to hold him in place, but honestly if you've got really strong medics you can do what I did and sandwich him in between NTRK S3 and Surtr S3 to give Dikaiopolis the most painful spitroasting of his life.

Now he'll be calling in swarms of Blood Blades to heal him, but that's when you make this sandwich a double with extra cheese and put two block-3 units around them to block additional Blood Blades as well as the enemies coming in, while the ranged tiles around them are used for healing and DPS.

A cheesy way to deal with the wave of Blood Blades is Silverash. Since he can hit enemies hiding inside shadow due to his talent hitting invisible enemies, you can actually wipe out the Blood Blades swarm on the bottom of the map by placing Silverash with S3 early, preparing for when Blood Knight moves from Phase 1 to Phase 2.

Another cheesy pick for this stage is Nightingale. if you have Nightingale, you can just ignore the Nova Knights bombarding you with their AOE skills. It's a huge load off your mind and lets you freely concentrate on beating BK's face in. If you don't have Nightingale though, you'll need a stun source to interrupt the Nova Knights when they channel their skills. Projekt Red is great for this, but even just Gravel baiting the Nova Knights early can do the job.

#Arknights