anonraja

[anonraja]

So a +11 s5 SoA wep + +10 r21 Tenebrous + potentially free 200 ERP at some point this summer?

While I love freebies and feel Elsword's in an overall healthier state than it was when I quit initially, I feel this is only going to exacerbate some existing issues:

people don't know how to play their class due to being rushed to Pruinaum Outskirts + Tirnog now

they don't know the game has mechanics since they're skipping over/rushing through the content that introduces more difficult gameplay

they're not going to have a set-up that deals damage unless they're a veteran player

Don't misunderstand; I honestly think helping people reach Pruinaum is fine and making it easier to build up Tenebrous is fine, but skipping over Abyss and dropping you straight into Serpentium? That's questionable, especially with the amount of times I still die in Berthe due to newer players not understanding the howl mechanic and refusing to learn. I'm always down to help others, but the amount of people who don't read chat and keep doing the same thing again and again is wild.

Honestly, I think giving away ERP for free like this (if the early translation is correct) is dumb since leveling ERP is one of the ways players get to know their characters. I also know older players tend to use ERP to help gauge another player's capabilities, and this is only going to make them more wary. Like I guess anyone who's currently below 400 ERP better start grinding.

[anonraja]

Changelog #66 - Because this wasn't finished yesterday

Apsara

Completely rewritten

Weeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllll for the most part

It's really only skill descriptions that remain unchanged, along with a couple of opinions

Am I rewriting my other guides? I have no plans to at this time. I was just really unhappy with this one.

[anonraja]

Changelog #65 - Quick balance update? For my Devi? It's more likely than you think.

Devi

Updated Life Swap , [Mod] Life Swap, [Mod] Falling Dragon, & [Mod] Shadoweave

Updated Opinions for Life Swap, [Mod] Life Swap, and Unleashed Chi

Updated Example Build(s)

Updated Conclusion

Surya

Updated Joining

[anonraja]

Changelog #64 - Mod (E) Opinions

I've included the KR Feb 27th balance patch to increase the time it takes before I update again.

Apsara

Updated [Mod] Falling Dragon & [Mod] Shadoweave to reflect how they're named in-game

Updated Ultimate Spearmanship

Updated Opinions for [Mod] Falling Dragon & [Mod] Shadoweave

Devi

Updated [Mod] Falling Dragon & [Mod] Shadoweave to reflect how they're named in-game

Updated Chi Release

Updated Opinions for Life Swap, Unleashed Chi, [Mod] Life Swap, [Mod] Falling Dragon, & [Mod] Shadoweave

Updated Example Builds

Updated Progression; tl;dr: Falling Dragon is a viable stack option

Updated Conclusion

Shakti

Updated [Mod] Falling Dragon & [Mod] Shadoweave to reflect how they're named in-game

Edited skills to reflect my Surya guide where instead of listing their [type] under the relevant passive, the [type] is listed in the skill description

Jumping off the above, the skill will also have [Soul Orbs] if it spawns regeneration orbs

Updated Spectral Walk, Fox Spirit, Repose of Souls, & Mana Release

Updated Opinions for Fox Spirit, [Mod] Falling Dragon, & [Mod] Shadoweave

Updated Example Builds

Updated Progression; tl;dr: Falling Dragon and Shadoweave are viable stack options

Updated Conclusion

Surya

Updated [Mod] Falling Dragon & [Mod] Shadoweave to reflect how they're named in-game

Updated Joining

Updated Opinions for [Mod] Falling Dragon & [Mod] Shadoweave

Updated Example Builds

Updated Progression; tl;dr: both Falling Dragon and Shadoweave are viable stack options

[anonraja]

I love it. I could not imagine a funnier result. Don't know what the fuck they'll do for Deer Bro and Baldr, but I really really REALLY hope Sharena gets something that ties her to both Peony and Henriette. Perhaps Sharena will be the first dancer for CYL? I doubt it, but one can dream. I feel they're just going to go with the "safe" Sothis Regalia attire for M!Byleth, but I'll be pleasantly surprised if they model him after Jeralt.

I'm fairly certain one of the reasons Heroes characters are doing well over others at this point is due to people who actually play mainline titles quitting the game. This trend would leave people who only know the franchise through Heroes, or those who's first introduction to the franchise was through Heroes and a lot of main characters from easily accessible titles are already in. This could also account for Three Houses still doing so well years later; people got introduced to 3H through Heroes and picked it up since they had a Switch or people picked up 3H as their first title then found out about Heroes. Whatever the case, it's likely CYL 10 will have at least one winner from Heroes and another winner from 3H. Unless a new Heroes OC that resonates with Heroes voters is introduced (either because thirsty or they genuinely like the character), I think Heroes voters might jump to Heroes Anna to complete the set or Freyja as she's still ranking highly.

I can't say for certain why Engage isn't doing well, but it's clear it's a combination of factors when even Reba Buhr campaigning for Ivy didn't work despite Mela Lee doing the same for adult Tiki in CYL 6 and Sam Slade helped boost Baldr's votes (although I think a lot of people were voting for Baldr anyway because she's pretty). Granted, Mela Lee's video for Tiki also came at a time when people were upset about adult Tiki getting zero representation. But this should be a similar case: people are upset about a lack of Engage representation, it's taken two years to get a decent amount of the cast in and some are still stuck as limited units (like Ivy herself being stuck not once but twice). I don't know exactly what it is, but it's more than just people quitting Heroes and vote splitting. Maybe the characters just didn't resonate with people? Maybe the game didn't sell well compared to other modern Fire Emblem titles so there's just less overlap between people who bought and played/finished Engage with Heroes players? There's likely more factors than that at play, but those two might be the main ones?

MY BABIES! THEY DID SO WELL!!! I'm going all in on Azura next year tbh. I love Sylvain, he's one of my absolute favorites, but I really want Azura to win.

I hope Tsubasa being Top 5 for women forces IntSys to see there's a clear and active fanbase for TMS that's still playing Heroes, but I think she's gonna need to pull off a win for that to happen. I really hope TMS voters will be able to go all in on her next year just to try and force her into the Top 3. Looking at Itsuki's votes, they can probably force a women's Top 2 for her if they all go all in on Tsubasa right at the start instead of swapping midway through.

It's interesting that Grima had more votes than Reinhardt, but seemingly does NOT count as a male. This implies IntSys might view Grima as female since F!Robin is seen as the "canon" vessel. We would need more data overall to 100% confirm that as it's also entirely possible IntSys views Grima as being genderless. Kinda want to see which side Grima would fall on if they clearly made the cut for Top 10 overall since it almost seems like they were excluded based on some sort of internal technicality.

[anonraja]

I've been farming for so long today and I've only gotten a single Mod E book. How can the drop rate be this abysmal?

[anonraja]

I agree. Honestly, it'd just be a disappointment if it was just some hooded figure.

But, plot twist, it's just Grima like how they've started to use Fomortiis instead of Lyon which, ngl, would be kinda disappointing but I wouldn't be mad.

Based on the CYL Top 5 per title, the results are gonna be funny regardless of who wins.

M!Byleth most likely nabbed a spot considering he was top of 3 Hopes and 3 Houses. The other men's spot is entirely up in the air between Deer Bro/Sigurd/Fomortiis/maybe even Sylvain if enough people swapped to him.

But could you IMAGINE if M!Byleth didn't win anyway? Like how hilarious that would be?

Either Deer Bro won leaving Sharena in the dust, Sharena won despite having less votes because the men's side was more contentious, both of them won, OR neither of them won. All we definitively know right now is Deer Bro had more votes than Sharena who had more votes than Baldr.

Who the fuck knows for the women's side. It could be Azura as she's been very consistent over the years and it's possible enough people have moved to her since a lot of other obvious contenders have already won. If enough voters moved to Sharena, she might have obtained enough to make the cut. Ivy's VA campaigned for her so she could've gotten just enough of a push despite Engage voters still being super split. Baldr's VA also campaigned for her character so we could potentially be looking at a Sharena & Baldr win. It's possible people are tired of IntSys ignoring TMS and successfully pushed Tsubasa just enough. We just don't have enough information.

Imagine if Grima actually made Top 10 for men. This means he has a decent chance of winning next year. Like what are they gonna do if he wins? Make a 3rd Robin?

[anonraja]

Based on the CYL Top 5 per title, the results are gonna be funny regardless of who wins.

M!Byleth most likely nabbed a spot considering he was top of 3 Hopes and 3 Houses. The other men's spot is entirely up in the air between Deer Bro/Sigurd/Fomortiis/maybe even Sylvain if enough people swapped to him.

But could you IMAGINE if M!Byleth didn't win anyway? Like how hilarious that would be?

Either Deer Bro won leaving Sharena in the dust, Sharena won despite having less votes because the men's side was more contentious, both of them won, OR neither of them won. All we definitively know right now is Deer Bro had more votes than Sharena who had more votes than Baldr.

Who the fuck knows for the women's side. It could be Azura as she's been very consistent over the years and it's possible enough people have moved to her since a lot of other obvious contenders have already won. If enough voters moved to Sharena, she might have obtained enough to make the cut. Ivy's VA campaigned for her so she could've gotten just enough of a push despite Engage voters still being super split. Baldr's VA also campaigned for her character so we could potentially be looking at a Sharena & Baldr win. It's possible people are tired of IntSys ignoring TMS and successfully pushed Tsubasa just enough. We just don't have enough information.

Imagine if Grima actually made Top 10 for men. This means he has a decent chance of winning next year. Like what are they gonna do if he wins? Make a 3rd Robin?

[anonraja]

Yes! That's it! That's exactly why he reads as so fake to me!

Honestly been wondering how much of his persona is dictated by higher ups and how much is actually him.

And I do agree with your tags. The man does not deserve all the backlash and abuse he receives, but that's unfortunately a problem with a lot of companies with one or two public faces. I'm just talking about him here because the way he tried to pivot from the transparency talk is just unprofessional and his unprofessionalism in general is getting a little grating. You can tell he either had little to no PR training or a higher up told him to deal with it asap then get back to business as usual, maybe both.

You are so real for this GM always feels a little unprofessional to me

Yeah, GM Raiden feels kind of fake. I think, in part, it's because he's trying to appeal to Elsword's target audience (teenagers), but a lot of players seem to actually be in their 20's or early 30's. I understand part of GM Raiden's job as the current head PR/community person is to try and foster a good relationship with the player base, but it gets a bit obnoxious when I just see him memeing for most of the interactions I happen to catch.

Then when he fumbles on a topic, it's hard. I get that part of it is due to him having to follow company policy, but some of it is all him. Like his Spongebob gif after talking about transparency just... really hits wrong. It somewhat feels like he's kinda complaining about having to deal with it to an extent? Then again, I don't think Elsword's had a good PR/community person in... years now? I remember GM Moshup constantly putting his foot in his mouth, too.

[anonraja]

You are so real for this GM always feels a little unprofessional to me

Yeah, GM Raiden feels kind of fake. I think, in part, it's because he's trying to appeal to Elsword's target audience (teenagers), but a lot of players seem to actually be in their 20's or early 30's. I understand part of GM Raiden's job as the current head PR/community person is to try and foster a good relationship with the player base, but it gets a bit obnoxious when I just see him memeing for most of the interactions I happen to catch.

Then when he fumbles on a topic, it's hard. I get that part of it is due to him having to follow company policy, but some of it is all him. Like his Spongebob gif after talking about transparency just... really hits wrong. It somewhat feels like he's kinda complaining about having to deal with it to an extent? Then again, I don't think Elsword's had a good PR/community person in... years now? I remember GM Moshup constantly putting his foot in his mouth, too.

[anonraja]

After replying to two feedback threads about transparency the GM posted this:

I understand it's likely to try and lighten the mood, but it feels tone deaf, especially as it's coming from the current public face of NA/INT.

[anonraja]

Yeah, it really doesn't make sense at this point. But I guess they just weren't aware that there may be some data mined info on elwiki? It's just kinda a mess since elwiki is the only source of semi-accurate information. Though, EternalDream did post the KR equivalent of elwiki (information about classes are under Character & Job Change) and made sure to state all information acquired there is through rigorous testing so there's likely a lot of errors.

You can see GM Raiden's full comments in player-feedback under the threads "Why do we have to try and get your attention" by Zerato and "Breaking down the NA feedback process: What's being pushed for us?" by Jordanなら.

It's absolutely wild how the official Elsword discord server banned elwiki then unbanned it 4 hours later.

It's also wild why people have to go to a third party in the first place to figure out how exactly their character's skills work. It's 2025. Why can't KoG make the skill tooltips actually useful?

Like how hard is it to write "damage% x (hit count)" instead of "damage% multi-hit"? Admittedly, I don't know how coding works, but I would assume hit counts have to be hard coded into the game itself. So couldn't they just copy paste the hit count into the tooltip? Even if they can't copy paste, it would still take only a couple seconds at most to write "x (hit count)".

Then there's a couple passives that just straight up don't say what they do in game. For example, CA's Bygone Days still does not list its effects. Sure, lore is fun and all, but it's literally such a garbage thing to do when tooltips are supposed to tell you how something functions. No one should need to go to a third party to find out their passive actually does something.

It's also insane how after that fiasco no one made an official suggestion for KoG to put accurate, transparent information about skills into the game itself. Yes, I saw some talk about it in the main chat, but no one actually made a post in the proper channel. Sure, KoG likely still would not implement it since it's not the KR community complaining, but it'd still be worth having a thread about.

[anonraja]

Apparently someone made a comment that elwiki has some data mined information on it.

As per the GM, today, just now, in the player feedback channel:

It's absolutely wild how the official Elsword discord server banned elwiki then unbanned it 4 hours later.

It's also wild why people have to go to a third party in the first place to figure out how exactly their character's skills work. It's 2025. Why can't KoG make the skill tooltips actually useful?

Like how hard is it to write "damage% x (hit count)" instead of "damage% multi-hit"? Admittedly, I don't know how coding works, but I would assume hit counts have to be hard coded into the game itself. So couldn't they just copy paste the hit count into the tooltip? Even if they can't copy paste, it would still take only a couple seconds at most to write "x (hit count)".

Then there's a couple passives that just straight up don't say what they do in game. For example, CA's Bygone Days still does not list its effects. Sure, lore is fun and all, but it's literally such a garbage thing to do when tooltips are supposed to tell you how something functions. No one should need to go to a third party to find out their passive actually does something.

It's also insane how after that fiasco no one made an official suggestion for KoG to put accurate, transparent information about skills into the game itself. Yes, I saw some talk about it in the main chat, but no one actually made a post in the proper channel. Sure, KoG likely still would not implement it since it's not the KR community complaining, but it'd still be worth having a thread about.

[anonraja]

It's absolutely wild how the official Elsword discord server banned elwiki then unbanned it 4 hours later.

It's also wild why people have to go to a third party in the first place to figure out how exactly their character's skills work. It's 2025. Why can't KoG make the skill tooltips actually useful?

Like how hard is it to write "damage% x (hit count)" instead of "damage% multi-hit"? Admittedly, I don't know how coding works, but I would assume hit counts have to be hard coded into the game itself. So couldn't they just copy paste the hit count into the tooltip? Even if they can't copy paste, it would still take only a couple seconds at most to write "x (hit count)".

Then there's a couple passives that just straight up don't say what they do in game. For example, CA's Bygone Days still does not list its effects. Sure, lore is fun and all, but it's literally such a garbage thing to do when tooltips are supposed to tell you how something functions. No one should need to go to a third party to find out their passive actually does something.

It's also insane how after that fiasco no one made an official suggestion for KoG to put accurate, transparent information about skills into the game itself. Yes, I saw some talk about it in the main chat, but no one actually made a post in the proper channel. Sure, KoG likely still would not implement it since it's not the KR community complaining, but it'd still be worth having a thread about.

[anonraja]

Changelog #63 - Mod E First Impressions

I'm posting this early as I'm likely only going to have one of the new mod skills upon release (drop rates suck and I'm ED broke) so all my current opinions are based on observation and general knowledge of the game. Overall, Ara's Mod E skills seem very strong and essential to her kit. That said, I plan to continue grinding for the new mod books in order to conduct my own testing. Example builds will be updated once I actually am able to experiment with the skills myself. My current plan is to get Shakti's -> Devi's -> Apsara's -> Surya's.

General

Updated Attributes for Shadoweave

Apsara

Added [Mod] Falling Dragon & [Mod] Shadoweave

Devi

Added [Mod] Falling Dragon & [Mod] Shadoweave

Updated El Resonance

Shakti

Added [Mod] Falling Dragon & [Mod] Shadoweave

Updated El Resonance

Surya

Added [Mod] Falling Dragon & [Mod] Shadoweave

[anonraja]

[anonraja]

Changelog #62 - Finally. Apsara Things.

People who visit my blog proper will notice I've made a page with links to my guides along with links to the tags for the changelogs. It's been almost 8 years since I've started this so it's long overdue.

In 2018, I did a quick write up for people to see which Ara would suit them best. It has aged like a fine milk left to sit in the sun. So I wrote a new one. You can find it here. It has also been added to the guides page on my blog.

Without further ado, here's the actual update.

Apsara

Updated Power of Eun

Updated Movement

Updated [Mod] Dragon Stance 3: Eight Trigram Palm, Ultimate Spearmanship

Updated Opinion for Fire Lotus, Secret Dragon Art - Blast, Suppression, Secret Tiger Art - Fierce Tiger, Full Moon Slash, Counter Switch, Flying Kite, Ultimate Spearmanship, Charging Fury, Tiger Stance: Fierce Spear Dance, Time of Enlightenment, [Mod] Dragon Stance 3: Eight Trigram Palm, [Mod] Dragon Stance 4: Moonlight Slash

Updated Example Build(s)

Updated El Resonance

Updated Conclusion

Might be some undocumented changes since I started to forget to add them to the list. Oops. Oh well.

Shakti

Updated Recommended Attribute for Suppression: Specter & Spell: Storm

Updated Opinion for Spell: Storm, Suppression: Specter, & Fox Illusion

Added one sentence to the Opinion for [Mod] Fox Fire to really illustrate its sheer strength

Updated Example Build(s) to include recommendations for the Transcendence slots

Surya

Updated Wishing Star