#also: no crab tank nerfs. why

[slicksquid]

wait this is kinda based

[kirbothyoatmeal]

Oh boy oh adjectival boy guess what happened now?

Someone in midlevel decided to complain about a top tier, again. Why do people care this time because it’s a Charger. Now Charger is the one wep that people really don’t like it when you complain about it, but why is that?

Well one of the reasons are the fact that charger is a popular weapon, people like playing it and people hold Charger players in high regard. If you ask me, it’s gone to their heads, and everyone lets it go to their heads and kinda enables it. So for some reason Chargers become this sacred cow of a weapon. When it’s not viable people will argue with you that it actually is, and when it’s dominant people will cry skill issue if you say anything.

And turns out the Charger players have made enough of a fuss that it hit the big news online, and now everyone knows about it. And I mean EVERYONE, Bc so many people dogpiled on the guy who complained about one specific top tier

So this doesn’t answer any questions, I should do that

Is the OP being dumb about Eliter: Yes. He and his whole team are really bad at adapting to Splatoon 3 meta and is still running passive control LDE bombspam strats w Splatling comps. Also playing a top tier like shot and splash and complaining about another top tier isn’t in the best taste

Does a high skill floor justify a weapon being too strong: No

Is Eliter actually super dominant: yes it is

Does it make weapons unplayable: Splatling kinda but that’s about it lol

Is it actually Bc of map design making Eliter counterplay harder: yeah, but that’s also the case w machine alongside it getting Booyah. Neither Eliter or machine got buffed as main weps, but machine isn’t the topic Bc people don’t care if you call machine overpowered and in need of a nerf

Is Eliter ACTUALLY unbeatable: of course not, and it’s still garbage on rainmaker

And why Eliter specifically: because Vac is bad and the things that make (splat) Charger good on these maps also benefit liter, and Charger doesn’t like fighting liter which has more reach than it

So what kinds of things beat out Eliter?

As you could probably expect. Eliter has no direct counters. Never has had em even when it was awful. All of its countermeasures are subtle in nature

Eliter, like shooters and splatlings, require line of sight to function; it can’t shoot you unless it has direct visibility of you, staying behind walls means it can’t actually hit you, so get a good idea where it is and isn’t safe to be. The maps in general have much better sight lines than in 2, so this is harder than before, but you don’t wanna sit around too long in its face Bc no matter how mobile it is the more chances it gets the more likely it is to land the shot. Ninja squid is often used in good part to liter existing, since it reduces visibility by a good amount especially at range. Walls such as big bubbler and splash wall can help, but crab tanks top is still exposed so be careful with that one.

Eliter still tends to lack agency and cannot do much on its own, it’s reliant on its team to do things involving the objective and struggles to be proactive, which is important in Splatoon. Taking out its teammates takes out a lot of the teams ability to do things; liter is really good at what it does tho but what it does well is area denial and being a jump point more than anything else

Liter cannot multikill well and does not handle being ganged up on; inbetween every shot it has to charge a good while. One of you may get splatted but it can’t take on all of you. You can also ambush it when it doesn’t have a charge up, such as when it just shot. It’s mobility isn’t good enough to get away very easily either. Even tho it often runs Respawn punisher the other main adaptation that isn’t ninja squid mobility builds has been the return of Quick Respawn stacking on most weapons that used to use it but stopped. Splat 3 is a more aggro meta overall than 2, so it’s easier to push through in situations where peeking would have just made you monkeys in a barrel.

If all else fails just do something to displace the thing, Missiles, Booyah, bomb, you name it. something to get it off the perch so your team can move up without its presence shutting you down.

Ofc there’s more and the stuff I said I could elaborate more on if I need to but that’s generally some of the basic stuff that makes Eliter a lot less daunting to deal with even if it is really that strong. I don’t think the main wep needs a nerf, but the counterplay rn for it is overall weaker. In time when they inevitably make better maps than what we have now, Eliter will cease to be as dominant and be more manageable to deal with. But for now, do what you can. Eliter or not at least the games more fun than whatever 2 was at the end of its life lol. I’m just glad Dualies are worth using again.

[enigmasong]

Remember a couple months ago when I sorted a few Doctor Who monsters into Pokemon types? Well, I’ve decided to go through ever single monster, creature, and robot (except the Abzorbaloff, because I’d rather not think about him) in New Who and sort them all into Pokemon type. Because why not, am I right?

Made a point of never going over two types, but that’s the only game rule I followed as the rest of them can hardly stretch well over what I’m doing anyway and I admittingly don’t know them very well because I’ve never played any of the games. So take these with a grain of salt.

First off, I’m gonna give an overview of the ones I’ve marked out as legendary.

The Beast and the Minotaur get it for being basically gods. The Minotaur being something that sets itself up as a god on planets (this could stretch over to the Nimon as well) and the Beast being actual Satan.

The sun from 42 and the planet, Akhaten get it for being celestial bodies. And Akhaten can also get it for the god thing.

The House and the Great Intelligence get it for basically being disembodied intelligences. And also because they seem to be fairly unique in the universe.

And the unique thing is also what gives the Star Whale and the bat-dragon thing from Kill the Moon this status.

I think the Racnoss and the Carrionites probably also qualify from being species from the Dark Time of the universe.

And, finally, I’ve the Thames river monster from Thin Ice as one on account that it’s really big. And we don’t know much about it. Okay, yeah, I’m stretching a bit on this one, but it’s staying.

Alrighty. I’m gonna take these in order of first appearance:

Plastic duplicates : normal - They’re just plastic. What else can I do with them?

The Nestene Consciousness : poison - At least in the interpretation of it that appears in Rose. And, to be honest, I’m only giving it that because toxins is what it eats. It is a bit of  a stretch.

The Forest of Cheem : grass - ...yeah, I don’t need to explain myself here. I’m just not gonna fill this part in on anything I don’t have to.

The Gelth : ghost/poison - They are ghosts made of gas. And there are plenty of Pokemon that get poison type because they’re made of gas. Heck, the Gengar line are ghost/poison because they’re made of gas.

Raxacoricofallapatorians : fighting/poison - They ritualistically hunt and, as their Pokedex entry puts it, ‘in extreme cases, when her life is in danger, a female Raxacoricofallapatorian can manufacture a poison dart within her own finger and, as a final resort, the excess poison can be exhaled through the lungs.’ Hmm, I guess that’s only make the female ones fighting/poison and the male only fighting.

The Daleks : dark/steel - They are angry squids in tanks.

The Jagrafess : ice - It was kept in an icy place?

Nanogenes : fairy/steel - Well, they’re machines and they have a magical look to them, so...

Sycorax : fighting - Same reason as Slitheen.

Cat Kind : normal - What? They’re cats.

The Werewolf : dark - You don’t get much more evil than trying to take over the world. At least in fiction.

Krillitanes : flying - But only for the particular version of them we saw. Their ability to assimilate any trait from other creatures they please gives them the rather fun sounding ability to change their typing whenever, so they could potentially cycle through any of them.

Clockwork Droids : steel - They’re robots. I won’t bother explaining that for further ones where that’s the only reason for their typing.

Cybermen : steel - I’m a bit flim-flammy on whether or not I should give them dark as a secondary type.

The Wire : electric/ghost - It’s an electronic being that possesses TVs. It’s basically a Rotom.

Ood : normal/psychic - just your basic species with basic telepathy.

The Beast : dark/fire - Literally Satan.

The Isolus : fairy - It even kinda looks fairy-ish.

The Racnoss : dark/bug - They will devour entire planets because they are forever hungry. And I don’t think I need to explain bug typing choices here or anywhere they turn up.

Jadoon : normal/fighting - Just your basic thug cops.

The Plasmavore : dark - She’s a vampire and I don’t know what else to do with her.

Carrionites : dark - Evil witches.

Macra : poison - I’ve not seen their original appearance in Classic Who, but I’m pretty sure the use of them in Gridlock has them severely nerfed. Anyway, the poison typing comes from the fact that they live and feed of the toxic car fumes.

Pig slaves : normal

Lazarus : dragon - He’s a big beast. Which, as far as I can tell, is the only thing that is required to have the typing. I mean, the Alola variant of Exeggutor is a dragon type and the only visual difference between it and a regular Exeggutor is its long neck. If that makes something a dragon...

The Sun from 42 : fire

Family of Blood : dark - For lack of a better option, mostly.

Weeping Angels : dark/fairy - The dark is a given and I don’t really know how else to describe their abilities besides ‘vaguely magical’. Thought about giving the Carrionites the fairy type as well, but I decided not too so the Angels can remain special.

Toclafane : dark/steel - Living in a dying universe will do that to ya.

Heavenly Hosts : steel/flying - They could be flying/steel. I don’t think the order matters much in this case.

Adipose : normal

Pyrovile : fire/rock - This is the only rock type in this list. And it’s not even as the primary typing.

Sontarans : fighting

Hath : water - I mean, they’re fish people? I mean, we don’t see them doing anything with water, but that’s the only thing we know about them. So... I dunno. Fish-water, okay.

Vespiform : bug/flying

Vastra Nerada : dark - Quite literally.

The Creature from Midnight : psychic/dark - I’m not certain on the dark thing, though. We don’t know enough about it to be sure.

Trickster’s Brigade Beetle : fairy/bug - It’s the time travel thing. I know Celebi’s time travel abilities give it the psychic type, but that was because it came before fairy type existed.

Tritovores : bug - Raise of hands, who actually remembers these things off the top of their heads?

Wormhole Manta Rays : flying/steel

The Flood : water - Though I suppose that they basically posses people could make it ghost type as well. I dunno.

Prisoner Zero : psychic - I was gonna base this on Ditto’s typing since it’s the shape shifting Pokemon. Ditto’s type is normal. That... doesn’t make sense. So I’m making PZ psychic type since it requires being psychicly connected to people to take their shape.

The Star Whale : dragon/flying - Again, it’s really big. And flying. Through space.

Saternynes : water

Eknodines : poison - Um, are these actually meant to be real, or might they have just existed purely in the Leadworth dream?

Silurians : ground - Because that’s where they live. Okay, yeah, I’m stretching here.

Krafayis : dragon

The Silence : psychic/electric - Seriously, water is a conductor of electricity. It is not going to insulate Jack. Why are you putting them in water?!

The Siren : fairy/ghost - Actually, I feel really unjustified in this claim. But I really don’t know what else to give her, so I’m not bothering changing.

The House : dark/ghost - It’s a sort of disembodied entity. Doesn’t that count as ghostly?

The Peg Dolls : ghost - Entirely because there is an existing ghost Pokemon that is a doll. And I lack a better option.

The Handbots : steel/poison - Unless your one of the species their medicine is safe for, then I guess it’s just steel.

Tivoli : normal - Nothing really special about them, is there?

The Minotaur : psychic - Because it has to change people’s minds to make them suitable for it to eat. Or was it the ship prison doing that?

Androzani trees : grass/psychic

Solomon’s Robots : steel

The Gunslinger : fighting/steel

The Shakri : dark - Let’s file this under ‘citation needed’.

The Great Intelligence : psychic/ghost - The ghost thing for the same reason as the House and psychic for the intelligence aspect.

The Snowmen : ice

Akhaten : psychic - Well, it eats psychically embedded things in any case.

Ice Warriors : fighting/ice - It’s in the name, isn’t it?

The Crooked Man : normal/dark - That dark typing being entirely appearance based. There are a couple dark Pokemon in which this is the case, so I feel justified with it.

Mr. Sweet : poison

Zygons : psychic/poison or psychic/electric - We come to the first and only DW creature to get an Alola variant. The psychic runs on the same reasoning as Prisoner Zero and the poison coming from the fact that they’ve always had the venom sacs as their primary attack. At least until Peter Harness rolled along and made them have electric abilities for some reason. So this is my compromise on that.

The Robots of Sherwood : steel

The Teller : psychic

Skovox Blitzer : fighting/steel

The Moon : flying/dragon - Literally the only thing we know about that thing is that it flies. Well, that and it’s somehow able to birth an egg that’s bigger than itself immediately after being born itself. Sorry, it did kinda lose me there.

The Mummy : ghost - I mean, it’s a dead guy.

The Boneless : fairy - I guess.

The Overnight Forest : grass/fairy

The Dream Crabs : psychic/dark - Though I think we can debate the dark.

The Fisher King : dark - Because ‘underdeveloped villain’ is not a Pokemon type.

The Mire : fighting

Whatever Leandro is : fire - It breathes fire at one point. Does that count?

The Sandmen : ground - They’re made of sand. I mean, not actual sand, but... it’s close enough????

The Quantum Shade : dark/ghost

The Veil : steel - It was ultimately just a robot, after all.

The Cloister Wraiths : ghost/steel - Haunted robots are rad.

Hydroflax : fighting/steel - The body, not the person.

Harmony Shoal : dark - Kinda didn’t know what else to do with them

Heather : water

The Vardi - steel

The Thames River Monster : ice/dragon

The Dryads : grass/bug

The Monks : psychic/dark - Because, again, ‘underdeveloped villain’ is not a type.

The Eaters of Light : dark - Again, it’s in the name.

Testimony : ghost/fairy

[sleepymarmot]

I still have about 200 queued posts (bear with me... and sorry followers on mobile), but I want to quickly publish some of my post-binging thoughts before the new episode comes out. (Because I get overwhelmed by other people’s opinions and can’t remember what my own were unless I write them down. It’s easy to recall which parts I simply loved for what they are because other people did too and I can reblog their posts; it’s harder to not forget my own perspective outside of that.)

I didn’t actually expect to post these opinions because I don’t feel comfortable criticizing TAZ the way I tear apart big franchises like ME. But I did write it down, so what the hell. Let’s start with the biggest piece of negativity then. I can't name a favourite arc but I think the last place is Petals to the Metal. The racing sequence was spectacular enough that I didn't mind the pacing that much, but the final episode was really disappointing. A combination of not actually explicitly confirming the pairing in canon (I seriously expected that would be the culmination of the arc) AND Bury Your Gays (yes, I know Griffin dealt with the feedback gracefully, that doesn't fix the actual story though) AND some extreme railroading AND deus ex machina/Power of Love (at least the latter was retconnet as in not retroactive continuity but retroactive context). That actually put me off the show for some time. I think this moment encapsulates my problems with Hurley's writing pretty well. She really comes off as a Mary Sue written by a self-aware male writer who feels the need to put female characters on a pedestal -- certainly not the most objectionable phenomenon, but still makes my eyes roll. I feel the same about Carey and Killian in The Crystal Kingdom and the recurring remarks about "competent women". (I mean, I understand the gameplay reason for that, it's not that I'm asking for super detailed fights between NPCs, but I didn't like the way it sounded in the story.) Thankfully Carey got some development with Magnus, Killian had a good introduction before that glorification thing started cropping up, and their relationship's good obviously; plus, thankfully, Lucretia is completely free from this (she actually might be my fave NPC in terms of writing).

I think my least favourite part of The Suffering Game is the final past bosses battle? It's not just repetitive -- this repetition, needless in this case, devalues the other instances of our heroes facing the past. The first big one was Noelle (great: surprising, touching, important for the overall plot as we now know), then we had the three robots (I was pretty delighted to see Jenkins and Magic Brian again) even it was more about combat than meaningful facing of past mistakes, then the destruction of Phandolin was seen again in The Eleventh Hour, and only a bit later the setting of the first arc will be revisited once more. So even not counting this scene, it was starting to get a bit navel-gazey, and the complete lack of story relevance of that battle diluted things even more. It kind of sounded like running out of ideas -- I'd prefer any other challenge or just a repeat of the random monster generation. (Btw I totally expected to see the crab from Rockport Limited in that lineup. It's kind of special to me because back I went "Ah a floating crab, yeah feel you boys, I hate fighting Praetorians too, at least this thing doesn't shoot lase--" and then it started shooting fire, lol.)

Back to what I wanted to talk about: I have lots of thoughts/feelings about consequences re: the last episodes. The spoilers I've seen gave me so much anxiety! Like I've read that Magnus loses memory so I completely expected him to lose everything. So I spent a lot of time in complete dread, and when I read "Magnus forgets" in the summary my heart dropped, and then it wasn't that bad at all so I thought "that's it?" and felt relieved until the fucking clone tank. At which point I thought "No, this is it" especially because all of the players interpreted it that way. So I was very surprised and relieved that he kept everything, and that Griffin was so kind to him. But that kinda brought me to another problem -- that the new body undid Magnus's sacrifices. He didn't lose a finger or 10 years of life; the only loss was the identity of his nemesis which a) is a sad thing and he might be happier without it -- I would; and b) the boys promised to take care of that. Meanwhile, Taako and especially Merle have to live with their sacrifices. That's unfair. I was pretty thrilled when I realized the sacrifices were For Real, and was feeling real dread and anxiety about them (can't say if in a wholly good way) and I don't like devaluing that. Though of course I'm pretty jazzed that the character who is at the moment my favourite got treated so well. That scene was cathartic as hell! But back to the sacrifices: I'm intrigued by the problem of balance of hurting the character in a way that's good for narrative and/or game balance (yeah the intent of "let's nerf them a bit" was easy to see) but not compromising them as a piece of writing. I didn't give a shit about max health or dexterity penalties, but the story significant things about losing body parts and especially memories sounded brutal and cruel to me. I actually laughed when during one of the commercial breaks Griffin said something like "I hope this isn't causing you too much anxiety" because I was rushing through this arc because of that anxiety! But in the end, as it often happens, the half-misinterpreted spoilers made everything sound worse than it actually was. And I was very glad and relieved to hear Griffin specifically clarify that he's not going to take away important parts of a character.

But despite what I just said, when I started The Suffering Game arc I was actually amazed because it was second arc in a row built around my personal favorite tropes! I really appreciate Doctor Who-ish journey through genres (that doesn't take itself seriously but also has an epic underlying plot. All my fandoms are the same...) Murder on the Rockport Limited also counts in that category. So if I had to pick a favorite, they'd probably be among the candidates? Well I don't know how to count Reunion Tour for that. I really liked The Eleventh Hour, time travel/time loop stories are like my #1 fave. And it's a closed room mystery too (like Rockport Limited). That was the point where I started listening much faster because I needed to learn the truth. (Also, the Lunar Interlude before that arc, with the three separate stories, was freaking revolutionary and started a new level of character development for the show in general.) But I was kind of disappointed by the lack of a Holmes speech-type explanation of everything in the end. Because a big part of enjoyment was the expectation that it'll all click together beautifully in the end -- and some pieces still didn't fit. I'm still not sure if I missed something or that wasn't explained. Why was Isaak, like our heroes and unlike everyone else in the town, aware of the temporal loops and free to act? What was the interaction between Taako's spell and the code word -- did the spell have any effect other than almost drowning everyone, would "Junebug" have worked by itself? I had some more questions I thing, but right when I was going to pause/think/rest, everything was swept away by the freaking Red Robe Magnus cliffhanger, so I continued to run forward internally screaming "Explain! Explain!" like a Dalek, and then that was joined by the aforementioned Suffering Game anxiety. And that's the story how I marathoned the last part of the show three or more times faster than I planned to.

I really loved listening to TTAZZ, both of them, it was really good meta! I think I started to appreciate the show more after the first one. I can see where the fan criticism re: representation is coming from, but I myself also belong to the category of people who can never visualise their own (or anyone's, really) characters and therefore really love the freedom of interpretation. I'm also a bit sad about the commentary on racism in the new one, which, in addition to the comments about the Taco Quest in the first one, made me pretty sure that storyline/running joke is not coming back. I found it really funny back then in the beginning of the show -- more so because I, myself, have no freaking idea what tacos are actually like. I mean, we might have some mexican food places over here, but I've never been to one. And I intentionally didn't look it up after starting the show because it was funnier and kind of immersive this way lol. But they sound pretty committed to non-committance about the enthnicities, and raising the topic in canon again would force the issue, so I think they're just quietly abandoning it. Story-wise, I'd love to hear something like "Taako had invented a dish and named it after himself, but the voidfish baby ate the recipe so he couldn't recreate it until now" because I'm a sucker for justifying jokes and tying them into the main plot/emotional storyline. But in general I'd prefer any option that offends people the least. I was kind of surprised when Justin talked about abandoning Taako's early "dumb" characterisation, because I hadn't actually thought it was "officially" thrown away. I assumed Taako was just really bad at paying attention, and got better at managing that as a part of organic character development. I actually found that kind of relatable, plus "absent-minded professor/wizard" is a classic trope. Also TTAZZ made me wish even harder for the lost awesome adventure of Magnus and Kravitz in the astral plane. And it was already slightly souring my excitement about the totally awesome & touching scene we got instead.

I didn't really get the exposition about the planes in The Crystal Kingdom, and the long explanation in the latest two episodes require more attention than I gave them. Hope today's episode will make things clearer. Some things I hope to hear explained soon:

Why has Merle died more times than Magnus or Taako?

Also, looking forward to the promised explanation of how Gundren can be Merle's blood relative lol

Why was the Chalice so much more self-aware and civil than the other Relics? Is it related to the fact that its creator has some special connection to the (a?) voidfish?

Was Magnus a wizard before? Being a lich, creating a Grand Relic... If so, why doesn't he have magic now?

If Magnus is a lich, can he one day die and stay in the astral plane with Julia like an ordinary human, like he wanted? If not, that's a pretty big and tragic turn of events for him. (Granted, this might be more of a D&D mechanics question...)

(I actually just found a Reddit thread starting with the same question, discussing whether all 7 are really liches or not, so these two points might not be even valid haha)

(I also saw someone theorize that Lup invented the taco recipe -- and damn I really do want to see that now. Imagine trying to figure out something and later realize that it was created by your dead sister who named that thing after you.)

(I was confused about LichBarry’s reveal because I thought at the end of PTTM he was mind-controlling Captain Captain Bane to poison THB. Someone had the same question and another person answered that Barry’s spell was only to make Captain drink the poison, and the murder attempt was on him. I totally didn’t get that. Between this and my question about “Junebug”, either mind-control spells are not very clearly explained in this show, I suck at understanding them, or both.)

(Shit, this list has transformed from future episodes wishlist into reactions to Reddit lol)

Since I was talking about Taako and Lup, here’s another passing thought: remember how Taako immediately wanted to be Like Them when he saw the lich duo? You know, the elven brother and sister?!

Not related to anything, but I just realized I can wear jeans as a stealth fandom reference and it's delightful :D