#but they'll be my no. 1 priority so rip

[cerastes]

Arknights God, how do I use Reed the Flame Shadow? I got her and I've leveled her but I think I'm missing something, because it doesn't seem like I'm doing the damage she's supposed to be doing.

So step one is that we need to stop with the Arknights God thing because I'm flattered that you and others have a high opinion of my gameplay advice but it also makes me look like a narcissistic jackass. I appreciate the compliment and I'm happy my advice helps, but to everyone not familiar with the whole "I like to play a heel clown character on my blog for funsies with my friends" will think I'm actually addicted to the scent of my flatulence and the rhythm of my own words. It makes answering these a tad awkward.

Step two is understanding that Reed' skill selection, and which skill is the correct answer to any given issue, has a lot of factors going for it, more than the majority of Operators. If you use Cantabile, for example, you know that both of her skills are bangers, and while they have their respective jobs, they are not hard-slotted into these. Reed's S2 and S3 are similar in this regard. You'll be ignoring S1.

Before we get into that, though, here's some fundamentals about the Flame Shadow: You position them differently from other Medics and most other units. A good Reed tile is one where she has both enemies and allies in her range, so, if you placing her at a front, you'll want her to be a bit behind, but not fully behind, your line of engagement. She needs to be able to attack in order to heal, and her allies need to be in her range in order to get healed. This may sound obvious, but it needs to be taken into account. She's not a Marksman or a Medic, she's her own beast. Another thing that needs to be taken into account is that her healing comes specifically from dealing HP damage to enemies, not barriers. Greytails and the Rat King, for example, have shields that must be broken with Arts damage before exposing the succulent flesh within, right? Well, until the shield breaks, Reed is not giving anyone any succor and they might in fact just explode because while she's dealing damage to their shields, it doesn't count as valid damage for her healing. Keep this in mind so you don't run out of sustain while fighting shielded enemies, since shielded enemies tend to also have high attack. The Final Reed Essential regards her Cinders (AKA Firebrand), which she always has a chance to apply with her attacks and skills (with S3 guaranteeing it): The way it works is that, if an attack would apply Cinder, it applies it before the attack resolves, meaning, the Arts Fragility will be in effect and that attack will already be dealing 30%(32% with Potentials) extra damage off rip. Or, in other words, you don't have to apply Cinder and then start capitalizing on it on the next attack. Arts Fragility, by the way, stacks multiplicatively with Fragile, and they count as different debuffs, despite the similarity in name.

You made it past the tutorial, now let's tackle 1-1:

S2, or as Harvard scholars call it, the Spitroast, is a damn strong skill. For the purposes of this post, I'll be using the M3 versions of the skills. Spitroast grants two allies, with Melee tile priority, 3 fireballs that'll deal 240% of Reed's Attack as damage to enemies they touch every 1.5 seconds, with this 1.5 second timer applying only for each unique target. The fireballs do in fact have a hitbox, so if there's enemies on either side of the fireball unit, you'll trigger two fireballs at once, one for the enemy on one side, and another for the other. Each fireball then takes 1.5 seconds to refresh (they'll look darkened around the Operator) and once they are a vibrant orange again, it means they are ready to explode again. Each time these fireballs deal damage, they'll heal their Operators as per Reed's trait (so 120% of her Attack), and each fireball has a chance to inflict Cinder as per any of Reed's attacks. You can test this yourself by putting fireballs on Operators so they hit enemies outside her attack range, and you'll see that they do in fact also have a chance to inflict Cinder. Be mindful that the fireball's instance of damage counts as a Reed instance of damage! This means that for the purposes of Counter effects, it is Reed that's the source of the damage, so for Spike Chests, Reed WILL receive the reflected damage, and for The Last Knight, Reed WILL freeze if the fireballs hit him, etc etc. The lane-holding application of this skill is that you can grant your cornerstone immense Arts damage and healing independent of everything else they have going for themselves, including through Status effects like Freeze or Stun, as the fireballs are independent entities separate from the Operator. So if Mudrock gets stunned by Nervous Impairment and has sweet dreams of beautiful rocks that go on adventures with her, she's not completely helpless, as the fireballs will keep shredding enemies while she's in dreamland. This actually leads us to the next point: Fireballs cannot be placed on Summons, so if you had dreams of making the sickest Stainless turret surrounded by industrial flames or picturesque mindblasts about Ling's Great Thunderer's surrounded by godly plumes of cleansing conflagration, well, stop being silly and come back to reality, also rent and student debts are due. Fireballs can be placed on 'Enmity' Operators, such as Musha (ie. Akafuyu) and Juggernauts (ie. Mudrock), but they won't receive the healing from each of their hits, as the healing is mechanically counted as direct healing, thus, they may not benefit from it. Well, at least they can always take a whiff of Lena's wonderful fragrances instead. With all this in mind, we get to the Spitroast part of the Spitroast: If you jail an enemy (sandwiching them between two Operators) and use Reed's S2 to give them her mighty balls, now that enemy is getting assblasted by both sets of balls, so a whooping 480% of Reed's attack as damage, which in turn is very likely to diagnose them with Cinder due to how many times they'll be taking Reed damage, so that final damage is now also increased by another fat 30%, in addition to being inflicted with Cinder's ATK -20%, so your engager is safer as well, on top of being healed a lot. So, in practice, let's say your trusted Specter the Unchained is currently blocking Yamcha Jesselton, and as they are engaged in mortal combat, you then deploy Skadi S2 on top of Jesselton as well. But this is all within Reed's range, so you use her S2 and now the shark and the orca also have fireballs around them that further obliterate Jesselton, and he can't even damage Specter in a way that matters because 1) she leveled HP and 2) she's getting an absolutely unholy amount of healing from Reed's hot balls, so, in short, he'll never have another birthday. This MELTS bosses, but obviously, it's a rather expensive endeavor, necessitating 3 deployment slots dedicated to the bit. But no one said being funny was cheap, and end of the day, it's funny seeing bosses melting down to nothing under what's practically two fire buzzsaws.

Ideal Operators for these strats involve your prim and proper engager, someone tough that can take a hit and also hit hard, like either Specter or Skadi S3, but you can also make this engager a dedicated tough slab of meat like Hoshiguma, and your drop-in assassin with huge damage, like Texas the Omertosa, Surtr S3 (two girls that will appreciate the Arts Fragility Reed can inflict!), Skadi S2, Nearl the Radiant Knight S2, et al. 'Enmity' Operators work as well but you'll not be received the healing, just keep that in mind, but they work splendid as well. Once again, Arts Fragility stacks multiplicatively with Fragile, so break out the ol' Suzuran S3 or, if the boss can be Frozen, Gnosis S3 for some more immensely violent peacekeeping.

That was a lot, but trust me, it becomes second nature once you see it in action once, it just clicks and now you know exactly how to roast that spit.

Woah, look at all the progress we made, it's time to start 8-12:

So, S3, the big flashy and fun explosions that scream "I'm a healer, but," in big red flaming text. This skill does a fair amount of things, actually! First of all, Reed will have multitarget attacks, two per attack, and her attacks during S3 will always 100% of the time inflict Cinder, so that +60% ATK buff she's getting is actually bigger than that, given that she'll always have her final damage increased by 30% Arts Fragility on top of that. What's more, Cinder's CANNOT expire for as long as the skill is active, and now have the additional effect of inflicting a Damage Over Time effect that deals 60% of Reed's Attack as Arts damage (so, again, amplified by Arts Fragility). And, of course, as we all know and love, if an enemy dies while having the Cinder's effect during the skill duration, they explode for 140% damage in a 1.7 tile radius, and enemies damaged by these explosions, you guessed it, also become inflicted with Cinder.

That's a lot going on, but it's also pretty self-explanatory once you lay it out like that. Ace detectives might have gleaned something from this river of letters: Cinder is a very strong effect. Cinder lets you deal more damage, take less damage, and receive more healing, since Reed's healing is based on damage dealt. S3 takes Cinder to the next level: Guaranteed proc, now with a DoT, and will never expire until the end of the skill. Not only that, but the multitarget makes it easier to inflict more and more enemies with Cinder, it's truly a fire gone out of control, for the enemy, anyways. S3 lends itself to mob control and killing large crowds of enemies with the power of friendship, but do not neglect its utility in engaging with troublesome elites and bosses! While S2 is her premiere boss-killing tool, it required set-up, deployment slots and tiles you might not necessarily have in high-end content, and in these situations where the boss isn't the only issue, but you also have to deal with an overall dangerous map that's threatening as a whole, S3 may just be the perfect tool to have a more balanced and yet still very potent approach.

This is what makes the Flame Shadow such a fun unit! Your skills are not really locked by circumstance, and they can be used with several different objectives and goals in mind, depending on what the rest of your team is and who your enemy or what the challenge of the map is. With her incredible adaptability and wide array of applications, Reed the Flame Shadow absolutely shines and can be a core part of any team.

#arknights #Reed the Flame Shadow #dreamknights

[nulfaga]

i want to do an absolutely miserable "everyone dies and suffers the whole way down" me playthrough too. so i spent some time yesterday looking at the me2 suicide mission and carefully plotting how to leave only the bare minimum amt of squad members alive (2, fewer than that and shepard herself will also cark it). weird amount of math involved. ideally those 2 survivors would be those who can meet an even more horrible fate in me3 (jack and tali for instance. there are many more squad members who can die in me3 but they tend to be heroic/meaningful deaths). liara is basically immortal and vega doesn't show up enough to be endangered but you can take them along to the final battle and (so i understand) if your war assets are absolutely shit tiny then they'll be vaporized by a reaper beam w/ no more ceremony.

i think the funniest option of all (you know in a cosmically evil kind of way) is to have an LI you scrupulously keep alive thru me2-3 (or 1-3) and then at the culminating moment they just get zapped and that's it.

here's my sample plan (choosing garrus as the cursed immortal cause i've been told i never gave him a fair shake. what fairer shake is there than this)

this is not "meet as few characters as possible" btw this is "kill everyone" so while not recruiting them at all would yield the same results what we're after is a pipeline of recruit -> kill (in the most tragic/unsatisfying way possible, wherever possible). death and despair in the milky way etc ME1:

-leave ashley/kaidan at virmire (in practice it doesn't matter who) -don't kill wrex (for now) -kill the rachni queen (though it doesn't make a big difference; grunt won't be alive to sacrifice himself w/ the aralakh company) -don't disrupt geth communications on virmire (kirrahe dies)

ME2:

-don't recruit kasumi or zaeed (they fuck up the numbers for the suicide run. i'm sure there's a way to bring them and successfully kill them while keeping the 4 squadmates we need alive but i haven't figured it out) -destroy maelon's data -let morinth kill samara (if possible. otherwise it doesn't make a difference past the suicide run) -successfully complete loyalty missions for jack, garrus, tali & mordin -keep DISloyal: miranda & grunt -doesn't matter (as in: do the loyalty mission if you like, but they'll die regardless): jacob, samara, thane, legion -get the silaris armor upgrade, but NOT the thanix cannon or cyclonic shields -do as many missions as possible between the reaper IFF and hitting the collector base (to ensure crew death) For the suicide mission:

-silaris armor means jack survives (for now) -no shields means legion dies (don't bring him to the cargo bay fight, or someone else will die instead and throw off the numbers) -no thanix cannons means thane dies

-assign jacob as the vent specialist (he dies) -assign samara/morinth as the fireteam leader (dead) -assign a loyal jack as the biotic specialist (no one dies!) -assign a disloyal grunt as the second fireteam leader (dead) -assign a disloyal miranda to escort the crew (dead) -this should leave tali, mordin, garrus & jack (all of whom should be loyal!) -leave garrus and jack to hold the line (no one dies) -bring tali and mordin to the final fight (no one dies)

-destroy the collector base -shepard survives with 4 crew members

ME3:

-pick every renegade option and DON'T visit the virmire survivor in the hospital after the mars mission -ignore the grissom academy mission (jack gets recaptured by cerberus) -later on, fight jack as a cerberus phantom (dead) -kill the rachni queen, or leave her alive and let her betray you idk -don't warn the krogan -sabotage the genophage cure; shoot m...god forgive me. shoot mordin when he tries to fix it himself (dead. rip) -since wrex is alive, he'll know about the sabotage; he will fight you and get killed (dead) -during the coup in priority citadel 2, don't try to persuade the virmire survivor, just shoot them (dead) -kill falere at the ardat-yakshi monastery -don't do the rannoch: geth fighter squadrons mission -during priority: rannoch, let the geth upload the reaper code and don't try to persuade/warn the quarians (tali dies) -gather NO war assets. you need under 1600 EMS. -bring 2 squadmates. at this point you can choose between garrus, liara, vega and edi. and javik if he's there. -i recommend bringing garrus and liara, the last surviving LIs, your ride-or-dies from the very beginning. (they will be vaporized by a reaper beam) -you should have only one choice for the crucible: destroy. because of your low EMS, shepard dies and this choice also destroys the mass relays as well as all life on earth.

-fin-

#this is so off the charts sad and evil for no reason #it's so funny that me even gives you this level of choice for how shitty you can make things #i cannot however joke abt killing mordin. that's fucked up and i will have to close my eyes when i hit the renegade interrupt #massively effectual

[endlesscacophony]

we should be getting the golden deer trailer today ............

#:eyes: #EXCITED #anyway hello! i've been...... well i've been dead most of this week my apologizes #I'm gonna try to write and sku up some things! #Rhys is visiting on tuesday and is gonna be here for a week so TBH idk how active I'll be here!! #could be extremely active #could be a lil bit #could be nothin #REALLY DEPENDS #but they'll be my no. 1 priority so rip #REGARDLESS #i'll still be available on discord no matter what so feel free to message me! #I hope everyone is having a great day! #stay safe <3 #and don't forget to love eachother #a la crit role bc calamity last night WAS SO GOOD OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO #◣ 𝘗𝘈𝘜𝘚𝘌𝘋 (𝘰𝘰𝘤)

[fincalinde]

2, 7, 25

2. what’s your shortest wip right now?

A secret WIP that might never be finished but that has been itching at me for a while. For a more interesting answer, of the things on the pinned list it's Grandmaster JGY as the giftfics and Gusu Baby are higher priority. It's outlined though.

7. do you outline before writing? if so, what’s your outlining process like?

Speaking of outlining... broadly my fics fall into two categories:

1. Doesn't need an outline but will almost always have notes of some kind. These are shorter fics written in a shorter period of time where I can hold the entire thing in my head when starting and know that I'm going to finish it quickly enough that I won't need to refer back to anything. I still scribble down key information, themes, etc. that need including just in case something happens and I get interrupted, and I don't begin anything without knowing the ending. Examples are Baby JGY and the temple fix.

2. Outlined. I outline based on arcs and beats rather than scene by scene, with additional notes for recurring elements etc. For example the orchid in weakness was in the outline and was attached to certain beats. I do amend outlines as I work if I think I need an updated forecast, but I always, always know the ending before I start and it is vanishingly rare for the substance of the ending to change during the writing or editing process. I know there are magical people out there who can start writing and see where they end up, but I am not one of them. (I mean I could and I want to, but I have to be strict with myself because otherwise I'd inevitably stall.) Examples of outlined fics include the weakness of falling in love, fridge deer, and Baby LXC (the last being plotted out with @xiyao-feels, who was invaluable!).

25. is there a wip you’ve re-written?

I assume this means to trash all or most of the draft and begin again? Because I only start when I know the ending (and have an outline if appropriate) I can't say that I've rewritten any fanfic WIPs. This is my hobby, after all. I write start to finish with very few exceptions, and once the draft is done the structural edit is about streamlining and improving rather than ripping it all out by the roots as I might with a different type of project.

There will probably be a significant element of rewriting for Gusu Baby once that's my top priority, just because I wrote quite a few snippets for the titillation of some friends and they'll likely need cannibalising to incorporate into the actual draft as I proceed.

#ask #anonymous

[timeskip]

I would love to see your predictions if you can share a link or would just like to talk abt it!! I love thinking ahead with who should get more banners and events (Rip chikage)

I can't give a link because it's on my personal email account (aka associated with my last name) but here's the relevant bits (there's also dates for all of them but it's hard to read so I don't usually share them, I can if you want me to though!)

Obviously I need to separate these out. The higher on the priority list they are, the more in need of an SSR, or specifically a gacha/event SSR, they are. Characters are unlikely to be given new cards if they're too low, but sometimes they hate certain character's fans and give them right away.

See: Tsuzuru is about to get another event. He's pretty high up in need for an event SSR, so that makes sense, but he fairly recently had the fairy standalone gacha. Standalone gachas make it more likely that they'll get event-related cards because... I guess they don't "count" as much? That's just what I've noticed in the trends.

Another thing to note, Summer have had a MASSIVE gap in gacha SSRs, so we should expect quite a few of them coming up, since Muku's last gacha was PR event, and before that it was Wonder Rush, and there hasn't been another Summer gacha since WAY before that... yeah, this is a trainwreck. Thank you Liber very cool /s

But GENERALLY, they tend to alternate troupes fairly regularly! Also, troupes never get SSRs of troupe charas in the event before their troupe play. So since Tsuzuru is next event card, Spring 9th definitely isn't after this upcoming event.

I think Misumi will be gacha here, because a) he's Summer and in need of an SSR and b) he has no valentine's SSRs so far, while most of the other Summer members do (and Tenma has MANY stitches with Tsuzuru already so he's unlikely)

AAAAAAND I ALSO HAVE A CG CHART.

Now you might say, "Percy, this is hard to read" and you'd be right! So let me walk you through it a little.

Currently it's set up for the next event but since we don't know the person with Tsuzuru, it's incomplete ofc. It's split by year, because USUALLY every character has 1 CG per year, with a handful getting two. Note that all 2017/2018 characters who got 0 CGs (highlighted in red) got double CGs the next year, so their numbers are pretty even with everyone else's. That's also why on the right there's a "2022 CG" column, so that we can track who's in NEED of a CG, since every character WILL get one.

Also, like. it has dates, colorcoded for convenience. I have a system with the dates+colors but that's not relevant rn. Juza is most in need of a CG next, and he has an orange date. Also, I think he'll be in the CG with Tsuzuru!! The jacket sleeve in the preview matches Juza's winter outfit sleeve.

And last but not least, my play prediction spreadsheet:

This is probably really hard to read but it's just to visualize troupe plays. I have another version with mixed plays, but generally the way this works is that you look at the "gaps" in the colored boxes (ex: Tsuzuru has only 1 Spring play (Clockwork) so it's been a long time and he's likely due for one). It also lists if they're event/gacha so I can use that to make my predictions. Remember to not mind the leaders, they don't get non-main story plays so it looks like they haven't had plays in forever and unfortunately it'll stay like that.

And of course I have a list of all pairs that haven't been together and my own predictions.

ANYWAYS THAT WAS REALLY LONG. If you want to talk predictions (for the next event or the play events or whatever) I'm totally up for that! But it might get long again (hopefully not THIS long tho omg)

#long post