A Wall of Text on the Relationship between Feminism and Nerd Culture

One of the hallmark features of "nerd culture" is an unquestioning capitulation to women which explains how social justice meme complexes extensively run rampant in traditional nerd spaces.

A lot of us who might style ourselves "nerds" ended up retreating to whatever our soup du jour hobby is because it's the lens we needed to see the world the way everyone else does normally. This used to be VERY socially unacceptable. So there's a dual reality to the "nerd" experience and both stem from innate ostracization. I've written about some of this here (http://scpantera.blogspot.com/2014/11/my-thoughts-on-gamergate-over-last-few.html).

On one hand we're reclusive, protective, and suspicious that anyone new who comes in has a less-than-pure agenda--and this is virtually always backed up by experience because there ARE people who do this, a lot of them even especially now that nerd culture is mainstream. If we're going to use feminism as our frame of reference, this is every new-girl-who-broke-up-my-WoW-guild story.

On the other hand--also in my experience--people in nerd spaces are often very (even irrationally) accepting of outside interest. If I find someone who I think genuinely shares my interests I don't care who or what they are, we can get along and play vidya together. I don't care if you're black, jewish, disabled, racist, whatever. And that's an absurdly progressive statement that "progressives" HATE on a macro level because when we say this we're saying we don't care about identity politics--their beloved hammer and sickle.

Feminists love to use the latter to subjugate the former. In some ways it's understandable, because there's a fair amount of unwarranted hostility to women (but also to everybody perceived as an outsider) that come into nerd spaces. Feminists abuse men's preferences for women, which tend to be super-juvenile in nerd spaces.

To nerd males, women are like dragons; they're unusual, exotic, powerful, sometimes-ultra-destructive, sometimes-total-bros, and yes there's an element of sex appeal there. So when feminists come in say,

"all you males are all the problem, you're all sexist borderline rapists who hate women and only want them for their vaginas"

instead of our default response being,

"that's fucking ridiculous, you're acting like a dick, get out"

it's,

"maybe we ARE the problem, maybe I AM a borderline rapist and I just don't even know it, I guess I better be super-extra nice to this kind lady who risked life and limb to bring me this torch of wisdom, never question anything she or her buddies say, and do everything they want because I don't want anyone to think I'm a bad guy".

This point is made in significantly more extensive detail here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/

And so the Cult of Social Justice taps into the gold mine of recruitment that is nerd culture.

So what can we do about it? Nothing really, short of adapting. There's a new generation of nerds who are going to fall for this same bait being born every second, even sparing the point that "nerddom" is now full mainstream--where the Church of the Patriarchy-Is-Real reigns supreme.

I'd say it's important for free speech and artistic freedoms to be protected because the Great Wall against Their march is that there is always going to be a market for ideas and art and nerd pursuits that don't conform to progressive tastes. I believe that this is the comforting inevitability that stands in opposite to their own crushing, apparent inevitability.

I think it's important to keep that in mind if you're someone who find themselves discouraged that everything you love is being stamped out. They literally can't win until they've snuffed out every flame of individuality--and even if you're the last one left they won't have won until you're dead.

Frankly, it's this confidence that makes it pretty easy for me to not be on Twitter shitposting about SJWs 24/7. I can appreciate that there's people out there keeping the fight alive but kind of feel sad for people who have made that their everything. Especially when people let their anger get misdirected at things that really aren't important. Especially when there's so many cool video games to play now.

Thoughts on Knight (Tanking)

Unlocked Knight last week, finished Cryomancer and started putting points into Knight this week.  Tried an HT tanking with Knight a day or two ago with maybe half of the effective tank talents and didn't really care much for it (switched back to Paladin after a not-really-tanking-related wipe on the last boss).  Did an MSM earlier today with a few extra talents and abilities I didn't have before (most notably, Barrier II) and it went much smoother.

Barrier II is the real make-or-break-point.  It was actually just recently nerfed but not to the point where Knight is inviable.  The recent patch reworked Inspiration (previously, the diminished Willpower regeneration from Barrier is removed for 6 seconds after using an ability that consumes Willpower) to Counter-Grip (the bonus effect of Barrier II lasts 1 second longer and Lunge restores 2 extra Willpower).  The important component of Barrier II (that's missing from regular Barrier) is that it doubles the damage reduction (30% to 50-55%--depending on if the bonus takes Rockwall into account) for 4 seconds after using an ability that consumes Willpower.  From what I understand, with the right talents you could maintain a very high uptime on the Barrier II bonus due to enough Willpower regeneration which is now a bit nerfed.

Frankly, between a competent support, judicious management of the Barrier II bonus and Tantrum/Resolute Defense, and Whiplash being an OP-as-fuck underdog ult for backup, you should have plenty of sustain to survive any fight a Paladin can.

Which is better?  Eh, I dunno yet.

It's hard to peg either one into a role yet too.  For example, Knight has much better AOE options but no AOE taunt.  Paladin has a low-cooldown, on-demand emergency shield but Knight has constant damage reduction.  Paladin and Knight can both get 4 and 3 seconds of invulnerability with a 16 and 15 second cooldowns respectively (with varying utility; Paladin can extend that invulnerability to allies, Knight can reflect a huge chunk of damage).  Neither seems to have a particular advantage at tanking single targets.

I feel like Knight is much more safer at tanking, but I also feel like I have more control over what's going on as Paladin.  So we'll have to see how things go as I finish up Knight and play around with it more.

Skyforge Block stat - Is it worth it? & Tanking stat discussion & Recommended Chapels

Sitting here with my first spare okki tablet trying to decide where to drop a second superfluous chapel.  The question on my mind is which tank stat is least valuable and thus most amenable to being replaced by an alternate chapel.  But that decision's not super interesting with regards to this post, here we're gonna look at Block specifically.

It's hard to find information on how all the tank stats work, but Block is especially nebulous.  At face value without doing any calculating, I actually assumed Block would be hella useful for tanking--it usually is in most MMOs and proc'd damage reduction is usually pretty high priority--so I was surprised to find a lot of people claiming that Block is worthless (tl;dr for below: it probably is indeed worthless).

But here's some theoretical math:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ttemNuGG8TlLqYEOLGcxK5PItUFaOroqWnnnNCkiPFQ/edit#gid=0
Edit: Should be fully viewable now and anyone should be able to edit the yellow boxes.  Let me know if you have any trouble with it.

Here's what we know:
-Block "occasionally" reduces damage
-Decreases "incoming damage" by a "certain" percent of Stamina

Here's what we don't know:
-How often "occasionally" is; ie the proc rate
-What specific percent of Stamina is applied

Here's some assumptions I'm making:
-The stat value of Block refers to the % of stamina by which damage is reduced, and that this value is a flat number (ie when blocking occurs with 15% Block you're reducing damage by a 0.15*Stamina flat amount)
-There's no other sources of straight up damage reduction (ie incoming damage is not modified at all)

Here's the variables involved:
-Proc rate; I wrote in samples for varying proc rates from 10% to 100% in 10% intervals
-Incoming damage magnitude; it's obvious right off the bat that fewer, larger hits make Block less worthwhile and conversely it's better suited to more frequent, smaller hits (basically, means there's more chances for Block to proc)

---

Now I set out to write this about Block to get a better idea how much of an impact it might be having but I decided to just go ahead and try to look at Shield Power, Adaptation, and Endurance as well--since knowing how Block works doesn't mean much without comparing it to the others.  Here's some notes based on these very rough calculations

-Shield Power: I'm assuming it modifies all incoming shields and not just personal sources
-Shield Power: Since the determinant of the usefulness of Shield Power is how many times a shield is applied, I modeled it as effective HP gained per minute--ie the shield being used as soon as the cooldown is available for Celestial Shield and Unstable Shield (including the Rain of Fire talent).  Note that with Paladin talents, Celestial Shield cooldown can be reduced if the shield is destroyed, which makes the eHP/min potentially higher in practice.  I don't have Alchemist unlocked to compare those shields unfortunately.  Knight shields are smaller and less consistent so I didn't really take the time to throw those in for now.
-Block vs Shield Power: Block needs a very high proc rate even in high frequency/low damage situations in order for it to be better, point for point, than Shield Power
-Adaptation: "Incoming damage is temporarily reduced if you take consistent hits."  Working assumption: Adaptation% damage reduction for subsequent hits beyond a short time period.
-Adaptation vs Block: At a constant proc rate (ie a situation where all incoming damage qualifies for Adaptation damage reduction), Adaptation seems to be comparable to Block at ~50% proc rate on a percent-by-percent basis
-Endurance: Assuming the % value is the damage reduction percent.
-Endurance vs Adaptation: On paper and in each stat's ideal situation, they appear to be the same value percent-by-percent, however one needs to consider that they are useful in opposite situations.  It's also worth considering that you can get Endurance in larger chunks via chapels than Adaptation.  Personally, I think it's more common to take larger amounts of damage, so I prefer Endurance when it's a choice between them.
-Nothing here takes healing into account, so there's probably some fudging there maybe.

AFAIK none of these stats are available from rings, so the real discussion here is chapel selection.  Based on all of the above, here's what I would recommend:

Province: First choice > Second choice
Dawn Plateau: Endurance > Block
Kesalia: Shield Power
Symerlis: Shield Power > Block
Ithanos Archipelago: Shield Power
Hallaghi Valley: Endurance > Adaptation
Fjord Kangher: Shield Power > Block
Thyrthon Plain: Endurance
Damon Wasteland: Adaptation > Regeneration

*Shield Power reportedly caps (soft or hard?) at 25%, so you may or may not want to pick one Block chapel over a Shield Power when you start upgrading to purple chapels.  I'm not aware of any other stat caps at this time.

Honestly, if you want to be prepared for all situations I'd recommend grabbing both first and second recommendations for each province to have maximum versatility (also, in the future we'll be able to activate multiple chapels in a province) but it's naturally up to you if you want to have DPS or support stats on backup first.

If You're Cappy And You Know It, Cap Your Hands

Had another cap discussion again and found two new responses: 1) farm equipment and 2) but leveling orders IS important!

1) I don't know if my situation or strategy is unique but I'm actually much higher in proficiency than than I should be for my prestige, which means stuff is easier than it's listed difficulty would imply (having too much prestige without enough proficiency creates the opposite problem where everything feels too hard and you become unable to equip new gear you find).  Now, this doesn't guarantee I have gear that matches my proficiency, but at the least a) my stats outpace the content, b) it is indeed noticeably easier than it probably should be, and c) I only ever need to do Normal level content to be assured rewards.

Basically, yes I could farm better gear, but I neither want nor need to when I can slowly accrue better gear organically as I progress.

2) Order levels only have an important impact on temple level caps.  Now, my temple levels are hitting caps, but it's because I'm hamstrung by Greatness, not order level.  In fact, my order level is currently double the requirement for the next level temples.

You get Greatness from the upper atlas, and thus need Sparks of Insight.  So again...

No Cap On Whining

And furthermore, why are new players stuck at the same lower cap?

And why can't I create a new character to play with friends who want to try it out?

And why do you have to do ridiculous shenanigans like this to maximize your prestige gains? http://www.reddit.com/r/Skyforge/comments/3c9wxs/how_to_maximise_your_prestige_gain_within_the/

And

And

And

And

They See Me Cappin', They Leavin'

I really think Skyforge is shooting itself in the foot by giving players a reason to stop playing every week as soon as they hit the weekly caps after a few days.  Cap reset Tuesday night and I was coming up on the Spark of Insight cap by Thursday night without premium.

"Work on orders" is not a proper answer to this.  Orders have two paths of progression: upgrading temples & chapels and raising adepts.  The former has two components: temple/chapel level and quality.  Temple and chapel levels have the most impact on both your prestige level and your character's stats but it is capped by the currency cap because holy texts are tied to currency.

So once you're at cap you're not going anywhere in terms of upgrading temples and chapels.

Temple and chapel quality require both credits (limited by cap, obviously)--and quite a lot of credits--and components received from missions available every other day.  So okay, there's a reason to log in every other day as long as you want to keep playing.  If you're not saving some credits in reserve, any progress on quality ends with the currency caps too.

Then there's raising adepts and ranking up your order, neither of which have an appreciable impact on your prestige or character.  In fact, the only direct relation they have that I'm aware of is that higher ranks allow for higher temple levels, except that just by sending adepts on missions regularly I've extremely outpaced the speed of my temple development.  The only way this would be a hindrance to progression is if someone never bothered with missions until they hit temple level caps.  Elsewise, order rank only seems to affect max level of adepts, level of daily adepts available to recruit, difficulty of missions, and number of adept slots.

You could, very very very easily, never "work on orders" and not lose out on much just by maintaining them for a few minutes every couple days and/or regularly on the few days of the week you're logged in full time.

So let's talk about the reason behind the caps.  Apparently according to devs (or so I'm told), it's meant to slow player progression into the endgame to give them more time to work on content.  It's a novel idea which I was okay with until the second week now where I kind of just wish I could explore the game unhindered.  If I really think about it, I'd rather reach the cap quickly and have nothing to do and then concern myself with minute character development than hitting caps in a few days.  I can FEEL it draining my enthusiasm for this game and that's very disturbing and frustrating that a game seems like it's okay with that.  My interest in it survives pretty conveniently right now that there isn't something else that wants my full-time attention.

I want to see where the story goes, I want to see where the gameplay goes, I want to see what the endgame is like, and I'd rather the thing between me and all of those not be that my numbers refuse to go up after a certain point.

I'd rather hit an empty endgame in a few weeks than hit an empty game 4/7 days of the week for months.

Dungeoneering

DF and HT guides forthcoming.  I've done DF twice and both times I got into groups that were stuck at the area with the trash that you have to sneak by (effectively at the end of the instance) and the one HT I had collapsed mysteriously AFTER the first boss was killed.

Mare Sacro Monastary Dungeon Guide

Mare Sacro Monastary (MSM) is the first "Group" Adventure, ie 5-man dungeon, you'll gain access to as you progress in prestige in Skyforge.

Like most areas you gain access to for the first time, Skyforge seems alright with dumping you right into an Impossible rating version of the dungeon--don't do this if it's your first time and be sure to manually drop it down to a lower-star difficulty to get your feet wet.  Group Adventures in this game are no joke and will wreck unorganized random groups, so you want to take the challenge at a reasonable pace your first couple times.

Entrance

Going in, the first several pulls are primarily groups of swarm mobs.  They're not difficult to handle but CAN do damage quickly so be prepared to pop shields.  Also, beware as you cross each bridge, as 1-2 kelps will jump up along most of them.

1st Gate

This pull can be pretty serious and is where most unprepared groups are going to hit a wall.  The swarm mobs need to go down ASAP but targets after that are a bit of a crapshoot.

Icy Abyss Kelps hit hard and will pursue the tank in melee range.  On occasion, it will pull in all nearby players and then create a bubble around itself which will burst, damaging players nearby after a short delay.  Everyone pulled in needs to get away from it quickly.

Roaring Waves Naiads are simple ranged enemies.  They can be kind of LOS'd behind the planters visible in the above screenshot, but they may path right up onto them.

I would recommend the tank grab all mobs and kite the Icy Abyss Kelp.  I would also recommend killing it first before the Naiads to simplify the encounter but any order is mostly fine.

Labyrinth

The next area has this kind of grid-y layout with groups of enemies at each corner of the yellow triangle, single kelps scattered throughout, and 3 patrolling Icy Abyss Krakens.  2 of the Krakens patroll each of the vertical lanes and one patrols east-west across the middle-top lane.

Make sure, before pulling any groups and while fighting, that you are aware of where the Krakens are so that you don't pull them also.  When and if you can pull them safely, they only take a minute or two to take down.  I usually grab the horizontal one and then one of the vertical ones to have a clear path.

Incidentally, the Krakens actually do eventually respawn if you spend too much time in the area.

I usually pull this west group first and, as you can see, from the west corner (as opposed to a lot of groups that like to pull them towards the gate).  This gives you a LOT more options for LOSing them for the pull and breathing room to kite.

Icy Abyss Naiads are rough and can shut down groups if you're not careful.  Their big ability to watch out for is when they have a bubble forming above them; they will launch projectiles that will deal damage and trap the hit player in a bubble--which can be chained to deadly results (often if multiple players are standing near each other).

If your group is having trouble with the Icy Abyss Naiads I strongly recommend simply targeting it first.

I like to pull the east group from the opposite side.  This group is relatively easy.

For this last group I clear out all the spare kelps on the side of the map that's convenient depending on which vertical Kraken was cleared out.  This pull is the same as the one before the 1st Gate, sans swarm-types.  Like previous pulls there's plenty of room for kiting.

Gauntlet => Cetus

This section has another 3 groups of mobs along with an extra quirk: starting from the second turn (the path leading directly to Cetus), groups of kelps continually spawn from Cetus and march down that hall.  If you pull smart, this is only really an issue for the last pull.  Be aware that any kelps that spawn and reach the end of the hall will just sit there if not pulled and then slowly die, so you can wait for waves to despawn before moving forward.

The first pull is pretty easy, just one Foamy Tides Ong and some kelps.  The thing to watch out for with Foamy Tide Ong is for when they start to spin around; they will start to do huge damage in melee range.

Second pull is an ong with 2 support kelps.  I strongly recommend pulling these back around the corner to where the first group was to avoid having to deal with the spawning kelps.

Third pull is a bit trickier unless you pull them far back around the corner, then it's just mostly dealing with Icy Abyss Naiad shenanigans while you take down the ongs.

Before moving on to Cetus, I recommend waiting for a wave of kelps to pass and then blitz straight for the boss, picking up kelps along the way, instead of stopping to fight them, because if you do you will start to get bogged down by rapidly spawning waves as you approach.

Cetus himself is pretty benign, the real trouble is with the intermittently spawning kelps, which can do real damage if they're not managed.

A lot of my troubles tanking this fight have been solved by simply kiting full time and picking up adds as they spawn.  It makes the fight very safe for everyone.

Leida the Conquerer

I recommend clearing out all the kelps in the courtyard leading up to Leida just to minimize the risk of extra accidental pulls during the boss.

Leida is a pretty simple fight.  The first, most immediate thing to watch for is geysers that will spawn beneath players and then erupt, dealing large damage if they're not avoided.  Second, at 15x and 7x HP, Leida will create a shield and spawn two Naiads.  The shield reduces damage to the boss and deals damage to anyone standing inside it; to break it, both Naiads need to be killed.

The two Naiads spawn at opposite sides to the left and right, which can make them tricky to pick up.  Often, one may wander into Leida's shield, in which case they need to be pulled out (with either abilities or manually--can retreat a bit into the courtyard).  If you can get threat on both quickly, you can cause them to cluster up by moving into the recess on the right/west that you can see in the background of the above screenshot.

Elsewise she's pretty easy to shred down, putting an end to MSM.

Skyforgin' and Tankin'

Been playing a lot of Skyforge the past week.  It's fun enough to fill my current MMO void while I'm still taking jaunts into Heroes of the Storm and Trove (since the Steam release I've had two separate groups of gaming buddies get into it).

Skyforge is a Russian MMO, and like a lot of foreign MMOs there is an awful lot that is either not explained very well period or not explained very well probably due to poor translations.  And like a lot of second- or third-string MMOs the external resources for the game are really poor when they exist at all, so I'd like to do what I did with this blog way way back when I started it circa Guild Wars 2 and try to collect information and strategies until someone else picks up the torch with a bit more organization and competence.

I can begin by talking a little bit about tanking so far, since that what I have modest experience with in MMOs and have been doing mostly in Skyforge.  I've only had access to Paladin so far.  Threat is very easy to get and hold and you have plenty of tools to get it and hold it and get it back if you need to.  As I get into the 4k+ prestige range though I'm starting to notice a lot of enemies--especially normal trash mobs--in normal+ level Adventures are tuned to completely squash you if you're not on the ball.  And this isn't entirely in terms of fight mechanics; a modest size group of Swarm-type mobs can and will wreck your shit if you aren't popping regular shields and your group isn't fast enough with the damage.

It gets worse in Group Adventures where you start having to treat every trash pull like you're approaching a boss.  Which is frustrating because the bosses, by contrast, are pretty well tuned for group play--for the most part.  Not having regular healing can really make things frustrating.  Maybe I'm doing things wrong or maybe I keep getting stuck with incompetent supports (I haven't played support enough to understand how viable or essential their role is, but I really should) but I switch off to DPS every so often to try to see how other tanks are behaving and I see the same kinds of issues.

One thing I've noticed that has helped, and have noticed other tanks catching on to, is that kiting enemies seems to be one of the safest ways to do things.  For example, pretty much all issues I had handling the pre-boss mini-boss of Mare Sacro Monestary were resolved by getting threat on the boss, picking up adds whenever they spawned, and running in a big ring around the outside of the room while the group blasted everything.  The gauntlet portion of the last boss of Daren Facility seems to virtually require a similar strategy.  Threat is not difficult to manage so you don't need to be constantly poking enemies, and enemy pathing is kind of strange; enemies don't seem to want to pass through each other and, when swarming, will gather around you in a circle--which is frustrating on many levels but can be abused to limit the number of enemies attacking you at once.  Also, ranged enemies seem to react very poorly to being LOS'd and may often sit there just staring at you from around the corner instead of attacking anyone.

This game very very desperately needs some way to mark targets; choosing which targets to kill first is a huge problem in this game.  Good and bad parties in this game can be distinguished by something as simple as whether or not everyone has the same sense in picking targets.

Anyways, that's all for now.  I'm going to do a writeup on MSM as soon as I've run it again to get accompanying screenshots.

Never Have I Ever

I've been playing Neverwinter the last 4-5 days ever since I hit some serious gaming withdrawal waiting on building a new desktop and discovered it (barely) runs on my shitty old laptop.  But this morning I had a very strange experience this morning where all the tiny nitpick things formed a perfect storm of FUCK THIS to where I might just stop while I'm ahead.

Neverwinter is a very nice game in terms of it's conventional MMO-ness and game mechanics; it's sort of halfway between the Guild Wars 2 fuck-the-trinity thing and...I guess Tera is the most relevant example of the other half--itself halfway between traditional MMO and aren't-we-cool-we-don't-have-tab-targetting actioney gameplay.  The class structure is fine if extremely extremely stereotypical.

It's also a Cryptic game.  A post-Star Trek Online Cryptic game, which very much harps on the spirit of a lot of the conventions and features of that game but dialed up to 11 on the tedious scale.  The game is constantly CONSTANTLY beating you over the head trying to get you to buy zen.  If you want to do ANYTHING cool you gotta have zen to buy shit.  It kind of seems (at least so far) that you either need to shell out or commit to the ridiculous grind of cobbling together astral diamonds (ie dilithium) to exchange.  I didn't bother with it in STO but it seems like it's even worse in Neverwinter.

Crafting resembles the crew stuff from STO and has a nice little web app for managing it without having to log in, and the companion minigame is really cool but you need to shell out zen (or already have a bunch of gold) to get more companions.

I mentioned it ran on my laptop, but it does so if everything is set to minimum and the "resolution scaling" also turned all the way down, which seems to just aggressively blur everything.  Which is fine; playing it on a tiny screen all blurry is uncomfortable but not unmanageable.  But the performance like this is pretty inconsistent.  In outside zones where there's not a lot around it runs fine, but in town it drops frames pretty hard...most of the time.  Sometimes it just works fine for some reason.  Similar problem with the dungeons: sometimes I can run 'em just fine, sometimes it runs so poor as to be nearly unplayable.

So this morning I was running the second dungeon for the second time (after I did it once I discovered I had a daily to do it, so I went to do it again) and the second dungeon is long and really really boring.

And my performance was shitting itself.

And I realized I was fed up with all the zen shenanigans.

And I realized I was sick of trying to play it as a blurry mess.

And I realized I had to listen to podcasts to make the boring questlines go by the night before.

And I realized I wasn't into it enough to look forward to leveling up another 40 times.

And...

So it's weird; I've "aggressively" stopped playing games before but never one I was, for the most part, otherwise enjoying.  I might have to come back to it sometime later but fuck all this zen bullshit.