CrowKnow

18 was an interesting year. Got a brand new computer, credit card for the first time and went through my first steam sale so luckily there's actual documentation. TF2 is still one of my favourite games. No other game has managed to capture the super dumb yet, super competitive feeling for me. I could still play it and still enjoy it but, there's also some bitterness in there. Saw a ton of cool things come out of that community like an annual charity event for Children's Oncology Services, people crowdfunding teams so they could compete and organize an international lan. It's where I met most of my steam friends. I also saw valve kinda just use it as a guinea pig, saw my community/server slowly die out, pros leaving the scene and the success of Overwatch which I feel TF2 had a shot at with some love from valve.

Neat game from indie devs out of Montreal. Turn based strategy like FFT except your actions are based on a deck. Each character has their own deck you build and then when you commit to an action you roll dice to determine damage/healing and other effects.

Was on a roguelite run today apparently... beat gonner and spelunky. Gonner after 7 hours and Spelunky after 44 hours ;_;. First time getting to Olmec and managed to finish it with my last bomb. Gonner I found a new kinda op combo that basically let me burst down the last two bosses..

There's a TF2 patch being teased... that actually has something concrete vs soon™ http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=30147

The Last Days of the Third Age

Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Overwatch and Mount & Blade Warband. I haven't found ANY of the side missions fun in Mirror's Edge so far. Running through the world and picking up collectables is fine but, reloading missions multiple times (an ssd is necessary not to go insane) to hear the same audio, to get lost cause runner's vision would suddenly stop or tell me to jump to my death, constantly having no idea what I'm supposed to do. It's suuuper disappointing and I'm glad I'm using the Origin subscription trial thingy to play it. Overwatch is Overwatch. I skipped most of the double exp weekend to play Path of Exile's beta for an expansion and I'm kinda sad I didn't get the genji skin throughout the event. I've been playing tons more Zen lately which is leagues less stressful than Ana. I don't have to worry about heals, I don't have to worry about the right time to nano since it's basically "did they use grav,blade,visor? Time to trance" and lastly I can actually protect myself vs trying to land sleepdarts, hitting noscopes and waiting till the right moment to throw a nade at the floor. I've been playing warband with a lotr mod which has been pretty fun. It's was a bit hard to get into cause I didn't remember most of the controls/mechanics of the mount and blade games so I wasn't sure what was mod specific or not. I'm at the point where I would like to wrap it up but, I can't siege towns so I'm stuck waiting (AND LOOKING FOR) the ai to finally attack the enemy.

Some new PTR patchnotes Really nice change for reaper since before he was kinda just a bad hog. Hog's Hook combo looks like it won't be able to reliably 1 shot 200hp heroes. Seems like he'll kinda be a bad reaper now? McCrees ult needed the buff, as long as it doesn't become like... an instant DVA bomb. Lastly, moooon map. Not that interested cause it's a 2cp map but, I'm curious about the lore behind it.

Source So that's a yes.. eventually.

Yeah I'm up for grinding for the skin. For anyone unfamiliar with the Nexus challenge stuff here's the jist of it. There are tiers of rewards that will unlock over the next 4 weeks Week 1 Rewards = Genji Oni Skin, Icon and Spray. You're required to play 5 games(either vs AI, Quick Match, Ranked, Unranked) with a friend Week 2 Rewards = Offier DVA Skin. You're required to play 5 games(Quick Match, Ranked, Unranked) with a friend Week 3 Rewards = Offier Icon/Spray. ^ Week 4 Rewards = 10 Lootboxes. ^ They're tiered rewards so for example: even if it's week 2 you gotta play 5 matches and unlock the genji skin before playing another 5 to get the DVA skin. So if you're busy you could just wait until week 4 and burn through all 20 matches in one go if you wanted all of the rewards. For those who can't get a group/friend to play you can join the two chatrooms below to find randoms to group up with. Just add the randoms on bnet and remove them when you're done getting your loot. Type "/join nexuschallenge" or "/join lfg" in the ingame chat. I only played against easy AI last time there was a challenge but, the game seemed on the forgiving side of Mobas. There's map objectives that can help you out if you're feeling lost. Your team levels up together so you aren't as likely to get left behind... that kind of stuff. Too bad after week 1 they require you to play against actual people but, at least winning is a requirements so even if you lose you're gonna get the skin eventually.

How are you all enjoying Uprising? Seems like a much more fleshed out version of the Halloween Event. I got up to Legendary but, it's super brutal at that point, Rein needs to be super on point with every charge/ulting and managing his shield life. The all heroes mode is also really satisfying in terms of experimenting with different heroes or just relaxing and playing through hard. Too bad it's gone in May. Uprising has also let me ease my way back into competitive which lead to a 5 game losing streak but, at least I got a beautiful clip like this. https://plays.tv/video/58f84b3daa94951d5a/when-your-team-forgets-hog-after-getting-hooked-him?from=user (I don't record my mic in my recordings hence the white text) Notice the Hanzo that gets saved from the hook and then backs up into the hog 20 secs later. Or the pharah that survives the hook and then ignores the hog.

Some changes on the PTR Ana definitely deserved a nerf but, I dunno how to feel about this as she's my main. She did high dps for a healer but, every time she tried to dps that's time spent not healing. My only real beef is that Pharah is going to be more annoying especially at lower ranks. For the nade my issue is that it was her only way of self healing, every other support has some type of regen and even with the 100 healing it was questionable to self heal cause of how strong anti/heal buff were when throwing the nade elsewhere. Last point is that I thought the big issue about her nade was the anti heal/heal buff? Being able to block heals and full heal tanks in a few seconds was what I saw being complained about the most so it's weird they didn't touch that part of her kit. Rest of the changes look solid though, guess I'll go back to playing Zen.

Went to the training area with her... she seems really strong. Her primary is like a strong Mercy/DVA pistol. Alt fire is mini graviton except you can detonate it mid-air that only has an 8 sec cooldown. Tons of opportunity to use it to pull people off edges, around corners or even shift their Rein so that you can get a hook in or something. 1 Ability is a curved shield. I think it had around 900 health but, you shoot it out like a widow mine. I'm not sure we'll see her replacing Rein's 2k shield? Last is the Fortify ability which reduces damage taken, and makes you immune to crowd control but, I don't think you can shoot during it. Not sure how good it'll be cause I don't think you can cancel it. It would be more like Reaper's wraith form for baiting out hooks/flashbangs than say Mei's cryo freeze

Yeah I'd say he's kinda overtuned. Really damage reduction compounded with Ana's super heals makes it even worse. Might see more DVA if the meta becomes Bastion heavy. Hopefully Blizzard gets around to fixing that bug.. seems like it could even happen accidentally.

Guess I'll res this thread instead of making a new one. Apologies in advance for the triple post :/ Players were expecting the devs to announce Act 5 today and instead the next big update will contain 6 whole new Acts.... bringing the total to 10. People are kinda pooping themselves over at the subreddit. Currently they're using the classic D2 setup where there are 3 difficulties and 4 acts. Beating the 4 acts unlocks the next difficulty where you rinse and repeat until you unlock the endgame. Now there there will be a total of 10 acts they've got enough content for a single play through which means they're removing the 2 extra difficulties. From the perspective of someone who's familiar with the game they've basically more than doubled the amount of original content while removing the annoying grind of replaying difficulties. The replay grind became super apparent because of 1) Temporary Leagues - kinda like ladder resets/seasons ending in other games 2) Hardcore - character dies so you have to reroll 3) Experimentation - with so many builds to try out rerolling becomes a necessity. GGG are one of my favourite devs so I'm pretty excited for the upcoming patch which won't hit until Juneish :<