go back, real quick, and look at the last few Big Things added to this game. we got sage subtrait, we got zero legends, we got the end of uncanny legends, we got behemoths, we got aku... now zoom in a little bit. miko mitama was added in v5.8, becoming the consensus best uber - relics are added in 7.0 to hurt her CC, 7.2 introduces loris to completely counter her, surge in 9.2 makes her lack of updated immunities more apparent, and 10.8 creates the eternal threat of aku shields to block her slow when she was already well on her way out of peak relevancy. kasli the bane in 9.5, but it takes a while for people to understand how powerful she is - behemoths as a common surge immune subtrait in 11.5, counter-surge in 12.4, hard pushing curse resistant sages in 13.1, and explosion in 13.7 to do to her what surge did to mitama.
my point is simple: ponos knows what units are good and what units are too good, and partially builds new mechanics to hurt the viability of these overtuned meta definers.
in terms of where this leaves the current meta, look no further than the community's least favorite new problem children, lunos and dlunos (luna's also an issue, but she'll be a separate post). their viability as standalone, typical units is pretty mediocre for a fest, but their 10 second cooldown and conjures completely break the game in half.
lunos gives you an on-demand breakerblast, a free ~150k damage 600 range hit, and a kaoluga-esque mini surge that will hold enemies in place for just long enough for the next lunos to come out. wait for lunos to die, conjure, KB the whole field, deploy next lunos, repeat. this is referred to as "lunos cycling". it's probably better than cyberstacking ever was, and it takes absolutely no time, skill, or sentient thought to pull off. KB/surge immunity can kill this strategy, but those are rare.
dlunos is largely worse than lunos, by virtue of not having the option of a first form that costs less than a burger and fries while still breaking the entire game, but let me pose this hypothetical to you: slime can can. slime cat's wave with the double money and damage of can can. dlunos can give you one of these every nine point eight seven seconds, with an 800 range AOE blast of the exact same damage as a talented can can at the same level, a wave (effectively doubling that damage), and double cash on anything it kills. this doesn't solo the game like lunos, but it's one of the most unnecessarily plug and play units to ever touch this game.
in any other game, these units would've been gone the first week of their existence. not nerfed, either completely reworked or fully removed. ponos doesn't do that. so what's the realistic path forward?
my theory is as follows: we'll see an uptick in KB immunity and wave immunity for a while, especially on advent/ZL bosses. this won't kill either unit, but will hurt them slightly. sage will get played out at some point, and ponos will have the opportunity to move on to a new subtrait, which i'm tentatively going to refer to as "mystic". mystic (or whatever the name ends up being) interacts with conjure in some way, whether being able to attack it, being immune to it, disabling the ability to conjure at all, and/or having a conjure of its own when knocked back/killed. lunos and dlunos will continue to be unstoppable through lategame, but endgame will introduce counters that cause them to fall to around where dasli is now (mid-low top 10 ubers). thus, the ponos game balance cycle will be completed.
will something along these lines happen? who knows! if i'm ponos, i might give up on the "no changes" gimmick and just nerf those boys into the ground. however, i think it's a pretty likely scenario that aligns with previous meta cycles. yorikatsu please do something about these jits man you have no idea the suffering balrog isn't even TOP FIVE
not even a big fan of vocaloid but i think i've found my favourite vocaloid music creator. i don't even listen to vocaloid they just have so many aura points
Actually I probably shouldn't vaguepost but like. It's The birdbrain Gal . And all those other songs. And also sawtowne is black. And also listen to black artists . Yeah. Ok. I'm very white so I have to stay in my comfort zone but Like. Racism isn't very cool
sighhhhh the good effects of the surgery i had 6 months ago that essentially made me worse off are now rendered completely null and void sighhhhhhh i guess it's back to wincing whenever i take a step or taking paracetamol (???how do you spell it) every day sighhhhhhhhhh sigh sigh sigh. Owie owie. Oww. Owie owie
i8 just somehow found my way onto the trans discourse side of twitter and today's topic is racism. please help it is arguably a very relevant argument but also i want some better more lighthearted negativity on my feed
titsay
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
jimmyeatworldofficial
ellievsbear
