#theorycraft

[chisacake]

Beebotrück

in honor of Supervive official launch tmrw

[criffyzou]

This dress up game by elequinoa was absolutely perfect for the scarority and I couldn't resist making all of them* in it.

I'm amazed at how different I could make them feel, it is so versatile.

*Minus the servo. Again.

[themarydragon]

Dragon Age: Origins potentially started with a bloodbath/tragedy (depending on which origin you picked) and then a betrayal in the prologue takes out your mentor/savior, king, new friends, and a whole-ass army (not to mention a lot of very good doggos).

DA2 kicked off with the loss of a city we knew from DA:O and then a character death (a sibling, no less), and then a major betrayal in the first act (not to mention the OTHER sibling's fate). And that's just the EARLY tragedy.

DA:I kicks off with the destruction of the Temple of Sacred Ashes (also from DA:O) and then jumps right into the destruction of Haven & death of countless allies in the prologue.

So it would follow suit if they killed someone(s) very early on in a way to get the DA veterans immediately invested in murdering the new antagonist(s) instead of focusing solely on Solas.

That said.

Tell me why Varric didn't get his name flashed across the screen when Lace Harding did.

Is there anybody that could get merc'd in the prologue that would piss all of us off more than Varric?

I don't want to be right. But I only trust Bioware to hurt me.

[a-knight-of-hope]

My TADC theory is that Pomni is the lead designer for a VR game, and everyone but Caine and Bubble are on her production team. They all put the headsets on at around the same time, but time moves at the speed of light inside the circus. Seconds become years, and when the headsets come off, it's only been two minutes tops since things started.

[skungie]

something that i find kind of endlessly fun to think about is that like. dys is literally the token cissie of his friend group and of the people he spends his time around in general. tangent, utopia, sol, nomi-nomi— all definitively Not Cis. even sym is just like, Guy-shaped™ at best. congruence also is just sort of girl-shaped to me

of course, then you get into discussions about, like, well... dys clearly has his own brand of Issues going on, and i think it makes sense that he would surround himself (inadvertently or not) with people who have grappled with their sense of self, and by extension their place in the world, in one way or another.

even if dys is lost in his own little esoteric world, and under the assumption that no one could ever truly understand him— something that may or may not be true depending on your personal interpretation of the game— he is surrounded by people who have felt things like he’s felt.

[twilighthiro]

an attempted theorycraft for @reine-does-things’s harpy warriors.

“Link, the Hero of Hyrule, has been cursed into a humanoid bird monster by Cia and her obsession. Even so, he continues to fight on the front lines, both on the ground and in the sky.”

“As a Harpy, Link has two normal attack strings; one on the ground, and one in the air.” 

“He switches between these two states with his unique action: his wings appear in a flash of light magic as he bends down on one knee, and he rises to the sky in a blur, doing a quick forward roll before hovering midair.”

“This movement is quick and simple except for a short moment when the wings appear, but overall a good getaway button if you have no special ready or just want to rain death upon land-locked foes. Likewise, in getting down, his wings fade into a flash of light and Link drops to the ground, giving you a small window to fit in a heavy or normal aerial attack before landing on the ground.”

“In the skies Link switches from whatever weapon you had equipped to his Magic Rod, this time with an enhanced and improved range of attacks.”

“He will blast the ground in front of him with a single magic bolt, blast the areas right and left of him with two bolts, send three magic bolts in a fan formation that travel a short distance along the ground before exploding massively, spin his rod to create a large ring of fire and throwing it to the ground, and transforming the rod into a giant battleaxe and carving a large horizontal swing.”

“Compared to the base magic rod this is massively improved and tuned into crowd coverage, with his first normal attack for single target and weak point damage, and each bolt of magic being very large.”

“His base heavy attack has him building up a massive ball of fire as he spins around, and launching it a short ways in front of him, where it transforms into a fire tornado and sucks up trash enemies and damages everything in range-usually in a keep-shaped square. While the fireball does amazing crowd coverage and decent single target damage, this attack’s windup is really quite slow. The purpose of this slow windup is to interact with his unique action: Link drops into a dive to the ground, wreathing himself in flames as he crashes headlong into a target, dealing truly absurd amounts of damage to a single target.”

“This is your go-to attack if you're in the air when a weak point gauge pops up, as you might not have time to land and attack before the gauge disappears.”

“His second strong attack has him summoning a horizontal column of fire and throwing it to the ground, where it explodes. Relatively quick and nice for activating bomb flowers, but that’s it.”

“Link’s third and final aerial strong attack has him spinning in a circle, burning the ground below him, and then crashing to the ground as his weapon transforms into a battleaxe and spinning forward for a short time. Quick, nice for clearing out crowds if a bit long, and landing if you want to land but not stop your damage-dealing.”

“Just a quick note: while in the air, Link’s forward speed is truly ridiculous, while his right and left movement suffers, plus taking additional damage from attacks. Choose wisely your movement while fighting airborne foes like Agorok.”

“On the ground Link uses whatever weapon you picked, and there is no difference except that you can jump for the skies at any time.”

“And now for the additional complications: after capturing a keep, Link gains a buff that remains for around thirty seconds. During that time Link can be ordered to any captured keep and he will basically teleport there; making this useful should you have keeps under attack and no warriors nearby. This buff renews after clearing the keep of monsters, meaning Link can jump all over the map and single handedly rescue any keep under attack.”

“On exactly two story maps, an extra event is squished into them: if a very specific ally is about to flee, Link enters a Frenzy state, forgoing his weapon in favor of his claws and refusing to remain in the air. This state remains until the ally is brought to an allied keep, acting as either a hindrance or a help.”

“Link only has normal attacks in this state, and they mimic the normal attack string of his Hylian Sword; he will jab forward, slash right, left, spin attack, jab twice, slash right and left again, and finish off by slashing with both hands in an X. Each and every attack comes out ridiculously fast-fast enough that it can be hard to tell sometimes if an attack is it’s own button press or not, and each slash is wide enough to deal handily with crowds along with single targets. Link himself moves very fast throughout, meaning that he can get in around four attacks before the enemy starts guarding, and simply slide behind them to continue completely destroying them and then moving on.”

“That’s it, besides the dark elemental damage that Link’s claws do on every strike.”

“Overall, a somewhat complicated playstyle with excellent crowd control, although it relies on what weapon you have equipped on the ground to truly be able to deal with anything.”

[sid471]

Archers of Fodlan (Fanmade Banner)

Hi I’m Sid and sometimes I make custom FEH units with... CRAZY high and unrealistic stats lol. That said, I made a 3 houses banner with, as the title implies, the Archers of Fodlan :3 Starting with...

Leonie!

She’s obviously very strong and speedy, but she also a workable defense if you wanna focus on that, already having 41 at base with the help of atk/def push, and possibly more thanks to her weapon, which has a similar effect to those of Farina and Malice, as well as granting her an additional +3 to her atk stat. She has super boons in Spd and Def, and super banes in HP and Res. Next we have:

Ignatz!

His build, in my opinion, is fairly straightforward lol. He’s a glass cannon with a decent res stat, but his primary focuses are his atk and spd. He’s one of those who has 1 super boon and a super bane just about everywhere else lol. His super boon is Atk, and his super banes are HP, Def, and Res. Next is our Demote and iiiit’s

Ashe!

I posted these in a Discord I’m in first and someone described Ashe as “4 star Ronan” so... That. Yes. lol. Ashe is strong and a good res tank but his defense is.... questionable. IDEALLY his 4 star skill would be atk/spd solo, but rouse spd/res would be fine too in my mind lol. The Unbound Bow takes after the other weapons in the Unbound set, inflicting atk/def -5 when not adjacent to an ally, rather than taking after the Helmsman Bow. He doesn’t have any super boons but has a super bane in HP. Also Ashe not having a title doesn’t say anything about my feelings toward him, I love Ashe, but I had the idea of casually building demote Ashe before I had the idea of making a whole banner so... Moving on to the last but not the least...

Mercedes!

Mercedes is the only post time skip unit on this banner... purely because Bernie is already in. And-and I had to get creative >_> lol. Anyway, I don’t have an idea for the Tathlum bow’s effect besides it giving +3 res. Sooo... If anyone wants to make one yourself and tag me :3. Anyway, Mercie is very slow the poor girl. But she makes up for it by being an excellent mage tank and some deeeeecent defense. Not great but not terrible. She has super boons in Atk and Def, but super banes in Spd and HP.

Aaaaand now we have a banner of the rest of Fodlan’s Archers :3... That I can remember lol. OH CYRIL! I coulda used Cyril... Oops. Ah well it’s already made now lol. Maybe he can be a GHB or that thing where they give out a free 5 star unit like Miriel and Balthus lol

[nzoth-the-corruptor]

Keys

In Legion and Battle for Azeroth, keys and the opening of the way were a major recurring motif for N’Zoth. In Shadowlands, the Jailer seems to have taken up the mantle of being associated with keys and opening the way.

edit: I was going to add in a section on Opening the Way but honestly, that is Exhausting. I’ll do a separate post on that later.

Spoilers for BlizzConline 2021 ahead.

In the Kingsmourne cinematic we see Anduin, possessed by the Jailer, attack the Archon and absorb the sigil of the Kyrian into Shalamourne. Once returned to Torghast, the Jailer takes the sigil and claims he only needs three more keys before he can show that death was never meant to be chained.

It is probably safe to assume at least four of the keys that the Jailer needs are the sigils of the covenants—of those who jailed him.  Denathrius had allied with the Jailer, and the Jailer expressed having no further need of the Sire; if Denathrius bore a sigil, it may have already been surrendered to the Jailer.

If the Runecarver is the Primus that means the Sigil of the Necrolords is compromised if not already in the Jailer’s grasp. 

We do not know whether or not the Sigil can be taken from its bearer without killing them — we also do not know if the Sigils are truly bound to their bearer, or if the Archon merely elected to carry the Kyrian Sigil as part of her out of duty.

It is possible the Venthyr and/or the Necrolord Sigil were not directly carried by their respective leaders, but hidden somewhere in their realms. The Primus’ love of games and tests would certainly fit in with that.

Many will, of course, remember Il’gynoth’s prophecies related to keys in the Emerald Nightmare raid:

“Five keys to open our way. Five torches to light our path.” “The lord of ravens will turn the key.”

As N’Zoth (and, by extension, his scion Il’gynoth) have no known connection to the Pantheon of Death (though Yogg-Saron might, and there is a small implication in Revendreth from Tremen Winefang that, at some point, the Venthyr obtained wine from the Black Empire...) it is safe to say that the first prophecy is distinct from the Jailer’s quest for keys.

The second is vague and does not seem to have come to fruition yet.

Later on the prophecies of N’Zoth in the Crucible of Storms raid show an acute awareness of the things to come in the Shadowlands:

“The veil wanes. His crown will open the way.” “Six seats at the high table. Six mouths that hunger. One will consume all others.” — N’Zoth, the Crucible of Storms

There are also these lines datamined for Il’gynoth in 8.3; I have never personally seen them in-game during Ny’alotha, nor has anyone I’ve spoken to, but given how glitchy and erratic some of the whisper triggers in Ny’alotha are I cannot completely rule out that they are simply triggered in bizarre locations.

“Before the last shadow falls, the father of sleep shall savor his feast.” “The golden one claims a vacant throne.” “The cunning ones kneel before six masters, but serve only one.” — Il’gynoth, 8.3 prophecies