Sh**ty Shakka's Celestial Bullsh**....

[LostSoul]

Really? *REALLY*?? You took his WORST feature, which is easily the worst skill mechanic in the entire damned game, made no effort to fix what makes it so awful, and then built a 10-tier milestone around this god-awful skill?

F***ing unbelievable....

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Par for the course. Sissy Puss Sissaspia's quests in the previous season took a damn lot of AFKing to get through, so did Bony Phantom's Warden's.

I'm more worried on whether D'hani's "fixes" weren't akin to the kind of "fixing" one would send a pet to the vet for. Edit: She was pretty worthless already for me, but that doesn't mean they get a smile and a nod if they decide to stomp on the poor thing.

[LostSoul]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Par for the course. Sissy Puss Sissaspia's quests in the previous season took a damn lot of AFKing to get through, so did Bony Phantom's Warden's.

I'm more worried on whether D'hani's "fixes" weren't akin to the kind of "fixing" one would send a pet to the vet for. Edit: She was pretty worthless already for me, but that doesn't mean they get a smile and a nod if they decide to stomp on the poor thing.

So far, so...'okay.' D'hani has moved up a few notches from what I can tell. But then, that wasn't exactly hard to do, being one of the worst DPS champs in the game. But Shaka? There's just no salvaging his puzzle mechanic. I'm sure it'd be fine in some *OTHER* kind of game, but it just doesn't work in this one. The game is literally built around having virtually no flexibility in where to position specific champions for their support buffs. Tatyana has a similar -- if less extreme -- problem with her buff. And legendary items/levels are inflexible. You can move them around exactly once per season. Shaka requires you do it every basically every f***ing run. None of my core support champions are eligible for multiple puzzle tags. And then you get to the fact that he's completely incompatible with automation. And they want us to complete tens of thousands of areas with *FOUR* puzzle slots correctly assigned? What the actually f***?!

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Oh, Tatyana is extremely annoying for me, specially since I expected her to be a useful ally for Valentine, but she ended up making me have to juggle formations to make her so-so buff fall on Valentine. Haven't unlocked Shakka yet, but if his issue is similar, this will be one "enjoyable" season.

[LostSoul]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Oh, Tatyana is extremely annoying for me, specially since I expected her to be a useful ally for Valentine, but she ended up making me have to juggle formations to make her so-so buff fall on Valentine. Haven't unlocked Shakka yet, but if his issue is similar, this will be one "enjoyable" season.

Shaka is Tatyana cranked up to 11. Randomly chosen slots. Randomly champion types (roles, races, genders) in those slots. Expect to do lots of juggling with every reset. At least Shaka's Celestial Puzzle is reasonably powerful. But *NOTHING* close to justifying how infuriatingly random it is.

[Sleepydwagonman]

I'm curious how the Shaka thing will work out with the grind. I set my offline resets at area 700 and can easily go beyond that. Strongheart's tripling of progress will help out, so that first tier of 768 would go in 256 areas.

I won't be spending anything on a Season Pass again (I don't regularly use any of the season champs) this time but I'll attempt to get as many adventure levels as I can again.

[LostSoul]

Originally posted by Sleepydwagonman:

I'm curious how the Shaka thing will work out with the grind. I set my offline resets at area 700 and can easily go beyond that. Strongheart's tripling of progress will help out, so that first tier of 768 would go in 256 areas.

I won't be spending anything on a Season Pass again (I don't regularly use any of the season champs) this time but I'll attempt to get as many adventure levels as I can again.

You won't be able to automate it. Shaka chooses new random slots and new random tags for those slots with every reset. You'll be lucky if you get more than 1 slot correct without direct intervention.

At least with this many Rivals in the formation, Kent pushing out Sentry is no big deal for clear speeds. Virgil's rapid fire more than makes up for it.

[Sleepydwagonman]

Aye, that's going to be the annoying thing about this particular one. Instead of doing 701 areas and then resetting with the same formation, it's going to need an early alignment for Shaka. I'm wondering how quickly this particular one can be gotten out of the way ...

[Kyouko Tsukino]

So I'll go ahead and unlock Selise first. Shaka Zulu will be a problem for future (as in, next week) me.

[LostSoul]

Originally posted by Sleepydwagonman:

Aye, that's going to be the annoying thing about this particular one. Instead of doing 701 areas and then resetting with the same formation, it's going to need an early alignment for Shaka. I'm wondering how quickly this particular one can be gotten out of the way ...

That's going to depend entirely on how far your party can progress before needing to reset. The further you can go, the less often you need to reset, the fewer times you'll need to 'reform' the party to get at least 4 slots assigned 'correctly.'

[WhatZit]

The whole thing (Season 7) looks like a pathetic low-effort slop job.

Only 3 champs reworked, with those reworks merely tweaking unpopular skills like the paints & the puzzles.

The allegedly improved scaling better be significant.

Worryingly, CNE seem to be more pro-actively embracing active play, since Selise still has it (and after Nrakk was given it in S6), plus the Shaka Shuffle every reset.

I'm also not sure that wasting a feat slot to prevent roaming familiars from activating situational Ultimates is the way to go, either. A UI-based block would have been much better.


EDIT: CNE's official explanation from Reddit Q&A is laziness personified! Dozens of champs screaming out for a rework, and they bludge off:

HunterDigi 5 hours ago
Non-redditor Ismo asks:
what the rationale of only reworking 3 champs is, and why 2 of those 3 are only being 'minorly reworked'?


CNE_Shawn 5 hours ago
Hey HunterDigi and Ismo!
The development for the season was leading up to our holiday closure so we kept the reworks a bit lighter this time around so we could make sure everything was done.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

One thing, is Shaka's puzzle considered a "positional" buff or just a "token" that falls in random slots? One would be Val's toy to play with, the other would be more annoying.

I'm thinking, since she can transfer a Dex 15 buff to Dex 14 Jim, for example, or can expand Nova's reach without needing to choose Nova's 3-slot specialization, if Shaka's puzzle is a positional buff, Valentine can make rearranging formations a lot less annoying.

[LostSoul]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

One thing, is Shaka's puzzle considered a "positional" buff or just a "token" that falls in random slots? One would be Val's toy to play with, the other would be more annoying.

I'm thinking, since she can transfer a Dex 15 buff to Dex 14 Jim, for example, or can expand Nova's reach without needing to choose Nova's 3-slot specialization, if Shaka's puzzle is a positional buff, Valentine can make rearranging formations a lot less annoying.

The puzzle slots are just token that falls in random slots. Celestial Puzzle itself is non-positional. And to be clear, it's only a minor improvement over Birdsong's buff, which is far easier and more consistent to use. Like I said, given the infuriatingly random nature of Celestial Puzzle, it should be clocking at least +e10 to compared to Birdsong in comparable gear/feats. Hell, given its random nature, it should be the single most powerful support buff in the game. Which it isn't, and it's not even close.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Oh well. On one hand, not breaking the system with Valentine. On the other hand, she can continue helping me clear variants in background parties without having to deal with broken bird, thunderboy, Kent Clark or Dark RNGesus.

It's a win for Valentine, at least.

[kab_reg]

IIRC, Shaka's buff is not considered as positional.

Don't forget Birdsong's boss-specific overkill. It is almost invaluable in ToMT runs with their abundance of armored bosses.

[LostSoul]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Oh well. On one hand, not breaking the system with Valentine. On the other hand, she can continue helping me clear variants in background parties without having to deal with broken bird, thunderboy, Kent Clark or Dark RNGesus.

It's a win for Valentine, at least.

Valentine's biggest contribution remains the flexibility she adds to the positional buffs provided by other champions, something that makes Celestial puzzle somewhat manageable. As opposed to a total trainwreck without her.