I had some ideas and started booking this out. But I lost some and it is not a passion. So I am just going to give my quick idea outline instead of the more in depth monthly breakdown.
Hogan needs to get in line with losing a match to Flair. I still run a 3 match series. Hogan wins 1 and 3. Run the full injury angle on match 2 (See Sting and Rude from a few years before).
Flair will defend the title at WrestleWar against G1 Climax winner Mashiro Chono.
Hogan needs some non-Flair opponents. I will The Boss, Big Ray Traylor become the #1 contender. Traylor will be the Starrcade opponent. Sting (and Vader) will help establish Traylor along the way.
Austin (US) and Regal (TV) will establish their bona fides as singles competitors. Vader will have a feud with Cactus (if we can get him to stay).
Austin will join a reformed Horsemen (with Sherri as manager). Tully earns a spot back against Funk, if he can smooth things over with Arn. Arn and Tully add to tag team depth, as the roster needs to add some talent.
Harley Race takes on Paul Levesque as a protege, and maybe he will stay.
Bobby Eaton and Steve Keirn (Bad Attitude) will be managed by Col Parker. They need some help on interviews, bu5 are great in the ring.
I see Teddy Long coming back to manage Ron Simmoms and Harlem Heat. He is too entertaining to not help Simmons get over and help guide Harlem Heat.
If Catucs and Funk can be kept around, I plan to have a loose collection of loose cannons with Pillman as well. Any can be lone wolf if others do not stick around.
Dustin Rhodes will be fighting for TV and US titles. Steamboat is still around getting great matches out of many opponents. Trying to build Patriot and Bagwell as a face team. The Armstrongs too with a manager (Dusty or Bullet Bob). Not confident in that.
Hogan will eventually drop title to Vader in 1995. Sting, and then Austin are the planned future champs. I will be bringing in Steiners in Dec 1994 or as soon as I can, as the best tag team ever. Flair and Hogan can be slid away from Title as feud and special attraction types. (All over Randy Savage if he comes available).
Nit as good as a gill booking and storyline. But wanted to give the overall plan.

Hello it’s me again, I’d like to thank everyone who read or skimmed my idea. The few upvotes I recieved gave me the courage to keep going with this idea and expand on Emerald’s story a bit more. I do admit that Rayleigh may be out of character since I haven’t gotten to that part of the One Piece series and only seen glimpses of him. So like before, I do implore you to give me feedback and criticisms that I can make to make this story better. Anyways, this is part 2. Please enjoy.
Flashes and flickers pop in and out of Emerald’s head. The abuse, visions of everything and anyone fleeing from his feral state, the laughter of his captors and new master ring in his head. The scorching pain of the branding and his screams fill his mind, and overwhelm his senses. In his mind he begs for it to end, crying, whimpering for it to stop, then he hyperventilates as the noises get louder and louder into a crescendo of pure noise. Then in a desperate cry he shouts to the heavens for it to stop. Enough!! He then springs awake on the floor screaming it, cold sweats as he began to process where he was. He began to look around frantically believing he is still in danger. His breath still hoarse, and his hairs standing on end, not noticing the changes that happened to him.
Rayleigh would come forward and greet Emerald with a light tease, however in his trauma induced fright, he got up and immediately went to fight Rayleigh without thinking. Emerald would use electro, his speed and strength, everything, but none of it would have come close to hitting Rayleigh. He continued this frantic and single minded onslaught while Rayleigh would dodge, block, or deflect Emerald’s attacks until he tired himself out. The mink would continue this, and while the Dark King knowing this was a response to his trauma, just waited until he wasted his stamina. Emerald in this rampage would only be reopening his wounds, causing him to hesitate and grasp at his wounds. He sat down realizing he would lose blood if he continued, and just started to back away. Rayleigh would approach in a calm and gentle manner, remarking on his performance. Emerald still did not trust him one bit however, still displaying a defensive stance while one arm held his wound. The Dark King would explain his intrigue and interest in him, explaining how he found him lying on the ground half dead in the rubble of the slavery base. He would remark that it was a rare thing that a mink would have left Zou much less a devil fruit. Minks were already pretty strong on their own thus the devil fruit created an intriguing question to his mind. Rayleigh would also note that Emerald was in his hybrid state, prompting the bunny to look at himself. his hands felt normal, only bruised and scarred due to his experiences, but then he looked at his tail. It was longer, segmented with a stinger-like end point. looking at this, he begins to become confused and his vision splits 8 ways. Confusing and even disorienting him causing him to fall back onto the ground.
Rayleigh would allow him to process these emotions, understanding that slavery was not something to take lightly. Not to mention he was still sorting out his emotions. He would then place a hand on Emerald’s shoulder, to which he would instinctively point the stinger at Rayleigh, but he wouldn’t move an inch. He attempted to lighten the mood, saying that he could very well be the first Mink to ever have eaten a zoan type devil fruit, however it didn’t do much to comfort him. He would ask the mink how he made his way down from Zuneesha, and Emerald would explain that he snuck into a guests ship. Rayleigh nods, and asks if he would like to return home. Emerald would refuse, and say that he wanted to explore the world outside of his home, to which the man would question him. He would ask Emerald as to what plan he had, to which the mink would remain silent. Rayleigh would explain that the world was full of dangers, perils and beings who would kill him without a second though. He humored the bravery, the foolhardy and naive nature of his, but he needed to be able to defend himself now that he was outside because minks were prized as collectables. Now that he ate a devil fruit, people would kill to capture him and put him back into the life he found himself. Or potentially kill him, deeming him too dangerous.
Rayleigh said that it didn’t have to be that way however. He would offer the young Mink a choice, he would train him, allowing him to cope and have closure with his trauma and master something called Haki. Allowing him to close the gap between him and those who wish him harm if he had conviction. The only caveat was that he wouldn’t go easy on him, and he would put him through the wringer. The other was helping him back a home, let him mature and have Emerald’s peers help him cope and train in his own way. However, he stated that his devil fruit was something he needed to figure out himself in either scenario. As well as he didn’t want Emerald to come back so soon, asking he took his time healing. The mink would would ponder this decision, his mind filled with anxiety and nervousness as the experiences he had rang in his head once again. But something began to fester from that dark place, a desire, a wish to never go to that life ever again. He would do whatever it takes to never go through that pain ever again. Thus he would stand, looking at Rayleigh and say that he wants to stay; saying that he never wants to go through that again, and that no one would stop him from seeing the world. Rayleigh would smile, it was a naive goal, but it was a goal nonetheless. The dark King says that he would help him and that training will begin when his wounds heal enough…..
There you have it, if you have read through this story till the end, then you are the best and I genuinely appreciate you reading this story. This has been fun to ponder about and act out in my head, my friend urges me to read the manga and while I am I can’t stop thinking about this. This is a lot of fun! For now I intend to write out Emerald’s training in terms of Haki and his goals in this world in the future. Keep those upvotes coming and please do leave feedback and criticisms, I really do want to read what you all have to say about it. If it sucks, then thats okay, if its good then great, i really just want to write good stories. I may also write full stories about these events as of now they are simply ideas in my head. Well enough rambling from me, thank you for reading and I’ll keep writing. Bye bye!

https://youtu.be/P1rE5xFa270?si=xUxz6KPGERo8JSGe
Script by: u/ComfortOneStop
Living in a world full of shape shifting, age old dragons is NOT easy! Fighting, both physical and political, is rampant on every level. Dragons will fight over everything if you let them! And it seems you've stumbled into another contest of wills between three very attractive dragon boys...

I was ghosted by my partner of a little over a year at the start of March. No argument or fight, it seemed all good to me, just one day they were gone.
I was devastated at first, and although it's still a little bit of a sore spot, I don't feel heartbroken now. 99% of the time I'm fine, but every now and then I get a feeling of some sadness.
I thought it being just short of 3 months with no contact (have confirmed they are alive and not injured or in a coma, just no longer in touch with me) was enough for me to start going forward.
I met someone a couple weeks ago who is not making a secret of how interested in me they are and honestly I'm interested in them as well, but I keep feeling this weird guilt being with them...it almost feels like I'm cheating on my ghost, maybe because I didn't get the full closure on the relationship?
And that in turn is making me feel guilty for talking to this new person in my life, as though I'm leading them on, and I worry that I might hurt myself and them more because of it. It doesn't make sense to me, I shouldn't feel guilty for living my life just because someone else decided they didn't want to be a part of it any more.
I should also mention I did disclose how long ago the relationship ended and how it ended to this new person.
I think I messed up and wasn't as ready as I thought, and now someone else might get hurt because of it.

I am a 23F and I dream just about every night and I do not take any supplements to help me sleep. Last fall I had nightmares almost every night about someone almost killing me. I never knew who it was and I would always fight back. After reading multiple dream interpretations they suggested its because a new me needed to be born. I agreed and it aligned with what I was going through. I made changes in my life and worked on me and the dreams were gone. Fast forward to about last month and my nightmares are back. Im having nightmares roughly 4/7 days a week and thats just from what I remember. Last night I dreamt of being at a concert and the man behind me kept touching me. I politely asked him to stop and he refused. He continued to do and then he grabbed me by my neck and was trying to choke me. Luckily I got away and I ran to the front entrance and was pleading for help as he chased me. They were able to get his name which was Angel and that was it. I ran out the entrance and somehow ended up at my friends house. I went inside and I finally felt safe and I called her on the phone explaining how terrified I was and she suggested she come stay with me. I saw a truck approach the house and it looked like him. I had the lights on and I was so confused how he found me but I knew it was over for me. I ran turned the lights off and I went to hide. As I went on my ohone to call for help I had so many missed calls but from a Jakob. I was so scared I didnt know why this man was stalking me. I dialed 911 and when they answered I couldnt speak. I woke up after this and my chest was tight and full of anxiety like if it were happening in real life. The remainder of the morning I felt very uneasy. I have spent the day trying to remember more details and try to figure out who the man was that I saw and think about anyone I may know with the names Angel and Jakob. Any ideas on why I have such frequent nightmares?

View Poll

So, I'm in between 3e campaigns at the moment as I gear up for the next one I'm considering some house rule changes and a player asked me why Manipulation spells are so impossible to use because of the Threshold requirement. Doing some research into it, yeah, I think there's a problem here and I'm open to just straight up removing thresholds from most of the Manipulation spells in SR3 and MITS. But they seem so deliberately tacked on there I can't help but wonder: Why were they put there in the first place? I'm generally keen to respect Chesterton's Fence, so I want to figure out what the designers were thinking when they put these in here before I remove it.
Some background So this is a general problem with opposed rolls in 3e, but opposed rolls become very silly instantly if you do anything but roll 4 or 5 dice against 4 or 5 dice. Consider the following probabilities of one pool size vs another:
Some basic statistics for opposed checks in the raw. These are your odds of success (net successes > 0) when you have the number of dice in the top row and your opponent has the number of dice in the given column.

	1 die	2 dice	3 dice	4 dice	5 dice	6 dice
1 die	14%	74%	95%	99%	100%	100%
2 dice	2%	22%	78%	96%	99%	100%
3 dice	0%	3%	33%	70%	91%	98%
4 dice	0%	0%	10%	36%	68%	90%
5 dice	0%	0%	2%	13%	37%	85%
6 dice	0%	0%	0%	2%	12%	34%

Already, there's some really alarming stuff in here, like a single die on one side of the equation changing the success chances by 40% or more. But what if we randomly inserted a requirement that the attacker achieve a number of successes equal to half the pool size of the defender. To help the attacker out, I'll also simulate him getting more dice because he does have Spell Pool after all.
Also, let's assume the spell is Force 5 Alter Memory for now, but as I'll explain later this matters less than you might imagine.

	7 dice Sorcery Test	8 dice Sorcery Test	9 dice Sorcery Test	10 dice Sorcery Test	11 dice Sorcery Test	12 dice Sorcery Test
Willpower 1	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Willpower 2	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Willpower 3	98%	99%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Willpower 4	66%	74%	82%	88%	92%	95%
Willpower 5	30%	38%	46%	53%	60%	66%
Willpower 6	1%	2%	3%	4%	6%	8%

There's some pretty wild stuff going on here right at the lines where the threshold comes into play. At 3 Willpower, resisting the spell is virtually impossible. The Force of the spell doesn't actually matter all that much here. The problem is that the spellcaster is rolling a pile of dice larger than your raw unaided attribute against a TN much lower than the Force probably is and only needs a single net success (which they needed anyway to just to cast the spell). Once you hit 4 Willpower, suddenly, not only does the caster need yet another success, but the fraction of his pile that is counting successes has reduced from 66 to 50%. 4s and 5s is clearly the sweet spot that I think the designers tested with the most. The variance here isn't too bad. There are reasonable chances of success and resistance all around.
However, once you hit that critical threshold of 6 Willpower, everything goes to hell. Casting spells becomes impossible. Going from Willpower 5 to 6 cuts the attacker's successes in half and requires them to get yet another net success. Here's where I point out that if Harlequin himself popped up and slapped your Willpower 6 character right out of chargen with a Force 8 Alter Memory and threw 20 dice at it... he'd only have a 49% chance of success. We've only been talking about Willpower so far, but all of the above basically means that Manipulation spells going against Body do not work on Orks and Trolls, full stop.
So it brings me to my thread question. What are Thresholds for, exactly? They don't even matter for targets with attributes of 1 to 3. They make things a bit easier for the defender in the 4 to 5 range, perhaps important given that these are spells which can turn you into a newt or make you shoot yourself in the face, but they become absolutely prohibitive against attributes of 6+. Why not get rid of them altogether? Or, if they must be kept to help out the defender, why not make them uniform? Why not make it so that the attacker always needs two net successes, regardless of the defender's scores? The defender's score is already relevant in setting the TN.
My suspicion is that the designers started out with spells like Ignite which go against a static TN under the theory that being really tough doesn't stop me from agitating the molecules on your body, but the Threshold was there to make it so tougher characters could still benefit from that toughness. Elemental manipulations are already kinda in that vein. They roll against static TNs but you get to resist them like normal ranged attacks (being tough doesn't negate the fire I'm shooting at you, it just keeps the fire I made from causing you harm). Somewhere along the way though the static TNs got tossed out and replaced with standard resistance rolls but the Thresholds stuck around.
Is this general understanding correct? Has anyone else puzzled over this or houseruled it?

I posted a thread yesterday about a 3 way fight of Shi Tou vs Kou Yoku vs Fu Tei but most ppl surprisingly disregarded Shi Tou despite the feeling that I got that he is really strong and looks like a young RiShin
People really underestimate the power of HSU members, we have 4 people above 90 in Strength

• KyouKai 96 + large a
  
• KyouRei 93 + large a
  
• RiShin 93 + a
  
• Sou Jin 92
  

I think Shi Tou will be also above 90 and will contend with generals too, in his first campaign he is 50-man commander, that's faster track than even RiShin the main character

I'm actually pretty proud of my end-game strategy. Getting to the Portal is pretty easy now, it just takes a million years. It's not quite perfect yet, but I am proud of how I do it because I haven't seen anyone else use it when looking up different strategies online.
Going into the fight with Deva, a couple Myrmidons, PC (Circle of the Moon Druid) starting as a Water Myrmidon, my boyfriend Halsin, Astarion, Shadowheart and Orpheus as the Illithid. Orpheus starts the fight as a Displacer Beast.
Astarion pops off and takes Dash as a bonus action to get to the edges of the brain and summons some allies.
Halsin summons allies and goes to stand next to Shadowheart who Dimension Doors both of them to the edges.
PC transports as a Myrmidon to the edges.
Orpheus (as a Displacer Beast) jumps to the closest Dream Guardian and Displaces them to get to the edges.
The Illithid Arcanists go down pretty easily between heavy hitting melee attack from Myrmidons and Displacer Beast. The allies are fussing with the dragon (sorry guys) and Orpheus is usually pulled out of Beast shape by taking heavy hits from the Illithids but is at full health by the time.
I'm still working on my strategy once I get through the portal, but it's been a delightful challenge. Any suggestions welcome! I would also love to read about other people's strategies. I thought I was very clever with the Displacer Beast trick, and how I love how everyone accomplishes things differently! It's legitimately fun for me to read about.

No, really, not a shitpost. In a sense, because of the way GMs are all about the saves, he determined, before this year, that he would restrict his own usage.
The story notes that, earlier this year, he had his first multi-inning appearance since 2019. Here's the info and intro on that:

Hader, one of the greatest relievers of his era, had spent the previous four years working under unprecedented, self-imposed usage rules to keep himself healthy. Together with his agent, Jeff Berry, Hader became the first known relief pitcher to place such restrictions on himself.

Why?

That remained Hader's stance until a team was willing to make him a long-term commitment, a process that extended until late January, when the Astros signed Hader to a five-year, $95 million deal. It is the first multiyear deal of Hader's career. ...
Hader lost his arbitration hearing in 2019 and went unsigned for months this winter. ...
Hader got 12 saves in 2018, and then in 2019, he continued to pitch as the Brewers' closer, picking up 37 saves; he worked more than three outs in 15 of those 37 saves. The Brewers were using him like a Swiss Army knife, Berry recalled, and the lefty was thriving. ...
The following winter, Hader was eligible for salary arbitration for the first time. What he had done on the mound was largely unprecedented, but Berry, needing a comparable performance in history, cited Jonathan Papelbon's one-year, $6.25 million deal as a closer with the Boston Red Sox in 2009. Berry asked for $6.4 million in arbitration for Hader. The Brewers offered $4.1 million.
The day before the hearing, [assistant general manager David] Stearns and Berry spoke, and Stearns made a two-year offer over speakerphone. Though Berry doesn't remember the exact proposal, he said it did not reflect Hader's standing as an elite reliever. ...
When the arbitration hearing began, Berry made his case, pointing to Hader's historic performance. The lawyers working on behalf of the Brewers and MLB's labor relations department -- which typically drives arbitration recommendations to the teams, with the team carrying the right to act on its own -- focused on the saves, in spite of how Milwaukee deployed Hader.

And so, Berry gets an idea. And pitches it to Hader.
If the Brewers were going to fight the All-Star over his salary, then they would design rules to protect him. Berry had never heard of another pitcher dictating his own usage, but he also had never had a pitcher used as Hader had been. Berry proposed three new rules for Hader to present to the front office: He would not pitch more than two days in a row; he would not pitch more than three outs; he would pitch only in a save situation or when the score was tied.
And, Hader said yes. (And, with the Brewers, had Counsell's full support. And, at least silent acceptance from the Padres.)
Of course, the Astros signed him to a multiyear deal. And that gets us back to the start.

Berry asked Hader how he could be used by the Astros.
"Any way they want," Hader said. "They made a commitment to me, and I'll make a commitment to them."

There we are. Lots more, lots more, at the link, but it needed a lot of framing.

Hi, I'm gonna give some feedback on my wargames experience. I know this is a big part of the long term homeworld strategy, so I hope the feedback is helpful. I am NOT going to talk about fleet v fleet or campaign at all, if anything applies to those modes, it is incidental and not intended as the focus of my feedback.
Setting / Map
So I feel that the map selection is incredibly limited. The fact is it feels like there are maybe 3 different possible maps for every stage, and that just doesn't feel great. Very repetitive.
Just more variety is needed here.
Spawns
I think the Incursion spawns are terrible. It is a war of attrition and it just feels like running a sprint every time and doesn't feel like anything we do ever creates a calm experience. I think challenge is an interesting concept, which I think Blizzard did well in Starcraft 2 co-op, by having difficulties (AI gets smarter, more capable), and eventually mutators (the difficulty remains, which is basically fairly straightforward once you get used to it, and now mutators make you play differently).
The constant nonestop onslaught is okay at first, but stops being fun quickly.
Artifacts and Fleets
I put both of these together because I think the two are heavily woven in.
I think the artifact system is interesting but _too_ random. The fact is that I may want to try out say a bomber build with the bomber fleet, with a focus on tank frigates and high damage bombers, or all assault frigates, etc. The problem is the artifacts are so random, sometimes I just get a fun combo of nonestop recon buffs and nothing useful. It just doesn't feel good.
And on that note, the ship comps are very weird given limited resources. For example a comp of 6 assault frigs + 2 support frigs is FAR more hitpoints and damage, than 3 times that cost in interceptors. A frigate at 20% hp that can heal is 0 money lost. 5 interceptors where 4 died is 4/5 of the cost destroyed and unrepairable. I like the Homeworld 2 version where fighters have squads, and as long as the squad is still alive, it can be reinforced. It solved that problem better than homeworld 1's style of individual fighters did. And for a mode where resources are very scarce, this is critical.
Frigates have the added bonuses of if you cap a frigate, you get another free frigate. Good luck capping fighters / corvettes.
So this all leads to very weird situations:

• recon ships are a waste of cash as they'll die and you lose too much cash
• interceptors are the same
• bombers are a specific strategy where if you get lucky on RNGesus roles, you can stealth bomb insta pop destroyers and frigates, and hope not too much cash is lost per run.
• optimal strategies seem to revolve around basically death-balling assault frigates and getting the right random artifacts.
• most of the time, we can't really "fight" and instead have to objective dunk.

What i'd like to see

• Get rid of incursions, and replace them with occasional carrier warp-ins. We can now destroy them and create breathing room to repair, rearm, etc.
• Allow us to sabotage the enemy's resources to significantly reduce their ability to reinforce. That way its not just an infinite wave of enemies.
• Make capturing count towards the unit count max. This will at least limit frigates a bit.
• Make artifacts semi-random. Or at least let us choose at least paths we want to focus on. My argument would be to eliminate randomness and let us just choose a "tech tree" that we buy via artifacts. This will create a wonderful progression. The fact that its not random isn't a bad thing.
• Add randomness in the form of mutators. For example every difficulty level will add some:

enemy carriers spawn more units, enemy units cost less, double carriers, enemy assault frigates lob miniature giant space hamsters at you, etc. These can all be interesting random changes that become addons as the missions progress to make the game more challenging, while also not taking away our agency in our ability to execute on strategies with our faction.

• Change up fighters / corvettes to be groups, that way we can micromanage groups retreating and repairing vs just losing cash immediately. I want to see fighters and corvettes changed so that we don't just waste cash on them. This will lead to far more varied tactics.
• With that, make the ships sleected work similarly to how starcraft selects large numbers of units (small colored icons, etc). So we can still micromanage as needed. The "select damaged" is a good feature, but often hard to manage given that I can issue a dock order, but now I need to order other units and don't have an easy way to do it. The entire selection system needs some very serious re-work to be a good game control scheme requiring micro managing. At a MINIMUM "select damaged" and "select undamaged" would be very useful.
• I think some game design from you guys is needed on how to change the game from a DPS race, to positional gameplay, even to some extent. That way "the blob" isn't the optimal strategy.

Closing thoughts
I see the community is very small and not really growing that rapidly. I hope to see wargames changed to a point where everyone will be excited to jump in on it. Finding it hard to find people to play with even among HW enthusiasts.
I haven't even unlocked all the fleets for war games and I'm kinda done with it. Looking at the year 1 pack... I don't even have enthusiasm for buying it because... I just don't play enough to justify spending extra.

For some context I have been playing since 2016 and have about 4000 hours on overwatch, its my favorite game and pretty much the only one I play. I've had fun throughout every meta even when certain heroes are more powerful, but for some reason current roadhog is really bumming me out. Recently I've played several games where my team feels really coordinated, communicative, and skilled. These are the games that make me love overwatch, games where even if we lose you can tell that everyone tried their best and worked together. My problem with current roadhog is that now, when I get these awesome teams, no matter what tank we play, what counters we use, how well we play together, we are up against a oneshotting 2000 health wall.
The Numbers
Hog has a LOT of health, 800 base with 450 from breather, with a 50% damage reduction for its duration (with more head shot damage reduction from the tank passive)
Pig Pen has 100 health, and can activate 1 second after hitting the ground. I find this ability frustrating to play against because it feels like hog can throw pen at you and (even if you react in time) it tanks your shots, detonates, and now you're slowed with half health or dead. The 12 second cooldown on this ability I think is fair, though.
Hook's hitbox has a .5 meter radius for enemies, but no radius for walls or barriers. This is one of the reasons why hook can reach around walls and objects without breaking. 90% of the time you're hooked you're going to die. If the hog is good, he'll body block your escape option, or pull you around a wall so you can't be healed. The displacement is very strong on its own, but with hogs own shotgun burst damage, pig pen, or his teammates, without a saving ability like bubble, defense matrix, suzu, lamp, or pull, you will die. With a 6 second cooldown, I genuinely think that hogs hook combo in its current state is one of the strongest abilities the game has ever seen. Even when you have defensive abilities, hook can outpace all of their cooldowns.
Whole Hog can deal up to 6720 damage, 896 DPS, which isnt so bad against squishies because of the 14m/s knockback. The problem is that it deletes tanks. I've played with reinhardts recently who get hooked in with a near full 1200 shield, 700 health (including armor), they get whole hogged, and they're dead almost instantly. The knockback reduction tanks have make whole hog even more effective against them.
The Counters
Without an Ana hog seems nearly unstoppable, but even with Ana he feels very difficult to punish. Nade can weaken him about 1/4 to 1/2 of his healthpool with help from your teammates if he uses breather. The 50% damage reduction makes it so even if your entire team focuses him, he still seems to survive nade with 300-500 health. If he gets support from his team in any way he's going to live. Nade should NOT be a guaranteed kill on hog if he has support from his team or is playing using cover, but at the moment it seems that hog can get away with being out of position, tanking nade AND sleep dart, somehow killing two of my teammates, and walking away free.
Sigma is probably hogs best tank counter, grasp can eat whole hog and shield can block hooks. Hog can still play around these abilities and has better pick potential.
Mauga and Orisa both can be effective against hog, but in sustained teamfights where no team gets a pick, hog will outlive everything and does not need to give up space in the same way Mauga and Orisa do because of his healthpool and self healing / damage reduction.
Dva seems okay and can defense matrix hooks, but again hog just has so much health that if your team can't get an early first pick you're pretty much going to lose the fight.
I don't get many teammates playing reaper into hog (or in general) so I'm not entirely sure how that matchup works, but I know in general reaper struggles on open maps where hog is good, and even when reaper is close, take a breather's damage reduction can tank reap's shotguns, and reap can still lose the 1v1. I think an additional problem is that the dive tanks that can open space for reaper to move in are pretty bad against hog.
As for other dps, your best bet is picking off a squishy early on in the fight, which you should be trying to do anyways. The problem here is that if you cant do this, hog will outsustain your own tanks damage and eventually you lose the fight by default.
Conclusion
I think hog has too much health for how much kill potential he has. He feels very difficult to punish even when countering, the 50% damage reduction on breather is very strong, and hook being a 6 second cooldown instakill is really frustrating to play into. Pig pen activates too quickly or has too much health. I think that if I see hog throw pig pen then I should be able to consistently kill it before it activates. Whole hog is a tank deleter with little time to react to.
Personally, I preferred hog before the rework, even when he was meta in earlier seasons. Right now it feels to me that he just has too much, his numbers are too high and he has too much burst damage. The game feels like the team with roadhog wins, but in a way that never felt as a bad as when any other tank has been meta. I consistently find myself and my teammates losing to hog no matter how much "better" we seem to be playing the game, or how hard we try to counter him or play around him. Is it just a skill issue, is this character not completely busted in the way I feel he is?

GO GREEN!!!! Buy EVs!!
So my wife and I traded up to EVs on both of our vehicles last fall.
We now consume 1200kWh more per month.
Roseville power mails me a notice every month now showing me how much more power I consume when compared to similar size homes and far worse compared to efficient homes.
They are talking out of both sides of their mouth.
HEYYYYY WHY ARE YOU USING SO MUCH POWER???
What do they expect? That I will go play the public EV charging station game and not only waste my time, but spend 40-65 cents kWh vs 14.68 cents charging at home?
IF I only charged at public EV chargers I would pay between $480 to $780 per month. How stupid would that be when our gas costs were $600/month and much much more convenient to "refill".
Full disclosure, I got EVs because not because I wanted to "go green". I did it because I love the instant torque, far less than gas and I love the tech of EVs.
Truth about EVs is you are really just moving your "carbon footprint" from your driveway/garage to the power plant. And the further east you go in the US the more power is generated from coal, oil, and nuclear. 50% of power consumed in California is produced by burning natural gas.
For the Tesla haters, no we didn't buy a golf cart with an iPad only to blend in with the sea of same.
2x BMW i4 eDrive 40s because it drives like a BWM and looks like a 4 series gasser.

I had a very informative phone call with the Vitreous Macula Retina (VMR) Institute in Huntington Beach, CA. As many of you are aware, VMR Institute and Dr. Sebag have been at the forefront of floater treatments for over a decade. I reached out to them because I'm trying to decide if pursuing a vitrectomy is right for me. I wanted to share the points from my conversation in case it helps anyone else who is also considering a vitrectomy for their floaters.

• Dr. Sebag is no longer performing vitrectomies, neither is anyone else at VMR. Dr. Sebag and his colleagues still perform comprehensive exams for floater sufferers and then refer patients to one of two local surgeons for vitrectomy: Dr. Hani Salehi or Dr. Eugene Chang.
• VMR offers vitreolysis for suitable candidates as part of a clinical trial (first few sessions are free)
• How often did Dr. Sebag operate on out-of-state patients?
  • When Dr. Sebag was still operating, about 1/3 of patients were from out-of-state.
• Post-op appointments
  • If traveling from out-of-state for vitrectomy, will need to remain in town for about 1 week for post-op appointments (barring any complications). Subsequent follow-up appointments are usually scheduled for 3-6 months post-op, then 1 year post-op.
• What type of anesthesia is used?
  • 99% of surgeons use local anesthesia (injected near the eye), often in combination with twilight anesthesia. The local anesthetic will typically leave half your face numb for a few hours.
• How do surgeons avoid frill?
  • The best way to avoid frill (leftover vitreous skirt appearing post-op) is to induce PVD (i.e., full vitrectomy). The decision to perform core vs. full vitrectomy is made on a case-by-case basis.
  • In a cohort of 230 patients that Dr. Sebag performed FOV on, 14% reported frill post-op. This 14% consisted entirely of myopic males (I found that quite interesting).
• How many patients under the age of 30 has Dr. Sebag operated on?
  • In the same cohort mentioned above, 40/230 were under 30 years old. The remainder were 50+
• It's not necessary to find "the best" surgeon for FOV because vitrectomy is the most common procedure that every vitreo-retinal surgeon must be able to perform. What's more important is finding a surgeon you feel comfortable with and asking them the right questions, such as what gauge instrument they use, how many vitrectomies they've performed, etc.

I'll admit that I'm disappointed to hear Sebag is no longer operating, but it's reassuring to hear that VMR is still dedicated to helping patients who suffer from floaters. I'm not 100% set on vitrectomy yet, but I feel that speaking with surgeons (rather than merely reading anecdotes online) helps me feel less anxious about making a decision. Knowledge is power!

Hi All! I’d love to know which bottles you all would select for my upcoming red wine event given the following categories. In terms of access, I’m located in the Eastern US so the bottle must be available or able to ship to the this area. In terms of price, I’d like to aim for $50-$125 per bottle, but willing to expand up to $200 for two or three of the bottle categories (for example, for the older vintage selection). Everything must be a red wine. Open to bottle idea or any other comments you have!
Flight 1: Intro to Old World vs New World
-1 bottle Spanish Tempranillo
-1 bottle US Merlot or Pinot Noir (can’t quite decide on the US option)
-1 bottle Aussie Shiraz
Flight 2: Varietal Comparison
-1 bottle Gamay (light bodied)
-1 bottle Sangiovese (medium bodied)
-1 bottle Cabernet Sauvignon (full bodied)
-1 bottle Tannat or Touriga Nacional (big and bold)
Flight 3: Vertical (old vintage versus new vintage; what tertiary notes come with time in the bottle)
-1 bottle 1990 (bday girl’s year)
-1 bottle Recent Vintage (let’s say 2015 forward)
Flight 4: Dessert and Fortified reds
-1 bottle of Port
-1 bottle of Madeira (or another idea)
-1 bottle of sweet Lambrusco (or another idea)

As a long time player who’s always wanted to dip my feet in the world of the DM I’m getting my first chance soon with my current campaign as a player on a hiatus and other players interested in still doing something with the allotted time. I’m going to run a one shot adventure, campaign? Idk what to call it since the intention is obviously for it to be short, i guess just a session. But i digress, the plan is a rather short introduction period with opportunities for some social interactions that should lead my players party to a dungeon I’m setting up. I plan on using traps, misdirections, a few ambushes, and a bigger boss fight at the end as a conclusion. Does this sound like a solid plan of action? I wanted there to be some social (beginning), some exploration/skills challenges (middle of exploring dungeon and dealing with traps), then combat of course to close things out and check all the so called boxes of play. Any advice is appreciated, I’m eventually going to run a full on campaign, but we all start somewhere ya know? Thanks in advance to any who comment a reply 🤝🏾

GamerLegion 🇪🇺 2-1 🇷🇺 AMKAL

Ancient: 19-17 Vertigo: 9-13 Nuke: 13-11
 
 

Map picks:

GamerLegion	MAP	AMKAL
X	Inferno
	Anubis	X
✔	Ancient
	Vertigo	✔
X	Dust2
	Mirage	X
	Nuke

 

Full Match Stats:

Team	K-D	ADR	KAST	Rating
🇪🇺 GamerLegion
🇷🇺 FL4MUS	69-60	88.7	72.0%	1.24
🇭🇺 sl3nd	53-54	75.4	69.5%	1.03
🇵🇱 Snax	49-52	72.1	69.5%	1.00
🇪🇪 aNdu	51-58	73.5	67.1%	1.00
🇷🇴 volt	48-49	62.8	76.8%	0.98
🇷🇺 AMKAL
🇷🇺 TRAVIS	66-60	91.7	72.0%	1.23
🇰🇿 ICY	54-50	67.1	74.4%	1.06
🇺🇦 Sdaim	49-54	67.0	68.3%	1.01
🇷🇺 Krad	55-56	74.2	64.6%	0.99
🇷🇺 Forester	46-51	64.3	67.1%	0.95

 

Individual Map Stats:

Map 1: Ancient

Team	T	CT	OT	Total
🇪🇺 GamerLegion	4	8	7	19
	CT	T	OT
🇷🇺 AMKAL	8	4	5	17

 

Team	K-D	ADR	KAST	Rating
🇪🇺 GamerLegion
🇪🇪 aNdu	28-25	91.1	72.2%	1.19
🇵🇱 Snax	25-22	78.1	72.2%	1.14
🇭🇺 sl3nd	25-24	72.6	69.4%	0.99
🇷🇴 volt	20-21	52.5	75.0%	0.92
🇷🇺 FL4MUS	19-29	71.8	58.3%	0.87
🇷🇺 AMKAL
🇷🇺 TRAVIS	28-27	91.0	77.8%	1.21
🇷🇺 Krad	29-23	90.6	69.4%	1.20
🇰🇿 ICY	21-21	61.1	77.8%	1.04
🇷🇺 Forester	22-22	64.4	69.4%	0.98
🇺🇦 Sdaim	18-24	63.0	63.9%	0.92

Ancient detailed stats and VOD

 

Map 2: Vertigo

Team	T	CT	Total
🇪🇺 GamerLegion	3	6	9
	CT	T
🇷🇺 AMKAL	9	4	13

 

Team	K-D	ADR	KAST	Rating
🇪🇺 GamerLegion
🇷🇺 FL4MUS	22-16	82.5	81.8%	1.39
🇷🇴 volt	13-17	74.9	72.7%	0.92
🇭🇺 sl3nd	12-17	68.4	63.6%	0.85
🇪🇪 aNdu	10-17	61.8	50.0%	0.72
🇵🇱 Snax	8-16	50.1	54.5%	0.62
🇷🇺 AMKAL
🇷🇺 TRAVIS	23-15	121.8	72.7%	1.63
🇺🇦 Sdaim	15-11	75.4	86.4%	1.31
🇷🇺 Forester	15-11	73.6	77.3%	1.24
🇰🇿 ICY	16-15	74.7	77.3%	1.07
🇷🇺 Krad	14-13	58.5	77.3%	0.99

Vertigo detailed stats and VOD

 

Map 3: Nuke

Team	T	CT	Total
🇪🇺 GamerLegion	5	8	13
	CT	T
🇷🇺 AMKAL	7	4	11

 

Team	K-D	ADR	KAST	Rating
🇪🇺 GamerLegion
🇷🇺 FL4MUS	28-15	119.6	83.3%	1.74
🇭🇺 sl3nd	16-13	86.0	75.0%	1.26
🇷🇴 volt	15-11	67.2	83.3%	1.17
🇵🇱 Snax	16-14	83.3	79.2%	1.17
🇪🇪 aNdu	13-16	57.9	75.0%	1.00
🇷🇺 AMKAL
🇰🇿 ICY	17-14	69.3	66.7%	1.09
🇷🇺 TRAVIS	15-18	65.0	62.5%	0.93
🇺🇦 Sdaim	16-19	65.4	58.3%	0.88
🇷🇺 Krad	12-20	64.0	45.8%	0.71
🇷🇺 Forester	9-18	55.7	54.2%	0.66

Nuke detailed stats and VOD

 
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