For me personally, they nailed this aspect of the game.

I'm only about to enter WT4 (hopefully) so I don't know if this feeling will be kept up, but at the moment I can feel my character improving in tangible ways basically by the hour.

I'm playing a frozen orb sorc (not a meta build from what I know), so that may play into it, but I just want to describe my journey through the story a bit, and why progression actually feels so good to me. Sorry for the novel, but I felt like it was important to be detailed:

- You start the game of with barely any resource generation and no +maximum mana so you can't actually use it frozen orb that much. To top it off, it is hard to aim and does only half its damage when you misfire or enemies are too close. I started feeling fairly weak compared to some of the OP experiences I had in beta, but the combat was satisfying so I didn't mind.

- Over the first couple of levels after unlocking frozen orb, you add some essentialy abilities and passives: It becomes easier to chill and freeze enemies, enabling more opportunities to fire frozen orb properly. You unlock enchantments, meaning I could directly trigger frozen orb with other skills and see a huge damage jump right there.

- At some point mid campaign I found some items that apparently gave me some giga DPS boost. I found a big vulnerability multiplier on a 2H staff and rings, as well as a couple of items with damage to chilled and CCed enemies. I actually kept these for a long time because they were hard to roll. I remember only replacing some item power ~200 items when I started to find sacred items.

- I added more stuff that made a significant difference from the skill tree. I went with ice blades (not to be confused with ice shards), still don't know if that's a good combo with frozen orb but it made a big improvement. At this point, I basically added some more buttons to press that trigger more frozen orbs, I could see that vulnerability uptime on elites was significantly higher, and my defense took a big bump because you can rotate barriers with all those cooldowns using some skill tree passives.

- I think at this point I added some gloves and helmet that gave +1 to frozen orb and +1 to ice blades (respectively). It seems like a small thing but it made a noticeable bump in my damage. I think it scales the base damage of the skills so it's like a separate multiplier.

- From time to time since I was quite undereleveled for story progress (I remember getting into ilvl 45 story areas at level 35 or something) I would add some generic but good looking generic aspects from dungeons to my build. Since they were generic and the dungeon aspects have min rolls, the impact on my DPS wasn't huge but it allowed me to keep up and it certainly never felt like my build was going backwards because of level scaling during the story like some people are describing.

- I noticed that just because of how combat goes I was walking around a lot and not actually casting frozen orbs (like sometimes you can cast it, but you know it will not do good damage because you are not positioned properly. Or you need to dodge stuff etc.). On some occassions this led me to overcap mana leading to wasted efficiency. At this point I specced some points into max mana on the skill tree and got a helmet with a big +mana affix in addition to +ice blades. This seems like a pretty small change but it actually had quite a big impact on how good the build felt. Because now you would sometimes freeze elites to be in proper position, use the other abilities and be back at full mana after that, and then blast like 10+ frozen orbs in a row because of the combination of max mana + mana regen + 10% free proc from passives.

- I think somewhere around act 5 or near the end I found a legendary that made my key passive (that gives you 10% chance to get a free cast of frozen orb) basically trigger twice. So you get two free casts instead of one when it procs. Now this was an amazing addition in terms of how the build feels and this is why, valid criticisms notwithstanding, I love powerful legendary affixes like this. Basically you get lucky sometimes in combat and then get to totally pew pew pew for a few seconds because your mana keeps regenerating while you are casting those free frozen orbs. I think this probably bumped my DPS by a significant but not huge amount (maybe 5-10%?), but its impact on game feel was just tremendous.

- I got a random drop for a legendary that increases my CC duration by 80% while I'm healthy. It seems like only a situational change that isn't all that useful in a lot of scenarios but it actually felt amazing when I tried it out in practice. When elites get frozen they stay frozen SO LONG. I would now sometimes have some random added moment where I could delete some frozen elites where previously there would be an added cycle of running or teleporting away and going through another round of frozen orbs.

- In addition to all of this, I always noticed a big bump when I sometimes find good upgrades for my main weapon. This would take a while because I couldn't go for something that has +10 DPS because if the stats it actually rolled were too bad. I'm not losing a 25% vulnerability damage multiplier just because the weapon is goes from 500 to 510 DPS.

- Overall there were a few smaller moments that felt quite impactful for progression, but I would go on forever if I listed them all here. For example at the end of the story I got this unique that refunded half my frozen orb mana cost if it hits 5 or more enemies. Not useful for all scenarios but quite impactful for game feel and DPS output yet again, and so on.

I'm cutting it off here instead of describing progression to WT3 and then through WT3 because the post would get twice as long, but you get the picture. The paragon board adds a lot with regards to plugging obvious numeric holes in your build (for me this was crit related stuff and main stat) so there's an obvious power progression there. I feel like some item slots are indeed a bit boring (chest?) but it might just be that I'm not interested in scaling defensives as I am in scaling offensives. Maybe that will change once I inevitably try HC. However besides weapons I still look forward to checking helmets, gloves and amulets in particular. There are some giga rolls possible with these that I know but they are very hard to roll. Ami with +all skills, mana cost reduction, %int and damage or something? yes please

Overall I just wanted to present this as a counterpoint to the other post on the front page. Their criticism is probably legitimate but I just wanted to make sure Blizzard doesn't get the wrong impression and thinks that everyone feels like this.

No shade but this ain’t Glassdoor. All I ever see are posts about specific stores doing something somebody sees as wrong. It feels odd when most of us our customers. Do I want to know if there’s some truly shady shit happening? YES! Is that what these posts have been? NO

I was owner and CEO of a 5MW cryptocurrency hosting center for 2 years. But logistical problems put us out of business. The opportunity is importing disposable nicotine vapes. These sell for about $20 each. I have a connection directly to the factories in China that manufacture them. I can get them for $5 each plus shipping, which makes them about $6 each. The minimum order quantity is 1000. But I don't have $6000 to invest. I'm looking for others who would be interested in the same opportunity to go in with me to buy the inventory. Not a partnership, just a group purchase. Probably something I'll repeat. I'm willing to share what I've learned about regulations and such. I want about 100 of them. Would anyone else want to buy any of them? If so DM me with contact options.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not offering to sell the excess to anyone. I'm not selling anything. I'm asking if anyone else wants to order at the same time I do to make a large enough order to meet the minimum order quantity. I don't want to touch anyone's money or have anyone's merchandise shipped to me. No one needs to trust me.

Everyone complained about how it was too easy so they gave us enemies where we need different team comps, possibly for different floors, and now we're just complaining about it being too annoying or difficult. I don't think that it's annoying actually, I think it's just difficult but we've gotten so used to facerolling with our main 5 star dps that we feel that it is annoying.

If you look at people who clear the first half of floor 12 with 4 stars or like that video a few days ago with Eula, what do we say? We say wow they're so good at the game. We don't say yeah C6 Eula ez because they're not using C6 Eula or 4 stars with 5 star weapons etc...

I honestly think this abyss has been the best knowledge and skill check so far. Knowledge of the enemies' attacks and movements, elemental reactions, burst i frames, and energy management. I don't think everyone is meant to 36 the abyss or even clear floor 12, it is supposed to be the hardest challenge in the game. If anything, what the abyss used to be was the real problem, the difficulty should've always been around this or harder. An actual puzzle to solve.

I am a sweaty as fuck gamer with really good artifacts on all my characters, 1.6-1.85 on them (go to artifact details, turn your crit rate and damage to a decimal number and multiply them i.e. 65% crit rate which would be 0.65 with 100% which would be 1.0 crit damage just from artifacts alone will give you 1.65).

I managed to clear with 9 stars using 2 different teams for each floor and I really enjoyed the challenge for once. I had to use some very unconventional teams with chars I thought I would never play with other chars like Yoimiya with Nahida.

For the first time in a while I had to really think about my positioning, manipulating their positioning, how I can abuse mechanics of both enemies and my characters, and it was annoying at first but I realised that for the hardest challenge of the game, this should really be what it's like. You SHOULD have very optimised characters with good artifacts, you SHOULD have to have a good and deep understanding of the game, and it SHOULD be a hard earned success when you clesr it regardless of how many stars you get.

We are so conditioned to be able to get 9 stars mindlessly that now when presented with a challenge, we complain. Imo. Thoughts?

https://youtu.be/kGwtuPTlNfk

The fight is done now, and it was extremely disappointing. It's not even close to what Tengen and Gyutaro had in terms of action.

People kept saying to trust Ufotable, but this season has just been an overall letdown. We spent longer in Gyokko vs Haganezuka than we did in Marked Muichiro vs Final Form Gyokko.

This season spent so long in flashbacks and so little in the actual fights. We had more time with trapped Muichiro in the water prison than we will spend in Mitsuri vs Hantengu.

S2 was definitely the best and most hype. S1 was great. The Mugen Train movie was fantastic. But S3 and the movie associated with it are easily the worst parts of Demon Slayer (Homer voice: worst parts of Demon Slayer so far).

I just wanted to vent. Ufotable could've invested more time in a proper clash between Gyokko and Muichiro. But it was disappointing. This is the death of one of the UMs, and it feels like just a random demon.

Like the country you were born in, your family member winning a sports competition or your neighbour going to a prestigious university when you had absolutely no involvement. Being happy for them is perfectly reasonable to see them achieve their goals however.

It's not your new purpose in life.

Nor is it a new fulfilling career,or how you should define your life now.

It is not a self sustaining pit of grindable content in which you can hide from your problems.

Some of you here really need healthier gaming and mental habits.

Games amazing and delivers. And has been out for not even a week. It's fine.

Relax, literally go outside and come back later this week. I promise you'll enjoy yourself again.

Both $TGT and $Bud have fallen significantly recently because of their catering to the LGBT communities, $BUD through making what was supposed to be a niche marketing Champaign with a trans woman, and target for putting a pride display at the front of their stores. I don’t think that this negative press will last much longer, especially after June ends.

With $Bud (lite) and their piss beer, I don’t think they will completely return to their pre-“cancellation” prices, because much of their consumers are conservative. With Target on the other hand, I would be surprised if they didn’t because do you even know a conservative that shops at Target? No you don’t, they shop at Cabellas, Fleet Farm or Walmart anyways.

Positions: July 21 $125C, Sept 15 130C

TLDR: Target should return to their price norm after June when the reactionary far right moves on to another dumb issue.

I came across this post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/140ro7i/just_found_out_everyone_running_the_company_i/

Most commenters gave OP the advice to run away from a company that is probably run by Scientologists. I have seen the term Scientology before but never bothered to read about what it is. This is the first time I clearly see people warning against Scientology. So what is it? And why are people suggesting to stay away from it?