Tuesday, 6 December 2016

The Last Guardian Review

             The Last Guardian has the highest highs and lowest lows of nearly any game I’ve ever reviewed. When it works, the bond I forged with my furry and feathered friend Trico is unlike any other. Part playful companion, part protector, navigating Team Ico’s gorgeous, melancholy world alongside this birddog is something I will never forget. But between those moments, The Last Guardian is a mess of wonky controls, a poor camera, and some annoyingly finicky puzzles.
Director Fumito Ueda’s spiritual successor to Ico (review) and Shadow of the Colossus (review) touches on many of the same themes -- isolation, companionship, and sacrifice. Like in its predecessors, The Last Guardian throws you into a mysterious world with a story open to interpretation and built mostly on symbolism. I was constantly driven to continue pushing forward throughout the 12-hour journey, and I’m happy to say that the payoff of the final 90 minutes made the whole thing worth it. But the heart of The Last Guardian is the bond between the nameless boy and the unusual giant hybrid animal Trico, who has more life and personality than nearly any other A.I. companion I’ve ever seen in a game.

A Boy and His Birddog


Watching Trico grow from a scared, savage beast to an immensely loyal protector provides a wonderful character arc. Like an actual pet, Trico has a mind of his own, but he’s usually predictable. Subtle touches, like way he shakes off after he’s wet or stretches his legs after you make it to a more open area, give him a life of his own. I found myself occasionally just standing in place and watching Trico paw at a group of butterflies or reach up on his hind legs to sniff at low-hanging tree branches. When he’ behaved as he should, I found myself legitimately on my way to forgetting that Trico wasn’t a living, breathing creature.
Watching Trico grow from a scared, savage beast to an immensely loyal protector provides a wonderful character arc.
You don’t have direct control of Trico, but can prompt him with a series of commands and gestures that nudge the beast to jump, swipe, or head in a general direction. A lot of these are done while you’re climbing on top of him, which mirrors that main, memorable mechanic of Shadow of the Colossus. Grabbing onto a tuft of feathers as Trico leaps from ledge to ledge can be oftentimes thrilling, but at the same time, the simple act of dismounting him is cumbersome. Many times I found my attempts to get back to solid land were thwarted by getting caught in my cute companion’s weird underbelly.
I use the word “vague” before, because even as the credits rolled, I still didn’t feel like I had a firm grasp of how to get him to do what I wanted or needed. Herein lies one of The Last Guardian’s most conflicting features: I love the concept of not possessing or physically maneuvering Trico, in that it preserves the feeling that he’s an independent and intelligent creature. Entering an environment and figuring out what he can climb, destroy, or interact with requires a healthy dose of careful observation.





The problem here is that there were countless times where I’d mentally solved a puzzle and knew exactly what to do, only to find that Trico stubbornly refused to go to the spot I needed him to get to. Whether he was facing the wrong direction and refused to turn around or was just a few steps to either side of where he needed to be to initiate a jump, I became exhausted by his refusal to heed my commands. A little bit of this obstinance added to Trico’s charm, but it happened far too often, so most of the time it just bombarded me with frustration and made me lose any feeling that I existed in this world. If I try a solution to a puzzle for 10 minutes only to find that I was trying the wrong thing, that’s my fault; if I try a solution for 10 minutes only to find that it suddenly arbitrarily works because of a slight readjustment to Trico that was beyond my control, that’s just plain annoying.
Aside from some light platforming, a bulk of the obstacles in The Last Guardian come in the form of puzzles like scouring an area in search of food for Trico or destroying the stained-glass eyes that terrify the beast. There are also enemies in the world that you’re mostly defenseless against on your own, so you’ll have to figure out how to lure them to Trico, or vice versa. It reminded me of the way you had to protect Yorda in Ico, but this time around you’re Yorda and have to rely on Trico’s A.I. to keep you from being taken away. It’s an interesting twist on the formula, and one that does a great job of bringing Ueda’s trilogy full circle.
Destroyed Beauty
If you’ve seen any footage of The Last Guardian, you’ve seen for yourself that the vast outdoor environments are nothing short of stunning. The colors, lighting, and architecture are unlike anything I’ve seen outside of Team Ico’s games, and they especially shine during the thrilling chase sequences. Watching bridges collapse as you narrowly escape danger, all under the beauty of a wonderful lighting system that adds incredible depth to the world, is fantastic. This, coupled with a moving and memorable score, made for a whole mess of unforgettable moments in the 12 hours it took me to complete it.
Be prepared for the camera to be completely blocked by screens full of feathers, walls, and foliage.
But then you go indoors, and many of the cramped interiors feel drab. Worse, they highlight The Last Guardian’s glaring camera issues. Given that you’re generally right next to a giant creature, be prepared for the camera to be completely blocked by screens full of feathers, walls, and foliage on a regular basis. It’s rare to even have to think about the camera in a third-person game in 2016, but I found myself constantly being pulled out of the experience trying to wrestle with my point of view. When you’re trying to deal with that and the floaty controls at the same time, it blows a lot of the good will that’d been built up by the outdoor areas. I can’t count the number of times I got stuck while trying to scurry up Trico’s back, or even trying to dismount the critter. It feels noticeably inelegant, especially when compared to the beauty and awe of many of the other scenes.





The Verdict
The divide between the highs and lows of The Last Guardian is staggering. For every wonderful moment of absolute beauty and emotional attachment to its lifelike companion, there’s an equal and opposite baffling moment that ruins the mood with frustrating controls and camera angles. But I found myself willing to put up with all of these hiccups if it meant experiencing any of its multitude of incredibly-beautiful moments.

Review:Sid Meier's Civilization 6

Every game in the legendary, 25-year-old Sid Meier’s Civilization 4X strategy series puts a new spin on the grand concept of taking a nation from a single nomadic tribe to a world-dominating superpower, one turn at a time. In that way Civilization VI looks familiar, but it’s loaded with some very smart and bold improvements that give it new levels of depth. Once I get absorbed into a campaign it becomes so engrossing it’s difficult to think about anything else.
Under its colorful, cartography-inspired art style and varied, stirring music that swells to accent what you’re doing and in what era you’re doing it, Civilization VI is crammed with an almost overwhelming number of systems. It’s got trade, it’s got religion, it’s got espionage, it’s got Great People, it’s got archeology, it’s got the kitchen sink. For the most part, that’s awesome because there are so many chances to build out your nation in different ways to take advantage of opportunities on its randomly generated maps and pursue the different victory types, and it’s all baked in at the ground level so that things like trade routes don’t feel tacked on and optional (they are, in fact, the only way to build roads in the early game). This feels like a Civ game that’s already had two expansions.


That can make the first few games feel overwhelming, even with the tutorials. The tutorials are good, but the amount of decisions you’re prompted to make from the very beginning of a game that will have significant impact on your late-game success is intimidating. That said, as an experienced Civilization player I got up to speed relatively quickly and, on my second playthrough, was able to hold my own on King difficulty without understanding everything. I still feel like I’m learning more and more with every game.
A lot of depth emerges from the new city-building system.
A lot of depth emerges from one of the key factors that distinguishes this Civilization from the five that came before it: the new city-building system, in which key buildings like markets, temples, and barracks that have traditionally been built in nearly every city to give them basic functionality have now been broken out into 11 types of “districts” (Commercial Hub, Holy Site, and Encampment, among others). Those districts must be placed on tiles within a city’s borders, and the number of districts you can build is limited by the population of a city, so you’re forced to specialize each city’s function. You might have one city that’s focused on generating science for researching new technology, another focused on creating wealth, and another that builds your military units with experience boosts – or maybe you go full military and build an Encampment in all of them. It creates a lot of possible paths.
What’s more, Wonder buildings (which can only exist in one city in the world and grant big bonuses) also occupy tiles, and many are limited by geography because they must be placed next to a river or a mountain or other terrain, or they have prerequisite buildings you have to build first or adjacent to. All of this cuts down on previous games’ Wonder spam, where one high-production city could crank out wonders quickly, and forces you to build them around your more diverse empire. It’s also great that Wonders are so large and visible on the map, and that they come with impressive in-game animations of their construction.




Because we’re playing on randomized maps every time, effectively laying out your cities’ districts and Wonders is a challenging puzzle. There are loads of tradeoffs to consider, but the biggest is asking if you’d be better off building a district or a Wonder or working the tile they’d occupy for food and production resources, potentially allowing your city to grow bigger in the late game. Those are decisions that always feel like they matter.
The land-grab phase feels urgent and exciting.
Also, in a reversal of Civilization V’s empire-wide happiness level system, in Civilization VI each city’s happiness has reverted back to being individually determined, and is based on how many amenities it has available – happiness is created by luxury resources or happiness-generating buildings (plus a number of other factors). That means rapid empire expansion is back on the table because you don’t need to worry about the founding of new cities having a major impact on the productivity and growth of your major ones, as long as you’re settling in areas that have enough luxury resources to support them. In fact, settling as many new cities as possible feels all but mandatory if you want to be competitive, which makes the land-grab phase of the early- and mid-game eras feel urgent and exciting.
Speaking of the mid game, the changes Firaxis has made to reduce unit clutter from that point on are extremely smart. The first problem in most Civilization games has been that at a certain point you (and all the AI players) get stuck with a dozen or so automated Worker units sitting around idling with no more city tiles to improve, which just makes turns take longer to calculate if you don’t manually disband them. In Civilization VI, Workers (now called Builders) expire after they’ve been used a few times – three, by default, but that can be expanded by government policies or wonders – they’re no longer hanging around doing nothing. And if you need a new one, they’re quick to build and affordable to immediately buy with gold. They can’t be automated, either, which makes the decisions of where to spend their limited charges feel meaningful again as well.




Secondly, when Civilization V switched from allowing you to stack military units onto a single tile (as had been the custom through Civilization IV) to limiting you to one military unit per tile it created a more tactical kind of combat, but also caused an enormous traffic jam when you built a large army. Civilization VI gets that under control by finding a great compromise between stacks and one-unit-per-tile: once you research certain technologies you can combine two and then three identical military units into a single, more powerful corps or army unit (not entirely dissimilar to Civilization IV’s Warlords). Thus the number of military units taking up space and blocking paths in the late game is sharply reduced by a half or even two-thirds, if you choose to take advantage of it. AI armies are also reduced, which means they have fewer things to shuffle around on their turns.
Those AI nations are each guided by one of the 20 available leaders, and each of them has agendas that guide their behavior. That gives diplomacy some much-needed transparency that’s long been missing in Civilization games. Once you’ve established a relationship with a leader through cozying up or espionage, you can see why they’re happy or angry with you and what steps you might be able to take to change that. Egypt’s Cleopatra, for example, likes other civilizations who have strong armies, and Queen Victoria likes nations that started on the same continent as England. They also have a randomized second agenda, such as preferring countries that have a high population or hating those who have more money than they do, so they’re unpredictable in every new game. It’s a big step toward demystifying their behavior.
Some of these agendas are irrational, such as Queen Victoria disliking when you colonize a continent she has her eye on (there’s no way to know which one) or German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa getting mad when you interact with City-States (which you’d have to go out of your way not to do), so it’s basically impossible to not anger someone at some point when you’re simply going about your businesses of taking over the world. But you can mostly balance those offenses out by establishing embassies, conducting trade, respecting treaties, or just being friendly. The one downside I’ve encountered is that in order to see what their motivations are you first have to have a level of access with them, and if you meet a new country in the mid game that dislikes you for unknown reasons it’s very difficult to establish a good enough relationship to find out why they were angry in the first place. And they’re not entirely consistent – they’ll sometimes go from seemingly friendly to aggressive, presumably because they saw an opportunity they couldn’t resist. (To be fair I’ve been guilty of that one myself.) And one time I saw what must’ve been a bug, where an AI first hated me for having a small navy but then for a few turns thought I had a huge navy before realizing I’d never built a single ship and going back to hating me. 

But Civilization VI’s biggest weakness right now is that the AI has a bad habit of starting unprovoked wars, and that it isn’t very good at fighting them. Even on high difficulty levels it fights by attempting to overwhelm you with numbers and technologically advanced units, so the challenge is in making use of tactics and support units, such as Great Generals and anti-air guns, to outmaneuver them. Winning isn’t a cakewalk because you can crank up the difficulty until that’s hard to do, but because of the AI’s uncoordinated assaults you’re unlikely to lose cities unless you’re badly outgunned or you left them undefended. Some military victories feel unearned because the enemy army simply doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing.
Somewhat related to that is Civilization VI’s disappointing handling of religion. The process of spreading your faith to other cities for bonuses basically amounts to a very simple version of combat where there are only three units, and they don’t change at all throughout thousands of years of history. That’s not inconsistent with reality, but it’s not that much fun to play. And while it is hilarious that Apostles and Inquisitors battle each other with lightning and mystical forces, I don’t think that’ll be enough to make me chase a religious victory by spreading my faith to more than half of the cities of every civilization on the map simply because of the monotony of it.





Back in the plus column we have the extremely customizable government system, which lets you assign bonus-giving policies to suit however you want to play. Each form of government, such as Monarchy, Theocracy, or Merchant Republic, is represented by a few inherent bonuses, but more importantly by a different configuration of military, economic, diplomatic, and wildcard policy slots; as you unlock new policy cards on the Civics tree (which is separate from but parallel to the Tech tree and powered by culture points) those policies can be added or removed. For instance, the Land Surveyors economic policy gives you 20% off the gold cost of buying new tiles for a city, while Public Works gives you 30% production boost toward new Builders and gives all new Builders two extra build actions. Military options include Logistics, which gives units +1 movement if starting in friendly territory and Professional Army, which gives you half off the gold cost of upgrading an obsolete military unit.
Mixing and matching policies can create a government to go with nearly any playstyle.
There are dozens of these cards, and mixing and matching them can create a government to go with nearly any type of playstyle you could want. You can also build certain Wonders to expand the available slots in your government, which opens up a lot of possibilities to specialize in heavily stacking military, economic, or diplomatic bonuses. In practice I’ve found that most Civics unlock in around 10 turns, so you’re able to make those changes for free very frequently (and you can pay to do it at will, too). But maybe you shouldn’t change your government type too often, because there are extra legacy bonuses for each government type are earned over time, encouraging you to stick with one for long periods of time to get the most out of it. It’s a deep and multi-layered system that will take a lot of tinkering to fully figure out.




Another of Civilization VI’s novel concepts is that your progress on both the Civics tree and the Tech tree is helped along by research bonuses you get just by building, improving, or fighting. For instance, founding a city on the coast will boost your research toward Sailing, which cuts the number of turns required to unlock it in half. But maybe you don’t have a good coastal location, so instead you kill three barbarian units (who can be extremely nasty harassers in the early game) and get a boost toward Bronze Working instead. This system lets the randomized map and the course of your civilization’s events influence you to go down research paths you normally might not, which increases the diversity of your playthroughs. Plus, all the quotes representing each technology and civic are narrated by the pleasurably distinctive accent of Sean Bean.
All of that translates to both online and hotseat multiplayer well, though I find the simultaneous turn-based online mode a bit messy because who attacks and who defends is determined by whoever moves that unit first, in real time. Currently there is no way to pre-make teams, and though you can just create alliances with your friends through the diplomacy screen, there’s no team victory setting – there can be only one winner. I also had my only crash in all of Civ VI during a multiplayer game, and there was no way to rejoin it.
On that note, Civilization VI runs very well on most systems I’ve tried it on. Load times are a tad long when you first start or load into a saved game (it takes about a minute and 20 seconds to load into my current game off an SSD), though at least there we get to listen to Sean Bean’s narration tell us how cool our chosen leader is. Once I’m loaded in everything’s been smooth, with only that one crash to desktop so far. For the first time in a Civilization game there’s even a built-in benchmark tool, which on my GeForce GTX 970 has shown framerates between 50 and 75 per second. However, running it on a Surface Pro 4 with a Core i5 and integrated graphics was not very successful - the early game ran fine on minimum graphics settings, but loading up a late-game save was basically unplayable, even when using the cartoonish-looking tactical mode to minimize the impact on the graphics chip. That’s a shame, because Civilization VI would make an excellent tablet game.
The Verdict
Civilization VI will go down in history as the most fully-featured launch version in the series. Many of those are smartly revamped versions of Civ classics, but it finds its own identity with great new ideas like spread-out cities, customizeable governments, research boosts, and leader agendas. And even though the AI has some improving to do, it can put up enough of a fight to make world domination a challenge.

Thursday, 20 October 2016

Summoners War: Perfect runes for your monsters

Hi, it’s been long time since my last thread. Finally got some free time to write some of my thoughts.
Some ToC:
  • In this post I want to make a rough guidance -a rule of thumb- about which monsters that can use specific runes.
  • pls take it with pinch of salt
  • I only want to emphasize on slot 2/4/6 only
  • I make this post with end-game stage on mind.
  • resistances on slot 6 is immediate sell
  • flat stats is immediate sell
  • always sell any non-6stars rune you got except 5stars slot 2 spd, or you got it with 4 crazy substats
  • what I bold is the premium runes, you should be grateful if you got one
  • also I won't emphasize too much on monster that got special rune build or monster that a bit falls through on end game

Monster-classification

Before we starts, I want to classified some of monsters as:
  • Raw DD (RDD) : usually this type of monster relies on one of their skills (usually their 2nd or 3rd skills) as their sources of damage: lushen, katarina, kahli, etc
  • violent DD (VDD) : this type of monster potential increase with violent rune: camilla, kahli, raoq, guillaume, all chimeras, perna, tyron, etc
  • speed DD (SDD) : a type of damage dealer that increasing his damage according to aspd : all samurais, theomars, tesharion, hwa, etc
  • HP-based DD (HPDD) : DD that benefit greatly from his HP: eshir, vigor, beast monks, darion, jubilee (as pointed by /u/TaiserRY)
  • DEF-based DD (DEFDD) : DD that benefit greatly from his DEF : groggo, velajuel, dark archangel
  • SS - Support that want to Recycle their skills fast or support that benefit greatly from speed : chasun, veromos, eladriel, briand, shannon
  • Speed Demons (SD) - monster that you want to be the fastest one no matter what : megan, bernard, chloe, verde
  • Crowd-Control (CC) : Debuffer team: tyron, barreta, aria, thrain, etc
  • Bomber (BOMB) : water wind light kobold, and fire dark joker
  • TANK : self-described

RUNES

so let’s start with the runes

Energy

  • slot 2 spd : not the 1st choices, but can be used on SS or SD
  • slot 2 hp% : can be 1st choices for any tank type
  • slot 2 atk% : good for anavel or any atk-based healer monster. good runes for bomber also if you can keep the acc high enough through substats
  • slot 2 def% : sell
  • slot 4 hp% : can be 1st choices for any tank type
  • slot 4 atk% : see slot 2 atk%
  • slot 4 def% : sell
  • slot 4 critr% : can be 1st choices for ahman, if you can reach 100critrate through substats with violent/energy build
  • slot 4 critd % : can be 1st choices for vigor/eshir, if you can reach high critrate through substats with rage/energy build
  • slot 6 hp% : can be 1st choices for any tank type
  • slot 6 atk% : see slot 2 atk%
  • slot 6 def% : sell
  • slot 6 acc% : not the 1st choices, but can be use on any CC if you can keep 85 acc through subs on violent/energy or despair/energy set

Blade

  • slot 2 spd : 1st choices for SDD, can also be useful for verd if you can’t hit 100critR through substats
  • slot 2 hp% : 1st choices for HPDD
  • slot 2 atk% : 1st choices for RDD, VDD
  • slot 2 def% : 1st choices for DEFDD
  • slot 4 hp% : sell, or you can keep it if you want broken sets for tank
  • slot 4 atk% : sell, or you can use it for BOMB
  • slot 4 def% : sell
  • slot 4 critr% : 1st choices for ahman, verd. don’t use it for any DD
  • slot 4 critd % : 1st choices for any DD
  • slot 6 hp% : 1st choices for HPDD
  • slot 6 atk% : 1st choices for RDD, VDD, SDD
  • slot 6 def% : 1st choices for DEFDD
  • slot 6 acc% : good for orochi, and mikene if you can reach 85acc and 100critr using violent/blade set

Focus

  • slot 2 spd : 1st choices for megan, bernard, and CC
  • slot 2 hp% : sell, or you can keep it if you want broken sets for tank
  • slot 2 atk% : 1st choices for bomber
  • slot 2 def% : sell
  • slot 4 hp% : 1st choices for CC, or you can use it as broken sets for tank
  • slot 4 atk% : 1st choices for bomber
  • slot 4 def% : sell
  • slot 4 critr% : 1st choices for orochi / mikene
  • slot 4 critd % : sell
  • slot 6 hp% : 2nd choices for CC (only if you can get 85 acc through subs). or you can use it as broken sets for tank
  • slot 6 atk% : 1st choices for bomber
  • slot 6 def% : sell
  • slot 6 acc% : 1st choices for CC

Fatal

There is a post regarding whether you should use fatal or rage, but for now, I assume that you can get at least 55 critR which is better to use rage than fatal
  • slot 2 spd : sell, or can be mediocre sets for SDD
  • slot 2 hp% : sell
  • slot 2 atk% : 1st choice for bomber, or can be mediocre sets for VDD, RDD
  • slot 2 def% : sell
  • slot 4 hp% : sell
  • slot 4 atk% : 1st choice for bomber
  • slot 4 def% : sell
  • slot 4 critr% : sell
  • slot 4 critd % : sell, or can be mediocre sets for VDD, RDD, SDD
  • slot 6 hp% : sell
  • slot 6 atk% : 1st choice for bomber, or can be mediocre sets for VDD, RDD, SDD
  • slot 6 def% : sell
  • slot 6 acc% : sell

Rage

  • slot 2 spd : 1st choices for SDD
  • slot 2 hp%: 1st choices for eshir
  • slot 2 atk% : 1st choices for RDD
  • slot 2 def% : 2nd choices for DEFDD (after violent)
  • slot 4 hp% : sell, or can be use as broken sets for tank
  • slot 4 atk% : sell
  • slot 4 def%: sell
  • slot 4 critr%: sell
  • slot 4 critd % : 1st choices for SDD, HPDD, RDD, DEFDD
  • slot 6 hp%: 1st choices for eshir
  • slot 6 atk% : 1st choices for RDD, SDD
  • slot 6 def% : 1st choices for DEFDD
  • slot 6 acc% : sell

Swift

  • slot 2 spd : 1st choices for SD, and SDD
  • slot 2 hp% : 2nd choices for SS
  • slot 2 atk% : sell
  • slot 2 def% : sell
  • slot 4 hp% : 1st choices for SD, 2nd choices for SS
  • slot 4 atk% : sell
  • slot 4 def% : sell
  • slot 4 critr% : best rune for verde (as pointed by /u/Uberlox) , otherwise sell
  • slot 4 critd % : 2nd choices for SDD
  • slot 6 hp% : 1st choices for SD or 2nd if the monster need acc
  • slot 6 atk% : sell
  • slot 6 def% : sell
  • slot 6 acc% : 1st choices for SD if the monster need acc

Guard

  • slot 2 spd : can be good for SD or CC, but definitely not 1st choice
  • slot 2 hp% : good enough for tank, but not 1st choices
  • slot 2 atk% : sell
  • slot 2 def% : 2nd choices for DEFDD if you can get lots of critR from violent/guard or rage/guard set. 1st choices for copper though
  • slot 4 hp% : good enough for tank, but not 1st choices
  • slot 4 atk% : sell
  • slot 4 def% : 1st choices for copper
  • slot 4 critr% : sell
  • slot 4 critd % : pls see slot 2 def%
  • slot 6 hp% : pls see slot 2 hp%
  • slot 6 atk% : sell
  • slot 6 def% : pls see slot 2 def%
  • slot 6 acc% : sell

Endure

  • slot 2 spd : can be good enough for SD, but definitely not 1st choice
  • slot 2 hp% : good enough for tank, but not 1st choices
  • slot 2 atk% : sell
  • slot 2 def% : good enough for DEFDD , but not 1st choices
  • slot 4 hp% : see slot 2 HP%
  • slot 4 atk% : sell
  • slot 4 def% : sell
  • slot 4 critr% : sell
  • slot 4 critd % : good enough for DEFDD or HPDD, but not 1st choices and only if you can get high enough critR
  • slot 6 hp% : see slot 2 HP%
  • slot 6 atk% : sell
  • slot 6 def% : see slot 2 def%
  • slot 6 acc% : sell

Violent

the best 4-rune sets in the game, nuf said
  • slot 2 spd : 2nd choices for SDD after swift, 1st choices for non-despair CC, 1st choices for SS (if you can get high enough HP)
  • slot 2 hp% : 1st choices for tank. 1st choices for HPDD (except eshir), 1st choices for SS (if you can’t get high enough HP)
  • slot 2 atk% : 1st choices for VDD
  • slot 2 def% : 1st choices for DEFDD
  • slot 4 hp% : 1st choices for tank, non-despair CC, SS
  • slot 4 atk% : 1st choices for anavel, or sell it if you dont have anavel
  • slot 4 def% : sell
  • slot 4 critr% : 1st choices for ahman, orochi, mikene.
  • slot 4 critd % : 1st choices for VDD. 2nd choices for SDD after swift, 2nd choices for HPDD after rage
  • slot 6 hp% : see slot 2 HP%
  • slot 6 atk% : 1st choices for VDD, 2nd choices for SDD after choices
  • slot 6 def% : see slot 2 DEF%
  • slot 6 acc% : 1st choices for non-despair CC

Despair

  • slot 2 spd : 1st choice for CC
  • slot 2 hp% : 2nd choices (after violent) for briand, arnold.
  • slot 2 atk% : 2nd choices for DD that got AoE : lushen (after rage), sig (after violent),
  • slot 2 def% : 1st choices for artamiel, wind mk despair-revenge. also 1st choices for copper
  • slot 4 hp% : see slot 2 HP%, also 1st choices for CC
  • slot 4 atk% : sell
  • slot 4 def% : 1st choices for copper
  • slot 4 critr% : sell
  • slot 4 critd % : see slot 2 def% or slot 2 atk%
  • slot 6 hp% : see slot 2 HP%, also 1st choices for CC if you get enough acc from substat
  • slot 6 atk% : see slot 2 atk%
  • slot 6 def% : see slot 2 def%
  • slot 6 acc% : 1st choices for CC if you don't get enough acc from substats

Nemesis

I won’t talk a lot about nemesis, since from my observation, only handful of monster can use nemesis to its full extent, with examples:
  • camilla with atk/critd/atk violent/nemesis
  • chasun with spd/hp/hp or hp/hp/hp violent nemesis
  • ramagos with hp/hp/hp vampire/nemesis
as pointed by /u/papagelos and /u/JohtoKan actually veromos is indeed another monster that can benefited greatly from nemesis using: violent-nemesis spd/hp/hp or hp/hp/hp

Shield

as a rule of thumb, shield works greatly if you got more base-HP%. Therefore this rune works great on hi-base HP monster, and can act as replacement 2-rune set if you find the stats and substats are much better than the most intended set.

Revenge

as a rule of thumb, revenge works great on monster that is not squishy, and got some special 1st skill effect
  • slot 2 spd : good on offensive tyron, raoq, bella
  • slot 2 hp% : darion, jultan, jubilee, talc, basalt. also good on any despair-revenge HP%/HP%/HP% tank monster, also good on HPDD monster
  • slot 2 atk% : camilla on violent revenge, wind mk on despair revenge
  • slot 2 def% : DEFDD if you can retain high critR
  • slot 4 hp% : see slot 2 HP%
  • slot 4 atk% : good for anavel, otherwise sell
  • slot 4 def% : sell
  • slot 4 critr% : good for verd if you can maintain 100% critr on swift/revenge
  • slot 4 critd % : see slot 2 atk%, also good on DEFDD if you can retain high critR
  • slot 6 hp% : see slot 2 HP%
  • slot 6 atk% : see slot 2 atk%
  • slot 6 def% : see slot 2 def%
  • slot 6 acc% : sell

Vampire

I wont describe in detail but vampire is good on:
  • ramagos on vampire-nemesis on HP%/HP%/HP% or vampire-energy HP%/HP%/HP%
  • for farmer, such as susanoo, liesel, to name a few.

Will

as rule of thumbs:
  • best will user is chloe with swift/will, spd/hp/hp and with crazy spd everywhere. so keep an eye for that :D
  • will is also good on cleanser, such as kona, fedora, delphoi with violent-will spd/hp/hp, also good on velajuel on violent-will def/critd/def
  • zeratu and rakan is another good will user with violent-will atk/critD/atk
  • otherwise, you can use will on your DD (if you can get high critR and critD), to counter tyron and zaiross team on PvP
in the end I hope this would be useful for some :D

Credits to ofuro28

Summoners War, Best game or not?

Hey guys!

Some of you might notice this game already but some may not literally understand the game very well. Just like me, I've been playing summoners war for quite sometime now. (by quite sometime I mean for 2 years). But I didn't play it everyday unlike other hardcore Gamers such as Schizophrenic Game (this would be his user account) and other hardcore summoners war players.

But how well will you understand the game?

1st watch this clip on how Com2Us advertise there game:






Now that you've watch this awesome trailer, Do you wanna play this game?

Ill give you a couple of heads-up. This is really an addictive game.

For some of the players here, there goal is be the best. Whether its for power or tankiness (yeah! i dont think that's a word but bare with me) to the Awesome 6 star monsters. The combination of different runes and others.




So this is just for beginners guide.

And I hope you guys like it :D
Good day to all.

Ill be posting game guides like any other people would do so bare with me for I will be more likely to be a noob at every game

Hope that you will understand :D