terabient

★ It's snowing tonight in New England. I can't remember a time when snow came so early--I remember a few scattered years in my childhood where there was snowfall in the last week or so of November, but nothing like tonight. Also not looking forward to driving in snow already, as my phlebotomy class for tomorrow hasn't been cancelled. OH WELL.

★ There has been a lot of talk post-Blizzcon about the state of Overwatch and how fun or not-fun it is to play in its current state, with the general consensus being that while it can be enjoyable, more often than not it's extremely frustrating, especially if you are playing for very short sessions (i.e. a game or two) or very long ones (over two hours). I haven't read every article/video that's brought up in the discussion yet, and I don't want to respond to stuff I haven't full seen, but I've definitely felt a sense of burnout in the past 2 months even though I still have a high interest in Overwatch.

★ I passed my LNA exam today! Now it's just a matter of waiting for the results to arrive by mail so I can send it in to the Board of Nursing and get my license reinstated.

★ Ashe went live on the Overwatch servers TODAY, along with a number of other character adjustments from the PTR, and I had a lot of fun trying out all the new stuff.

Ashe: She kinda feels like a Borderlands character plopped into the world of Overwatch--she can ADTS (much faster than Widow and Ana can), is strongest at mid-range, and her coach gun knockback is best used for self-mobility so it feels like she has a Borderlands TPS type superjump at her disposal, even with the cooldown aspect. Her Dynamite seems pretty meh if you just throw it out and wait for it to blow up--it moves slowly enough that people can just move out of its range--but if you detonate it early by shooting it (either in the air or just after it lands) it's a lot more threatening. The burn effect is stronger than I expected although any type of healing will cleanse it.

Her ultimate B.O.B. is interesting. He's thrown out as a projectile like Mei's Blizzard or Zarya's Grav, and once the projectile hits a surface B.O.B materializes and just....runs down the map until he hits something at which point he starts shooting at anything in sight. I didn't pay attention to how long the duration is, but it felt like 6s-8s? Given how much damage he can put out instantly it seems a little long although if you summon him in a bad spot he's worthless--it doesn't seem like you can re-position him if you throw him out in a way that makes him run away from the enemy team.

Mercy: Her ultimate, Valkyrie, charges 10% faster and her healing while in Valkyrie is 60 HPS instead of 50. In practice, this means getting Valkyrie up roughly every other fight, and I had two games where I started a teamfight with Valkyrie and the fight lasted long enough for me to get another one to end it. Having better HPS also means there's some wiggle room for Rez/damage boost to so there's just...a lot more utility overall with her ultimate. I still think Valkyrie is in a weird spot where it's not strong enough defensively to be used as a counter-ult, and not particularly good as an initiation ultimate like Nanoboost or Rally, but at least you get them quickly so you can use it more freely.

Roadhog: His hook and gun spread got tweaked, so that his hook reels in people faster and his damage is more consistent and predictable so ideally there are fewer instances where hooked targets survive with like, 4 HP and escape. In practice it didn't seem like there was much difference but I suppose that was the intent.

Reaper: His shotgun spread also got tweaked to be more consistent (though not tighter) and he heals 30% of damage dealt rather than 20%. Unfortunately he still sucks because his ideal range is still right in your face, he doesn't have a good way of getting into that range without getting stopped by a zillion different CC/stun abilities, and his damage even at ideal range plummets if he's shooting into armor health which he is doing basically all the time. Poor dude can't catch a break.

★ For my next phlebotomy class i have to bring in a volunteer and I'm kind of nervous about having someone I know come in because what if I severely mess up and hurt them? I've been doing this weird thing where I ask someone about volunteering and the moment they agree I immediately try to talk them out of it. Still, I have two people committed for this week's classes so I just have to....not suck.

Not much of interest happened today. I studied for my LNA exam on Tuesday and plan to run through all the clinical skills at least once tomorrow (aiming to do 3 but I get easily distracted). In the evening I visited a consignment shop that I'd heard good things about. I got this Extremely Goth ring-watch:

( it's big )

I am also, for some reason, extremely tired even though I didn't do much that would warrant exhaustion at this hour. Maybe my sleep schedule is starting to become something reasonable at last? Let's hope!

It looks like I won't be getting back home until it's past midnight so have a placeholder
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★ I'm feeling a lot more confident in phlebotomy class EXCEPT when it comes to the butterfly needle and hand draws. I have an easier time drawing from an arm vein I can't see but can feel but drawing from a more obvious hand vein is...beyond me????? It's just been so hard to get comfortable with the butterfly needle. :( We've only done about 5 venipunctures though so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I'm still struggling with basic things at this point.

★ Started my competitive mode placements in Overwatch and I have never played this well as D.va before:



but it ended in a draw, which means it doesn't have any effect on my rank and i'm extremely salty about it. THANKS, ASSAULT MODE. I wish there was something that could be done wrt the scoring or the map designs to make Assault maps faster, less frustrating and less prone to stalemates but like, the shitty experience that is 2CP has been a complaint since launch and there's been several minor rule tweaks and map design changes since then, none of which have made Assault any better. There was some talk at Blizzcon about the development of new game types for Quick Play/Competitive mode....if that ever sees the light of day maybe they can just retire Assault entirely. at least retire Hanamura and Temple of Anubis PLEASE

★ Also got my FIRST EVER play of the game as Sombra, although it was just Quick Play lol. (I guess I'm not 100% this is the first time I've done it b/c honestly I play this game way too much, but it sure FELT like my first Sombra POTG) I used to play Sombra a ton before her perma-invisibility buff but all but dropped her because I didn't get how to use her properly. I've been going back to her recently given that Tracer, my usual go-to, doesn't fare well against the tanky compositions being run in comp these days...and while I'm not fully comfortable with Sombra again (the translocater changes really fucked me up) something finally clicked with how to utilize her so I've been having more success lately.

★ Ran one match where my team went triple support (Lúcio/Moria/Brigette) on Dorado, and the other half of our team was Roadhog, Tracer and something else I can't remember, although it didn't matter because we managed to steamroll the team to the point it started to feel unfair. Triple support is one those unfortunate compositions that are fun enough to play as but when you are playing against it, it feels awful. It's also hard to figure out what to do about it, in terms of "what would Blizzard change in order to make this composition a little less dominant," because taken individually none of the supports feels OP, it's just when you stack on tons of HP recovery, damage mitigation and displacement/stun/boop abilities on top of each other that the game feels miserable. (unless your team is running an mirror match and you're executing better.)

★ I'm slowly making my way through Soulcalibur VI's single player modes and boy do I have some thoughts on how the story modes are unfolding. They're mostly positive thoughts, but there are some choices that I am not 100% on board with yet.

I'm literally falling asleep at my desk as I'm typing, though, so I'll leave it til tomorrow.

today, i stuck myself with a butterfly needle during my phlebotomy class. I am, so far, the only one who has made that mistake. My instructor says it's common, and her assistant shared how she had stuck herself many times after their needle supplier altered their design a few years ago. So, I'm not as shaken about this mistake as I thought I would be.

I have my nursing assistant refresher course tomorrow. I am a little nervous about that because even though I've been working as an assistant for years, it's been in an in-home setting, so I'm a bit rusty on procedures that rarely happen in the home like bedpans and changing sheets with a person in the bed. But then, forgetting these things is why I'm going to the course in the first place so I should calm down...

i am....not satisfied, but hopeful with last night's election results. Truth be told, almost a month ago I was convinced that nothing would change; that the House wouldn't flip, because taking 23 seats in a single, midterm election sounded impossible; that turnout would be up, moderately compared to traditional mid-term election numbers, but that apathy, pessimism, and blatant and concentrated voter suppression would keep those gains mediocre at best. So, having no faith in a Blue wave at all, I'm deeply inspired by all the wonderful things that happened last night. There will be over one hundred women in the House of Representatives! (Okay, not all of them are Democrat... :/) Michigan has a matriarchy! It's also heartening to see that people have not given up just because the election was not the overwhelming Democratic victory many were hoping for. I thought, if there's any setback at all, people would be convinced that their vote doesn't matter, so they would just go back to ignoring elections again...I am glad to see that many are realizing the grind involved in changing how government works. It's been ignored so long, and the institutional damage began long before Trump took office.

PLACEHOLDER LOL i will be editing this in about half an hour i just want the post to be up before midnight

It's been years since I've really squee'd about a series at length so why not change that? i tweet about Overwatch on janejana but it's usually about Overwatch League/professional play stuff and bitching/bragging about my own matches in ranked and quick play; i've never really talked about the ~lore~ or fanfic or shipping which I miss doing. (thanks hamimi_fk for the encouragement!)

( Favorite Overwatch characters by personality/lore )

( Favorite Overwatch characters by playstyle/most played characters )

I could have started homework for my phlebotomy class and started cleaning up the house, but instead i stayed in my pajamas and watched the end of the Overwatch World Cup before going out for drinks with my sister and brother-in-law. In my defense, it was cold and rainy and a good day to sit in and watch something trivial.

( cut for match results )

Some scattered thoughts about compositions used and the general state/balance of characters and meta in high-level play:

-The recent change to Lúcio's Sound Barrier (grants 750 shield HP instead of 500) felt extremely oppressive. Ofc the purpose of a defensive ult is to keep your team from wiping, but the increased HP has changed the way Barrier is used in a subtle way. The old barrier was used reactively against high-burst ults, but due to its short duration and cast time it was not as reliable as Transcendence. Now it seems to be used most often in situations after ults are expended to deny any advantage the enemy team might get from using ultimate combos or committing to a deep push and instead of feeling like a clutch save for your team, dropping the beat feels like a death sentence for the other team and just feels...unfair?...in a way the old Barrier did not. 750 HP, even though it decays, is an enormous amount of HP to burn down in a single fight and that's not even considering Sound Barrier usually comes on top of Rally and its 100 armor HP. I think the old Barrier just needed a cast time reduction or should have charged faster instead of what exists now.

-All of the support characters saw substantial playtime in the Cup, even though there's been a lot of complaints by...certain segments of support players...who feel the number of nerfs Mercy and Brigitte have received have made them substantially worse. Which is nice! I'd actually say out of all the supports it's Moira who is the weakest at high level play because she does not offer much outside a metric ton of AOE healing and the lowest DPS in the game and Ana and/or Mercy offer utility outside healing (sleep dart, nanoboost, res, damage boost) and have better synergy with the off-supports as well. But her kit's still really strong in ladder/solo queue play.

-It doesn't look fun to be Reinhardt but it looks super-fun to be Winston. Mobility helps a lot i guess.

-McCree was used to great effect by several teams on Control-type maps and I have no idea why he's become so strong in this specific situation so suddenly (he's generally been a poor pick against 3/3 comps which is what is most commonly run on control maps) This is probably why i've never been higher than platinum in competitive mode.

-Wrecking Ball appeared to be the counter-of-choice for double-sniper comps but didn't get very consistent results...still seems like the best counter out of all the tanks for snipers at high leves since D.va and Winston can get burned down so quickly when trying to contest snipers.

-Tracer's in a bad spot :( At least no one on ladder plays as a team so she's still strong there lol.

i started playing Soulcalibur VI this week. Fun fact, I had no idea it was being released until, like, half way through October even though it's been promo'd like, all year??? i'm a terrible fan. Feelings so far:

★ Story: SCVI is basically a fleshed-out version of SCI, so it doesn't have much in the way of surprises plot-wise, but there is a lot more world-building, character interactions and more time spent on building character arcs overall which is my bread-n-butter even in a fighting game so I've been enjoying it a lot! The writing quality is a bit hit or miss, the translation seems a bit basic (there's definitely been some conversations that do not sound natural even within the weird alt-history world of SC) but it's still nice to see genuine dialog happening between characters even if they are sometimes basic. The voice acting is good but the fact that dub actor pool has shrunk to like, 10 actors for all the characters in the game kinda makes every NPC sound indistinguishable.

★ Presentation: it's a Bamco figting game so it goes without saying that it looks great; the colors and lighting in particular are stunning. Character models haven't changed much from SCIV/V era but the stages look much improved. The story mode is presented a very Arc Systems fighter/visual novel way with illustrations rather than in-game graphics, and they're INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL. Kilik and Maxi's character portraits in particular are A+++++, on-fire levels of hot. The women suffer from a bit of same-face (like, it's a beautiful face! it's just the same for every girl) but that's my only complaint.

★ Gameplay: I don't hate Reversal Edge. I'm glad Guard Impacts are no longer a metered resource. Critical Edges are performed with a single button, which I don't hate on a fundamental level but you gain meter FAST in this game and successful CEs take off a lot of damage so I think the meter gain needs to be toned down a little. I haven't really played "seriously" yet though. lol

it's been awhile. it's nice to see dreamwidth becoming more active as of late, although the fact that it's due to livejournal fucking up again is...less nice.

i'm not actually sure what else to put here. this is mostly a 'hey flist, i'm still around' post, i guess.

i've mentioned this on twitter and tumblr, but for those who don't follow me there, i have an imzy account now. i'm @janejana over there. i have a few invites left if anyone wants one--just PM an email address i can send it to so i can get a free t-shirt. :)

a few places i've been lurking in:

reads: generally, nonfiction articles that aren't designed to be simple clickbait. i have already lost a few evenings perusing this comm, though there's little in the way of discussion at this point. :c

100 words: a straightforward drabble prompt community. Accepts both original and fanfic material.

The Cookbook: Comm for recipe sharing and general cooking questions

that's about all i can recommend so far. i've searched for some fandom-oriented communities and while plenty pop up most of them appear to be placeholders--understandable, but i do wonder if/when fandom activity will pick up. the lack of a traditional profile/personal blogging space makes me kind of nervous about posting stuff over there.

if you're on imzy let me know what you think of it so far! i'm...cautiously optimistic. ^^