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The Forge Class System and Tips/Strategies


Christo1

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So I am mostly making this post to start the discussion as to who is good for what jobs in this wonderful update, but I am going to go ahead and list down below who I have been seeing as what class wise in the time that I have been playing.

Wilson:

Spoiler

I personally have been playing as this character a lot because it is the most fun, and he seems to function best as the group healer. The sleeping property of the staff along with Wilson's quick and better revival. I have also seen him used as a high-damage ranged character into a good portion of the game with this option aiming for speed and damage rather than the healing item. That's about all I personally am seeing for his abilities thus far.

Willow:

Spoiler

I have been seeing her used as a ranged magic user with that meteor staff specifically (seeing as she has the increased fire damage and explosive damage this makes sense). Bernie can take some hits, but overall the need to revive him is a much more crushing disadvantage than an advantage. I say this because he doesn't really do anything (to my knowledge) other than function as a small distraction, meaning a better option might be Wendy.

Wolfgang:

Spoiler

Here we have one of two choices really, we have a tank, opting for high damage absorption gear, and we have a speedier build, focusing more on outrunning attacks (specifically boarilla's attack). As a tank he functions very well, especially for the healer. Because of Wolfgang's mighty ability at low health, it is an amazing indicator that he is at low health without having to look at the top of the screen (and seeing as the healer should probably be focusing on keeping the tank alive so that he can go revive/heal others, this works great). The speedy build is good for a Wolfgang who wants to personally stay alive, so there may be an opportunity to have two on a team here.

Wendy:

Spoiler

She seems simply like a more improved version of Willow other than she doesn't have the 10% increase in damage from the meteor staff. I say this because Abigail is a MUCH larger help than Bernie is simply because she does damage. I know people will immediately say something about how little damage it is, but its not about how much damage she is doing, just the fact that she is doing damage. This is because Abigail  will often become the target of shielding enemies (I'm specifically referring to boarillas but tortanks too i guess) meaning that she will cause them to put up their defenses. This might seem annoying during the earlier parts with the large amounts of tortanks, but becomes very necessary later in the game when you are looking for any time to even think when fighting the boarillas. The convenient distraction paired with the damage means Abigail can stay alive longer than Bernie and offer more of a window for healing.

WX-78:

Spoiler

This seems like one of the most straightforward characters to me. He should probably be a tank because of the shock upon him getting hit allows for larger buffer times meaning less damage done overall. Having a robot punching bag honestly might be better than having Wolfgang as a tank, and as i previously said, Wolfgang can function quite well as a speedy build. I personally cant decide which I would prefer to have more as a tank though.

Wikerbottom:

Spoiler

Here we have a character that I tried to play once and immediately got tired of, so anyone who is taking the time to learn her, congrats, you are better than me. Its not that she is a bad character by any regard, she is probably one of the most useful, but I haven't seen her used in much of a creative way. The ability to freeze the enemies is very useful, especially while the team is trying to fight off large hoards, picking one or two at a time is a very necessary ability to have. Thanks to the freeze having the same AOE as the heal/sleep it can be used immediately after the blooms disappear, freezing the lesser enemies and allowing more freedom to kill off the larger threats and allow the team to be healed frequently. But this is about the only way I have seen her played or thought of playing her.

Woodie:

Spoiler

I haven't seen too much of Woodie in The Forge, but what I have seen, he really is not a good character to use. He is a melee character who can throw his weapon but he doesn't offer as good of a tanking option of WX-78 or Wolfgang so he is not good in that regard, he doesn't really do all that high of damage so it would be difficult to use him with a focus on attack. The only way I can really think to potentially use him would be as a character who focuses on distracting and outrunning, but even so I think Wolfgang is a better option.

Wes:

Spoiler
I can honestly say I haven't seen anyone play him nor have I played him but there may be potential for him to be used as a high attack character, giving him basically anything would be good. His aggro abilities are really interesting though. The ability to be revived twice as fast would mean that a Wilson could get a Wes up in no time and the ability to keep aggro (if he could get it) could potentially save a run. By this I mean, if Wes were to be built to have speed and melee weapons, he could distract the enemies while a Wilson/healer goes around and gets everyone up. I feel like this might be optimistic, but it seems more than possible. 
It has been noted to me that a strategy is to have Wes aggro a majority of the mobs, allowing for people to pick off one or two at a time, giving him speed item. This seems like it could compliment what I have previously written on him also.

.Maxwell:

Spoiler

He doesn't seem to terribly useful to me, he can be used similar to Wikerbottom I guess, but he has less health and is overall less able to perform in my opinion. I also haven't seen him used other than one game when I played him. This might just be because I sucked with him, but I do not currently see him as a good team player or a good self-centered player. Please correct me if I am wrong though.

Wigfrid:

Spoiler

She honestly seems like the most reliable speedy class as she can stun a couple of enemies with her spear, and she seems to get aggro pretty easily off of people. She seems pretty standard, and is quite a strong character to play, although not too terribly interesting in my opinion. I have also briefly seen her used as more of a tank character, but it did not work too well from what I have seen.That's about all I have seen of her though.

Webber:

Spoiler

Webber seems like he is one of the best ways to get DPS on the enemies, but people need to be careful when they play him. His spiders and the darts can get a lot of damage, but he cant take hits so this needs to be paired with a tank. It might be interesting to see people get speed items with Webber and outrun the enemies, letting the spider babies do a majority of the damage while shooting in as possible.

Winona:

Spoiler

 

I am really stumped when it comes to Winona. She has high health (200) and she can use anything available to her, but her perk just is not enough to me. 10% reduced cool down times is great but it dosen't exactly set her up for any particular class. Maybe that is the whole point of the character, that she can hop into basically any position and do well, but if you are playing with a group with the intent to win I see no reason to go out of your way to chose her.

Sinister_Fang Has said that Winona has a good potential as a healer because of her 10% reduced cool down on the staff, which might lead to interesting team composition if you could have a DPS Wilson for revival (or no Wilson at all) and a separate healer being Winona.

 

 

Please feel free to reply with how wrong you think I am about everything I have written and how using Wilson for his melee ability is the supreme use of his skills.

Now onto the second part of this post. I will try to update this later to include more things as they are suggested and as I am discovering them, but seeing as it is 1:00AM where I am at the time of writing, I am trying to wrap this up fairly quickly. Without delay, here are my tips.

  • Healers, be sure to use the staff as much as possible. This might seem wrong to do at first, because saving the heal for a good time might seem more worthwhile, but the sleep buff on that baby lets just about anyone heal up just about anywhere, and can lead into some good combos and high damage delt.
  • Tanks, be sure to defend your healers. This is very important, and even if you are at low health, just take the hits so that the healer can put out his special. doing so will allow them to put things to sleep and potentially get you back up if you died, if not, it will heal you.
  • If all of the tanks are down, try to make an opening for the healer, this kinda goes with the last one but still.
  • Keeping good health is much more important than doing damage, so if anyone in the group needs to be healed, do NOT attack the things while they are asleep.
  • Dont attack things who are stunned/frozen unless they are the only things left. having 5 enemies frozen in place while a boarilla is not an invitation to focus on the 5 enemies, it is an invitation to do the opposite. 
  • Finally, try to have some good team comp before the game. People will just get frustrated if nobody can get up because there is nobody who can hold a staff.
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This is real well done! I hope to see you add to it as you get accustomed to the characters more. I've only been playing Wilson mostly since hes just so darn useful. Also, you forgot Webber! He seems... alright. His spiders chip away at the ankles, making him a somewhat decent ranged attacker.

(Also, you should of posted this to the forge sub-forums, but i'm sure a kind moderator could move this for ya :) nvm :>

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38 minutes ago, Christo1 said:

Maxwell:

He doesn't seem to terribly useful to me, he can be used similar to Wikerbottom I guess, but he has less health and is overall less able to perform in my opinion. I also haven't seen him used other than one game when I played him. This might just be because I sucked with him, but I do not currently see him as a good team player or a good self-centered player. Please correct me if I am wrong though.

Nope, you're completely right on that. He is quite bad in the forge, mostly due to how the petrifying tome works. He shouldn't be in melee due to his low health, and the tome deals barely any damage anyway (I've also been unable to activate his ability using the tome). He won't be able to do all that much until after you get the fire staff (I forgot what it's actual name was). Although once he gets it he's a decent dps. Problem is that Wicker does pretty much the same thing, but better. Both character's have a slow start and rely on a single item that's dropped mid way through the fights.

I tried to use him, I really did. But I feel bad doing next to nothing during the beginning rounds.

49 minutes ago, Christo1 said:

Winona:

I am really stumped when it comes to Winona. She has high health (200) and she can use anything available to her, but her perk just is not enough to me. 10% reduced cool down times is great but it dosent exactly set her up for any particular class. Maybe that is the whole point of the character, that she can hop into basically any position and do well, but if you are playing with a group with the intent to win I see no reason to go out of your way to chose her.

Actually, I have to disagree. She fits the role of the healer extremely well with that 10% reduced cooldown time. Casting heals more frequently really helps to keep everyone alive longer.

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I've moved this over to the designated section of the forums the newly created The Forge Beta Subforum which I believe would best suit this discussion under the Strategy and Tactics in this subforum. Enjoy!

I've been playing ranged characters since the beginning, I don't know why but I just don't like the sounds of getting hurt... it feels like I'm making a bad move each time I get hurt, so I stay away from melee characters. Will join in the conversation if I have anything worthwhile to say. Cheers.

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I've used Maxwell in the Forge. And yes, his starting item, the Petrifying Tome, isn't too good, though quite useful if you can manage to petrify a bunch of mobs together. When using the inferno staff however, I find his dps potential with his shadow duelists being a lot better than Willow using it. Besides, Willow can still use darts which means she can still use the molten darts to still get bonus fire damage. Maxwell is stuck with using books and staves. Might as well let Maxwell make the most use of his dps with an inferno staff. Though it'd probably be a lot better to have someone else use the healing staff.

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Ironically Wes is REALLY helpful in the Forge.

The strategy is to make most of the monsters aggro onto Wes and have him bait them around. Since almost all of the monsters use melee attacks Wes is able to lead them on using his passives with relative ease. Meanwhile the rest of the team can aggro smaller groups of monsters out of Wes’s monster following and beat them up separated from the rest.

This is particularly useful when the Boarilla shows up as Wes can use the speed boost items and keep it distracted until all the smaller monsters have been dealt with. This same tactic seems to work with the Boarior as well.

His passive to be revived quick really compliments this tactic well. When Wes dies and the horde that’s following him aggros onto somebody else it’s very easy to get him back up and distracting again, especially with a Wilson.

I took this role a couple of times and managed to make it work very well. In fact a person that was originally mad at me for choosing Wes took it back and complimented me because it was working so well.

Klei is really enforcing the “Wes is secretly a god” meme and I love it.

Another thing to note. Any character can do this job. It’s just with the rodeo clown job Wes is bes-t.

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Webber : 
Ranged DPS, darts only. He seems to have the highest damage output of all the classes but he can only use darts. As long as he gets physical damage items he is sure to be top damage dealer in pretty much every game. While he has no buffs helping the team in any way, he does get 3 baby spiders which will bite targeted enemies for 6 damage (7 with all damage items), spiders are ignored by enemies , it's basically yet another way to increase his damage. 

 

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7 hours ago, Ashkain said:

This is real well done! I hope to see you add to it as you get accustomed to the characters more. I've only been playing Wilson mostly since hes just so darn useful. Also, you forgot Webber! He seems... alright. His spiders chip away at the ankles, making him a somewhat decent ranged attacker.

(Also, you should of posted this to the forge sub-forums, but i'm sure a kind moderator could move this for ya :) )

I am sorry I forgot to add Webber, I will get him in the post a little later. Like I said later in the post, I made this at 1:00AM so I must have just missed them when I was thinking about them. I will add him rn.

7 hours ago, Szzz said:

I guess you forgot Wigfrid.

Same thing here. People have been commenting some pretty good stuff in regards to these two characters.

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I like to call myself a sandman due to people making me a healer class. With a good team who can understand cool down mechanics, the entire team can do rotations in attacks and healing. With great teamwork, we got up to the boarrior. Didn't defeat him but got to the point.

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On 10/24/2017 at 1:15 PM, Christo1 said:
Spoiler

I haven't seen too much of Woodie in The Forge, but what I have seen, he really is not a good character to use. He is a melee character who can throw his weapon but he doesn't offer as good of a tanking option of WX-78 or Wolfgang so he is not good in that regard, he doesn't really do all that high of damage so it would be difficult to use him with a focus on attack. The only way I can really think to potentially use him would be as a character who focuses on distracting and outrunning, but even so I think Wolfgang is a better option.

 

Woodie is a good character in the hands of a capable player.

When thrown, his axe can stop the beyblading tortanks, and draw aggro from other players to himself. Also makes a pretty decent tank, and since he attacks faster, has good dps. He can kite, but is better suited for tanking. Can't say if better than Wolfgang, but if you want a team with 2 tanks, a Wolfgang and Woodie combo is pretty good.

On 10/24/2017 at 1:15 PM, Christo1 said:
Spoiler

He doesn't seem to terribly useful to me, he can be used similar to Wikerbottom I guess, but he has less health and is overall less able to perform in my opinion. I also haven't seen him used other than one game when I played him. This might just be because I sucked with him, but I do not currently see him as a good team player or a good self-centered player. Please correct me if I am wrong though.

 

Maxwell is a versatile character.

He's like a Wickerbottom but with an option for more dps (shadow duelists, in exchange for less health). I've been seeing more Maxwells recently and the only thing I can say is that if you aren't confident in your skills, you probably shouldn't use him. The problem with Maxwell players is that if you have a Willow on your team, they usually fight for the fire staff.

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After playing Woodie for about another 7 hours, I have to say he is probably my favourite character. But he requires a lot of skill if used as a runner.
Throwing Lucy turns out to be incredibly effective as it forces mobs to aggro on you, stops tortanks and  most importantly interrupts the Boarior if your timing is perfect it is theoretically possible for the boarior not to launch a single attack.

But again Woodie requires you to know how to play and what to do. You need to throw Lucy at every monster chasing squishy character,  every monster going after reviving player, every Crocobile banner, every spinning Tortank you see, at Boarilla after every dodge you make, and of course at the Great Boarior every time it's time to interrupt his attack. This last thing requires timing if not clairvoyance as you need to start throwing before his attack animation starts, otherwise it will be too late. 

So yeah, I'd say Woodie is superior runner to Wes, because he can keep aggro of any monster he wants on him indefinitely (but only 1 - 2 monsters at a time without cooldown items), his running chips away at monster HP, and he can actually prevent monsters from attacking at all.

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1 minute ago, thenumberf5ve said:

So does anyone know what each different totem pole does. The ones that spawn with the Crocoviles waves?

According to the latest devstream, theres 3 types (i can only recall 2) but the purple shield increases enemy armour, and I assume the one that has the teeth buffs enemy damage? Can't recall the third one.

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13 hours ago, Ashkain said:

According to the latest devstream, theres 3 types (i can only recall 2) but the purple shield increases enemy armour, and I assume the one that has the teeth buffs enemy damage? Can't recall the third one.

The third one is a garland of flowers akin to the ones summoned by the healing staff, so I assume they give passive heal to the enemies.

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On 24/10/2017 at 7:15 AM, Christo1 said:

Maxwell:

He doesn't seem to terribly useful to me, he can be used similar to Wikerbottom I guess, but he has less health and is overall less able to perform in my opinion. I also haven't seen him used other than one game when I played him. This might just be because I sucked with him, but I do not currently see him as a good team player or a good self-centered player. Please correct me if I am wrong though.

So, i'm currently lvl 41 and i tryhard this mode with some friends.
Maxwell is my main, and i will explain why :
It's true that you loose some dps on the start of the game until he got the firestaff, but with the Petrifying Tome, you are able to control the number of ennemies for the team, it's quite usefull against tortank and scorpion because you can block at least 4/5 ennemies on your own, while all the team dps the same target.
Once the scorpion phase is finished, the true potential of Maxwell is unlock with the fire staff, his passive can trigger 5 shadow dealing 35dmg each one, but that's not the main bonus.
During the boss phase
(Boarilla / Grand Forge Boarrior) these shadow can "stun lock" the bosses for some seconds, if you can combo behind with other abilities from the team, Boarrior litteraly can't deal any dmg for few seconds, and it's primordial at the end to avoid as much dmg as possible.
(One last thing, for the Boarrior phase, Maxwell need the 85% armor, if not he could get two shot because of his 75hp life)

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with the addition of the new book, mages have been rehauled and are easier to fit into teamcomps.

Previously, they were forced to take a staff to be remotely viable in any team composition. This means wicker would take heal or fire staff and derive willow or wilson of their job and force them into an awkward dart-dps mode, or maxwell would take the fire staff and do likewise.

now it's more feasible for a mage to be on their own and have the two books- one as DPS (albeit mediocre from what i've seen, but it's literally 100% better than when they didn't have it) and one as crowd control. Now, book mages have an identity, and staff mages have an identity. They still function well with staves, but aren't required to/ if they get bullied out of the staff, they have backup.

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The summon book is still kinda eh and it doesn't help that it drops -after- fire staff, and neither of them can activate their passives with books... unless the summon's damage actually does activate their passives?? (Does it? Honestly, I keep getting disconnected.)

The summon book IS a good addition, but, it should be something you juggle with a staff. (further helping cement wicker as worthwhile party choice via even more dps, whether healing or not) And a Maxwell shouldn't even touch it opposed to the fire staff, I... think. Unless it does help him proc a bunch of duelists. It's a good backup option if the party setup is janky though (e.g. 2 mages that both aren't healing because people picked badly)

Wilson competes with Wes as lowest priority staff user anyway. Wilson's job is reviving, dps is second priority so someone else should be using The Best Weapon In The Forge. Willow out-damages most people even if she's relegated to darts and Wicker/Max still use the fire staff better than her.

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Might as well go ahead and type this up 

Some tips I have for Webber: 

-You can seriously do the most damage and hit the most times if you use Webber right. 

-The damage the spiders do is influenced by your armor and weapons. Keep this in mind and if you can, try to get armor and weapons that boost the amount of damage you do. 

-Unless you're playing with a Willow, get the fire dart as soon as you can (or get the second one that comes around if there's a Willow). It's very useful and, as stated above, will increase the damage the spiders do. 

-Spiders are slow, so try to have them attack an enemy that someone else, usually a tank, is holding in place. 

-If you can, position the spiders so that they are closer to the spawn than you are. When the enemies come out, send the spiders to attack and they will be able to get in much quicker. It's a small time boost, but it helps. 

-Also attack with your basic attack first so that the spiders get sent in. If you use your powerful attack then they won't attack what you attacked. This can also be useful if you need to attack multiple enemies, but want to keep the spiders on one. 

-Webber is way better at range attacking than with kiting because of the amount of damage he can do. When kiting it's very hard for the spiders to get any hits in, so I wouldn't recommend kiting as Webber unless you really have to. 

-Be fueled by the spite of people criticizing you for choosing Webber

And some tips for people who play range in general: 

-Tanks are your friends. I mean it, stick to the tanks. You really won't be able to attack much if certain enemies start to aggro you. Plus sticking to what the tank is attacking is a good idea in general. 

-You can very easily kite the Tortanks and the Venomeers since they are slow. It's very easy to fight one without getting hit. Keep this in mind if you need to draw aggro, especially from your healer(s). 

-If there's multiple darts on the field, keep in mind their ability reloads individually. In certain situations you can keep switching between darts and using your barrage attack. I'd especially recommend doing this when enemies are defending or asleep. 

Plus some other general tips: 

-Be nice. No one wants to listen to you if you're being rude. Try to cooperate with your team and don't yell at everyone for not playing exactly the way you want to. This also goes for newer players, we all start somewhere you know.

-I said this before, but attack what the tank's attacking. It's best to focus on one enemy and this is especially useful so that you don't have multiple Tortanks letting it rip on the field. 

-Run in a large triangle to avoid the Tortanks when they start spinning. 

-Most weapon abilities will cause enemies to stop being in defense mode, and also will stop the Tortanks from spinning, so save them until they do such and then attack them to bring them out. Also note that you may have to keep in mind when your teammate's abilities reload and try to space it so that you don't attack at the same time as them. 

-If you need to revive someone and you need to buy some time, run as far away as possible from who you're trying to revive. Once your at the edge, wait a little bit until the enemies reach you, then run back. This buys some time with enemies like the Tortanks or Venomeers and is very helpful if you're the only one left. 

-Revive Wilson first, then healer, then tanks. 

-Don't give up on your team because you don't like the comp. It's still possible to win even if the team doesn't look it. I once won with 1 healing Winona, 2 Wilsons, 2 Wolfgangs, and me as Webber, anything's possible. 

-Restating this again, be nice

 

Edit: I should probably point out that I'm mostly basing this off of what I played in the beta. I may be wrong about some things. 

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my conclusions about the book as an Expert Gamer (tm) with some experience and hands on on the book:

 

 

due to the fact that the summoning book doesn't proc either of their passives i can only infer that the NEW BOOK WAS LITERALLY INVENTED TO BE JUGGLED

im dead

my thesis: You need a ranged weapon to proc your passive as wickerbottom or maxwell. doing it at melee with the book is asking to die. you're not a tank. ESPECAILLY not maxwell. go away maxwell. Thusly, Wickerbottom should be using the healing staff (slow) or fire staff (Fast) to proc her passive. only THEN can she deal ~~ 1000 damage per cast of the summoning book if it gets every hit in and she had the passive. reminder, if you aren't proccing her passive, her only bonus over maxwell is 50 health.

as such, this means the book cannot be used as a primary offensive means. What this means:

1) situation 1 is where you have two mages. Two maxwells, two wickers, one of each, whatever. it has never worked well in my experience, because instead of one old person standing around petrifying people OCCASIONALLY AND OTHERWISE NOT CONTRIBUTING UNTIL THE STAFF DROPS, there's 2. its a 4vforge with some petrifying. Now, with this book, one can focus on a staff (maxeel, for example) and the other can use the two petrifying books AND the dps books, granted not to the best of their ability but it's better than it was before

2) situation 2 is where wickerbottom gets either staff. As healer, she now has DECISION MAKING BEING A KEY PART OF THE GAMEPLAY wow! that's so cool! it's an incredible design choice, no sarcasm intended, i'm being real. anyways, she now has to pick what she uses her passive on. As a healer, she gets her passive back JUSt in time for the heals to go off cooldown. Now, she has to think: Do I need to heal more, or can i throw some DPS in?

not to mention, even if she doesn't use her passive on the dps guy, that's still a lot more dps than none at all. so that's great. now a healer who does damage.

3) situation 3 is when she gets fire staff. Now she gets her passive in no time flat, and can use it on her fire ulti, attack a few times, and bam she has it back again. 90% of the time i get my passive proc when the meteor staff is like 1/4th of the way cooled off. now she can drop it, activate minion, and go back to staff and have even MORE insane DPS (considering she already had insane DPS when she was doing 30k damage after not having a weapon for the first half of the game)

like, if wicker had fire staff from the beginning, she'd be doing ungodly damage

as it stands, she starts the game without a weapon basically

anyhow, that's my reasoning and experience

also, not to mention she's triple juggling in the last 2 situations

 

(pasted from a rant i made to my discord group)

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