This drama is mainly about the events of Season 7/World Championship 7 (WC7), the season of Battlebots that aired in 2023. Big spoilers for the season inbound, including the overall winner, along with spoilers of the outcomes and winners of previous seasons.
I will try my hardest to be unbiased which is hard because I am extremely biased and any attempt to be unbiased could only come across as enlightened centrism. I will simply try to keep the bias to a manageable level.

Battlebots

In case you don't know, Battlebots (well, combat robotics, but Battlebots is the most well-known and publicized event by an order of magnitude) is a... sport? Game? Hobby? Lifestyle? Where the goal is to throw two robots of a comparable weight against each other, with the goal to destroy each other. Battlebots itself is in the heavyweight category, with a 250 lb weight limit per robot. Other popular weight classes (relatively popular - heavyweight is the only televised one) are antweight (1 lb), beetleweight (3 lb), hobbyweight (12 lb), and lightweight (30 lb.) Battlebots itself airs on Discovery, generally with a main season and a spinoff season each year.
If you watched Battlebots back in the late 90s when it was on Comedy Central, you might remember robots that were basically big wedges pushing each other around a square and maybe occasionally taking a bit of armor off. That's not how it is anymore. Bots are destructive, powerful, and great spectacles to watch fight. Seriously, you should watch Battlebots. It's on Discovery+ and HBO Max. If you don't want to spend the money, Norwalk National Havoc Robotics League (NHRL) has competitions every few months that are livestreamed for free on Youtube in the smaller weight classes.
In case it's not clear from the write-up, Battlebots is filmed usually in the fall, and the season airs spring the next year. So all of the events in this write-up occurred over a 2-week period in OctobeNovember 2022, but only were public drama as the episodes aired January-May 2023. Much like any reality/game show, all the builders, production, etc. knew the outcome of the season before anything aired, there's just millions of dollars of NDAs.

The Culture

Something interesting about Battlebots that might surprise those unfamiliar with it is the culture. While teams work as hard as they can to reduce the other robot to splintered scrap in the box, back in the pits everyone is super awesome and nice and kind and helpful - a frequent occurrence is going to the pit of the bot you just took apart and seeing if there is any way you can help with the rebuild.
The classic example is in the 2021 season, when the iconic Witch Doctor's weapon disk kept breaking due to poor quality steel. They were scrambling to find material and resources to machine a new disk, when a ton of teams came together to save their season.
Team Sporkinok (yes, that's a trans Battlebot) lent them their pickup truck, to go pick up steel from a nearby supplier who was found by the captain of Team Blacksmith.
They needed to recreate the failure to figure out was wrong, so Team Shatter (the biggest, strongest hammer-bot in the competition) took their robot to the test box to try and break a disk.
They took the steel to the nearby build space of Team Chomp, who stayed up all night on their waterjet to cut new disks (the new disks worked well, by the way.)
After the season, they still didn't know for sure what the cause was, so they worked with Team Hypershock to create a dummy test robot, modeled after the very durable robot (and future 2022 champs) Tantrum, they could test the old disks on. They then sent the broken disks to a materials science lab run by a friend of the captain of Team Tantrum to perform materials analysis.
Many of these teams had fought Witch Doctor in the past, others would fight them in the future. But that doesn't matter - in robot combat, everyone is friends outside the box.
Right?

Riptide

Every year there are of course rookie bots competing for the first time. Sometimes from veteran teams and builders, such as last year's Blip (from the creators of Tantrum), or this year's RIPperoni, from former members of the teams behind Uppercut and P1, but just as often from new builders, at least new to heavyweight (almost nobody starts out with with the robots that can cost as much as a new car.)
One of these 'new-to-heavyweight' rookies last year was Riptide, captained by Ethan Kurtz (the guy with the "you know I had to do it to em" pose.) Ethan had found a good amount of success previously with the beetleweight Rival, and Riptide was basically Rival writ 80 times bigger. Riptide had a pretty good first season, winning 2 out of their 3 qualifying fights and making it to the quarterfinals before losing to the extremely good SawBlaze.
No real controversy, aside from a false start and early hit on HUGE in their first fight - written off as "I'm fighting a heavyweight on Battlebots for the first time" nerves, no hard feelings from anyone, not even HUGE. They also gave fan-favorite (formerly) indestructible brick Duck! such a bad thrashing that Duck! permanently retired after that fight (Duck! was having a bad year anyway, that fight was just the icing on the cake.)
Their success led to them co-winning Rookie of the Year alongside Glitch, who won an amazing 7 fights in a row, a feat only done before by 3-time championship winner and undisputed GOAT Bite Force (Glitch had to bow out of the tournament because their bot had taken irreparable damage despite the victories, but it's possible they could have extended it even further.) Riptide became well known for Ethan screaming "LET'S GO!" (or sometimes, "LET'S F------ GO"!", giving the censors a bit of a workout and annoying production) after big wins.
So coming into season 8, their sophomore year, hopes are high for Riptide and people want to see this breakout star do well, right? After all, there's no big controversy in their funding or anything, is there?

Stan Kurtz

Stan is the bald dude next to Ethan in the team picture. He's Ethan's dad, and also one of the main sponsors for the team through his company BeCourageous. Where did Stan Kurtz get his money to sponsor a big team? Well, he once had a company named RevitaPOP. RevitaPOP made vitamin B12 lollipops. If you know anything about 'alternative medicine,' this is where you say "oh no."
Stan Kurtz was once upon a time the president of Generation Rescue. Yes, that Generation Rescue, the Jenny McCarthy 'vaccines-cause-autism' one. He was instrumental in getting the 'movement' off the ground in the first place - I even seem to recall seeing a link to a talk he did where he said he was backstage for McCarthy's interview with Larry King, but I'm not about to sift through hours of his horrid talks and speeches to find it.
Stan Kurtz sold lollipops that he claimed cured autism, autism that he and his organization claimed was caused by vaccines. In fact, he claimed they even cured his son Ethan's autism! Remember this when you read about Ethan's behavior - it's not an excuse, but "autistic but prevented from going to any kind of therapy or anything because it would make his dad look like a liar" is certainly an explanation.
Let me divest into opinion for a sec. Stan Kurtz is evil. There is a direct line between the actions of Stan Kurtz promoting vaccine denalism and snake oil cures, and dead children. Fuck Stan Kurtz. Every other problem with Team Riptide could be overlooked if they did not have this dude as their primary sponsor (which necessarily would require replacing Ethan as captain, because you can't separate him from his dad financially.) Okay, back to the writeup.
But put a pin in "Riptide's captain and his dad are antivaxxers" - it's a surprise tool that will help us later.

Riptide in WC7

Fight 1: Glitch

Aside from that, people didn't have that much of an opinion on Riptide going in to WC7 (and even that wasn't too widely known until partway through the season.) Generally, there was a feeling of "let's see if they can keep it up" - often a lot of very promising rookie bots have weak second seasons. They started the season fighting Glitch, to see who was truly better. One hit, weapon-on-weapon, and Glitch fucking died. Upside down, weapon not spinning, no way to self-right.
Team Glitch asked Riptide to hit them again try to flip them back over, maybe knock some life back into the bot. Not an uncommon thing, but sometimes it backfires. Riptide did, launched Glitch across the box, and now Glitch was super-dead. Instant, extremely decisive knockout for Riptide. No drama yet.

Fight 2: MaD CatTer

Now on to the second fight. This one was against MaD CatTer, consisting of community college professor Martin Mason (goatee in the middle) and his students. Martin Mason is known for his intentionally cheesebally and over-the-top Macho Man imitation/homage, with lots of pointing at the camera and saying "Oh yeah!" Also by all regards the nicest man on planet Earth and one of the most beloved figures in combat robotics.
Of note is MaD CatTer's driver, Calvin Iba (guy beneath Martin's pointing hand.) Calvin Iba is one of the few builders better known for his smaller robot - his robot Lynx is the winningest beetleweight of all time, with an incredible 11 tournament wins, 8 undefeated, and an overall record of 86-11 as of December 2022 (and several events since then, but I can't find overall fight records of those events.) Now, Lynx is a very similar design to Rival (and therefore Riptide) - Lynx predates Rival by a few months, but the design is relatively generic and common at lower weight classes so it's not exactly plagarism.
This is relevant because Battlebots production tried to stir up drama, painting Calvin as angry that Ethan copied his bot and scaled it up to 250lb before Calvin could himself. For what it's worth Calvin did play into it a bit (he brought Lynx to the fight), but by all regards there aren't really any serious hard feelings about that. "Beater bars" (the weapon style of Riptide/Lynx/Rival) predate all three bots. Worth noting that Rival lost to Lynx in a brutal slugfest in the semifinals match of NHRL a few years ago, so maybe Ethan had a bit of a revenge arc more than anything.
On to the fight. MaD CatTer is a pretty serious bot - not most people's favorite to win it all, but a 'serious contender for semifinals' kind of bot - so nobody knew how this would go. It was back and forth for... about 10 seconds, then Riptide got one good hit and did not let up. MaD CatTer got taken apart like they never had before, left a smoking mess, stuck sideways against the arena wall, knocked out within a minute. Riptide then drove around a bit and punted pieces of MaD CatTer around the box, which got them a warning from the ref for being unsafe and for doing unnecessary damage to perfectly salvageable components of MaD CatTer. The team apologized later for that, saying they wouldn't do it again. Remember that.
Okay, two rapid knockouts against serious bots. Riptide is definitely not suffering from the sophomore curse. But in the post-fight interview, we did get a little taste of Ethan being a bit of a jerk - basically dismissed Calvin/Lynx as worse Riptide, and put his hand over Martin's mouth (without Martin's permission) as a way of saying "shut up wrestler man!" Could have been funny, but it came across as somewhat mean-spirited and Martin clearly was not cool with it (and Martin Mason is not a sore loser - he spends almost every post-fight interview gushing about how good the other robot is, even if MaD CatTer loses.) Production asked Calvin what he thought, and he said (while holding Lynx) "well, I designed this robot to be unbeatable, it's a great robot to base it off of. Good job." Good comeback.

Fight 3: Captain Shrederator

Captain Shrederator is a longtime veteran, being one of the few robots (alongside Witch Doctor, Hypershock, and Lock-Jaw) who has competed in all 7 seasons of the reboot. And they've competed for even longer - under various names and throughout various small tweaks, Captain Shrederator is basically the same robot as Phrizbee, from original Battlebots Season 3.0 in 2001. They're not exactly good by any modern standard, to be honest, but they're fun and an institution of the show. Worth noting that leading up to this fight, Nick Nave (son of Shrederator captain Brian Nave and a member of the team) had been hinting at possible controversy around this fight for a few weeks beforehand on the subreddit, so people were ready for some shit.
So going in, everyone expects Riptide to win. Here's a bot that made MaD CatTer look like a middleweight, versus a team with, at the time, a 6-18 career record. Riptide can't be complacent because even Shrederator can do some damage if you let it (by some metrics, Shrederator may have the most powerful weapon in the competition), but it's their fight to lose. Ethan Kurtz explains his strategy in an interview before the fight - get some big hits that flip Shrederator over. Once they're upside-down, they can't self-right and they'll be counted out. Makes sense, a solid, quick, safe, easy way to win. Well, watch the fight here if you can.
If you can't, I will summarize: It starts off with Shrederator dodging Riptide and spinning up, until eventually Riptide gets a solid hit that breaks a piece of Shrederator's shell off and destabilizes them. One more big hit from Riptide and Shrederator lands upside-down - it's over. Well, no. Riptide then goes in and hits them again before they can be counted out. And again. And again. And again. At this point Shrederator is basically completely dead, but it's still able to spin. Shrederator's team calls over to Riptide "yo, stop it we're dead already." Riptide hits Shrederator again. Riptide's weapon operator tells Ethan to hit him again. And so he does. And one more time, as sparks fly out of Shrederator's pulverized electronics. Riptide leaves Shrederator dead on the floor, as they go and, you guessed it, punt shrapnel around the box. At this point the referee has to physically take the controller from Ethan (while the rest of team Riptide tries to stop the ref.)
Of course this is a KO for Riptide, but in doing so they did around $10,000 worth of extra, unnecessary damage to Shrederator, and almost the entire bot had to be thrown out and rebuilt from spares. Riptide was not apologetic (and in fact later Ethan would gloat to the camera over how Team Shrederator hadn't even tried to rebuild their bot.) No members of Team Riptide helped Shrederator rebuild either, though one did offer. (It wasn't Ethan, Stan, or the weapon operator Sid.)
To say this was controversial to the community would be lying. Controversy requires some argument or debate. There was none - everyone thought Riptide went way too far. Riptide later tried to say "we interpreted their spinning as intent to keep fighting, and we couldn't hear them asking us to stop." Which was seen by most of the community as a load of crap, since Ethan had said to the camera that he didn't need to do those late hits just before the fight, and teams are bantering with each other in fights all the time. Riptide was formally warned by the ref again for this fight.
At this point, the editors I guess realized that controversy sells. In almost every remaining episode of the season, even ones where Riptide didn't fight, they had some clip of Riptide, or Ethan, or something else to rub in "these guys are really mean and have a good bot, wHaT iF tHeY wIn???" Very much a 'whenver Riptide's not on screen, all the other robots should be asking "Where's Riptide?"' situation. It got old very fast (read: instantly.)

Fight 4: Black Dragon

You want to talk about beloved teams, you have to mention Black Dragon. This Brazilian team is known for two things - their plush duck, which they won in a claw machine the first time they came to the US for a competition and have kept as a good luck charm ever since, and their durability - they had gone a near-record 24 matches without ever getting knocked out, winning all of those fights or losing by judge's decision. Leading up to this fight, Battlebots kept having segments showing how Black Dragon had almost surpassed Bite Force for the "most fights without a KO" streak (Bite Force was never KO'd in its entire 4-season career, going 26-1 with 1 lost JD.) Of course, then they had to fight Riptide.
This fight was probably the least controversial Riptide fight of the season - you can watch it here. Riptide went in and did not let up, unrelenting, leading to the Brazilian bot suffering their first ever KO in under a minute. Riptide was actually pretty chill in the post-fight interview, very respectful towards Black Dragon - I guess that ref warning stuck. For now. With that, Riptide advanced to 4-0 in the qualifiers, and ended up securing themselves the #2 overall seed (behind the undefeated Brazilian monster Minotaur, a favorite to win it all every season and the season 3 runner-up.)

Round of 32: Shatter

For those who don't know, Battlebots has a series of qualifying fights (this year, 4 fights per bot) to determine, out of the contenders (50 this year), which 32 get to compete in the tournament for the Giant Nut, and where they will be seeded. As the #2 seed, Riptide got to fight the #31 seed - hammer-bot Shatter, who you saw earlier helping Witch Doctor. Now, let me not mince words - Shatter was fucked. To paraphrase a comment I saw, "If Shatter drives like a god, gets the most perfect hammer shots ever, and in general is the best a hammer has ever looked in the history of hammers... they will still lose." There was no way Shatter could ever, ever win, barring some kind of catastrophic self-induced failure from Riptide. But damn it, Shatter captain Adam Wrigley was sure as hell going to try.
Now, for more info, the bots have rules that govern what you can do. There's a lot, but 2 are relevant - strict 250 lb weight limit, and the tip speed of a spinning weapon cannot exceed 250 mph. Bots are weighed before each fight to confirm the weight limit, and all bots with spinners have to do tip speed tests in the test box. After the weigh-in, you cannot modify or work on your bot in any way without the approval of production and safety. Not for anything. Maybe a sticker if you want.
So when a Shatter team member found Riptide working on their bot in the tunnel leading from the pits just before the fight, questions were had, and team Shatter demanded Riptide be reweighed and tip speed retested (there were rumors in the pits that they were spinning faster than 250mph.) The team later explained they were attaching a plastic hammer to the robot to mimic Shatter (teams doing funny decorative mods to their bot to mimic the other bot is a longstanding tradition.) All evidence seemed to point to that being the case, so nobody thinks they were lying about it, but it still warranted a reweigh. My opinion - that's fine, but tell production. If people think you're going to do something illegal, and you do something legal but in a way that looks illegal, don't be surprised when people think you're doing something illegal.
I will note that the show made a big deal out of how when Riptide was weighed before they were 'caught,' they weighed in at 250 lb, and the re-weighing said they were 248. There was some concern from Shatter about that, not helped by Stan Kurtz being kind of smug back to them. In response to one Shatter member asking "Why is it 248 now and 250 before?", Stan responded "You're right, there's something wrong. We made it lighter." Now, the thing with this is that there are multiple scales, they're not extremely precise, and if anyone has ever worked with industrial scales before you know how easily they come out of calibration. Some builders have said that whether or not the AC was on could add a pound of weight from the airflow. The "250lb" scale was not the same as the "248lb" scale as well. Generally, nobody really thinks there is something up with the weight, but working on the bot post-weigh-in absolutely warrants a reweigh, no matter who it is.
Riptide complained a lot about it, to the point where the word "whiney" comes to mind. You messed up, teams are meant to tell production before they add decorative stuff and you didn't, so you need to be reweighed. You've already pissed people off in the past so don't be surprised when they give you a bit more scrutiny. Take your lumps, apologize, act like adults, and maybe people will give you the benefit of the doubt next time. Instead, there was a lot of "oh boo is me, we're being discriminated against" - a direct quote from Ethan is "their paranoia is affecting our performance, I think it's really uncool that they did this." Granted, if the scale drifted the other way and they had to lose 2lb of armor to satisfy the arbitrary scale drift, I would get it more, but as it is they just look, well, whiney.
At this time, unbeknownst to anyone until they revealed it on a livestream, Team Whyachi (the team behind the powerful flipper Hydra, engine of (self-)destruction Fusion, and Comedy Central-era legend Son of Whyachi, who had the pit next to Riptide, was asked by production to put a spy camera up to make sure everything was above board. Allegedly they also began doing analysis of the audio and video of the actual fights, to make sure teams (read: one team) weren't cheating and spinning faster than the "maximum speed" they did in the test box.
However, aside from the (explainable, acceptable) scale drift, Riptide was not found to be cheating with tip speed or anything else. Shatter accepted this without complaint - they just wanted to be sure. So, that's out of the way. Ethan basically said "they are paranoid and are trying to ruin us so we will crush them" - fair enough, I suppose. Here's the fight (note: this video includes the entire 'weigh-in' drama before the fight if you want to watch it instead of just reading about it.) For what it's worth, Shatter lasted longer than anyone yet against Riptide - almost 2 minutes - but it went the way everyone expected. The most unexpected thing was in the post-fight, where Ethan basically said "Adam is a paranoid loser" (alongside, allegedly, some more personal insults that got cut), then went in for a "sporting" handshake. Unsurprisingly, Adam refused it.
Now, Adam is basically the "union rep" for the builders - he's the guy chosen (by the builders) to represent them when Battlebots is thinking about changing the rules. He is a very widely respected guy and is by all accounts very sporting and nice. So when you've pissed him off enough that he refuses the handshake (only the second refused handshake in modern Battlebots history, as far as I am aware), you know you fucked up. But either way, Riptide is on to the round of 16.

Round of 16: Hypershock

You saw Hypershock earlier. They're quite good - definitely a contender, though generally not going to be anyone's main pick to win it all. This year, they were the #18 seed after a rough set of qualifiers, fighting 2021 champs End Game, 2021 runner-up Whiplash, perennial contender SawBlaze, and the confusingly fast Claw Viper (seriously watch this, look how fast that boy is.) But after a solid win over #15 seed Lucky, they were on to the round of 16.
When I say Hypershock is a fan favorite, I mean they are the fan favorite - between their iconic style, aggressive driving, and captain Will Bales's humor and charisma, it's probably not wrong to say Hypershock is the most popular bot and team around. People love Hypershock, and people don't love Riptide, so this fight had a lot of "save us, O-Will Bales Kenobi, you're our only hope" energy with the community. Leading up to this, Will said in an interview that Riptide was good, but every team can't be good forever, and that someday Ethan will experience, in Will's words, a "humbling event."
But Hypershock wasn't the odds-on favorite here - Will Bales's flashy driving tends to lead to errors, and against something as nasty as Riptide, any error is death. The full fight isn't uploaded, but here's a clip of the post-fight highlight reel. Will started out doing a 'box rush' (charging straight at the other bot as soon as the fight starts), only to attempt to dodge to the side. Unfortunately, this led to him powersliding directly into Riptide's weapon, losing a wheel, and getting flipped over.
Now, the thing with vertical spinners in Battlebots is they spin 'up' - this means that the outer side goes up and the inner side goes down, so you can brace your own bot against the floor and send the other one flying. Now Hypershock is upside down, effectively spinning 'down,' so the energy from hits pushes the other bot down and themselves up. Riptide is spinning 'up' as normal. Both of these are extremely powerful weapons. Both want to send Hypershock into the air. So what happens when they collide? The energy of both weapons goes into sending Hypershock flying up over 25 feet and slamming into the ceiling of the Battlebox. Remember that that thing weighs 250 pounds. To quote Will in the post-fight interview, "nobody has ever been hit like that before." Much to the chagrin of Hydra captain Jake Ewert, who had the goal of being the first-ever bot to send another bot into the ceiling (and came within inches in their fight against Deathroll), Riptide made Battlebots history here.
The rest of the fight goes as expected at this point and Hypershock is KO'd, with Riptide moving into the quarterfinals. Sorry Will, you aren't the humbling event this time.

Quarterfinals: Copperhead

It's the final episode of the season - the quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals are all in one episode. People are spooked because Riptide is a incredible, powerful bot built and driven by shitty people, and nobody wants them to win but they might. But to go any further, they have to beat Copperhead.. This snake-themed bot is probably best known for getting a new captain almost every year, and this year it's Luke Quintal in charge for his first time. They just came off of an insanely dominant upset over 2021 champs End Game.
Luke has said that he was too focused on Copperhead to pay attention to the controversy, so he became aware of it when, leading up to this fight, builders kept coming up to him and whispering in his hear "dude, you have to beat Riptide. You have to beat them. You might be our last hope." He's just a first-year captain/driver, with the oldest bot in the competition (Copperhead has had the same two frames for its entire 4-year career - this is the longest any frame has competed in the history of modern Battlebots without replacement), who's had to have back-to-back fights against rookie of the year Ripperoni, 2018 Most Destructive winner ROTATOЯ, and End Game. No pressure.
Now, people have tried ways to beat Riptide. You can't just tank their hits with a durable bot (Black Dragon.) You can't outdrive them with fancy footwork (Hypershock.) But something nobody has been man insane enough to try is to go weapon-to-weapon on purpose to break Riptide's weapon. Copperhead just went weapon-to-weapon with End Game and broke theirs. Copperhead is durable enough to take those huge hits Riptide deals out. So their strategy is to just go berserk until something breaks. But there's one major plot twist left.
Remember how I said the Kurtzes are anti-vaxxers? Well, the pandemic is still going on. In order to get into the pits, you either had to be double-vaxxed or test negative every day. Well, there's no confirmation that Ethan was or was not vaxxed (but let's be real), but guess what? In the greatest Chekhov's gun in Battlebots history, he tested positive for COVID the day of the Copperhead fight. Riptide is out their driver for their biggest fight ever.
Other builders have confirmed that this was not the first or only time that team members had to miss days due to testing positive, but previous times either 1) did not involve the drivers, or 2) were in the qualifying rounds where fights could be postponed to following days. But neither was the case this time. Now, this is really a shitty situation for Riptide, and I do feel some degree of pity for them - what a thing to happen. But at the same time, lmao.
Riptide has to spend most of the day deciding who would drive the robot in the fight. The first person they ask? Jack Barker, driver of End Game and 2021 world champion. Jack agreed - can you blame him? Riptide is a hell of a bot, probably super fun to drive, and who knows, maybe he could win another Giant Nut. This got as far as Jack driving Riptide around the test box, before Luke found out and was like "hang on, no. He's not on your team. It's not fair that you can just go to the best driver in the pits and ask them to drive for you." Production agreed and hastily made a new rule where the driver has to be a member of the team. This all was not in the episode, and was only revealed by Luke Quintal after the season aired.
Team Riptide then deliberated between the several members of the team who might stand a chance. They eventually decide on team member Felix Jing, who's an award-winning Vex Robotics driver but has never driven a heavyweight before. Felix seemed to be a nice enough guy, and pretty humble. However, in the deliberations over who would drive, they lose time and are unable to replace their damaged weapon from the Hypershock fight.
So the fight. Riptide box rushes Copperhead, and the first weapon-to-weapon sends Copperhead flying. Luke's bot is still going, though, and goes in for another clash. This goes on for a few hits, until a massive hit sends Copperhead flying up and Riptide flying back - but when they come to, Copperhead's weapon is spinning... and Riptide's weapon is cracked down the middle, exactly what Copperhead was aiming for.
Copperhead does not let up and keeps hitting, eventually ripping about a quarter of Riptide's weapon off completely. However, the damage from the last 4 years of fighting added up. Those big hits from Riptide were the final straw - one of Copperhead's two wheels just falls off. Copperhead can still move, just about, on just one wheel, but suddenly this fight got a lot closer. They keep hitting Riptide, but it goes to the judges after the full 3 minutes.
It's a split decision. Battlebots is scored on an 11-point system - 5 points for damage, and 3 each for aggression and control.
All three judges gave Copperhead three damage points to Riptide's two and Riptide two control points to Copperhead's one.
The first judge scored aggression 2-1 for Copperhead. 6-5 Copperhead.
The second judge scored aggression 2-1 for Riptide. 6-5 Riptide.
The third judge scored aggression 2-1 for the winner...
Copperhead!
They did it, they saved the goddamn universe. We will not have to live in a world where the ur-anti-vaxxer and his dickhead kid win Battlebots. Everyone is fucking ecstatic. I cheered. The audience cheered. God probably cheered. And boy, did the pits cheer - some builders have said this was the biggest celebration in the pits they had ever seen. Tim Rackley of Monsoon (big lad with the flag) apparently was picking Luke up and carrying him around the pits cheering. Riptide is out.
It's a pity Ethan wasn't there to experience his 'humbling event' in person, but it happened. He was there on a video call on a tablet - apparently, production did ask him how he felt and he went on a 5-minute rant about how the team was being forced to face jealousy and adversity because they had to get reweighed. The entire rant was cut from the episode that aired. I've seen conflicting reports if he said "if I was there we would have won," but it would be in character if he did.
Team Riptide used their appeal (each team gets one) to ask the judges to re-review the fight - they did (absolutely fair - you have nothing to lose, anyone should appeal in this situation), and as though to rub it in even more, the sole judge who ruled for Riptide changed his mind about Riptide's aggression, giving Copperhead a unanimous JD. The saga of Riptide in WC7 ends here.

Aftermath

There was zero drama of any kind for the rest of the season (all 3 fights of it.) All the fights were great, clean fights between respected and respectful teams and robots. Copperhead ended up losing to HUGE in the semi-finals - no surprise or shame there, HUGE is designed to be invincible to bots like Copperhead. HUGE ended up facing the mighty SawBlaze in the finals, and in probably the best finals match in combat robotics history, SawBlaze managed to win a unanimous JD, giving SawBlaze captain Jamison Go the Giant Nut.
Literally zero people were unhappy with this - both Jamison and HUGE captain Jonathan Schultz are some of the nicest, most genuine, humble builders in the sport, and going into the finals it was very much a "no matter who wins we all win" kind of thing. Both bots are also "non-meta" - "meta" being the general form of bot that Hypershock, Riptide, Witch Doctor, Copperhead, etc. are, a compact vertical spinner - seasons 3-6 saw meta bots win both first place and runner-up, so people were excited to see a finals match with something new on both sides.
This was very recent, so no news if Riptide will be invited back next year. I would be shocked if they weren't, though - controversy sells, and regardless of how bad the team is, the robot is a killing machine that makes for incredible spectacles. There is allegedly a "sportsmanship rule" being added next year - it's a pity that something that has gone unspoken for decades has to codified in rules because of the actions of one team, but hopefully it will help. Between unethical sponsors, destroying fan favorite bots, being rude both inside and outside the box, cheating allegations, and a stunning lack of humility, Riptide really checked all the boxes in the 'bad guys' field this year.
I could say "the viewing community is willing to give Riptide one more chance to apologize and redeem themselves" but that would be a lie. For the most part, the subreddit, main Discord, etc. are all sick and tired of ever seeing the team again, and would love nothing more than for some cool, nice builder to hijack the bot so we can have cool robots and cool people. I don't know how the builders feel - I imagine that they're probably not quite as vehemently opposed to the team on average, but there's probably no love lost.
I enjoyed writing this up quite a lot, because it really was a classic "villain defeats the main good guys, but then the underdog comes out of nowhere and saves the day" story. Also Battlebots rules. Feel free to ask me anything about the show, or any bots, or if you want to see some cool bots that I didn't include. And seriously, watch Battlebots, it's so good. Check out /battlebots - it's the off-season, so the shitposts are about to get real good. I'm running out of characters so the collection of miscellaneous facts I originally had stuck on the end of this writeup is going to be in the comments.

I know what you're thinking: no way; there's no chance Tim Duncan is the GOAT. He's not even the best player of his generation you might say. You're thinking there's no way Tim Duncan belongs in the same category as MJ or LeBron. If you believe this, there are three things that you'll probably bring up as I make this argument.

1. The Second Act: If you're the kind of person who rates players through spreadsheets, his career in the 2010s is statistically underwhelming.
2. The Peak: You might say that Duncan never had a real peak where he was the most dominant player in the league on a daily basis, like Shaq.
3. Greg Popovich: Duncan has always had Pop, arguably the greatest coach of all time in his corner.

I hear you, and I will address these later on in this post. First, let me address Duncan's stats and accolades.
Duncan's notable accolades from his NBA career are as follows:

• 5 Championships
• 15 All-Defensive Teams (8x First Team, 7x Second Team)
• 15 All Star selections
• 2 Regular Season MVP's
• 3 Finals MVP's

Duncan's 5 championships are more than Larry Bird or Wilt Chamberlain, his 15 All-Defensive selections are the most of anybody ever, his 15 All Star appearances are tied for 3rd all time, he has as many regular season MVP's as Kobe and Shaq combined and only MJ has more Finals MVP's.
Don't forget about his college accomplishments though, because remember: Duncan came out of Wake Forest after four years despite people like Jerry West who said he could have been the number one overall pick had he left after his sophomore year.
Duncan's accolades form his collegiate years:

• 3x NABC Defensive Player of the Year
• 2x ACC Player of the Year
• 2x consensus All-American
• 1997 Naismith Player of the Year
• Most rebounds in NCAA history.

These NBA and collegiate snapshots of his basketball career, should be enough to have him at the table of the GOAT conversation. You're not convinced yet, let's dig into some more numbers.
Here's where Duncan ranks all-time on some of the major statistical categories across his NBA career:

• Points: 16th
• Rebounds: 6th
• Blocks: 5th
• Steals: 158th
• Assists: 100th

These career totals, admittedly, are substantially less impressive than other players at his position, like Kevin Garnett (19th in points, 9th in rebounds, 18th in blocks, 18th in steals, 55th in assists), Karl Malone (3rd in points, 7th in rebounds, 70th in blocks, 12th in steals, 61st in assists) or Dirk Nowitzki (6th in points, 26th in rebounds, 53rd in blocks, 94th in steals, 155th in assists). And that's because you can't judge Tim Duncan's numbers like you can with most players. Imagine in 15 years if somebody said to you that Russell Westbrook was better than Steph Curry, citing how many PTS, AST, and REB Westbrook had. You'd laugh right? Because you know that numbers do not always tell the full story. It is impossible and irresponsible to discuss a player's ranking without mentioning the stats that exists, but by measuring players purely by their basketball reference page, you're leaving out context and the story in which those numbers were achieved. That context is what makes those numbers meaningful.
Such is the case with Tim Duncan, whose success and greatness transcends a box score. You can't judge Tim Duncan with numbers alone. The fact of the matter is, that if you ran a team and if you could pick from any NBA player that ever played the game, and your goal is to win, you would pick Tim Duncan.
Offensively, Duncan was dominant for his first ten years in the NBA. From '98 to '08, he averaged 21.6/11.8/3.1 while playing on one of the slowest teams in the league. In that span, the Spurs never ranked in the top half of the league for PACE. Adjusting his stats for PACE and looking at his stats per 100 possessions (31.2/17.1/4.5 with 3.5 BLK at 50.8 FG%), you're looking at a big man who was every bit as productive as any other offensive player in the league at the time.
You already know about his skillset. He was, after all, The Big Fundamental. He could pass out of double teams, face up and break down the defense with surprising agility, consistently knock down shots from the elbows, and torch any big man in the league with his array of moves in the post and suddenly imposing physicality. He could masterfully run a PnR with any guard with working limbs. And, of course, he had his signature bank shot, one of the most consistent and reliable shots of all time along with Kareem's Sky Hook and Dirk's fadeaway. Those skills never deteriorated throughout his career, except perhaps his last year.
This is where I want to attack the 2nd idea that his second act was unexceptional. His scoring numbers dipped in last 8 years, where he never averaged over 20 PPG. But, as the Spurs offense became more collaborative and free-flowing, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili shouldered more of that scoring burden as Duncan aged. Duncan's shot attempts fell, though he remained efficient. His skills hadn't waned; the Spurs just didn't need him to score 28 points every night. He retained his role as alpha dog during this stretch and contributed in other facets of the game. He could pick his spots, put his teammates in position to succeed, and save himself undue punishment and wear until is was needed. That's why in 2013, at the age of 36, he became the oldest player ever named to First Team All-NBA.
Duncan was never a prolific scorer, even in his prime. His game was never predicated on gawdy point totals like Malone or Dirk. With a different offense, he took fewer shots, and with fewer shots, he scored fewer points. In his last eight years, he remained a tremendous rebounder, was the go-to guy in crunch time, and the best defender, maybe ever. And this is what hurt his stats: the lack of flashy numbers for defense outside of blocks and steals. It's so hard to measure how much a drive was cut off because of his presence or a shot that was altered because of his contention. There are some metrics that attempt to measure this, like DRTG, Defensive Win Shares, and Defensive +/- , and while it is an inexact science, these measures do a fairly good job at assessing a player's impact on defense. Duncan's ranking in those metrics is unmatched:

• 95.6 DRT (3rd all time)
• 106.3 Defensive Win Shares (2nd all time)
• Defensive +/- (5th all time)
  These metrics along with his All-Defensive selections serve as a testament to how Duncan thrived when the opponent had the ball. Legendary basketball writer, Jack McCalllum wrote this for SI in 2016 after Duncan retired:
  

"Duncan guarded centers and power forwards (sometimes even small forwards) with equal success. And as the NBA became more and more of a high pick-and-roll game, Duncan accepted the extra responsibility of getting involved at the perimeter, while never abandoning basket responsibility. Nobody was better than Duncan at being both an advance guard and the final fortress."
FiveThirtyEight published this article in 2016, where analyst Neil Paine calculated career WAR values that took into consideration defense and offense, and Tim Duncan led the WAR rankings, by a mile:

1. Tim Duncan: 109.2
2. KG: 96.2
3. Karl Malone: 95.4
4. David Robinson: 89.3
5. Hakeem: 85.9
6. LeBron: 82.8
7. Kareem: 78
8. Larry Bird: 74.2
9. Shaq: 73
10. Pippen: 72.7

What does all of this mean? It means that Duncan was a tremendous offensive player, despite the lack of volume, and one of if not the greatest defenders of all time. In short, his value as a two-way player is virtually unmatched in the last 50 years of NBA basketball.
Enough with the numbers. I want to talk about Duncan when it mattered the most: the playoffs. You can look at any numbers, read any article, or talk to any fan who paid attention to the game at the time, and you'll come to the same conclusion: Tim Duncan was a killer in the playoffs. All of his most memorable performances came in the postseason, and more often than not, came in crucial games when his team needed him most. From his near quadruple double in 2003 to close out the Nets and earn his 2nd championship to his 25 point first half against the Heat in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals ten years later, there was never a moment too big for Duncan. Here are his playoff numbers, significantly higher in almost every category than he his in the regular season:

• Points: 6th
• Rebounds: 3rd
• Blocks: 1st
• Steals: 46th
• Assists: 33rd

His '99 championship run was phenomenal, where he tore through a young Kevin Garnett, the newly assembled Kobe-Shaq Lakers, Rasheed Wallace's Trailblazers, and the Patrick Ewing-less 8-seed Knicks on his way to being named the second youngest Finals MVP ever. His 2002 campaign was incredibly underrated, as he carried one of the worst teams of his career to 60 wins and outplayed Shaq before being beat by the two-time champs. His 2003 season was his best season, and we'll get to that in a second. Just know that his running mate, David Robinson, averaged 8.5 PTS and 8 REB in the regular season and that Duncan's 5.9 win shares in that playoff run remain the most of anybody in a single postseason.
In the mid-to-late 2000s, Duncan's Spurs remained a fixture in the playoffs against competition like Dirk's Mavs, Nash's Suns, and Kobe's Lakers. He repaid them with two more titles in '05 and '07. He also gave us one of the clutch shots of his career in Game 1 against the Suns in 2008 with this 3 point game-tying three pointer in OT.
Like I said earlier, in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals, at age 36, playing against Wade, Bosh, and apex LeBron on the road, Duncan put up 25 points in the first half. It would have gone down as an all-time series clinching performance had it not been for Ray Allen's iconic game-tying 3-pointer. Looking for revenge in the 2014 Finals, Duncan set the tone in Game 1 with the classic 21/10 game, while shooting 9/10 from the field. As his final playoff hurrah in 2015, trying to defend the title at the ripe age of 38 in Game 7 of a first round series against the Clippers, Duncan reached all the way back and put up 27/11, sinking crucial free throws to tie it, before Chris Paul hit a clutch, game-winning shot near the buzzer.
The same Tim Duncan giving the business to a 22-year-old Kevin Garnett, was the same Tim Duncan taking a 26-year-old DeAndre Jordan to school. Duncan was ready to win championships from the day he entered the league to the day he left. And I think that is why his peak is used against him as an argument for GOAT status. The fact that his championship window lasted his entire 19-year NBA career and that his teams were always somewhere between 50 and 60 wins meant that it's hard for any one of his seasons to stand out from the rest. And for some unfathomable reason, being consistently great is less of an accomplishment than being great for short stints.
Like I said, his 2003 season was his best, after leading his team to 60 wins and his 2nd consecutive MVP, Duncan eviscerated everything in his path as he tore through the playoffs. He upended the Suns, ended the Lakers 3-year reign as champions, and outdueled Dirk before absolutely torching the Nets in the finals. By the time he was holding the trophy, it was clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Duncan was the league's best, most complete player.
Now, I'd be lying if I said that Duncan's peak was higher than Shaq's. But I also wouldn't feel comfortable saying that the difference between the two is great enough for me to lose sleep over. To me, the truth is that Shaq was so much more of a spectacle. To watch peak Shaq was an experience unlike anything else. To see someone of his size and stature move so powerfully and fluidly is still something of a miracle. To see Duncan at the peak of his powers was a lot like seeing him seven or eight years later. He was just a little faster, a bit stronger, and a touch quicker in his prime. But do aesthetics denote superiority? I'd say, no. And though Shaq in his prime was certainly a more dominant offensive player, there was never a time where he could match Duncan's abilities as a defender, leader, or teammate. The two are the antithesis of each other. Shaq loves fame; Duncan loathes it. Shaq would sometimes show up to training camp out of shape, often battle with his co-stars and finished his career having played for six different teams. Duncan took great care of his body, cemented himself as the cornerstone of his franchise, and is one of the most celebrated teammates in NBA history. Shaq left a little on the table. You can never say the same thing about Duncan. Shaq cared a little too much about what everyone thought of him, while Duncan couldn't have cared less.
Let's tackle the third criticism: that he always had Pop. To me, Pop is the greatest coach of all time, but he would be the first one to tell you that he wouldn't be here without Tim Duncan.
For one, Duncan can play any style of basketball, in any era. You want to go slow school, old-pace, dump it off to the big man down low, let him bang and be solid on defense? Titles. Remove the hand-checking and illegal defenses, increase scoring and start moving toward the perimeter? Titles. The league goes small ball, the pace explodes and shooting and ball movement is more important than anything? The largest margin of victory in NBA finals history.
Secondly, he can play with any team. Honestly, has any superstar done more with less? Jordan had Pippen his entire run and Rodman for the last half. Bird had McHale and Parish. Wilt had West and Hal Grier. Russell had Cousy, Jones, and Havlicek. Magic had Kareem and vice-versa. Kobe had Shaq and vice-versa. And LeBron has had Wade, Kyrie, and AD. Duncan's best teammates? Old David Robinson, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili, who combined for 5 Third Team All NBA appearances and 4 Second Team appearances during their time with Duncan. Parker and Ginobili are long shots for the HOF, and even though Robinson's in the HOF, he wasn't playing at a HOF level alongside Duncan.
Third, and most importantly, Duncan forged the culture of the Spurs. Pop was essential in acquiring players and reinforcing the culture that Tim wanted, but Duncan was truly the most vital component. The NBA is a star-driven league and finding a great player who hasn't gotten a coach fired is like finding a good Star Wars movie: they're few and far between. Not only did Duncan not get Pop fired, he let Pop coach him harder than any superstar ever. If Tim had ever thought to himself, "you know what I don't feel like getting my chops roasted in front of the whole team today because I didn't box out well in practice" he could have gone right to RC Buford, and Pop would have been gone - end of story. But Tim understood what Pop was about, and trusted him enough to be mentored in an unprecedented way. He set the example for his teammates, that no one is immune to criticism and that it's expected of everyone to leave their egos at the door.
In 2017, the Spurs SB Nation blog, Pounding the Rock, spoke to Sam Walker, author of "The Captain Class," a book which examines winning culture in team sports, from field hockey to rugby. In an exchange, Walker said this:
"[T]he book's main conclusion is that the only one factor that must be present in order to maintain greatness over a long period of time is the presence of a particular kind of selfless, relentless, independent-minded, publicity-averse, emotionally composed captain with strong communication skills. And that's Tim Duncan. Duncan was a pure example of the species."
I love Pop, but I have to believe that Duncan was the catalyst that powered Pop to be what he is now. This isn't Belichick-Brady where you wonder who made who. Pop is the greatest coach of all time, because of Tim Duncan. If you want to take credit away from Duncan by saying he played for the best teams, you might be right, but only because he made them the best team. He gave up touches, let other guys hold the torch, put everyone around him in the best position to succeed, and he enjoyed it when they did.
When I said earlier that the thing that hurt Duncan's stats more than anything was a lack of defensive numbers, I lied. The thing that hurt Duncan's stats more than anything was the fact that he never gave a shit about stats or awards. Ever. He wanted his teams to succeed and he wanted to win. That's it. Just read about how his teammates talk about him:
"The best PF ever! Thanks for the memories old man. A great player and teammate."
- Lamarcus Aldridge
"Sometimes all you NEED to say is THANK YOU....To the BEST EXAMPLE of a Leader, Brother, Friend."
- Bruce Brown
"Even tho I knew it was coming, I'm still moved by the news. What a HUGE honor to have played with [Duncan] for 14 seasons!
- Manu Ginobili
I don't think there is a more beloved teammate than Tim Duncan. In the words of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, "...his understated selflessness made him the ultimate teammate." Duncan was always the big brother. Correcting his teammates when they made mistakes and throwing his arms around their shoulders when things didn't go their way. He led in the most effective way possible, not with tweeting, bombastic words, or showy halftime speeches, but by example.
Of all the end-of-career farewell wishes, the one from his former teammate, Brent "Bones" Barry stuck out to me the most. He quoted Mark Twain, saying "'To be good is noble, but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble'; for your brilliance TD, I am grateful. For your skills as a player I am in awe. And for your friendship I am honored."
Milwaukee Bucks coach and former Spurs Assistant, Mike Budenholzer said to ESPN's Kevin Arnovitz in 2016: "The magnitude of that, the number of people in this league who have enjoyed opportunity or found fortunate spots in the league, you can trace it back to this one guy -- to the way Timmy played ball and the way he conducted himself. The 'culture' is Timmy."
The NBA is a league of superstars and dynasties - from Russell to Jordan, from Wilt to LeBron. We'll remember its history through its champions, and in the history of North American sports, no team has been as good for as long as the Spurs. San Antonio's success is completely unprecedented in the world of basketball. Aside from his lockout shortened sophomore season, Duncan won 50 or more games and qualified for the playoffs in every season of his NBA career. He finished his career with a win percentage of 71%, the highest of anyone, in any sport, ever. The Spurs run of success started in 1997, the year they drafted Duncan. Since then, he was the cornerstone, the engine of the franchise that has perpetually defined what winning culture looks like - in and outside of basketball.
And so I say again, if you could pick any NBA player from any era of basketball and your goal was to win, you would pick Tim Duncan. His abilities as a basketball player are what made him a superstar. But his consistency, willingness to be coached, love and support of his teammates, and humility are the things that make him transcendent.
I'll let Pop have the last word. This is what he said to the press after Duncan announced his retirement:
"Everybody always talks about who they'd like to eat dinner with, if you had one night and you could go to dinner or lunch with someone. Some people say Mother Teresa, Jesus, the Dalai Lama...I could honestly tell you, my dinner would be with Timmy. He is the most real, consistent, true person I've ever met in my life."

Hoederer 6☆ limited? Guard dreadnought HP: 3783 (X, trust, potential)/3997 (Y, trust, potential) Atk: 1398 (X, trust, potential)/1040 (Y, trust, potential) Def: 276 The rest is the same as others dreadnought Module X: increase talent 1 effect from 2x to 3x Module Y: gain defense after skill ends on talent 2 Talents: U-official secret editor: inspire effect and heal receive from operator u-official is 3x. One eye mercenary: range +2 tiles ahead, reveal camouflage enemies, defense +100% for 10 seconds after skill duration. 1 skill: simple plan: plants mines in random tiles around (same range as bard), these mines detonate inflicting stun for 2.5 seconds and mark that target for sniper allies to attack. (Auto-activation, sp cost 3, initial sp 0, auto-recovery) 2 skill: you won't escape: atk +50%, aspd +50, gain 30% physical evasion, after killing an enemy atk increase +20% (stacks up to 30 times), while skill is active is immune to immobility effects. (20 seconds, initial sp 5, sp cost 75, manual activation, auto-recovery) (Inspire by hoederer star wars roguelike scene in main story) 3 skill: hunting down: stops attack, gain 90% physical evasion, each attack received increase atk +12%, on the last second of this skill deals damage to all enemies on range (28 seconds, sp cost 30, initial sp 0, manual, auto-recovery) (Inspire by hoederer vs W traps scene in main story). I tried to make him balanced.

He's like one of the most braindead and unskilled champs I've ever faced: healing, true damage, CC immunity for like 55425 seconds, sustain... It's like combining Master Yi and Tryndamere but way more cancerous. I usually pick Jarvan but I really want to destroy him, any tips?

Been wanting to try a new method of Infinite Scaling: Infinite level ups

Passive: With Age Comes Experience

Birk starts every game at Lvl 0 instead of Lvl 1 (Still unlocks basic abilities at Lvls 1, 2, & 3, but not ult at Lvl 6). Birk gains XP equal to 10% of pre-mitigation damage from all sources he deals to champs, structures, & non-small monsters (Reduced by half for monsters), affected by shared XP at 25% effectiveness. His level is uncapped (Can go beyond 18), but any systematic mechanic (Runes, Items, Spells, etc) besides XP gain have their per lvl effectiveness reduced by half for him (But are also uncapped, except for CDs, which will always be their Lvl 18 CD regardless of lvl) (At Lvl 0, it is also reduced equal to the amount he would gain per lvl)
When Birk levels up, his yo-yo glows, causing his next basic ability to stun enemies hit for 1s
Birk doesn’t unlock his ult at any lvl, instead can buy a unique “scroll” while in fountain (Via a unique menu) to unlock the ult the scroll gives. Main scrolls are the ults themselves & cost 1500G each, while sub scrolls are add-ons that give additional effects to the ults & cost 500G each. Scrolls of any kind don’t sit in item slots & are considered passive, but can be sold like other items, but for full value. Selling a main scroll will also sell all its sub scrolls (Besides land scrolls)
NOTE Scrolls (Besides Land Scroll) each count as a legendary item for use with Mythic Passives
NOTE All players can see his XP amount beneath his mana
NOTE In game modes where players start at Lvl 3, Birk starts at Lvl 3 as well

Q: Yin Yang Slash

Birk swings his yo-yo in a 0u (+100% Atk Range) radius around him, dealing 100% AD (+35% AP) physical damage to all enemies hit, applying on-attack & on-hit effects at 100% effectiveness
Cooldown: 5
Cost: 35
NOTE Cast Time & total animation are reduced by bonus attack speed
NOTE Can apply either of (E)’s enhanced attack effects to all enemies hit

W: Spiral Stance

Birk becomes unstoppable but unable to basic attack or cast abilities (Besides E) for 1.5s, during which he has a 10% (+1% (+1% per 100 Bonus ArmoM Resist) per 100 Bonus Health) Base Health Shield. Afterwhich, he strikes his yo-yo at the lowest % health enemy (Always prioritizing champs>monsters>minions when possible) within 0u (+200% Atk Range) of him, dealing 100% AD (+35% AP) physical damage
Cooldown: 10 (On activation)
Cost: 50
NOTE Strike animation is reduced by bonus attack speed
NOTE Can apply either of Calm of the Quick’s enhanced attack effects to all enemies hit

E: Calm of the Quick

Birk dashes 0u (+100% Atk Range) in a target direction & empowers his next 2 attacks within 5s. The 1st attack slows the enemy by 50% for 1s, the 2nd attack deals 150% total damage (Including rune/item effects such as Electrocute, Grasp, Sheen, etc)
Cooldown: 10 (On activation)
Cost: 50
NOTE Dash Speed is equal to 500% Total Move Speed
NOTE The 2nd attack is what will apply the stun from “With age comes experience”

R: The Scroll

Uses the ultimate you gain from your main scroll
Cooldown: 210 (On Activation)
Cost: 100
NOTE Sylas can only target Birk with Hijack if Birk has a main scroll

List of Scrolls

Land Scroll Neither a main scroll nor a sub scroll. Costs 20G each, can be bought infinitely (Unlike main & sub-scrolls) regardless of what other scrolls you have, & grants +1 Ultimate Haste per land scroll you have
MAIN SCROLL Resting Strike: Birk launches his yo-yo in a target direction, stopping on the 1st enemy champ hit to deal 0 (+1% AD/0.35% AP per 1% of target’s missing health) physical damage to them. This can be tapped or held (For up to 5s) to affect the range, & while charging, Birk’s slowed by 50%. When tapped, the max range is 100% of Birk’s atk range. When held for at least 0.5s, the range is increased to 200 - 500% (Based on hold time, from 0.5s to 2.5s) of Birk’s atk range
SUB SCROLL Form: If the affected enemy dies within 0.5s of being hit by this, Birk can recast this within 10s for the same effect at no mana cost
SUB SCROLL Precision: If the affected enemy would be left below 15% of their max health after this, they’re executed
SUB SCROLL Meditate: After the damage is dealt, Birk restores 0 (+500% AD, +175% AP) health over the next 5s. If the affected enemy dies within 0.5s of being hit by this, he also becomes invisible for the 1st 1.5s
MAIN SCROLL Quake of the Lands: Target a location within 0u (+250% Atk Range) of Birk. After a 1.5s channel (After 1s he vanishes & is untargetable), Birk arrives at target location & creates a 0u (+100% Atk Range) shockwave around him, dealing 0 (+0.25% AD/0.1% AP per 1% of enemy current health) physical damage to enemies hit & stunning them for 1.5s
SUB SCROLL Winds: This stun is increased from 1.5s to 2s & additionally knocks up enemies hit for 2s
SUB SCROLL Motivation: Enemies hit by the shockwave are marked for the next 5s. Allied champs (Including Birk) that damage marked enemies restore health equal to 25% of the post-mitigation damage dealt
SUB SCROLL Defense: For the next 5s, Birk gains 0 (+100% AD, +10% Bonus Health) Bonus Armor & M Resist for each enemy he hits with the shockwave
MAIN SCROLL Challenger: Target a location within 0u (+500% Atk Range) of Birk. After 2.5s, then within the next 5s (If there is no recast, this goes on a 10s CD), he can recast on a target enemy champ within 0u (+100% Atk Range) of him to strike his yo-yo into them, dealing 0 (+0.25% AD/0.1% AP per 1% of enemy’s current health) physical damage to them & suppressing them for 0.5s before both of them blink to the initial target location (Birk is at the target location, while the enemy is 75% of Birk’s Atk Range away from him in the opposite direction)
SUB SCROLL Return: If the target dies within 10s of the 2nd cast, this can be cast a 3rd time within the 10s duration to blink back to the original cast location
SUB SCROLL Cripple: For the next 2.5s, the target’s grounded & Birk steals 10% of their move speed
SUB SCROLL Purloin: For the next 10s, Birk reduce’s the target's AP, AD, Atk Speed, Armor, & M Resist by a % amount, gaining Lifesteal for himself equal to 10% of the total reduced stats for the same duration
10% AP
15% AD
20% Atk Speed
20% Armor
20% M Resist

Base Stats (Lvl 0 Per Lvl)

Health 500 50
HP Regen 5 0.25
Mana 250 25
MP Regen 5 0.25
Move Speed 350 2
Atk Range 250 5 (Ranged at all Lvls)
Atk Speed 0.5 2.5%
Atk Damage 50 2
Armor 30 1
M Resist 30 1
Haste* 0 2
*Ability Haste, Item Haste, Spell Haste

Gaze in terror at these shadow beasts on Dump Stat

 
Part demon, part servant, and part emotion, the Sorrowsworn are creatures of despair and, you guessed it, sorrow. They are foul creatures who are terrifying to face, incredibly strong, and feed off the mental anguish of others.
Before we dive into this very messed-up demon, we just want to put a warning out there. Sorrowsworn delight in the misery and failures of others, so if topics of depression and misery aren’t exactly your thing right now, we recommend checking out a happier monster, like the Faerie Dragon!
 

3e/3.5e - Demon, Sorrowsworn

Large Outsider (Chaotic, Evil, Extraplanar, Tanar’ri)
Hit Dice: 18d8+216 (297 hp)
Initiative: +7
Speed: 40 ft (8 squares), fly 80 ft. (poor)
Armor Class: 28 (–1 size, +3 Dex, +16 natural), touch 12, flat-footed 25
Base Attack/Grapple: +18/+31
Attacks: +2 glaive +23 melee (2d8+25)* or bite +21 melee (1d8+14 plus 1 Con)*
Full Attack: +2 glaive +23/+18/+13/+8 melee (2d8+25)* and bite +16 melee (1d8+9 plus 1 Con)* or 2 claws +21 melee (1d6+14)* and bite +16 melee (1d8+9 plus 1 Con)*
Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft. (glaive 15–20 ft. only)
Special Attacks: Aura of loss, spell-like abilities, whispers of loss
Special Qualities: Damage reduction 10/cold iron and good, darkvision 60 ft., immunity to electricity and poison, mind reading, outsider traits, resistance to acid 10, cold 10, and fire 10, spell resistance 25, strong willed, telepathy 100 ft.
Saves: Fort +22, Ref +14, Will +17 (+21 against mind-affecting spells and abilities
Abilities: Str 29, Dex 17, Con 32, Int 20, Wis 22, Cha 21
Skills: Bluff +26, Concentration +32, Diplomacy +9, Hide +28, Intimidate +28, Knowledge (arcana) +26, Knowledge (geography) +26, Knowledge (the planes) +26, Listen +29, Move Silently +32, Sense Motive +27, Spellcraft +28, Spot +29, Survival +35 (+37 on other planes, +37 avoiding getting lost and hazards)
Feats: Ability Focus (aura of loss), Alertness, Cleave, Combat Reflexes, Great Cleave, Improved Initiative, Improved Sunder, Improved Toughness, Power Attack
Climate/Terrain: Infinite Layers of the Abyss
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 17
Treasure: Standard coins; double goods; standard items, plus +2 glaive
Alignment: Always chaotic evil
Advancement: 19–36 HD (Large); 37–72 HD (Huge)
Level Adjustment: -

A sickly thin demon standing 15 feet tall with bat wings, this creature of sadness and pain, the Sorrowsworn, first appears in Monster Manual III (2004). Twisted horns protrude from the top of its head, and the creature has a wide mouth and hooked claws as hands. While it may look like a sad and severely depressed demon, it appears this way to mock the pain and suffering that its victims feel. If you feel happy because you just killed a dragon and have multiple bags of holding filled with its hoard, you're not safe from the creature. They will force you to remember everything painful you have felt in your life and even suffer through the pain of things that have not, and may not, happen to you.
How does the Sorrowsworn go about this? It has several abilities that allow it to eat your pain and suffering, just like those bullies in high school. It's a sneaky bastard and will hide, waiting for the right moment to strike and when you are at your emotional weakest. Though, if you expect to see it trying to hide its 15-foot frame behind a bush, you are going to be disappointed since it has access to spells like invisibility and nondetection.
Once it is ready to strike, this gaunt demon of sorrow will first cast greater dispel magic on whoever has the most buffs or auras, like your cleric. This is followed by it casting mind fog, which causes Will saves to tank while in the spell’s effect. On the third round, it then casts feeblemind on the most powerful spell caster, like your wizard, and then teleports into the thick of things and begins tearing with claws, biting with teeth, or slashing with their magical glaive.
Once you are surrounded, or well, you have the Sorrowsworn surrounded, it then activates its aura of loss ability. All creatures near the horrid demon start getting very sad and must make a Will save or find spellcasting to be far more challenging than it ever was before as now you have to contend with your inner demons telling you that you aren’t good enough. If your mind telling you that your father will never be proud of you isn’t enough to make you want to leave the fight and cry in a corner, good news is that the Sorrowsworn will also be talking about how you were always a disappointment and how no one could ever possibly love you. It can even access the most vulnerable parts that you keep locked up tight since it can read your thoughts and will capitalize on your mental weakness.
Once you are an emotional wreck - well, even more so than usual - the Sorrowsworn can then begin targeting creatures that are very sad with its whispers of loss ability that will make you sob like a baby with three different flavors of depression: Future Sorrow, Great Emptiness, and Past Losses. Future Sorrow fills your head with bad things to come, and you'll wonder why you even try to prevent them from happening, and you get to be stunned for two rounds. Great Emptiness shows that all great battles or wars result in nothing changing and that the greater good is a fallacy, so you should abandon trying to make a better world, leaving you confused for five rounds. The last, Past Losses, is the opposite of Future Sorrow, with the death of your friends and family crushing your heart and soul, leaving you dazed for three rounds.
While you’re crying and wondering why you should even go on, the Sorrowsworn then takes the opportunity to use more of its offensive spells, use its glaive, teeth, claws, or maybe even more mental anguish to overwhelm you and your party, leaving you in need of an owlbear plush to cry into.
 

4e - Sorrowsworn Soulripper

Level 25 Skirmisher
Medium shadow humanoid / XP 7,000
Initiative +27
Senses Perception +27; darkvision
HP 236; Bloodied 118
AC 39; Fortitude 35, Reflex 39, Will 36; see also Bleak Visage
Speed 10; see also Sorrow’s Rush
Claw (standard; at-will) Psychic +30 vs. AC; 2d8 + 7 plus 2d8 psychic damage.
Flutter and Strike (standard; recharge 4-6) Psychic, Teleportation The sorrowsworn soulripper teleports 10 squares and makes a claw attack, gaining combat advantage against its target.
Sorrow’s Rush (standard; encounter) Psychic The sorrowsworn soulripper moves up to 10 squares and makes three claw attacks at any points during its move. Each attack must be made against a different target.
Bleak Visage Fear Melee and ranged attacks made against the sorrowsworn soulripper take a –2 penalty to the attack roll.
Combat Advantage The sorrowsworn soulripper deals an extra 3d6 damage on attacks against any target it has combat advantage against.
Alignment Unaligned / Languages Common
Skills Insight +27, Stealth +30
Str 24 (+19) Dex 36 (+25) Wis 31 (22) Con 28 (+21) Int 18 (+16) Cha 22 (+18)

Because this edition wants you to continue feeling emotional pain and misery, there are now three Sworrowsworn, all found in the Monster Manual (2008) with the Sorrowsworn Soulripper, Sorrowsworn Reaper, and Sorrowsworn Deathlord. Each still preys on your guilt of those who died and the impending deaths of those you love, but now they aren’t quite as horrific as before. While they still look like demons, they are in fact not demonic or fiends. Instead, they are death incarnate itself, basically twisted angels of the Shadowfell who track down mortals who refuse to die, like liches or vampires.
As one might guess for twisted angels of shadow, they are under the employ of the Raven Queen and many shadar-kai crave to one day ascend and become a Sorrowsworn. The shadar-kai see this ascension as a way to obtain their desperately desired immortality, which we guess means that the Raven Queen is cool if her favorite servants get to live forever, but everyone else needs to die.
Looking at the Sorrowsworn, the Soulripper is a sneaky death angel, stalking its target and surprising them from the shadows. It can move quickly into battle, and then ripping through large hordes of creatures as it moves, like a swirling hurricane of death, claws, and sorrow. After them are the Reapers who target a single creature to inflict as much pain as possible. We all know it hopes that all that pain results in your death, and we're sure it will bring the Sorrowsworn some sick sense of pleasure. It utilizes a scythe, just like a real angel of death, and attempts to rip your very soul out. If it can reduce you to 0 hit points, not only does that put you pretty close to absolute death, but it also heals the Sorrowsworn, restoring some lost hit points every time it brings a creature to death. If this happens, just know your party will experience a mix of emotions. They’ll be sad to see your broken corpse on the ground, but also very angry with you since you now just healed the enemy you selfish jerk!
The Deathlord is the most powerful of the bunch. It can phase in and out of the walls between attacks, all the while it rips you apart, which is beyond frustrating to fight. Even if you do manage to hit the Deathlord, more than likely it’ll be insubstantial, allowing it to ignore part of your damage. If you think those three are particularly annoying to fight, wait until you have to face a swarm of Sorrowsworn with the Shadowraven Swarm. They look like ravens, but when they gather into a swarm, they are almost as powerful as a Deathlord and only get more painful to fight the more damage you deal to it.
In the Manual of the Planes (2008), the Sorrowsworn hunt nightwalkers and death giants, seeing such creatures as contaminating the Shadowfell. Nightwalkers are creatures made out of shadow, undead who live on the fringes of the Shadowfell. The text gives us information about the Sorrowsworn who reside in the Shadowfell, most of which we've discussed already. We find out that a truly impressive Sorrowsworn can rise to become a Raven Knight, the foremost soldier in the Raven Queen's army with even more information on the Raven Knight found in Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead (2009).
If you are wondering if all Sorrowsworn are content to serve Raven Queen, well we are here to burst your bubble with the adventure Winter of the Witch by Stephen Radney-MacFarland in Dungeon #162 (Jan. 2009). This Deathlord, Morthalat, is a renegade and serves as a chief agent for Orcus. If you know anything about Orcus, then you know that Orcus believes that life continues into undeath and is the biggest enemy of the Raven Queen. It’s a shame Morthalat decided to turn from the Raven Queen, especially since your group of adventurers get to take the Sorrowsworn down.
In the adventure E1 - Death's Reach (2009), we are introduced to the Sorrowsworn Fleshripper and Sorrowsworn Doomguard. The Fleshripper is armed with spiked gauntlets. They move around the battlefield quickly, punching you repeatedly in the face while you remember better days of not being punched in the face. The Doomguard wields a scythe and can teleport, which is kind of like cosplaying as Death itself. If you are hit by the scythe, prepare to be immobilized by Shadow Reap, which will heal the Doomguard if you are reduced to 0 hit points by the attack.
The adventure E2 - Kingdom of Ghouls (2009) brings us the Sorrowsworn Dread Wraith and Sorrowsorn Blade. The Sorrowsworn Blade is charged with the psychic energy of their wielder, dealing slashing and psychic damage to any who get too close. The Dread Wraith is truly frightening. It regenerates and has an aura that reduces bright light to dim light called Shroud of Night. In addition, it can teleport, daze you, and eventually raise you as a Spawn Wraith when, not if, it kills you.
Not surprisingly, the Sorrowsworn are brought up throughout the sourcebook The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond (2011). It tells us about Vorkesis, considered the first of the Sorrowsworn and the current exarch of the Raven Queen. Being born without eyes doesn't impede his sight, as he can see far and wide. He also only has one hand, in which he wields a black longspear.
Vorkesis primary responsibility is to guard the souls of epic heroes. He does so with a variety of abilities and his deadly longspear. He is a powerful warrior, as befits an exarch’s position, and is a skirmisher without equal. He can turn invisible, launch his spear with ferocity, and deal tons of damage against single-target creatures, making him quite the dangerous enemy to have.
In addition, Vorkesis is also known as the Master of Fate and knows the fate of every creature that has lived, is currently living, or is dead. If you're curious about this and behave yourself in his presence, Vorkesis will happily regale you with stories, for being around mortals lets him experience what everyday life is like. Maybe if you are really unlucky, he’ll even let you know how you’ll die, giving you a firsthand experience with his longspear.
 

5e - The Angry / Angry Sorrowsworn

Medium Monstrosity, Neutral Evil
Armor Class 18 (natural armor)
Hit Points 255 (30d8 + 120)
Speed 30 ft.
Str 17 (+3) Dex 10 (+0) Con 19 (+4) Int 8 (-1) Wis 13 (+1) Cha 6 (-2)
Skills Perception +11
Damage Resistances bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing while in dim light or darkness
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 21
Languages Common
Challenge 13 (10,000 XP) Proficiency Bonus +5
Two Heads. The sorrowsworn has advantage on saving throws against being blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, stunned, or knocked unconscious.
Rising Anger. If another creature deals damage to the sorrowsworn, the sorrowsworn’s attack rolls have advantage until the end of its next turn, and the first time it hits with a Hook attack on its next turn, the attack’s target takes an extra 19 (3d12) psychic damage.
On its turn, the sorrowsworn has disadvantage on attack rolls if no other creature has dealt damage to it since the end of its last turn.
Multiattack. The sorrowsworn makes two Hook attacks.
Hook. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (2d12 + 3) piercing damage.

Five Sorrowsworn are first found in Morkenkainen's Tome of Foes (2018) before being reprinted in Morkenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse (2022). The five are The Angry, The Hungry, The Lost, The Lonely, and The Wretched, though in Monsters of the Multiverse they drop the definite article and add Sorrowsworn to the end.
They get a lot of changes in this edition and are completely different from both previous editions. They are now monstrosities when they were demons or shadow beasts before, and have a much lower Challenge Rating, so not quite as dangerous. In addition, they are the embodiment of emotions in the Shadowfell, only forming when intense emotions are felt in the plane of shadow.
We start with the super-weak Wretched Sorrowsworn that only clocks in at a Challenge Rating of 1/4, far weaker than any true Sorrowsworn should be. These small creatures travel in packs, biting and attaching themselves to you on a successful attack. They wander the Shadowfell, feeding on their victim's life force to stay alive. Far, far above them are the CR 7 Lost Sorrowsworn who twist their victims all around in the Shadowfell until they have no idea where they are, causing the rising fear of being lost to become their primary emotion. The Lost have five long spikes for arms, stabbing and grappling you when these arms pierce your flesh.
Next up is the Lonely Sorrowsworn, who prove that you are never truly alone while you are lost. They hunt those who feel alone and abandoned. When you are up close and personal, they drain you of your mental energy, though if you try to get away from them, they’ll launch their harpoon arm at you, and reel you back in since they’re probably scared of the dark and don’t want to be alone. Of course, they aren’t quite as horrifying as the Hungry Sorrowspawn who has a huge maw, eating everything in sight. They are forever hungry and can unhinge their jaws to fill it with whatever they can find. If you decide that fighting these creatures is starting to hurt, and you regain hit points, the Hungry gets incredibly upset that you didn’t feed it too, and gains bonuses to attacks and damage.
The last Sorrowsworn are the CR 13 Angry Sorrowsworn, and we don’t mean that they are just upset. We literally mean they are the essence of anger, though you’d be forgiven if you just thought they were a weird, malformed albino hook horror. They feature two heads, hooks for arms and hands, and an anger problem that you won’t be able to help them with. If you do fight them, you just made a horrible mistake as they get stronger when they are attacked, so we guess the best strategy is to run away as fast as possible… or maybe that would also make them angry? Maybe the best thing to do is just let the barbarian and the Angry figure out their anger issues between them.
 
So there we have it, the Sorrowsworn. They've been demons, shadow beasts, and monstrosities. They've fed off your anguish, been guards of the Shadowfell, and attempted to eat you. No matter what edition you play, they are creatures to be feared and approached with caution.

Past Deep Dives

Creatures: Aarakocra / Aboleth / Ankheg / Balhannoth / Banshee / Beholder / Berbalang / Blink Dog / Bulette / Bullywug / Chain Devil / Chimera / Chuul / Cockatrice / Couatl / Displacer Beast / Djinni / Doppelganger / Dracolich / Dragon Turtle / Dragonborn / Drow / Dryad / Faerie Dragon / Flumph / Formian / Frost Giant / Gelatinous Cube / Genasi / Ghoul / Giant Space Hamster / Gibbering Mouther / Giff / Gith / Gnoll / Goliath / Grell / Grippli / Grisgol / Grung / Hag / Harpy / Hell Hound / Hobgoblin / Hook Horror / Invisible Stalker / Kappa / Ki-rin / Kobold / Kraken / Kuo-Toa / Lich / Lizardfolk / Manticore / Medusa / Mercane (Arcane) / Mimic / Mind Flayer / Modron / Naga / Neogi / Nothic / Oni / Otyugh / Owlbear / Rakshasa / Redcap / Revenant / Rust Monster / Sahuagin / Scarecrow / Seawolf / Shadar-Kai / Shardmind / Shield Guardian / Star Spawn / Storm Giant / Slaadi / Tabaxi / Tarrasque / Thought Eater / Tiefling / Tirapheg / Umber Hulk / Vampire / Werewolf / Wyvern / Xorn / Xvart

Class: Barbarian Class / Cleric Class / Wizard Class

Spells: Fireball Spell / Lost Spells / Named Spells / Quest Spells / Wish Spell

Other: The History of Bigby / The History of the Blood War / The History of the Raven Queen / The History of the Red Wizards / The History of Vecna

206 days after first starting Raid, I've finally managed to beat the most annoying Doom Tower Rotation on hard.
It took me a lot of manual runs through trial and error, especially as my gear and stats on my champs used are nothing special.
Lurking on this Sub has definitely helped me figuring out the right strategies for certain Floors and Bosses, so I thought about giving some of these tips back and wanted to provide some Information on what I've used to complete this rotation, and even though sometimes it's pretty champion specific, if there's only 1 person out there capable of copying something I've used, it's gonna be worth it.
Regular Floor Stages:
I've used the same team for almost all of the 119 stages, with only swapping out 1 Champion for certain Floors.
As you can see I've been running a poison explosion team, even though for many stages I wasn't even using Teodors explosion as this would have resulted in me clearing a wave too quickly, leaving my champs abilities on CD for the next wave. So many times I've simply started my turn with all 3 of my poison abilities, not using Teodors pop, and then simply manually A1 attacked the waves until they died without me needing to pop the poisons. This worked without any issues on most Floors, but on the stages that hit pretty hard it could get a bit tricky due to not using a Reviver in this team.
That's where Ragash A2 has been helping me out. Using his Stun to delay at least 1 attack from each opponent per wave allowed for some more survivability, and the Continuous Heal of Bad-El Kazaar usually allowed to take at least some hits.
Lady Kimi has been an absolute must for me beyond Stage 80, as my Venomage and BEK are used in my CB team at a speed of less than 190, and none of my Champs besides Kimi has Accuracy above 250, resulting in me dying on every single stage above 80 without ever getting to take a turn if I wasn't running Kimi. Her DT 30% Speed passive and increase Accuracy ability were the only reasons I've got a chance to complete DT Hard in the first place.
There were a few stages with extremely hard hitting single target abilities I could not clear before at least 1-2 of my Champs dying. In those cases I've simply either replaced Ragash or Venomage with Pythion.
No other than these 6 Champions have been used for all 119 regular stages on this rotation.
Stage 90 - Dreadhorn:
Bommal has been the only boss I really had to rely on a single Champion. I was lucky enough to pull myself a Lady Annabelle recently and put her in good enough Regeneration / Immortal Gear that I've managed to beat him after a few hours of retries.
Ragash only has been there to clear the waves, Dreng for the Aura (he's not even built) and Geomancer for his Burn passive to take away a few minutes from Annabelles fight.
Wished I could provide a better strategy not depending on a single Champion, but Bommal really has been a pain in the ass without her.
Stage 100 - Scarab King:
Up until the Stage 20 hard Scarab I was confident that my Teodor could clear all Scarab Stages himself, but as a Solo Champion for him he fell apart at Stage 50, so I had to make a whole team work to beat him.
As I didn't have enough Champions built to rely on a permanent turn meter decrease, I had to work with my Valkyrie and Pythion to manually get through this fight.
The key for this fight was to bring all of my Champions up to around the same speed, so none of them would outspeed the shield provided by Valkyrie. So I've replaced my Pythions HP % Boots and Valkyries DEF % Boots with Speed boots, bringing everybody up to around ~220-230 speed.
Every time my tune got fucked and a Champion would have attacked Scarab without a Shield Buff active on his next turn, I would save their non damage abilities for this specific turn, so they wouldn't cause the Scarab King to Counter Attack. (e.G. Lady Kimi would still outspeed Valkyrie, so I saved her increase Accuracy and Speed Buff A3 ability for the turn she would attack the Scarab without active shield).
The other thing to focus on this fight was Scarabs A2 Ability that would steal buffs from Champions with no active shield going on. As his damage from multiple Attacks where higher than my Shield allowed me to tank, this would results in me losing the Shield and Scarab stealing the Counter Attack Buff from some champion, resulting in immediate defeat on my next turn if I attacked him with CA on him. So I tried to manually tune my turns in a way that all of my turns were used and Counter Attack Buffs on my Champs expired before he used this ability, and my Pythion to use his A2 Block Debuffs so my Champions wouldn't get provoked without the active shield buff ongoing during the 1 turn after this ability.
Definitely also took me 2-3 hours of playing around and an almost 15 minute manual run before finally getting through this.
Stage 110 - Celestial Griffin:
Probably the easiest Boss out of those 4 and the only 1 I can run on auto with a high success rate. Even easier on a manual run as you can perfectly react to the abilities he's about to use.
Not much to say here, used my Poison Abilities + Teodors Pop the rounds before his "Transfer Debuff" ability is used, followed by using my Pythions "Block Debuff" ability on the round he was going to transfer the Debuffs so they wouldn't backfire. Also used Valkyries Shield the turn after he removed my Buffs to have CA up for the 2 following turns.
Stage 120 - Dark Fae:
Dark Fae probably took me the longest to figure out, as again I was lacking built turnmeter decrease Champions, and the Champions I had to use were quite tanky, so killing my own team was the biggest struggle against this boss, so lets get through the team I've used:

• Lady Kimi:

Like in the regular floor stages, I was highly dependent on her DT Speed Aura as well as her increase Accuracy Buff on my Champions to get through this. Lady Kimi is the fastest Champion in this team and started my turn with her A3 Ability

• Nekmo Thaar:

Could have used any increase turnmeter champion for this spot, but since I have only built him and Arbiter and he was easier to kill (and his Decrease Speed ability also helped a bit, even unbooked), I've decided to go with him. But the 30% turnmeter increase was pretty much the only thing I needed him for on my first turn.

• Venomage:

As I was using Ragash and Nekmo Thar, Dark Fae would heal herself by 20% of her max HP on one of her Abilities, and since I couldn't prevent her from taking a turn, I had to rely on my Venomage 100% Heal Reduction Ability to be used before she could use her healing ability. Also his decrease attack / defense and Poisons definitely helped to shorten the fight

• Ragash:

Followed my Kimi and Nekmo taking their turn at the start of the fight, I've used Ragash A2 AoE Attack to kill my cloned Ragash, Pythion (thanks to positive Affinity as he's quite tanky) and Nekmo Thar, only leaving Venomage and Lady Kimi alive, which I then simply killed with some A1 attacks the following turns.

• Pythion:

Pythion was important to clear the debuffs my cloned Kimi and Venomage would put on me at the start of the fight, as well as use his "Block Debuff" Ability to use on my team before he would use his cloning ability so I would not gear the "Fear Debuff" on my team.
So yeah, the goal was simply to make sure to have 100% Heal Decrease up on the boss before his healing turn, have "Block Debuff" active before he would use "Fear" and hope for good damage RNG for my Ragash to clear my own team as fast as possible.
1-2 hours and successfull 15 minute manual run later it has been done.
Stats of all champions mentioned:
Hope this could at least help one single person out there, and good luck everybody beating this shitty rotation \o/

I can't really decide which one I like better, I have been using Exhausting lately mostly because I was still getting stunned by enemies while using the other one and I am not really sure what the Interrupt Immunity is actually protecting me from. The shield is nice but Exhausting getting an extra 3 tics of damage just seems better for bosses and stuff.
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Been wanting to try a new method of Infinite Scaling: Infinite level ups

Passive: With Age Comes Experience

Birk starts every game at Lvl 0 instead of Lvl 1 (Still unlocks basic abilities at Lvls 1, 2, & 3, but not ult at Lvl 6). Birk gains XP equal to 10% of pre-mitigation damage from all sources he deals to champs, structures, & non-small monsters (Reduced by half for monsters), affected by shared XP at 25% effectiveness. His level is uncapped (Can go beyond 18), but any systematic mechanic (Runes, Items, Spells, etc) besides XP gain have their per lvl effectiveness reduced by half for him (But are also uncapped, except for CDs, which will always be their Lvl 18 CD regardless of lvl) (At Lvl 0, it is also reduced equal to the amount he would gain per lvl)
When Birk levels up, his yo-yo glows, causing his next basic ability to stun enemies hit for 1s
Birk doesn’t unlock his ult at any lvl, instead can buy a unique “scroll” while in fountain (Via a unique menu) to unlock the ult the scroll gives. Main scrolls are the ults themselves & cost 1500G each, while sub scrolls are add-ons that give additional effects to the ults & cost 500G each. Scrolls of any kind don’t sit in item slots & are considered passive, but can be sold like other items, but for full value. Selling a main scroll will also sell all its sub scrolls (Besides land scrolls)
NOTE Scrolls (Besides Land Scroll) each count as a legendary item for use with Mythic Passives
NOTE All players can see his XP amount beneath his mana
NOTE In game modes where players start at Lvl 3, Birk starts at Lvl 3 as well

Q: Yin Yang Slash

Birk swings his yo-yo in a 0u (+100% Atk Range) radius around him, dealing 100% AD (+35% AP) physical damage to all enemies hit, applying on-attack & on-hit effects at 100% effectiveness
Cooldown: 5
Cost: 35
NOTE Cast Time & total animation are reduced by bonus attack speed
NOTE Can apply either of (E)’s enhanced attack effects to all enemies hit

W: Spiral Stance

Birk becomes unstoppable but unable to basic attack or cast abilities (Besides E) for 1.5s, during which he has a 10% (+1% (+1% per 100 Bonus ArmoM Resist) per 100 Bonus Health) Base Health Shield. Afterwhich, he strikes his yo-yo at the lowest % health enemy (Always prioritizing champs>monsters>minions when possible) within 0u (+200% Atk Range) of him, dealing 100% AD (+35% AP) physical damage
Cooldown: 10 (On activation)
Cost: 50
NOTE Strike animation is reduced by bonus attack speed
NOTE Can apply either of Calm of the Quick’s enhanced attack effects to all enemies hit

E: Calm of the Quick

Birk dashes 0u (+100% Atk Range) in a target direction & empowers his next 2 attacks within 5s. The 1st attack slows the enemy by 50% for 1s, the 2nd attack deals 150% total damage (Including rune/item effects such as Electrocute, Grasp, Sheen, etc)
Cooldown: 10 (On activation)
Cost: 50
NOTE Dash Speed is equal to 500% Total Move Speed
NOTE The 2nd attack is what will apply the stun from “With age comes experience”

R: The Scroll

Uses the ultimate you gain from your main scroll
Cooldown: 210 (On Activation)
Cost: 100
NOTE Sylas can only target Birk with Hijack if Birk has a main scroll

List of Scrolls

Land Scroll Neither a main scroll nor a sub scroll. Costs 20G each, can be bought infinitely (Unlike main & sub-scrolls) regardless of what other scrolls you have, & grants +1 Ultimate Haste per land scroll you have
MAIN SCROLL Resting Strike: Birk launches his yo-yo in a target direction, stopping on the 1st enemy champ hit to deal 0 (+1% AD/0.35% AP per 1% of target’s missing health) physical damage to them. This can be tapped or held (For up to 5s) to affect the range, & while charging, Birk’s slowed by 50%. When tapped, the max range is 100% of Birk’s atk range. When held for at least 0.5s, the range is increased to 200 - 500% (Based on hold time, from 0.5s to 2.5s) of Birk’s atk range
SUB SCROLL Form: If the affected enemy dies within 0.5s of being hit by this, Birk can recast this within 10s for the same effect at no mana cost
SUB SCROLL Precision: If the affected enemy would be left below 15% of their max health after this, they’re executed
SUB SCROLL Meditate: After the damage is dealt, Birk restores 0 (+500% AD, +175% AP) health over the next 5s. If the affected enemy dies within 0.5s of being hit by this, he also becomes invisible for the 1st 1.5s
MAIN SCROLL Quake of the Lands: Target a location within 0u (+250% Atk Range) of Birk. After a 1.5s channel (After 1s he vanishes & is untargetable), Birk arrives at target location & creates a 0u (+100% Atk Range) shockwave around him, dealing 0 (+0.25% AD/0.1% AP per 1% of enemy current health) physical damage to enemies hit & stunning them for 1.5s
SUB SCROLL Winds: This stun is increased from 1.5s to 2s & additionally knocks up enemies hit for 2s
SUB SCROLL Motivation: Enemies hit by the shockwave are marked for the next 5s. Allied champs (Including Birk) that damage marked enemies restore health equal to 25% of the post-mitigation damage dealt
SUB SCROLL Defense: For the next 5s, Birk gains 0 (+100% AD, +10% Bonus Health) Bonus Armor & M Resist for each enemy he hits with the shockwave
MAIN SCROLL Challenger: Target a location within 0u (+500% Atk Range) of Birk. After 2.5s, then within the next 5s (If there is no recast, this goes on a 10s CD), he can recast on a target enemy champ within 0u (+100% Atk Range) of him to strike his yo-yo into them, dealing 0 (+0.25% AD/0.1% AP per 1% of enemy’s current health) physical damage to them & suppressing them for 0.5s before both of them blink to the initial target location (Birk is at the target location, while the enemy is 75% of Birk’s Atk Range away from him in the opposite direction)
SUB SCROLL Return: If the target dies within 10s of the 2nd cast, this can be cast a 3rd time within the 10s duration to blink back to the original cast location
SUB SCROLL Cripple: For the next 2.5s, the target’s grounded & Birk steals 10% of their move speed
SUB SCROLL Purloin: For the next 10s, Birk reduce’s the target's AP, AD, Atk Speed, Armor, & M Resist by a % amount, gaining Lifesteal for himself equal to 10% of the total reduced stats for the same duration
10% AP
15% AD
20% Atk Speed
20% Armor
20% M Resist

Base Stats (Lvl 0 Per Lvl)

Health 500 50
HP Regen 5 0.25
Mana 250 25
MP Regen 5 0.25
Move Speed 350 2
Atk Range 250 5 (Ranged at all Lvls)
Atk Speed 0.5 2.5%
Atk Damage 50 2
Armor 30 1
M Resist 30 1
Haste* 0 2
*Ability Haste, Item Haste, Spell Haste

Link to the master post
https://www.reddit.com/CFB/comments/13rssrf/bowls\_and\_the\_race\_for\_the\_mythical\_national/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3

Setting the Stage

​

Team	Record	AP	Coaches
Nebraska	12-0	1 (51)	1 (31)
Texas	11-0	2 (3)	2 (3)
Auburn	10-1	3	3
Illinois	10-1	4	5
Miami	10-1	5	4
SMU	10-1	6	6

​
Important games and other notes

• August 29th: Preseason #1 Nebraska and #4 Penn St were each granted an extra regular season game to play in the inaugural Kickoff Classic. The Huskers got revenge on the Nittany Lions with a 44-6 thrashing.
• September 10th: BYU lost its season opener to Baylor, 36-40. They wouldn't lose another
• September 10th: Illinois lost it's season opener to Missouri, 18-28. The Illini would run the table the rest of the year (including beating 3 top 10 teams in 5 weeks) to secure a B1G title and Rose Bowl berth.
• September 16th: unranked Miami lost its season opener to #16 Florida (in Gainesville), 3-28.
• September 17th: #3 Texas took down #5 Auburn 7-20 in Auburn. Both teams would win the rest of their regular season games from here.
• September 24th: Miami waxed #13 Notre Dame, and entered the polls for the first time as a result.
• October 29th: #2 Texas defeated #9 SMU 15-12. This would prove to be a de facto conference title in favor of Texas

Five teams entered the bowl season with national title hopes. Texas and Nebraska stood as the only two unbeaten, but as SWC and Big 8 conference champs, were tied to the Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl and couldn't play for a de facto national title. Despite both being unbeaten, Nebraska was a heavy favorite to claim a consensus national title, having spent every week of the season being #1 in each poll. Waiting in the wings were #3 SEC champ Auburn who was heading to the Sugar, and #4/5 Illinois who was heading to the Rose bowl, meaning the top 4 teams in the AP were all heading to different bowls. Independent #5/4 Miami crashed the blue blood party and was paired up in the Orange bowl vs Nebraska.
​

The Bowls

Cotton Bowl #2 Texas vs #7 Georgia (January 2nd, 1:30pm EST)
The Longhorns path was simple . . . beat Georgia, then tune into to the Orange Bowl and root for Miami to pull off the upset, which would make them consensus national champions. The upset minded Bulldogs had other plans. It was a defensive slug fest, with the teams tied 3-3 at the half. The Horns managed two 3rd quarter field goals to lead 9-3 heading into the 4th. Texas muffed a punt in their own red zone late in the 4th and Georgia capitalized with a a 17 yard touchdown run by QB John Lastinger to deliver the Dawgs to an eventual 10-9 upset. Texas' title hopes were officially gone, while Auburn fans probably shouted "SEC! SEC!" as their conference rival's upset kept their national title hopes alive.
​
Rose Bowl #2 Illinois vs Unranked UCLA
Illinois spent all of September unranked, before shocking college football, becoming the first team in Big 10 history go 9-0 in their conference slate. They had a slim chance at a national title, needing Nebraska, Auburn, and Texas to all lose their bowl games. Additionally they would need the pollsters to give them more 1st place votes than Miami, which wouldn't be ideal since Miami would have the better bowl win. In any regard, unranked UCLA proved they didn't belong in the conversation in the first place. The Bruins raced out to a 28-3 first half lead and continued to pile it on in the 2nd half, in a 45-9 route. Illinois finished the game with 0 rushing yards.
​
Sugar Bowl #3 Auburn vs #8 Michigan (January 2nd, 8pm EST)
Auburn entered the Sugar bowl knowing Texas lost the Cotton, but now needed to take care of business and Miami to do the same in the Orange bowl, which kicked off around the same time. If those two things happened, it was assumed the voters would elevate them to #1 in the final polls. Michigan made them earn it. The Wolverines scored a TD in the first and led 7-0 at the half. Auburn used its rushing attack, led by the one and only, Bo Jackson, and its kicking game to claw back in it. Trailing 6-7 with 23 seconds left, Auburn kicker Del Greco made a 19 yard chip shot to deliver the Tigers to a 9-7 victory. I imagine they quickly looked for the nearest TV or radio to see what the Orange bowl result was to see if they're championship hopes were still alive.
​
Orange Bowl: #1 Nebraska vs #4/5 Miami (January 2nd, 8PM EST)
Tom Osborne was on the precipice of his first national championship as the Huskers head coach. As the #1 team in each poll since the preseason, all the Huskers needed to do was take care of 11 point underdog Miami, in their home stadium and they're your national champs. However, the Hurricanes had other plans. In what is considered one of the best bowl games of all time, it would become a game huge momentum swings. The Canes stunned Nebraska by racing out to a 17-0 1st quarter lead. The Huskers rallied with 14 in the 2nd, one coming off a trick play known as the 'fumblerooski, and then a field goal in the 3rd to tie it at 17. Miami countered again with two 3rd quarter TDs to lead 31-17. Then the Huskers rallied again with two 4th quarter touchdowns. The 2nd TD came on 4th and 8 from the Miami 24. With :48 seconds left to go in the season, three teams' championship hopes (Nebraska, Miami, and Auburn) hung in the balance. Tom Osborne had a decision to make: kick for the tie or go for 2 for the win. Thanks to Texas' earlier loss, in the Cotton bowl, a tie would be good enough for the pollster to vote Nebraska a consensus #1 as college football's only unbeaten. In a decision that would go down in both Husker and college football lore, Osborne elected to go for two to win win the game. Turner's pass to Jeff Smith in the end zone was batted away by Miami's Kenny Calhoun. The Canes pulled off the shocking upset 31-30, and put the college football world on notice as a new dynasty was born.

Final Results

​

Team	record	AP	Coaches
Miami	11-1	1 (47.5)	1 (30)
Nebraska	12-1	2 (4.5)	2 (6)
Auburn	11-1	3 (7)	3 (4)
Georgia	10-1-1	4	4
Texas	11-1	5	5 (1)

As a husker fan, this is a heart breaker, even if it occurred 5 years before I was born. Had they gotten the conversion, I'd argue this team would be considered on par with the 1995 team. Miami's monumental upset leapfrogged them from #4/5 in the polls to their 1st consensus national championship, and as we'll later see, that was only the beginning. This came much to the dismay of Auburn, who played arguably the toughest schedule in the nation, which included wins over #4 Georgia, #6 Florida (who beat Miami handily), and #8 Michigan. In fact, the Tigers didn't even jump Nebraska, who still received 1st place votes in each poll despite the loss. College football's lack of playoff or sanctioned national championship game was maddening to some but I have to be honest, I think I like the chaos and controversy better. That's what college football is (or at least was) all about.
​
Sources and other info
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_NCAA_Division_I-A_football_season
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_NCAA_Division_I-A_football_rankings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoNs0mdKAO8 (the end of the Orange Bowl)

In your opinion, is there a champion that has consistent pressure across all levels and item breakpoints? I’m talking in terms of overall pressure, throughout lane phase and into team fights. Any lane is fine- this is more of a general question to try to find champs to play that can be reliable throughout the game (not necessarily OP or broken through the entire game, just that they have the ability to make an impact). I’ll offer an opinion but I am not a good player and will likely be wrong about some of the things that I write out.
My pick is Sett. I am a top main and a Kayle player. Sett is scary in the early levels when I can’t outrange him. Whenever he takes Q is a scary breakpoint. If it’s level 1, he can take 1v1s pre-minions with Conqueror or Lethal Tempo (especially with Ignite). If he takes E first, his level 2 with Q is scary with the Q activation chase down potential into stun. Level 3 unlocks safety and damage with his W shield, and levels 4-5 with Q max are strong as well. His ult is great in 1v1s and 1v2s (if you can hit both targets), and max Q at level 9 does a ton of damage if he gets on you. He gains extra health regen and damage on W with levels, and his ult and W are good for team fights. His items also work in tandem with these consistent power spikes, with his damage build (especially BoRK) enabling more % health damage and his bruiser build adding damage to his Q and W plus overall survivability.
What are some of your picks for some other roles? What makes those champs consistently strong?

"An ominous shadow is cast to the world..."

Chariot Requiem is spawned every 90 minutes.
When Chariot Requiem is defeated, all players that grabbed SCR during its recovery, attacked the golden orb, or attacked SCR in its walking phase gets a Requiem Arrow (Which is used to get either Whitesnake, Weather Report, GER if it is used on a GE, and SCR if it is used on SC).
The player who has attacked the golden orb at least 10 times gets an exclusive accessory called "Post Mortem", which is SCR's hat. Post Mortem is part of the Reaper questline.
〖PASSIVE ABILITY〗— The Musketeer
Chariot Requiem has 1500 health. Players near Chariot Requiem will fall asleep for 2 seconds, then wake up in a different body. Players who switch their bodies also switch their health.
The second Chariot Requiem takes 100 damage from regular attacks, it becomes invincible to all attacks except grabs for 2 seconds before beginning to heal itself. Once it heals itself, it resumes walking.
If Chariot Requiem is hit by a grab during its recovery, the person who grabbed SCR will obtain a Temporary Requiem Arrow that lasts until they are hit by Chariot Requiem. Chariot Requiem will focus on attacking Temporary Requiem Arrow holders.
When Chariot Requiem is near the TRA holder, a yellow orb will appear behind either the one who has the Temporary Requiem Arrow or the one who had the Temporary Requiem Arrow before. If this same yellow orb is attacked either by an attack from another player or an attack that hits targets behind the user, Chariot Requiem takes permanent 100 damage and is stunned for 2 seconds. Once Chariot Requiem recovers, its movement speed against TRA holders is increased by 20% and can be stacked up to 14 times, and the gold orb does not respawn for 10 seconds. When Chariot Requiem's move is finished, the gold orb disappears.
The Musketeer adds a passive ability that affects all players near Chariot Requiem once Chariot Requiem has reached 700 health.
Complete Life Alteration: All players near Chariot Requiem have their damage, movement speed, and health decreased by 150%, and they all take 2 damage every second. Complete Life Alteration's health drain is disabled when Chariot Requiem is down, but is increased by 50% when it's in its complete invulnerability phase.
Because Chariot Requiem is a boss, it is immune to the effects of perfect blocking, aside from its move getting canceled.
【MOVE】— An Opposing Hand
This move has three different variations.
TRA holder is a Stand user: The Stand of the Temporary Requiem Arrow holder attacks its own holder, dealing decent damage and knocking them in the direction of Chariot Requiem's pursuit.
TRA holder is not a Stand user, but a person nearby is: The nearby Stand user's Stand is disabled for 1 second and attacks the Temporary Requiem Arrow holder, dealing decent damage and knocking them in the direction of Chariot Requiem's pursuit.
TRA holder is not a Stand user, and all players are not: Chariot Requiem's movement speed against the Temporary Requiem Arrow holder is doubled for 2 seconds.

• 〖DAMAGE〗— 17.5 damage

【MOVE】— "Requiem's charging at you!"
Chariot Requiem rushes to the TRA holder's location. If Chariot Requiem successfully rushes at the TRA holder, they get the Requiem Arrow back and the holder takes decent damage. Chariot Requiem can use moves while rushing to the location of the holder.
Requiem's charging at you's movement speed buff can be applied with An Opposing Hand V3's movement speed buff.

• 〖DAMAGE〗— 15 damage

【MOVE】— Your Own Shadow
This move can only be used when SCR has reached 1000 health.
A fake golden orb appears behind either the TRA holder or the holder before the current one for 2 seconds. When someone attacks the faux orb, the TRA holder instead takes hefty damage and is stunned for 3 seconds. Players can tell the fake orb from the real if it is glowing or not, and when SCR has not attacked yet.

• 〖DAMAGE〗—100 damage

【MOVE】— Victoris Voluntatem
This move can only be used when SCR has reached its "second phase".
Chariot Requiem unleashes its power in a wide radius, putting all players in its range to sleep for 2 seconds. Unlike The Musketeer, Victoris Voluntatem does not switch the souls of players.

Last Updated: June 7th, 2023 - Added ultimate cooldown time and upgrade costs
Last Updated: Initial Post
This is a stand-alone information guide for this Champion that will be updated as necessary for use during Events or when doing a Time Gate.
If you have questions about this Champion or find something that needs updated, feel free to let me know in the comments. Please know reddit archives posts after a certain amount of time, so PM me if something needs updated and the comments are locked.
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Thanks!
 

Year 6 Champion - BBEG, the Drow Wizard

• Source: The 1 for All YouTube series as played by Kendall Drury
  
• Arrival Event: Dragondown
  

You can read their original Champion Spotlight here.

• Slot 3
  
• Good with: Awful Ones; DPS Champions with INT 12 or less; Evil Champions, Lawful Champions, or Champions with a total ability score of 78 or less
  
• Affiliation: None (Adjacent to Awful Ones - Antrius, Evandra, Nixie)
  
• Eligible for Mirt, Strahd (Zariel w/Feat)
  
• Time Gate Priority: High
  

 

Race	Class	Alignment	Gender	Age	Role(s)	Overwhelm Point
Elf (Drow)	Wizard	Lawful Evil	Male (He / Him)	500	Support / Speed	5

 

Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma
10	13	8	18	15	12

 
Bio: BBEG is the Big Bad Evil Guy, a Drow necromancer who believes immaculate planning will always lead to success. Unfortunately his constant failures contradict this conviction. BBEG likes to monologue and taunt his opponents, leaving his summoned zombies to engage directly in combat.
 
Basic Attack: Chill Touch - BBEG conjures a spectral hand over the enemy with the most health and touches it, dealing one hit.

• Base Attack Type: Magical
  
• Base Attack Speed: 5 seconds
  
• Self-DPS Buff: 1.32e23%
  

Ultimate: Balgronuuth's Undead Horde - Balgronuuth's symbol appears in the air for 30 seconds. While the symbol is in the air, every time Rise, my Minions! summons a zombie, it summons two instead of one.

• Base Ultimate Cooldown Time: 360 seconds

Gaar's Note: This is a huge ultimate due to how Rise, My Minions! works with Sources of Corpses. Having this up as often as possible is nice.
 

Passive Ability

Awful Nemesis: As the sworn enemy of the Awful Ones, BBEG is eligible for any adventure that any of them are eligible for. However, they still don't remember who he is.
 

Interesting Abilities

Evil Overlord: BBEG increases the damage of all Champions with an Intelligence of 12 or less by +100%.

• 1.64e10% after upgrades; Supported by an Item & Feats

Gaar's Note: This is their primary support buff and is fed by another ability. Don't bother using DPS that are INT 13+ with them as they won't get the buff.
Homebrew: BBEG increases the damage bonus of Evil Overlord by 100% for each active potion, stacking multiplicatively.

• 2.56e04% after upgrades; Supported by an Item & Feats

Gaar's Note: Well, that's one way to make us use potions I guess. This counts each size of potion as a uniquely active potion so can get into the 20s in terms of stacks if you use everything you've got.
Rise, My Minions!: Every 10 seconds BBEG creates a plodding zombie that appears in front of the front-most column and slowly moves across the screen from left to right. It takes 30 seconds for a zombie to plod from its spawn point to the right-side of the screen where it despawns. Zombies persist with area changes. Enemies near the zombie take 0.2 second worth of BUD-based damage per second.

• No upgrades; Supported by an Item & a Feat

Gaar's Note: Moving, pulsing AoE damage is a unique ability and can help clear out waves on your tank line as well as stationary bosses in the back.
Sources of Corpses: The time it takes for Rise, my Minions! to summon a zombie is reduced by 2.5 seconds for each Awful Ones affiliation member in the formation, and the damage bonus of Evil Overlord is increased by +25% for each summoned zombie, stacking multiplicatively, with buffs applying to the pre-stack value.

• No upgrades; Supported by an Item

Gaar's Note: Because this bonus stacks multiplicatively and has item support that buffs the pre-stack values, this ability makes BBEG OP. Running up the item levels on this pays big dividends.
Railroad: If the current area is completed (for the first time) in 5 seconds or less, BBEG reduces the next area's quest requirements by 25%.

• No upgrades; Supported by a Feat

Gaar's Note: This is the speed ability and requires you're clearing levels fairly quickly to keep active. It stacks with other abilities that do the same thing to reduce area goals super low.
Global DPS Buff: 9.33e06%
 

Specializations

Powergaming: BBEG increases the damage bonus of Evil Overlord by +200% for each Evil champion in the formation, stacking multiplicatively and applied multiplicatively.

• No upgrades; Supported by an Item & a Feat

Min-Maxing: BBEG increases the damage bonus of Evil Overlord by +150% for each Champion with a total ability score of 78 or less in the formation, stacking multiplicatively and applied multiplicatively.

• No upgrades; Supported by an Item & a Feat

Rules Lawyering: BBEG increases the damage bonus of Evil Overlord by +100% for each Lawful champion in the formation, stacking multiplicatively and applied multiplicatively.

• No upgrades; Supported by an Item & a Feat

 

Equipment

	White	Green	Blue	Purple	Gild Priority
Slot 1: Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability	25%	87.5%	150%	275%	3
Slot 2: Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability	25%	87.5%	150%	275%	2
Slot 3: Increases the effect of BBEG's Rise, My Minions! ability	25%	87.5%	150%	275%	3
Slot 4: Increases the effect of BBEG's Sources of Corpses ability	10%	30%	50%	100%	1
Slot 5: Increases the effect of BBEG's Specialization choices	25%	87.5%	150%	275%	2
Slot 6: Reduces the cooldown on BBEG's Ultimate Attack	9s	18s	36s	90s	1

Legendary Effects

• Increases the damage of all
• Increases the damage of all
• Increases the damage of all
• Increases the damage of all
• Increases the damage of all
• Increases the damage of all

Gaar's Note: Find more information on the Legendary system here.
 

Feats

Here is the info for when you can unlock each Feat Slot:

Feat Slot	Unlocked at Level	Rough Cost
First	665	e19
Second	1565	e38
Third	2685	e62
Fourth	4070	e91

Gaar's Note: Currently, you will need to level this Champion past their current upgrade softcap which will require you changing the blue update indicator from UPG to one of the numbered options.
Here is the info on what Feats are available for this Champion:

Obtained	Recommended	Name	Effect
Default		Selflessness	Increases the damage of all Champions by 10%
Default		Recruitment	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 20%
Default		Balgronuuth's Pact	Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability by 20%
12,500 Gems		Inspiring Leader	Increases the damage of all Champions by 25%
Regular Gold Chest	Pushing	Derailed Campaign	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 40%
Regular Gold Chest	Situational	We Brought Snacks	Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability by 40%
12,500 Gems		Improved Summoning	Increases the effect of BBEG's Rise, My Minions! ability by 40%
50,000 Gems	Speed	Skipping Ahead	Increases the effect of BBEG's Railroad ability by 100%
Regular Gold Chest	Pushing	Evil Plan Completed	Increases the effect of BBEG's Powergaming, Min-Maxing, and Rules Lawyering abilities by 40%
Regular Gold Chest	Zariel	Motivational Monologue	Increases the Charisma score of BBEG by 1

 

Level Upgrades

Gaar's Note: Level Cost is the cost to go from your current level to the stated level. It is not a cumulative total. However, since we're dealing with very large numbers, it's in the ballpark.

Level	Level Cost	Upgrade Effect
0	NA	Awful Nemesis
1	6,000	Add to Formation
20	1.83e05	Evil Overlord
50	1.01e06	Increases the damage of all Champions by 200%
80	4.35e06	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
100	9.36e06	Homebrew
140	9.08e07	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
150	6.65e07	Specialization Choice
180	5.73e08	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
200	1.23e09	Rise, My Minions!
210	1.24e09	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
250	1.94e10	Ultimate Ability
270	3.75e10	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
300	2.00e11	Sources of Corpses
320	4.30e11	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
360	4.16e12	Increases the damage of all Champions by 100%
370	3.05e12	Railroad
380	4.97e12	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
430	1.35e14	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
480	1.55e15	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
500	2.80e15	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
530	1.49e16	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
550	3.21e16	Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability by 100%
590	3.11e17	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
650	6.41e18	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
700	7.09e19	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
740	4.69e20	Increases the damage of all Champions by 100%
750	3.44e20	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
770	1.47e21	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
840	6.96e22	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
900	1.27e24	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
970	3.95e25	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
1000	1.36e26	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
1010	1.11e26	Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability by 100%
1050	1.74e27	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
1130	9.84e28	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
1170	6.07e29	Increases the damage of all Champions by 200%
1220	7.40e30	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
1250	2.69e31	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
1300	3.67e32	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
1430	2.28e35	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
1450	3.78e35	Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability by 100%
1500	6.34e36	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
1550	7.27e37	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
1600	8.34e38	Increases the damage of all Champions by 200%
1680	4.44e40	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
1780	5.91e42	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
1800	9.85e42	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
1880	7.67e44	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
1900	1.29e45	Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability by 100%
1950	2.18e46	Increases the damage of all Champions by 200%
1980	7.92e46	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
2000	1.70e47	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
2100	3.57e49	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
2190	2.87e51	Increases the damage of all Champions by 100%
2200	1.82e51	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
2220	7.81e51	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
2350	7.11e54	Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability by 100%
2360	4.48e54	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
2400	7.01e55	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
2500	1.07e58	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
2550	1.12e59	Increases the damage of all Champions by 200%
2600	1.29e60	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
2700	1.84e62	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
2780	9.02e63	Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability by 100%
2800	1.52e64	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
2900	3.19e66	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
2940	1.94e67	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
2950	1.42e67	Increases the damage of all Champions by 200%
3100	5.55e70	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
3190	4.43e72	Increases the damage of BBEG by 300%
3200	2.82e72	Increases the damage of all Champions by 100%
3250	7.65e73	Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability by 100%
3300	8.77e74	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
3420	3.34e77	Increases the damage of all Champions by 100%
3430	2.11e77	Increases the damage of BBEG by 100%
3500	1.61e79	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
3650	2.50e82	Increases the damage of all Champions by 100%
3660	1.58e82	Increases the damage of BBEG by 200%
3700	2.47e83	Increases the effect of BBEG's Evil Overlord ability by 100%
3760	5.08e84	Increases the damage of BBEG by 200%
3800	3.24e85	Increases the effect of BBEG's Homebrew ability by 100%
3810	2.38e85	Increases the damage of BBEG by 100%
3820	3.87e85	Increases the damage of all Champions by 100%

Current max upgrade level is 3820
 

Formation & Mission Information

Once you complete the first mission, three Variants and a Free Play show up. It uses a formation that holds 10 Champions. It has a Champ-specific format that I've done my best to re-create below.

Back Column	3rd Column	2nd Column	Front Column
	0
0		0
			0
0
	0		0
0		0
	0

New Player Formation & Specializations:
While I recommend learning to build your own formations, here's a set of starter formations for brand new players to use while they get the hang of things. Anyone with other options should check that link for how to figure out how to make the best of them. You can also ask for help in the #formations channel in the official Discord.

Back Column	3rd Column	2nd Column	Front Column
	Hitch - Charismatic
NA		Bruenor - Battle Master
			NA
Asharra - Dwarves & Elves
	Calliope - College of Valor		Nayeli - Oath of Devotion
Minsc - Humanoids		Jarlaxle - Leader of Bregan D'aerthe
	Celeste - Life Domain

This formation is for the first couple of runs where you're just not going to get enough Gold to get everyone on the field, let alone level people up into their power curves. At this point, Jarlaxle is focusing on being your Primary DPS while everyone else is set up to support him.
The following formation is for once your Hitch starts doing more damage than your Jarlaxle. You can find this out by pulling Asharra out of the formation and swapping Jarlaxle and Hitch around to see whose damage is better. If Hitch is higher, next run change Asharra's Spec to buff Hitch instead.

Back Column	3rd Column	2nd Column	Front Column
	Jarlaxle - Leader of Bregan D'aerthe
Makos - Dark Blessing		Bruenor - Battle Master
			Nayeli - Oath of Devotion
Asharra - (Swap)
	Calliope - College of Valor		Tyril - Wild Shape
Minsc - Humanoids		Hitch - Charismatic
	Celeste - Life Domain

This formation should get you through the Event as a new player. If you have other options or think a different DPS is geared better, try it out and see what happens! Swapping DPS around like this can help you figure out what works best for you with your specific items.
These are the rough Favor values you need to reach to make a Variant say Difficulty: Easy. Keep in mind that this is just a generic rating system and some Variants may be harder than others, even with Favor in this range.

Variant	Favor Level (Normal)	Favor Level (Scientific Notation)
75	20,000	~2e04
125	15,000,000	~1.5e07
175	150,000,000	~1.5e08

 

Initial Adventure: Let Sleeping Dragons Lie (BBEG)

Cost: 100 Dragon Claws
Complete: Level 50
Reward: BBEG + whatever Waukeen's Favor you earned
Info: No restrictions.
Gaar's Notes: This adventure requires over-leveling Champs a lot more than usual due to the AoE damage and stuns coming off the Boss. You may want to add extra Tanks for health share as well. Efficiently farming Favor is very important in this adventure and it may require farming Favor in Free Plays to reach the gains you're used to seeing from normal Time Gate adventures due to the Favor-check status of the Boss.
Boss Abilities (as best as I can tell):

• Claw Swipe - Attacks a random Champion
• Roar - Strikes fear in any Champions that fail their saving throw, preventing them from attacking or using abilities for a short time.
• Breath Weapon - AoE damage to your Champions

 

First Variant: Roll For INT-ish-a-tive!

Cost: 1,000 Dragon Claws
Complete: Area 75
Reward: Gold BBEG Chest & whatever Waukeen's Favor you earned
Info: BBEG starts in the formation and can be moved, but not removed. You may only use BBEG and/or Champions with an INT of 12 or lower.
Gaar's Notes: This isn't an overly-restrictive variant so you should be able to do it rather easily as long as you have the Favor shown in the chart above. If you have any empty formation slots, aim for e01+ Favor more per empty slot to help out.
 

Second Variant: Herding Cats

Cost: 2,500 Dragon Claws
Complete: Area 125
Reward: Gold BBEG Chest & whatever Waukeen's Favor you earned
Info: BBEG starts in the formation and can be moved, but not removed. Every second, a cat spawns and moves towards a random Champion. When the cat reaches the Champion, they are stunned for 3 seconds because of overwhelming cuteness. The cats can't be attacked. Stunned Champions can not attack, but their formation abilities remain enabled.
Gaar's Notes: This may slow down your overall progress, but shouldn't be too horrible as long as you have the Favor shown in the chart above. If you want to be careful, wait until you have enough Favor for the third variant before attempting. Firebreath Potions can be your friend here as they'll keep attacking even when you aren't!
 

Third Variant: It Was Me All Along!

Cost: 5,000 Dragon Claws
Complete: Area 175
Reward: Gold BBEG Chest & whatever Waukeen's Favor you earned
Info: BBEG starts in the formation and can be moved, but not removed. You may only use Lawful Champions, Evil Champions, or Champions with a total ability score of 78 or less.
Gaar's Notes: They're trying to focus you in on the Specialization Choices here. You can test out your formation in a Free Play and see if it can complete area 175 to be safe. If it can't, just convert it to a pushing formation and get some more Favor, then try again. If it can, go do this variant.
 

Free Play

Cost: 500 - 2500 Dragon Claws (Cost scales based on how many you do to a max of 2500)
Complete: Area 50 to earn a random BBEG chest
Reward: See above + whatever Waukeen's Favor you earned
Info: No restrictions.
 

Achievements

Gaar's Note: All of these achievements can be earned at any time, not just during their Event, except where noted.
Recruit BBEG - 1%
Recruit BBEG, the Drow Wizard
This Is Not The Last You've Seen Of Me! - 1%
Complete all three variants of the "Let Sleeping Dragons Lie (BBEG)" adventure. (This achievement can be earned via Time Gates.)
Obliterate The Minotaurium Emporium - 1%
Obtain a piece of gear for each of BBEG's six equipment slots. (Event Champ gear does not come from regular SilveGold Chests. You can earn Event Champ gear from their specific Event Chests, Time Gates, qualifying Patron Chests, and other Chests as noted.)
Let Waking Dragons Fly - 1%
Complete area 275 in any "Let Sleeping Dragons Lie" free play. (This achievement can only be earned during the Dragondown Event, but it can be earned in any Champion's free play.)
It's Hard Raising a Family - 1%
Have 8 of BBEG's plodding zombies active at the same time.
Gaar's Note: Park yourself on a level with a couple Awful Ones in your formation and hit BBEG's Ultimate and wait. With enough Awful Ones, you don't even need the Ultimate.

Jar Jar Binks - Light Side, Support, Gungan, Galactic Republic
Synergy Suggestions - Padmé, Jedi Knight Anakin, Jedi Master Kenobi, Ashoka Tano, Mace Windu.
The notorious Gungan, who was pivotal in the election of Supreme Chancellor Palatine and ending the invasion of Naboo, finally makes his appearance on the Holotable. Jar Jar is a support who inflicts the Confuse debuff, and helps provide turn meter to his allies. His powerful debuff, Booma Grenade, will help clear enemy buffs and provides additional problems for droid opponents.
Clumsy Movement -Jar Jar inflicts Confuse for 3 turns (max 3 stacks, which cannot be evaded). If the target is already Confused, the duration for all current stacks resets to 3 turns. All allies gain 6% turn meter plus and an additional 3% for each stack of Confuse on the target (Maximum 9%).
Booma Grenade (Special 4)
Jar Jar throws a Booma Grenade, which removes the target's buffs, removes 100% of their Protection, and inflicts Buff Immunity for 1 turn. If the target is a Droid, they are stunned for 1 turn, which cannot be dispelled.
Unusual Tactics (Special 5, Zeta (4))
Jar Jar moves erratically, inflicting 1 stack of Confuse on all enemies, (which cannot be evaded). If an enemy is already Confused, the duration for all their current stacks resets to 3 turns. Jar Jar then increases his Evasion by 5% per stack of Confuse on each enemy until the end of his next turn (max 75%).
Bombad General (Unique, Zeta)
At the start of battle, Jar Jar gains 25% Evasion. Every time Jar Jar evades an attack, he gains 15% turn meter. If there are no other allied combatants at the start of a turn, Jar Jar escapes from the battle.
Lifedebt (Unique)
If the allied Leader is Galactic Republic, Jar Jar assists whenever the Leader uses an ability on their turn. When Jar Jar assists in this way, he removes 10% of the target's turn meter

Year 5 Season 1: Broken Wings

A new manhunt has begun with the launch of Season 1: Broken Wings!
Here is all you need to know about the first season for Year 5 of The Division.
 

CONTENTS

• Season 1: Broken Wings Manhunt
• Season 1: Broken Wings Calendar
• Descent Game Mode
• Gear, Weapons & Talents
• Quality of Life Changes
• Apparel Event
• Season Pass

 

MANHUNT

In the wake of the attack at the White House, The Division has discovered that 11 people are unaccounted for and considered missing. You will be tasked to go on a high-stakes rescue mission to find the missing civilians, as they have valuable intel on the White House and The Castle Settlement.
 
Year 5 Season 1: Broken Wings
 
Year 5 Season 1's prime Season 1's is Mari Singh, the former Director of the DC Aquarium. She moved into The Castle and set up a fish farm to support the settlement and build a sustainable and secure place to raise their growing family. Agents must locate and rescue Mari and 4 other hostages before further damage can be done in Washington DC. Securing the people will help rebuild The Castle and restore vital services for The Division. Good luck, Agents!
 

CALENDAR

Year 5 Season 1: Broken Wings - Calendar
 

DESCENT

Descent is a free, 1-to-4 player game mode with semi-infinite and randomized progression, versus an infinite difficulty curve. Warlords of New York ownership is not required to access the mode.
Agents are stripped of all their gear, specializations and perks when starting the game mode. The mode is a playground where you can experiment with builds not feasible in the regular game, challenging them tactically and encouraging deeper understanding of the build meta. This AR training simulation at the NSA Facility was designed to test the limits of the Ortiz Robotics tech. Leave your gear and SHD tech behind to help Wally extract intel from the NSA database.
Access Descent from the Mega Map, Castle Settlement Door, Matchmaking Station, and Helicopter Pilot to activate the simulation. Equip weapons, skills and talents, take turns exploring rooms, defeat enemies, bosses and the ultimate opponent: the Nemesis.
Continue your Run after defeating the Nemesis and see how far you can go for exclusive leaderboard rewards! Discover the history of the simulation and Ortiz Robotics' connection to the Division and the Black Tusk each week in your Collectibles menu.
 

GEAR, WEAPONS & TALENTS

Year 5 Season 1 comes with an array of new weapons and gear! This includes one Gear- and one Brand Set, new Exotic Weapon and Gear piece, 2 new Named Weapons and a bunch of new Weapons & Gear Talents.
 

NEW EXOTIC WEAPON

St. Elmo's Engine - Exotic AR
=> Image
Talent Actum Est
Shooting an enemy gives 1 stack, at 100 stacks the next magazine is filled with shock ammo.
 

NEW EXOTIC GEAR

Shocker Punch - Exotic Holster
=> Image
 
Talent Defibrillator
Gives 50%-time reduction when being stunned by any electric skill. Using a Shield gives 100% melee damage. Using the St. Elmo's Engine Exotic AR gives an extra 100% melee damage and applies shock to any enemies hit with melee within the 5-meter radius. It has a 15 second cooldown. Fixed Attributes – Armor, Explosive Resistance and Hazard Protection
 

NEW GEAR

The Cavalier - Gear Set
=> Image
2 Pieces equipped give +30% Hazard Protection. 3 Pieces equipped give +40% Incoming Repairs. 4 Pieces equipped give access to a new unique talent.
 
Talent Charging
For each second spent out of cover during combat Agents will get 5% reduced incoming skill damage. Max 50%.
 
Talent Charged
While fully charged, gain immunity to any movement speed debuff and share hazard protection and damage reduction with all allies for 10 seconds. After Charged is consumed, Charging buff will resume if the Agent is still in combat and out of cover. Charged Talent does not stack.
If another agent applies Charged on an ongoing Charging Talent, Charging will pause for the duration of the Charged Talent.
 

Chest and Backpack Bonuses:

Chest Bonus – Talent Overcharging Increases Charger max incoming damage protection to 50%
 
Backpack Bonus – Talent Safe Charging Charger gives 10% protection per second
 
Electrique Gear Brand Set
1 Piece equipped gives +10% Status effect Damage. 2 Pieces equipped give +20% Electricity Protection. 3 Pieces equipped give +10% SMG Damage.
 
Chest and Backpack Bonuses:
Named Chest "Henri" Talent Perfect Companion. Increases total weapon damage by 20% within a 10-meter radius of an ally or skill.
 
Named Backpack “Lavoisier" Talent Perfect Galvanize. Applying Blind, Ensnare, Confuse, or Shock to an enemy grant 50% of your armor as bonus armor to you and all allies within 30 meters of that enemy for 10 seconds.
 

NEW NAMED WEAPONS & TALENTS

Cabaret - MP5 ST
Talent “Perfect Thunder Strike” – Deals 40% extra damage to shocked targets.
 
Big Show - MG5 LMG
Talent “Perfect Thunder Strike” – Deals 40% extra damage to shocked targets.
Talent Thunder Strike
Deals 30% extra damage to shocked targets. Applicable to all weapon types except Signature weapons.
 

BALANCING EXISTING GEAR

Talent Determined
Allows to chain multiple headshots by using the Talent's buff.
 

QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES

• Conflict XP rebalance.
  • Added SHD XP progression.
• The living world activities XP gains revamp.
  • Removed Double XP for Convoy activities
  • Across all activities XP gains are now 12% higher

 
=> XP Balancing Changes
 

• Added the Grants Tab to make the compensations process more streamlined and items easy to obtain.
  • Grants Tab can be found in the Store.
• Added an option to allow players to change mission difficulty regardless of the world difficulty setting.
• Added quick grenade selection menu.
  • Hold G for PC
  • Hold D-pad Left for the consoles.
• Added visual feedback for locked Grenades.
  • When browsing through the Grenades menu in the Inventory, players will see a notification which lets them know if the selected Grenade can be equipped or not.
• Added an option to mark Apparel Items as favourite.
• Added Directives selection for Raids.
• Added the option to Show selected mission Directives on the Mega Map.
• Added the possibility to hold ESC/SPACE to skip videos and epilepsy warnings.
  • Equivalent of Space button is X (PS) and A (XB)
  • Equivalent of Escape button is Options (PS) and Map/Hide Map (XB)
• Added a new In Loadouts section at the bottom of the Item Details window in the Inventory (under a gear piece's talent and mod slots) to display the current loadouts where the selected item is present.
• Added the Hide/Show Mask and Hide/Show Signature Weapon buttons in the Inventory when hovering over the specific tiles/tabs.
  • Currently present in the cross Options layout.
• Added a notification widget for modding Primary, Secondary and Sidearm weapons' skin slot, which appears if the player has any custom skin available for that weapon in the Store. The notification also has a quick button that redirects to the Weapon Skins Store tab.
  • Only available after you open the custom weapon skin section in the store.

 

OTHER

• Fixed the issue with the Mission Difficulty setting selected from the Mega Map not persisting when fast traveling to the mission.
• Deconstructing Named items from Brazos de Arcabuz Brand Set will now give Brazos de Arcabuz resources.

 

DESCENT

• Balancing and Difficulty:
  • Talents balancing
    • Allegro - Reduced the initial and per tier bonus rate of fire from 10% to 7%
    • Breadbasket - Reduced Headshot damage from 20% to 15%
    • Concussion - Reduced the initial and per tier bonus Weapon damage bonus from 10% to 5%. Reduced the per tier Duration bonus from 1 second to 0.5 seconds. Reduced the per tier Weapon damage from headshot kills from 15% to 10%.
    • Obliterate - Increased the initial Weapon damage bonus from 1% to 1.5% and added fixed number of stacks - 30.
    • Adrenaline Rush - Reduced Bonus armor initial and per tier bonus from 5% to 3%.
    • Optimized - Reduced the initial and per tier Weapon handling bonus from 10% to 5%.
    • Vindictive - Reduced the initial and per tier Critical Hit chance bonus from 7% to 3%.
  • Lowered the arena defensive buff from 20% to 15%.
  • Tweaked the Exotic Talents drop chance by increasing it after Descent Loop 4
  • Updated the supply shop rules by allowing only 2 random special ammo to be present in the list.
  • Fixed difficulty scaling after lvl 30.
  • Added Named Item blueprints from Seasons 1, 2, 3 and 4 to the Reconstructed caches.
• Rogue agents' encounters:
  • Removed the healing packs.
  • Updated the spawn values based on number of players (number of players + 1 rogue agent)
  • Increased the rogue agents spawn rate.
  • Buffed rogue agents' Health, Damage, and Armor.
• Nemesis encounters
  • Immune to shock ammo
  • Fixed an issue preventing Nemesis from using Sticky Bomb and Chem Launcher Skills

 

APPAREL EVENT

New Season means new vanity items!
When the event is active, you can earn Apparel Cache keys in game by levelling up your watch levels and unlock the different items through caches. The best part is there are no duplicates in these event caches!
 

ESCALATION

As part of Season 1: Broken Wings, you will be able to unlock apparel items inspired by SHD tech and the Black Tusk.
Escalation Apparel Event keys for the Apparel Caches can be earned from the following sources: 1 free key granted to all players, SHD Levelling - one key every four SHD levels, direct purchase with Premium Credits, and, if you are a Year 5 Season 1 Premium Pass owner, you'll be granted 3 extra keys.
 

SEASON PASS

The optional Season Pass is available for 1000 Premium Credits ($9.99 or your regional equivalent) in the in-game store, granting additional cosmetics and opportunities for season gear as you progress. Year 5 Season 1: Broken Wings is available to all The Division® 2 Warlords of New York owners and Ubisoft+ subscribers.
 
In addition, players with the Season Pass can gain access to the following premium track rewards:

• 9 new weapon skins
• 10 new gear dyes
• 3 new emotes
• 3 new arm patches
• Special Year 5 Season 1 vanity outfit
• A Splinter Cell outfit
• New helmet available as the level 100 reward

 
You can also track some of the top-level investigations being conducted by the team over on our Known Issues Board.
We look forward to seeing you dive into the missions and objectives for the Season 1 Manhunt, as well as uncover the hidden history and shed light on the secrets of the Black Tusk, Hunters, Division tech and Ortiz Robotics.
 
Good luck out there!
/THE DIVISION 2 TEAM
=> Source

http://98kof-us.game-bean.com/t3/178/3575/1500009812.html
​
Looks like Ralf XV is the next fighter! His draw will be on June 16th and don't worry, I will make about him like I always do so don't you guys worry. For the record, I think he is insanely good. So that's a small spoiler I guess
​
Hein is being turned into a striker. I can't imagine it will be good enough to pick up so another easy skip on his striker
Finally, we have a new FIGHTSOUL: Winter!
​

• 1☆: when equipped on fighters with freeze skills, cant apply effects; when deployed, add "frost" to self and an ally with no freeze skills: increase 80% res for bleeding dmg, each round reduce 20%, down to 20% at minimum if self has bleeding, burning, poisoning (any), increase 60% crit rate and 30% crit power
• 2☆: after equipped, when round starts self recover 15% max hp, each cc-ed ally (freeze, paralyze, stun, silence, soul burning, pertrification, taunt) recover 10% max hp; self permanently immune to freeze and gain "ice piton" effect: when ult, self increase 30% dmg power for one round, each cc-ed ally increase 8%
• 3☆: add another ally for "frost"; fighters who holding "frost" at the beginning of the round, according to the layers of self bleeding, burning, poisoning, each layer provides 10% res for bleeding dmg and 5% dmg for one round, can be stacked with other similar buff
• 4☆: at the beginning of each round, attack ignores target's 30% total def, according to the type of bleeding, burning, poisoning, each effect increase 10%; "frost" effect upgraded: when self holding any two of bleeding, burning, poisoning, double the crit power and crit rate; when attacking according to the layers of bleeding, burning, poisoning, each layer reduce a random enemy's 10% res for 2 round "ice piton" effect upgraded: when ult, according to self bleeding, burning, poisoning, each effect increase 10% dmg power.
• 5☆: add another ally for "frost"; "ice piton" effect upgraded: when ult, for each cc-ed ally, increase 12% dmg power; when ult, increase dmg power for surrounding allies for one round, equal to half of "ice piton" effect; when small skills and ult, there is a chance for this attack to ignore shield (self bleeding burning poisoning, each layer provide 30%

It may NOT seem much but think of this FS to be anti shields so this will help fighter vs Kula XIII, Liz strikers and Dolores in the future. So if you want a better chance fighting against Kula XIII, consider picking up this FS!
Looks like that's it for this update, nothing too special but seems we got Ralf a little TOO early. They skipped Dolores and MAYBE Heindern but I am sure he will get a draw. Clark SHOULD be next since he came right after Ralf in China but we shall see