Hey, folks. With the conclusion of Operation Midnight, now’s as good a time as any to take a look at recent gameplay trends and developments in Snowbreak. Because let’s be real - Operation Midnight was kind of a filler event. Not that there’s anything wrong with one of those every now and then, but there just isn’t too much to discuss that hasn’t been covered already (see the Vidya - Agave review if you haven’t already). So today, let’s talk about new Neural Sim strats, game mode changes, and finalise the verdict on Agave as a character that’s just as good as her event. Which is to say, just alright.

Doubling Up

One of the tools that Neural Sim bosses have always had as a defensive tool is the ability to just turn invulnerable after you do enough damage to them. And as time spent with the boss in an invulnerable state is time you’re not actively killing them, this is naturally time loss, suboptimal, and overall highly undesirable. Players have found ways to get around this, from cancelling the trigger with CC effects, slipping in damage through momentary gaps in invulnerability periods, or straight-up bursting the boss so hard that it never gets a chance. But not all invulns can be cleanly bypassed in this way, and as the game provides more and stronger burst tools, another option has opened up. If you’re stuck waiting on an invuln, why not bring a burst DPS along to shwack the boss as soon as it ends?

These double-DPS strategies aren’t particularly common for now as the standard 1-DPS-2-support meta is still just very efficient, but it’s been used on bosses like Fiend - Frostwind, Will - Flameblade, and even Joseph - Hardened depending on whether you consider Agave to be a proper DPS (but more on her later). Cherno - Engima and Siris - Ksana are unsurprisingly the facilitators of these shenanigans more often than not though, and as more relatively squishy bosses that rely on invuln phases to stay alive get released, expect to see more double doses of DPS in top team comps.

Vocabulary lesson! Invulnerability triggers come in two types:

• Soft HP triggers, which let through any extra damage dealt by the hit that takes the boss to the HP threshold. This regularly gets abused to a comical degree, like being able to one-shot Cerberus before it ever gets the chance to hit its 80% HP trigger.
• Hard HP triggers, the lame classmate who reminds your teacher that they forgot to collect homework. Any extra damage you deal when you hit the trigger gets thrown out, sorry. Nobody likes these.

Doubling Down

So what’s the deal with any remotely difficult content in the game getting nerfed or removed? First, it was the removal of Battlefront events after Realm of Illusion, with the difficulty of its wave defence game mode being made easier as well. And as it turns out, next on the chopping block is Jotun Tunnel, a game mode that was already barely ten minutes of trivially easy content for anyone who’s been playing for more than a month and has at least a few lights on in their think-noggin. Rather ironically taking place at around the same time that Jotun had its original batch of  major difficulty nerfs the year prior, this year’s installment lowered the threat level even lower, with stages now featuring terrifying lineups like two Adventist Judges or five(!) Changed dogs, though Seasun thankfully had enough mercy to spawn them in separate waves of two and three.

The matter of that original nerf was something that I was thinking of revisiting at some point, as it seemed to me that the cause of it ended up being more about everyone being underlevelled at the time and less about the actual difficulty of the stages themselves. I had actually naively hoped for a difficulty bump at some point now that experienced players had more than enough firepower to breeze through Jotun but uh, well. You know.

What makes it even more confusing is that while I’ve seen a fair amount of complaints about the Battlefronts and wave defence game modes between global and CN communities, Jotun Tunnel hasn’t really been a perceived pain point, with most players being able to clear it just fine as far as I could tell. That is to say, it appears that Seasun took the initiative on their own to reduce the difficulty. Why? It’s hard to come up with a compelling answer, especially considering that there are three difficulty levels to choose from that each reward the same amount of Digicash. If it turns out to just be Seasun losing faith in their playerbase, I can only ask that they take off the kiddie gloves and stop being afraid to give us a proper challenge.

And while we’re here, why did Brave Squad get its co-op stage removed? No really, I’m genuinely confused about that. Their multiplayer servers can clearly handle it well enough considering that they’ve run multiple iterations of it with no issue. I guess some things will remain a mystery.

Film Faux Pas

It’s been a while since the buffs to Vidya - Agave were implemented, and well… it’s probably fair to say that they benefited your keyboard more than Agave herself. Being able to hold down her standard skill to cast it on repeat is great and all, but her actual combat power doesn’t increase all that much where it matters. While certainly capable of putting out competitive enough times across multiple bosses, her best use remains mostly as a parts breaking slave on Joseph - Hardened and for taking down Nightborne Phantom, which was tailor-made to benefit her.

More or less everything from my initial review of her is still accurate, and you can check that out for a more in-depth look at her strengths and shortcomings.

Meta Changes

You can find the full tier list here.

Agave doesn’t make a particularly large impact on the meta, so there aren’t any major shake ups as far as placements go.

Vidya - Agave Rated at Tier 1

While occasionally useful in niche scenarios, Agave ultimately comes off as underwhelming in an age of gassed-up monster DPS releases.

Eatchel - The Cub (High Investment) Rated at Tier 0.5

Things are looking up for our friend from Yehrus. She’s been finding a place in more and more lineups for her raw attack buffing power - provided that you’ve been giving her sufficient attention and the shiny shotgun on her wishlist. The release of a top Kinetic DPS in Lyfe IS has also given her an extra niche as a Twilight resist shredder as well.