Poobah

Wow now that is an old GPU, nearing 10 years old now right? I've been starting to look at upgrading but I'm at least on a 1070.

You'd be fine just maxing out Warlock too. Eldrich Blast is great of course and well worth investing in to when you're going for a blasty spellcaster but especially if you have a bard in party for the extra short rest he'd end up being able to cast 12 5th level spells per day which is an insane amount of Fireballs/Flame Strikes/Cones of Cold/Walls of Fire depending on the shape of the area you need devastated etc. Hunger of Hadar is also an absolutely busted spell for all sorts of reasons. GN posted a very thorough set of GPU benchmarks and note it'll likely be going in to their CPU testing suite as its performance is largely CPU bound when it comes to modern GPUs - all of which perform excellently - with even much older cards holding up very well on 1440p and especially 1080p. I don't know if anyone's running one but they also show much better and smoother performance from Intel's Arc GPUs on Vulcan vs DX11

Sounds interesting, is it a youtube show/podcast or something?

Accepted in the show do get (stoneless) rings. There's a scene where Egwene visits Nynaeve in her much nicer room and fusses over her new ring.

Thinking about Elayne and Egwene only being Novices I just had a thought that if they aren't going to be returning to the tower then that maybe why they had Ryma give them all those rings from the dead/captured Aes Sedai, though bringing them to the tower for the ritual melting we've seen may also be what gives them the motivation to return.

I feel like Tear is important for a bunch of reasons but most of them aren't necessarily specific to Tear but rather what Rand going there represents and accomplishes and how it acts as a key moment in his character arc. The show has and is already dealing with the arc of Rand ceasing to run from his destiny and accepting that he is indeed the Dragon Reborn so that at least isn't a factor, but it does represent rather more than that. It's a transition for Rand from just some guy - even "just some guy who appeared in he sky fighting the devil that one time" is not really of much note and a rumour at best to many people - to instead becoming the King of Tear, somebody concrete and undeniable that absolutely no one can ignore. It's also a transition point for Rand into the role he takes on throughout the middle of the series, where he gains confidence that develops towards arrogance and hubris as a he becomes a ruler of nations, conqueror, tyrant, and empire builder who few dare to oppose - and I agree in this that it does rather make sense to push it back until after he picks up the Aiel for pacing and arc reasons. Like it or not Wheel of Time has a bunch of Mcguffins that need collecting and I absolutely disagree that Callandor is something you can just discard. It's iconic. And whether or not they go to Tear there are a bunch of characters and plots which are introduced between TDR and TSR that do need to be gotten started - we've had a bit of a hint that maybe the twisted redstone doorway isn't going to be there (I'm wondering if they have just the one door in Rhuidean that mashes both sets of 'finn together?) but Rand needs to meet Elayne, Perrin needs to meet both Faile and Berelain, Mat has to start getting lucky, doing heroic things, and playing with gunpowder etc.

Yeah I saw that. I was questioning why it was so dark and generally how.. off? it felt. It was like someone turned the brightness on my screen down to 0 for that scene. It didn't feel like it was night... was it supposed to be? In general something just felt very off about it, my best guess is maybe they decided they needed an establishing shot for Perrin and co arriving at Falme and quickly threw that together on a soundstage somewhere or something.

Episode was mostly very good. I'm a not fan of the conflict between Siuan and Moiraine though and what they're doing with Siuan's character and motivations in general. Leane too is extremely different from the woman who became one of my favourite tertiary characters in the middle books, and while we don't see much of her pre-stilling in the books it'd be a hell of an arc for her to go through and I fear that after the character assassination of these two will come an actual assassination next season because, frankly, I'm not sure there's room for their arcs in an 8 episode a season show and they've been made rather unsympathetic to boot. I'm glad they solved the shielding of Moiraine and I think it was done ok but it felt quite rushed and I feel like they could have put in a bit more establishing stuff for it in previous episodes rather than some of the fluff. I get that Lan not being suicidal is part of that and they imply here that he's been doing a lot of thinking about this stuff but I feel like showing him actually doing some of that and joining the dots on screen in previous episodes would have been good because as I said cramming it all into the one episode makes it seem rushed in my opinion. The CGI for the weaves has definitely improved significantly, and is becoming a great visual spectacle much more how I imagined it to be. I enjoyed seeing Lanfear blow up the foregate and then Siuan and the various AS in her retinue bring rain to douse the flames. The show is still being heavily carried by the villains: 100% this. Fares Fares is doing an incredible job as Ishamael and whatever else I think of the decisions made in this adaption what they've done with Ishamael is superb. This is the Ishamael that Jordan wishes he'd written in to Eye of the World when he hadn't really gotten all his lore sorted rather than the cardboard cut-out devil figure - this is the beloved philosopher he describes in the world book whose declaration of the Dark One on the world stage brought chaos and despair, the man who unlike the other petty and selfish Forsaken chose the Dark because he truly believes in the destruction of the wheel for the greater good, a man who I actually believe could convert people and who people would want to follow. His presence is fantastic. I'm also enjoying their version of Lanfear a lot too. Elayne and Nynaeve's scenes were fairly short but worked well, and I'm glad they're taking initiative and getting shit done all on their own, it's also good that we're going to get the revelation about the sul'dam sorted too. I enjoyed the scene where Bain and Chiad beat Aviendha, it's a nice window into Aiel culture, but otherwise Perrin was just... there I guess and continues to be the weakest link in the show by far. I also wish they'd managed to find some bigger dogs or CGI'd these ones bigger because Hopper seems comically small. Also what was up with that really dark scene where they approach Falme?

As far as I know it was a popular fan theory but was never confirmed anywhere to my knowledge. I had a look at my big lore book and it isn't mentioned in the entries for Ishamael or Moridin. Also it's worth noting that Dreaming and Dreamwalking are distinct, separate abilities. Dreaming definitely seems to be a capital T Talent (ie. a special inborn power) whereas Dreamwalking seems to be a bit more fluid in that while some people have a strong predilection towards it it does also appear to be a skill that can be learned to some extent. I would say that it's pretty clear that Ishamael is doing some serious Dreamwalking but the books don't, IMO, point towards him specifically having prophetic dreams as such, though various dark prophecies do exist.

Yeah, as much as I'm enjoying this season a lot it's largely been carried by the villains, and while I was hoping to see Moiraine and Lan gradually taking steps back in order to allow the younger cast chances to shine (and the Wondergirls at least have managed to do just that) I feel like entirely sidelining them and having them do almost nothing plot related this season so far is a huge risk, these last two episodes have to land with some big payoffs for it to have been worth it IMO.

Agreed. I'm not really sure what they're doing with her visions, I'd need to go back to S1, I don't remember if they actually showed any or just had her describe them, but they're very different to the book ones which I don't really like but which also leaves me finding it very hard to guess or speculate about how this is going to play out. In the books if she understood the meaning of one of her viewings then that was the true meaning 100% an inescapably fated part of the pattern.

It rather reminds me of TNG's Chains of Command with Picard's torture "there are four lights".

That was a very good, very powerful episode. Egwene and Renna's actresses both delivered particularly great performances. Lanfear continues to be on point and unsettling as fuck. I'm still holding my breath on the Moiraine plot... I don't particularly like seeing her so powerless and lost - that's not Moiraine - and I don't know what the point of all the faffing around and family drama in Cairhien is. I really hope it manages to have a decent resolution and they go with shielded not stilled sooner rather than later.

All our Farscape talk last thread manifested it.

All in a few months... with at least two forsaken helping, with a high rate of burnout, with the Pattern very obviously spawning enormous amounts of male channelers and rare talents because it's the last battle. Just like how Nynaeve reinvented healing and did something deemed impossible even in the Age of Legends, how Egwene figured out Traveling, Elayne how to make objects of the power.

Yeah I definitely see things the same way. Egwene and Elayne are seen as massively stronger than even the strongest current Aes Sedai and then Nynaeve is seen as staggeringly, terrifying stronger even than them, "a bonfire next to candles" is the quotation that stuck in my head for the comparison between them. That said I mostly think the 72(+6) point scale is a waste of time - most especially the extra male levels which even he pretty much admitted were a mistake with all the clarifications that female dexterity was enough to make up the gap - but the whole thing really. As I said earlier from how people actually match up in the books and how he describes perceived strength differences it feels to me much more like Jordan internally conceptualised power on a simpler tier/weight-class system where there isn't really much functional difference between people in a tier (a 1v1 would come down to other factors than strength - skill, luck, strength of will etc.) but a big one between tiers (Rand, Nynaeve, Logain, and the Forsaken are in a different league to Egwene, Elayne, and Cadsuane, who are themselves described as massively much stronger than the strongest Aes Sedai, and those in turn are shown to be very much stronger than an average one etc.).

I meant that only 0.01% of channelers (or less) are as strong as Rand and Lanfear (because yes see bell curve distribution, with these absolute top people being many, many standard deviations to the right). And I do think that some of your examples do show non-linear progression of power too - Siuan went from being above average to being average and went from being able to lift 3x her weight easily to struggling with someone who was probably 1.5x her weight at most, and yes as we see with Morgase, someone at the absolute bottom tier of power can just about make a small bit of wind and Lanfear is unarguably a lot more than 72 times as effective as her, and similarly I think based on what we see in the books it's abundantly clear that she is more than 20% stronger than Moiraine (she's 12 places higher than her on a 72 point scale).

I rewatched the fight and honestly while I agree the rapid cuts in some parts are a rather jarring I otherwise can't find that much to complain about it and still think it's pretty cool. Not to get too lost back on the channeling in battle topic but I was writing a whole big post up before the conversation moved on so I do want to say the main point I think gets forgotten is that our viewpoint is extremely warped when it comes to the power levels of the channelers that we see - pretty much every channeler we follow is top 20 in the entire world. The protagonists and Forsaken (plus Logain and Alivia, maybe Cadsuane with her Angreal) are in a power tier so far away from what the average channeler can do that it isn't really comparable. They're the 0.01% or whatever and the power curve seems to be exponential if you start comparing the feats that the top level people are capable of to those who in theory aren't that many power levels below them according to Jordan's notes - honestly it feels much more like he considers them in tiers with big jumps between them rather than a smooth scale.

That was a really great episode, I love seeing Lanfear unleashed, and in general I agree that the work they're doing with all the villains in the show is top notch. Liandrin's development/arc has been very unexpected but not at all unwelcome, the actress is killing it and it's very nice to see how diverse Darkfriends and their motivations are (though ultimately it all comes down to selfishness) and how fractious they are as a result where in the books it does often seem like many of the darkfriends' motivations are either just some vague promise of power/immortality or literally nothing and they're just evil because. It's also nice to see those signs of regret that come with the realisation of what they've committed to which we get a bit of in the books but not in nearly so compelling ways. The scene between Ishamael and Lanfear was perfect, and it was nice to have some of the others namedropped. Definitely seems like Lanfear is merged with Semirhage - they played up her sadism this episode, and put her in that all-black domme outfit at the end there where book Lanfear would exclusively wear white and Semirhage black. Perrin is the weak link so far for me but Aviendha was great and I look forward to seeing more of her. I'm looking forward to seeing more Nynaeve-Elayne interactions next episode and seeing the full horror of Damane training through Egwene's eyes too; I expect Ryma to sacrifice herself to save some or all of the girls which will make it all the worse when we next see her as Pura. It was a shame to get no Min / Mat this episode but I assume they're just traveling, and having them take an episode off is an economic way to show that it takes time to get places / give a sense of scale, which was one of my criticisms of the earlier episodes so I'll allow it.

I know it when I eat it.

I don't really agree. Artillery, tanks, fighter jets and even the atomic bomb didn't make infantry obsolete. Warfare evolved but ultimately you do still need boots on the ground. Having a few hundred channelers is all well and good but it isn't enough to cover an entire continent, they get tired and moody after a few days in a row of hard channeling, mostly need line of sight to use their powers effectively, and die just as easily as anyone else and are going to be viewed as extremely high priority targets so they need to be protected. Plus the other side has channelers of their own too.

Since everyone was sharing in the last thread in celebration of Steam's 20th birthday, apparently I joined in 2005 and am now feeling very old. My top 20 games are: Path of Exile - far too many hours Slay The Spire - 1168 hours (still rising) Civilisation V - 1075 hours The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - 715 hours XCOM Enemy Unknown (mostly with the Long War mod) - 600 hours Stellaris - 594 hours, this is a bit of a surprise to me, but I guess I was really intensely into it right up until they totally reworked planets, at which point I totally dropped it. Skyrim - 450 hours XCOM2 - 405 hours Dead Cells - 370 hours Hades - 350 hours (hell of a great game, would be much higher if my hands hadn't gotten really bad eczema when I was getting in to speedrunning it which ended up with me having to not play controller based games for like 6 months rip) Monster Train - 313 hours (still rising) Borderlands 2 - 272 hours, another surprise 'cause honestly I barely remember playing this any more, guess it was a fun game back in the day, I know I used to do some multiplayer with friends so I expect that's where a lot of the time went. Enter the Gungeon - 230 hours Our Darker Purpose - 225 hours V Rising - 200 hours (I think some of these were afk) Celeste - 155 hours Darkest Dungeon - 150 hours Divinity: Original Sin 2 - 133 hours Into The Breach - 110 hours Baldur's Gate 3 - 76 hours and rising

His relationship with Lanfear is definitely going to make it seem a lot more justifiable for him to struggle to attack her when the time comes.

Regarding the power level of Channelers and its impact on warfare - Jordan was a Vietnam veteran and saw first hand some true horrors and the times that he shows the One Power being used in battle against actual people definitely reflect that experience and are amongst both the most graphic and the best pieces of writing he did in the entire series. I can't really think of any other fantasy series that made me feel the absolute horror of being a powerless footsoldier in a high magic setting, akin to going over the top in WW1 or storming the beaches of Normandy, running in to a barrage of grenades, automatic weapons and artillery fire with almost zero control over your own fate in the face of such deadly weapons. Obviously there's Dumai's Wells, but the battle in the middle of Path of Daggers where both sides end up completely broken also really stuck with me.

Balefire is a temporal weapon, it kills your target at an earlier point in time than when the Balefire hits them - it doesn't actually damage the soul or anything. The temporal effect prevents the Dark One from snagging the soul because it's gone and recycled already.