VGDP does not need buffs. 43% WR? That is all of you guys using ban hammer.
Genuinely not trying to start anything here, and I'll concede the first point up front: yeah, this game can be arbitrary sometimes. Nobody's arguing otherwise.
But I want to push back on where this conversation has landed. Do we honestly believe it's an accident that The Big Test requires dashes? That doesn't read like an oversight to me — it reads like a deliberate cost attached to a deliberate payoff. Final Exam brings the most value on the board, and the dash requirement is the price of admission for it. If it were free, it wouldn't be a decision.
My honest read on why this keeps getting relitigated: a lot of the folks holding the other line are OG-release players who got very comfortable cheesing with VGDP back when Ban Hammer was busted. And that made total sense at the time — I'm not knocking anyone for playing the strongest option in front of them. But the conditions that made it correct aren't the conditions we're in now, and the newer players coming up are absorbing it as received wisdom because it's coming from the people they trust most.
When I actually read through the arguments in this thread, ~99% of them reduce to two scenarios: Ban Hammer on the backline, or holding for a Pun ult.
- IW and CnD in the fight? Ban Hammer.
- Pun might ult mid-teamfight? Great? now you've held it for two? 😂
Both are real situations. Neither is the default state of a match. Building your entire approach around the exception is how you end up with a habit that only cashes out some of the time, and how you end up teaching that habit to people who don't yet have the reps to know when it doesn't apply.
43% WR on VGDP? Thats you guys lmao not the hela team up giving you issues