u/aahdin

If you check https://redrift.gg/meta and look at pairs of heroes you'll see that in redrift the lovers Sal & Pimenta are

A) One of the most picked duos in the game (5th highest)

B) With one of the highest act 1 clear rates of any duo (81%)

C) With the LOWEST full clear rate of any highly picked duo (38%)

So, what's going on?

Well, I believe it has all got to do with the lovers trait and how people are playing it wrong. On its face the trait seems simple, Pimenta gives Sal a bunch of attack speed, Sal gives Pimenta a bunch of armor, and then you scale into the lategame and crush the final boss together. Right?

Wrong, you get wrecked at the final boss because your damage is bad and despite 700 armor you aren't that tanky. What gives?

Well, to put it simply Sal and Pimenta's B tier choices are both really important, and giving a bunch of stats to a bad unit missing a B tier spec isn't going to win you the game. That said, with the lover buffs AND a real B tier spec either one is capable of hard carrying a run... on their own.

So, the tragic strategy -

Act 1 - Pick up Sal & Pimenta, whichever one gets upgraded to B tier first gets the Lover. Whichever is upgraded second gets either Spicy or Brisk.

Act 2 - Scale for as long as you can, and then about half way through sell the lover for a better tank/dps. Ignore Pimenta's cries as she watches 300 attack speed Sal run off with Rowan "the friend".

Tips for lover scaled Pimenta:

Once Pimenta has 300+ armor along with spicy (duelist) she is the best lifesteal tank in the game. She doesn't really need to worry about regular damage, she just needs to lifesteal enough to out-heal poison and burn, which is easy to do.

Prioritize attack speed, lifesteal, and relics that provide debuffs. Plague bauble is incredible, duelist's foil (AS + Omnivamp + extra AS every 15 autos) is BIS on her. In general you don't need to worry too much about defensive items, health is nice but you can get more effective health from omnivamp so I think it's best to just focus on attack speed and omnivamp (even the 5 gold AS/omni item is pretty good!)

A lover scaled Pimenta is the best solo unit in the game, with items and a debuff relic she can pretty consistently solo challenges, and even the final boss - her damage is really good and she will usually be your top DPS.

She isn't super team reliant, but duelists that give her AS buff are nice, so are mystics that can give her more effective health, or anyone who can apply debuffs if you miss a debuff relic. Respeccing your lover Sal into a breezy Sal also makes her a great partner late game.

Tips for lover scaled Sal:

Some people like the Breezy (duelist), which is more popular right now, but trying both out I'm pretty sure the Brisk (warrior) is much stronger with this strat. With items and lover scaling a Brisk Sal will kill bosses and rooms stupidly fast, well before Breezy Sal can scale up.

Brisk Sal scales very well with pretty much every offensive stat - Magic, AD, AS, crit, and mana are all great on her, so are on-hit effects! IMO the single best item is Wizard's focus for the starting mana, AP and crit. After that I like Mage's wand for starting mana and scaling AP (if her bonus attacks kill it scales wand), but spellblade and polymath prism and siphoning dagger and like 10 other items are all great on her as well.

She works with a lot of frontliners, but one of the best IMO is intrepid Kai - she's great at applying the on hit armor debuff and can do enough damage to down bosses/rooms before intrepid Kai's initial rush shield is up. Anyone who can buff her even further, like backup Tilly, is also great.

I've seen a few dozen posts on the JB trade today but I haven't seen this discussed much. The Celtics have an absolute bargain bin roster - I'm pretty sure if all these guys went into free agency tomorrow they'd be paid 2-3x as much collectively. They each played over 1000 minutes last year for the Celtics.

Jaylen Brown alone is making $65m guaranteed in 2029, even if you don't extend him. Most of these guys are up for new contracts before then, and PG expiring a year sooner is actually a pretty big deal since that's when Pritchard is up.

I'm guessing that this was a pretty major factor in the trade - with Jaylen Brown on the books it seems very difficult to keep the team together. Especially if you extend him it becomes practically impossible, and if you don't extend him that comes with its own boat load of problems.

Hey it's sometimes annoying to find at rim percentage stats, so I decided to look them up for players I've seen discussed for us in this draft. Posting partially for my own reference so I don't need to look it up by team again.

Name	at rim %	% assisted	3p%	% assisted	pts/36	age
Aday Mara	81	64	30	100	18.6	21.2
Yaxel Lendeborg	73	51	37	84	18.0	23.7
Hannes Steinback	71	60	34	94	19.3	20.1
Cam Carr	68	59	38	70	20.2	21.5
LaBaron Philon	66	15	40	58	25.6	20.6
Mikel Brown	65	28	34	51	22.4	20.2
Brayden Burries	65	36	39	74	19.4	20.8
Ebuka Okorie	56	13	35	41	23.8	19.2
Nate Ament	52	46	33	89	20.2	19.6

Shooting stats from https://barttorvik.com/playerpbp.php?sort=1&year=2026&conlimit=&tvalue=Alabama&minrim=0&min2=0&min3=0&tot=0&rev=0

Age/ppg from https://www.tankathon.com/big-board

Big standout to me is Philon, shooting 66% at the rim with 85% of his shots being self created is pretty impressive. Also the best from 3 and the highest volume. Mara's at rim % is also really impressive, and Carr impressed me there too but seems like more of a play finisher than a creator. Okorie is also doing a lot despite being the youngest player on the list.

I didn't really follow the 2018 draft at the time, but after the finals I went back through to get an idea of how to maybe spot a "diamond in the rough" like Brunson, superstars who fell to the 2nd round are always kinda interesting for retrospectives.

But with Brunson... he's got one of the longest lists of college awards I've seen. Half a dozen player of the year's, 2 titles,19 ppg on efficient shooting while running one of the best ever college offenses. Pretty much the consensus best player in college the year he was drafted, and known for an amazing work ethic/attitude/motor.

I guess he was a junior, but even then Obi Toppin went top 10 the next year despite being a year and a half older. And even in Brunson's same class he went below plenty of sophomores who were only a few months younger than him - Donte had a way smaller role in nova and is only 5 months younger but went 17th! Plus with Brunson it's not like his freshman/junior years were bad.

I know it's kinda cheating to look at these drafts in retrospect like this, but with how great he was in college I am wondering how on earth he went 5 spots below Jacob Evans - is being 9 months younger and an inch taller but mid really more important than being the best player in college?

So my question for people who follow the draft more than I do - is it that common for players who do that well in college and have no motivation problems to be useless in the NBA? Was it really reasonable for him to go that low? With the 33rd pick most guys don't ever become NBA rotation players so I have to imagine the majority of scouts didn't think he would even play in the NBA, let alone have any kind of star upside.

It's awesome to see Mike Brown killing it as head coach. Sacramento is an absolute terrorist organization I'm happy they fired him and he got out of there.