u/memerminecraft

I've decided to make a short series out of this.

A number of Dwarves appreciated my Scout Lighting post yesterday, so I figured the next obvious candidate was the unique Gunner Shield. This one's a little more straightforward & serious.

When trying to prevent one's own immediate death by Glyphid, each class has a series of options. I've ranked them by effectiveness for each class.

Scout:

1. Grapple away

2. CC with grenade

3. CC with secondary

4. Kill

Driller:

1. Stun with drills

2. Kill

3. Tunnel away

Engineer:

1. Kill

2. Platform away

Gunner:

1. Shield

2. Kill

3. CC with weapon

4. CC with grenade

Please leave any additional notes in the comments. Obviously, some of these are generalized because they depend on your exact build. Specific things like the C4's stun and Engi's L.U.R.E. are specific kit picks you can also use that sit outside these categories.

Gunner's shield is the only purely defensive tool in the game. Engi's platform is the one other tool I would consider usable for "defense," but it mainly serves as a mobility tool.

Gunner's shield is pretty widely encompassing. It blocks all projectiles and causes every enemy in the game to "fear" its radius. However, a few things can get through. AoE attacks (explosion/oppressor rocks) and certain fast-moving enemies can hit dwarves inside a shield, such as Patrol Drones and Shellbacks.

Most commonly, I see the shield used to assist in reviving downed teammates. It becomes especially useful when multiple downed teammates are close together, because a single shield lasts long enough to get two or even all three of them up. It works especially well when a newly revived teammate helps revive remaining dwarves.

Occasionally I'll see a gunner use a shield (especially on 3/4 shield ammo) to protect themselves while resupplying. But many graybeards will agree that the best use of a shield is to *prevent* downs during difficult fights (which is incidentally its only real use in solo).

As for the Shield upgrades - I never really understood the utility of the shield cool down upgrades. Shields are so useful that they're more commonly limited by ammo than recharge speed. I much prefer the duration & radius upgrades, which improve the utility of individual charges.

Gunners, I call upon you! Tell me what you think!

Nose of the World

The Mediocre Hunt

Nae'Blis Reborn

The Shadow Still Rising

The Fires of Hell

Great Lord of the Dark

Crown of Serrated Swords

The Highway of Daggers

Winter's Liver

Singular Road of Twilight

Old Fall

Knife of Nightmares

The Storm Is Here

Pits of Midnight

A Memory of Blight

I primarily play Scout.

As my beard has grayed, I've learned when to use my flare gun. The answer: almost always.

Yet still appears the occasional "Light" message in the chat, even when:

1. I am far away and/or preoccupied

2. I am conserving flare ammo

3. There is no active swarm and high-up places have already been cleared

In any of these cases, a dwarf's own flares must suffice for the time being. It especially baffles me when a fellow miner asks me to light up a place to look for things that will be my job to reach anyway; I will get there when I get there.

As I have played each class a fair amount, my understanding of the job descriptions of each class are as follows:

Driller:

1. Swarm clear

2. Drill for objectives

3. Drill back to pod

4. Drill to downed teammates during swarm

5. C4 when convenient

Engineer:

1. Kill anything that gets close

2. Point defense

3. Seal entry points

4. Platform under resources

Gunner:

1. Kill everything

2. Zipline for swarms and objectives

3. Shield to protect or revive during swarms

Scout:

1. Kill HVTs

2. Kill stationaries

3. Kite swarms

4. Collect resources

5. Complete secondary objectives

6. Find events

7. Trigger dangers

8. CC during swarms

9. Revive downed teammates in hard to reach places

10. Get to drop pod first to secure victory

11. Light the cave

Suffice it to say there are a number of things a scout must do in addition to lighting the cave. If you are unfamiliar with the class, be judicious with your flare requests. You can use your laser pointer to note the location of Scout before making a lighting inquiry.

Thank you for coming to my TED (Terraforming, Extraction, and Dwarves) Talk.

If all dwarves in the drop pod die before all dwarves outside the drop pod die, you can still lose the mission while in the drop pod!

This seems unfair.

I was thinking how much fun it would be to see Gus be the one to embrace the deception. And this episode delivered it.

The whole premise is a delightful classic. They even give Gus the Psych-ish flashbacks!

...how did Shawn get like 50 different jobs before Psych?

I don't know what it is, but something about the way he keeps that ridiculous strained expression for half the episode while still fully playing Gus is absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible facial control.

I'm not a BBB, so under normal circumstances I can trust that my bones will hold strong.

However, considering that doctors possess black magic and can break the unbreakable, what happens if a doctor, enraged, hits me with a crowbar? Should I be worried that they'll use their black magic or is that tied to their medical equipment?

**I'm about to heavily defend the official ending right now so if you don't want to see that, please avert your eyes.**

I've seen so many people hating on the ending since... Well, since it happened. I never understood that. I thought it properly wrapped up the characters' stories. It was as sad and as wonderful as life is both sad and wonderful.

Then I heard about this "alternate ending" on YouTube. I've heard people say they prefer this ending. And the other day, I finally got around to watching it.

And all I thought was... Really? That's it? Cut out the last few major beats that tie the ending into the themes and characters of the preceding NINE SEASONS OF THE SHOW?

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. It felt so hollow. Like an obligatory "farewell" rather than a proper conclusion.

One major complaint I see is about Tracy's death. Sure, I'd prefer the "alternate" ending if the characters were real people I knew. But it's not! They aren't real! So why does anyone believe removing Tracy's death somehow improves the story?

Another major complaint I see is about the Robin thing; that it doesn't make sense for Ted to bring the Blue French Horn back to Robin in the end. But one of the major themes of the show is the strangeness of life, and how long it can take to become the person you need to be.

Ted realized that Robin wanted different things from life than he did, so he had to let her go. At the time, he couldn't have possibly imagined the resulting world that brought about a situation where life had *already happened*, and where he & Robin actually made sense again. The only way to get there is for something awful to happen (death/divorce) and of course he wasn't expecting that.

I don't know. I can't shake that feeling.

**To be clear, I'm not defending the fact that they stretched half of season 9 across a span of like two days of a wedding. I do think that was mostly a poor choice. I mean the actual ending itself.**