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Abathur's "hey, gimme your arm, I'll give it back later, IMPROVED"-bit is great. But yeah, also disappointed by Izsha's... humanness. I suppose you could defend it by saying that Kerrigan's brain is still mostly human, so to store human memories, she needs a human basis, so she infected a person to be her backup memory storage, and resultingly they still look somewhat human-like. Still kinda boring, though. Tenebrais posted:Abathur is great fun as a character, although the logic behind him never really sat right with me. The Overmind having a designer is a division of labour that doesn't really gel with the whole hivemind thing, to me. Shouldn't he and his cerebrates be capable of designing mutations themselves? I always got the impression that the Zerg of old kind of did a survival of the fittest thing, incorporate all the DNA from successful organisms they come across, throw them against each other and against hostile environments and see what comes out on top. Then again half the cerebrates from SC1 gave me the impression they couldn't "design" a way to get shoes on in the morning without taking your feet off first, so I could absolutely believe that the cerebrates largely just ended up as feuding middle managers while another group did the actual work that the cerebrates took credit for. <Overmind>: "I knew incorporating the DNA of all those retail managers would backfire somehow. But they promised that numbers would go up!"
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Jan 12, 2024 11:45
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aniviron posted:First time seeing either and I have to agree, Abathur rocks, Izsha seems lame. What's even the point of playing chitinous abominations if you are going to give them human faces. 'Cos it's Blizzard, where men are free to be whatever they want to be, and all women have to be sexy (though to be fair they're not the only ones). Seriously, look at the casts of any Blizzard game (Starcraft and Overwatch 1 being the worst offenders in my opinion)- the men range in size and shape, whereas all the women are conventionally attractive to some degree- hell, even Ana got herself a younger-looking skin. Also, isn't Ishza supposed to be some variant of infested Terran? I vaguely recall she was a medic or something.
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Jan 12, 2024 12:28
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This all reminds me of how infested kerrigan originally looked. See that? That is horrifying. Infested terrans in SC1 were no better.  They've taken out a lot of the sheer hosed-upedness of the design for what are, granted, more coherent but less repellent looks for them, minus the abominations.
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Jan 12, 2024 12:58
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Supposedly Izsha is supposed to be some terran woman from one of the starcraft books, but I don't know the details of that. (If it was written before or after heart of the swarm even) It is supposedly Kerrigan's doing nonetheless, so of course she doesn't have the good taste to make her look like Abathur or something.
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Jan 12, 2024 13:13
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NewMars posted:This all reminds me of how infested kerrigan originally looked. Come on, she looks like a bassist in prog rock band. They are scary, but not that terrifying. Kerrigan and the Abstract Swarm Queen tonight at Joeyray's pub.
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Jan 12, 2024 13:36
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I'm posting so I can join Co-Op but to those who mention Brutal on HotS seems especially difficult, that's because it is. GiantGrantGames found out that Blizzard added a 25 percent damage modifier dealt to your units for this campaign only, so Hellbats and Siege Tank splash OHKO Zerglings without upgrades and just making your army squishy. https://youtu.be/aqXJvKuKh-Y?si=3wmIOJVq_mmLJ96K DTaeKim fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Jan 12, 2024 |
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Jan 12, 2024 13:45
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DTaeKim posted:I'm posting so I can join Co-Op but to those who mention Brutal on HotS seems especially difficult, that's because it is. GiantGrantGames found out that Blizzard added a 25 percent damage modifier dealt to your units for this campaign only, so Hellbats and Siege Tank splash OHKO Zerglings without upgrades and just making your army squishy. So that's why you take the +10 HP. So you can survive A Seige Tank. 
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Jan 12, 2024 13:56
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And so we start meeting the Swarm's middle management. Izsha's comment about Kerrigan storing her plans in her makes me think that Kerrigan maybe knew that she was losing her mind after her infestation, so she tried creating a backup drive rather than just trusting her own memory that she suspected was no longer reliable. Abathur on the other hand... I like him as a concept, but I think how he's written around certain campaign mechanics is rather awkward.
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Jan 12, 2024 14:23
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Don't forget that Izsha also has a REALLY annoying and unpleasant voice and she. speaks. so. slow. and. never. shuts. up. Abathur has a cool voice, but he really is one dimensional and doesn't do anything beyond narrating when you "evolve" a unit. I really don't get the appeal or why people think he is great. Other than perhaps when compared to how poor the other characters are.
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Jan 12, 2024 14:26
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Poil posted:Abathur has a cool voice, but he really is one dimensional and doesn't do anything beyond narrating when you "evolve" a unit. I really don't get the appeal or why people think he is great. Other than perhaps when compared to how poor the other characters are. Abathur has something in common with the character next campaign everyone is looking forward to - he gives no shits about what is going on in the plot, and doesn't like or care about any of the other characters. He's all about his own interests and that's it. It's pretty refreshing once, as a player, you have also stopped giving a poo poo about the plot or characters.
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Jan 12, 2024 14:38
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Tenebrais posted:Abathur is great fun as a character, although the logic behind him never really sat right with me. The Overmind having a designer is a division of labour that doesn't really gel with the whole hivemind thing, to me. Shouldn't he and his cerebrates be capable of designing mutations themselves? It's been pretty clear right from the beginning that Blizzard never had a particularly strong understanding of what a hive mind is, as a science fiction concept. Specifically, a hive mind doesn't have even the concept of individual identity; a zergling couldn't be a pet, it's like one of the cells in your hand and has as much individual volition and overall functional and moral consideration as one. In a hive mind, every participant is just one physical part of a single animating intelligence. Even the cerebrates don't make sense in that way, although you can kind of sort of justify them as sub-processing units that handle some of the burden since there are an awful lot of zerg. That aspect of things isn't going to improve, so it's better to just repeat to yourself that it's just a game, as it were, and enjoy Abathur hamming it up.
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Jan 12, 2024 14:49
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I guess I am the only person who started rolling his eyes at Abathur's speech patterns after 2/3 of the game? About zergling mutation: until the first evolution mission, move speed is great choice. After it, the attack speed rules. Xarn fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Jan 12, 2024 |
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Jan 12, 2024 14:49
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Xarn posted:I guess I am the only person who started rolling his eyes at Abathur's speech patterns after 2/3 of the game? Nope, I can't stand Abathur and his annoying voice. Then again I can't stand Izsha either 
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Jan 12, 2024 14:55
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Abathur is the greatest. 
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Jan 12, 2024 15:13
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idonotlikepeas posted:It's been pretty clear right from the beginning that Blizzard never had a particularly strong understanding of what a hive mind is, as a science fiction concept. Specifically, a hive mind doesn't have even the concept of individual identity; a zergling couldn't be a pet, it's like one of the cells in your hand and has as much individual volition and overall functional and moral consideration as one. In a hive mind, every participant is just one physical part of a single animating intelligence. Even the cerebrates don't make sense in that way, although you can kind of sort of justify them as sub-processing units that handle some of the burden since there are an awful lot of zerg. Yeah part of the Zerg backstory in SC1 is "The Zerg were a hivemind but then the Overmind found some Khaydarin crystals and Xel'Naga research that let them each be sentient individuals while still being a hivemind." Which I'm guessing was mostly just a conceit to let them have things like characterization and bickering in the Zerg campaign but in practice the Zerg "hivemind" is actually basically just the Khala.
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Jan 12, 2024 15:52
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They could have done it without space crystals by making it that when the zerg are on different planets the hivemind has to split because it can't maintain real-time thinking over interstellar distances, and when they come back together they don't merge cleanly and both selves feel like they're the "real" one
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Jan 12, 2024 16:22
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Or just simply “there’s a hard (albeit high) cap on how much Zerg the Overmind/Cerebrates/Kerrigan/Queens can individually control before they risk being turned into almighty idiots from the sheer strain of that much micromanagement”.
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Jan 12, 2024 17:13
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It's 200
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Jan 12, 2024 17:28
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Szarrukin posted:I remember one of devs mentioning that single WoW mount earned them more money than entire SC2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZru-6M8BY
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Jan 12, 2024 18:14
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They're basically nodes in the hive much like computers are nodes in the internet. You can decentralize processing across the mass but certain patterns can emerge (or be imposed) that become distinct from the whole, so cerebrates and the Overmind were like server farms or supercomputers dedicated to managing what are otherwise sets of decentralized processes. Abathur's just a dedicated network for testing
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Jan 12, 2024 18:26
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I'm also on Team Metabolic Boost for the default upgrade. Adrenal Glands is good too and I could see switching to it in some cases but for the most part movement speed is more important. Though it can also depend a bit on evolution. Mostly though I'm just salty that Adrenal Glands feels so much less impressive than in SC1.
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Jan 12, 2024 19:00
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IIRC zerglings were deliberately nerfed compared to their SC1 version due to the fact that you could now easily order 100+ of them around.
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Jan 12, 2024 19:16
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Nostalgamus posted:IIRC zerglings were deliberately nerfed compared to their SC1 version due to the fact that you could now easily order 100+ of them around. The other story I've heard is that Blizzard wanted more variety in zerg comps than just lings -> mutas with an optional defiler or queen or whatever if you're feeling spicy.
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Jan 12, 2024 19:23
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Cythereal posted:The other story I've heard is that Blizzard wanted more variety in zerg comps than just lings -> mutas with an optional defiler or queen or whatever if you're feeling spicy. Wait, is that actually the meta for SC1? Man, I thought I was just bad at zerg.
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Jan 12, 2024 20:34
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Felinoid posted:Wait, is that actually the meta for SC1? Man, I thought I was just bad at zerg. It is in ZvZ and ZvT. ZvP usually involves a lot of hydras. You'll see folks go hydra/lurker/defiler in ZvT or go muta in ZvP sometimes. Late game in the non-mirror matchups you might also see Ultralisks. ZvZ is just ling/muta all the time, though. It's extremely rare for the mirror matchup to tech out of that stage and it's always awesome when it does.
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Jan 12, 2024 20:45
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Tenebrais posted:Now, Kerrigan needing a designer, that makes a bit more sense. She's still got human limitations to work around and doesn't have an inborn understanding of DNA. I would be fully behind the idea if Abathur had been an old cerebrate that Kerrigan kept alive to do the grunt work of gene sequencing for her. The Leviathan brood (yellow faction) in SC1 was the only one that didn't have a Cerebrate named in the manual. We can headcanon Abathur as that guy, why not. What I have more difficulty with is why iszcha has a face at all. Cerebrates didn't need faces. Faces are inefficient design. Unless kerrigan is implied to have done that on purpose just to have some kind of face to talk to, which would have been an interesting humanizing touch on her if the writers had thought about it at all. Points if the face was clearly modelled on a terran adjutant.
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Jan 12, 2024 22:06
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Yeah that's what I assumed, even as the Queen of Blade Kerrigan had enough human left in her to prefer having a face to talk to, a human-looking face for her "adjutant".
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Jan 12, 2024 22:10
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In SC1 I just thought of it as the Overmind being more effective at controlling cerebrates which made almost all of them self-sufficient the moment it vanished.
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Jan 12, 2024 22:21
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JohnKilltrane posted:I'm also on Team Metabolic Boost for the default upgrade. Adrenal Glands is good too and I could see switching to it in some cases but for the most part movement speed is more important. Though it can also depend a bit on evolution. Given that the attacks in campaign are usually telegraphed, I don't find myself needing ling speed for repositioning. And to get them on target, well, one of the evolutions solves that in much more fun way
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Jan 12, 2024 22:47
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Kaldir 1: Harvest of Screams Video: Harvest of Screams     It will push temperatures down so fast that almost all thermal energy will be lost.   Hey, do you like essence? Because Heart of the Swarm really loves that word. Holy poo poo it loves essence. Essence Count: 2 Plus one since Abathur said it during the intermission. For funsies, try and guess how many times the word essence will be said in Heart! Winner gets nothing but a warm fuzzy feeling!  Now, you may have noticed that Kerrigan has ditched her rifle. I guess ammo is hard to come by when you're running the Swarm.  So Kerrigan's swapped out for something a bit more renewable. It has the same stats as the rifle. Hell, this version of Kerrigan even has a completely different set of voice lines compared to before! With such lovely phrases like "this world is mine," "the Swarm hungers," and "take no prisoners."  Essence Count: 3 My Zerglings are really loving fast now. Even a stimmed Marine only has around 3.3 movement speed!  But you know the drill by now.  Quick no-build segment for the new unit. The Roach, as we've seen in Wings, is a ranged unit that trades the damage and anti-air of a Hydralisk for sheer bulk. It also has the ability to rapidly heal when burrowed, making it easy to patch up between fights. With 4 range, it'll neatly sit right in front of Swarm Queens and keep them safe.  There are some angry Ursadons roaming around.  However: Kerrigan.   Kerrigan's new attack is, to go with her ability to Force Choke people, honest-to-god Force Lightning.   I just have to find an ursadon matriarch. Two frozen Roaches, with a massive ice wall just past them.  As soon as I approach, everyone freezes solid.   Essence count: 4  Essence count: 5  When the Ursadons get close, everyone breaks free.  It's an easy fight.  Essence count: 6 Excellent. And now I can sense Nafash's hive cluster nearby... And just up ahead is a frozen hive cluster.    Thankfully, Abathur is a god at fiddling with essence and can instantly slap some Ursadon antifreeze into Nafash's brood.    Kerrigan doesn't even try to talk her way out of this. In her defense, Jim probably told her about what happened with Raszagal, and I don't think the protoss would ever believe that she won't try anything funny after that.  This is the first time we've heard of it, but the Golden Armada has been what the protoss have been getting up to between games. Aiur is still covered in feral zerg left behind by the Overmind, so they've been building a massive army to reclaim their planet by hand.  They are, my queen. In Wings, all but one of the TvP missions were against the Tal'darim, which were pretty much tailor made to be irrelevant baddies for the player to beat down. Hell, even the one mission against the regular protoss had no hard feelings between Jim and Selendis!  Kerrigan is not facing the Tal'darim. Kerrigan is facing a completely normal group of protoss and is going to kill every last one of them. It's fine, since Kerrigan can't go kill Mengsk if the protoss are hunting her! Welcome to Heart of the Swarm.  Essence count: 7 I do like an efficient Swarm. If I have a chance, I'll hunt down some matriarchs. There's no time pressure on this mission. They'll never get that message out.  Protoss approaching the hive cluster!They aren't even trying to stop Kerrigan, just slow her down. Even against what little zerg Kerrigan has on hand, they're entirely dependant on getting Shakuras involved if they want to survive.  Still, the very first attack wave is 10 Zealots, which is far more than I can cleanly handle with my starting army.  Thankfully, the mission's gimmick kicks in shortly after they start attacking. The map will get hit by a flash freeze every so often, and since I now have the Ursadon essence I can move around freely while every protoss on the map freezes. Also it dings the vision range of all my units, even if it doesn't really impact me all that much.  So I can go poke at the first Spire while my Spine Crawler finishes off these utterly defenseless Zealots.  Admittedly, I can't really do much with six Roaches.  But I can at least chip away at it.  After a flash freeze ends, there's a two minute delay before the next.  So I focus on getting my base up and running.  There's always one attack wave during these times.  It's a bit like Outbreak, really. Push out when the enemy can't fight back, then defend once they can retaliate.  A couple of Zerglings makes the rest of this base go down fast.  The Spires will warp in a few units if you attack them while they're unfrozen.  But it's nothing I can't handle, and the expansion is open.  Might as well grab this bonus while I'm in the area.  Or not.  Thank god for that movement speed upgrade!  Back to what I was doing.   Essence count: 8 On top of bonus levels for Kerrigan, the extra essence will reduce the vision penalty during a freeze.  Every now and then a group of Ursadons will hit my base during a flash freeze. Just to make sure I put something into static defense.  But I have enough time after that to get started on the next Spire.  Defend.   Attack.  Defend.   Attack.  At this point I have so many bodies I can push in before the next freeze.  Letting me grab the last bonus before it starts.  Essence count: 9   And as soon as the next freeze hits I click on the last Spire and win.  Which is good, since this base would not be fun to fight through normally. Colossi and High Templar shred Zerglings, Immortals and Void Rays punch through Roaches, and the only units I have that can hit air are Kerrigan and the Swarm Queens.  And done.   The protoss expedition will be unable to contact Shakuras.   Harvest of Screams - Complete the "Harvest of Screams" mission in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Ice Breaker - Destroy 20 unfrozen enemy structures in the “Harvest of Screams” mission. Storm Chaser - Complete the “Harvest of Screams” mission in less than 15 minutes on Normal difficulty. Psi-Lence is Golden - Complete all objectives in less than 12 minutes in the "Harvest of Screams" mission on Hard difficulty. Cold Rush - Complete the "Harvest of Screams" mission in less than 9 minutes on Normal difficulty. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Feb 6, 2024 |
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Jan 13, 2024 05:10
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Izsha, are we the baddies?
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Jan 13, 2024 06:04
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Warmachine posted:Izsha, are we the baddies? Essentially, yes.
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Jan 13, 2024 06:13
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No mention of the dialogue that shows up when you get close to Nafash's body? You can even see it in the screenshot above quote:But I have enough time after that to get started on the next Spire.
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Jan 13, 2024 06:35
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My Essence Guess is 255.
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Jan 13, 2024 06:41
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I'm guessing 420
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Jan 13, 2024 06:50
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69
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Jan 13, 2024 06:51
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JackSplater posted:No mention of the dialogue that shows up when you get close to Nafash's body? You can even see it in the screenshot above I'll be honest, I didn't even notice her and no lines popped up.
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Jan 13, 2024 06:58
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 Now I don't avoid the Zerg, Matt. But I do deny them my essence!
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Jan 13, 2024 07:01
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How significant is Kerrigan gaining a level?
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Jan 13, 2024 07:10
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Gonna go with a nice round 300 Essences
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Jan 13, 2024 07:22
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