Chương 156: Chapter 155: Researching Myself

Meno woke to somebody pounding on his suite door while his phone rang beside the bed, and the two sounds combined into something annoying enough to drag him out of sleep whether he wanted to wake up or not. He reached blindly for the phone first, missed it, found it under the edge of a pillow on the second attempt, and squinted at the screen until the numbers stopped looking like the sun. Early Friday afternoon.

Meno dragged himself upright, discovered his legs had mostly forgiven him for the capsule session, then stumbled through the suite and opened the door. Vivi was standing outside with several shopping bags over one arm.

"Finally." She pushed past him before he could invite her in.

"You have to get ready and depart for Skyline in a few hours. Getting the plane wasn't simple. His assistant was extremely unhelpful, but I got through to her after the third attempt. I also let Rina know when to get ready because I knew you were in the zone."

"Good." Vivi pulled an entire pile of clothing from one of the bags and shoved it into his arms. Meno blinked down at it.

"What are these?"

"Clothes, obviously. You barely have anything here, and you have to be stylish tonight. You can't show up with Rina wearing a hoodie and shorts, and a full suit is a bit much." There were dark pants, a fitted shirt, some kind of light jacket, and several other things Meno could not immediately identify as necessary.

"Ah, I love you, Vivi." The words left his mouth before his brain was awake enough to supervise them. A flash of old conversational disaster hit him hard enough that he froze with the clothes still bundled against his chest. Vivi was smiling, orange hair catching the light from the windows while the small piercing in her nose twinkled brightly enough to feel accusatory. Meno corrected himself immediately.

"I mean, not like that. You know. You're very useful." Vivi laughed.

"I get it, boss. Stop blabbering and try to get your brain working. Also, don't think of tonight only as a date with Rina. It's a very good networking opportunity. The event is going to be filled with representatives from major brands, so I'm coming too." Meno narrowed his eyes.

"You're third-wheeling?"

"I'll be invisible."

"Sure. Sure." He put the clothes down on the couch before he wrinkled something and Vivi found another reason to attack him.

"I'm getting food first, then I need to do some research."

"Go ahead. Oh, and the Furnon picture you sent me for merch was fantastic. We've already sold twelve thousand shirts, and I only put them on your website this morning." Meno had already started toward the door, but that stopped him.

"That many?"

"Yes."

"Good, I guess." Vivi followed him a few steps before adding, "Also, hosting that Scuzzy guy might not have been your best call. He's a major asshole with zero regard for anyone. About as far from sponsor-friendly as you can get."

"Good. I need somebody like that to balance my family-friendly image." Meno opened the door.

"If sponsors want my views, they're going to have to pay up anyway."

"Family what? I hope you're joking." Meno left before he had to defend the statement. The Pearl's restaurant supplied the important part of his recovery: pizza followed by chilled blueberry juice. Meno ate fast, washed down the last greasy slice, then headed back to the suite with his brain finally functioning well enough to become annoyed by a different problem. He knew embarrassingly little about what other classes actually did.

Individual fights taught him mechanics quickly, but class names had become increasingly ridiculous. He could recognize obvious things like Cryo Channeler Tempest after fighting one, but the leaderboard was now filled with combinations of base classes, variants, and evolutions he had mostly dismissed as other people's problems. With the Streamline top-50 event only hours away, this was probably his best opportunity to fix that. He sat at the computer and discovered Scuzzy's stream was already offline.

That was strange. Meno had handed the guy millions of viewers when he logged off, and Scuzzy did not seem like the kind of person who would voluntarily stop exploiting that advantage until somebody physically removed him from the capsule. Meno considered checking what happened, then decided that sounded like somebody else's problem. Instead, he opened the official Veyrath leaderboard, pulled up the class wiki beside it, then reluctantly opened Crownfall's website in a third window.

He would never admit it publicly, but Crownfall's class database was generally more trustworthy than a random forum post written by somebody whose evidence consisted of losing one duel. The leaderboard started exactly where he expected. [1-89] PrayerBeadGod | Swing Master Tyrant EX | GC | GraveMistake [2-85] Karmabeast | Venom Tormentor Umbral | GC | GraveMistake Even after sleeping for most of the day, they still held first and second.

Forty hours in Layer 4 had bought enough separation that nobody had caught them yet. Meno clicked his own class immediately, not because he needed information, but because he wanted to know what Crownfall had written. He skimmed the summary aloud.

"Low data, extremely gear dependent, clunky gimmick skills, overtuned, not recommended." Vivi looked over from where she had started reorganizing something on the table.

"What are you doing?"

"Researching. Currently myself."

"Okay. You know I'm eventually dragging you away from that screen." Meno tuned her out. The write-up was kind of fair, except they had clearly misspelled cool as clunky. Also, calling Tyrant gimmicky while Kestrel played a class entirely based around exploding mirrors to fork arrows was objectively insane. Combining weapons was normal. Kestrel was the gimmick. He refused to read the ordinary Swing Master wiki page because it would undoubtedly contain similar misinformation and clicked Karmabeast instead.

Venom Tormentor Umbral made much more sense once the terms were separated. Tormentor was the control rogue branch instead of the straight damage one, Venom leaned into debuffs and poison without making damage-over-time the whole identity, and Umbral stacked more crowd control and mobility on top. That matched everything Karmabeast did, which meant the flat brain had somehow built something coherent by accident. Meno moved down.

[3-82] Pike | Terra Channeler Tempest | RB | Highbanner [4-82] Moon | Mercy Herald Devout | RB | Silverwake [5-81] Oxy | Blood Juggernaut Profane | GC | No Guild His attention stopped on rank 5. Oxy had left GraveMistake. Meno leaned slightly closer to the screen, as if the guild field might change back if he looked at it from the right angle. It did not. He still did not like that she had accepted equipment in exchange for being used as bait during Pike's quest-copying plan, but leaving the guild felt unnecessary.

Maybe she was joining Silverwake or Highbanner now. Maybe she just wanted to be guildless for a while. Whatever. He was not going to message her about it. Pike, Moon, and Oxy had at least kept the leveling advantage they built while Meno slept, which meant their Fractera route was working. Northwatch and Sereth were nowhere near the top 5 anymore, so Meno assumed they had either been sentenced to permanent bucket duty or logged out for officer work. The class descriptions mostly confirmed the fight.

Channeler was a slower, Mana-heavy mage archetype built around sustained or growing casts, which explained Pike turning basketball-sized rocks into flying houses. Terra meant Earth, obviously, while Tempest accelerated Attack and Cast Speed. Meno suspected it also helped resource recovery somehow, because Pike had sustained that ridiculous flight-and-boulder routine for far longer than he should have. Moon was easier. Herald was the standard priest-healer archetype, while Mercy pushed harder into direct healing.

Devout boosted overall healing and support auras, although Crownfall described the aura side as only decent outside summoner-heavy setups. Oxy's build was much more aggressive. Juggernaut was the warrior-side tank archetype, less purely defensive than Bulwark or Anchor, while Blood centered on HP manipulation. Profane doubled down through self-damage conversion, offensive benefits from sacrificing HP, and effects that restored health afterward. That explained the red explosion. Meno continued.

[6-80] BrineSaint | Dawn Bastion Paragon | RB | BrineTime"BrineTime," Meno said.

"Not bad." BrineSaint had apparently created a guild while Meno was sleeping. Putting your own name in the guild name felt slightly weird, but for a streamer guild it made sense. Meno could have made PrayerMistake, BeadTime, or something equally terrible, so GraveMistake was clearly superior. Bastion was the paladin tank branch, and it came in three main flavors: Dawn, Dusk, and Twilight.

Dawn rewarded successful defense by sending damage back at the attacker, so the harder the tank got hit, the worse the block became for everyone else. Paragon was a safe, high-value evolution built around cooldown reduction and better uptime. Crownfall called it the best-value choice for anyone mixing defense and offense, though not the strongest option for either one alone, which Meno translated to boring but good. Then came rank 7.

[7-80] Kestrel | Prism Detonator Eternal | SC | Crownfall Meno studied the class description carefully.

"Prism Detonator apparently means idiot." Vivi did not look over.

"And Eternal," Meno continued, "usually means maximum damage among the standard evolutions, balanced by the small downside that one mistake gets you killed. For Kestrel, though, I think it means eternal idiot."

"Very useful research."

"Thank you." He moved on before Crownfall's site could sense the disrespect and revoke access. [8-79] Thorn | War Anchor Dominion | RB | Stormhold [9-77] VantaRush | Tempo Blade Oracle | RB | HypeForge Meno already knew more than enough about Thorn's War Anchor Dominion after the Titan Trial, so VantaRush was more interesting. Blade was the direct damage rogue, unlike Tormentor, which leaned into control. Tempo added combo manipulation, rewarding planned attack sequences instead of button mashing.

That paired surprisingly well with Oracle, an evolution that shoved a lot of a build's damage into short burst windows. Oracle lost to Eternal in sustained DPS on paper, but its burst could spike much higher if the player executed properly. Crownfall rated it especially well for dungeons because deleting a dangerous phase early often mattered more than winning some long perfect-damage graph. That made sense. [10-77] Honeygrave | Rot Savant Astral | SC | HoneyPot Honeygrave had fixed his name.

Meno wondered for a second whether something had happened with Merry, then noticed the new HoneyPot guild and decided he would probably find the answer farther down the ladder anyway. Rot Savant was familiar: damage-over-time priest, lots of decay. Astral was more interesting, converting AOE power into single-target performance, increasing range, and improving mobility skills with phasing.

Honeygrave had also created a guild, which made two streamer-heavy guilds appearing overnight and suggested people were planning to recruit at the Streamline party. Meno did not care enough to investigate yet. Ranks 11 through 14 gave him a much more useful surprise.

[11-77] Burst | Hymn Architect Paragon | RB | BrineTime [12-77] Fletch | Freezing Deadeye Oracle | RB | BrineTime [13-77] Nock | Conflux Detonator Oracle | RB | BrineTime [14-77] Hush | Voltaic Deadeye Oracle | RB | BrineTime BrineSaint's entire party had climbed far higher than Meno expected. They had definitely found a real Fractera farm. Maybe not Layer 4, because BrineSaint preferred stable routes, but Layer 3 could still pay if they had found the right area.

Or maybe they had used the map Meno leaked and found a dungeon. He had revealed the entire Layer 4 map and somehow forgotten to check whether it contained dungeon markers. There had to be at least one, because a zone that large without a dungeon would be stupid. The party composition was built for it too. Architect was the support priest branch, giving up direct healing and personal damage to make everyone else stronger.

Hymn specialized in big channeled buffs, and Paragon's cooldown reduction would let Burst rotate those effects more often. Then BrineSaint had stacked three Oracle archers behind it. Meno finally understood why Oracle kept appearing in organized groups. Deadeye was the normal archer DPS archetype, while Detonator leaned harder into setup and burst. Fletch used Freezing for Ice and slows, Hush used Voltaic for Lightning, and Nock's Conflux mixed elemental effects together.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. So Burst juiced all three archers, Fletch slowed the target, Hush layered Lightning, and Nock turned the whole elemental pileup into some extra Conflux nonsense before all three dumped Oracle burst windows at once.

"Okay," Meno admitted.

"BrineSaint cooked a little." Vivi looked over.

"Is that good?"

"Unfortunately." The next two names were familiar. [15-76] Northwatch | Spellguard Bulwark Vigilant | RB | Highbanner [16-76] Sereth | Cryo Channeler Tempest | RB | Silverwake"The bucket crew survived." Northwatch's class was more interesting than Meno had let him show before kicking him to death. Bulwark was the specialized tank archetype.

Anchor mostly wanted to plant itself in place and eat the hit; Bulwark cared more about specific defensive gimmicks, and Spellguard focused on reducing and disrupting spell damage. Vigilant was exactly what it sounded like: more survivability, better defensive reliability, and fewer exciting ways to die. Sereth's setup was easy enough. Cryo plus Channeler meant slow, channel-heavy Ice magic, while Tempest made the whole thing faster. Meno still wondered why both she and Pike had picked Tempest instead of Eternal.

Faster channels were useful, obviously, but raw damage seemed better for PvE unless Tempest also came with enough Mana regeneration to keep the faster casting going. That was probably it. [17-76] Patience | Souldrain Warlock Titan | SC | Crownfall Meno paused on the name.

"No way." Vivi sighed.

"What?"

"That's the fishing guy."

"Who?"

"The high-level fishing guy. Patience. He spent half the early game fishing instead of leveling, and he's actually a Titan." Meno sat back, personally offended by the timeline.

"He was low enough when everyone figured out the unlock that he could still grab it. That's borderline cheating." Vivi gave him a look.

"Please don't make a scene out of that. People who discover things first usually end up making worse choices than everyone copying them later." Meno considered his own history.

"I can't relate." Vivi muttered something he chose not to hear. [18-76] SlopDog | Royal Headsman Eternal | RB | Stormhold Thorn's supposed prodigy had slid to rank 18, although that was still comfortably in the top half of the event list. According to several anonymous wiki posters, a group famous for honesty and emotional stability, Headsman was a specialized warrior DPS archetype built around execute damage.

Most variants were considered mediocre because they diluted the one useful gimmick with bleeds or burn effects, while Royal Headsman went harder into pure finishing damage and was supposedly the only version that saw much high-end use. The wiki also claimed Headsman was the weakest major warrior DPS archetype after Master and Striker, which would make SlopDog's position impressive if the authors had any idea what they were talking about. Meno estimated that chance at around 1%.

[19-76] JaxxonVale | Rift Warlock Myriad | VC | QuestingVale Maybe sending Scuzzy after JaxxonVale had been slightly excessive. No. Impossible. Rank 19 was clearly what happened when someone turned to quests. The class fit the crime, and Meno had seen it before. Rift Warlock summoned temporary demons with overpowered effects, which made it especially good in dungeons. Myriad made that even better by giving skills alternate versions depending on how they were used.

The same ability might come out as Frost in one setup and Fire in another. Myriad was probably bad for raw DPS, and therefore perfect for questing. [20-75] Rook | Arch Hydromaniac Eternal | SC | Crownfall"This is definitely GlassRook," Meno said.

"He used to be top 10. I beat him to get onto the list." Vivi did not even turn around.

"Very impressive." Meno ignored the sarcasm because she should have been more impressed. Arch seemed to mean upper-tier mage branch, while Maniac was the fast-cast side of mage instead of the big-channel side. Less standing still, more instant spells and normal casts, with each version going hard into one element. Hydro meant Water. Simple. [21-75] Orison | Cleave Master Eternal | SC | Crownfall Meno physically disliked seeing Orison with Master in the class name. Fake Master.

Real Masters started at Level 1 as Masters. They did not wander around for 60 levels as something inferior and then pick the title later. The mechanics were at least respectable. Master was the technique warrior branch, with each version built around a different combat gimmick. Swing Master ramped through repeated weapon hits, while Cleave Master gained power from hitting multiple targets and was supposedly one of the best melee AoE classes. Which sounded terrible. Boss damage mattered more.

If Orison wanted the AoE gimmick to matter against one target, he should have picked Astral instead of Eternal, but apparently half the leaderboard had developed an Eternal addiction. [22-74] Relay | Wishful Seraph Devout | RB | HypeForge VantaRush's officer was a healer. Seraph was the more specialized healing branch beside Herald, with the word before Seraph explaining the gimmick.

Meno read three lines about Wishful, saw the phrase conditional healing state more than once, and decided that was enough healer research for one lifetime. Good enough. [23-74] Snackdealer | Alpha Tamer Infernal | RB | HypeForge"An actual pet class in the top 25. Not bad." Vivi checked the time.

"You need to get ready, Meno."

"Just a few more. I'm almost done." That was not remotely true. Tamer was the pet-focused archer branch, with Alpha centering the build around one powerful companion while Pack used multiple smaller ones. Infernal was the fun part. Oracle compressed damage into planned burst windows, but Infernal went even harder: less total output across several seconds in exchange for one enormous spike. If Oracle dominated a 5-second burst window, Infernal apparently dominated the single second where everything landed.

That was cool. [24-74] Lagmonster | Rapid Striker Tempest | RB | HypeForge Seeing Striker reminded Meno of Aurelia's Heavy Striker. Striker was the standard warrior DPS branch and usually favored two-handed weapons, although certain versions broke that rule. Rapid Striker was one of the flexible ones, trading some of the traditional heavy-hit identity for faster weapon use. Tempest was the obvious pairing: Attack Speed on a fast Striker. Boring, effective, and still less cool than Master.

[25-74] Brick | Shockguard Bulwark Vigilant | RB | HypeForge Another specialized Bulwark. Shockguard was more interesting than Northwatch's obvious anti-magic Spellguard setup. It was not built to shrug off normal damage forever. It was built for the moment the HP bar got hit by a nuke. That made it worse against steady pressure, but extremely good against huge individual hits. Still less generally tanky than an Anchor, but it could move, which made it better in Meno's opinion.

Vigilant was the safe pairing, which meant boring. Movement Speed was usually better damage reduction than another percentage slapped onto a defensive ability, but people seemed emotionally attached to standing there and getting hit. [26-74] Jammon | Heavy Sniper Umbral | SC | HoneyPot Vivi looked over.

"Oh, I met Jammon at the bar. Nice guy. Maybe I'll ask him out."

"Cool. I'm trying to work here."

"Clearly." Sniper was the other major damage archer beside Deadeye. Deadeye wanted uptime and steady DPS, while Sniper gave up movement for bigger individual hits, making it strong when the fight was already solved. That was the problem. You should never build around solved content. Umbral made the choice more interesting, at least. It traded some damage for control and movement tools, which suggested Honeygrave's group cared about safety during long sessions. Suboptimal.

That was probably why they kept losing whatever lead they gained. Too safe. [27-74] Sway | Peace Anchor Paragon | SC | HoneyPot Peace Anchor sounded like a pacifist class, but it was better than Meno expected. It still had the usual Anchor nonsense about standing in place and becoming impossible to move. The difference was that War Anchor mostly protected itself, while Peace Anchor reduced incoming damage for the entire party more efficiently. Meno still preferred War. Paragon felt slightly suspicious on it.

Eternal would at least make the stationary tank do some damage and give standing still a purpose. [28-74] Ammonia | Imbued Sniper Myriad | SC | HoneyPot After using Sinseeker for a while, Meno understood why organized groups stacked archers. Dealing damage from range was extremely convenient. Almost too convenient. He still missed the physical impact of actually landing a melee hit, but his current melee weapons were dramatically worse than Sinseeker, so feelings did not matter.

Imbued Sniper added elemental effects to those big Sniper hits, while Myriad apparently let Ammonia cycle between a bunch of different versions. Why anyone needed that many elements was beyond Meno. Just take Infernal and hit harder. Problem solved. [29-74] Merry | Daydreaming Seraph Umbral | SC | HoneyPot So Merry still existed. Honeygrave had changed his name, started a guild, and somehow not broken up with her. Mystery solved.

Merry was another specialized Seraph healer, and once again Honeygrave's group had put Umbral on something that could have taken more damage or healing instead. Meno was starting to see the pattern. Honeygrave loved crowd control too much. At that point, just recruit one rogue and stop griefing every other class slot with Umbral evolutions. Umbral was clearly meant for PvP. [30-74] Vera | Wardlight Herald Dominion | RB | Stormhold Thorn's healer had copied her guild leader's bad habit and taken Dominion.

Dominion was the evolution for people who wanted to draw a circle and become important inside it. That made sense on Thorn, who already treated moving as a personal insult, but on a healer it sounded terrible. Then Meno read Wardlight. It was an Absorption-focused Herald, and Dominion could apparently turn her planted area into a stronger shield for the rest of the raid.

"Oh. That's neat." Maybe Vera knew what she was doing. Unfortunate. [31-74] Edris | Oath Architect Devout | RB | Highbanner Another Architect. Meno still did not understand why anyone wanted one instead of adding another DPS and making the boss die faster. Architects could heal a little, sure, but not nearly as well as Heralds or Seraphs. The answer was probably buried in buff multiplication somewhere only Chadculator could enjoy, and Meno refused to follow it that far.

Unlike Burst's Hymn version, Oath Architect locked away chunks of Mana to keep passive party benefits running instead of channeling huge temporary buffs. An AFK support build. Terrible. [32-74] Rauk | Steel Juggernaut Vigilant | RB | Highbanner There were too many tanks on this leaderboard. Steel Juggernaut kept the more offensive Juggernaut identity, but built its defenses around raw Defense instead of the HP nonsense Blood used. Pairing it with Vigilant made sense.

It was also boring in the same way bad television made sense if the goal was falling asleep. [33-74] MiriTopPrincess | Rush Master Feral | SC | Crownfall Meno stopped scrolling.

"That name is offensive." Vivi glanced over.

"Why?"

"Because she has an actually good class." Rush Master Feral was one of the best combinations he had seen so far, which made the username substantially harder to forgive. Rush Master specialized in speed, and Feral doubled down on Movement Speed and combat uptime instead of Tempest's heavier Attack Speed focus. Rush did not just attack a million times per second. It turned momentum and speed into extra hits, making movement part of the damage engine.

"That's cool." He actually wanted to try it. What would Swing Master have looked like if its ramp centered on speed instead of raw hit scaling? Maybe he should recruit MiriTopPrincess away from Crownfall. The name would remain a problem. [34-74] Powerbank | Surge Arcanist Oracle | RB | Stormhold"Oracle again. Snooze." At least Surge Arcanist was fresh. The build ramped damage through Mana investment. The downside was obvious: you had to build Mana instead of damage, which sounded like bait.

[35-74] PatroSoloKing | Legion Necromancer Feral | GC | No Guild Meno had never heard of PatroSoloKing, which made seeing a guildless Grave Crown player this high unusual. Necromancer meant undead summons, Legion meant lots of undead summons, and Feral added Movement Speed, which meant Patro could probably run to the kitchen and make coffee while his army killed everything without him. Meno disliked summoners on principle. Too boring.

[36-73] Vexil | Shade Stalker Astral | SC | Crownfall Stalker was the third rogue archetype Meno had actually checked. Blade did more damage. Tormentor brought harder control. Stalker lived in the annoying middle by being better at invisibility, movement, and refusing to stay targetable. Shade added temporary copies that repeated attacks, while Astral probably stacked all the phasing nonsense on top. Still suboptimal. Blade did more damage, and damage won.

[37-73] FelixKO | Lucky Seraph Infernal | RB | Highbanner Meno actually laughed.

"These healers are something. Infernal on a healer means this guy probably spends 4 seconds doing absolutely nothing, then panic-heals one person from zero to max in a single disgusting burst." Vivi considered it.

"That sounds strong."

"No, it's crap."

"Okay." [38-73] SessenDebuffCity | Hex Savant Hollow | RB | Silverwake Now this was annoying in an interesting way. Hex Savant was another DPS priest, but instead of Rot's direct damage-over-time, it leaned into curses, debuffs, and making the target miserable. Hollow was the real grief evolution. Resource drain, silence, sustain denial, healing reduction, exposure-style damage amp, and enough non-damaging debuffs to make someone ragequit. Crownfall called it the strongest PvP evolution. Meno approved.

If you were going to give up damage, at least ruin somebody else's day in exchange. [39-73] Garlick | Twilight Bastion Dominion | RB | Silverwake Twilight Bastion was the sensible paladin tank option. Dawn hit back after blocking, Dusk did weird damage effects, and Twilight mostly handled utility while refusing to die. Then Dominion made it even more planted. Trash. [40-72] Lethren | Sigil Arcanist Eternal | SC | Crownfall"Shockingly, Crownfall has another Eternal." At least Sigil Arcanist was different.

It did not throw normal projectiles around, which felt like wasting one of Arcane's most annoying advantages, but the trade was obvious: place Sigils, drag enemies through them, then detonate or combine the marks when everything lined up. Great for AOE. Great for organized tanks. Great for people who enjoyed setting up homework before doing damage. [41-72] Arnold | Prime Necromancer Profane | SC | Crownfall Too many Crownfall names. Prime Necromancer meant one major undead summon instead of Legion's whole horde.

Profane made that mildly interesting, since Arnold could burn his own HP to supercharge the minion, then recover through whatever sustain loop kept the build alive. Still a summoner. Next. [42-72] FelinaaaQQ | Arch Aeromaniac Eternal | SC | Crownfall Meno barely read it.

"Eternal. Crownfall. Fast Air mage. Next." He looked toward Vivi.

"What class are you playing?" Vivi smiled without looking away from the clothes she was arranging.

"It's a secret."

"Must be terrible."

"It is not." Suspicious. [43-71] Purgatory | Dusk Bastion Astral | SC | Crownfall"Yay. Another tank." Dusk Bastion was at least the strange paladin version. Dusk spread damage-over-time effects through its defensive skills. Astral made that less boring. Maybe it pulled some of the multi-target Dusk damage into better single-target pressure the same way Honeygrave used Astral for Rot. At least it was not Vigilant. [44-71] BunnyPls | Lunar Naturalist Eternal | RB | Highbanner Meno read the class too quickly.

"Lunar Nudist Eternal."

"Naturalist, idiot." Vivi finally abandoned the clothes and walked closer.

"I also play Naturalist. It's basically Veyrath's nature mage. Closest thing to a druid, except no shapeshifting, because turning into a cat in VR is where we draw the line." Meno looked up at her.

"Are you Lunar or Solar?"

"Solar. More straightforward. Plants, growth. Lunar is decay."

"So that's it? You grow flowers while questing?"

"It's pretty." Meno had no good response to that, so he continued. [45-71] JojoBleeds | Vein Flayer Ruinous | RB | Stormhold Flayer completed the major rogue set. Blade was direct damage, Tormentor was control, Stalker was stealth and movement, and Flayer was for people who wanted the target to keep dying after the hit landed. Vein meant bleeds. Ruinous was the anti-defense evolution, built to punish Defense, Blocks, Parry, Deflect, Absorption, and anything else trying to stop damage.

PvP players liked it because tanks deserved grief, but the same effects also scaled into raid bosses where every layer of defense made Ruinous more valuable. Meno still doubted it beat Eternal for raw damage. If it did, half the leaderboard would not be eating Eternal's downsides on purpose. Maybe DoT builds had different math. Not worth the rabbit hole. [46-71] Strawberry | Scorching Deadeye Tempest | RB | Silverwake Basic. Fire archer. Deadeye DPS. Tempest fast attacks. Good damage. Next.

[47-71] ScuzzyIamDisease | Plague Blade Hollow | GC | GraveMistake"He actually made it." Scuzzy had reached the top 50. His class explained the negative-Karma farm immediately. Plague spread diseases between targets and made them annoying to cleanse. Blade handled the direct damage, while Hollow piled on healing reduction, resource disruption, slows, silence, and every other debuff that made fighting back a total pain. Then the whole mess spread to the next target. The guy really was Disease.

Meno felt slightly better about restreaming him now. Only slightly. [48-70] ArayuXO | Arch Elementalist Myriad | GC | GraveMistake Meno did not know much about Karmabeast's apparent love interest beyond the fact that Karmabeast kept getting rejected and somehow treated that as encouragement. She was clearly good, though. Elementalist used all the major elements instead of hard-committing to one, while Arch once again meant she had reached the advanced end of the archetype.

Myriad actually made sense here, because alternate versions on every elemental ability turned the whole build into a giant combo menu. For once, Meno approved of Myriad. Also, Arayu was in GraveMistake, which made her smart by default. [49-70] BookerTrashClass | Primordial Invoker Ruinous | SC | Crownfall"His name says it all." TrashClass was apparently still good enough for rank 49. Invoker was a mage-summoner hybrid, basically the closest Veyrath had to a Naraltan-style shaman.

It summoned elementals, and Primordial meant one big elemental at a time instead of a pile of smaller pets, while still keeping access to different elements. Ruinous probably helped the summon chew through armor, shields, and other defensive nonsense. Interesting enough, but Meno still did not see why anyone picked it over Eternal. Answering that properly would take more time than he was willing to give Kestrel's forty-ninth-best minion. He scrolled to the final name, then stopped.

[50-69] Aurelia | Heavy Striker Titan | GC | No Guild Meno leaned toward the screen.

"Wait, what?" Vivi knew exactly what he had seen.

"You noticed? Aurelia's been playing almost nonstop since she left here. Not sure what that's about, but it's pretty impressive."

"She got Titan."

"Yes."

"Who did she do it with? Was it Patience?"

"I don't think so." Meno reopened the class page as though Titan might disappear if he refreshed it. It did not.

"She actually did Titan with Heavy Striker." Meno shook his head.

"The stand-there-and-charge class. It was definitely because of that Masterwork III regeneration ring I sent her." Vivi gave him a completely neutral look.

"Yeah. It's all about you, Meno."

"What all? I mean just in this case."

"Okay." Vivi reached behind the monitor and put one hand very deliberately near the cables.

"Get ready now or I'm unplugging everything." There was still the Tyrant EX modification system. Every ability and passive was waiting for him to decide what should get stronger and what he was willing to sacrifice. Meno closed Crownfall's site first so nobody could accuse him of spending too much time there.

"Fine." The Tyrant EX theorycrafting would have to wait. First, he had to get dressed properly and attend a party filled with dysfunctional Eternal addicts, including Kestrel, plus two people with Titan, an evolution he had been forced to skip. Should be fine.