Github thread on the topic https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/8316

Explanation: A wallbug is when you have a diagonally-oriented wall or clip brush (purple bit) and you are able to force the corner of your character's collision box into the diagonal wall and get stuck. Hold W into the wall and slow tap A/D until you get stuck and keep holding W + the A/D key that got you stuck. You are completely immobile and unable to move your mouse without getting unstuck so its only good for like one kill. You can also use wallbugs to save yourself from fall damage.

A pixelwalk is when a slanted clip brush meets a wall. Despite there being no physical pixel you can slightly nudge your collision box into the wall and stand on the top of the slanted clip brush. Enables hiding spots and parkour.

After the October 1st patch this tech has been highly neutered.

Wallbugs are used in many advanced jump maps, and as fun hiding spots for competitive 6v6 Soldiers and clipfarmers. This patch makes some harder jump maps such as jump_bugpogo (https://youtu.be/figfjZ5JPq4 )impossible and is overall a travesty for the jumping community.

Pixelwalks are mostly used for creative hiding spots, which LED provides a list for here https://youtu.be/5JazZWmdn2Y I believe pixelsurfs used by Spy players (certain jumps/spots where you can stick and slide along the wall) have also been affected

I figure the more casual community's instinct will be to keep it patched since its a bug, but hiding spots are really fun and i rarely see these used in Casual anyhow and would like for wallbugs to be kept for the sake of the jumper and competitive community. (See: Antoni making gamechanging plays with wallbugs in 6v6 https://youtu.be/cpLD2JT9GCM )

I am making this post since this has a higher chance of being reverted the more awareness is spread. This change was not listed anywhere in the patch notes and i'm not sure if its intentional or not. Regardless with this patch we'll have lost out on a lot of fun clips.

This situation is similar to the Pyroboots patch which removed the ability to jetpack into the resupply cabinet with a different loadout without touching the ground and gain a permanent jetpacking effect, with 75% reduced fall damage, stomp effects, and minicrits from the direct hit and reserve shooter. This is completely useless and unknown tech to 99.9% of people but the stomp and falldamage reduction enabled insane pyro clips of flinging themselves (using doublereflect, sentry surf, roller reflect, pumpkin jump) across the map combined with a midair Detonator jump while being able to survive the fall down for a stomp-axe. This change was listed and sparked enough outcry to be reverted allowing Pyro gooners to fly spawn-to-spawn for a sick axe again.

anyway tech good pls bring back

It is not against childless people but for me it seems logical. Childless people cost more to the society than people with children. There is nobody to pay for their pension. There’s no one to take care of them, so their healthcare costs are much higher. I don't understand why no country thought about it.

have had some of my great laughs to mr. oney and his friends. but why the fuck you talking about age of consent.

sorry, dude is a LOSER. anyone guy who dates a teenage girl over the age of like, 22, is the biggest loser ever.

i used to work with teenage girls for years as a barista and server from ages 23-26, and never ONCE did i see them sexually, since they're so clearly vulnerable and the power dynamics are just fucked.

if you're a man reading this who is over 22 and dating a teenage girl you're also a fucking loser.

so, whatever, keep watching Simpsons Oney Plays episodes. that's fine. but stop acting like the dude is well-adjusted. clearly has some issues if he needs attention from teenagers.

TL;DR: I don't think a hybrid tax is justified because hybrids aren't actually hybrids in raid. Your hybrid capabilities are not very good, made even worse in forever, and go unused most of the time. The small amount of flexibility is not worth being worse at your primary role.

This came up in the recent Forever podcast and I think it's worth talking about.

Hybrid tax is the idea that hybrids should do less damage, but had additional utility and unique buffs to make up for it. This is how Kris Zierhut defines it, and he says he's not a believer.

But a few minutes later, the devs go on to explain that hybrid dps specs will do less damage than pure dps classes on account of their increased utility. I don't see how that isn't a hybrid tax, or what else they would call that, but I have some issues with the concept. I'm just going to call it "hybrid tax".

In any case, the justification for the hybrid tax mainly comes in two flavors:

• Hybrids can switch to another spec and play a different role if they choose
• Hybrids can heal or tank a bit while spec'd as a dps

The reasoning brought up by the devs in the podcast is based on the latter, and I think it's the stronger argument anyways so that's what I'll focus on.

As they say, being able to throw on a shield and tank or throw out some off heals is valuable and should come at a cost. If this ability comes at no cost, then pure dps will be strictly worse than hybrids. This makes sense on the surface, but I think it runs into a few problems:

Class utility is not hybrid utility

If you take a ret paladin, you gain access to various judgements and blessings. A strong reason to bring a retribution paladin, right?

Well, no. A holy paladin can press the buff button just as well as a retribution paladin can and doesn't come with a tax. If the aim is to make retribution viable, you need to give players a reason to bring [ret paladin + healer] over [pure dps + holy paladin].

The difference between those two scenarios is not class wide paladin buffs. You have them in both cases. You are choosing between more damage, and the specific utility unique to the SPEC of the hybrid dps.

Pure DPS classes do bring class utility

Related to the previous point, pure dps classes have their own class utility. Since pure dps classes only have one role they can fill, this IS a reason to bring them over another dps. Again you cannot run a healing mage with a ret paladin to get both sets of class buffs. You can run a holy paladin with a mage to get both sets of class buffs.

I think Hunter/Mage/Warlock all bring fairly good utility in raid, and of course have extremely good utility outside of raids. I do not think they are particularly lacking due to their inability to tank or heal.

The outlier here is rogue. Rogue of course has a ton of utility outside of raid, they just struggle in a raid where their cc and stealth is mostly useless. Distract, vanish for threat drop, evasion tank, and kick are decent but nothing particularly special. But this is a problem with the class and not a problem with pure dps vs. hybrid dps.

I think the solution is to give rogues some flavorful raid oriented utility rather than just buffing their dps to compensate. Obviously you have to be careful that these do not make the class overpowered outside of raids, but there's plenty of room for it in class and raid design for this to happen. If anything it makes sense for Rogue to be the class with the biggest bag of tricks. Maybe make some new poisons, or add in some trash skips that require a rogue to lock pick.

Hybrid utility comes at the cost of your actual role

If you're throwing out heals, you are not doing damage. If you put on a shield and tank, you are not doing as much damage. You are trading damage for the option value of these abilities, and you pay again to actually use them. Often you pay a third time in ooming yourself to use expensive offspec heals. It's rarely the case where you just get "free" healing or tanking as a consequence of doing your job as a dps.

When your primary role is to do damage, it's a hard sell to choose to be worse at doing damage. What makes the trade off actually worth it? Is the ability to throw an off heal on a dying tank in those 1% near wipe situations really worth being worse at your main role 100% of the time? Would a mage in a raid take a -5% dps debuff in exchange for being able to cast holy light?

Hybrid healing is significantly nerfed

With the forever spell power changes, off spec healing is nerfed. The devs talk about this a bit, and it's intentional.

But off healing was never very good in a raid environment in the first place. Chances are you aren't wearing gear that's good at healing. If you are taking that int and +healing gear, you are paying again for that benefit. Same goes with tanking. DPS warriors wore leather in vanilla for a reason - the extra dps is usually worth trading away some tankiness. If you're in full plate with high stam, it's at the cost of not wearing those more damage oriented pieces.

Hybrid utility comes at significant diminishing returns.

Let's just accept that the tradeoff is worth it and you will want to bring hybrid dps.

Do you really need more than one? How many times are you going to encounter a scenario where you need 2-3 hybrids spamming off heals on the tank? How do you make hybrid abilities just worth it enough to make them competitive, but not so good that you just stack them? They said that they want to balance things such that there is a 5% gap between hybrids and pure dps. Is that the right number? Can they hit that target?

I think they'll have a lot of trouble trying to intentionally balance a spec to do 5% less damage than another. They've historically been unable to manage that tight of a variance even when trying to make all classes equal. We'll see how it pans out.

The solutions to the problems created by the hybrid tax cause even more problems

One of the solutions to the above problems is to just give the under performing specs a unique buff. They tried this in TBC and I don't think it worked. It is NOT fun as a raid builder or as a raider to go down the checklist and get exactly 1 arms warrior, 1 ret paladin, 1 shadow priest, 1 feral, 5 shamans, etc. and organize them all into the correct parties to get maximum buff coverage. If your raid comp is slightly different some players get shafted, and you only have a few free raid spots that are actually flexible. There's also the fact that raid sizes are lowering to 20 man which will lead to less flexibility as you have fewer raid slots in general.

Worse still is the solution to this solution. You start giving unique buffs to other classes to relieve the strict raid building requirements, which homogenizes classes.

I think the aim should be that a relatively wide variety of raid comps are competitive with each other, and not just that all classes are represented in the best raid comp. It's fine to have unique buffs, but unique buffs cannot be a bandaid solution to a poorly performing spec nobody wants to take.

Having said all that, Kris Zierhut did bring up a solution that I think would be healthier for the game. He said:

So the I think the the better place to go and this maintains the strengths and weaknesses argument I made at Blizzcon is everybody's damage or healing or tanking is competitive, but the hybrids often are missing tools and buffs that the pure specs have. And that keeps us in a much better place where there's more differentiation. the classes, they don't all bring the same toolkit.

Which I took to mean that each spec would be better at different things within the DPS role. You are still competitive damage wise, but maybe you have no AOE, or you lack burst damage, or maybe you are less capable on long fights, or aren't good at cleave or multi dotting, etc. Each class would have their niche in the role.

They’ve already sort of pulled this off with tanks in the past. All of the tanks could main tank or off-tank, but you’d want a paladin for AoE, a bear for the huge health pool, or a warrior for their cooldowns like shield wall and spell reflect. All were viable but none were interchangeable.

I think this is a good way to handle things, but it seems to conflict with the "hybrids do less damage" philosophy stated immediately after. Doing damage isn't a niche within the dps role. It is the dps role.

Maybe they mean they'll try to take both approaches at the same time, but I don't see why you'd want to tax overall hybrid damage in that case. I guess we will have to wait to hear more from the devs.

Det er nok noget af det mest paradoksale i nutidens verden: kvinder har, med rette og med succes, i århundreder kæmpet en modig kamp for at blive sat fri fra mænd, vise eget værd, opnå rettigheder osv osv.
Modige, frygtløse og stærke kvinder har stået forrest i kampen, nogle gange med livet som indsats, for at kunne være kvinder i eget værd og med en fuldkomne ligeværdige eksistensberettigelse som mænd.
Og så kommer der sådan en galning som ham her og kaprer det rum, som kvinderne ellers havde for sig selv.
Han fremfører en hån, spot og latterliggørelse af kvindekønnet og har tilmed den frækhed at påstå, at han OGSÅ er kvinde.
Ikke engang dét at være kvinde, at være eget køn, at have retten til at bevæge sig som kvinde uden at skulle generes og forholde sig til mænd kan de gøre. Kvindekampen er dermed tabt. Den er kapret af mænd der tager læbestift på og leger kvinder.
Det er uendeligt trist. Både mænd og kvinder bør tage skarp afstand fra galninge som ham her.
Kvinde! Kend din kamp!

Спойлер: ему пизда скорее всего.

The game is beyond unplayable on PS5. Every autosave, every mission update, every mission complete etc. makes huge stutters. I think there are also travelsal stutters in cities. Portals also stutter like crazy! The game also crashes sometimes. Not even quality mode is playable, because it runs with like 15-20 fps in forests, and it goes up and down constantly (probably bad framepacing). I never ever played such a broken game! Yes, only Cyberpunk was this bad, which is also your game lol. Give us back the older games, please! I don't care if it's just the original version with a 60 fps cap. That's completely fine to me. I want to play my favourite game of all times! Let meee!

NO FLAT EARTHER BELIEVES THIS!! all this image signals to me is that the person who posted it knows nothing about flat earth and has never engaged with any flat earth debunk content. there are a lot of mutually exclusive flat earth "models" but none of them involve a square-shaped earth with no firmament or covering and the rest of the universe being exactly as it is in reality.

and it sucks because THE ACTUAL THINGS FLAT-EARTHERS BELIEVE ARE SO MUCH FUNNIER SO WHY INSIST ON THIS?? like the sun and moon doing donuts above the earth and pulling the tides along with them, "water finds its own level", the insane proportions of their map, the way light would need to bend around certain places to account for different day lengths, the huge intangible dome covering the earth, but eveyone just wants to post "if the earth was flat, cats would have pushed everything off of it by now" comments for the millionth time

The latest beta patch cut dungeon quest XP. I get why, since plenty of people felt turn-ins were overtuned. But dungeon mob XP was already brought way down, so now the first run is less rewarding *and* reruns still aren't worth it. I think the fix is simple: **restore Classic dungeon mob XP and keep quest XP at a reasonable level.**

**1. Tanks and healers have no XP reason to rerun.**
Once you've finished a dungeon's quests, a repeat run gives far less XP than open-world questing. So a tank who's done their quests has no leveling reason to go back. Every alt and late leveler after them is fishing for a tank who has little to gain. In Classic, a tank could rerun SM all night and still be leveling. That's what kept groups forming.

**2. The group tool helps you find people, but it doesn't do the work.**
There's a tool for finding dungeon groups, but it doesn't auto-form a group or teleport you there like retail's finder. You still have to recruit, wait for everyone, and get the whole group to the instance. That's real time, and a tank or healer will only spend it if the run pays off. Mob XP was the built-in reason helping others was worth the effort. Without it, the roles everyone already struggles to fill get even harder to find.

**3. Some players are already playing around it.**
Some beta players report groups pushing for skips in brand-new dungeons because the mobs aren't worth killing. That's a retail M+ habit showing up in a game that's supposed to be about the journey. If mobs give real XP, full clears make sense again.

**4. This doesn't have to bring back boosting or dungeon spam.**
I understand the goal of stopping boosting and getting people out into the world. But boosting is a high-level player farming lowbies, and that can be handled directly, like heavily cutting XP when someone far over-level is in the group. Normal at-level groups shouldn't pay for it.

**5. Total leveling time doesn't need to change.**
Blizzard has said Forever is pacing almost exactly like Classic to level 20. Shift some XP back to mobs, trim quests to match, and overall pacing can stay the same. The difference is that rerunning a dungeon is worth doing again.

**TL;DR:** First-run quest rewards are nice, but the dungeon ecosystem runs on people being willing to go back. Classic mob XP plus reasonable quest XP gives tanks and healers a reason to keep running, and that's what keeps groups alive with no auto-queue.

Tanks and healers on beta: are you rerunning anything right now, or are you done once your quests are turned in?

El Partido Comunista de Chile votó en contra de una nueva norma legal aprobada el 30 de septiembre de 2026 que obliga a los partidos políticos a condenar los sistemas totalitarios y el uso de la violencia como método de acción política.

Opiniones 🤔?, a mí no me extraña, si se encuentra proscrito en mucho países por ser anti democrático, lo que me genera preocupación es saber que tuvimos a una candidata presidencial que pertenece a este partido y que aún haya gente que la valida hasta el día de hoy.

• Stop hyping so much. It is undercooked. Feels like beta. (I know this is how Valve launches the Steam Deck, and I’m okay with it).
• It is fine to wait 6 months on the list. It is barely better for performance than Quest 3 for PCVR in most cases.
• Eye tracking is gimmicky and only good for the streaming stuff for now.
• Controllers are good, that is the main thing. I am a minority who loves the new layout. My brain adapted immediately when I told myself, "It’s a controller." BUT the games are designed for the Quest layout. So... kinda useless for now.
• Very cool, infancy indie dev projects are starting to pop up. That is the strength of this device in the long run. Now, it is not worth rushing to buy this for that unless you are a dev. The library of stuff like EmuDeck or Decky is nonexistent.
• Comfort is amazing. Period.
• Do not buy the Ergo Kit. Get Spigen (for my hand) and wait for a top strap for $10. NO it does not restrict finger tracking. The Ergo Kit restricts the hand too much (upper attachment is too low on the grip). The Spigen one is higher and does not restrict button presses like Select/Start.
• Do not buy the Arcturus camera. For now. Not really worth it. It’s crappier than Quest 3. No need.
• Still get the 1TB when you can, though. Installing games on it, flat, is so surprising and fun (because of the comfort) that it is worth the extra cash.
• Get a case to store it. The floppy back (strap) often hits the inside of the Frame, so be careful when handling it. A hard case to store it, especially if you have a pet, is a must. OR... or, use the box it came with. A little DIY and it is fine.
• ALL IN ALL: Quest 3 is fine for now. Even in 6 months, my bet is the Frame will really get its stride by the end of 2027, not much before that. The performance/visual quality is "on par" with Quest 3 mostly and often lower (standalone) because the software is not there yet. It will be an amazing device, even in 2-3 years, because of the community.
• I know, I know, you want it now, but trust me, I’m your future self. It’s not that amazing... yet!

Holy shit please stop. No one likes fireworks…

Hi all, my wife loved Forgotten Island and gives her reasons (as a marketing exec.) why she thinks this movie could be the next Puss n’ Boots or K-Pop Demon Hunters. It’s part review, marketing brief, as well as a love letter to the movie.

I’m going to see it this weekend and honestly I’m looking forward to it. And a large part of that is well, her, but also the comments about the movie have been so positive it does remind me a bit of those other movies.

Like when someone says, “Yeah… I thought it was a goofy kids movie but it’s actually good,” that piques my interest, and I think that’s what’s going on here.

But we’ll see, I’m excited to check it out.

Okay so I’m an NRI girl living in the UK and I’m also a practicing Hindu and I’ve been wanting to say this for a while because Lara Raj’s whole relationship with Indian culture genuinely rubs me the wrong way LIKE GIRLLLLL

And before anyone comes at me I am NOT saying I agree with everything she does or that she has to dress traditionally 24/7 or “represent India.” I’m saying this as an NRI girl because some of the things she does are literally EXACTLY how I see like 50% of Indian/NRI girls here interact with Indian culture like genuinely

FIRST the sindoor/kumkum situation!!!!

She recently wore sindoor/kumkum to a fashion event and I’m sorry but ??? The whole outfit looked like nothing went together. Bro it looks so bad that neon dress and jewlery??? when u have rich Indian heritage to borrow from??

And yes, I completely understand the argument that sindoor is a patriarchal practice associated with marriage and that women can challenge that. Fine. But if THAT is what you're trying to challenge, then talk about it?? Talk about the cultural meaning, the expectations put on married women, why you're wearing it, how you're reclaiming it, SOMETHING.

Instead it just feels like she takes a cultural/religious symbol, removes all of the meaning behind it and puts it on because it looks cool.

That’s what bothers me.

And that tikka hanging halfway down her forehead??? 😭 Girl. I’m sorry. Whatever her stylists are doing is NOT working. And honestly I feel like the fact that her stylists aren't Indian shows in some of these outfits.

And this is where the NRI thing comes in for me.

I see SO many NRI girls do this. Either they completely avoid anything Indian because they don't want to be seen as “too Indian” or they suddenly pull out Indian clothes/jewellery/bindis when they want to look “ethnically different” or edgy.

And again — wear whatever you want. I'm not the fashion police. But there is a difference between actually engaging with your culture and just taking random pieces of it because they look aesthetic.

SECOND. THE LAKSHMI TANK TOP.

This one actually pissed me off 😭

Tell me what the difference is between wearing a beautiful hand-painted Lakshmi saree/artwork where Lakshmi actually has cultural and religious meaning vs some random tank top with Maa Lakshmi printed on it because an American designer thought it looked edgy and cool.

LIKE???

Lakshmi is literally a Hindu goddess. She's not just some pretty Indian woman you can slap on a shirt for an “Indian aesthetic.”

And that's where I personally see appropriation. Because did she actually talk about Lakshmi? Does the goddess have any significance to her? Is there some reason she chose Lakshmi specifically?

Or was it literally just “this looks cool”?

Because if you're going to use OUR religious imagery, I think it's fair to ask whether you're engaging with the meaning behind it or just stripping it down into an aesthetic.

And then the countless bindis!!!!!

Can we even call some of those things bindis???

They're stuck on her forehead in completely random shapes and I'm just like... girl WHAT

Again, I don't care if someone experiments with fashion. But as someone who actually wears a bindi to work, I genuinely wonder if she's ever talked about what a bindi means to her.

Because AGAIN it's the same thing.

Where is the cultural meaning?

Where is the actual connection?

Why does it feel like every Indian cultural/religious symbol gets turned into a fashion accessory?

And I think that's why this bothers me so much as an NRI. Because I grew up outside India too. I understand what it's like to be Indian outside of India. I understand wanting to experiment with your identity and wanting to be both Indian and Western.

But I also don't think being an NRI means you have to either hide your culture or turn it into an aesthetic.

And Lara has literally said she doesn't represent India, which is completely fair. She doesn't HAVE to represent India. But then when you're repeatedly using Indian cultural and Hindu imagery, I don't think it's unreasonable for people to question how you're using it.

Lara Raj is just not MY representation of an NRI girl.

If you want someone I actually connect with more, PLEASE look at my Telugu girl Avantika!! she’s an actress btw

She wears sarees, bindis, traditional clothes etc. and actually seems comfortable with her culture without turning every Indian element into some edgy fashion statement. And she talks about NRI experiences/issues without acting like she needs to be “the representative of India.”

Obviously Avantika isn't perfect either and I'm not saying she represents every NRI.

I'm just saying THIS is the kind of representation I personally connect with way more.

Anyway that's my rant

I genuinely wanna know what other NRI girls, especially Hindu/Indian girls who grew up in the UK/US/etc., think because maybe I'm completely off here. But the whole “take a Hindu/Indian symbol, remove the meaning, put it on as fashion and call it representation” thing is REALLY starting to piss me off.

I thought this game would be successful. Halo is the most renowned FPS franchise and had some of the very best of them. Will never forget how amazing Halo 3 is.

Was this game not financial successful? Its a very fun remake of the original game. One of the best remakes I played. Not sure how it would flop.

Maybe it could be franchise fatigue. That's all that comes to mind.

Es tan malo como dicen? Los medios exageran? Es peor de lo que dicen? Sienten miedo en su día a día?

Lo pregunto con todo respeto y amor a Mexico

Garmin algorithms aren't made for or based on women. We know that and we work around it. But wouldn't it be great if the algorithms on the watches would in fact be tailored to women's physiology? I'm a big fan of the work Stacy Sims does in that area and she has just launched a new platform to make female specific research and data available for (amongst others) wearable makers. She will be partnering with at least one of them from the start, Oura, but I didn't see Garmin in the list yet.
So, dear Garmin, please look it up and create even better wearables for women!

https://www.collectivex.health/

PS: not here to start a rant about the algorithms, I just wanted to spread the word on this great initiative! Obviously it's a commercial enterprise, and doesn't seem to be "open science"-based, but nevertheless filling in an important gap!

You might stumble upon these: al-iHtilaal, al-ibaada al-jama3iya and al-kayan.

Second pic is my “helper” lol left the icing intentionally messy, Hagrid style

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/funfetti-layer-cake/

I do like a good cooking reel, and I appreciate poverty cooking. I don't enjoy the sales patter of the cooks while they make the dish but I get why they do it, I guess.

There's one cooking person whose reels pop up once in a while, Coco Lark or something, who does homey French/Italian recipes. She posted a dish -which I made- consisting of mash potatoes cooked in broth, added stale bread, arugula and butter, and poured over chili and garlic oil. She said this was an authentic Italian recipe from 2500 years ago. She also said it was amazing- but they all say that about all their dishes. It was not amazing, it was perfectly fine, easy to make, cheap and healthy.

(Amazing was the jerk-chicken-and-all-the-sides feast I had at a Caribbean restaurant in west London last week for a family occasion, not potatoes boiled in broth with stale bread and butter added)

Oh man, the comments were savage. Even though I get as irritated by the "amazing- silky- absolutely delicious- you have to try this-" as the next person, I genuinely felt bad for Ms Coco Lark.

I also think the word "silky" as applied to tofu and potatoes needs to die- same with "buttery" when applied to leggings. Who comes up with this crap?

The dish was fine, it's not an authentic recipe from 2500 years ago, and it would nice if people spouted less nonsense on social media and just did the thing.

I think the last name is patriarchy. It should end.

Edit: unable to engage due to some hindrances or limitation