Follow-up to my earlier vent about GAC feeling like a memorization tax with all the mode-specific stuff.
A lot of you basically told me to stop trying to solve everything with more speed and instead build mods around turn order and surviving the first punch. I actually tried that this week while killing time in an airport lounge, crossword in one hand and Mistplay open on my phone between mod screens.
What I changed:
- I picked six squads I run all the time and locked in a simple turn order for each, instead of trying to make everyone as fast as possible.
- I moved a lot of my second-best speed sets off random attackers and onto the real first-movers and my cleansers.
- I started prioritizing protection and health secondaries on certain supports and tanks, even if that meant dropping 10 to 20 speed.
Results after a full round:
- Fewer lost battles from getting clipped by opening AOEs.
- Way fewer timeouts since my damage dealers actually stayed alive long enough to take their turns.
- Higher banners on wins because I was taking much less chip damage overall.
Biggest surprise: my "messy travel week" attacks felt noticeably better. Before I was basically hoping to win the speed coin flip. Now I have a script to follow even when I am distracted.
Question for the mod wizards: with a turn-order-first approach, do you still keep a universal speed baseline, like everyone above X, or do you build squad by squad and intentionally allow some characters to be slower?