Abyss of Dagath - Dev Workshop: System Changes and General Quality of Life

[MobyTheDuck]

4 minutes ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

They did say they wanted to acknowledge those who used that setup. This is a great way for players who are comfortable with that style to continue using it. Why not?

Yeah, I can respect that. My problem here is that this Shield Gate exploit was used to AFK leech, I've seen many people using this to be able to AFK in a corner of the map when paired with a slow or stun.

[Zetin2455]

2 minutes ago, (NSW)Probably_Asleep said:

Won't the changes to Health/Armor/Shield/Energy Mods reduce the effectiveness of Archon Shards?

It shouldn't. Blue Shards add a flat value after mods. Since the total value after mods is staying the same. Nothing changes.

[Cleblatt64]

I noticed an issue with the stat-changes on Lavos. He will get a huge nerf with the reduced Base Health.

With just Vitality equiped:
Now: 1.480 Health
After: 1.080 Health

The problem gets really worse when you use a complete Umbral Set:

Now: 2.140 Health + 1.541 Armor => 13.132 Effective Health
After: 1.512 Health + 1.890 Armor => 11.096 Effective Health
This is a loss of more than 15% of effective Health.

Please reconsider the changes to his Health.

Sincerelly,

a scarred alchemist.

EDIT: This issue has been fixed. Thank you DE.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Cleblatt64

[McRibbles]

10 minutes ago, (NSW)Probably_Asleep said:

Won't the changes to Health/Armor/Shield/Energy Mods reduce the effectiveness of Archon Shards?

It's not like the +Health/Armor/Shield shards were very useful to begin with tbh. Or, like, at all actually outside of very few niche gameplay scenarios. Speaking of.... this seems like a pretty good time to make them +flat bonuses, eh, DE? Eeeeh? No? Okay. Yeah. They still won't be used, I guess.

In any event, I'm kind of surprised to see that we're finally getting Attenuation changes. Kinda felt like they just forgot about it in lieu of Duviri. Would've been nice to see some small shard tweaks as Red & Blue shards are just generally kind of mid with their only usecases being to replace Primed Flow or hit some strength breakpoint.

Edited September 28, 2023 by McRibbles
formatting hard pls understand

[(PSN)c1234567890alvi]

The shield gating changes make me really curious. I have to get my hands on them first, but my first impression is: Pillage and Condemn will become more viable options, and frames that are heavily dependent on shield gate exploit, like Banshee, Equinox or Mirage, will have a harder time. I think I will need to rework these soon, send Forma :P

Companion rework sounds nice, good to see Panzer and Smeeta dodged those bullets, a nerf for them would have left a bitter taste. But yeah, maybe my 20+ Orokin Reactors finally get something to get installed on. 

Reduction of grind is always nice because grind is no content. And having less loading screens for Incarnon swaps is nice, because loading screens are no content either. 

Stat changes are there I guess, same for Steel Path Circuit rewards. I still won't touch it anymore tbh, because for the amount of time you have to play the game mode the rewards often don't feel really worth it. 
 

All in all, very much looking forward to get my hands on this to get a better overview!
 

 

 

[GesuCritto]

All this mess for 1.3 sec of invulnerability ? when ur steel path mobs literally atomizing us (... not one shotting) they simply delete us with their damage.

FYI 1.3 sec of invulnerability is tot garbage... nothing can save us from 2 / 3 hit damage in steel path !!!!!!

Edited September 28, 2023 by GesuCritto

[Sarlight_808]

many people didnt receive shards from stream

[DrinkingRock]

Looking good overall, however I think you might want to reconsider the Duviri side-objective challenges. Multiple people in my Alliance do not enjoy Duviri and wouldn't be happy having to go back in and hunt down side objectives they've never done. 

Especially the "Do 3 puzzles" challenge. Random locations plus player confusion would make this pretty hard to do without being hand-held.

[Probably_Asleep]

8 minutes ago, Zetin2455 said:

It shouldn't. Blue Shards add a flat value after mods. Since the total value after mods is staying the same. Nothing changes.

I think you're right. I've been dealing with Incarnons so much lately that I just intuitively thought that Archon Shards affected base values. But yeah I don't think anything changes.

 

2 minutes ago, McRibbles said:

It's not like the +Health/Armor/Shield shards were very useful to begin with tbh. Or, like, at all actually outside of very few niche gameplay scenarios. Speaking of.... this seems like a pretty good time to make them +flat bonuses, eh, DE? Eeeeh? No? Okay. Yeah. They still won't be used, I guess.

In any event, I'm kind of surprised to see that we're finally getting Attenuation changes. Kinda felt like they just forgot about it in lieu of Duviri. Would've been nice to see some small shard tweaks as Red & Blue shards are just generally kind of mid with their only usecases being to replace Primed Flow or hit some strength breakpoint.

I play Mag so even one blue shard more than doubles my armor. With a TF I go from baseline 29.4% damage reduction to 53.8%. (With 5 it goes as high as 80.6% which makes Adaptability push it to the ridiculous level of 98.1%, but I like using the the other slots) So I love it! But I agree it's probably niche.

The Attenuation changes shocked me as well. We just went past the 1-year anniversary of Archon Hunts three weeks ago.

[Crevab]

GARUDA PRIME
Health: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Shields: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Armor: Base Rank - 420 (from 400)
Energy: Base Rank - 220 (from 160) / Max Rank - 320 (from 360)

 

Unless I'm mistake, Garuda Prime is the only Prime to get an energy nerf? But why?

Edit: Upon re-reading the whole list I guess she was a bit of an outlier

 

 

Also now is the time to make 190 energy the new floor for Primes. Save Ash, Frost, and Rhino I beg of you

Edited September 28, 2023 by Crevab

[Drachnyn]

vor 5 Stunden schrieb [DE]Taylor:

Archon Hunt Damage Attenuation Changes

Speaking of earning Archon Shards, Damage Attenuation (or “damage pillows”) may be a familiar mechanic for those who frequent Archon Hunts each week. 

This was a hot topic, especially near the end of 2022. Since then, we’ve taken our time to assess player feedback and devise a plan to address it -- and we’re finally at a place where we can execute it. 

Damage Attenuation is one tool of many to increase enemy difficulty by limiting how much damage they take from player weapons, etc. 

Our current form of Damage Attenuation has resulted in many weapons feeling lackluster due to the high attenuation values, and damage output was reduced significantly to balance out the post-attenuation modifiers -- meaning that Archon fights felt like a slog if players did not use a limited set of optimal builds.

This is not a favourable outcome, so we are making the following changes:

1 - Maximum Damage Caps are increasing

• Maximum Damage per Damage Instance has been increased 
• Maximum Damage Per Second has been increased 

Our goal is to make big hits still feel like big hits, especially for low-rate of-fire weapons. We’re able to reduce the damage cap significantly because of the next change:
 
2 - Modifiers now apply before Damage Attenuation

Critical Multipliers (and other modifiers) applying post damage cap allowed for many of the One Shot builds to function, and for full transparency, we want to prevent One Shot Archon builds as much as possible. By changing where these modifiers apply, we can increase the Damage Caps to a much less punishing level for players.

Our goals with these changes are to:

• Increase player damage output, thereby reducing the overall time to kill for Archons
• Make “big hits” feel impactful by no longer throttling them to such an extreme degree
• Encourage overall build diversity for Archon Hunts
• Reduce the ability to use of one-shot builds

We’re excited to see what Archon Hunts look like for players with these changes with Abyss of Dagath releases. If we feel things are too fast now, we may pull back a bit. As always, values are subject to change, so keep an eye out on the patch notes for final values on October 18th!

Awful changes overall, one shotting archons was literally the only thing interesting about them. The fights are dogS#&$ but instead of making them more interesting and giving them more mechanics you just prevent one shotting them. Terrible decision, do better.

[D-Shear]

vor 21 Minuten schrieb GesuCritto:

All this mess for 1.3 sec of invulnerability ? when ur steel path mobs literally atomizing us (... not one shotting) they simply delete us with their damage.

FYI 1.3 sec of invulnerability is tot garbage... nothing can save us from 2 / 3 hit damage in steel path !!!!!!

It's exactly the opposite:
Shieldgating is the only survivability tool for anything above base steel path. 

You can't mod for health and armor, because the enemy damage values FAR exceed what you can achieve, so if you have 50hp or 5000hp makes literally no difference at all when approaching around enemy lvl 1500 and that is based upon SINGLE hits, not accounting for multiple hits. For the very same reason, shield stacking is beyond useless, even if they would buff the shield DR from 25% or 50% to 75% or more. It's all the same, when the enemy bullet damage exceeds hundreds of thousands of damage compared to your measly 1-2k shield/health you could cobble up by sacrificing all your warframe slots for those values.

And this is what this boils down to:

Nothing will change at all in the meta, because there are literally no options other than shieldgating to play in those enemy level ranges/level cap. The bottomline is though, all frames with no shield gimmick (speaking hildryn, protea, condem etc.) are stripped by 1 whole warframe mod slot, which are already VERY tight on every frame, because they need to slot in the new mod to revert shield gating to it's current form. 

Now, before those andies roll in with their argument of "bla bla but only 0.1% of players play this content".

That is still 0,1% of us that get royally screwed over for no reason at all. There is no compensation for the nerf, no alternate way to go around it, it's just straight up you lose one warframe mod slot across the board and they didn't even care to make the shield gate mode an exilus mod to soften the blow a little bit.

Edited September 28, 2023 by TeenieSlasher

[Amolistic.]

25 minutes ago, Drachnyn said:

Awful changes overall, one shotting archons was literally the only thing interesting about them. The fights are dogS#&$ but instead of making them more interesting and giving them more mechanics you just prevent one shotting them. Terrible decision, do better.

Bro did you read? They literally said "we don't want oneshot, but we improve the overall killspeed, so that you are INCENTIVIZED to bring different weapons to the hunt."

You seriously sounds like you have skill issue, OH NO I CANNOT ONESHOT ARCHONS ANYMORE DE DO BETTER, I WILL NOT CHANGE MY BUILD BECAUSE OF I WANNA ONESHOT.

the boss fight itself ain't bad, its really ok and staple design, even better vs most of the bosses i see in games, Just the "thing" is quite punishing, at least I don't really need to rely on headshots with very burst weapons or whatever thing, its quite boring as I always have to bring burst weps to the fight with no leeway at all.

 

You guys complain about dmg attenuation being shet because it is punishing and have no variety, now in all of a sudden they recognized the issue and resolve it, allows for variety of weapons to shine and now it is an awful change? What kind of double standard is this?

OH ONESHOT IS INTERESTING. DEFINITELY INTERESTING. Go and touch some grass from vinland saga.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Amolistic.

[(PSN)Rainbow_Neos1]

1 hour ago, MobyTheDuck said:

Wait, did you guys address the Dragon Key + shield gate problem and then added a new mod that does nearly exactly that?

Yes. 💀 

[Amolistic.]

4 minutes ago, TeenieSlasher said:

It's exactly the opposite:
Shieldgating is the only survivability tool for anything above base steel path. 

You can't mod for health and armor, because the enemy damage values FAR exceed what you can achieve, so if you have 50hp or 5000hp makes literally no difference at all when approaching around enemy lvl 1500 and that is based upon SINGLE hits, not accounting for multiple hits. For the very same reason, shield stacking is beyond useless, even if they would buff the shield DR from 25% or 50% to 75% or more. It's all the same, when the enemy bullet damage exceeds hundreds of thousands of damage compared to your measly 1-2k shield/health you could cobble up by sacrificing all your warframe slots for those values.

And this is what this boils down to:

Nothing will change at all in the meta, because there are literally no options other than shieldgating to play in those enemy level ranges/level cap. The bottomline is though, all frames with no shield gimmick (speaking hildryn, protea, condem etc.) are stripped by 1 whole warframe mod slot, which are already VERY tight on every frame, because they need to slot in the new mod to revert shield gating to it's current form. 

Now, before those andies roll in with their argument of "bla bla but only 0.1% of players play this content".

That is still 0,1% of us that get royally screwed over for no reason at all. There is no compensation for the nerf, no alternate way to go around it, it's just straight up you lose one warframe mod slot across the board and they didn't even care to make the shield gate mode an exilus mod to soften the blow a little bit.

Shield gating is not the only tool to survive anything above base SP, there is something called CC abilities, one button press and suddenly your survivability goes up, and also there is a focus school called vazarin.

Shield gating still works, but now i guess you need to rely on CC abilities more, cast more often since ~325 shields regen'd = 1.33s invul, but tbh, shield gating is not really doable alone in high SP, you still need rolling guard or something, and cc abilities too.

I already see the nerf coming tbh, and I really expect worse, this is far better than I thought.

[TheFlameFlash]

why is Nira and Gladiator health mods getting shafted compared to their counterpart shield mods the inconsistency annoys me

[SDGDen]

Just now, Amolistic. said:

Shield gating is not the only tool to survive anything above base SP, there is something called CC abilities, one button press and suddenly your survivability goes up, and also there is a focus school called vazarin.

Shield gating still works, but now i guess you need to rely on CC abilities more, cast more often since ~325 shields regen'd = 1.33s invul, but tbh, shield gating is not really doable alone in high SP, you still need rolling guard or something, and cc abilities too.

I already see the nerf coming tbh, and I really expect worse, this is far better than I thought.

there's also the fact that DE doesn't and shouldn't balance the game for steel path.

 

steel path is basically DE's attempt at countering powercreep to begin with, and the way it scales is *really* dumb (just look at armor in steel path basically giving 99.999% damage reduction to enemies) 

 

imho, steel path needs it's modifiers removed. it should JUST be +100 levels. but before that happens, player gear and enemy damage output needs to be balanced significantly better (so those modifiers aren't needed anymore to begin with) 

[Amolistic.]

19 minutes ago, Crevab said:

GARUDA PRIME
Health: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Shields: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Armor: Base Rank - 420 (from 400)
Energy: Base Rank - 220 (from 160) / Max Rank - 320 (from 360)

 

Unless I'm mistake, Garuda Prime is the only Prime to get an energy nerf? but why?

 

Also now is the time to make 190 energy the new floor for Primes. Save Ash, Frost, and Rhino I beg of you

Me as a very hardcore Rhino main find this not so difficult to deal with, just go a lil efficiency and boom ezpz, but tbh, rhino and frost, even if you give them more energy, the problem is that they both are mid or mid-high casters (frost cast more than rhino), you really need efficiency or you will empty your bar like there is no tomorrow, even if your max energy is increased, it only prolongs the inevitable, you only can regen this much.

2 minutes ago, SDGDen said:

there's also the fact that DE doesn't and shouldn't balance the game for steel path.

 

steel path is basically DE's attempt at countering powercreep to begin with, and the way it scales is *really* dumb (just look at armor in steel path basically giving 99.999% damage reduction to enemies) 

 

imho, steel path needs it's modifiers removed. it should JUST be +100 levels. but before that happens, player gear and enemy damage output needs to be balanced significantly better (so those modifiers aren't needed anymore to begin with) 

hmmm true

Edited September 28, 2023 by Amolistic.

[(PSN)Rainbow_Neos1]

Love getting nerfs to some frames and buffs to others because of changes you think need solving. Know what you could've done? Buffed everything slightly. Less energy by 10 on some builds literally means one less full ability per full bar. 

Instead of shifting every frames health, you could've just put vitality to 150%. A 300 Excalibur would then get 750. 

But instead you leave even more room for bugs because you altered all frames. Less is more in coding.

Edited September 28, 2023 by (PSN)Rainbow_Neos1

[D-Shear]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb SDGDen:

there's also the fact that DE doesn't and shouldn't balance the game for steel path.

 

steel path is basically DE's attempt at countering powercreep to begin with, and the way it scales is *really* dumb (just look at armor in steel path basically giving 99.999% damage reduction to enemies) 

 

imho, steel path needs it's modifiers removed. it should JUST be +100 levels. but before that happens, player gear and enemy damage output needs to be balanced significantly better (so those modifiers aren't needed anymore to begin with) 

Oh, the game should definitely be balanced around the highest possible difficulty. 

But like you said, the highest difficulty is still a thrown together load of bandaid bs, that is exactly why it was remedied by shield gate in the first place. Do you see the circle closing here? That is also what I was referring to, when I mentioned compensation: There is no point in removing that one mechanic that makes endgame content playable without tuning the other knobs. Nobody would care about SG, if there was actually a tuned endgame, but as long as we don't get that rework, why in the hell would you touch anything that makes it work right now? Like I said, nobody is phased by that anyway, that doesn't play this content, it's literally a change that kicks the 0,1% in the balls with no effect on the other 99,9%. Where does that make any sense?

[Cerikus]

5 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Steel Path Circuit Reward Path - New Riven Option!
For those who have acquired all of the Incarnons via the Steel Path Circuit, we want to offer you additional rewards for this game mode. With Drifter Opportunity Intrinsics at Rank 9, you will be presented with 3 Veiled Rivens in addition to the weekly Incarnon rotation for your Circuit Reward Path! 

Just like the Incarnon Geneses, the order you pick the Rivens will determine what Rank you need to complete in the Circuit to earn them. 

I need to say something as loudly as possible:

THANK! YOU!

I've been posting so much about this. In my dream world I would adjust the reward path even more after after aquiring all Incarnons, but this is HUGE.

I love it.

[Jarriaga]

At long last the DDK exploit has been killed.

There is now peace in the world.

(Adding a mod to simulate its effect [Sacrificing a full mod slot for it] is exactly what I proposed DE should do almost exactly a year ago).

10 minutes ago, TeenieSlasher said:

Oh, the game should definitely be balanced around the highest possible difficulty. 

I don't know of a single game in history that has ever been balanced around its hardest difficulty.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Jarriaga

[Probably_Asleep]

On 2023-09-28 at 10:13 PM, TeenieSlasher said:

It's exactly the opposite:
Shieldgating is the only survivability tool for anything above base steel path. 

You can't mod for health and armor, because the enemy damage values FAR exceed what you can achieve, so if you have 50hp or 5000hp makes literally no difference at all when approaching around enemy lvl 1500 and that is based upon SINGLE hits, not accounting for multiple hits. For the very same reason, shield stacking is beyond useless, even if they would buff the shield DR from 25% or 50% to 75% or more. It's all the same, when the enemy bullet damage exceeds hundreds of thousands of damage compared to your measly 1-2k shield/health you could cobble up by sacrificing all your warframe slots for those values.

And this is what this boils down to:

Nothing will change at all in the meta, because there are literally no options other than shieldgating to play in those enemy level ranges/level cap. The bottomline is though, all frames with no shield gimmick (speaking hildryn, protea, condem etc.) are stripped by 1 whole warframe mod slot, which are already VERY tight on every frame, because they need to slot in the new mod to revert shield gating to it's current form. 

Now, before those andies roll in with their argument of "bla bla but only 0.1% of players play this content".

That is still 0,1% of us that get royally screwed over for no reason at all. There is no compensation for the nerf, no alternate way to go around it, it's just straight up you lose one warframe mod slot across the board and they didn't even care to make the shield gate mode an exilus mod to soften the blow a little bit.

Ya losing a Mod slot hurts. I'm a little excited about this because I use Mag(Prime), but a lot of my builds have low Ability Strength. I love using Polarize + Counter Pulse because it simultaneously CC's and restores shields, while only costing 30 energy with Fleeting Expertise. But it actually only restores 160 shields when Ability Strength is at 40%. That worked great with the Dragon Key trick, but I don't know how it's going to go now. I'll need to dedicate Mod space to Ability Strength now, so I'm basically losing a mod slot either way.

In my case though at least I can get the strength I need to keep my playstyle through a combination of Arcanes and Archon Slots. The same can't be said for other players that use difference frames and builds. I can see this being a burden for some.

Though I am looking forward to experimenting with 2.5 seconds of invulneratiliby.

 

On 2023-09-28 at 10:37 PM, Jarriaga said:

I don't know of a single game in history that has ever been balanced around its hardest difficulty.

Spoiler

It took me a while but I thought of one

[BalaDeSilver]

5 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

EXCALIBUR
Health: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Shields: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Armor: Base Rank - 240 (from 225)
Energy: Base Rank - 100 (from 100) / Max Rank - 150 (from 150)

EXCALIBUR PRIME
Health: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Shields: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Armor: Base Rank - 315 (from 300)
Energy: Base Rank - 175 (from 150) / Max Rank - 225 (from 225)

EXCALIBUR UMBRA
Health: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Shields: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Armor: Base Rank - 315 (from 300)
Energy: Base Rank - 175 (from 150) / Max Rank - 225 (from 225)

5 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

RHINO
Health: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Shields: Base Rank - 355 (from 150) / Max Rank - 555 (from 450)
Armor: Base Rank - 240 (from 225)
Energy: Base Rank - 100 (from 100) / Max Rank - 150 (from 150)

RHINO PRIME
Health: Base Rank - 170 (from 100) / Max Rank - 370 (from 300)
Shields: Base Rank - 355 (from 150) / Max Rank - 555 (from 450)
Armor: Base Rank - 290 (from 275)
Energy: Base Rank - 100 (from 100) / Max Rank - 150 (from 150)

Rhino (the tank frame) still has less armor than Excalibur (the sword frame). Kinda of a pet peeve of a friend that's still not getting fixed :v

At least armor buffs should still matter a lot for people who don't use any armor mods, which is somewhat common nowadays.

[SDGDen]

37 minutes ago, (PSN)c1234567890alvi said:

The shield gating changes make me really curious. I have to get my hands on them first, but my first impression is: Pillage and Condemn will become more viable options, and frames that are heavily dependent on shield gate exploit, like Banshee, Equinox or Mirage, will have a harder time. I think I will need to rework these soon, send Forma :P

for mirage:

her 3rd ability can net you 95% DR when in shadow easily, weave into and out of shadows based on whether you need more offensive or defensive boosts. combine with another form of DR for easy 99.5% (i like using adaptation even though it's not a TRUE 90% DR), mirage also rolls faster which allows you to avoid more fire. her clones also distract. i also heavily recommend double-casting her 4 when you're in a pinch to blind enemies in a large radius, if anything, her three issues are: she can't regain her health, she has no armor strip and she is very energy intensive since you need to keep up two buffs and keep energy in your back pocket for her 4. i'd recommend using archon shards, arcanes and subsumes to help with those three areas (arcane energize, an azure shard with healing and your armor stripping subsume of choice) 

 

for equinox: 

equinox's 3 in night mode can reduce the damage enemies deal, she can also heal in night mode and use her 2 to crowd control. again, her issues are energy use and lack of armor strip. her damage reduction also doesn't work against enemies that are outside of your 3's range so it's ineffective against sniper-type enemies. because of her using a lot of drain abilities, you should look into either generating energy orbs with her or generating health orbs and using equilibrium, that way you can easily keep up your energy. getting equinox to be survivable in day form is.... quite difficult, since ALL of her survivability boosts are tied to night mode. if you don't care about armor strip you could run dispensary with equilibrium to double-dip into both of the orbs dispensary creates but i don't really know which ability you'd remove since you need her 2 for CC, her 3 for DR and her 4 for healing, you could remove her 1 and just only play night mode i guess? and then have a separate build for a day mode nuclear build.

 

for banshee: 

banshee's a bit tricky, i think her survivability is kind of a meme since she's supposed to survive through stealth but her stealth ability doesn't actually keep you alive. silence works great until the enemy stays alive longer than the initial stagger (although them not hearing you is a pretty neat bonus for modes where they're not alert by default). if you're good with banshee's abilities (most notably use of her 1 to CC and armor strip enemies) you could use pillage or rebuild shields. rebuild shields is more immediate but has a cooldown while pillage has more utility (due to the wide range armor and shield strip) but is mildly slower. 

 

 

honestly, part of the thing here is just their playstyles and which missions they fit in, as well as making use of the entire kit. i'd 100% consider running condemn on some frames with the changes but not these three, prefferably a frame that has some kind of grouping ability. 

 

if there's any mistakes in this, i do apologize, i wrote this entire thing off the top of my head.