LARMER, JACK “WICK”

“And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak… and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers.”

Numbers 13:33

“…write them upon the table of thine heart.”

Proverbs 7:3

1. Every threat ships with its answer. Ship a problem, ship the counter with it. Cheap and single-target at first, more expensive and team-wide as the threat scales. And findable. A counter nobody can see isn’t one. [In the original: ᚲᚨᛚ᛫ᛗᚨᚱ᛫ᛃᛖᛚᛖᛞ᛫ᚹᛖᛞᚨ, every threat bears its answer. The word ᛗᚨᚱ, threat, shares a root with “merchandise.”]
2. Never nerf the reason someone queues. Some mechanics are why a player shows up at all. Movement is the canonical case: strong, and some people are only here for it. When something beloved overperforms, the fix is an answer, not a smaller number on the thing they love. Shave the joy and they quietly leave. Ship the answer and both sides get a game. [In the original: ᛚᚨ᛫ᚲᚨᚱᚢ᛫ᚺᚨ᛫ᛞᚢᚾ, do not unmake the joy. ᛞᚢᚾ is joy, but also “the reason one returns.”]
3. Rework the cost, never the soul. A redesign keeps the fantasy that made people love the original and reprices what it costs to use. If the rework wins but the players who loved it leave, the rework lost.
4. Full value requires risk. Power should pay out on commitment. On a hero you hit, in a fight you’re actually in, not on a flat timer ticking from across the map. There has to be a window where landing it can go wrong, or dodging and dispel and spacing stop mattering. The item I won’t build is the one that pays the same whether you earn it or not.
5. Uptime is a stat. Half the broken things in any patch are uptime problems wearing a damage costume.
6. Reuse live verbs. Every mechanic I propose already exists in the game in some form, so new work reads like it was always there. That is a default, not a ban on invention: brand-new machinery is welcome, it just belongs in a major update, not a Tuesday patch.
7. Conservative numbers, named kill criteria. Reach for a number before a redesign, because the fix usually is a number. Every change should ship with the result that would prove it wrong already written down. If you can’t say what would make you revert it, you don’t have a design yet. You have a wish.
8. Check the data before the nerf. Loud isn’t strong. Pull pickrate, winrate, and win-probability impact before you move a number. Sometimes the data backs the gut read and sometimes it humiliates it, so be honest about which one you’re running on. And if you over-nerfed something, just put it back. Reverting isn’t an admission of anything, it’s the next correct change. [In the original: ᚲᚨᚱᚨ᛫ᛖᛗ᛫ᚨᚱᛞ, read the ashes. ᚨᚱᛞ is data: what remains of the fire.]
9. Objectives never pay the winner twice. A losing team needs a real way back, or people quit trying and the game’s over by minute twenty. But they earn it off the map, off objectives and tempo. Nobody hands it to them on a coupon.
10. Real holes. Real solutions. If it doesn’t fill a hole nothing else fills, I don’t build it. A missing counter, a role nobody covers, a reason to take a fight that isn’t there yet. Anything else is making something so you can say you made something, and the shop’s crowded enough.