 What's up everybody I'm the Mangus you were awesome and predecessor reopened the servers for another closed alpha weekend. The only way you could play is if you were able to get your hands on a key but there were a lot of keys being given out out there. The alpha was generally viewed by the community as a success, I personally had a great deal of fun playing. This time instead of jumping around with different heroes I pretty much just stuck to Narbash and tested out the plethora of new items they added since the last test. Today I'm going to give you my honest opinions on the game. While I was impressed for the most part there were some things that needed to be fixed. So let's go through the good, the bad and the ugly of Predacessor's alpha weekend. Let's start out with the good. Bellicom steel were added in. This is not only exciting for those out there who are fans of the two heroes but also a triumph before I made his balance and testing teams. Success in alpha development is usually marked by what you don't notice and I didn't notice either hero being exceptionally over or underpowered. I'm not saying the entire game is balanced but the addition of new heroes, even an old school paragon usually meant that whatever team had that hero was going to win the game because they were introduced in a woefully overtuned and under tested state. I felt that both steel and bellica were impactful when played skillfully without being oppressive. Props to the balancing team and the testers. Omida added a metric fuck ton of new items since the last test. While there were some bullshit item combos and mandatory pickups that I'll get to later, there were many successes in this category. Specifically the crests. These were starter crests that gave benefits to each role in the game. Some roles had multiple crests to choose from. They were cheap enough that you could buy them at the start of the match with some gold left over for potions or wards. Even better, certain crests would evolve once you met the correct conditions. For example, the crest that I used the most on Narbash was called the crooked crest. It gave you some health, mana regen, magic power and .3 gold per second with a passive that gave you stacks every 30 seconds. Damaging a hero would consume a stack and give you 36 gold. To dissuade non-supports from taking the item, the passive only worked if you averaged less than 3 last hits per minute. The UI indicated the progress of your stacks and the stacks were very helpfully indicated on your character model via spinning globes around your character. After getting 500 gold, the crest would evolve into crooked sight which increased the stats given, the gold amount per stack and also gave you an active which allowed for the placement of two shadow wards. Earning 1000 gold evolved further into scoundrel sight which once again had higher stats, more gold per stack and gave you 4 shadow wards to place. 4. I was tossing wards out like a big green Santa tossing candy in a Christmas parade. I had so much vision that I could see the enemy's soul. The other set of evolving crests were for junglers and they either gave regen or extra damage against jungle minions and these crests evolved into a smite based on how many minions you had killed. The numbers for the evolving those crests were a bit high but it's still a cool idea. The crests were probably my favorite update to the game, really well done and helped resolve the starving support problem. As with all of the other tests, the game ran exceptionally smooth. I didn't hear from some people that it didn't run as well for them in previous tests. However, I personally thought it did much better. Each step of the development process for Omeda has been a step up. New additions have served to improve the experience instead of causing unforeseen step backs. There were of course some things I didn't like about the alpha. I'm going to specifically address gameplay when I talk about the bad. Bugs shall be reserved for the ugly portion of this video. As much as I enjoyed the addition of all the new items and the resulting build diversity, there was an ADC item that I felt was mandatory which is something I don't like. The item in question gives you the increased attack range. I know people say that you don't have to build this item but come on. If you don't take this, you will lose against any other ADC that does have it and can aim at least a little bit. And not taking it means that you won't be able to position in teamfights as well as someone who does have it. The other problem with items was some bullshit combos. I don't know if these were intended or not, but the end result is some pretty cheap ways to play that I took full advantage of. An example of what I'm talking about is this gaze item that gives you a slow and ability hit. Innocent enough and pretty common in mobas. However, if you build this along with Hellfire, an item that passively radiates ability damage, you end up being able to pulse a constant damaging slow to everyone around you without spending any mana. I was going toe to toe 1v1 with Narbash against mid game junglers without building any damage other than Hellfire. That shouldn't be a thing. I'm sure there are some other silly combos out there, let me know in the comments below what you guys found. The last thing is that I still think early game ADCs are a bit overtuned. You shouldn't be shitting your pants on Feng Mao when you discover that you're up against a Murdoch in the off lane. I know many people thought that Kai was also overtuned, however, I personally think he was fine. You just had to pick up one of the many cards you could use to counter him. You can't say someone is overpowered if you do nothing to counter them. Now the ugly which I'll reserve for bugs and technical issues. I didn't find many bugs in the game, however, I did get disconnected once, which was very frustrating because there's no way to reconnect to the game afterwards. I ended up finding out that everyone disconnected in that particular game, so at least I didn't have to feel bad about leaving my team high and dry. It did seem that there were a lot of disconnects though, especially at the loading and character select screen. Unfortunately there's no way to know if people were experiencing a bug or just getting pissed that someone took their hero that they wanted to play and just disconnecting themselves. Also saw Jellynees get a bug where he was unable to select a hero, I'm not sure how common that was, but it's something that needs to be looked into. That's all I have to report for you fine people today. I'm not sure how far out the open beta for this game will be. I don't know how they plan to monetize other than with the badass Murdoch skin that they made and the Scythe skin for Severog. I do know that they plan for eventual console release, however, I don't know when that will be, I just know it's going to be a while. If you enjoyed the video, please leave a like and subscribe for more, but for now this is the Mangoo signing off, you guys, have a good one. Mangooos!