What has been your favourite or least favourite crest in Silksong so far and why? Have I got anything colossally wrong here today? If so, let me know so I can update this comment with any necessary amendments! Love the discussions going on already, I've learned a lot from these comments and have been addressing some things generally here in my ammendments section.

Ongoing Amendments/Comments:

1. Shoutout to all the Beast Crest defenders, I hear you all on your totally fair points in support of the crest. I was mostly meming with the pogo hate and still think it's fair to say it's the most awkward to learn, but because it has a high skill ceiling once you've mastered it it does have a lot of interesting flexibility you can't get with other crests. This is probably why I love the Hunter Crest as I think the same is true for it, though less extreme than here. I think the lack of iframes while in motion at the start of the pogo is easily the biggest hit against it, making point blank pogos literally impossible without taking damage, so I still stand behind that as a legitimate criticism. For combat though I do absolutely see the case for it being good once you've got the pogo mastered as it can be a great gap closer pre-clawline, though I think generally the clawline does the same thing but better in most scenarios while being safer and more consistent. Still, mobility is certainly viable with this crest and you can absolutely pop off damage wise with it, which I've always been in agreement with so keep raging on you beasts! Realistically I could see boosting mobility up to maybe an A, not sure how I feel about S yet at least from a platforming perspective but for combat I can see the potential.

2. Witch Crest heal defenders, I hear you on the support for the heal being insane damage, which can be from a single action perspective but only if you multibinder and claw mirror, otherwise it's legitimately not competitive with just using silk skills for dps. HOWEVER, I will conceded that it creates a playstyle that allows for uniquely hyper aggressive play where you can get away with being hit since you commit to making your primary damage your heals and if you're ever missing any HP then using the bind heal with the multi+claw combo is certainly really solid assuming you land all hits. I think my biggest gripe with the crest is that it is objectively inconsistent at giving you your heals against mobile enemies, and anything that dies during the bind itself, making weak or low enemies impossible to fully heal off of, which is a large, legitimate detractor to the crest in my opinion. You can be more careful to look for consistent windows against mobile enemies but it can often be at the expense of DPS when you tunnel on that playstyle instead of just needle whacking. In any case, I definitely agree it's one of the coolest, and most satisfying crests when you play it really well and it's far from bad so definitely run it if you enjoy it. I can also see the vision here for bumping it higher but the inherent risk and true inability to heal against certain enemies are still real detractors. I think it still objectively comes last in terms of maximum overall potential, especially due to build limitations and lack of yellow tool slots but maybe it goes up to a solid full A. Still super fun to play!

3. Wanderer Crit DPS calculation error - Blunder on my part for Wanderer DPS when factoring in crits. The damage calculation should be: (base needle dmg)x98% + (base needle dmg)x2%x3 = 1.04x base needle dmg instead of 1.06 (so 4% instead of 6%). For crits with magnetite dice you still get a bonus of 0.6% dmg so nothing changes there and you'd get 1.046 or 4.6% increase to DPS. A minor but meaningful error that doesn't change it's max DPS potential but does put an optimal hunter and beast a touch further in comparison.

4.  An important note around DPS - most of these dps calculations were made without consideration of variables like downtime where an enemy isn't attackble due to being out of range or dodging a combo, mostly for simplicity but also because in general all crests will suffer similarly in DPS as a result of this or make use of dead time in a similar way. One thing that I probably should have done though is add the bind time from the beast crest into the DPS calc, though I initially decided against it because I figured you could also use conventionally dead time to activate your fury and because it's significantly faster than the base bind already that it was fair enough to exclude it since it does also act as your heal itself which you'd have to spend time activating for any other crest anyways. Perhaps it was an oversight, perhaps this is justified, though I did mention for all high DPS needle crests like the hunter, wanderer, and beast that you would run into issues either from breaking focus on the hunter, in the beast crests case healing and taking damage to reduce duration, and wanderer from simply not being able to reliably hit all 3+ hits per second and not having enough silk in reserves to activate the crit passive that you end up with very similar numbers at the end of the day. All of these numbers were meant to just highlight absolute ceilings, while in practice you'll obviously be likely to get below those points, in some cases much less but I tried to call those situations out explicitly as much as I could and tried to put those into consideration with rankings as well. Hopefully you feel that the assessments were fair enough despite it being possible to be a bit more exact with the numbers.

5. Clawline considerations - I think this was something I didn't factor in enough and that it's worth pointing out that this is a great solve for a lot of mobility issues on crests like the architect or beast if you can't get the pogo down, but also for quick gap closing to get hits off on the wanderer since it relies almost exclusively on needle damage to perform. This is something that applies to all crests generally but probably a bit more for those 3 than the others, so perhaps a bit of a bump to each with this in mind.

6. Shaman crest definitely has a level of consistency to it that I think a lot of other crests fall short on but I still stand by my statement that you simply can't melt a boss faster with it than you can with an optimized set of tools, it's just not possible. That said, Shaman can very reliably burn a boss and it has a special place in speedsruns where you don't have the luxury of optimal tools or resources so it's absolutely a play, if not THE play in those situations. It's feels very cool to use to just launching out spells 24/7. I really hope we get some endgame stuff to get better use out of it as it'll be an easy safe pick for boss rushes. I know grubberflies elegy was my crutch for all radiance godhome bosses, so I see the vision!

7. Wanderer Crest Range Clarification - It is true that the Wanderer crest is the same as the hunter crest but the upslash on the wanderer and the girth of the swipe itself is distinctly shorter which is a legitimate detractor, especially for airborne enemies which is what the crest struggles with the most by far. It's also true that the longclaw disproportionately increases it's range compared to other crests, which is why I think it ends up feeling like a must have blue slot for many people as the difference is very noticeable. It's of course optional though so if you're fine with the base range then definitely swap it out for something else.

I just realize, Hornet is probably the only boss in gaming history that become stronger when you unlock her as a playable character

The beast doesn’t concern themself with the opinion of other crest users

if youre a beast crest user, always remember youre a child of skarrsinger karmelita, which instantly makes you based

13:32 WHAT KIND OF PSYCOPATH PUTS DELVERS DRILL ON THE TOP SLOT?!

Additional point that I have experience with: Wanderers crest allows you to completely negate a lot of enemies/bosses attacks by just spamming the attack button and parrying

Because of the Crest system I really wish we get an equivalent of Godhome as DLC for this game because I really, REALLY would like a way to easily retry any boss I want while messing around with different set ups.

No matter how much slander the Reaper Crest gets, I'll keep spamming the funny dash attack

I’m watching this while farming thousands of rosaries for the shell shard fund

Listen... the witch's double hit pogo when hitting an enemy and the double hit dash attack putting me at the perfect height, with most enemies, to do that great pogo made me fall in love with it - the initial honeymoon phase forced me to get used to the heal mechanic and now I've gotten good at picking a good time to maximize its benefits

12:31 as a hollow knight player, i was surprised how fast and easily i was able to adapt really well to the diagonal pogo

The running dash on the Reaper crest is extremely slept on, imo. I used it to get past the bosses that I was playing too agressive on, and being limited by the attack speed really helped with pulling back my agression. Running dash also puts you at the perfect height to down pogo OR clawline into an annoying flying enemy in gauntlets.

A thing to consider about Shaman crest is the fact Thread Storm + Volt Filament allows you to one-shot every non-boss enemy in the game, allowing you to eliminate priority threats in gauntlets before they can do any real damage. And, while the Charge attack does deal less damage, the safety that it does offer with its range cannot be ignored, with the pin badge making it so that I legit feel comfortable using Needle Arts more often than non-pogo normal strikes with it, making for a play style that is very reminiscent of playing a Wizard.

we can all agree with beast crest probably got the biggest learning curve

I uniornically love the beast crest pogo. After a short time getting used to it, the horizontal mobility has really solid gap-closing potential. Not that hornet lacks for horizontal speed, I just enjoyed using this to land a pogo into some weird combos. Beast crest is an all-timer for me

Reaper seems like an obvious nod to the Rally mechanic from Bloodborne. You even find it in Greymoor (which is obviously Bloodborne inspired) and it incentivizes aggressive play just like Rally

I think one aspect being missed about the the reaper is how well it all flows together, the dash attack puts you in a perfect position to either dash away or pogo, the pogo gives you enough air to dodge again, the clawline combos perfectly into the pogo and the range of the slash is enough that you can sometimes just get an extra hit in without putting yourself in danger especially with the longclaw pin. It's amazing for the hit and run tactics a lot of the more duel style bosses require.

I've never done drugs but i believe hitting the witch crest heal with claw mirrors probably feels the same. There just something so satisfying in turning into a portable nuke and blasting a boss all the way to the next Hollow Knight game. Also my stubborn ass for some reason decided to try and beat the final boss of act 3 with the Witch crest and it was hard but man did it feel good :D

I feel like team cherry knew the monster they would unleash if they gave wanderer 2 red slots.

Flintbrew combo on the fastest crest? Absolute havoc

18:40 the main benefit for reaper i think is that its focused on comeback, hunter rewards you for playing well, but reaper is the best crest to be at low health on, cause you can heal, wail, get Silk full really fast and then heal again, full silk again, and then start firing off spells.