This was going to be a simple mod reply at first but when i read that I had to write an "exhaustive explanation", I was a little irritated. I don't expect anyone to read in full but yea. You've read the title so here goes.

Refer to beatmapsets/1326193/discussion/2747596/timeline#/2044299. For full context, download the map and head to this section: 00:54:927 (1,2,3,4,5).

Since I feel like everyone's going to point out the Ranking Criteria and how I'm not blindly following the guidelines, I'll do an "exhaustive explanation" as required by the Ranking Criteria. Though I feel like I've already done that in my reply to Kyrian's mod - I believe that following guidelines as *absolute* authority is dumb.

I'll start by saying it's a *Guideline*, not a *Rule*:
I quote
I'll also quote

Then the guideline in question, quote
What I'm doing that violates this guideline: Using 5 consecutive 1/2 circles on a Normal difficulty, as the lowest difficulty in the set.

My "exhaustive explanation":
These last 5 notes are stacked 1/2 beats, on the *very last section of the song*, where in every diff is represented as the hardest section of the map. So naturally I wanted this to be the hardest section in the Normal difficulty. So I decided that 5 consecutive 1/2 notes does the job pretty well. Now, before everyone starts screaming "you aren't following the guidelines!", allow me to explain.

I quote Scaling BPM on the ranking criteria

This song is 156BPM. Which is in the middle-ish in between 180BPM and 120BPM. If at 120BPM an "almost constant 1/2 chain" is acceptable, I believe that just 5 consecutive 1/2 notes at 156BPM on a *very exceptional* part of the song (the hardest part in the kiai, also represented as such in all other diffs) is justified. Not to mention they're stacked, which means movement isn't affected and makes it easier on the newer players.

This should feel intense for newer players, and that is completely intentional. These 5 notes feel very intense in the other two difficulties. Using two 1/2 sliders and ending on a single note is way too slow and soft, and doesn't follow how it works in other difficulties.

I honestly don't know if anyone's going to read this in full. But I did this because I find it annoying that someone's pointing out a guideline when I've already explained my reasoning beforehand.

If I'm genuinely wrong for believing so, let me know, I'm all ears. But I'm confident my decision is justified enough to slightly ignore a guideline for an exceptional case.

It's very cool that you actually bother with this.
I think your explanation makes perfect sense and shows that your case is in fact probably not really violating the guideline in the first place.
Regarding the "exhaustiveness", whenever you're aware that something you did grazed a guideline, just make your explanation a bit more succinct, you don't need to write a wall of text about it just because it said "exhaustive".
The exhaustive explanation is necessary is when a guideline is obviously violated. Your case is just an edge case that does not warrant an exhaustive explanation in my opinion.

Replying something like "In my opinion 3 1/2 on 180bpm as mentioned in the guideline and 5 1/2 on 156bpm as in my map are comparable in difficulty if you add in the lowered difficulty from stacking the circles." would be fine in my opinion. At the end of the day, the nominating BN will have to take another look whether they consider it an unnecessary violation of a guideline or not.

You're right, I might've gotten a bit carried away. In the end the actual explanation was really only 3 paragraphs long, and most of the post was just me quoting different sections/pages in the ranking criteria. Yes, obviously if a nominating BN were to look over it and genuinely believe it's not justified enough, I'll change it. But thanks for reading!

I like your dedication to represent song well than to balance the gameplay. Applauds to you

Your stack is fine, but there's one important thing here your modders failed to consider that no one has brought up yet: rest moments.

As far as I can tell, the diff-specific guidelines are written to be general and widely applicable. Indeed, in most cases I'd judge a stack of five 1/2 circles to be too intense for players who are just getting into the game, even at this bpm. It's just too demanding for an otherwise typical section; doing something this intense in the middle of tapping all kinds of different gaps and following sliders and what not is just too much for those players.

But that's only because the player has no time to rest. In your map, literally nothing happens for two measures after the stack, and there's only a single circle left in the map after those two measures anyway. As long as the player can read roughly how many circles there are in this stack (which is something they should already know or be in the process of learning at this level), the stack alone should be perfectly doable. They can get all the rest they need after clicking just one more circle.