Done with the victory board, here are my thoughts.

[Lucan't]

This is just going to be a tl;dr.

• Had to pivot majority of the runs into Poisonblood or Frostfire setups.
  
• Stacking damage is good if it's exploitable (looking at you Dice of Fates, Predator's Quintessence and Abandoned Antumbra).
  
• Double Contrition of Allura is bonkers for shield setups.
  
• Leaky Pen is actually wack with orb lord setup and anything else that benefits off of picking up an orb.
  
• 70%+ crit chance feels like 20%.
  
• Aspect specific vestiges feel extremely weak when compared to anything that I'm praising.
  
• Unbound was actually fun to fight when I didn't have the bonkers Poisonblood or Frostfire setups.
  
• Mosscloak is my new fav (easier to set up for wack combos).
  
• Weaver and Clairvoyant might need a slight buff to their base kit, but w/e. It's not that bad rn.

Had fun for the most part, but man. The difficulty is unforgiving if you don't go for wack setups that sometimes play the game for you. Nothing for spikes as unfortunaly I didn't find that set as strong as any other available elemental effect alone.

[Limdood]

so many of the epic, and ESPECIALLY legendary vestiges that scale up to high levels are so obnoxiously useless.

Like, thanks game, I really appreciate Predator's Quintessence or Trickster's Hook or Window to Eternal Longing in the final shop right before the boss...

I'd love to see the infinite scaling vestiges toned down and moved to lower rarities (maybe Predator's quintessence and Abandoned antumbra get moved to green or blue rarity, and "devoured prey" buff dropped to 4 omni damage...), so they can actually be feasibly obtained in book 1 or 2 without just Blessing of Kwills + lots of money + "hoping really hard."

And then take those legendary vestiges and make them NON-scaling, but big effect. Contrition of Allyra is a great example. So is Cultivated Harmonies or Controlled Explosives. Big, immediate effect vestiges with a strong impact, suited for their position as USUALLY only obtainable after book 2.


To the OP's points, in no particular order. Everyone seems to have wildly different views of "strong" vs. "weak" aspects. Weaver, for example, is generally considered a fairly strong aspect.

Aspect vestiges are often quite weak feeling. Some of them felt pretty good pre-1.0, but since 1.0, almost all of them feel significantly worse than other, similar-set-having vestiges. +Smite damage equal to 1/5 of your crit damage? +1 shuriken per turn or excess shuriken aren't used up? Frost Aura is still the most laughably minor bonus I could imagine giving to the Clairvoyant. The overly complicated but still weak omni damage when using combo based on the CD of the triggering binding? The aspect vestiges feel like they should be a step UP from normal vestiges....like a blue aspect vestige for your aspect should feel roughly on par with the best blues or a purple...not "don't use your excess shuriken" with one set bonus...

I don't agree that high crit chance doesn't feel high...but crit is a mess right now. It takes extreme investment to get going, and you STILL have to boost your actual damage levels significantly for it to matter. If you spent half the investment you need to get crit strong on any other strategy, it'd be just as effective. Crit really only works (since the crit chance nerf during the vestige set overhaul) if you're ignoring crit chance, and using triggered crits (cloak of the conspirator, uelima's whetstone, counterassistance, afterimage, or a number of augments) OR if everything falls into place and the game is just throwing success in your face.

Unbound does feel like a fairly fun fight, but there doesn't seem to be much REASON to fight the unbound....it costs resources early on, when losing a glyph is a big deal (especially since, yet again, the devs have chosen to make rank 20 have NO glyphs available for choosing bindings unless your book 1 challenge awards glyphs. If it doesn't, then you won't get to reroll EITHER of the first 2 binding tuners...early glyphs are NOT expendable), and other than story quest progression, and "defeat the unbound at rank any/10/20", there is no tracking for completion, no earning more rewards in return for having to fight another final boss. Monster Train not only tracked which cards/deck combos you beat the Optional Final Boss with, but it also used a point system where you could grab extra benefits for your run in return for some enemies being harder, and if you took TOO MANY (or "enough", depending on your goal), then you'd have to fight the optional final boss. the design was fantastic....cost vs. reward. In Inkbound, though, it's "LOSE resources in order to fight the optional end boss, who doesn't really benefit you to fight in any way"