Why are the Moon Rabbits still unchanged?

[worldsoul15]

This may be something silly, but why are the Moon Rabbits an ordinary enemy instead of an elite encounter? they feel like they were designed as an elite encounter and then demoted to a regular enemy encounter.

Beyond that, I feel like I have died more often to the Moon Rabbits than to any other enemy besides Seija. Mostly because, unlike any other enemy in the game, the Moon Rabbits counter the strategy they are intended to punish(damage stacking for one big attack, be it via poison, time pulse, Burst damage, or firepower) so hard that the devs needed to specifically code in a special tool for helping to beat them.

It just feels strange for me for there to be a "normal" enemy in the game that regularly feels more frustrating and dangerous to fight than all of the elites in the same region. I never feel more discouraged than when I'm running a Red Reimu/Marisa or Blue Sakuya deck and I run into the Moon Rabbits, because I know that I'm likely to lose so much hp that if they don't kill me outright, the next encounter will.

[SilentCaay]

A lot of the late game normal encounters are about as difficult as elites so there's really not much reason to single out the rabbits. The rabbits aren't even that difficult. They have never killed me while I've had a decent deck. I've died to them like once to twice when I somehow managed to get to the end of Act 3 with a crappy deck.

I actually have Blue Sakuya fighting the rabbits on video, although it's on Hard but Lunatic isn't much more difficult. Blue Sakuya is an unstoppable murder train so you shouldn't have difficulty with ANY encounters, including bosses or Seija. If you are having difficulty, you probably need to learn to build better combo decks since that's where Blue Sakuya excels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyjuySGeZIk

[hachet.duck]

Why are the Moon Rabbits still unchanged?

Because they aren't a problem. The Tanuki give me more problems than the moon rabbits.

[eric.wijaya654]

Originally posted by hachet.duck:

Why are the Moon Rabbits still unchanged?

Because they aren't a problem. The Tanuki give me more problems than the moon rabbits.

personally speaking, hard disagree
with the tanukis at least you can kinda bum rush them if you have decently hard hitting AoE cards like for instance, Marisa's Red Star Explosion or Oni Spirit Bomb if you have decent counters to that -2 Firepower
the rabbits though? Different story, especially since the game straight up has to give you a free card in order for an encounter with these freakwads to even get anywhere close to significant tolerability. I've got a bunch of Discord friends who share the sentiment and they play this game a lot more than me, even being able to clear Lunatic runs, and even they think the rabbits are complete BS so I guess they must have a skill issue too.

Unless you pack a significant stack of multihit and block cards or even DoTs, the rabbits can and would probably be able to tear decent chunks of your healthbar if you let them be, which, as a reminder, is pretty easy to do given that they have an eternal stack of Flawless, healing from the Lazy Moon Rabbit and a strength buff from the other Moon Rabbit respectively once enough turns have passed, and also the sheer fact that they're the only enemies in the game that can actually attack more than once.

And even if the battle isn't much of a hindrance due to how stacked your deck might be once you reached act 3, it doesn't help that the fight is LOOOOOOOOONGGGGGG. From my observation, this is the only enemy encounter in the game to be on par with, if not lengthier than any of the normal act bosses. If you're not dying because of your poor deck composition, you're dying inside because of how much more tedious Flawless made these guys to fight. You can bumrush most of the normal enemy acts in about at most 1-2 minutes, but the rabbits could take around 5-10 minutes depending on whether your deck is focused on either getting multiple hits in, DoT strats, or racking in heavy damage in singular turns. And considering that most of this game's primary strat is to rush through enemies with a barrage of hard hitting attacks, yeah that's not a good sign, now isn't it?

TL;DR say what you will about the Tanuki, at the very least the game doesn't have to hand you a free card just to deal with them.

Also there's this achievement that requires you to beat a run within less than 60 minutes time appropriately named, "Speedrun", so good luck if you're trying to get those and you either have bad luck with the rabbits or just have them as an encounter in general.

Edit : I just realized that the orange rabbit doesn't get a strength buff necessarily but gets buffs that allow them to inflict various debuffs after enough time has passed. My apologies, it's been a while since I played the game

[Zeks]

I only don't play Marisa and I don't remember moon rabbits being a problem in the last several months while always taking barrier from the yukari's boon. There are all kinds of decent multihit option available to every character more or less that make them a non issue.

If anything, terminators, fox + two poison girls and lovesick are much worse. And no, I don't count tanuki as a problem. They are annoying but not hugely so.

[hachet.duck]

Originally posted by Zeks:

If anything, terminators, fox + two poison girls and lovesick are much worse. And no, I don't count tanuki as a problem. They are annoying but not hugely so.

See this is why i like the game, the fact that we all disagree on what is hard does actually show some level of balance (most likely influenced by preferred play-styles/characters etc). The terminators only give me minor problems with certain characters (others just stomp them) and i don't think I've ever had a problem with the fox youkai (if anything shes target practice for those runs i have to fight Remy)

[eric.wijaya654]

Originally posted by hachet.duck:

Originally posted by Zeks:

If anything, terminators, fox + two poison girls and lovesick are much worse. And no, I don't count tanuki as a problem. They are annoying but not hugely so.

See this is why i like the game, the fact that we all disagree on what is hard does actually show some level of balance (most likely influenced by preferred play-styles/characters etc). The terminators only give me minor problems with certain characters (others just stomp them) and i don't think I've ever had a problem with the fox youkai (if anything shes target practice for those runs i have to fight Remy)

Honestly the terminators used to be such a pain in the ass for me before the Moon Rabbits were added in as a normal enemy encounter. Of course cards like Bass of Taiko or anything that practically feeds off enemies having blocks or barriers could mitigate that stuff, but dealing with their insane damage output is another story entirely. The fox youkai is more annoying than actually hard, if anything, she's less of a problem if you kill her fast, especially if you managed to get a clean chunk of her health pool before she unleashes her signature ability. I guess the Drowned Girls could also be a problem but a high enough stack of block could be good counters I guess? Idk I never really play beyond Hard and even then they're only there for like one act.

Moon Rabbits however, suck ass, because if you're not dying because of the pure Terminator level brutality of their attacks, you're dying inside because of the tedium of fighting two enemies with an entire battle length's worth of Flawless AND also the overtime healing buff that kicks in not that long after the battle even started, you know, because that's just what I needed in an already tedious fight ; MORE TEDIUM.

[Guedez]

I like playing Reimu barrier, so I sit around building barrier while I let passive damage slowly cripple enemies. That means the Takuni turns literally all of my cards into nothingness, and only became able to attack with the free balls every turn ability if I am lucky to have one.
Meanwhile the moon rabbits do absolutely nothing to me.
So I feel that how much each enemy is a pain is highly dependent on what you like building.

[mldb88]

While they're definitely rough, I don't really see them as a 'problem'. It's just something you have to keep in mind when considering deck balance. If your entire deck has all big single hit damage and you haven't really considered AoE or multihit options (hell, the X cost repeated damage effects for instance are just really good on their own in almost any deck as a mana sink and they tear through the rabbits in no time to boot) you're clearly gonna have a bad time. That's also the reason they give those rewards at the start. If you know going into it you don't have the multi-hits needed to win, you take the shoot cards, no questions asked. If you do have a deck that can deal with it already, you take the healing or barrier depending on which is more useful in the moment.

[Vengyr]

Originally posted by Zeks:

If anything, terminators, fox + two poison girls and lovesick are much worse. And no, I don't count tanuki as a problem. They are annoying but not hugely so.

Lovesick is fine as long as sometimes you just accept your fate and take the curse. Feels bad, but she does not kill you (unless your deck is completely hopeless).

I've always been vocal about the fox+poison fight, it's ridiculous in a way that it punishes some decks way, way more than others. This is not okay because it makes certain playstyles much less attractive, and you can't even avoid the fight. If they were an elite, you could at least avoid elites for the act.

[Locher]

Moon Rabbits are the opposite to Tanukis.
While Tanukis counter decks that specifically shine for attrition-based decks (accumulate firepower or Barrier),
Moon Rabbits counter glass-cannon builds with high burst damage cards and low defensive options.

[You, Dumbass]

Originally posted by Vengyr:

Originally posted by Zeks:

If anything, terminators, fox + two poison girls and lovesick are much worse. And no, I don't count tanuki as a problem. They are annoying but not hugely so.

Lovesick is fine as long as sometimes you just accept your fate and take the curse. Feels bad, but she does not kill you (unless your deck is completely hopeless).

I've always been vocal about the fox+poison fight, it's ridiculous in a way that it punishes some decks way, way more than others. This is not okay because it makes certain playstyles much less attractive, and you can't even avoid the fight. If they were an elite, you could at least avoid elites for the act.

never died to one, but they're super frustrating. hence why I focus fire that thing before charm's up (not required, but it makes things a lot easier.). Also, bringing decent defence can make them less annoying.