Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
2 
Report this post
For example Haruspicy is way better than Embrace Ire, due to the fact that in small deck you can get this card again and just spam Grace/Reckoning that way.
Same with Adjourn, why reduce the amount of recoking you get, if that's one of the main high damage sources.
So yea... I dont think you missed anything. Butcher is annoying with her tbh
Edit: after playing endless, I really wish for SKIP animations options too...
Surface Pressure, +1 mana and draw +2 cards each turn for every 15 reckoning.
Haruspicy, 1 mana and 2 cards per 10 reckoning...
I HAVE 14k Reckoning due to the fact that fight against the Butcher takes ages. Can you imagine how long it takes me to end my turn?
Tinkerer really needs some love.
My teams DELETES EVERYTHING, if they dont the enemies finally get their turn.
After everyone had fun the Contraptions can finally start doing something. Finally they can deal chip damage to multiple random enemies. Even the enemies that was the nearest last turn is probably not the nearest anymore, as they just moved around. And the enemies I do hit just got a fresh coat of armour just to spite me more.
I know its offtopic, but I would love to see the following 2 changes:
1) Contraptions attack at the start of the enemies tunr
2) All Comtraptions ignore armour (to give them a niche)
Ofcourse more/other buffs would be great in gernal for him. I just focused on contraptions as that is the main feature of him (even if its extremly weak).
Technicly you can do other stuff on him too, and he is okay at that, but everyone can hit enemies with some strong attack cards.
So back to Topic: Bruja
In general I would say she is on the powerlevel of the Mage if we ignore Malfeasance and Adjourn (imo the strongest base game class).
That Bruja can go infinite is not the issue. (EVERYONE can do that)
Damage itself is not the issue. (Some other Class/Artifacts can do the same)
I would say the biggest issue is how easy it is to get the combo started. And how much damage you can do even while just starting out.
And that just comes down how broken Malfeasance (large AOE Nuke for what essentialy free) and how broken Adjourn is (you start out with it and it just gives way to much Reckoning + Grace).
I guess Adjourn is mostly the poster child of generating way to much Reckoning way to easy. Technicly there are other cards that can generate alot.
Hit those 2 Cards (maybe also other Reckoning generators) and Bruja is probably fine.
I guess there are always other stuff that could be changed about the class, but overall I just like her and hope she doesnt get killed for the crimes of Malfeasance and Adjourn.
Noted, we will test this!
I've played a fair chunk of Bruja singleplayer with no companions, and multiplayer with one friend. We tend to play with 4-7 Torment, and lately we play with 50% stronger and 50% healthier monsters for 4 torment since it seems to restrict player builds the least, while offering a good challenge. You can do higher torments with easier modifiers overall, but they tend to be more build restricting which is less fun. Finally, we play to try to win every time, and get the highest win% we can.
In my assessment, Bruja seems to have two sides. A reckoning synergy side, and a low life synergy side. This forms the foundation for the issues the class has. The first issue is the balance between those sides, and the second issue is a lack of diversity in building her.
1. Balance
One side is far better than the other. OP talks about how easy it is to assemble the pieces for the reckoning to work, but the problem is while you're assembling the pieces you're garbage.
The payoffs for the risk you take with reckoning are weak. You have to spend an awkward amount of the game being kind of bad in order to try to be useful at all. And worst of all, Reckoning for me has tended to die on bad draws even if you have most of the pieces. Even when it's working it doesn't seem to be robust enough to handle bad draws, or limited play like Antipope scenarios. Maybe in endless where you have the room to make the perfect deck it's good? I don't know, I don't play endless.
Conversely low life builds are easy to assemble. The cards are extremely efficient, and pretty good even at low rarity. It can do incredible damage easily for 1 ap starting at common. The common card has strain, but it's an easy upgrade. The block cards are incredibly powerful and flexible. They work as support, and for yourself. It was no sweat 3 runs in a row to end the game with a deck which could give 40-50 block to both players, and do like 60-80 damage a turn with almost no bad draws. Honestly the only real downside to low life is you can't leverage Thumb Lancet, which puts you behind like 3-5 gems if it's a run where it's offered early, which isn't that common.
It's sort of like Quarrels vs Arrows on rogue, one is just stronger than the other. It feels bad when you see reckoning cards show up as rewards because, at least the way I play Bruja, they're dead cards. But game mode and torments are probably a factor between our two experiences. I don't play without torments which is kind of on me, and I don't play endless.
2. Lack of Diversity
With reckoning being weak, few cards to bridge the gap between the two archtypes, picking cards for her is usually obvious. I think she needs a third broad archtype. I'll compare her to Mage, though you could make a similar comparison with Rogue. Mage has bolt synergies. He has rune synergies. He has block support (though it's mediocre). He has healing support. He has mana and draw support. He has crowd control support. He even has weird one offs like Wind Blast, Incantation or Dark Pact which you can build around. You can build a mage with a complicated admixture of these different styles to suit the dungeon, how your allies develop, and what you're offered. Bruja doesn't get to do this. Part of the problem is the weakness of her one archtype, but another is that both archtypes REQUIRE cards to work. You can't play low life without block, you can't play reckoning without cards to deal with reckoning either via block or grace. This locks you into future card picks based on earlier card picks. It's not a question of 'we could use this' or 'I might want to angle into that', it's often 'I have to pick this or skip'. Reckoning and low life can be mixed up, but usually to the detriment of low life, and at the real risk of killing yourself. She lacks diversity in support, offering very weak healing which isn't worth the draw or mana, and block. So much block. She does solid damage on both reckoning and low life, but it's not interesting in the same way bolts vs runes makes you consider targeting and coordination. They're both just kind of high damage single target or small AOE nukes (Before rare). She needs something else going on.
I think Black Bile was supposed to be something which filled the role of a third synergy, but it just doesn't work? This isn't Slay the Spire where you can draw cards off drawing status (unless you're mage), so drawing black biles is painful, even deadly. The payoffs are basically Black Affinity, Linden Brew, Tongue Bite/Autosarcophagy, Bile Blade/Humoric Attune, and I think that's it? The lowest rarity payoff is uncommon, and you REALLY need both the Tongue Bite AND Bile Blade line firing in order to work. Linden brew is just not a good card. Getting black biles before having payoffs for them is very bad, and the cards that give them tend to be not great. So it's a hard synergy to build into, and on top of that it's just another low life synergy anyways? Like it's not really its own thing, it's just another expression of low life, since you'll almost never want to do it with reckoning because a hand full of black bile while you have reckoning and low life from playing bile cards will just kill you. It makes the bad draw situation Reckoning already suffers from worse. So instead it's just parallel to the Necrotize line on a low life build, a little harder to assemble, and but fun when you do.
3. Meditations on Solutions
She has the debuffing enemy damage thing, which is cool. I like the idea of her having cursing support, but the way it expresses it's functionally just more block on top of her block. Maybe she could lean into debuffing and cursing?
Some ideas:
Reflect damage curses to work with her block.
Move enemies similar to rogue or mage, but allowing you to choose where to put them to set up AOE plays.
Mark, maybe AOE mark since no one else does that.
Curses which effect entire slices for small but ongoing effects (-damage, or damage per turn sort of deal, tinker already has -block with traps)
A curse which persists on an enemy, and causes their attack intents to give a benefit like draw, or gain mana giving you an incentive to keep them alive.
Design is really complicated, and these ideas may just not work with the game. But I do feel she needs to do something a little more than 'give armor, hurt self, do damage'. I want to be excited when I see the card reward screen for what might come up, not just autopick the thing that minimizes dying, or gives me more damage.
Ultimately however the third path expresses, I think it should have some degree of cross synergy with the other playstyles. It could help bridge them to make the character more flexible and compelling to build overall.
I'll close this out with a list of some cards which are in my opinion just bad, and why they're bad. I may not be right of course, but I'll make my case.
Bag of Bones/Lifesteal/Violent Cycle:
They all do the same thing, and even Cycle's not worth playing. Doesn't work with low life, too slow and a wasted draw for reckoning. Reckoning already costs mana for its cards, and low life doesn't care about the healing so it's just a dead draw and wasted mana.
Teeth Necklace/Bone Broth:
Similar to above, too expensive, too slow, too little to gain. I can imagine grabbing it if I have thumb lancet, high damage so I'm securing the kills, and an ally who's on support keeping me alive I guess? But that's quite the edge case. I can imagine playing it maybe if it was 1ap since it exhausts at least? Probably not though.
Inner Well/Work Life Balance/Edgerunner:
Wow, skip your turn for the benefit of going down to 1hp slightly slower since all the great blood cards cost more than -1hp. Low life builds float 1hp at pretty much all times anyways, so I think this is supposed to let you splash some of those cards, and some healing cards to keep high life while getting the benefits of the 0 mana blood cards? But man.. You'll need to both get enough viable healing AND get Edgerunner, AND functionally skip MULTIPLE turns in a battle ramping this garbage up for the benefit of.... what exactly? Thumb lancet for the win I guess.
Ribleaf Compress/Knead Cobwebs:
The only cards you'll play which cost 0 to let you benefit from this also cost life, so we're in an edgerunner situation. You get to waste a draw, spend mana, and the benefit is marginal. Turns out using your mana is really good, and healing 1-3 hp is not. It can help turn on 'if you lost life this turn' stuff though, which can sometimes be a little tricky I guess so it has an edge case, and it doesn't cost 3 mana I guess.. Yay?
Adjourn:
This card doesn't seem to know what it's doing. It's a source of grace for reckoning, and a source of black bile for low life black bile. But black bile will straight up kill you on reckoning, and there are better ways to get bile. This card is functionally a curse except to try to turn on a big reckoning payoff damage turn, but you already know how I feel about that. Anything which makes reckoning even less consistent is bad, and this is as bad as it gets.
Forewarn:
What's up with this orphan card? 4 block for 2 mana's bad, 1 heal is irrelevant. The black bile is really bad unless you already have the payoffs, and this isn't good enough to justify for that synergy. And it doesn't even have an upgrade path? Like it turns into completely different use case cards? Reckoning gain and monster debuff with no black bile stuff (the only reason you'd use this card)? Why's it so bad? Why does it cost 2 mana? Who would ever pick this for the privilege of spending resources upgrading it into completely different and kind of mediocre cards? This card is baffling.
Bargaining/Curry Favour:
These are actually great cards, but only if you're not using reckoning at all. They're draw positive, making them work amazingly well with all the 0 mana cards you get on low life. But on reckoning? They just don't do enough. They're too expensive, and don't reduce reckoning by enough to justify themselves. This won't save you. Reckoning needs to build up reckoning which usually costs mana, nuke with that high reckoning to get the payoff from it which costs mana, then mitigate the reckoning, which costs mana. Spending 3 mana to reduce it to 25% is your entire turn, and you need to draw everything in the right order. Keep in mind a low life build could be nuking with reap for like 40 damage for 1 ap without all this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around. I feel like these cards are emblematic of why reckoning sucks. Too risky, too many pieces to build, requires the right draws at the right times, too expensive even when you have the pieces, and a payoff that's like maybe marginally better than doing something else, but probably not. Even its own synergy card is better off outside of the synergy.
Alright there's more but I'm getting tuckered out with all this thinking.
My two cents anyways.
Overall I've had a lot of fun with Bruja, and I'm also loving the new tinker rework.
I wasn't ready for the impact anyway
I must admit, that both self damage and reckoning are surprisingly viable.
self damage is really easy to get into, and outside of 'deal damage start of turn' artifacts possibly triggering rotting, it can be very sustainable.
Reckoning is more risky, but once you go to a lower endless floor, you become basically unstoppable. They key is Wrathstealer - immense block, gives a lot of reckoning, fueling Malfeacense.
Seriously, is it a bug that Wrathstealer applies Grace even if you already have Reckoning?
That said, I agree with you that the 'heal' cards need a buff. I like Bag of Bones and Teeth Necklace early game, but they fall off after a few floors. Bone Broth is complete garbage, though.
Reduces your healing per monster. Applies a benchmark for the heal to trigger. While the previous Teeth Necklace may have healed you for 8, Bone Broth does nothing.
Additionally, you need to draw and play it early. Since the influence does only count monsters killed after it gets played.
To make matters worse, all of these healing cards are non-summoned only. It can become a problem pretty fast when the enemy spawns summons, but now you take damage without being able to re-heal.
Lifesteal and Violent Circle are the biggest offenders here. They need to be replayed. They only trigger on non-summon. And each trigger heals you between 1-2 life - it being an additional card can be both good (for certain artis) and bad (Pope).
I likem the concept of Knead Cobwebs, but it does so damn little on its own. It only really is playable in 2 cases:
- full on life damage without using cards spening mana (issue: healing is too little)
- late game reckoning where Surface Pressure generates 8+ mana
And for case 2, you rather use Worm Stew to increase your reckoning tbh.