Feedback on Balance Issues

[Naecabon]

Some feedback on areas of balance now that I've completed the game fully on Relentless / Chaotic with no modifications to difficulty:

- Steam Sorcerer is the strongest PVE Mage Hybrid currently, and it's not even close, and it's by a WIDE margin. 3X crits simply scale way too big and just get out of control. Critting enemies for 4-5K trivializes the game and it's not hard to do with a mana-stacked Steam Sorc.

- Dark is good in the early game but pretty useless in the end game. The raw damage advantage you see early on helps, but late game it simply gets outclassed by the stronger combos backed with Relics. Dark 100% absolutely should be scaling its damage based on the amount of health used to cast the spells, as this would give Vivified an advantage over the class similar to Ravens/Humans in fire and Wolves in Lightning. It also needs slightly more utility. The ONLY case study I had for Dark relevance late was Dark/Lightning, but it just became an extension of Lightning itself in that it was just spamming Inspiration for the 1.5X damage bonus. It never used any of the Dark spells, ever.

- Earth is fine but kind of boring in that other than mana costs, Quake is objectively just always the cast because Smash is simply a boring one hit wonder. Differentiating Quake/Smash a little more would have been better, most other classes have more differentiation between their first two attacks. Smash is my least favorite Spell in the game. That being said, the Earth Ultimate also just trivializes most of the game and also feels a bit overtuned - not sure how you'd change it but once you have it you can't really lose.

- Nature is another class that feels strong in the early game but starts to dim in the late game. Swapping the back row forward is fine at first but eventually Steam Sorcerers just dont care and one shot the entire row. This might be better if Steam Sorc was toned down a bit.

- Lightning is probably my second-least favorite as it just really serves as an Inspiration stat-stick. If it wasn't for Inspiration you'd almost never use it.

- Fire is absurdly strong.

- Air is the sleeper and is really just kind of busted. A Lightning/Air Human Mage ended up being my MVP. Haste on the entire team backed with Inspiration spamming on the Steam Sorcerers meant the entire enemy team, regardless of difficulty, died in two turns. Most of the bosses never really got to even take a single action.

- Water is probably the most balanced at the moment. Its strong but it feels fair - a solid single target attack with utility function, backed with a full row aoe that can also function as utility with armor, and a full board hit AOE ult that also heals - it's a great kit with lots to do. Steam Sorcerer pushes this to the extreme but I digress.

- Augury is absolutely busted. I love the Altar and being able to adjust the RNG for a cost, that part I'm fine with - but it's too cheap at the moment, Gnosis shards are very easy to come by and you can just SPAM swap your slots and relics around freely the second you unlock it.

But the ability to completely wipe enemy resistances and/or make them weak to whatever you want just trivializes any chance of the game's difficulty holding water in the end game. There's nothing here, nothing to push you - you can arbitrarily adjust things however you want (you can just choose to not use Augury, sure) but that's just not the kind of experience most of us are looking for, I think. We like a challenge.

- The early game can be challenging with the invasions but the late game just becomes a snooze. It seems like the game has the MAGE score scale up to around a Wand II difficulty, but it never goes to full Wand III so all of the above ground fights become irrelevant and more of an inconvenience of forcing me to go through the motions of clicking the one or two buttons to one shot all the enemies. I stopped caring about any of the timed events involving Invasions because their full strength fights were so easy that they didn't really matter - I couldn't care less about Hunting the big Matrix squid or chopping the Bramblespores. Just let me know when you're done so I can come one shot you.

At the very least, Relentless should add a third tier of difficulty based on MAGE score just to keep it interesting, heck maybe even an eventual 4th just to keep us on our toes. Having it all kind of soft cap around a level 12 difficulty is just meh.

- Class balance is fine, I think Raven Cultist is just leagues ahead of everything else but I digress. The fact an Air mage can haste the Ravens to guarantee they take first action means Speed ultimately becomes somewhat irrelevant, and Health isn't much of an issue since Earth mages guarantee the enemies aren't really doing much damage. This allows you to just focus on maximizing Attack and Mana - while Shattered can perform this role as well, their Relic slot is less appealing. By the end game 90% of my school was Ravens. Humans have a niche in Fire and Air builds, Wolves can function in the early game similarly to Ravens but fall off in the late game. Vivified need love more than any of the races and really serve no purpose in the end game whatsoever - if they scaled Dark damage to HP on use it could be a different story entirely.

All in all its a fun game but there are definitely some glaring balance issues. If they never address any of them, thats totally fine, I suppose someone could just decide to do a no-Steam-Sorcerer-playthrough to artificially challenge themselves as it is :)

[kaibioinfo]

I love the Altar and being able to adjust the RNG for a cost, that part I'm fine with - but it's too cheap at the moment, Gnosis shards are very easy to come by and you can just SPAM swap your slots and relics around freely the second you unlock it.

Yeah, I totally agree. It somewhat takes away all the meta game of getting your perfect staff members. Of course, rng is annoying when you have just too many things to consider. But freely changing all relict slots for basically no costs is just boring. Maybe restricting it to one change per character?

The early game can be challenging with the invasions but the late game just becomes a snooze. It seems like the game has the MAGE score scale up to around a Wand II difficulty, but it never goes to full Wand III so all of the above ground fights become irrelevant and more of an inconvenience of forcing me to go through the motions of clicking

Yeah, but I found the events also too frequent and just annoying during the endgame.

Vivified need love more than any of the races and really serve no purpose in the end game whatsoever - if they scaled Dark damage to HP on use it could be a different story entirely.

Vivified water mages scale their defensive magic with their absolute hp. So they WOULD in theory make great defensive mages, IF the ultimate spell of earth mages wouldn't make defense purposeless anyways.

[algieba]

Hi, your builds intrigued me, and as I was having trouble with some fights on Relentless I wanted to ask you a few questions:
- I assume the Steam Sorcerer is a human and uses flame lash? With Inspiration cast by a lightning mage he gets a guaranteed 3x hit. But considering the cost of flame lash, you can use it only once? Do you refill Mana with potions or the Lightning Recharge Spell?
- Why do you need Haste AND Inspiration and in the same mage (again a human I assume)? Inspiration increases speed and makes sure the Steam Sorceror acts first. And if you use flame lash, you don’t have the mana to use it again, so why haste?
- So what did the team you used for most of the game look like?

[The CyBee]

And how do you even use Augury? I see you saying its busted but the game barely explains how to properly use the orbs I made with it. I have never been able to use it, so tell me more about it!

[Philtre]

Originally posted by The CyBee:

And how do you even use Augury? I see you saying its busted but the game barely explains how to properly use the orbs I made with it. I have never been able to use it, so tell me more about it!

When you go into the screen to set up a battle, at the bottom there are two small bars with a bunch of symbols on them. Hover over the symbols to see the effect and the cost of each option, then click on the choices you want (if any). You can only pick one option from each bar,

[Naecabon]

Originally posted by algieba:

Hi, your builds intrigued me, and as I was having trouble with some fights on Relentless I wanted to ask you a few questions:
- I assume the Steam Sorcerer is a human and uses flame lash? With Inspiration cast by a lightning mage he gets a guaranteed 3x hit. But considering the cost of flame lash, you can use it only once? Do you refill Mana with potions or the Lightning Recharge Spell?
- Why do you need Haste AND Inspiration and in the same mage (again a human I assume)? Inspiration increases speed and makes sure the Steam Sorceror acts first. And if you use flame lash, you don’t have the mana to use it again, so why haste?
- So what did the team you used for most of the game look like?

I use 2X Steam Sorcerer Ravens, 1X Earth/Water Raven and 1X Human Air / Lightning Mage

Haste makes it so everyone acts first AND acts twice, two actions per turn

Inspiration guarantees their next attack crits, meaning your Steam Sorcerers get the guaranteed 3X Crit on whichever spell they use. This works on Tsunami.

You do not need to use Flame Lash to do insane damage. The triple crit on Tsunami is usually a 1k+ board nuke in end game and both of the basic water spells, Fireball and the Fire Ult can do mega damage as well with 3X crits, damage relics and Inspiration.

Human can work as a Fire Mage but I prefer the bonus of having all of my attacks do beast damage and not just the one trick pony of a big Flame Lash burst. The Water spell that increases damage/lowers their speed is also useful situationally as a one shot pop.

Also the 3X Crit Tsunami typically full heals your team at the end which is nice for quick healing inbetween fights for fast chaining of combat.

In end game, when I'm doing irrelevant fights that I want to quickly one shot, I just put my Air Mage in the back line with my Water / Fire main, cast Haste, cast Inspiration on the second immediate action, hit Tsunami and it one shots the board. This works for every invasion fight like clockwork.

Lastly, using Quests you can get all of your Ravens to the Human S tier mana rank trivializing the need to go human in the first place.

[The CyBee]

Originally posted by Philtre:

Originally posted by The CyBee:

And how do you even use Augury? I see you saying its busted but the game barely explains how to properly use the orbs I made with it. I have never been able to use it, so tell me more about it!

When you go into the screen to set up a battle, at the bottom there are two small bars with a bunch of symbols on them. Hover over the symbols to see the effect and the cost of each option, then click on the choices you want (if any). You can only pick one option from each bar,

oh, got it. So it is not just making the balls but also paying a cost! Thanks for the info.

[Naecabon]

Originally posted by The CyBee:

Originally posted by Philtre:

When you go into the screen to set up a battle, at the bottom there are two small bars with a bunch of symbols on them. Hover over the symbols to see the effect and the cost of each option, then click on the choices you want (if any). You can only pick one option from each bar,

oh, got it. So it is not just making the balls but also paying a cost! Thanks for the info.

Yeah, the first row is all about moving around spaces on the board, but the second row can literally eliminate all enemy defenses and give them weaknesses. It's super strong!