Post update balance thoughts

[Aluminum]

Overall the update was great--fixing the vase bug makes the game playable again for people who want max challenge.

Some thoughts on balance, starting with things changed in the update:

-Big Foot: good change: the game doesn't revolve around Big Foots anymore (thinking about which units can survive 7 damage). The health reduction also makes it easier to rush down Big Foots. Wooly Drek fight is still the most challenging fight in the game, for most builds, however.

-Marrow: good and necessary nerf. A problem remains in the Marrow fight, however: the Marrow's spawn position RNG makes a huge difference to the difficulty of the fight (i.e.: if Marrow is alone, the fight is much easier.)

-ice forge/spike wall: okay changes, spike wall might be overnerfed but I do enjoy fights where they show up more than before.

-Firefist (gain spice equals to lost health ally): still garbage (without pepper flag)

-Van Jun: very interesting change. This unit can now provide all the scaling you need for long fights and completely changes the way you use summoned units. (chump blocker -> scaling DPS) New Van Jun kind of relies on Fallow Mask though (Fallow Mask itself might be OP compared to other summons but I love it.) The Van Jun change does remove one of the only practical ways to use Pengu charm, but I don't know if that charm was ever intended to be anything beside charm pool bloat.

-Krono: necessary nerf, perhaps, but having to move units around adds annoying micro management.

-Bink: sad but necessary nerf

-Mini Mika: overnerfed. Without turn-0 infinite, Mika was an average DPS scaler before, now it's about half as good as its previous worst-case performance.

-Bom Barrel: Nearly unusable. Halved effectiveness aside, the removal of turn-0 junk plays means that it can no longer generate any damage on turn-0 and playing this on crown turn makes you draw 4 less cards on turn 1. Using it mid-battle rarely feels worth it either without a large amount of existing recycle. (The recycle charm not being able to be put on units also makes this less likely)

-Gnome Merchant: actively bad: an indirect consequence of treasures being skippable is that the GM no longer has any upside compared to basic treasure nodes. (unless you want junk in your draw pile, which is very infrequent) This feels really bad when the GM has one of the vase pieces so you're required to take a junk.





Now about things that wasn't changed in the update:

-Bonnie, Booshu: still garbage. I don't quite understand why the game is so shy about give player options to heal when other defense strategies (shell, summoning) are so strong.

-Berry basket vs Shellbo: Berry basket is so bad in comparison: it heals at most 2 HP, require missing HP, can't heal clunkers and has practically no charm interactions. Shellbo gives +3 hitpoints at base level. It's true that things like Tiny Tyko will die from unmodified Shellbo but there are many ways to get around this (berry juice, shell shield, balance charm, Kernel, weakness charm, etc. etc.) What's more, Shellbo triggers on-hit effects which is huge, while there is only 2 on-heal effect in the game (lil Berry and heartforge)

-Krunker RNG: in phase 2, Krunker can hit as mcuh as 100% of player's tiles as it can hit its own tiles. This is too much input-randomness IMO, I'd prefer it if its phase 2 attacks always hit 3~4 player tiles and always hit 1~2 of its own

-Spice in general: Still too reliant on one card (pepper flag) to the point where Spice builds with and without the flag feel like two different builds on different orders of magnitude in terms of power.

-Longshot mechanic: As a keyword for leaders, this should not have positive power budget cost. i.e.: it should be seen as a debuff or at least neutral.

[Redlegoguy1]

Originally posted by Aluminum:

-Longshot mechanic(?): seems to have been quietly removed from leader generation. I'm fine with this, but I would also have been fine with it if the keyword was given neutral or negative power budget instead of positive one like before.

I don't think this was removed from leaders, I just had one today. Perhaps the odds of it appearing were changed? Otherwise it may have just been coincidence on your end.