Free re-roll

[Gaming Existence]

Recently done a load of games using the Black Moon modifier game mode. As part of this mode, every talent and item selection comes with a free re-roll as if you had 5X Lep Coins.

The free re-roll from the start makes the game so much more enjoyable. As a player you feel you have a bit more control over the talent build you are working towards and a bit more control over completing sets.

The demand on stars to avoid dead talents and item selection pools is reduced, yet you won't ignore stars and have more opportunity to burn a bunch in a row to really avoid dead selections, or find that specific talent or item you really need.

The annoyance of burning your starting stars for that first level talent selection and then simply restarting if it goes bad is reduced, lowering this issue in multiplayer can only be a good thing to avoid level 2 leavers.

it obviously adds a lot of power to the players but also makes them feel a bit more in control to build in interesting ways, and that is often the most fun part of the run and this provides more chances to have that fun.

With hopefully some balancing coming in the future I just wanted to provide my feedback that the free re-roll is really fun, engaging and rewarding. I would not be opposed to it being in the game as standard with additional balancing to scale power against it.

[Mroarka]

You can use free reroll modifier without Black moon already, simply use custom modifier and use free reroll only.

Also, if people leave a game because of a lvl 2 talent, then I'm not sure this kind of game is meant for them. Changing the game for them would destroy it for players actualy enjoying randomness and who are able to adapt.

Also², first you post this, then you post something about the game being basically too easy, well guess what make the game really easy ? Free rerolls.

Want to get the exact build you want every time ? Either play something else (diablo-like games for exemple) or learn to manage your stars (like don't roll lvl 2, that's mostly a waste of ressource).
Sometimes you won't get everything you'd like, but you can get a viable build able to win easily every time (it takes time to learn though).

Finally, if you are tired of leavers and want to play multiplayer, then come to Passtech discord (or other ravenswatch discords I guess) where people are playing together without leaving for futile reasons.

[Plumber]

I’d want three standard talent choices per pick on leveling, myself. Hell, maybe escalating numbers of choices as you keep throwing stars away, or an option at Shrines of Fate to rig the next standard talent. Yes either of those would be extremely strong, no I don’t care. You know how I feel about talent RNG getting in the way of weird builds. It’s easy to break the game with raw stats but very restrictive with talents.

I think there’s only a few dead talents across the cast (which ideally would be changed so they aren’t ‘dead’ anymore) and every character has at least one talent build that directly competes with another one for function, not just space, but it’s usually possible to avoid those conflicts and never makes or breaks a game… but there are no positive guarantees either, and the game strongly incentivizes us to take what lumps we’re given in the earlygame and build from there. At least it’s statistically easier to rig builds with the addition of the Shrines of Fate letting us choose between rerolls or respecs, and the game’s in a better spot for it overall.

[Gaming Existence]

Originally posted by Mroarka:

Also², first you post this, then you post something about the game being basically too easy, well guess what make the game really easy ? Free rerolls.

Two things can be true at the same time. I personally feel the game for seasoned players needs some balancing to make it harder/challenging/interesting and... I found the game more fun when I had more freedom of expression to build my character with a bit more control.

I also said:

Originally posted by Gaming Existence:

I would not be opposed to it being in the game as standard with additional balancing to scale power against it.

And as Plumber mentioned below. The free re-roll or as their suggestions below mention. This can be about helping with interesting builds, not just forcing the same build.

Many characters have a couple of OP builds that if forced are of course strong. But they also have a number of interesting builds that are fun and can be powerful, but they require a lot of moving pieces. Opening your mind from not just "People will force one build every game." To the potential this could open up more interesting builds is a thought discussion worth having.

Originally posted by Plumber:

I’d want three standard talent choices per pick on leveling, myself. Hell, maybe escalating numbers of choices as you keep throwing stars away, or an option at Shrines of Fate to rig the next standard talent. Yes either of those would be extremely strong, no I don’t care. You know how I feel about talent RNG getting in the way of weird builds.

[Gaming Existence]

Originally posted by Mroarka:

Want to get the exact build you want every time ? Either play something else (diablo-like games for exemple) or learn to manage your stars (like don't roll lvl 2, that's mostly a waste of ressource).

This is not always the case and I will explain how a the free re-roll or as Plumber stated 3 talent choices with re-rolls increasing the choice options by 1.

You take Carmilla, the shop has Black Lotus, Ace of spades and the option to duplicate a rare item. Now I personally will almost never take a Carmilla pure attack build or special/onslaught build. But with this shop I might be tempted to change up my usual 2-4 standard builds I normally use.

But level 2 I am presented with off attack talents. Both blood orb lets say, perhaps at level 3 I am also given two talents for blood Orb and elect to just probably do my standard builds and save my stars for later, ignoring the shop and the attack build that was on offer. But the free re-roll might just help me make that decision to try that different or weird build a bit easier.

It also helps those times perhaps you are looking for odd strategies you would not normally go for. Perhaps want to try and get the Unicorn set bonus for example. You would not normally waste a star when say you can easily grab King of clubs or Golden Egg on offer, but with the free re-roll you might risk it and get the Unicorn horn you are looking for this weird build or just happy to take the Dragon Hide or Jack of clubs or whatever the re-roll gave you.

As I mentioned in the my OG post, I personally like the freedom it provides and player engagement.

[Plumber]

The reality is Nightmare pubs with expert players already force one or two builds every game, and “meta builds” mean more the tune of “meta talents” where the most consistent way to crush the game is to get any of the best talents which drastically impact the game on their own and cook items around them, further magnifying their strength. Some characters have trivial ways to win from being able to play around their starters or ults, which is a big reason why only ch1 matters in experienced groups even in bouts of horrid RNG. This is true of capstones as well; more than half the cast autowins at Lv10.

I would like to pick Explosive Blast by accident on purpose and then do a silly Defense build on Pied Piper who is otherwise overwhelmingly weighted toward Attack/Power damage and Special stacks/CDR. However, it’s extremely unlikely to see it within Ch1 and by the end of Ch2 odds are I’ve found one of the other actually good talents that supersede it, and one of the two other offensive Defense talents in Extended Measures encourages comboing with Power as well. It isn’t an issue that it falls off, but the window in which it’s worth taking is both fleeting and rare under the current talent distribution model.

It could be buffed, too, I suppose. Would be nice if it boosted its stagger or something.

[Mroarka]

Rogue games are about randomness. Sometimes you get that OP build, sometimes you get that funky build, sometimes you stumble upon something you didn't expect. That's where lie the charm of these games.

Some builds are indeed more difficult to achieve than others, well that's what fun about them aswell. Some things are more enjoyable when they don't come that easy. That's partly why rogue games exists.

I never said anything about always "forcing the same build" every time. I talked about getting the build you want (which can change from a game to another), but if you know in advance you'll be able to get it no matter what (and pretty early on), then there's no longer any randomness.

But then again, with proper star management you can pretty much get what you want, theres' a learning curve though, but that's also the charm of rogue type games (how to manipulate RNG).

If what I said above is not fun for you, then rogue games are probably not what you are looking for.

That being said.
You find it fun to have more room to make the build you want ?
Fine, use the modifier which already is in the game then.

Want even more ? Use the free legendary modifier so you'll get better chance at getting tamatebako (you can let the free item on the ground or don't pick up act 1 quest reward once you have tamatebako if you find it to be too OP).

I mean... options are already here.
Why do you ask for something that's already here ? Maybe because you can't find multiplayer lobby with that modifier on. Could it be because most people actually don't want to play this way ?

Originally posted by Plumber:

I’d want three standard talent choices per pick on leveling, myself. Hell, maybe escalating numbers of choices as you keep throwing stars away

As a modifier, why not. As part of the base game ? That would be even less randomness than a free reroll (that already almost garantees you'll get what you want). I mean, it's not like we have a pool of 50 talents, it's only 20 with less and less each lvl up. And rerolls are not that hard to get.

[Mroarka]

Originally posted by Plumber:

I would like to pick Explosive Blast by accident on purpose and then do a silly Defense build on Pied Piper who is otherwise overwhelmingly weighted toward Attack/Power damage and Special stacks/CDR. However, it’s extremely unlikely to see it within Ch1 and by the end of Ch2 odds are I’ve found one of the other actually good talents that supersede it, and one of the two other offensive Defense talents in Extended Measures encourages comboing with Power as well.

The probability to get one specific talent in act 1 without any roll is ~28.4%. That's far from "extremely unlikely". Then act 2 exist, you can still build around something you expect in act 2. Is it optimal ? Nope. Can you do it still and win the game or even brake it ? Absolutely.
You get talents that "supersede it". So what ? Don't use them ? Take them but don't build around them ? Will you be suboptimal ? sure. Can the build still be viable ? Absolutely.

[Plumber]

Viability wasn't in question here; any character can win with any talent set (and none of them). As such, "just don't use the other talents you get and play badly on purpose" is a factually correct but unfulfilling argument as the goal is to get meaningful value out of a relatively suboptimal talent, let alone getting it early enough into a run before characters naturally gravitate toward their fortes in Ch2 onward.

If you want to talk odds, I'm not sure where you pulled ~28.4% from. For most characters at rank 9, there are 18 standard talents in the pool, so the probability of getting a specific talent at Lv2 at rank 9 is 2/18 or 11.1%, then 11.7% with one talent eliminated at Lv3, and 12.5% and so on. Because rerolling eliminates the current set of choices, rerolls tighten that down to 2/16, 2/15, 2/14 etc. which is not additive chance, only a separate roll with slightly better odds. Thus, when assuming the player doesn't find (or burn) more than three stars, the odds of getting a specific talent by Lv4 are 11.1%, 11.7%, 12.5%, then three rerolls at 14.2% each.

Let's unrealistically assume the player doesn't care about having it as early as possible, only that they have it by Lv4. We'll approximate the inverse odds you don't get your standard talent each level to 88% (slightly better than actual for Lv2/3 and slightly worse for Lv4, just fudged so it's easier to follow):

0.88 x 0.88 x 0.88 = ~68% chance you'll not get the talent in question, or ~32% that you will. If we throw away three stars at Lv4, the odds improve a little bit to 0.88^3 x 0.86^3 = ~43% failure or 57% success. Not exact math, but it's enough to illustrate that one in three runs having the talent after half of Ch1 is typically cleared in 4P Nightmare, or roughly one in two if you're blowing stars fishing for it, are nowhere near confident odds. I referred to these odds as "extremely unlikely" because I personally consider gambling this way to be a hugely irresponsible waste of control.

Lv4 is also late into Ch1 and after most of the more difficult mobbing fights have already concluded, and then in Ch2 scaling onward it's hardly a relevant talent for damage purposes without stacking Moonstones and Raven Skulls or naturally transitioning to a Special build because Sforzando allows a bunch of Defense-related talents to proc with Special (except Explosive Blast for some reason).

tl;dr hostile talent RNG prevents the player from getting meaningful use out of a meme talent in the very thin window of time where it has more potential than single-digit percents of your overall damage, and then it's irrelevant.

[Mroarka]

"Play badly on purpose" your words, not mine.
Less efficient does not necessarily mean bad. A player could play badly around a strong talent the same way he could play well around a lesser one. It's not that much about which one you choose but how you use it.
Furthermore If you decide to play for fun around a talent then abandon it because you find something stronger, it might be a good play in terms of gameplay efficiency, but it is a bad play in terms of reaching your original goal.

lvl 4 might be late act 1, but it's still early game. Are you that impatient ? Are you one of those player leaving a game lvl 2 because you didn't get what you wanted ?
Of course the earlier you get it, the better. I never said otherwise.
But again that's a rogue, the "unrealistic assumption" is that you can expect to have exactly what you want the earliest possible every time. This genre of game is not meant that way.

Now about odds, I did a miscalculation indeed, I started from 20 talents instead of 18. My bad. So actualy the odds are even more generous.
I did 1-(18/20)x(17/19)x(16/18), so instead it is 1-(16/18)x(15/17)x(14/16) to get a specific talent act 1 without roll, which is about 31.37%. Not confident odds indeed (which I never claimed) but even farther from "extremely unlikely" (which you did).

You consider it a "hugely irresponsible waste of control" well... Yeah if you indeed burn all your stars lvl 4, that's why I talked about odds without roll. And that's why I talked about act 2 where you get even better odds and where it's not too late to transition into something else if you get unlucky.

How can you win a game without talent but can't manage to get more than 1 digit % of your overall damage with explosive blast ? "hostile talent RNG" seriously ?
You must be referring to something else than explosive blast then.
Piper has talents that compliment its defense build, but in no way does he have a RNG talent that increases this talent damage.
If you only do 1 digit % of damage because you took stronger talent on the way and stopped playing around explosive blast, that's on you, not the talent itself.

Originally posted by Plumber:

it's hardly a relevant talent for damage purposes without stacking Moonstones and Raven Skulls

Firstly : you don't need moonstone for it to be relevant, you need global stats. Moonstone is one source of it, yes, but there are many more these days (dmg and crits).

Secondly : Well... Like... Pretty much anything else ? If you play a power build you'll most likely stack power items, if you play a special build you'll most likely stack special items, if you play an ult build you'll most likely stack ult items, if you play a dash build you'll most likely stack dash item (or go for 7L boots variant, which needs items stack anyway)... How is this any different ?

Some talent/build will need more stack to compete, but :
1) That's why some build are meta, some are not.
2) Even the worst talent in the game (whatever it is in your opinion) is not useless and you can build around it in some way.
3) If RNG is against you, most of the time you can turn a build into something else midway.
4) Even some meta talent can be meaningless if you don't invest into it.

Explosive blast does proc on Sforzando BTW (100% sure, just tested it)
I played a nightmare game just now (I don't know how to share a screen here).
Got extra measure lvl 3. Only ranked it up act 3 for excalibur, never took any other power talent and only got raven effigy as item for power).
Sforzando lvl 4. Only investment into it was raven effigy.
Explosive blast lvl 7.
1 skull, 2 def charges through all act 2. Ended up with 7/3 endgame.
All camps in all acts cleared, no overtime, game was 46:03 long, 55% damage from defense, 14% from trait and 15% from power.
I even skipped great talents by rolling them out (chorus/ low notes/ stimulant vibe) to prove a point.
I "only" did 700k overall damage and didn't get 3+ items in act 2 hourglass, so what ?
I did enjoyed an explosive blast focused build for more than half the game, did way more than enough damage to win and my off-meta-non-efficient build/talent was meaningfull from it's appearance to the finish line.
What more could you ask for without falling into elitist expectations ?

It sure will be overshadowed by meta builds, but as long as you have fun, who cares ?
Elitist meta abuser. Just don't play with them if you want to go off meta, you'll be fine.

On the other hand, removing almost any concept of randomness in a rogue game to please impatient players, who cares ? Pretty much any player enjoying this core mechanic of roguelike games.

And since you know you can win without talent this shouldn't surprise you at all, so I don't get what you are talking about with "hostile talent RNG that prevent meaningfull use [...]"
It's not hostile at all, the pool of talent is one of the shortest pool there is in rogue games.
There already are several options in game to alleviate this RNG.
This RNG does not prevent player to play around any talent there is in the game. (Which does not mean rework won't be welcomed on some of them, but that's an item balancing issue, not an RNG issue)

[Plumber]

Whoa! Speaking of hostile...
Going to jump around a bit in this reply to try and keep things organized because I can see we're getting a little scattered here and it's leading to some negative misinterpretations (and insults for some reason; I'd appreciate a little more goodwill).

It's also nice to know Sforzando + Explosive Blast works; either I never realized it got fixed at some point or I somehow gaslit myself into thinking it was broken. Either way, it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong about something, and I'm happy to hear that's the case here.

I'd like to preface that I'm not really interested in the elitist meta abuser lifestyle. Perhaps I could've stated my intentions outright when I said I wanted to play with a talent I deemed bad and griped about the things stopping me from playing with it voluntarily, but no, I actually find it pretty boring to play in mathematically correct but dull ways and actively seek out ways to make my runs more complicated. The more stuff going on, the more thoughtfully I have to play, the better, and I love getting use out of dumb picks that require strategy to use them even if there's a better, more straightforward option.

If it helps to illustrate this, I'm one of those players that'd always opt to build Seven-League Boots over Raven Wings since there's more going on with SL Boots even though stacking wings is usually better overall. One of my favorite items for how nicely it rounds out foibles like these!

I also want to affirm this:

Originally posted by Mroarka:

as long as you have fun, who cares ?
[...]
It's not hostile at all, the pool of talent is one of the shortest pool there is in rogue games.
There already are several options in game to alleviate this RNG.

This is the ideal.
Ravenswatch is indeed a better game than most of the games in this style. We also have options for tens of stars and nearly-full respecs through the run. While it's possible to make a Defense build work well generally speaking, the reasons it's a problem here for this specific talent owes to multiple different factors working against it in Ch2 onward. Again, the most relevant phase of the game for it is Ch1, where we have the least amount of build control - and again, there is no guarantee.

Originally posted by Mroarka:

lvl 4 might be late act 1, but it's still early game. Are you that impatient ? [...]
You consider it a "hugely irresponsible waste of control" well... Yeah if you indeed burn all your stars lvl 4, that's why I talked about odds without roll. And that's why I talked about act 2 where you get even better odds and where it's not too late to transition into something else if you get unlucky.

Yes!
The game falls apart by the halfway mark when played well even with zany item choices, and 31% without rerolls is terrible when that's for the last gasps of Explosive Blast's time to shine.

Originally posted by Mroarka:

"Play badly on purpose" your words, not mine.
Less efficient does not necessarily mean bad. A player could play badly around a strong talent the same way he could play well around a lesser one. It's not that much about which one you choose but how you use it.
Furthermore If you decide to play for fun around a talent then abandon it because you find something stronger, it might be a good play in terms of gameplay efficiency, but it is a bad play in terms of reaching your original goal.
[...]
I played a nightmare game just now [and got 55% def dmg]
How can you win a game without talent but can't manage to get more than 1 digit % of your overall damage with explosive blast ?
What more could you ask for?

(P.S. As implied in a previous post, a lot of these thoughts are geared toward the context of 4P. It's trivial to get ahead of the curve in 1P and wipe the floor with even the weaker talents, and in comparison 4P's scaling and the very high emphasis on heavies/bosses therein leaves more room for cooldown management to matter. A lot of the following still applies to 1P anyway and I consider it unsatisfying to use there too, but I figured it'd be good to mention since the degree the player should care about this nerd garbage is very different in 4P.)

I didn't mean to put words in your mouth by saying "playing badly on purpose," that's just how it feels to me to opt not use a character's full kit as best as I can handle it no matter what talents and items I choose. A good player could also play well around a weak talent and get worse performance than default properties of their other moves, which is the situation Explosive Blast typically faces. What more I can ask for is that I get it early enough for it to mean something (or that it gets buffed). In other words, I don't care whether the player can do most of their damage with Explosive Blast if they decide to, I care about whether it matters that they did.

It's not easy to quantify this without studying an individual encounter because the end results screen is misleading because it doesn't care when, where, or how damage was dealt. Almost nothing we do in Ch1 matters for the results screen because of the exponentially higher health enemies have. The drive-by damage dealt to random fodder enemies nuked in whatever flavor of ability the player chooses when sweeping the end of a chapter, which is always going to favor burst and fire-and-forget attacks, is counted toward the same total as armored enemies and bosses that have more effective health and are tied to actual objectives. Furthermore, at the end of the game where enemies have the most health, the player also has the most damage from raw levels and certainly whatever item cocktail they've cooked up. Personally, the results screen doesn't matter to me. It's insubstantial. Smoke and mirrors. I care more about everything that happens leading up to that point; the strength of the run overall. So, for a weak and weird talent that gets outshone, when is that going to be? The very start of the game.

Let's talk a bit more on itemization.

How is [building for Defense] any different ? [...]
you don't need moonstone for it to be relevant, you need global stats. Moonstone is one source of it, yes, but there are many more these days (dmg and crits).

Global damage and crit are usually what I shoot for since I like using as much of a character's kit as possible! The latest patch giving us more options for it was a good move. However, it's global damage, meaning indeed the entirety of a character's damage output. Because Piper's default stats are weighted towards Atk/Pow and talents largely interface with Atk/Pow-typed or typeless damage, this means taking generic dmg/crit in the interests of making Explosive Blast stronger also make everything competing with it stronger too.

Thus we need 5x Moonstone for it to be stronger over our other options. The only way to boost Defense-type damage exclusively, not just inclusively, is the 5x Moonstone bonus. It can use some extra charges/CDR from Adder Stones and Raven Skulls which also work with Moonstone, but again, Invasive Blast and Extended Measure piggyback off of those too and lean the player further toward Trait and especially Power. Seven-League Boots certainly makes Defense purples really, really good with even a single Vajra or either of his two dash talents, but those render the Defense accessory to them. It also doesn't help that common items are ironically the hardest to complete collection bonuses for, which is its own can of worms.

Here's why Explosive Blast's own numbers are an issue:
Without getting the 5x Moonstone collection bonus, it has lower damage to individual enemies per cast than default day/night Power, which also have half the base cooldown (a little kinder than that if we have Sforzando to trigger it off of Special). It's area damage which Piper has no access to during the day by default, which is a pretty big deal against spawner enemies (which are frontloaded to Ch1) and it's nice to have in situations where we would already want to push/stagger/dodge enemies with base Defense. However, there are fewer spawners in Ch2 onward, heavies and bosses all care much more about singletarget damage and when fought as efficiently as possible tend to die last even if you're focusing on them and sprinkling in area attacks, and for salt in the wound it's also weaker than his other AoE talents (Finale has higher damage and stagger, Acoustic Pulses has more cumulative damage and adds a little stagger, both are tied to Special instead of Defense). Altogether, it's best in Ch1 where you can tell ghouls and spiders to go away, where there's merit in wiping fodder as quickly as possible so you can focus on the bigger targets, and we're unlikely to have other area talents. Afterwards, there's little reason not to respec off of it since it rarely actually does anything anymore.

Take this with a grain of salt because it's the realm of theory to assume we can always use abilities as soon as they're off cooldown without losing damage lining them up with staggers, clumped enemies, dodges etc. where most situations see Piper's Defense hoarded for big opportunities for a push/stagger/dodge, but because even in this hypothetical it loses out to base Power, that's an asterisk that only hurts it more. In situations where none of that typically matters, though, like vs. stunned enemies or Master Nightmares, it's a little easier to compare its performance directly. It's an okay talent vs. the Ch2 Faceless MN, for example, where Defense innately stuns eyes and the boss proper has no actual stagger bar. (Ironically it's kind of iffy for the ch2 summoners who reuse those eyes since they have an annoyingly inconsistent explosion on death and are more dangerous dead than alive lol)

So many criteria and weak points... and yet despite all that it still feels pretty damn good to play it well at Lv2/3, hence saying "boy the talent RNG sure sucks!" in this thread. We can rig for purple items via Sandman dupes and saving rerolls for red chests, planning talents around them. However, while it's never a bad idea to get extra Defense stacks/CDR on Piper as a rule of thumb, it remains we cannot rig talents and then build items around them. This isn't about being betrothed to the most efficient choices possible and unwilling to try something weird; it's about being prohibitively unlikely to make the most out of an inefficient choice even when we actively want to.
Unfavorable RNG causes cracks to appear. Talents like these are what fall through those cracks, where even if they're technically usable they lose their time to shine for systemic reasons (in addition to just being plain undertuned numerically).

If we could rig even a single standard talent - just one! - you bet I'd go for Explosive Blast even in its current state if I saw some Raven Skulls or Adder Stones in the shop. It sure sucks, but it's not what I would consider a "dead" talent.

[Shard of time]

Originally posted by Plumber:

Whoa! Speaking of hostile...
Going to jump around a bit in this reply to try and keep things organized because I can see we're getting a little scattered here and it's leading to some negative misinterpretations (and insults for some reason; I'd appreciate a little more goodwill).

The moment someone disagrees with you and shows mild, if any, annoyance with you, you shrink it to being "hostility". Not changing, eh?

Anyway i'm chiming in to ask - where did you see an insult? Cuz I can't notice a single one even though you say it like theres multiple

[Plumber]

Yup, you were right that Sforzando works with Explosive Blast. Played a couple games this evening, morphed into him as Wukong and unmistakably saw a damage number popping up the instant the Special came out, clearly separate from Acoustic Pulse. Contributed almost nothing to the Special's lifetime damage, but hey! Jury's out on whether it was ever really malfunctioning or not, but it sure works today.

Also did a quick 1P Piper run to echo your experience, since I wanted to get a feel for your impressions with the talent lategame; plus it's not like 4P is the only way to play, and it's admittedly been a while I've played without some shade of multiplayer scaling... While I previously wrote that I found 1P much easier than 4P, holy smokes! I forgot how fast everything melts with just 30 dmg and crit from grimoires. Didn't get anything noteworthy going in the way of items or talents since I was saving my rerolls for Lv9; still ended up one-cycling most of the bosses up to the Ch3 Claws MN and blowing through fodder with single Powers...

Yet as another cosmic prank, despite burning 8 stars at Lv9, Explosive Blast never showed up at any point in the run, so I wasn't able to use it against Ch3 fodder or Baba Yaga's skulls. How poetic. It sure would be fun to know how the code works on rerolls beyond what we know heuristically. In any case, I believe your stats given how I was mulching weaker enemies I passed by with nothing but Sforzando + Acoustic Pulses. Lot of weight toward Special damage that run just from rolling around late Ch3, as explained, even though plain old unboosted Power and Attack were my workhorses for most of the run.