Personal takes on the repentances balance (let's talk and discuss, opinions welcome)

[Narga95]

After completing the old game and dlcs pre repentance, and after playing a good amount of repentance, I have some opinions on some balance changes of some items that I don't feel like were right. Now don't get me wrong, some changes were necessary since some items could hard carry you, but others don't feel right in terms of power balance in the current game. I will divide my suggestions and opinions in tiers.

"Shouldn't have been changed" tier:

• Guppy transformation: when I first saw the changes in his fly spawn from 100% to 50% I tought that it was fair enough since it was so easy getting his transformation and the huge change in dps it provided, but after playing a lot I think that now it's pretty unjustified. The reason is you can't find easily more than 1 guppy piece in every run because of the diluted devil deal pool and balance changes overall, in all the runs I did I could only find 2 max and didn't transform once. Since it's so hard to get his transformation now it wouldn't make sense to both make his transformation hard to get and nerf it too.
  
• Sharp plug: using two of your own hearths to refill any active items except some of them was pretty fair and you couldn't abuse it (much). But now it costs half a heart for every charge slot, making it useless for items with a lot of charges and meh for items with low charges. Again, I thought it was kind of a fair change but with how bad it is to get blue/black hearts and how it's difficult sometimes to even get some red heart containers I find it impossible to use. I can only think of a specific situation in which it could be good (max heart containers, blank card, the sun card).
  
• "I'm drowsy" pill: when I first discovered how slow was buffed I was kind of shocked, it was already pretty good and made things easier but I get it, they wanted to buff some items that slowed that were pretty bad so they buffed the slow effect in general so even the drowsy pill too (but not the stop watch? my boy changed so much). But did you try to use an "I'm drowsy" pill during a hard boss fight? It becomes a joke now, at least make the slow effect for the drowsy pill work like before, or it will feel like a better special item.
  
• Most orbitals rotation: learning how to use some orbitals was already pretty hard and required a good degree of skills with the drawback that it was easier to get hit.
  
• Holy Mantle shield effects: I don't feel like the invulnerability frames before were too much, honestly. I know that this is an indirect nerf to the lost because before it was pretty good, but now getting hit by fast continuous attack means you probably die even with the holy mantle effect if you don't have good speed or reaction times.
  
• Restock: It was what made the runs broken, it was TOO broken, since in the precedent state of the game you could get both steam sales for 0$ items, humbleing bundle for a lot of money, and other ways to get lots of money that will make you get a lot of good use out of restock. Now? Shops aren't great and you don't always have money to even buy the stuff you need, so restock feels useless to get. EVEN MORE SO that the price always gets up every time you buy. The only time you can use it effectly is if you break the game money wise in some way (hardly unlikely), or to use the money you couldn't use on womb/utero in the hush shop for some extra stuff. Since everything else already indirectly nerfed restock, why not leave it like that?

"Balance was necessary but now it's bad" tier:

• Everything that spawned a black heart (+maw of the void): all items that dropped black hearts were really, really good and borderline OP. They needed a nerf but it's honestly too much. Items like those helped a lot if you had a bad run (which is now more than possible, had plenty of runs with only mediocre items and no damage up items), but deleting the black hearts spawn is too much. I would suggest either to make the spawn rates very low since even getting a single black heart per floor makes them rewarding to use, or to change the drops to half soul hearts. Also maw of the void damage nerf is too much since if you need to use maw of the void you probably have nothing special with bad dps and you need to get near enemies, it also costs two whole hearts still.
  
• Devil beggars: can't lie, I would always give my hearts to them since they were pretty generous and I was always full of hearts. But now I don't have many hearts to give and they are stingy as hell (heh). I know they're devils and they want to make you suffer, but at least I would like to get a reward with at least 20 half hearts you know? They can give you better rewards, but you can't see them since you either need to cheat with an invicibility effect to get them or just have some hp generator like the sun.
  
• Blank card, placebo, and the likes: honestly the change in the charges make sense, but in the other hand it doesn't fit with all the other balance changes. Before it was too good and now it's meh, don't have any suggestion other that I won't ever pay for those as they are now.
  
• Humbleing Bundle: before it was "if you get it in the first chapter you won't have to care about resources, but if you get it later on it's useless" now it's "won't help much anyway". Middle ground perhaps or a little rework?

"It was introduced in repentance and needs a nerf asap" tier:

• Psychic fly: You know why.

There's probably more of what I said that I can't remember and I will probably add some later, and people will probably disagree on some of my takes, but those are the stuff that I couldn't like and just wanted to get some opinions of them to see if other people think the same way I did. Too many people either saying "git gud" or "too many nerfs" and no constructive takes, so I wanted to expand a little more in this regard.

[jayhena]

the real problem with guppy nerf, is the d4 d100 nerf, not the halved spawn chance. reroll taking away transformations was a heavy hit to already pretty yolo playstyle. getting spun and guppy meant you pretty much always had decent dps regardless of your rolls, but now, you can probably end up naked and clearing rooms could be a challenge.

[Box]

An interesting discussion prompt. Everything listed is apparently bad! I can see you're bringing a balanced and not at all one sided take to the table.

I'll pass. You can keep your head in the sand if it pleases you.

[Narga95]

Originally posted by Seductive Cardboard Box:

An interesting discussion prompt. Everything listed is apparently bad! I can see you're bringing a balanced and not at all one sided take to the table.

I'll pass. You can keep your head in the sand if it pleases you.

Thanks for reading only some lines of the discussion and showing you are a superficial person. You can go troll somewhere else.
All the other changes were good and needed so I didn't discuss them, of course I only talk about the bad changes since discussing something fair is pointless.

[Narga95]

Originally posted by jayhena:

the real problem with guppy nerf, is the d4 d100 nerf, not the halved spawn chance. reroll taking away transformations was a heavy hit to already pretty yolo playstyle. getting spun and guppy meant you pretty much always had decent dps regardless of your rolls, but now, you can probably end up naked and clearing rooms could be a challenge.

Yeah that's one of the multiple reason, but getting a D4/D100 in my opinion kind of felt like cheating anyway. You could get infinite health and items just by rerolling everytime (and transformations too obviously) on top of getting really good items or good combinations. Now it's just a "my items sucks I want to reroll them in better ones" which was the correct way to use it anyway. Your new items could suck or could be amazing.

[Nikymaster]

I agree with everything

[artzpiip]

Question though: When you successfully complete the run, how many times out of 10 you felt overpowered?

[UtopicGamer]

Originally posted by artzpiip:

Question though: When you successfully complete the run, how many times out of 10 you felt overpowered?

Ummm almost "never"? because the rebalancing on this dlc is the biggest load of horsecrap i've ever seen, it's not even balanced anymore!

[jayhena]

Originally posted by artzpiip:

Question though: When you successfully complete the run, how many times out of 10 you felt overpowered?

depends where i finish, usually my runs that end at The beast are either really strong, or gnawed leaf, but since my save file is pretty new i have a ton of unlocks to get still, and most runs are a slog in cathedral and i take forever to reach and kill isaac, praying for something decent in the chest. and honestly, with the new dark room, with 4 devil deals to take, + the negative being a damage upgrade, it's not bad.

[JellyPuff]

Originally posted by jayhena:

the real problem with guppy nerf, is the d4 d100 nerf, not the halved spawn chance.

I'd hardly call that a nerf. D100 being changed from "guaranteed victory" to "almost guaranteed victory, if you don't mess it up" isn't so bad. So far, the most broken runs, i've had in repentance were D100 ones.
HP gain/loss from HP-ups is now also something worth keeping in mind. Items, that are removed via D4/100 are also put back into the item pool it seems. The item is now overall much more interesting imo and even, dare i say, more 𝔃𝓪𝓷𝔂.

[jayhena]

Originally posted by JellyPuff:

Originally posted by jayhena:

the real problem with guppy nerf, is the d4 d100 nerf, not the halved spawn chance.

I'd hardly call that a nerf. D100 being changed from "guaranteed victory" to "almost guaranteed victory, if you don't mess it up" isn't so bad. So far, the most broken runs, i've had in repentance were D100 ones.
HP gain/loss from HP-ups is now also something worth keeping in mind. Items, that are removed via D4/100 are also put back into the item pool it seems. The item is now overall much more interesting imo and even, dare i say, more 𝔃𝓪𝓷𝔂.

they fixed "breakfast-ing", any item rerolled is now not taken out of the pool, but placed in a low priority behind items you didn't see yet, atleast that's what the patch notes said.

[WyllyDW]

There's a new guppy item to unlock so it balances itself out I think. beat mother with Cain to unlock guppy's eye

[Chimera]

To me that's the general feel of the game right now: Powerlessness. Feels like they wanted to make things more balanced, but ended up making broken items even more necessary because of how terrible everything else is. Almost no run feels like I outplayed the enemies skillfully and used my knowledge of the game to make progress slightly easier/more enjoyable, it just feels like I managed to survive while not having that much fun at all.

Even enemies feel like they take ages to kill now, and I think that negatively affects my motivation to pick up riskier or "safer but duller" items in general, feels like I'm just waiting for a big one to come and hopefully carry me.

[mr worldwide]

Originally posted by JellyPuff:

Originally posted by jayhena:

the real problem with guppy nerf, is the d4 d100 nerf, not the halved spawn chance.

I'd hardly call that a nerf. D100 being changed from "guaranteed victory" to "almost guaranteed victory, if you don't mess it up" isn't so bad. So far, the most broken runs, i've had in repentance were D100 ones.
HP gain/loss from HP-ups is now also something worth keeping in mind. Items, that are removed via D4/100 are also put back into the item pool it seems. The item is now overall much more interesting imo and even, dare i say, more 𝔃𝓪𝓷𝔂.

I had a run where I spawned with missing no because of eden's blessing and I can tell you that in no way will those runs work where you reroll. Rerolling takes away your HP from the items you had previously and also transformations. Items like these are useless now, because getting a good combo with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ nerfed items like we currently have rn are impossible. Even on the later floors I spawned with like 4 hearts which is basically 4 hits. It's not almost guaranteed victory, more like an almost guaranteed lose if you pick up D4 D100 missing no and the others.

[Narga95]

Originally posted by artzpiip:

Question though: When you successfully complete the run, how many times out of 10 you felt overpowered?

For now only in three of them I felt overpowered. Two times when I broke greedier mode so it doesn't count, and in the other because I was playing true coop with my brother and he got lucky using the D6 because he ended up with poliphemus+brimstone+ludovico.

Originally posted by WyllyDW:

There's a new guppy item to unlock so it balances itself out I think. beat mother with Cain to unlock guppy's eye

Already unlocked it, in a run in the first floor I found a super secret room full of red chests and found Guppy's collar and Guppy's eye. Reached the dark room and took devil deals, no third guppy item, so I don't think it balances it out. Maybe a little but eh.
I know I was unlucky but it's still very hard even with a good start to find at least 3 pieces.

Originally posted by ✞Chimera✞:

To me that's the general feel of the game right now: Powerlessness. Feels like they wanted to make things more balanced, but ended up making broken items even more necessary because of how terrible everything else is. Almost no run feels like I outplayed the enemies skillfully and used my knowledge of the game to make progress slightly easier/more enjoyable, it just feels like I managed to survive while not having that much fun at all.

Even enemies feel like they take ages to kill now, and I think that negatively affects my motivation to pick up riskier or "safer but duller" items in general, feels like I'm just waiting for a big one to come and hopefully carry me.

If you're talking solely about alt-path yeah, but they need to be stronger since alt path helps you way more than you think. It can give you a free throwable knife, you can get two pedestal items in the Treasure rooms if you use either the twins or time it right in coop, so if you start with a good item you can snowball from there. But starting with a good item now is more difficult so it doesn't seem worth it.

Originally posted by mr worldwide:

Originally posted by JellyPuff:

I'd hardly call that a nerf. D100 being changed from "guaranteed victory" to "almost guaranteed victory, if you don't mess it up" isn't so bad. So far, the most broken runs, i've had in repentance were D100 ones.
HP gain/loss from HP-ups is now also something worth keeping in mind. Items, that are removed via D4/100 are also put back into the item pool it seems. The item is now overall much more interesting imo and even, dare i say, more 𝔃𝓪𝓷𝔂.

I had a run where I spawned with missing no because of eden's blessing and I can tell you that in no way will those runs work where you reroll. Rerolling takes away your HP from the items you had previously and also transformations. Items like these are useless now, because getting a good combo with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ nerfed items like we currently have rn are impossible. Even on the later floors I spawned with like 4 hearts which is basically 4 hits. It's not almost guaranteed victory, more like an almost guaranteed lose if you pick up D4 D100 missing no and the others.

Yeah definitely this, wait until you play as alt eden what "fun" it is. Already unlocked some stuff with him and eugh he may be one of the worst.

[UwU]

Originally posted by WyllyDW:

There's a new guppy item to unlock so it balances itself out I think. beat mother with Cain to unlock guppy's eye

There's also a new trinket (yes, trinket that counts as Guppy item)