Thoughts on item mimic nerfs?

[Ketrai]

So repetance split blank card in half and nerfed a bunch of item mimics.

I kinda feel like these have been hurt way too hard, and the main reason is the fact recharge times can jump from a reasonable 6 rooms, to a silly 12 rooms. In a lot of cases, mimics are just this extremely situational thing that takes up your valuable active slot, whilst being often simply inferior to other items with similar effects.

- Full health pill/The sun is now a weaker version of yum heart unless you have more than 3 empty hearts upon use. Not only do you need to find the relatively rare sun card, but you need to have a bunch of heart containers to make it work. Using it as a room nuke is just using a much slower necronomicon.

- Hierophant/balls of steel. Inferior to satanic bible, inconvenient compared to book of revelations. Probably still the best defensive use of these items.

- Chaos card : apparently inferior to the sun, if you have to believe the 6 room recharge versus 12.

- Doubling cards are now much, much harder to use to the point you might as well not bother. They're all sitting at a 12 room recharge now. Including two of hearts.

- Justice : 12 room recharge for some reason, despite only giving a small amount of consumables. Pretty much a worse version of book of sin. Waste of your card slot.

- Jera. Now a 12 room recharge whilst requiring an EXTRA rare blank rune item, restricted to the member shop, secret room, or crane game. Even if you're a character that can break the game with it, you'll need an insane amount of luck to make it work.

- Stat up pills. Pointless, they didn't even bother giving range/luck/shot speed ups a lower charge time than the others, despite being completely garbage compared to tears up / health up. You're sacrificing your active item for this?

- Placebo in general. Naturally, you'll use it with an unknown pill in case it's a good one. It's a range up? Well enjoy your 12 room recharge before you can test any of the other 5 pills in your super secret room.

- Stat downs. Why are these are 4 room recharge? I'm guessing to prevent easy infinite stat ups with false PHD, but there should be some risk/reward to using false PHD, having a shot speed down / luck down pill in the rotation, and giving up your active just to spam it. I feel like this rare combo should be rewarded more... Otherwise, it's only really useful to boost up items like tech X, which benefit from a lower shot speed.

Other than all the nerfs, there's a very minute amount of buffs to consider as well.

- 1 room pills with acid baby, simply nukes the room with poison. Good if you have really high damage.

- Amnesia. Basically a 3 room recharge for black hearts with false PHD, makes black heart bombing actually viable. Especially with car battery, and especially especially with 9 volt.

- I'm drowsy. Mass room slow at broken stopwatch levels with a 3 room recharge? Steamroll the entire game.

- Infested. Two room recharge that's better than spiderbutt with either dirty mind, or the chocolate trinket.

- Butter with new cards. Essentially lets you use the new incredibly powerful cards and souls for cheap, as it guarantees a 4 room recharge with blank card.

- Soul of cain, cheaper red key, can be used every room with 9 volt for infinite rooms each floor.

- Soul of eden. Op d6 with chaos and 4 room recharge.

At least, until these get nerfed as well. Everything else about the items is basically worse save for a few rare cases. And a lot of the power comes out of rare unlocks or combining it with other items. Few card and consumables got lower amounts of cooldowns than the default 4 in afterbirth +
On one hand I like that you have to put in some more effort to break the game, but there should've been an in between for room charges like a 8 or a 10 room recharge. I also feel that any combinations that are equivalent to other active items such as balls of steel should at least offer a lower charge. And the sun/full health should be dependant on how much they actually heal you, with a 12 room bar, healing a heart every 3 charges spent. With the full heal remaining at 12. 12 room recharge items in the game are few and far between, and uh... far more powerful than most of the mimics? Mega blast... Mega mush... delirious... Eden's soul... Everything jar (infinite bombs is no joke) An early jar of wisps. I'm not sure a 12 room range up comes anywhere close to deleting multiple rooms as SATAN.

[Amble]

Most of the recharges are simply too long, I fully agree. I've yet to happen upon a run with a worthwhile mimic item synergy once since Repentance dropped, just been disappointed every time by even simple things like Justice or stat up pills being 12 room charge.

Almost everything needs to go down 6 or 4 charges for me to give these items any respect again.

[Souren]

Originally posted by Mr. Dooter:

12 charges for anything should never be allowed and whoever made that change is stupid.

I think 12 charges for items like eden's soul or megablast was okay. But for placebo/blank card copies its just stupid, 6 should be the max

[XZero]

I agree with making it less than 12. Make it 6 at most.
12 is way too much.

[Ninja ZombieYoshi]

I feel like Sun card having huge cooldown is acceptable enough, as it can fully heal red hearts, heavily damage one room of your choosing, reveal the entire map except the Super secret room, AND removes curse of darkness, and full heals only get stronger the more red heart containers you have. Why the full health pill isn't a ten room charge, nevermind an eight room charge, I'll never know. Full health placebo always felt like a straight downgrade from Blank card Sun, and I guess that's not changing.
To me, the idea of certain pill/card/rune effects having bigger cooldowns is not a bad idea, but you would have to encounter a mimic item that works with what you can grab, which can be tougher than you think. Worst case, you got PHD and Placebo from Basement, and SOMEHOW the only pill you can find is "I Found Pills!" and well dang it, without Acid Baby a one-room charge nothing effect isn't exactly enticing.
Also, retaining the 12 room charge if you forget you're not holding the right consumable after using a big-recharge combo SUCKS. Yeah, THANKS game, totally wanted 12 rooms of charge to be placebo'd with the hanged man only to have to build ANOTHER 12 rooms of charge.

[Zero Grim]

the fact anything longer than 6 is instantly a 12 is insane, if they don't want a single battery to recharge them just make them 8 rooms instead, 8 rooms for 2 soul hearts is worth the extra hurdle.

[jareddm3]

D1 still works fine. Especially great for tainted cain.

[Backstabba]

I like the weaker cards having lower cooldowns but 12 room cool down is too much.

Even more so for justice or the sun being at 12 which is just plain silly.

Heck 2 of hearts is a 12 room cooldown and its one of the worst cards in the game!

The Moon? which generates 1-2+ red rooms and almost always gives an angel room item once per floor only has a two room cooldown while The Hierophant has a 12 room cooldown!? WTF is going on here?

[Ninja ZombieYoshi]

...TWO OF HEARTS has a twelve room cooldown?
I'm sorry, that's NOT on the same level as placebo full health, NEVERMIND THE SUN CARD!
I mean, let's see here, ideally, you get:
A large amount of heart containers
Your health to be in the middle of "empty" and "full"
AND the bloody card itself!
For what, six hearts? MAX? If you TIME it right?
Again, NOT ON THE SAME LEVEL AS FULL HEAL.
No idea what the developers were thinking there.

[Ketrai]

Originally posted by Ninja ZombieYoshi:

...TWO OF HEARTS has a twelve room cooldown?
I'm sorry, that's NOT on the same level as placebo full health, NEVERMIND THE SUN CARD!
I mean, let's see here, ideally, you get:
A large amount of heart containers
Your health to be in the middle of "empty" and "full"
AND the bloody card itself!
For what, six hearts? MAX? If you TIME it right?
Again, NOT ON THE SAME LEVEL AS FULL HEAL.
No idea what the developers were thinking there.

Yeah I forgot to mention it in detail but all doubling cards are now 12 rooms. Two of clubs is probably still the most powerful one except for two of diamonds greed mode. Honestly it feels like a lot of these nerfs were made solely with greed mode in mind, Which is silly. That's not how ypu balance a game.

[1024]

I think they went a little overboard. Cases like this indicate that the changes are not balancing, just cancelling lots of the good stuff.

[kone]

I really don't want to give up an active item using Blank Card or Placebo to what would be the best of their capabilities.

Your active is dead for so long with the 12 charges. Can't use anything else for the floor most of the time. Reversed Stars is the only one justified being that way.

[JellyPuff]

Originally posted by Ketrai:

Yeah I forgot to mention it in detail but all doubling cards are now 12 rooms. Two of clubs is probably still the most powerful one except for two of diamonds greed mode. Honestly it feels like a lot of these nerfs were made solely with greed mode in mind, Which is silly. That's not how ypu balance a game.

They should've just made special "Greed Mode Versions" of some active items or "per room clear" triggers, rather than trying to balance for both regular and greed mode.

I'm completely fine with Jera having 12 charges and a way to mimic it being a bit less common, but then there's Clear Rune+Algiz which is only 3 charges, which itself is just bonkers. Or heck, just carrying Cracked Dice still breaks the game easely, because IV-Bag is so common.

There's a reason most other rogue-lites with hundreds of items and thousands upon thousands of possible interactions, make use of an early-access period before launch nowadays. Player feedback from both more casual and more hardcore players really is the only way to properly balance this game, unless you can afford an actual army of playtesters.

[MeTaL GuArD]

Originally posted by 1024:

I think they went a little overboard. Cases like this indicate that the changes are not balancing, just cancelling lots of the good stuff.

This does remind me of how WoW balances some of their talents sometimes, where they will blatantly nerf what's currently being used to the point where it is basically dead in its row.
Considering the obsession with stopping game breaks, I think this is also the case here.
That, or somebody who has never played the game is in charge of balancing, which I really hope isn't the case.

[jayhena]

just find the void and make it a 6 room again, that's the only way of actually making use of placebo now, unless you have like, feels like walking on a sunshine for bootleg unicorn stump build.
(shot speed up shouldn't be a 12, usually i like shot speed down more than ups, since i like keeping it average, or slow with tech x and such)

[Revalopod]

reversed strength card is incredibly powerful. how many room charges is that?
it's basically 2x damage + drowsy pill