I'd say the Lost indirectly got buffed

[Norton 360 for Gamers]

I've seen folks complain about Holy Mantle being nerfed but after trying my first Lost run after Repentance I can't say I noticed a big difference. Him being only allowed to take one item per devil deal isn't much of a nerf either on account of Satan offering garbage half the time anyway.

What I did notice is that the Lost is pretty much guaranteed to drop the Perfection trinket which you can only get by clearing three floors without taking damage in a row. Not exactly hard to accomplish with a character that dies in one hit anyway.

What does this trinket do? It increases your luck stat by 10.
Why is this good? Because Luck, among other things, increases the chance of tear effects occurring and a high enough luck stat can even cause an item's tear effect to happen every time. For example, the Apple! item adds a chance for your tears to be razor blades instead which deal quadruple damage. At 0 luck the chance for a tear to be a razor blade instead is 6.66%. At merely 14 luck it becomes 100%. That's quadruple damage at all times with the Perfection trinket and a few items that increase luck/luck up pills. And even with the trinket alone that's still a high chance. That's just one of many items that add some kind of effect to your tears. Slow, Paralyze, Fear, Knockback, poison, charm, shooting extra tears and so on. All those things happen more frequently which in turn makes your life easier. Granted, you're not guaranteed to be showered in items that add tear effects in your run but with how many there are in the game I think it's fair to say you'll find a few at least.

The reason I consider this a buff for the Lost specifically is because Perfection has one major downside. If you take damage even once while holding it you lose it. Given that taking damage means Game Over for the Lost unless you have extra lives it's not much of a problem for him. So yeah, I'll take that over Holy Mantle's invincibility frames being half a second longer. Still ended up getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥ on my run due to stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ but that's Binding of Isaac for ya.

[lexilogo]

IMO Lost getting the Eternal D6 instead of the D4 is already enough of a buff to compensate for the lack of being able to clear Devil Deals completely and Holy Mantle having slightly lower iframes. As you point out, Perfection is also a bonus that the Lost will always get and it's a pretty good trinket.

And besides, do we REALLY care if a challenge character got nerfed or buffed? Especially when Keeper is no longer really a challenge character but instead genuinely fun?

[jayhena]

who cares about single devil deals when angel rooms are so broken currently