Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
On one end of the spectrum she's a rather uneventful star collector: competing with Chicken for defensive stat spread, if only for having 2 more health to work with. With a single active extension, she's QP but without the strongest defensive card in the game as a hyper. With two stacks she's now better than Marc in general combat but without any out-of-combat snipes to aid in takedowns. All things considered, Marc is considered to be the most consistent character in the game in terms of raw stats. At three stacks she starts balling out of control as she is now a terrifying lovechild of Yuki and Fernet: something you need to whittle down but cannot because the counterhit will hurt too much.
All of this is layered on top of the fact that she gains stacks without even needing to use any cards, which makes counterplay against Nath boil down to "just don't use cards", which is a rather boring and uneventful way to go about things. But at the same time it backs people into a corner where trying to use a card to seal Nath's fate to lose her a single stack, does nothing of note since she's made a net loss of 0 stacks, just less 50% of her stars. This only really is different when she's at max or minimum stacks, in which cases she either has nothing to lose or didn't gain anything in the first place.
Minimum stacks, she's got almost nothing going for her. She's got worse evade than Aru and worse attack than both Hime and Alte. All 3 of whom are her closest analogs.
At max stacks, she's very difficult to take down. She no longer needs cards to be strong but she can keep them on standby should she ever need to gain more stacks after a KO, those stats alone are plenty to be able to sucker punch anyone who dares try to challenge her. 5 health lasts a long time with +2 def. In a vacuum, that sounds okay, but Nath doesn't exist in a vacuum, she exists in a world populated with cards. Mid-late game healing cards are at their strongest on characters with high defense and middling health, as every individual health healed may amount to being an entire extra battle survived (even more if they initiated and won).
No one enjoys spending 5 chapters slapping Fernet only for her to stuff her face with Pudding and start the process over. Nath is just the same, except she's more likely going to steal your stars in the process. Like Fernet and Kyoko, Nath suffers from counterpicks, but since the game does double-blind picks for characters and cards, there's no real way to prepare for a Nath unless your opponent is extremely obvious or if you pack a deck specifically to counterpick as many characters as possible, even if it means counterpicking your own character (ie lots of card disruption, trap removal, no healing cards of any sort, etc).
Honestly I think Nath with 1 and 2 stacks is fine, but it's the edges where things don't feel quite right, mostly because of the healing cards and passive healing through home visits or regeneration.
Here's my approach that hopes to address those cases without disrupting her mid-tier forms much.
Nath 6 -1/-1/+2
Active Extension: Reduce max hp by 1. Gain +1 in attack/defense. Gain -1 in evasion. Max 3.
This amounts to a slight buff at 1 and 2 stacks, having 1 more evasion to work with to distinguish her from the QP and Marc analogs. At her weakest though, she's a more healthy Aru just without the superb star creation. At her strongest, she's still really scary, but it'll take fewer attempts to actually take her down. Plus it means that out-of-combat damage such as Cloud of Seagulls and Long-Distance Shot are dealing meaningful damage to her rather than a small fraction. Also as per with Kiriko, reducing max health doesn't reduce current health, so it's entirely possible to have a 6hp max stack Nath if you use Quick Restoration each time. Just you won't be able to heal that back if it's lost later. Honestly I'm still not a fan of her gaining stacks from her opponent having used a card just because the counterplay to it is so dull. But I'd be more inclined to tolerate it if she weren't such an slog to take down given the huge risk in trying to engage her.
I kinda want to see each form have a meaningful purpose rather than being another step toward that final form, but that's rather difficult to design deliberately without making each form its own thing. She's so polarizing to play though, most of the time she's a lame duck that can't get her foot in the door, then the rest of the time she's steamrolling everything that gets near. If you look at raw winrates yeah she's not going to be all that impressive compared to other characters, but in those times where she does win, the general experience I've had with her over the past months is that she's either done nothing special to win (ie passively gaining enough stars since everyone's avoiding each other, a boss KO that could've gone in anyone's favor, or ganking another player to steal the victory) or is winning so hard that she should consider not doing stars norma in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, I like the character. I just feel like some things are a bit off with her.
(For instance, if an opponent attacks you and rolls a 4 for attack each time, a 6 HP / -1 Def Nath could potentially take up to 5 hits until she's forced to evade, whereas a 3 HP / +2 Def Nath could at most take 2 (and would have significantly worse Evade to boot).
Considering how absolutely awful Nath is without Active Extension and how little she can do without the Atk bonus from her stacks, giving her worse effective defense as a drawback just doesn't work.
What I do consider a valid complaint is the fact that Nath's counterplay being "don't use cards" is somewhat dull. I've suggested this in the past, but to combat this, her passive could be changed so that she only gets a stack of AE if she survives the battle a battle card was used in - this would not only delay her stat increase to the end of the battle, it would also make opponents less hesitant to use battle cards against Nath if they think it might be enough to get them the kill.
Overall I still want to reduce her general durability at high levels of stack considering how easy it is to maintain that footing once she gets it. Quick Restoration, Puddings, and Dinner are probably the biggest contributors to a Nath strong-arming the lobby into submission. But I have entertained the idea of having her hyper grant additional stacks should she spend sufficiently enough stars to offer an option for kickstarting herself at the expense of all stars rather than having it only really see use once she's already got 2 or 3 stacks and securing a kill or just plain dumping stars so no one can have them. Having an option select like that can give her the flexibility to be more than just a character with polarized results on both ends of the spectrum.
Unlike a vast majority of bully-type characters, Nath really gets the best of both worlds. Most of them are fragile and can't really survive a solid hit should someone get the jump on them or they fail to seal the deal (Yuki, Flying Castle, Cast Off Kyousuke, Alte with stacks, Hime, Suguri, Kae, Peat, Tomato, Seagull) or have some crippling passive that prevents them from tapping into higher potential (Star Breaker, Store Manager, QP Dangerous, Flying Castle again). Out of all characters, Tomomo is the only one who doesn't have any outstanding issues other than having low enough health that engaging is still a risk. Since Defense and Evasion are mutually exclusive, it usually won't matter if you have negative evasion since having positive defense is almost unanimously the superior choice mathematically. It only becomes a problem if you are dealing with opponents rolling lots of low attacks, or if you yourself are so low on health that evasion is mandatory. This is why Marc is so consistent; she's able to engage in combat with comfortable odds of dealing more damage than she takes in the return volley. Nath with max stacks is super-Marc.
Becoming the strongest combatant is her whole gimmick. You can't just remove that from her and still have her start out as the world's most pathetic punching bag.
Perhaps scarier, but that doesn't mean it's better. As I've said before, the star cost is in no way worth the result, especially since it can still be fully negated via Shield Counter or RAF.
Not to mention that if you use it in an attempt to catch up because you're not already in the lead, you're unlikely to even get close to the full +9 boost (as you'd likely have no need to use it if you already had 200+ stars), so it doesn't even really have any value as a comeback tool.
While of course there's a lot of variance regarding card draws, on an average map it takes Nath upwards of 20 chapters to even have a realistic chance of having drawn three battle cards in total (I did some math regarding this in one of the previous topics regarding Nath - I could dig that back up if needed), and that's assuming she goes out of her way to prioritize card draw panels over bonus panels, which is a disadvantage in itself.
So assuming she doesn't get screwed over by card distribution RNG, successfully uses all three of these battle cards without dying in the process, actually has a lead to protect by the time she reaches max stacks and then is lucky enough to have healing cards on top of that, I'd say it's completely reasonable if she's hard to take down.
If she's not in the lead, all the healing cards do is protect the stacks she worked for, which is of little value if she doesn't have a way of engaging whoever actually is in the lead in battle. On larger maps especially, +2 Atk can be surprisingly meaningless if you simply never manage to actually catch your target on the field.
All of these (a lot of which I'd strongly hesitate to even call bully-type characters in the first place) except Alte and QPD also don't have to spend the first two thirds of a match or longer to build up the stats that allow them to bully. They simply have them.
Nath not only doesn't start with the stats required to bully others, she actually starts out as the most bullyable character in the game aside from Chicken herself.
While lacking Evasion is not exactly a problem if you have high defense to compensate, it's still valuable to have, especially if you have low HP.
The reason Nanako works as a character despite only having 3 HP, for instance, is not just her +2 Def - it's that and her +1 Evd on top of that. +2 Def ensures that she can take heavier hits reasonably well while her +1 Evd prevents low attack rolls from burning up the meager HP she needs to work with for the higher ones.
Having +1 Evd on top of +1 Def is also the reason why Sherry is almost as hard to take down as Fernet - attack rolls up to and including 3s are unlikely to damage her at all, and attack rolls higher than that still aren't likely to deal significant damage.
Marc, meanwhile, is well-equipped for dealing with other +Atk opponents, which generally are squishier than she is, but she doesn't do all that well against opponents who have +Def themselves, even if they have -1 Atk.
shut up
6HP and +2 Evd means you might actually want to stay stackless depending on the matchup. In any case, that's much better than she starts off with now.
Losing effective defense by gaining Atk sounds like a great compromise so that getting to 3 stacks isn't the obvious goal in every game. And she still needs to actually take damage before anything is lost, since 4HP with +2 Def is still better than 6HP with -1 Def.
It's a little less braindead than Big Magnum having zero downsides to it at all. IoF stays completely risk free no matter who uses it, though (barring Kae or another Nath).
It would be a great compromise if 0 stacks Nath was in any way, shape or form even remotely functional as a character, like puddingless QPD is (that 0 base Atk makes a big difference). But she's not. Even with 6 HP and +2 Evd she wouldn't be.
There's also that Nath has no way to purposely remove unwanted stacks, so giving her an incentive to stay stackless seems rather backwards.
If she went all the way to +3, that'd be another matter entirely. But she only goes to +2, she has to work her way there, and she may never actually get there despite her best efforts.
If my reward then is just another squishy +2 Atk character who can't really survive extended exposure to combat, I'll just pick Yuki or Tomomo instead and have my +2 Atk from the very beginning of the match with no ifs and buts attached.
It's like saying +2 Atk Alte or a QPD with any three puddings of the bad/dangerous variety are overpowered. It completely ignores the requirements attached to even get to that point.
It should be good enough to collect at least 30 stars without much trouble, unless you're in a room full of +2 Atk characters, which is why I said "depending on the matchup." Every card spent makes the road to norma 3 take longer unless you'd die, so not having a desperate need of cards helps a lot in the beginning.
You still get +1 Atk/Def in any battle where a card is used, so if that's not functional, then Kiriko and Kae are hurting even more. And if you can get to norma 3, your hyper becomes usable to bring others down to your level.
Removing stacks isn't hotly desired unless you're at 1HP, which is already true as it is. It'd just be less reason to get depressed about losing what you've worked all game to build up, and an incentive to hold back a little to cruise at 1-2 stacks more often rather than flip between 0 and 3 exclusively.
Well it would be overpowered if you could also have a full hand of usable cards at the same time, the bonus was granted by common cards every character would bring at least one of while not necessarily requiring you to draw them yourself, and you can't instantly lose any and all bonus in a single turn (not chapter, any one player's turn).
Oh wait.
She could have Dashes and the like, I suppose? That's great and all, but not a lot of cards actually help her engage others in battle. (Besides, nothing stops QPD from using cards until she actually draws her third pudding [and she can discard the third pudding at any time if she happens to draw a card she really wants], and Alte likewise can use whatever cards she wants to.)
Also, you're very unlikely to get stacks from opponents using battle cards on you unless they're beginners who don't know how to play the game. Competent opponents will either use a card that kills you (e.g. Accel Hyper) or they won't use one at all. Given how utterly non-threatening Nath is until she gets her second stack of AE, there's usually little need to, anyway.
Maybe you can trick an opponent into giving you a stack if they use a Shield Counter on you thinking you were going to use AUW, but if they don't fall for it (or don't have one)... well, good luck. And that's still at least halfway into the match at the earliest.
As for losing your stacks, QPD is more vulnerable to that than Nath is (although Nath is vulnerable to the very same cards QPD is if she's caught by them before she has a chance to use her battle cards), but at the same time Sweet Guardian, although still expensive for what it does, also helps her get her stats back (and more quickly than Nath's AUW does at that). QPD also has the advantage of being able to build and alter her stats without ever seeing combat at all, which she can in fact use to her advantage to surprise an opponent by having different stats than expected.
And Alte can simply never lose her Atk bonus at all.
In fact, I've actually said this before, but I consider Nath to just be a slightly worse QPD.
QPD with triple Puddings is silly and terrible, so nobody does that. But then anything that isn't triple Bads or triple Dangerouses is going to be plain worse than Nath's +2 Atk +2 Def at 3 stacks. So really she's not at all versatile, rather she's at the mercy of the deck to not only give her a relevant card type, but also a specific one that she wants.
Nath just needs any battle card at all, doesn't matter which one outside of star cost.
I think you're underselling the value of healing with +1 or +2 Def, especially Pudding filling up all the way to 5 HP. You don't have to be winning for that to make a difference. Heck, she doesn't even need 2-3 stacks for that to be really useful. Just have 1 stack and/or 1 battle card on hand, and now she's got above average bulk. Healing prevents death, saving both stars and stacks, meaning you can both stay competitive and build up to be a major threat.
Healing to full with full stacks while in the lead is essentially gg. But healing early and often means the climb to full stacks is a gradual process, and taking the lead from there is a simple task. All you need is one kill, which isn't hard to get with +2 Atk and the freedom to use cards. And then keeping the lead isn't hard to do with +2 Def, cards, and +2 Atk to discourage or capitalize on attempted bullying.
I think we're both on the same page that fully stacked Nath is extremely good, while disarmed Nath is extremely bad. I just want both of those states to be more reasonable and "fun" rather than painful for yourself, everyone else, or both every time anyone picks Nath. I don't think it averages out at all.