(Sweet Maker) Saki Isn't that great...

[Baka Taco]

It could be just me, but I do not, for the wold of me, understand, what kind of game play she was intended to have.

First off, her passive: it's understandable, she's supposed to be a counterpart to Natsumi (Sweet Blogger), where one triggers off of drop panels, and another from encounter panels. But then why do her stats imply passive play style, if she's supposed to constantly battle? .

Second, the ruling of "Sweet Type" cards is either bugged, or the developers don't have a full agreement on which cards are considered confections and which are not, because Saki does not draw any Pudding trap cards with her passive, unlike her counterpart Natsumi. And she's supposed to be able to, because there's an EXTREMELY small amount of cards that Saki can make use of otherwise, which is a problem, and here's why: there's only eight cards that Saki (Sweet Maker) can currently manifest with her passive: Three of "Saki's Cookie", one "Portable Pudding" and three of regular "Pudding". The problems start with the fact that for some godforsaken reason her passive is norma restricted, so she can only draw FOUR "Sweet Type" cards UNTIL 4TH NORMA. And that's considering that no other player draws these cards beforehand. That is a problem in itself, because what makes a good character in this game, is character's passive and hyper cards being cohesive , which brings us to the next problem:

Third, her hyper card. What is this? Again, why? I understand what the developers were going for: you collect sweet cards, you draw a hyper, you go attack someone or something, use it, get some attack, heal yourself for some reason , and discard basically all the cards that you're holding because otherwise the use of the said hyper would be useless. There's so many problems with it, I don't even know where to begin.

1) If her hyper is usable on the 1st norma, then why is her passive norma restricted and makes her wait until higher norma counts to get sweet type cards that end up being discarded by your hyper card?

2) Why does it make you discard the sweet type cards that you were fighting so hard for with you poor battle stats and that you can only draw eight times in total until the deck refreshes? These cards aren't even that useful, all they provide is healing. And you MIGHT NEED THAT HEALING after the battle, so WHY, what's the point ?

3) What is the healing part for? Is it supposed to compensate for the fact that you're discarding all your healing cards with it? Well, it doesn't help at all, especially if you're full HP. I'd understand if the effect was "gain 1 HP", instead , and it would make so much sense, too. You eat the sweets, you get all nice and chonky, get your sugar rush and win the fight. But it doesn't work that way, and most of the time you don't even kill anything with it, so you discard your whole hand and get a slap in the face for a 10 star cost.

4) Why is the attack it provides so little? It's not anything crazy, not at all. You can only hold 3 cards to begin with, if one of them is your hyper, the maximum amount of attack points you can get is +4, which might sound crazy good om paper, considering that it's a level 1 card that only costs 10 stars, but the backlash it inflicts onto you is so much worse that the end result that it's aiming to provide.



You might say "oh, well she's a Hyper Card independent character", which would be entirely wrong, because her passive is literally FORCING you to stack your deck with useless healing cards that end up fueling a lackluster attack buffing battle card. And her base stars are not enough to carry her as is, the negative evasion stat is literally a death sentence. And keep in mind that this is a DLC character, that you're PAYING MONEY for. I'm not saying it's impossible to win with her, it is. But it would take way too much effort, strategizing and luck than with other characters. You don't even have to go far to look for an example, her counterpart, Natsumi, is so much more consistent and you can tell that she's been put much more thought into:
1) Her passive doesn't force her to wait for higher norma and only play around healing cards.
2) Her battle stats are way more reliable and even "comfortable" to play with: she can dodge, her defense is solid, yes her HP pool is a tiny bit smaller, but her overall survivability doesn't suffer from it.
3) Her hyper is unforgivably good for being free, you can make such crazy plays with it, from drawing 10+ cards in one turn to battling all active players without even moving an inch, you can experiment with the boost cards that you play (and again, this hyper is not forcing you to put specific cards in your deck, it could be any boost card you like).



Anyway, what I'm trying to say is... JUSTICE FOR SAKI, my guys did her dirty and she needs a buff, if not a rework, ASAP.

My suggestions being:

!) Buff her base stats. my idea: +1 ATK. This would give hear an easier time dealing with wild units, make her hyper a bit more threatening, and also create a mirror reflection of Natsumi's stats, which would make perfect sense. Option B would be giving her 0 EVD instead of -1, because again, it's dreadful.

2) Buff her passive so that you can draw any sweet type cards whenever, regardless of the current norma. Yes, this might end up bricking your hand, but at least you can actually make use of your passive and get a sweet card faster than other players, which is the whole point of this DLC: Deck control, easy deck search and fast card access.

There is also an option where you don't buff Saki's base stats, but increase her hand capacity to 4 cards so that she can hold more sweet cards.

3) Let Saki draw Pudding traps with her passive as well. This wouldn't make fueling your hyper with them as painful and also give you way more potential early game. (I'm still not sure if it's just Saki or the developers messed something up with the ruling that doesn't have to do with Saki in particular, but it doesn't make her any better)

4) Buff her hyper. It could be improved in so many ways, so it's all fair game, really. You can:
A) change the "heal 1 HP" to "gain 1 HP"
B) If you don't plan on letting Saki get Pudding traps with her passive, remove the discarding backlash at all, but increase its cost.
C) If you don't plan on buffing Saki's base attack or increasing her hand size, increase the attack it provides.





That would be all, thanks for reading my rambling about a fictional character in a silly (but pretty great) video game not being strong enough. Hope Saki will get the love she deserves and stop being the weak link of the newest DLC, that everyone would like to play, but wouldn't, because they know they'll most likely lose.

[Genolla]

Idk she feels really good to me. I just woke up so I didn't read this entire novel you wrote (sorry) but I skimmed through it a bit. She might not seem great on paper but in game she's really good.

[Baka Taco]

Ehh... She might be good in co-op, but her normal game is still on the weaker side, especially on small maps and maps with a lot of encounter pannels. She kinda struggles imo.

[Genolla]

nah I meant in Normal, but yes very good in co-op as well

[princelaharlsama]

why does it need to discard her whole hand? its more conditional than either blue crow or waruda machine for similar effects
on top of that, shes meant to be a light bully, so shes putting herself at a disadvantage by bringing heals for squishies/tanks to use to protect themselves from her
seems poorly conceived

[Baka Taco]

Exactly, she cannot deal with tanks at all. The +4 attack is easily blocked, unless they're 1 HP, and low attack rolls like 1 and 2 cannot be dodged because of the low evasion stat. Plus you conviniently bring healing cards in addition to the ones that they already brought.

[Genolla]

actually yeah on closer look (more reading) I see what you mean about the hyper issues lol. It's only good right now because everyone is playing them and bringing pudding but in normal circumstances where you're the only one playing as a Sweet Character the odds of getting Sweets cards are much lower

[fluury]

Kinda wild suggesting -1 EVD is a death sentence.
+1 DEF with 5HP are very solid stats and with the added bonus of potentially getting healing when you will need it (e.g. after an encounter) makes for a fairly sustainable tank-esque character with the extra of being able to blow up people with her hyper if the stars align.

The only change I'd wish for is that she also draws the trap ones in the name of consistency. Don't think she is underpowered at all, however. Not with those stats.

[RyuuKarot]

Originally posted by fluury:

Kinda wild suggesting -1 EVD is a death sentence.

What's even more wild to me is the suggestion that 5 HP +1/+1/-1 isn't remarkably strong in and of itself. Neither Marc nor Lulu have ever been less than good characters, and both have always been able to function perfectly fine off of their stats alone.

Now I will admit that I didn't play the character as of writing this because I clearly misunderstood how her passive worked, but looking at it again, the hyper seems to be more of a "pop off when the stars align" type deal on a character who, like Lulu, functions without it.

Time will tell if this is the case, but I'll throw out how I thought the passive worked as a potential buff in the event FBF decides it's necessary: Rather than drawing the next "Sweet" type card from the deck, the effect just creates one kinda like Sumika/blue treasure chests and adds it to your hand.

[Erikune]

I can see the game plan with Saki Sweet Maker: Fight an encounter, take a point of damage, get a Cookie card, heal it off. Occasionally get a spare Cookie or some sort of pudding. Then when you bring out your hyper, it's a surprise at being a partial heal (much like Portable Pudding) and an incredibly dangerous attack. And while +4 ATK can result in only 1HP damage dealt, it is much more likely to result in heavy damage or a KO.

I do agree that the developers need to make more sense over what is a "sweet" card and what isn't. Saki, especially, needs those Dangerous Pudding (and preferably add Bad Pudding in there) to help her ability and hyper out. Allowing the hyper to go over max HP would be another positive, for when she is already at full health but wants some buffer with spending those extra cards. The rest of the suggestions, I don't find as necessary at the moment. Saki Sweet Maker doesn't need a positive ATK stat any more than Alte or QP do. While a larger hand size would be vastly better for Saki's hyper, 4 card hands are really powerful and a character who can hit 5HP +4/+1/-1 fairly easily is probably too strong to give that to.

[F IAaP n]

She seems fine to me, but I do wish her hyper didn't discard anything. It could alternatively draw the same amount of the cards it discarded.

[Ed1749]

The thing you're missing is the fact that she has an almost guranteed free draw of a cookie/pudding every time she lands on an encounter. Cookie, for reference, is arguably one of the best cards in the game for a tanky character. Her playstyle is definitely more Sherry/Marc(Statline is more Marc, but the whole "im a tank, and you cant bully me for fear of death" is definitely more Sherry) than whatever you think she is. +4 atk and 2 healed hp off your turn is incredibly good as deterrence, portable pudding gets super taxed for less power. She's not meant to be a bully, she's meant to be an unkillable tank that's unaffected by encounters(a massive weakness of every other tank) and can occasionally fire a cookie shaped shell if anyone tries to mess with her. And the fact that she can only draw pudding when she can play it is by far her strongest power, and there'll be enough cookies and pudding in the deck since they're plain good cards.

Now, is the Sherry type playstyle kinda boring? Yeah, which is probably why you don't like her. But buffing a character that's like Sherry, one of the most powerful and uninteractive characters in the game, would be a bad idea. Absolutely by no means ever give Saki +1 Atk

[Kit Fulvas]

Originally posted by Ed1749:

The thing you're missing is the fact that she has an almost guranteed free draw of a cookie/pudding every time she lands on an encounter. Cookie, for reference, is arguably one of the best cards in the game for a tanky character. Her playstyle is definitely more Sherry/Marc(Statline is more Marc, but the whole "im a tank, and you cant bully me for fear of death" is definitely more Sherry) than whatever you think she is. +4 atk and 2 healed hp off your turn is incredibly good as deterrence, portable pudding gets super taxed for less power. She's not meant to be a bully, she's meant to be an unkillable tank that's unaffected by encounters(a massive weakness of every other tank) and can occasionally fire a cookie shaped shell if anyone tries to mess with her. And the fact that she can only draw pudding when she can play it is by far her strongest power, and there'll be enough cookies and pudding in the deck since they're plain good cards.

Now, is the Sherry type playstyle kinda boring? Yeah, which is probably why you don't like her. But buffing a character that's like Sherry, one of the most powerful and uninteractive characters in the game, would be a bad idea. Absolutely by no means ever give Saki +1 Atk

still think it'd be better to get an exhaustable out of deck card draw rather than from deck. Thats like the biggest weakness to the two evolved Sweet gods, cause in reality, unless the deck gets shuffled, you might just only have 3 encounters worth of cookies.

[Zomoroko]

Um but she can draw Dangerous Pudding though

[Baka Taco]

Originally posted by Zomoroko:

Um but she can draw Dangerous Pudding though

Yeah I think I've made a mistake that she can not, but I played three games in a row and for some reason she would not draw any dangerous puddings that I did put in the deck...

[WalrusJones]

The norma gate is a very obnoxious, unintuitive behavior, but I have also managed to make other players very scared of her in lobbies where I was the only one using her.

I avoid placing ANY sweets cards that don't give HP because the seven hp sweets isn't that much less likely to draw then 10 sweets, and the elevated defense maximizes the effect of HP cards which lets you just be unusually aggressive.

So like, she can be filthy, but also the cutoff makes her very unintuitive because your main feature cutting off until the boss triggers doesn't feel natural especially when the boss denies you your ability.