Griotte thoughts ?

[Matanghi]

What you guys think of Griotte ? I think she's pretty weak tho, she should be feared at night, but most of the time people don't care

[TheStratovarian]

I don't know where I place her, since she is heavily map dependant. If you have a lot of cities. She's a scary trickster going high wits.

Getting 3-4 extra dice for anything, spell, wits, combat, if you have the ability to play with reduced cost in cities can be very potent, thats bane blade level good, without a drawback.

But, if you don't, well, her focus is very thwarted, or if you get a 2nd city focused character, you have two folks that basically are fighting each other the whole map, and letting the other two sorta scale away.

I dont know wether to say she's good, great, or bad, she's just got that level of randomness that makes it hard to pin down.

[Daffu]

I don't know man - it depends on the trickery aspect. I played her last night, and by the time it was mid game, I had around 3 towns, and played around 4-5 trickeries each day, most at 0 gold... I was sitting on nearly 30 gold and won very neatly through prestige by killing everything in sight at night - I was running around 10-11 dice at night plus my equipment.

I think you're meant to play her as a trickery gal - the amount of towns you own really helps.

[Sandling]

She's very good when played correctly, focussed on what truly makes her good and unrivaled: Clearing Perils (at Night). Combine this with the Ring to generate money when clearing Perils (Including your own you play for free) and you'll ensure that you'll have plenty of penny for those turns when your settlements get stolen again.
She does not need to focus as much on finishing the entire questline either, given she of all heroes has the easiest time breaking into the Palace with all her additional peril dice, making her a very dangerous opportunist at any given moment.

[Matanghi]

Yeah, I did not think about these strats at first, i'm def gonna try with these differents options

[BadRoy]

Don't you mean Griotte THOT's? ( ͝סּ ͜ʖ͡סּ)

I really like her. I like the interplay of laying low and dropping Trickeries during the day and marauding as a killing machine at night. It feels great to whip that meat cleaver out and start raining dice down. She'll probably be my first rat main unless she gets seriously nerfed.

That said Griotte players are going to have a hell of a time against Elyssia. Griotte wants as much of a discount on Trickeries as she can get so builder bunny is going to be a great counter for that.

[Tei]

I think the floor of her power should be raised and she should have a hard cap on the ceiling. The floor of her power is that she just doesn't have clan affinity. I for one don't like a hero's card drawing and strategy being that guided. It's one thing to be like Brun and have not drawing spells mean giving up on a hero power. It's another to be like Griotte and have not drawing trickery mean giving up a basic gameplay mechanic everyone else has and not having a power on top of that. I think she should still have normal clan affinity without playing a trickery.

Her power currently just has a soft cap of her wits x 2, and I feel like there's just no good reason to allow it to be that high. Even if it's inconsistent to pull-off or the other players could have stopped it by taking her settlements or saving a spell to shut her down, why does a hero ever need to get a dozen or more dice in both combat and perils for an entire turn? Why would we ever want a hero that can create a situation where you have to stop her from being oppressive every other turn? It's the developers job to keep heroes from being too busted, not the player's. It's the player's job to keep their opponents from being strong, not completely off the charts.

Also, I feel like the power will limit the game's design as a whole. The trickery deck tends to have situational, slow and overpriced cards. Those aspect could be fixed to some degree and make it a more attractive deck to draw from. However, something that would very reasonable for the 19 other heroes like, reducing the cost on a lot of trickery cards, could easily make Griotte a big issue. A hard cap on her bonus could at least alleviate some of this.

[Plerr]

I dislike her, mostly for the reasons posted above. Too weak at base, too strong at max. I'd like to add that once people catch onto the fact that she can easily break into the palace and end the game whenever she feels like it she's going to be extremely unpleasant to play against. I think she needs a rework but I realize that will not happen.

Also, I gotta say I love her animations and the drastic change in character from day to night. I think all of the sounds and visuals of Griotte are top-notch, so kudos to everyone who designed her!

[Shamanic Wolf]

As a person who has faced Griotte on nearly every game the beta has started, i would say she is a nusiance. I have tried dealing with her with different characters and the end is all the same. If she dosent kill you by battle, its spamming you with AP reduction and health reduction cards. Honestly i dont know how they would balance her out, but all i gotta say is dont let her get gold, or your game, and chance of winning anything with be screwed.

[Mekhane Cultist]

Originally posted by Tei:

I think the floor of her power should be raised and she should have a hard cap on the ceiling. The floor of her power is that she just doesn't have clan affinity. I for one don't like a hero's card drawing and strategy being that guided. It's one thing to be like Brun and have not drawing spells mean giving up on a hero power. It's another to be like Griotte and have not drawing trickery mean giving up a basic gameplay mechanic everyone else has and not having a power on top of that. I think she should still have normal clan affinity without playing a trickery.

Her power currently just has a soft cap of her wits x 2, and I feel like there's just no good reason to allow it to be that high. Even if it's inconsistent to pull-off or the other players could have stopped it by taking her settlements or saving a spell to shut her down, why does a hero ever need to get a dozen or more dice in both combat and perils for an entire turn? Why would we ever want a hero that can create a situation where you have to stop her from being oppressive every other turn? It's the developers job to keep heroes from being too busted, not the player's. It's the player's job to keep their opponents from being strong, not completely off the charts.

Also, I feel like the power will limit the game's design as a whole. The trickery deck tends to have situational, slow and overpriced cards. Those aspect could be fixed to some degree and make it a more attractive deck to draw from. However, something that would very reasonable for the 19 other heroes like, reducing the cost on a lot of trickery cards, could easily make Griotte a big issue. A hard cap on her bonus could at least alleviate some of this.

I agree with everything in Tei's post. Griotte's ability doesn't feel like it was balanced effectively against the other Heroes at both extremes. The implementation of a cap on her range of bonus from 1-4 or 1-5 feels a lot more fair than the way it stands now.

[InfinityBall]

Ya'll forget that her bonus is only at night, so during the day she has no bonuses whatsoever. Not to mention that the way to get mega bonuses (being any player except the first so you play your "night" draw during the day) REQUIRES several cities under her control. If you're not paying attention to the cities, then shame on you in the first place!

I don't think she's anymore OP than the other characters. Once people learn to keep an eye on her cities/gold (as you would Yordanna's prestige levels), she can be managed. As another posted mentioned, another "city" character really handicaps her (I'm looking at you, Rabbit clan).

[Toad]

I would not say she's too powerful. She requires having good settlement control which can be very RNG based on map generation. She requires having the gold to lay down the Trickery cards that buff her, and these buffs only apply in the next turn. If luck turns against her, she can end up wasting a hand of cards and gold for a buff that she doesn't get to use the most of, and it disappears by morning. If you can guess where she's going and what she's doing, it's possible to throw her plans astray, the same as any other character. At the very least, just stay away from her at night. Griotte can be very powerful, but it's always a fleeting power.

[[LoG] Blake]

Thanks everyone,

We appreciate the feedback - now that the Rivals have been released publically we're getting a larger sample of data coming back in and we'll look at any balance changes required in the new year. Thanks so much for your comments.

A cap on her Hero power is an interesting idea...