Agnes is the most boring and least fun character

[Stabbey]

That is not the same thing as saying that she is the HARDEST character, because she isn't. It's just that Agnes is no fun to play as at all.

Agnes starts out with 20 fewer HP and gets 2 fewer HP restored per potion bottle (8 instead of 10) than the Apprentice. In exchange for that, she gets Revenge (5), and a wand which is in the top 3 WORST wands in the game, if not THE worst.

Revenge delivers a stunning shockwave to nearby enemies when you're hit, and it's one of the below average perks, something you only really would take on a level-up if the alternative was worse for your build. Just getting the Revenge perk is not enough to make an interesting or useful character.

Unfortunately, the second half of what makes Agnes unique is her wand, and that is garbage. The stunning on hit effect is not a good enough compensation for the completely terrible damage and slow rate of fire it has. Her wand's alt-fire is literally useless. The way it spreads makes it impossible to predict if you'll hit anything with the side bolts.

What it comes down to is that Agnes has several disadvantages in return for being able to stun enemies, and that is just not enough to make her fun to play.


Suggestions

If the idea behind Agnes's wand was to stun and then switch to a useful weapon, then she should start out with the Sleight-of-Hand perk which lets you swap weapons much faster.

That won't fix the worthless alt-fire on her wand, though. So perhaps Agnes's primary fire should be the same as the Apprentice's primary fire, and the alt-fire for Agnes's new wand should be the same as the primary fire for her old wand. So she could use her alt-fire to stun and her primary fire to attack. There are other possible changes to be done with her wand, that's just one possible example.

If the idea behind Agnes is to make her focused on status effects, then she should start out with the Torture perk of at least Rank 2 (maybe Rank 3). Torture would also have the effect of making swapping between wand and other weapons a bit more feasible.


My recommendation is therefore to give Agnes the following perks:
Revenge (5)
Torture (2-3)
Sleight of Hand

This will give Agnes a fairly distinct playstyle of inflicting stuns and other status effects. Revenge lets her make use of those when getting hit, and Sleight of Hand will let her use her wand to inflict stuns when she is not getting hit, then switching to an ACTUALLY EFFECTIVE weapon to finish the enemy off.

Agnes is already so dull, and the changes are so mild that I don't believe that she needs additional nerfs even if she gets those extra perks. If that's not acceptable, then you could reduce Revenge to 3 or 4.

Making these adjustments to Agnes would at least help her to better fill a niche in the game, which she does not do at the moment.

[WaaghMan]

Just letting you know that we're aware of your concerns, mentioned also in this topic http://steamcommunity.com/app/308420/discussions/0/405694115207906522/

We intend to do an update and will try to improve Agnes to make her more interesting, as well as other additions, but it will take some time.

[Stabbey]

Oh, cool. Thanks for responding. I know you're busy with your upcoming egyptian third-person game.

[WaaghMan]

Ok, we've been giving this a thought and I think we'll do the following change:

* Remove Revenge
* Add Magic Missile 5 , Sleight of Hand, and Torture 1
* Remove Stun state from primary wand attack and increase its DPS (mostly behaving as Argo's wand). Change secondary attack to be a spread-stun attack and crowd control.

So raw wand DPS may still be a bit lower for Agnes than other classes, but it's greatly improved, and her trademark debuff skills are still there (freezing magic missile projectiles plus stunning alt wand shot).

[Stabbey]

Originally posted by WaaghMan:

Ok, we've been giving this a thought and I think we'll do the following change:

* Remove Revenge
* Add Magic Missile 5 , Sleight of Hand, and Torture 1
* Remove Stun state from primary wand attack and increase its DPS (mostly behaving as Argo's wand). Change secondary attack to be a spread-stun attack and crowd control.

So raw wand DPS may still be a bit lower for Agnes than other classes, but it's greatly improved, and her trademark debuff skills are still there (freezing magic missile projectiles plus stunning alt wand shot).

I just gave improved Agnes a shot and it's a definite improvement, she's much more fun to play now. Agnes's wand has gone from being the worst to possibly one of the best.

I want to play her a bit more, specifically against tougher enemies before I form an opinion about how strong she is now, but it's looking good so far. Great job.

[Stabbey]

Just finished a full-game run with the new Agnes. It took me a few tries because I made mistakes and made some poor perk choices which kept me from getting past floor 2 or 3.

On this latest run, I got some good status-effect weapons - Viper Fangs, the Staff of Atlantis and the Frostbow, although I stopped using the frostbow in favor of the staff. For perks I was able to get Torture up to 5. The synergy between the weapons and Torture was great. I stopped using the wand for a while, then I started up again because the stun effect helped a lot.

I even passed up a Divine Staff in a treasure chest... which was a mistake because I was unable to beat Cephus. I think I wasn't taking the fight as seriously as I should have been. On future runs I should try to remember to take at least one DPS weapon even if I lose a status effect one.

The new Agnes is definitely much more fun than the old one, and she now fills in a much better niche, that of status-effect person than she did before.