open letter to the devs

[SammanthaAkaKda]

why do you lot hate me?

allow me to elaborate: i been playing this game for like, a year? and i am by every stretch of the word a casual player, i barely play ranked, and dont take classic too seriously, so why is it that whenever i am having fun playing with a unit y'all gut them?

me months ago: oh banana is fun but place whitemane and templar and some gaia shields and its big banana, and big banana is a fun super unit (keep in mind not strong, as with all super units it gets shafted the second a four eyes gets sent)
devs: hey you know what'd be real funny? if we nerfed whitemane and templar, and specifically nerfed only the one aspect you use them for

me soon after: ok so big banana with templar and whitemane is worse now, oh but if i put a green devil down and add a bunch of gaia shields it'll be a nice beefy combo to tank a lot of stuff, also less weak against four eyes since its arcane defense
devs: pffffft watch this sucker start to have fun with this stat, imma nerf the effectiveness of this combo by 25-30% and she cant do ♥♥♥♥ lmao

me after that gut punch: ok i'm not mad, i'm not mad, i'm not mad; so what if they nerfed everything in every combo i like, i can just, oh i know, i know how to play with pyros a bit, and zeus is good to deal with thin waves that pyros struggle with, so screw masterminds, i'm just gonna start playing with mech since at least they're not gonna nerf those super basic combos and the sinergy with aps
devs: *rolling in the ground with laughter about to nerf aps, mps, and pyro*

me, tired of all this nonsense: ok so i guess... what do i even play now? i could maybe try to learn good combos with double lock-in i suppose and start to work on those?
devs: *pissing themselves about to down the nerf hammer on double lock-in*

in conclusion
why do you lot hate me?

quick edit: before anyone says any variation of "but they gotta balance the game", yall are aware that one possible way of balancing a game is to instead of nerfing half the roster go and buff the other half ye? hell buff the enemies if the game is too easy idc, but give us some meaningful buffs, like stuff that buffs the units in a meaningful way like "you know this special ability of theirs you like? well now its a little bit better!" instead of "idk man see what you can do with *checks notes* +2 attack damage"

[Frangos Fighter]

if out of say 70 units 6 are really really good, its alot easier to nerf 6 than buff 64

[SammanthaAkaKda]

ok frangos lets list out the nerfs to units i personally use then off the top of my mind:
grarl line (2 units nerfed)
yozora line (2 units nerfed)
pyro (1 unit nerfed)
green devil line (2 units nerfed (twice))
whitemane (1 unit nerfed)
brawler line (2 units nerfed)
red eyes line (2 units nerfed)
iron maiden line (3 units nerfed)
desert pilgrim line (2 units nerfed (one twice))

then to the masterminds:
double lock-in
redraw (essentially removed, replaced with something completely different more akin to chaos)

legion spells:
battle scars, protector, villan, vampire, hero, investment, pulverizer, glacial touch

and keep in mind, some of the most heavily nerfed stuff like pyro, redraw, red eyes, and double lock-in were all essentially my "mains" in this game, i have more games opening pyro than all the other units combined, and most of my games i try to capitalise off of auras if i roll them, or just generally use two units that work well off of each other, like green devil/pilgrim used to, but it honestly feels like they are nerfing every special ability on every single unit that has it so there comes a point where the game is just a bunch of stat stick units with no discernable characteristics other than "this one's attack is a bit higher than that one's so..."

essentially what they did, from where i'm standing as someone who used to play a lot with the units that are getting shafted, is they took over half my roster and said "hey it'll all get suddently a lot harder from here, if you dont like it learn an entirely new playstyle from the ground up, which will be just as hard, also we'll probably nerf that too so dont get attatched. basically just dont have mains, we'll make them suck if you enjoy playing them"

[Jules]

Hi SammanthaAkaKda,

Understand that it feels bad to have your favorite units nerfed, but we do have to nerf over-performing units. If we only did buffs, it would cause power creep, which makes the game less balanced and less fun in the long run.

Originally posted by SammanthaAkaKda:

ok frangos lets list out the nerfs to units i personally use then off the top of my mind:
grarl line (2 units nerfed)
yozora line (2 units nerfed)
pyro (1 unit nerfed)
green devil line (2 units nerfed (twice))
whitemane (1 unit nerfed)
brawler line (2 units nerfed)
red eyes line (2 units nerfed)
iron maiden line (3 units nerfed)
desert pilgrim line (2 units nerfed (one twice))

To comment on a few of these:

Grarl hasn't been nerfed in a while. It also remains one of the most picked units in the game.

Yozora - I can't remember the last time Yozora or Arctaire were nerfed. Perhaps 2 years ago. The last change we did was an Arctaire buff a few patches ago

Pyro hasn't been changed in ranked in over a year. It recently got a classic-only nerf, along with other AOE units, because there were hundreds of posts and comments about AOE being too strong in classic.

Green Devil - This was nerfed this patch because it's the #1 most picked unit in the game and quite strong

Whitemane - The last time it was nerfed was probably a year ago

Berserker - This was nerfed this patch because it's the #1 performing unit in the game right now with a high win rate and pick rate

We're very careful about balancing the game and make sure to do a mix of nerfs and buffs. Hope that gives more context into the changes :)

[SammanthaAkaKda]

Originally posted by Jules:

Hi SammanthaAkaKda,
Grarl hasn't been nerfed in a while. It also remains one of the most picked units in the game.

Yozora - I can't remember the last time Yozora or Arctaire were nerfed. Perhaps 2 years ago. The last change we did was an Arctaire buff a few patches ago

Pyro hasn't been changed in ranked in over a year. It recently got a classic-only nerf, along with other AOE units, because there were hundreds of posts and comments about AOE being too strong in classic.

Green Devil - This was nerfed this patch because it's the #1 most picked unit in the game and quite strong

Whitemane - The last time it was nerfed was probably a year ago

Berserker - This was nerfed this patch because it's the #1 performing unit in the game right now with a high win rate and pick rate

We're very careful about balancing the game and make sure to do a mix of nerfs and buffs. Hope that gives more context into the changes :)

grarl: had the aura magic resistence on templar nerfed sometime last year, red lobster was caught in the "true aoe" nerfs

yozora: true aoe nerfs (literally the patch that released the cheeky sakura card)

pyro: true aoe nerf (i barely play ranked as i mentioned in my post)

green devil: this latest patch as well as the patch from a while ago where it tanked its demage reduction from 35% to 25% (yes i know technically it was a buff to the no synergy green devil thanks to marginally increased stats, but it is a straight nerf the second you give it a gaia shield)

duelist line: aight i guess tbh its not too high in my list anyway, if that was the only nerf i'd have barely noticed it

whitemane: together with templar if memory serves, i believe the damage reduction from the aura was decreased from 10% to 8% (edit: my mistake here, i misread it, apparently antler is the one that got nerfed, not whitemane)

those are the nerfs i remember off the top of my head, anyhoo regarding "it was long ago" doesnt really change anything if the change that was made 10 years ago is still the last change to the unit, it means that is the unit we have available to use, might have happened in the past but it affects the present

[DeKevin]

I've been playing this game since beta, i dont know how many years ago. Imho the devs have been doing an excellent job in buffing and nerfing units. always based on statistics and always informing the players which statistic resulted in the nerf. Gaia buff is a niche, you cant expect the whole balancing to be centered around that

[SammanthaAkaKda]

yeah sure for someone that can play this game front to back back to front with any character it must be heaven to be able to on a dime switch to any random unit they decide to buff, but for people like me who are still learning how to open combo and split properly it sucks to have our crutches kicked from under our armpits randomly

[Vivianite]

Originally posted by SammanthaAkaKda:

yeah sure for someone that can play this game front to back back to front with any character it must be heaven to be able to on a dime switch to any random unit they decide to buff, but for people like me who are still learning how to open combo and split properly it sucks to have our crutches kicked from under our armpits randomly

is it really random if it's posted before the patch goes live? you have a lot of resources in front of you

[SammanthaAkaKda]

Originally posted by Vivianite:

is it really random if it's posted before the patch goes live? you have a lot of resources in front of you

kinda difficult to adapt to something in 3 days when i took a month to figure out how to play the opener in question and now i gotta learn a new one from the ground up, if i knew they werent gonna touch, say, gralr line for 3-4 months at least then i'd look into learning them, but i dont want to sink another month into a unit just for it to be nerfed before i even finished learning it properly

[Vivianite]

Originally posted by SammanthaAkaKda:

Originally posted by Vivianite:

is it really random if it's posted before the patch goes live? you have a lot of resources in front of you

kinda difficult to adapt to something in 3 days when i took a month to figure out how to play the opener in question and now i gotta learn a new one from the ground up, if i knew they werent gonna touch, say, gralr line for 3-4 months at least then i'd look into learning them, but i dont want to sink another month into a unit just for it to be nerfed before i even finished learning it properly

im hearing excuses and not real issues

[Pencilnote]

Jesus, just adapt and learn to improve. This isn't valid feedback, this is just you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about how you want the game to be easier to cater to you. I'm a filthy casul but even I'm not this much of a whiner.

You're free to complain but don't preface it as if it's a legit critique to the game's balancing team. Git gud(tm).

[SammanthaAkaKda]

may all the units you play as in every game get nerfed into the ground while the foes you most struggle with get buffed even further
may all your struggles be dismissed as overreacting and all your cries for help be answered with "git gud"

[DeKevin]

I think your problem is you are trying to hard to min max. I dont really care about the buffs/nerfs i just play whichever i feel like, You win some you lose some, but in the end gaming is about having fun. fck the meta

[Psycohitman]

u cant even balance classic because u have how many opening options? like 20? most classic games get to wave 22-23 all people autosending etc. dont nerf good units buff bad ones.