Fighter Feedback

[FlyingPinkPony]

Heyo, back after a number of Fighter runs. I'll try and keep this a bit shorter than the Hunter one but we'll see that goes.

Bugs -
Berserker School - Next attack bonus seems to cap at 3 stacks regardless of how many Resist Hits you use.

Berserker Healing - This isn't really a bug but because it costs 6 fury to cast you can never cast this spell regardless of how many hits you resist because you cap out your fury and then immediately lose one at the start of your turn. You must use an active item or draw Inner Rage to play this card at all which feels bad.

Berserker Healing - Doesn't say anywhere the energy cost goes up by 4 per cast. This card overall feels really weak. Really difficult set up, energy cost simply to heal 1 health?

Furtive Hunters - Seems to take damage from damage reflect despite having Ranged Attacks, they are still unable to be stunned or take damage from Spiked Block.

Silk Net - I can't seem to cast this offensively

Raised Spiked Shield says deals 1 return damage but the Buff Tooltip says it deals 2 Strike.
Raised Spiked Shield says it deals Damage Return (Skull) but this doesn't ignore Armor like normal Damage Return on Monsters.
Raised Spiked Shield will in fact deal 1 damage to ranged attackers if it being played at that moment, but will not deal 1 damage to ranged attackers with it's follow up return mechanic.

Axe Hack and Axe Slash need different icons - even just flipping one of them would fix this.


Overall Play Pattern and Feedback
- In general I'm having a really frustrating experience with Fighter. I like the theme and feeling a lot of being that tanky guy and I feel like I should be enjoying the defensive/offensive shield bashing playstyle more than I am. It's hard to walk away from a run feeling satisfied though, for starters it feels like just a much weaker class than the others, My runs are 2-3 times slower than other classes (and take about 10x the number of turns per fight) and almost every mechanic is a real struggle to deal with playing a Fighter. I've mostly been using Guardiand School with some attempts as Berserker builds.

Distance - I have no options w/melee weapons, the bulk of my options. Enemies starting 2 distance away like Countess make me a sad panda as I just have to sit there depressed for multple rounds.
Dodge - My energy costs and card draw are so punishing I tend to kill a single unit a turn in some fights.
Summong Multiple Enemies - Similar to dodge I can't really spike enemies down and so they tend to just clog the field with ads. Summoner enemies that start at a distance
Damage Return - I have no options w/melee weapons beyond sitting defensively and slowly cycle until I get enough charges and find Tactical Strike. This makes fighting even weak enemies with this mechanic a chore.
Disease - I rely a lot on blocks so large numbers of disease causing enemies like the in forest are unmanageable without really lucky chaining recovery dodges. Berserker is just screwed, Berserker needs some form of dodge on many of the new stages.
Stunning & Energy Drain - Warriors have really bad cycling and so any Stun/Discard and any energy drain are particularly painful for the Warrior as it often can make it so their 1-2 actions they can take in a round are invalid.

All the other classes (especially Wizard) just seem like they can ignore most of those mechanics which makes playing the warrior frustrating my comparrison. I don't want the warrior to trivially answer any or all of these, but I do want a fight or a mechanic where I'm really glad I'm playing Fighter over other classes and that doesn't seem to exist atm.

Specific enemies like Poltergeists that have 2 dodges per turn and spawn multiple enemies are just insanely frustrating to deal with.

Itemization notes
Schools - I think the Schools overall are carrying too much of the Fighters Power, while I like the playstyle differences between Guardian and Zerker I'd love to see a small amount of that power moved into weapons / offense.

Guardian School - Recovery Dodge is frankly amazing, probably too much so and Defensive Stance is so crucial to be up all the time it's odd that there is only 1 copy in the deck, this makes it really unreliable.

Primary Weapons -
Flail - Want to highlight this guy cause I like it a lot.
Morning Star is also really interesting and fun, making enemies distant isn't something I want to do often but it is fun and sometimes useful. I can see this working well with serker as pseudo defensive tool but the energy cost seems a bit high overall though
Hammer - Intertia is thematically cool but way too punishing. Making a fraction of your card cheaper but the majority WAY more expensive isn't a solid tradeoff and there is only one way to remove the effect :(
Black Sword / Longsword - I got through most of the game with the Longsword and I like the feel of it but the power difference between the two weapons is much too large. Adding 9 damage to a 4 damage strike is too much. I'd love to see the Black sword toned down slightly and the base longsword buffed a little bit. I think this type of power delta is causing some of the feeling of the game being too difficult for newer players who lack the equipment and experienced ones who have gotten many of the upgrades.
Battle Axe / THrowing Axes - I like the Sharpness mechanic and especially how they share it but the BA is just way, way sharper :D

Secondary Weapons
Round Shield - Having all 5 of the cards be identical is a little lame. I'd love a Shield Bash on it if for nothing else just to spice it up. I also wish there was more of a callout on the Round Shield about how powerful it starts since I almost dismissed it entirely since it's just strictly worse card-wise to the Spiked Shield.

Spiked Shield - This really screams for a Shiled bash to replace a Shield Raise. I also don't think this shield needs Weaken. It's just a little too universal atm and as such is my go-to shield option, I'd love another 1 damage in exchange for the weaken

Tower Shield - It feels really weird how cheap and powerful these blocks are when chained. Overall I like the heavy shield option though.

Holy Shield - Interesting option I haven't tried much Paladin but the Ture Block spell feels overloaded. It has 5 effects in just the base Block alone (and 2 turn Weaken for 2 is prob too good vs bosses). I'd love to see this focused a bit more. I'd suggest pulling the stun for more holy power.

Hatchet - I like that there is an extra weapon option. I think the Axe Parry spells are a bit too good for this weapon tbh. I'd suggest 2 Block on the base and add another 2 t the chain. I'd love if this weapon added some sharpness (even 2), just to keep the mechanic on Axes consistant and really crank the good feeling synergy of this with the other axe weapons.

Also did Javelins go away? I can't seem to find them anymore in my inventory.

[Gwim]

Hi Pony! Thanks again for the long post!
I'll now comment on some of the points you touched:

Resist Hit: Just improved the description for the card. It now says that i can only have up to 3 charges.

Berserker Healing: I think you'll notice when you play berserker more that this card can be quite powerful. Once you equip any of the many Berserker armors available you'll see it's quite easy to get to rage 6 and that in many occasions you can use healing up to 3 times per battle.
To properly play this school, try to always mulligan for Inner Rage and become enraged in the first or second turn. From then on you should try to stay permanently in that state. When enraged you can cycle a lot faster and that's when the Berserker shines.
With regards to the card's description, I'll fix it to reflect its increase in cost. ;)

Furtive Hunters: This happened with the Cursed armor right? We'll try to have it fixed for v069.

Raise Spiked Shield: Same as with the previous point. I'll fix the description for tomorrow though.

Axe Slash: I'll try to make new art for it as soon as I can.

Silk Net: That's strange it seems to be working perfectly for me. Maybe I accidentally fixed it in a previous version? In any case if it happens to you again after tomorrow's version please let me know.

Overall Play Pattern and Feedback: I am happy with the current state with the berserk, I think it is possible that you haven't got the hang of it yet. Since it can become quite offensive and dynamic once you learn how to use it well.
With regards to the Guardian school, I'm working on making it more dynamic (by lowering the cost of many attacks among other things) and we'll soon be releasing an update with some fixes in that direction. Hopefully that will improve the experience. :)

Notes on Distance: Can be a problem if you're not prepared. Particularly with enemies that become more dangerous if left alife (like the countess). The Fighter however has many ranged weapons at the moment. I recommend having things like the javelins (the new weapon), the throwing axes, the forest axe and/or the sling (old javelins item). In any case, even with that I agree that the fighter still needs some work on this department.


Defensive Stance: This card, like you say, is crucial and should be up at all times. However you should always be able to get it by the first or second mulligan. After that, once you start cycling you shouldn't have trouble getting to the next Defensive stance, since after all, decks only have 15 cards.


Hammer: The best way to play with this weapon is usually to only swipe when you have a hammer chainbreaker in hand. Otherwise swiping should only be done in emergencies since it can totally destroy your stamina economy. However if you manage to have a few hammer cards in hands, like 2 swipes and a strike you can deal a lot of damage in a turn for a low stamina cost.

Black Sword: Agreed. That sword needs a nerf. :p
In any case, it's going to be moved in the future and converted into a special upgrade for the longsword.

Round Shield: Agreed. I have added Shield Bash to this shield and its changes will become available tomorrow.

Spiked Shield: Removing the weaken could be a good idea and I actually had plans to implement a Spiked Bash card. So I might implement those things in the near future after some testing.

Hatchet: I'll be implementing sharpness for this weapon in the future. I'll also give your suggestion a try and see how it works. :)


Old Javelins: They have been replaced by the new Sling item, which you should have in your equipment screen if you had the javelins. (if you don't that's a bug... hehe) This change was made because we now have Javelins for the primary slot.


That's all for now! Thanks for all your feedback!

[FlyingPinkPony]

Ah cool, if Javelins are a new weapon that explains why they're missing. I'm still missing a few unlocks for Fighter so I'll see if I can grab them and give them a try.

I tried Net again and it seemed to work fine this time offensively and defensively. Unsure what happened there, but if I see it pop again with a consistant repro I'll let you know. .

Furatitve Hunters was happening with the Spiked Shield effect, not cursed Armor. I typiclly run plate mail and Spiked Shield for my Fighter runs.

For Axe Slash - I really don't think you need to do anything fancy on the art, flipping it horizontally, a color shift, etc just any visual adjustment that would make them stand out a bit from each other is totally fine.

For berserker I'd still love rage to decay at the end of the turn instead of at the start just to make the class feel more usable / cohesive without needing speciality equipment - it just pretty akward getting enough fury defensively but then having it immeditely decay out of usability. I'll admit I haven't gone super deep on zerker so it's possible I'm not playing it optimally, but it's also likely the state of some of the other classes is throwing my balance perspective atm, since I'm used to current Hunter and Wizard combos where I tend to kill all the enemies before they can even move.

Looking forward to the upcoming changes!