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Slay the Spire >  Workshop > Chronometrics's Workshop > The Disciple > Discussions
The Disciple
Description Discussions16 Comments172 Change Notes
singingdragonlord Jan 4, 2019 @ 3:29pm
balance seems a bit off...
whilst the designs of this mod are absolutely fantastic, as well as the wonderful artwork. the balance leaves something to be desired however... Whilst I've only done a single run with the mod, almost all of the cards I've seen fall into either hillariously OPness or downright uselessness.

Even without me having fully figured out the most optimal way to play the class, which cards to pick up/avoid etc etc. I managed to easily complete my first run of the mod, something that I wasnt able to do with the 3 vanilla characters. (granted I never had all three of them at ascension 20 when I went through my first playthrough of them, so maybe its just the experience + lesser difficulty)

hell even the starting relic seems insane compared to the three vanilla classes, as it changes the already self retaining cards from a ok I guess to great, and then add on other stuff through second hand or other cards that I havnt unlocked yet and in a single turn the power level is crazy.

its not so much that a specific card or playstyle with the deck seems OP, but rather they all do to some variable level, using the others as a comparasion. the only thing silent has going for it in higher ascensions is poison. the defect has echoform and creative AI. ironclad kinda lives and dies by the relics he gets.

the disciple on the other hand? power stacking on almost of a extreme level as the defect. echoward that is strictly a better version of ironclads rage, instead applying to everycard but not only that, it also scales with dex. alternate timeline, a mash up between silents prepared and defects seek(seriously, drawing a card of your choice is such a huge advantage in every situation, and should either be nerfed to a uncommon with exhaust added onto it, or rare and as is). back four seconds. a free get out of jail card for every clutch situation, barely managed to survive the act 2 robo bosses hyper beam? just have a 0 mana heal for whatever you lost, and these are just the most eye catching problems

Again, it may just be me having a kneejack reaction to the new content and not being in a high enough ascension to make accurate calls, and I do hope thats the case. Because everything else with this mod is wonderful. hope you continue refining this mod, and looking forward to any others you may put out in the future. and to anyone checking the comments/discussions that are on the fenec as to download this mod or not, dont let my minirant about balance disaude you. this is a very lovingly put together mod that breathed some fresh air into this game for me
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Showing 1-13 of 13 comments
ferret POOP Jan 5, 2019 @ 7:07pm 
My comment posted on the workshop page...

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WAY OVERPOWERED but amazing kit idea.

Recurrence should not affect strength debuffs. In fact, remove all strength debuffs from this char or make them exhaust.

I was able to make all bosses have negative strength and thus keeping my life high while dolling out mediocre damage. I didn't even know the kit and this was super obvious and simple. I made so many errors in judgement and still crushed it.

Please nerf.
#1
Chronometrics  [developer] Jan 6, 2019 @ 8:31am 
Hi, I'm currently on vacation, but I can assure you I've worked for many months on the balance of this mod. I implemented metrics reporting for this mod in august, and the 10k runs I have tellme that the mod is notably weaker than the vanilla characters (5% lower winrates). Additionally, I have a group of 30 testers who I've been soliciting feedback from for four months, a heuristic based spreadsheet for quantized balancing, and I've been streaming dev runs since july, three-four times a week.

I can never fully guarantee balance, but I am confident this character and the card pool is by no means OP. If you find it too easy, consider increasing the ascension! If you have specific cards that you feel are too strong or too reliable, please attempt ten runs giving yourself that card as a starter for your favoured ascension, and compare them to your other characters! If you think you've found an unusual exploit or strategy that I've overlooked that guarantees you victory, please send a couple san runs my way!

I appreciate your feedback as well on impressions of cards. Regardless of how actually balanced a card is, it can give off the impression of being too strong or too weak, and that impacts player experience! I work hard to generate cards that lead to good player experiences, so I value reports of that kind as well.

Thanks for all your time in writing this review!
#2
Bobit Jan 8, 2019 @ 2:00pm 
@Chronometrics

Is Fast Forward + Anchor an infinite combo if you have enough of them in the deck?

I'm quite sure Anchor is overpowered either way because Deflect gives 5 block and the fact that Anchor leaves a "useless" replica is an upside. Deflect is also a pretty decent card according to spirelogs.

Changing enemy intent seems to make some elites and bosses too easy but I guess that's okay.

Overall it is a really fun mod where most cards are balanced. There's just a few ridiculous ones.
#3
Unfortunately Sane Jan 9, 2019 @ 7:06pm 
@Bobit

When you play an anchor card it disappears for that fight, due it it appearing above the Disciple's head :)

It's more akin to boot sequence than deflect due to that reason; it just happens to have some replica synergy on top of boot sequence in exchange for being ethereal and not innate. You either use it or lose it (or theoretically alternate timeline it).

As for Pattern Shift, it's been a character-defining starting card from the ...start. The character has been balanced for having pattern shift in every deck since the very beginning! It's very strong. It's also dead weight against certain enemies (and dead weight against significantly more enemies if you do not draw it turn 1).
In my experience Disciple is pretty reasonable at killing most bosses, but seems to take more damage in hallway fights and most deck archetypes just flat die against Donu + Deca.

I'd recommend upping the ascension level if you're not having fun with the tools at your disposal. The character's winrates are lower on higher ascensions than the base 3 classes. Can you win every run on Disciple on A0? A1? Absolutely. Can you do the same with Ironclad/Silent/Defect? Absolutely.
#4
Bobit Jan 9, 2019 @ 10:41pm 
Fair point, totally forgot about boot sequence (don't play much defect), but at least it's uncommon. I did know that Anchor was basically exhausted on use, but from a drafting mindset that doesn't make a card weaker for me. Boot sequence is a card I will almost always draft but expecting you to make even better balance than the vanilla game would be kinda ridiculous.

Seems to me like Act 1 is especially easy because you have two strong cards and pattern shift is especially good against elites. Act 2 is rough. Then Act 3 you assemble a pretty strong combo.

In hindsight I'm probably overvaluing Fast Forward too because while it may play 10 cards it still takes two turns to do so and you have to play a bunch of anchors first. Net result is probably like 2 mana for 30 damage which is on par.

But my question about Fast Forward infinite combo is, if you have enough Fast Forwards in your deck and enough replicas available (hence why I mentioned Anchor because it's the most spammable replica), does the game loop infinitely? And if you can, how many replicas + fastforwards would it take to do so? If it's a low number then I would consider that unbalanced. But otherwise I retract all my balance claims, everything seems fair enough unlike most mods. :)

Finally I want to ask your opinion on end of turn relics cancelling sleep. Sleep is such a powerful part of the kit and this completely nullifies it in most situations so I'm considering just not picking up those relics even if I don't have a sleep card yet. I'm not implying that's an unbalanced dynamic, I just want to know your opinion on that strategy.
Last edited by Bobit; Jan 9, 2019 @ 10:44pm
#5
Unfortunately Sane Jan 10, 2019 @ 8:56pm 
@Bobit Sorry, I should mention clearly that I just watched this being developed and I'm not an authority!

Fast Forward+ with 10 replicas in play, no other copies and less than 10 cards remaining in your deck would theoretically loop infinitely (until something died). Getting the replicas in play via fast forward would require much less cards or more copies of fast forwards. With more copies of fast forward you can viable increase the deck size or decrease the remaining card count required to loop, but there's always the chance you don't draw that second fast forward during the first one with a big enough deck.
They do stack really well. They are insane! They do require other cards to enable. Assembling 5-12 cards for a broken combo is reasonably okay investment as far as I am concerned!

Honestly, the only relics/replicas that are end-of-turn that I can think of are Locked Mercury and Spiked Shell. Locked Mercury I agree with you, Spiked Shell I would just advise you to not empty your hand until you're ready to kill :P
#6
Chronometrics  [developer] Jan 11, 2019 @ 8:54am 
The formula for ff+ infinite is decksize < (ff+ * replicas in play with more on timer than ff+'s in deck)/2. In practice, it's pretty unlikely and the more difficult of the two available infinite combos to achieve.
#7
Chronometrics  [developer] Jan 11, 2019 @ 8:56am 
Regarding difficulty, act 1 easy, act 2 hard, act 3 you've got a good combo is exactly how vanilla functions as well, and was what I'm aiming for. Pattern Shift helps a lot to mitigate act 1 elites - without it, you tend to get bodied by Disciple's lack of immediate large damage.
#8
Chronometrics  [developer] Jan 11, 2019 @ 8:57am 
Regarding sleep, it's a strong strat and would be stronger if it didn't have so many limitations.
#9
Bobit Jan 11, 2019 @ 8:58am 
yep, ty
Last edited by Bobit; Jan 11, 2019 @ 8:59am
#10
spyke2009 Jan 16, 2019 @ 4:35pm 
Love the character and premises behind the playstyle/archetype. Easly the most natural seeming character of all the custom modded ones I've played. But I also find that a lot of the interactions between retain relics and the natural retention of the cards via the characters mechanics, is wonky. PIcked up a pyramid and rather than at least letting me hold on to cards that don't self retain, sans the cost reduction as that might be a bit too good, it completely and utterly removed all the cost reduction mechanic. For even the self retaining cars that the character thrives on and needs to be competitive. It's little things like that which make me wonder if that 5% difference in balance is due to wonky unintended interactions.
#11
Deso Jan 26, 2019 @ 5:32pm 
I think a few cards have weak upgrades in number terms.
#12
OptimusPrimordial Mar 1, 2019 @ 1:37am 
Has the Disciple been heavily nerfed since this thread was started? The character took me three hours to complete one run. Not because it was too hard but because I was trinket stacking all day, waiting multiple turns for retains to come down in cost and sitting on Old Timer.
You can say I just had a poor build but on the first floor you have so little offensive power you either grab what attacks you can get or get healing trinkets and attrition out every fight.

The game offered attacks which shatter your trinkets to hit hard but you can't resupply those mid fight so it's a losing position for bosses. It offered single hard hitters but they don't go off till later, 7 turns in the case of locked calendar.
The class definitely has a lot of ways to hamstring the opponent but it feels like you're slowing the ai down to your level rather than accelerating yourself.
#13
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