This thread can be used as a dialogue to discuss Mei and Tainted Mei's balance and mechanics changes.


Firstly, in the update to support Co-op and add Tainted Mei, I took the opportunity to rebalance Mei more in-line with the game's non-tainted characters.

I removed the grudge mechanic which was: Dealing damage or being near enemies afflicted them with a powerful Damage over Time. You gain damage for inflicting a grudge and that damage fades over time.

Functionally it was implemented as a way to ensure that no matter your luck, Mei will have the stats necessary to beat the game. This made her very, very powerful. Everyone knew Mei was the OP modded character.

My rationale was simply to reduce the power difference between Mei and other non-tainted characters and reduce the confusion with the grudge mechanic.

This was replaced by permanently adding 0.15 damage per Red Heart container and 0.2 damage per Bone Heart container. Secondarily it's easier to understand, reduces the confusion over constant damage changes, and clears the screen from lots of purple fires and flashes.

It's definitely less unique, but that wasn't the goal of the grudge mechanic in the first place.

In my opinion the gameplay differences boil down to Mei feeling much less powerful (because she is) and the lack of incentive to move fast / skip rooms. There's also a small element of damage over time that was removed which is a fair criticism.

How do you feel about the grudge mechanic? Was it too powerful? Does the red heart conversion bonus make up for it? Was it just good because it was visually interesting?


Spectral tears were removed on a whim, so I don't have many qualms about adding them back in. Without spectral there are some explosive synergies that become much more dangerous, so I understand the disappointment.

My rationale was "eh she doesn't really need spectral, does she?" which isn't very strong, so I'm not worried if people would prefer a rollback on it.

Does Mei need spectral from the start? Is it good enough to just add spectral when she has explosive synergies?


A somewhat powerful very short range homing was added, but it's being removed in the next update since it's unnecessary.


Tainted Mei's main weapon is a slightly delayed (about 10 frames or 300ms) rainfall around 2 tiles ahead of her. Her secondary weapon is targeted rainfall that hits the closest enemy/enemies without much input from the player. This so called "global rain" attack is weaker and less reliable, somewhat incentivizing players to actually engage in combat rather than standing around.

Synergies with items like Tech, Tech 2, and Brimstone change the delay to nearly instant are are currently a large, large power jump.

Her starting item is Mei's Broken Heart which starts a storm for the duration of the room. This effect can stack with itself to add more rainfall. These are 75% random and 25% targeted.

Initial response is that she is unsatisfying or too idle.

Do you feel Tainted Mei is unsatisfying to play? Does she too heavily promote idle gameplay?


I am testing a version of Tainted Mei with Luck based targeted rainfall. So far it feels much less feasible to idle the whole game since you'd spend minutes in a room just waiting for a lucky hit. As such, it more closely fits my original design goal of fighting against the design of large rooms in Repentance.

I will try tying rain variants (Tech, Brim, etc.) to Luck as well and see how that feels, as right now the jump in power from Tech-less to Tech-ful is far too high.