#Buff the worst jokers

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

gloomy echo
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Now that top players are making tier lists it might be good to look at the bottom tier of their lists and then use your judgment on if any of those cards should be buffed. especially if they are appearing on multiple lists.
Often those cards are in the situation that they are good once in a while, but overall quite poor. You could make them even stronger in the narrow case, like red card could be +5 instead of +3 or something.
I am not good enough to say which cards these are but I am including a pic of someone else's tier list that looked reasonable to me, just to give you ideas.

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tight onyx
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8 ball should have stayed a tarot gen tbh

heavy temple
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is it me or do i disagree quite alot with this list?

gloomy echo
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the list could be bad, but the topic is more general than one list

heavy temple
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at least with sme of the F and D tier cards, like erosion, showman and 4 fingers

gloomy echo
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feel free to add more or better lists

tight raft
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i mean there's not much substance to the post if you're just saying "bad jokers should be buffed"

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i think everyone agrees with that

gloomy echo
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I am saying buff bad jokers, but also take a look at the lists that people are posting and read the F tier on all those lists to get ideas.

heavy temple
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It again does depend on what your cnsidering these on
like if we are considering endless, Idol is almost S tier, but otherwise F or D tier is valid

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I think i want to make my own tier list, just cause fun

gloomy echo
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yeah do it, and if you are good post it here

heavy temple
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I will be considering my ranking based of beating a standard game of Balatro, and not endless

weak jasper
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Some cards are pretty much only good for high rolls (Baron, Idol, retriggers?, bloodstone), but I feel like those do what they're trying to do, and don't need a buff

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but superposition, red card and 8 ball and stuff like that def need buffs

split nimbus
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i dont wanna start an argument but putting showman in f is crazy

weak jasper
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I honestly think a negative Showman is worse than having no jokers

ember ember
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showman is pretty bad for winning

tight raft
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showman is kinda only useful when you already have a good setup and an empty joker slot you dont know what to do with

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just to fish for a duplicate of one of your other jokers

heavy temple
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the thing is that i feel showman should at least be a D, it can actively harm your deck if you need diversity, but it far more helpful in my eyes than 8 ball, superposition or golden ticket

signal lichen
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a good buff to showman would be duping only jokers, nerfing your tarot/planet selection is annoying

upbeat crypt
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that is subjective

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showman can be useful in mega celestials combined with telescope for the chance of 2 of your preferred planet card appears in the pack

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but thats more of an edge case

tight raft
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well every benefit from showman aside from finding joker dupes is an edge case

wise gull
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This tier list laughably bad, especially the F tier. Whoever made this just needs more time playing the game. I understand this is thei opinions but cmon

tight onyx
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also red card is overhated

silk matrix
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Also just because a joker is bad for hyper consistent endgame setups doesn't mean it's undertuned or unusable. Like regular Jimbo Joker is down in D tier but if I see that guy in shop 1 I'm buying him a lot of the time to get me through early antes. Idol is in D tier but it's an incredible joker if you are running deck manipulation (things like trading card/DNA). Erosion is in F tier but if you already thinned out the deck it might be an easy 20-40 mult purchase.

Any tier list is subjective. This list doesn't measure "bad" or "good", what it really seems to be measuring is "consistent" or "inconsistent". Which isn't the same thing.

Imo tier lists are a bad metric for balancing a game like this. Raw numbers and aggregate feedback are better sources of info

gloomy echo
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added another tierlist from someone else in chat. I am sure it is also perfect

tawny patrol
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people make tierlists based off of different criteria so it’s not so simple to identify all the jokers that are clearly lacking

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are we all disagreeing because one person makes it based on highest potential power, while someone else does it based on gold stake winrate, and yet another based on how often they would take a specific joker?

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I think the biggest discrepancies are due to what stake people are playing on, and that raises the question of what stake the game should be balanced around

tame pecan
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calling seance a fool is just incorrect

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mad/clever probably only needs a few deaths, or maybe some strength

gloomy echo
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It isn't about any one specific tierlist, just the dev can use them as data, then use his own wisdom and experience to make decisions.

tame pecan
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yeah

tiny fern
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I know the point isn't the tier list proper, but I just waned to mention that an objective tier list for Balatro jokers is something of a flawed idea as a concept, considering how both random and mercurial runs can be.

tame pecan
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exactly

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people like different playstyles

viral ore
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What is considered the worst joker? I think any jokers that can build around are fine, even pre-buff dagger were played in many runs.
Every game has weaker options than the meta, doesn't means all options should be equally as good. Beside, there were already many suggestions on how to buff a specific weaker joker in #1155557846805643434 . Finding the worst joker in a tier list is definitely worse than any well thought out suggestion on a specific joker.

tawny patrol
vital zephyr
# gloomy echo

The fact four fingers is rated low on both of these is criminal imo.
It's not the best card, but it can do a lot for a straight/straight flush run.

azure holly
tawny patrol
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planet generation could be cool but playing 2 8s is way too hard for an unlikely chance of slightly boosting a hand that you actually play

azure holly
tawny patrol
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that would actually feel like a joker you could build around

azure holly
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yeah that could actually be good especially early game or if it just created a planet card of your most played hand

solar cipher
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okay everyone is arguing about the tierlists posted but like

8ball, red card, showman, and superposition are all clearly horrible

showman CAN go off a little but 90% of the time all it does is reduce your options when opening packs, it's really really bad

superposition doesn't even need an explanation for why it's bad, it's just so bad and it's not even bad in a fun way, that one desperately needs a change of some sort

Even if we're not talking generally buffing jokers based on tierlists, superposition in particular needs a buff

the other ones i mentioned probably need buffs too,but at least they're bad in a way that can potentially be fun if you're forcing it, superposition just sucks completely

short spindle
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red card is completely fine

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it's orange stake that's the problem

solar cipher
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i think high stakes changing the balance of the game is actually a good thing, mixes things up a lot

i still think red card is terrible but it doesn't NEED a buff like superposition does

any joker that has the potential to be fun or go off doesn't NEED a buff imo but superposition doesn't clear that hurdle

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I also think red stake is the most problematic stake but I don't know if I'd change it

you wouldn't feel pressured to reset runs without red stake and it'd make every other stake feel less random

but red stake also teaches newer players to actually skip so i think it's generally good design

tawny patrol
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it’s hard to go wrong by not taking any skips

solar cipher
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maybe that's just from my personal experience, i almost never skipped until I got my first Throwback and it took Red Stake to get me to actually look at skips seriously

gloomy echo
solar cipher
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yeah free shops and negative skips are almost always worth it

tawny patrol
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I kinda disagree, I’ll take a free shop as ante 1 small blind but in general you lose money and interest, the ability to scale your jokers one round, and one less shop to deal with the scaling blinds

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negatives are kind of a high roll type of thing, you can get lucky and get something that helps a lot but it’s very inconsistent

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if it’s early you may not be able to afford it really, and later you have a build going that may reduce the chance of it helping much

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kinda curious for others to weigh in though

solar cipher
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i mean i do definitely skip negatives or freeshops depending on my situation but i think in general taking those skips is a decent heuristic to follow until you get a feel for when not to skip them

really early negatives are generally bad and really late freeshops aren't great but really late negatives are almost always worth it and really early freeshops can make a dead run into a winning run

even if all you get out of an early free shop is like, a random tarot, a planet you don't plan to use, and a +4 mult joker, that will help you beat early blinds with less hands and thus generate you enough money to compensate for the money lost by skipping, in my experience

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but until you get a sense for when to stop skipping for freeshops i think skipping them most times is a decent rule to follow

tawny patrol
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well again I guess it goes back to what stake the player is on, it’s much much harder to get away with skipping for anything with increased scaling

I’d still contend that skipping early is not the best habit to get into, really only thing helping you beat early blinds in fewer hands is jokers and you are actually making it less likely to find a scoring joker by skipping a shop

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it might feel like the shop can be a big power boost when it hits but it might not have felt like it was “saving the run” if you had taken the last round and found other stuff worth buying

solar cipher
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I mean I do have experience playing on gold stake but I tend to lean more toward endless mode so maybe that's why our opinion is different? If it's between making 3$ on small blind and seeing a shop or just skipping that blind and getting a free shop I lean towards the latter. Eternal jokers do make free shops worse but losing all your interest on buying one joker to beat a boss blind with vs maintaining your interest and having somewhat suboptimal jokers for the boss blind seem pretty similar in scale to me. But I also haven't had any interest in attempting to maintain a win streak or anything so maybe I'm just not noticing the EV I lose when I skip early since I just instantly go for another attempt.

I'm not the best player in the world by any stretch of the imagination but I do have a lot of hours logged and a highscore I'm happy with and a good number of high stake clears though I kinda avoid gold stakes because I don't love playing with the hand size loss just from a fun perspective, so you can take my view on this with a grain of salt. It's all just from my perspective of how I played when I started vs how I play now and if I had skipped more often when I started I would have had more clears. But I also might have started from a lower skill floor than others did

tawny patrol
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Yeah preference is a big thing, everyone enjoys the game different ways

For better or for worse Balatro is the kind of game that leaves the player at the mercy of rng often, which makes me biased I am used to approaching games from the perspective of winrate when it doesn’t really seem to be a design goal of the game at the moment

And yeah the game is still young so I don’t know that anyone could really claim to be a great player yet, even the best players are learning new stuff all the time

solar cipher
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I think my feelings on skips are largely based on the fact that I absolutely did not skip often enough when I was first playing and thought it was horrible to skip. In reality every single decision in Balatro is extremely extremely context sensitive but I needed to actually try stuff out (like skipping) in order to learn what was good to do and what was bad

Anyways to get back on topic superposition is a horrible joker and it needs to be buffed so that even if its still bad it's at least fun lol

like if superposition also let your straights cross the ace line, like a King/Ace/2/3/4 would score as a straight when you had superposition it would suddenly at least be a fun build around

as it is now it has basically no use, best case scenario is you pick it up in a free shop, manage to get it to go off once, then you sell it. that's honestly still bad because you'd rather see any other joker in a free shop regardless and it's absolutely not ending up in your joker slots except via a free shop or a judgement tarot

like as it is now it's barely better than getting nothing and 90% of the reason it's better than nothing is the 2$ you get from selling it

it's a truly unfortunate joker

it's the judgement tarot saying "nope" basically

wise gull
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I think Superposition is solid in Straight builds. You get tarot cards, not as easily as Vagabond but you get to build your $ without having to stay under $3 lol And you can play High or low straights so you have flexibility. Playing Straights from King through 4 would be incredible and is a great idea and honestly fits the theme of the Joker. I think it should be reworked like that, even though its already pretty dang useful. I think the real issue is that tarot cards dont feel great to use on Straight builds. Destroying/Deathing away Ranks 6-9 is the thing i shoot for and/or getting things the same suit but it takes A LOT. Im all for this change tho

tawny patrol
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its like tarot cards are not that impactful given how hard it is to make those straights, and then if you are able to do it (semi) consistently its because you arlready taroted a lot of your deck and probably dont need more

split nimbus
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I feel like 8 ball should be reverted to giving tarot cards instead of planet cards ngl

scenic timber
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What really needs buff is those lazily designed ones, mad joker, wily joker etc. they are also really bad most of the time

upbeat crypt
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localthunk say that these boring jokers has to exist for a few reasons: to make the interesting jokers interesting, and to help the early game. If these jokers with simple requirements didn’t exist early game would be much harder.

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4oak jokers like mad clever and family are indeed a bit less consistent due to 4oak being hard to achieve without deck manipulation

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others do help very much if you have nothing else though

short spindle
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yeah i agree

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but it is funny that basically all of them are worse than abstract

upbeat crypt
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abstract by itself is bad though assuming you get it shop one without anything else

prime fern
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Gift card can be good if you use with a tarot

short spindle
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+3 mult for ante 1 is not bad at all

upbeat crypt
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ic

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abstract is good unless it’s by itself

sharp lodge
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the worst part about balancing is that even you guys cannot agree on what's bad and what's good...

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but we can all agree that the Card and Planet Vouchers are almost always terrible

lime lily
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It's only good if you got a lot of money to spend on jokers to burn

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But I agree that bad cards are bad

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Showman often goes off and creates... Showman

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And the randomness of the legendaries mean you risk getting stuck with Yorick

short spindle
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you don't have to scale campfire extremely high for it to be good

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$6 for x2.5 mult (buying and selling three random consumables) is already great

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you can buy them before the boss and save them to sell afterward for the next ante

wild jackal
short spindle
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Two random planets would be cool

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and yeah I like the theme

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The planets are literally eight balls lmao

glad mauve
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maybe make 8 ball just play a single 8 by itself?

sharp lodge
upbeat crypt
trim pike
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How is campfire bad

sharp lodge
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if you disagree your opinion is automatically invalid

trim pike
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Why red card at B

glad mauve
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make campfire give x1 mult per sell

tight raft
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misprint A tier 🤔

little hull
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Bro why's blackboard on C teir

glad mauve
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who made this tier list?

tribal jetty
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swash at the end is crazy

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worst jokers isnt really a clear thing though because as this thread shows, even agreeing what's bad is impossible among a large sample of people

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and win rate isn't the only factor in a card's strength

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how niche a card is vs its ceiling, ante 8 vs endless scaling, etc

glad mauve
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does that mean we can't buff 8 ball or seance?

tribal jetty
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not really, just thinking that 'worst' is a pretty nebulous metric. specific examples is good

prime fern
sharp lodge
sharp lodge
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all mult doesn't work with it too well because it has to be on the right

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and also there is like 2 cards that play with it

sharp lodge
tribal jetty
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swash is basically a slightly worse abstract a lot of the time, which isn't a bad position to be in

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obviously it doesn't scale to endgame in many builds but early-mid game it's very good

sharp lodge
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any joker is good early game 💀

tawny patrol
split nimbus
tawny patrol