Balance Suggestions

[muted quarry]

Rather than having 20+ different posts of things I think should be buffed/nerfed, I'm just going to have them all be in this thread.

Things that should be nerfed:

~~Golden Blood: ~~
Fortune Tree:
Performer:

Fortune Dash: Should be capped to 9 gold gain per dash so that you need other techniques if you want to go gold positive in tandem with radiant dash.

Inner Keep: +2 armor when upgraded after losing last block is huge and can be triggered multiple times, the base version should be limited to triggering only once per fight and the upgrade should either unlock that restriction or increase the armor gained to 2.

Things that should be buffed:

Back Guard: Not sure what this even really accomplishes, I'd rather be able to turn my back to my foes so I can purposefully lose armor rather than block.

Surprise Dash: The upgrade should make them turn away from you rather than just turn around generically.

Mirage block: Should do more, you can already counter attack so it doesn't seem like theres much point in getting behind the enemy without additional techniques. Maybe the upgrade should grant some benefit to back attacks? +1 damage and +5 gold gain perhaps?

Born Ready: Seems too easily countered by your adjacent enemies starting with block/dodge/armor to absorb your first hit.

[muted quarry]

Rainbow/ashen fan still feel weak. +1 card for 15 gold just isn't impactful when theres the baseline ability to infinitely mulligan. Should be upgraded to 2 or maybe even 3 cards.

[pure marten]

All of our patches have been text free (outside of just changing a number). Most Buff/Nerf needs text, we need to update the technique's description in every language thus it's a bit more involved.
We're planning to do text amendments and various balancing in the near future. No promises but we'll definitely take your feedback in consideration!
For now I'll see for the various gold techniques you mentioned.

[muted quarry]

Scorched earth feels pretty weak when it is anti synergistic with armor and doesn't affect half the threats in the game. Some enemies with resources (cough, Lancer, cough) even deal 2 damage and are thusly not fully countered by scorched earth. Buff ideas:

Not have an agonizing requirement when it already reduces maximum health, and have some other benefit when upgraded, such as perhaps removing the maximum health reduction

Fully negate damage from foes with resources.

Or effectively act like armor when it reduces damage to 0. I.E. prevent armor from being reduced and negating the impact of the attack so that you aren't staggered or thrown to the ground on impact.

The first idea feels like the easiest way to keep it approximately the same as it is while keeping it distinct from armor builds. It didn't really feel like it fit in with the other agonizing builds anyways when it doesn't negate armor loss, an important component of most of the agonizing builds.

The second idea at least lets it work against lancers, but doesn't necessarily amount to much of a change. We could maybe combine this idea as the upgraded version of the first idea

The third idea allows it fit into other agonizing builds by allowing it to work with armor. Or makes it less unwieldy if you are just negating the the stagger/knock back of hits reduced to 0 and not the armor loss

Volatic shift feels pretty bad. I don't like that the unupgraded version forces you to give up the base usage of it and the upgrade only restores the base usage. There aren't enough 2+ armor enemies in the game to justify Volatic shift working this way IMO. I'd recommend that the base version lose the downside and the upgraded version gains some other upside, perhaps the ability to stun enemies it removes armor from.

[muted quarry]

Other weak techniques that are not necessarily worthy of being buffed:

Aura of Hatred
Raid (Some of the best steal techniques are triggered on defeating enemies or effectively defeated enemies)
Dodging Pawns (Maybe the upgrade for these two could provide resources to a non pawn foe since the upgrade seems to care about foes having additional resources for you to steal?)
Blocking Pawns
Iron Shirt
War Hero
Intimidation (Could maybe be buffed to an adjacent enemy?)
Requisition (Dunno how I feel about this one. Its already easy to acquire weapons from defeated foes, so I don't know what the point is in a technique that automatically equips them. Maybe the upgrade could increase the weapon's durability?)

[muted quarry]

Heard that people think that the dodge & and provoke friendly fire style of the leaf school is weak. I don't entirely know what would be a fitting buff for the style of play but I'mma brainstorm a bit anyway.

Buff ideas:

Radicial cycle+: Your attacks inflict 1 less damage...
Your light and heavy attacks deal 1 less damage...
Peaceful Ki: The first time one of your attacks inflicts damage. Consume 1 🔵 .
The first time you defeat a Foe with an attack, consume 1 🔵 .
Peaceful Ki+: The first time you inflict damage with an unarmed attack, consume 1 🔵 .
The first time you defeat a Foe with an unarmed attack, consume 1 🔵 .
Plant Rice Dodge+: When you pick up a weapon from the ground, you avoid attacks. When a foe inflicts friendly fire while you are doing Plant Rice Dodge, they inflict 1 more damage.
When you pick up a weapon from the ground, you dodge attacks. When you dodge an attack while performing Plant Rice Dodge, that attack inflicts 1 more damage to foes.

[muted quarry]

a harder buff dev time wise would be to increase the density of friendly fire / Ki techniques so you have more enablers in the pool and are more likely to get what you need.

[flint badge]

I concur, the base version should do what + version does, and + version could be something else, like "when you hit an enemy with an armour, you don't lose Lightning strike". So that you'd have to decide whether to follow the hit with the next one that would spend the charge anyway or to hit someone else nearby. More tactical options.

/////

Warp+'s delay before teleporting back could honestly be increased by 0.5 seconds, right now the timings it puts you in may feel... disruptive for the player. Plus oftentimes the enemies don't get the time to turn around so that they're facing you backwards when you warp back (so they stay as they were), so it's only detrimental. I played a full dedicated backstab build, upgraded warp, and most of the battles it felt I'd rather prefer to have unupgraded version of it. I think the perfect window would be if you had time just enough to warp, perform One-one-two and return. So maybe even +1 second. Doesn't need more, really.

||It also doesn't require wording changes 👀||

[flint badge]

I've played that one a few times since I love the concept of pure dodge runs (it's sad you can't do those, not realistically before Ogai anyway), I wouldn't say it's weak, although it doesn't bode well against the Admiral (mostly due to the dash-is-not-an-attack bug, but even without it, the first phase will be rough if you've invested in friendly fire gameplay too much).

But I like the buffs suggested. Especially Plant rice dodge. I've never picked that one because it didn't feel good enough compared to, well, anything else that's not entirely useless for your build. Free dodge when you're picking up a weapon sounds amazing and very interactive.
Both Radical cycle and Peaceful Ki could use a minor buff. And they are a bit too.. similar between each other, to my taste. They both play the same role at providing more Ki but punishing your offence. Radical cycle+ feels more punishing and I'd say not enough of more rewarding. Peaceful Ki feels well balanced to me. It doesn't provide you a Ki generating engine, but hey, free Ki as long as you know how to preserve it.

Funnily enough, one of my main issues with balancing is that it soon feels like Common cards are rarer than Rare cards, whereas many common cards feel more core to builds (also there's stuff like Luxation being just better than Subluxation in most cases). I think it's due to the fact that the pool of common cards is probably much larger, so the chances of fishing a common card you need are much less than chances of fishing a rare card you need since there are less of those, yet they are encountered often enough.

[flint badge]

I also agree that the fans are not worth it when there's reroll for 10 coins. I don't think even combining the two fans would make it really worth it, to be honest. Both feel like 5 coin trinkets at best.

[muted quarry]

Balance Suggestions

[spiral stone]

something I noticed with radical cycle+ is that your light still staggers enemies, so you can still use it to set yourself up (removing block, armor, and dodge, along with using a light into heavy to catch a quick attack) still can be very annoying to use once you get to a one-on-one, though

so maybe instead, the damage reduction should only apply when there's more than one enemy, disabling for when friendly fire is impossible to cause

[flint badge]

I've played Leaf a lot, and my favourite starter is Eye poke. But I never upgrade it. Its upgrade makes it so much worse.
Stun doesn't do anything. Sure, you can bypass block... just the same as when they turn around. Dodge is the same (you have to avoid it to hit with eye poke in the first place). You can have less strikes on armour because they wake up from stun immediately but it takes enemies some time to turn around. There's no card like "when enemies get stunned, they take damage". And you lose the highly likely friendly fire blow from the enemy you're attacking. Literally worse in every aspect from what I see.

Possible upgrades:

• Eye poke triggers only when you hit a block or armour, otherwise you deal regular damage and preserve eye poke for such target;
• Eye poke bypasses Dodge [but that would make Bamboo leaf hand worse]
• You gain another Eye poke charge when entering Duel

And just generally, Stun mechanic is very boring, I would never like to give up something fun, interactive and combo friendly to take stun in the first place. I'm all up for as many setup mechanics as possible, such as Turn around or Substitution.

[muted quarry]

Candy box is too expensive for what it does. You can maybe generate enough gold to buy it by the end of act 1, so you could maybe start to benefit from it in act 2, but thats a waste so you'll probably not have it during act 2, and it doesn't work at all during act 4 at a baseline. Requires telescope as a synergy item to make sense and add health recovery opportunities to act 4.

Either its cost should be reduced to like 35 or it should be reworked, possibly to being telescope-esk in adding a challenge that grants healing to each fight.

[muted quarry]

Incense of wealth is too cheap. Its cost could easily go up to 20