Please give my goat Pimento some love

[torn swan]

I've played quite a bit of the recent update and man... Pimento is pretty underwhelming

I feel like his main problems come down to:

A 5 turn counter is just too long. All the other main damage dealers have lower turn counters. Yuki has 4, Chompom has 3 and Lil Berry also has a 4, so Pimento falls behind all of them.

Having no frenzy on a Spice focused unit really sucks. Before Pimento's release, if you were going for a Spice focused build, you would usually pair that with Foxee or Tiny Tyko, since their Frenzy lets them get more value from each stack of spice. Sometimes a barrage unit like Jumbo or barrage hero also works, but Frenzy just works really well with Spice, so its a huge shame that Pimento has neither.

He's anti synergistic with Spice. Like I said, he has no Frenzy or barrage to maximize the usefulness of his Spice, but on top of that, his effect is the exact same as Pepper Flag's. That means if you have Pimento and Pepper flag on your team, you are just getting less value from him. It feels really strange that this is the case, since no other unit in the game has the same effect as an item or clunker, and in this case it actively hinders Pimento.

So how can we fix him?

I feel like there are a lot of different ways to fix Pimento, so I wanted to list them in order from more simple and realistic to more creative and fun.

The easiest way to buff him is for sure to just make him a 4 turn unit, or to give him 1 Frenzy. I feel like either one of these changes puts him closer to Chompon and Yuki in terms of viability, though he remains fairly uninteresting this way, and keeps the anti synergy with Pepper Flag, which I'm not a fan of.

A way to get rid of this anti synergy with pepper flag would be to change his effect slightly, to something like "Gain Spice equal to damage dealt". This way, he can gain a little bit of spice if he attacks with none, but it also makes it so that if you have Pepper Flag, he essentially doubles his spice with each attack. This might sound broken, but Spice Stones are already in the game and aren't that insane. Plus, for this to happen, you need to take up a spot on your side with a very vulnerable clunker, and even then Pimento is still fairly slow.

The other buff idea I have is a bit more out there, but I think it could be fun if he just gained 1 Frenzy every time he gained Spice. With this effect he would probably need a bit of a nerf, like a reduction to his health or even going up to a 6 turn counter, but I think his play style would be really fun. You would have to put as many different triggers of spice on him before he attacks, then he just bulldozes the enemy, after which he has a long period of downtime before attacking again.

[sly whale]

Pimento having the same effect as Pepper Flag is the point

Now there are twice as many ways to get the effect of Pepper Flag, you’re far from guaranteed to get it

I agree he needs Frenzy or something though, obviously he’s intended to be weaker than e.g. Foxee or Jumbo at base because he has the Pepper Flag built in, but 1 Frenzy or a 4 counter would do him good without making him strictly better

[torn swan]

Yeah ig, I just think its a little boring to make him a walking pepper flag when the and damage dealers have more unique ways to scale damage.

but yeah, the most realistic outcome is -1 or giving him , both of which I'd be okay with

Also I think it's worth mentioning that another big issue with Pimento is that on top of being slow, for him to scale you need to use Spice cards. The only effect those cards have is buffing his damage.

Other units like Yuki, Lil Berry and Chompon scale while gaining other beneficial effects. Chompon and Lil Berry become tankier as they gain damage, while Yuki scales as you snow other units. Meanwhile, Spice offers no other utility, it just buffs Pimento, a slow damage dealer

[sly whale]

I’d agree with that except Spice scales cards’ attack much faster than those other methods, especially since Spice Stones exist

Yuki has Snowcake but also has exactly 1 health, Chompom has Nutshell Cake but that prevents you from using Moko Charm or having them be injured, Lil’ Berry is the slowest because he needs to trigger for each individual instance of healing

Spice being one-dimensional isn’t a bad thing because it still does that one thing well

About the only other thing that competes is Shell Shield for Chompom, but sources of Shell are also harder to get your hands on