I’m of the opinion that Jaina’s J should be her signature card, it feels strange to me that an archer’s arrow card would be among her worst options to reveal.
From a fluff perspective (and from the FSFG) I really like the thought of her slow J having knockdown. This would provide a great dodge follow up and allow her to set up crossups and straights, which she excels at, without spending any throws/blocks to do so. I could also see it being more damaging than Graves J, say 10(9) damage to keep it to an increment of 2 damage. This would allow her to make much more efficient use of her dodges in the early game when she is block starved and also whenever she is outsped by 2.2/2.3 speed in neutral or by 0.0 speed DPs.
This change also makes slow J a truly formidable throw punish, even without follow up, which Jaina sometimes is stuck without in the early game. It would particularly help her versus Zane, one of her worst matchups, who hates being knocked down, and it would trade very nicely with his K.
In terms of addressing her card flow, how about if fast J had a J* ability which gives her something like the higher risk version of Graves J:
Feeding the Flames: When you deal block damage with Flame Arrow draw a card
This way she can use the fast side to build her hand along with her opponent, escalating the game. If she then uses her innate, the net bock damage is only 2HP so its either gain cards for 2 net damage or cycle cards for 5 block damage.
In terms of a fast J speed boost, I reckon 2.4 speed is essentially a non-issue for balance since she has unlimited 2.4 speed K once she draws it. Unlimited 2.2 speed would probably reduce her zoning game play in most matchups, so I’m less keen on that as a first pass solution.
Instead of a new J* for her, why not shuffle her existing abilities: move her 7* to her 10 and her 10* to her J. That way she has full use of her 7-throw and an increased incentive to use her J’s early in the game.
This change coupled with a 2.4 speed fast J and a slow J that knocks down would let her make better use of the cards she already wants to use in the early game, while simultaneously setting up her late game and granting her more fast throws and blocks to use throughout the match.
One of the only changes I’m thinking of is a change to BBB’s innate.
Current version:
“Lose range at the end of a turn in which both players blocked or you got hit by a non-[range-legal] move. (In 2v2 and 2v1, cancel range if there are no BBBs on the battlefield.)”
3.0 version?:
“Lose range at the end of a turn in which both players blocked or you got hit. (In 2v2 and 2v1, cancel range if there are no BBBs on the battlefield.)”
Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but the BBB mirror seems really dumb to me (perhaps because I am an intermediate at best robot) & while this would make Long Range not as effective as it can be against the rest of the cast, it also allows range to be cancelled by things other than Gold Bursts in the mirror, finally!
But that would result in BBB losing range if he successfully K-throws, or hits another BBB with a normal. That seems really weird for no real reason. I mean, I agree that the BBB mirror is very strange, but it doesn’t seem bad? Like there’s an interesting tension between which BBB wants to be at range, and which doesn’t. The interplay of normals/dodges/QsKs at range is completely different from any other range in any other MU.
Given all the back-and-forth on all these V.3 change logs, I’m curious to know what we think the most universally agreed-upon changes are. For example, it feels like everyone agrees that Rook’s special blocks should hit the opponent, and it also seems like everyone agrees that Geiger’s TD should end on hit. What other changes are similarly non-controversial?
This. I have longed for such a set of changes for a good while now. But I’ve never felt like there was enough agreement over enough characters to be able to put a list like that together.
The only truly non controversial change I can think of is 's special blocks. People generally agree that how they currently work is somewhat counter intuitive and only make him worse. Two other rather common suggestions are:
T only once per turn. Personally I would go to twice per turn because it’s fun to combo, but 4x combo can feel reeeaaaalllly bad on the receiving end. T gets buffed. A simple boost to 8 or 10 health healed would probably be agreeable, but a complete rework is still on the table.
All that remains is generally agreed upon points of balance without a clear way to proceed.
all suffer from awkward hands that make their fun kits randomly useless.
Some bleh MUs like vs and vs could use a buff, but doing so is really hard without breaking something.
, among others, generally feel a tad weak but don’t have a very clear part of their kit that needs fixing.
are often considered for nerfs. Although it’s debatable how much nerfing is needed; especially while other characters receive buffs. I personally believe 's MA being put to 0.1 speed would be good and relatively small nerf in MUs where he is already strong. Still outspeeds 0.2 speed attacks but is less oppressive bullshit in matches with 0.0 speed attacks. Edit: also 0.1 speed is completely unique and bucks Zanes own X.3 speed convention for maximum anarchy. Thematically I am in love with this and very biased.
I think all four of these characters could be fixed with the same universal change: A partial mulligan rule. Something like, At the start of the game, each player secretly selects a number of cards to discard, then draws an equal number of replacements. (Then possibly shuffling the discards back in.)
Discarding rather than reshuffling would also serve as a large buff to and a very small buff to , as this would set up early cards for their recursion tricks. It would also inversely buff , who can punish greedy mulligans with T.
That said, the fact that Sirlin didn’t include partial mulligans in Yomi v2, despite their common inclusion in a lot of modern card games, suggests that he likely already tried the idea and discarded it for some reason I’m not aware of.
(Such a rule would also have to come with some sort of Geiger nerf, as more consistent access to Spirals and TD would be a power boost.)
This is an interesting suggestion, but my gut feeling is that it would boost more than it would boost , simply because more of their cards are good and they would be able to have more of them from the very start of the game.
Imagine Troq being even more likely to have face cards, or Zane being even more likely to have the hand quality to go in hard from the very start of the game. Yes the opposing char is also more likely to have their own answers in hand, but I think the advantage would still lie with the top tier characters simply because their game plans are stronger/simpler.
That said, I’d love to playtest this idea and see how it feels in practice.
I should also add that I disagree that Jaina would be fixed by this rule, I don’t think her problems really stem from bad opening hands, though occasionally she does also suffer from them (commonly no blocks, less often not much damage).
Her innate interacts really badly with Jokers and she has pretty poor dodge follow up unless she dumps a precious resource (multiple Ks) or spends a solid throw ender/late game neutral tool (AA).
My science/maths background means I like to express it as Jaina having a deterministic disadvantage (as the game goes one she is systematically put in a poorer position) rather than a stochastic one (she randomly has a bad time due to draws). Gwen also suffers from this same type of disadvantage due to her innate slowly killing her.
I feel like “Zane reveals Shenanigans flips before the opponent decides whether or not to face down” is another consensus change? Though to be frank I’m not sure how much it would really matter either way.
Definitely agree! Also, in connection to this idea you brought up:[quote=“thehug0naut, post:50, topic:2074”]
I like to express it as Jaina having a deterministic disadvantage (as the game goes one she is systematically put in a poorer position) rather than a stochastic one (she randomly has a bad time due to draws).
[/quote]
This got me thinking: are certain characters, such as Midori, “stochastically balanced” in the sense that, if they had access to good hands every game they would be too good? That is, is it the fact that they have high variance in their hand quality that keeps their overall power level (looking at multiple games in the long-run rather than single games) in line with other characters? If so, is there even a way to reduce their variance without making them too good?
This is definitely how Midori works, actually. I’ve joked a lot that he’s a great bo7 character and a bad bo1 character for that reason. Sometimes a game just feels lost when you get one of those hands. But a great degree of my success with him is not tilting at that bad hand, but rather finding a way to teach my opponent that my hand isn’t actually bad when it is.
Inversely, this also allows me to mask a godhand as a terrible one for a few turns, and suddenly I DF and you explode in 3 combats.
Midori can stand to gain a lot from added consistency to his kit. Simple ideas are DF giving a face card from discard on activation, or T ability drawing him a card when used. Either of these ideas drastically increase his power level by slightly reducing his draw variance, which is kind of dangerous.
The question then is, would that version of Midori be as good or better than Troq? Not sure, but Midori has some very good matchups against low tier characters, so having more consistency against them would be crushing.
Imo the best way to balance a character is to try to find something that helps them against their worst matchups that doesn’t affect them in their best ones. Crash and Flow putting a card on the bottom of the deck in v2 is a great example of this, but it’s hard to find these sorts of changes. Midori’s only real problems are that Geiger, Zane and DeGrey are very good characters, and BBB can highroll against grappler characters a lot. So moreso just changes to those characters in some way would help him be a better character in a safer manner.
If everyone gets buffed in v3 though give me these card draw things plz lol
As my main girl, I’d love to see some Persephone buffs. The biggest would be to increase her health increased to 80 or 85 to help her survive the early game. Maybe increase the speed of her normals to x.2, but really once she gets going she can hang well with most of the cast. It’s just that she needs more time to build a hand, and when so much of the cast can take her out in 3-4 combos, she can have a hard time finding her groove.
@Leontes I always love your posts about Midori’s hopes and dreams
For the record I think 10* drawing a card is a fantastic change, it means 10s can let him access dQ when he’s being pressured without ruining his hand so much. Makes it much more viable to defend your hand earlier in the game. I imagine this would be particularly helpful vs Zane and other rushdown characters, but potentially less of a deal vs DeGrey or Geiger. Unfortunately I reckon it’ll also help him squish Gloria even faster, which is probably not really that desirable, since she probably already feels that she’s on a clock.
The other thing I kind of like for Midori is letting him power up for 2s, which I feel is thematically on point with Menelker powering up for his own “dragon” cards. Firstly it would mean 2s are actually usable outside of activating dragon form, so his grappler early game should be slightly better - and in a pinch he can power up for a block. It also means that he can reliably access his dragon moves against characters with counters and combo throws. I don’t think it really makes the Gloria MU all that much worse as Midori usually can build the exact hand he wants vs her anyway.
I’ve always felt that a small HP increase was probably all the mistress really needs, since I’ve always found her lockdown plan pretty fierce. She does suffer from having to win combat a lot of times, something many of the ladies of yomi have to contend with. More HP would certainly help her there.
I think x.2 normals should be reserved for Ven and Sets though. x.4 normals are still pretty speedy vs a bunch of the cast, and a 2.4 speed lockdown vortex is nasty enough!
Oh yeah I forgot about that one. I think it just takes the advantage slightly back from the damage monster since you won’t be wasting jokers on terrible shens that reveal a 10 and a 4. I feel being able to laugh at his nonsense draws without crying over my lost blue burst would make the match feel better even it the numbers didn’t improve all that much. Plus it makes his average combo damage less card efficient, which I’m all for.
Yeah true, he probably should have had them, but would 7 damage throws really mean much for his game? Obviously it’s a few extra points of damage but I see it as fairly inconsequential.
What is is worst matchup would you say? I feel like his kit is pretty sweet overall, he just has a small margin of error since his HP is so low
How about this change for Zane, meaty attacks do not benefit from normal draw. This is designed as a fairly solid nerf to his damage efficiency.
Right now a favourable shenanigans means he can play 9Q9J for 34 damage off of 1.0 speed and it only costs 2 cards from hand. He can still do this with my nerf, but only off a hard throw read in neutral.
It also reduces his card flow while he vortexes, which is among his more obnoxious qualities imo. It also makes Max Anarchy more of a “weirdo trickshot move” as it’s harder to assemble aces while going in. MA probably still needs a speed nerf though.
I think a lot of his worst matchups would be improved by changing the other characters as opposed to Menelker, similar to what has been suggested for most of the mid tiers.
My least favorite characters to fight as Menelker are Setsuki and Degrey; hand damage means little to them, and they do full combos off of dodge. However, there’s not much to really change to fix this (except for maybe up my ability to threaten dodges by upping my throw damage).
's special blocks. People generally agree that how they currently work is somewhat counter intuitive and only make him worse. Two other rather common suggestions are:
T only once per turn. Personally I would go to twice per turn because it’s fun to combo, but 4x combo can feel reeeaaaalllly bad on the receiving end.
T gets buffed. A simple boost to 8 or 10 health healed would probably be agreeable, but a complete rework is still on the table.
all suffer from awkward hands that make their fun kits randomly useless.
vs 
and 
vs 
could use a buff, but doing so is really hard without breaking something.
, among others, generally feel a tad weak but don’t have a very clear part of their kit that needs fixing.
and a very small buff to 
, as this would set up early cards for their recursion tricks. It would also inversely buff 
, who can punish greedy mulligans with T.
