Yomi-O's now with 200% more fireballs (v3 wishlist)

You might be right. Here’s my thinking.

The initial reason was to encourage using Jack frequently and trying to get it out of your hand quickly. This encourages playing Jack in combat (the most certain way to get it to discard), and I think it creates a sense of “impatience” that feels very Jaina.

The second edition version of the ability had the powerup restriction added to it because 10 is a very low value card already so without the powerup restriction people would exclusively powerup with it (like what was done in V1 iirc). Moving the ability to Jack, a much higher value card, means powering up with it is harder to justify since Jack is all-around probably Jaina’s best card in this build. I was kinda anticipating this might still be a problem though so removed two pumps from Red Dragon to make stockpiling Aces less valuable.

I don’t think the two ways Jaina has to recur Jacks (innate and Embers) are super consistent. Both depend on the opponent blodging and her innate is often costly.

Was any of that convincing? Thinking on it, maybe the problem could be handled in a different way. If Rain of Fire let Jaina fetch a Jack from discard (like Geiger’s TD) then I think you could remove Smoldering Embers from it altogether, although that would make the recur mechanism less unique. That would leave her with only one non-innate ability. What did you have in mind for it?

I’m definitely not an expert on Jaina, but I think my take on her would look something like this:

Burning Vigor
When you deal damage or block damage with an attack or Knee Bash, you may reveal a card from your hand. If you combat-reveal that card next turn but don’t deal damage or block damage, draw a card and take 5 damage. If you combat-reveal it and do deal damage or block damage, your Flame Arrows deal +1 damage and block damage this turn and you may search your deck or discard pile for a Jack.

Explanation of Burning Vigor

This is a more aggressive re-design of Grave’s innate, Knowing the Opponent. I kept the basic structure the same but made it so that getting the good effect requires deal damage or block damage, which encourages keeping the aggression high. I also wanted to have self-damage if it goes wrong, but I decided to keep the card draw if it goes wrong so that you don’t feel completely punished if you play honest and can’t deal damage. Also, I thought that if she’s got a chance to deal self-damage if it goes wrong she should also get increased damage if it goes right, hence the slight boost to Flame Arrows. That part will matter most when Rain of Fire is active, but even then the +1 damage and the 0 cp Linker effects are separated (unlike Temporal Distortion), so there’s a very real chance that you have to work hard to get both effects active at once.

Jack
Flame Arrow: 7 damage (6 block damage), 2.4 speed, 1 cp Ender
Charged Shot: 10 damage :knockdown: (9 block damage), 5.0 speed, 2 cp Starter


Flame Trap [During Combat]
If either side of this card wins combat or deals block damage, draw a card and the opponent doesn’t draw a card from blocking.

Explanation of Jack

The combat stats on Flame Arrow and Charged Shot don’t matter to me nearly as much as the Flame Trap ability. I’m still quite proud of this one, and a bit of tweaking made it fit nicely with the new innate. Now you have plenty of incentive to combat reveal the archer’s arrow, which is as it should be! This is carefully worded, however, to make it so that Flame Trap only can activate when combat-revealing it—if you combo into Flame Arrow or dodge into Charged Shot, you aren’t winning combat or dealing block damage with either of them. The card draw may be too much against grapplers in particular, but testing would quickly reveal whether that’s the case and it’s not core to the design; the main part is that it shuts down the draw from blocking like Grave’s Lightning Trap does, which prevents the problem 2nd Edition Jaina has where the opponent can build hand faster than her and barely take any more damage than she does from her innate when she combat-reveals Flame Arrow.

Right now it’s late and I don’t have any good ideas for Burning Desperation, but Rain of Fire seems good as you have it (if it turns out too good, it could of course be moved to her 7). Also, I think having Smoldering Embers exactly as it is in 2nd Edition is probably fine. Don’t care much about move stats, since that’s getting into territory I’m even less qualified to talk about, so I’ll just leave it there and everyone can tell me how much my idea sucks! :wink:

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Well, this version of Jaina basically 9-1s quince.

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Ah that mu could be bad, I don’t think it would be worse than Geiger though? I’m assuming you mean it would be so bad because Rain of Fire makes black Flame Arrows beat non-numbered dodges. I’ll remove that part so it just beats odd-numbered dodges. Probably makes her lose to DeGrey/Lum, but if those mus turn out too bad we could reword it so that black Flame Arrows beat “odd numbered dodges and Ace dodges”.

Some thoughts on these builds:

  1. I like Rain of Fire, but as per above it needs to just beat normal dodges until we test it and see it needs to be otherwise.
  2. I like Fire Trap, but it might need to be slower or Can’t Combo or maybe both (my suggestion is Can’t Combo)
  3. If Q is completely non recurring then it should be 0.0 speed at all times. I don’t think
  4. I like @hobusu’s innate, but “damage or block damage” includes comboing into attacks from throws. Not sure if that was intended?
  5. I’m not sure I like Jaina’s throws to 3CP generally. One of the great things about Jaina is how her combos feel. I’d probably prefer that we make rain of fire less broken with 2CP throws. Rain of Fire could require that she reveals attack to get 0cp linker Js maybe?
  6. I’m still not sure she needs x.4 speed normals if fast J becomes such a strong reveal at 2.4 speed. Plus it would be nice if we didn’t have to change every card she has.
  7. these new jainas are mostly unrecognisable (which is fine for overhauls) but it makes me wonder if we should focus on what bits of Jaina’s kit should be kept? Knee Bash as a pumpable throw, Two sides to J, Combos feeling meaty even off of throw, few blocks, lots of dodges, recurring DPs, are all things I think make current Jainas who she is. It’s important that we not throw them all away when retooling her.
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“Hi I have a 2.4 move (faster than everything but your AA) that recurs whenever you try to dodge it. Also sometimes it just beats your dodges anyway. It also does really good chip. Oh and it recurs when dealing chip. Lol good luck beating it.”

Really this applies to every character, but it’s very oppressive vs quince and grapplers.

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I think any character that warrants enough substantial rework to the point where people are writing up entirely new decks is going to be irresolvable by consensus. The Jaina conversation doesn’t seem to be aligning on any concept beyond “should have a good jack” and “should be Grave-like, but rushdown-ier” and I doubt that it can. Those are such broad concepts that there’s a ton of valid levers you could pull to realize them.

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Maybe it’s worth putting together a minimalist proposal that satisfies at least the “should have a good jack” and “shouldn’t be completely dominated” criteria, and see if we can get consensus on tweaks, rather than complete rewrites (the rewrites can be saved for N different variant versions)

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400 messages in 10 days :open_mouth:

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I think special dodges should be sacrosanct to a significant degree. If Midori, the character with a defining trait that his special attacks can’t be normal-dodged, cannot prevent special dodges from working against him, then other characters probably shouldn’t either.

Aces are already odd numbered as per Argagarg’s Ace-block on KD.

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Putting my money where my mouth is: how about making Jaina’s fast-J a 1cp linker that can recur for free when its combo’d into from an attack or a knee bash, and making slow J actually charge by giving it some quantity of pumps?

I’m not sure if those actually fill the holes in Jaina’s kit, though.

I like this approach. Just so we’re all on the same page, can someone clearly explain why Geiger dominates Jaina? If nothing else, we’ll need an explanation for her section in the Bureau of Balance.

Thoughts on Jack and the future

I still think this is the best way to make Jacks worthwhile as a combat-reveal:

J* Flame Trap [During Combat]
If either side of this card deals block damage, the opponent doesn’t draw a card from blocking.

Combined with whatever stat changes to Flame Arrow and Charged Shot make sense for improving her bad matchups, this would make combat-revealing Jacks similar to Grave combat-revealing his own Jack, but with more block damage and some self-damage. I removed the “search your deck for a Jack” and card draw parts of my first and second versions, respectively, for two reasons: (1) I realized that getting card advantage off of it could be oppressive against grapplers, and (2) this way lets me cut out everything that isn’t the core of what I wanted Flame Trap to be.

I do think Flame Arrow at least needs buffed so that the ratio of block damage to self-damage is at least 3 (to match Lightning Cloud’s 3 block damage), and as long as it doesn’t make any matchups unfair it would be nice if Flame Arrow could trade with other projectiles like Lightning Cloud and (especially) Fast Time Spiral. I could see the damage being boosted to 8 to match Lightning Cloud’s, but this should do as a starting point:

J* Flame Arrow: 7(6) damage, 2.4 speed, 1 cp Ender

Changes to Charged Shot should be handled carefully, I think, to make it a useful tool for Jaina’s bad matchups but not cause it to become oppressive in her good ones. At the very least, though, I think it needs to be kept at a minimum of 2 damage stronger than Flame Arrow, leaving this as the smallest change from 2nd Edition that does so:

J* Charged Shot: 9(8) damage, 4.6 speed, 2 cp Starter

Points worth considering for the future:

  • Should Charged Shot knock down?
    • If so, how fast should it be?
    • If so, should it be a Starter or a Can’t Combo move?
  • Should the damage of Flame Arrow and/or Charged Shot be increased further?
    • If so, how much?
    • If so, should the block damage also be increased to match or should it be left as-is (for example, a Flame Arrow with 8 damage and 6 block damage and a Charged Shot with 10 damage and 8 block damage)?
  • What needs improved to make Geiger no longer dominate Jaina, and what are the smallest changes that would allow that without making her good matchups oppressive in turn?

@JonnyD Please explain to this man.

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I’ve never liked the “Linker Flame Arrow” idea, ever since it was first suggested. It makes the Phoenix Archer even less likely to combat-reveal her Arrow (which I feel should be a key part of her game plan at least early on for the flavor of “this is an archer, she should be shooting arrows at people”) since she’d rather use them after hit-confirming with one of her better moves, especially if she gets them back for free if she combos into them instead of combat-revealing them. She also already has lots of other cards to use as combo-filler, mainly Kings as high-damage Linkers, Aces as high-damage Enders, and normal chains to get those Aces and do pretty good damage while you don’t have Kings.

Charge Shot being a pump move isn’t a bad idea, but I don’t think it’s necessary. It already conveys the key part of charging up by being slower than Flame Arrow, and I like that it’s immediately clear to new players what the tradeoff between the two sides is in a way that having it be pumpable might not be—I still have to re-explain pumping to some of the less experienced players in my area because it’s not entirely intuitive.

So no, I don’t think either of those is particularly useful or even improve flavor.

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Just make Charged Shot something like a 10 damage, can’t combo, KD, speed 9.0, throw with an ability that lets her buy it back. Now she can fight Arg, Degrey, and Geiger maybe. Then change UP so it can only rotate normal attacks and 6 into a attack/block.

Edit: Or maybe this doesn’t help at all vs Arg, stupid counters

I’m curious about this too, because as someone who plays neither of these characters, it doesn’t seem like it should be one of the most lopsided MUs in the game, just from a glance. And learning things is cool!

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Wow, that’s really bad flavor to have a charged-up version of Flame Arrow (a projectile attack) become a throw (which normally involves, you know, grabbing the person instead of shooting them). Jaina probably needs better throws, but that’s not at all how we should go about it.

There was lots of talk of making Charged shot be a slow attack that beat blocks or different colors of J beat different types of dodges it just makes more sense in Yomi to make that thing a throw. When trying to convert a spacial game into a card game with no spacial element some things might not line up so well.

I had thought about that, but I don’t want to be the one explaining to new players why an arrow counts as a throw when all other throws in the game involve grabbing people with hands or legs instead of shooting them with an arrow. I don’t think we should table ideas that require new players to make such a huge leap of logic, even if they would improve balance.

Game Balance Myth 2: Sirlin only cares about balance.

From the outside, I can see why someone would think that because I work on games that require a lot of balance work. But the testers who work with me would laugh at this. I’m the one always pushing back on balance changes because other things are more important: good flavor (mechanics expressing the right personality), good dynamics, and elegance. I want fewer words, fewer elements, things to be as simple as we can get away with, and for characters to feel right. If you allow balance to rank higher than those things, you get a terrible feeling game. You get stuff like the huge guy made of rock having fewer hit points than the young ninja girl. If you make only balance changes that respect all the constraints I mentioned, it’s hard work but you can still have a balanced game.

If that’s the case we can call it something different, imo. I don’t claim to know whether this version of J would be helpful to Jaina at all, but if it did, I wouldn’t reject it just because it’s not an arrow type move.