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

I agree. Anyone who can put that kind of throw and dodge pressure on Grave will do pretty well. Plus Max Anarchy is the great equalizer.

Interesting…

Maybe its just the historic salt speaking - not having the badfeels from just dying in 3 combats making it feel like one of his bad matchups :thinking:

So if this matchup is an example of Zane’s kit (and particularlry MA) performing as it should, does that mean max anarchy shouldn’t change? Or that at least it should stay faster than TPoS?

This is why balance is haaaard. :smiley: Changing stuff in a way that’s meaningful without (1) making an already hard MU more difficult, (2) making an already easy MU even easier, or (3) significantly changing the balance of an even MU is tough.

If a change is suggested, it really has to factor all of that in. Zane dumps on a big percentage of the cast, but if a change makes Troq-Zane actually 9-1, its bad even if it makes every other Zane MU 5-5.

Add in the fact that each additional change has to take into consideration all previous changes…? It’s why I muted this thread for several months. And probably will again, because showing up to sigh and say “it’s complicated” isn’t particularly fun for people who just want to brainstorm changes to the game. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Maybe this is me being stupid, but Max Anarchy and Meaty Attacks aren’t my biggest complaint with Zane. Max Anarchy is almost never silent, so you can play around it. And most characters have tools to get around meaty bullshit through reversals or armor. (Though the characters who don’t might be in need of buffs.)

What I hate about Zane is his goddamned 9s and 7s. Or, to be more precise, it’s the fact that his bad hands still deal massive amounts of damage, through shenans and spaghetti combos and random duffs and everything else.

Zane does not need to build a hand to deal chunky damage like Valerie or Grave or Geiger. He doesn’t risk burning himself or stalling out like DeGrey or Setsuki. He’s not made of tissue paper like Sets or Menelker or Gwen. He can just press a button on a four card hand and shenan into another x-throw-9 or x-Q-9 or throw-7-J or whatever. It doesn’t matter. The damage train doesn’t stop. And this is on top of his pile of useful tools–the aforementioned meaties and trump throws and Max Ans. And this means his every hand is above the bell curve, which is why he can so consistently win in 4-5 good combats.

I think a reasonable Zane nerf might look like one or more of the following:

  • Nerf throw damage to 5. You want the ability to do trump throws AND linkers off shenans? Fine. Have the crappiest throw damage in the game. Now his throws are tools he has to consider, rather than free passes to combo city. (Of course, this would be the most card-intensive solution.)
    *Name and nerf the 9 attack. You can’t really swap around his attacks without creating other problems with chain-combos. So just cap the thing and move on.
    *Increase Q or J to 2 dots on combos. I’d actually prefer J, since it would make Zane have to decide between combo damage or KD setups, rather than getting both.

On the downside, all of these solutions worsen his Troq/Rook matchup, and we don’t need to virtual-buff Troq. A solution like this would need to be paired with a Troq nerf of some sort. (Like shaving off five life and giving it to Persephone.)

Thoughts?

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For sure it is!

And that’s actually why I think its even more important to have a thread like this. To get remotely near something that might make Yomi a better game a *lot* of brainstorming will need to be done.

And a whole bunch of play testing. This is something we definitely need to do more of.

For what its worth, apologies to @mysticjuicer and anyone else annoyed at my endless theorising. I would promise to reign it in but I don’t think my inner tweak-addict can really be suppressed :wink:

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Personally, I don’t think 1 or 2 damage adjustments on throws do anything meaningful for any character. I think a HP nerf to Zane makes sense, or some damage to the roundedness of his kit.

edit: Maybe Zane just doesn’t get normal draw off successful attacks, for example. Shenanigans then becomes a “wacky” version of normal draw, rather than double-normal draw. He still does everything at all stages of the game, but he has to block some more.

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No apologies needed at all.

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I like this change a lot. Send his damage efficiency back to the phantom zone Yomi v1. 34 damage while only spending 2 cards from hand is, after all, quite obnoxious.

J → 2CP is another interesting change I’d like to play test tho probably not one to try alongside the normal draw nerf. I’d like to see how this adjustment changes his decisions.

I could easily see a damage nerf to Q and J. J in particular always struck me as ungodly strong considering he also has a 9 and 7 attack. Again probably not something to do along side the other changes listed here, but something to test out.

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I don’t necessarily agree that making Maximum Anarchy more of a weirdo, trick-shot is a good idea, but here’s an alternative suggestion for how to do that anyway: When Zane plays MA he has to discard an additional card from hand.

This wouldn’t effect Slipstream Phase. Also, unlike the power-up change, this wouldn’t affect Zane building for MA, rather it would affect the playing of the actual move itself and his hand in the aftermath. This brings the focus of the weirdness onto MA itself, not his Aces.

To make it even more trick-shoty you could make the discarded card be random. But that sounds like way too big a nerf.

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I have long said the reason Zane is so good is that he double dips from normal draw, and he has “free” dodges into KD/big damage. Shenanigans + Normal Draw is crazy efficiency unlike anything else any other character gets, and the cards he draws into hit super hard without other combo pieces. The fact that his advantage time keys into this exact mechanic is how he runs characters over with no cards.

As a joke example, Zane has 0 cards in hand. Top deck a Dodge, successful Dodge into Shenanigans K. Draw card for next turn, it’s a 9. It hits. Draw a Throw, Shenanigans finds J.

34 damage from an empty hand over two turns, and he is still in advantage time. What lol

This sort of thing happens way more than you think, haha.

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It almost seems that we could be reaching some sort of consensus/agreement on :zane::exclamation:

I humbly submit the following as a draft Zane nerf:

Shenanigans
When you win combat with an attack or throw, if you could combo, reveal two cards from the top of your deck. You may use up to one of them in your combo. Discard the unused cards(s).

Your normal attacks do not benefit from normal draw.

I believe this covers the discussed nerfs of a) no free dodges, b) no double normal draw, and c) facedown after shens. Though I admit the timing of the shens flip is not 100% concrete from this wording.

With this we have a solid nerf to his damage efficiency that doesn’t change his design much. Imo this is a really good starting point for some playtesting. We almost certainly need to develop a suitable Troq nerf in light of this, but there isn’t any reason not to press on with testing vs other characters.

I’d be up for forming a testing group and collating the results / opinions. I’ll try and get something posted up to that effect over the next few days. Will need to see how rule-less mode plays.

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I am wary of nerfing Zane in THREE ways in a world where we want to buff all of the low tier characters. He is already nebulous on whether he wins some of those matchups but realistically the way he beats low tier characters like Valerie, Gloria or Gwen is just by hitting them with Anarchy.

Like in theory, he should kind of lose to Gloria (recurring 2.2 speed moves, K that trades okay with Crash Bomb, Meaty Attacks is still very good). But he doesn’t, because Anarchy.

I think we should be looking at Anarchy more than the other things, even though he is maybe a bit too strong with those other card draw things intact. It’s the relationship between the fact that Zane playing Anarchy on a 5 card hand still lets him hit you really hard the next turn, so the impact of losing Aces doesn’t really hurt him like it would Midori or something.

In any case “just nerfing” Zane and Troq seems like a means of inflicting retribution upon them, punishing them for being good for a long time and removing them from the meta arbitrarily. We don’t want that (see v1 vs. v2 Jaina).

That said, I’m okay with just one of those three for now, whether it’s losing Normal Draw during a Meaty Attacks turn (or always? No normal draw? What a rulebreaker) or Shenanigans allowing you to facedown after the fact. His “free dodges” are very powerful, yes, but he’s actually much slower of a character than we are ever willing to admit, so it’s kind of okay that his dodges are strong. It feels bad to run attack into dodge into a J/K because they deal 9/10 and set up advantage time, though… Having a single A and dodging a lot is also pretty disgusting when it hits, but hey, it has to hit I guess. Shenans really can whiff.

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Btw an easy thing to help Troq/Rook vs. Zane would be that their K doesn’t grab sped up Normals. Doesn’t affect Valerie at all, some weirdness with Rook vs. Rook/Troq. Maybe it’s “printed normal speed” so it would make Vendetta a bit worse on an Acro turn (?).

Basically it would just mean that Zane can still use 6/7/9 as meaties and beat K with them, but still lose to Block/J/Q/AA/Joker. Seems fine, and a real mixup that makes sense. Zane should also want to end with J, and being punished for that against exactly two characters is pretty sad.

Also change wording to “faster than 5.0”. Gwen can use whatever help she can get imo.

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I would still like to see the J->2 CP change, as I believe that would be a very welcome change in desicion making for the Zane player. “Do I go for the more damaging 9, Q, 6, 7 combo, or do I go for another setup turn with 9, Q, J?” Right now, I don’t see how any Zane situation requires a trade off when it comes to “what do I play if I win combat”. Quinces might choose to either use a J at the end of the combo to do damage, or they might save it as a Positive spin for next turn. Valeries might want to hedge against a potential blue burst by not using their J++ combo, but instead use lots of normals to get aces. Gwen might want to use J as a linker, or save them for a starter. Zane lacks any of those trade-offs. The only one is whether or not to use AA in a combo, or save for AAAA. Which is to little.

Changing J to become 2CP changes that a little.

Removing his Normal Draw would be interesting, as that gives Zane players more handmanagement to do. And if that is too hard of a nerf, how about removing Normal draw from Meaties?

Outside of that, I wouldn’t mind if AAAA ends up being at a weird speed, like 0,3 or 0,5. But I enjoy the suggestion that AAAA needs to discard either 1 or 2 cards from hand, AFTER it is hit - like Attilian suggested.

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In my mind, shens before facedown is a necessary fix before we even talk about nerfing Zane for “balance reasons”. Having so little control over the effectiveness of jokers vs such a strong rushdown character is super mean, and frankly unnecessary. Its completely fine for Shenans to be chaotic, but it shouldn’t also waste one of his opponents’ key resources.

I don’t really have a problem with tweaking those other proposed nerfs along the lines you suggest, but I’d like to do so after we do some playtesting. I definitely don’t want to over nerf Zane and Troq, it’s just much easier to try a stronger nerf and then lessen it once we have some data to suggest that’s the right thing to do.

Also, in no way do I think that nerfing Zane and Troq is about “removing them from the meta” or arbitrarily punishing them. They have been demonstrated to be advantaged against the vast majority of the cast and have very strong, efficient options. Starting any discussion of balance with some general nerfs to each of them is imo quite sensible. It should mean less changes to everyone else.

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I hadn’t spotted your post earlier @neigutten!

Yeah I think that the nerf to draw/shens will fall somewhere between the one I proposed above at the strongest end of the nerfhammer through to:

Meaty Attacks
While your opponent is knocked down, your normal attacks are speed 1.0 and do not benefit from normal draw.

Where only meaties lose normal draw, and dodges are still “chaotically free”.

The J → 2CP is also on my list of potential changes to test. It does an interesting thing where his throw into advantage time combo would only be 15 damage which probably buffs blocking vs him a fair amount. It might work out well, I just don’t really want to comment until we get some testing done.

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If J becomes two cp, his damage efficiency goes down the tube. I am against that change.

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Good, an 85 life character shouldn’t have Setsuki like combo damage all the time. What if J is 2cp but 10 or 11 damage? that way throw into J is 17 damage, which is more inline with a character of this amount of health, and the Meaty 9QJ is still an absurd 27. As neigutten has pointed out it still leaves him throwQ9 for 22 if he just wants to go for damage so actually gives a previously boring character some choices. I still like removing normal draw from the character on top of this.

I’ll strongly disagree with this. Val and Gwen generally have to build in the early game so Zane can be all over them. Crashbomb wrecks Val and the few times I’ve played the mu from the Val side I don’t think MA even came up because all of Zane’s stuff is just so good.

I’m of the opinion that if you don’t remove any core Zane stuff (Shenans, high damage super, KD where it is, linker throws, attack/throw/block/dodge spread how it is, and Meaties) then you can’t nerf the guy enough as a starting point. during v2 testing when his K got changed to what it is now there was some grumbling, iirc, then when KD got removed from Q there was intense grumbling people declared the character trash and moved onto other stuff. I think a similarish thing happened to Troq once his GG got pumped down from +2 per attached card to +1. All people could think about after that was how “bad” BU was.

In response to your first point I’m more in favor of giving bigger nerfs to top tier characters and small nerfs to lower tier characters (if needed after the nerfs of top tiers) in order to bring everyone close to the middle of the power curve. I’d hate to see power creep really take hold in Yomi.

I am really holding out hope for a v3 at some point in the future though.

If those goes through wouldn’t Rook just get run over by Meatys? and by extension run over by Zane? I think Rook’s already got enough trouble then to take a nerf like this.

Good point about Rook. He would only have AA as a way out, excepting Rock Armor (that loses to J ender). Troq can take that nerf because he already has JQAA to deal with Meaties outside of K, but Rook would need something else.

Noted about power creep. I’m more in favor of “buffing” a character to be more thematic, or more fun to play. I think Gwen could really use some more differentiation in her playstyle to make her more unique; right now I don’t feel like she’s a freezy ice zombie but rather “Setsuki 2.0kindof”.

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This isn’t really a balance change, but if there ever is a version 3, I want Gwen to get a new ability.

I know people will argue with me, but I just feel she’s boring (and I really want to like her because she looks awesome). She plays the most basic form of Yomi. Even more basic than Grave and Jaina. Gwen almost always has all 4 types of cards in her hand, and she just uses them with no tricks. There’s not much in the way of mind games beyond “I know she has the Queen”

Considering she’s supposed to be an aggressive character, I’d like to see her get some more specialized abilities. I want to make some decisions beyond “this is the most damaging combo, so I’ll play these.” Maybe let her take damage to limit the opponent’s ability to dodge next turn or halve her health to go into a berserker mode or something. I feel like she should have more high risk/high reward stuff like that.

I’m not an expert player, so I don’t really know what would throw off balance. I just want her to have fun options the way other aggressive character like Menelker and Sets do.

I think something like this would be hilarious and give her some new juice:

Draw Phase:
Lower your health to half of what it currently is (rounded up). This turn all damage you do is doubled. This includes block damage and Relentless Strikes.

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