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

I like that wild things are being suggested, but that sounds a little too wild considering that Gwen has access to Chillbane, which currently maxes out at 42 damage. (14 from Jacks, 12 from King +Pump +Pump or a Jack and a 6, & 16 from Aces.) Giving her an ability to double her damage seems like it would destabilize the balance of the game a little too much for my liking! :0 I do think that here could be some merit to the, “Limiting the opponent’s dodges” idea, as that potentially allows Relentless Strikes to be a more reliable way for Gwen to end the game. I don’t have a ton of Gwen experience, but right now it seems like Relentless Strikes mainly gives her a bit of extra chip damage on King and Jack and adds a little value to blocked normals, but it seems difficult to close out a game with it. I guess it’s matchup dependent, though!

Here is my wild idea, which may have been suggested before! If it was, I’m sorry for transforming into a repeating megaphone: I wish that Jaina could put herself to 35 or less life with Burning Vigor to buy back Aces or Queens with Burning Desperation in one combo! :fire: This seems like a thing that she could have had before, but I guess she hasn’t based on what is on her wiki page. What do ye Yomi-ers think of that? Would that be too good? I don’t think it would be, but I could be off! :o

Yeah, it was just a quick idea. Thinking about it more, I don’t think it’s a super overpowered move since it’s so risky. Early in the game, anything faster than a 1.2 attack makes the health loss worse than the payoff. Only a dodge into AAA is close to a good payoff, but they can Joker it and it’s not a big win even if you hit. In late game it’s much better, but Gwen loses health every turn as it is.

I think it seems fun. It makes her play differently. You might end up doing things like holding onto Qs more for the late game mindgames using double damage. Or maybe you’d go into berserker mode at 2 health and then surprise the opponent with a healing block.

I’m digging it more as I think about it more.

And to be fair, Geiger can do worse without halving his life!

I think it would actually end being super OP. If shes at single digit health she really has no reason to not trigger the effect. Then she can just go “whoops, take 70 damage”. With AAA/dodge she’d be able to set up a 50/50 mix up against most characters that deals 44.

I’d like to see Gwen’s T have an additional effect that if she plays it and it doesn’t lose combat then she doesn’t take the 2 damage from her innate. However, I’m coming from the perspective that I’d like to see individual games of Yomi take more combat wins on average to complete then less.

I’m no fan of Geiger and think he should be toned down quite a bit but to be fair Geiger’s stupid damage combos require some set up.

That might make her more balanced, but it doesn’t make her more fun.

My problem with Gwen right now is that there’s no flair.

I like playing high risk characters and I played Gwen for a while, but it just felt so bland. I ended up switching to Jaina because I felt there was more of a thought process involved in her gameplay. Like I get to choose how I want to be risky and had to think about what I was doing more. There’s mind games to be played with Unstable Power, or what cards you choose to return, or when to ditch your embers.

With Gwen it’s just like “should I dodge, throw, or attack? I have them all in my hand pretty much all the time.” She really just plays Yomi in the most base form, which is fine but boring.

Gwen needs a trick beyond just drawing more cards.

All that just comes down to matters of opinion. In moderation blocking is fun for me. Grave is one of my favorite characters and the BBB mirror is one of my favorite mu so the base RPS Yomi is my favorite way to play the game (imo some characters, especially expansion characters, go to far with their weirdness).

I will agree with @Leontes (I believe it was him) who said that Gwen is basically Setsuki 2.0. So it would be nice to see something that made her more unique.

1 Like

I think Gwen is very cool with relentles strikes. She has the option to be EX Arargarg for 8 turns with the correct hand combination, doing very safe attacks while doing so.

Not sure If I’ve said this any where in the above but I’ve been thinking it for awhile and I’d really like to try Geiger’s TD being used in the power up phase. This allows characters that have few cards to deal with TD a window to power up in response and it prevents Persephone from eating all his TD when landing MC.

This might have the bad side effect of being used to grab face cards and then instantly turning them into aces. If so a “can’t power up after use” clause could be handy.

I’ve been playing Rook a bit lately and have some thoughts on him.

He’s cool/solid in the early and early mid game. But then he doesn’t have near as much he can do in the late game. Stone Wall is usually only good in the late game and drawing them early can be awful. Entangling Vines has more utility but still isn’t great in the early game. Once RA is off the table several of Rooks cards really drop in power. I like the idea of block characters in Yomi (by block characters I mean characters that have to block a lot, so Arg isn’t a block character) and would like to see a strong block character (Troq doesn’t count either because he doesn’t need to block that often).

Some more Rook ideas:

additional innate - Hard body
Whenever your block wins combat deal 1 damage to the opponent

or

Whenever your normal block wins combat deal 1 damage to the opponent

This could really rack up some damage through the course of the game and would give some additional scare to Rook’s blocks. Any extra damage Rook can get in the early game would help him deal with late games and being able to use any block to get in some late would be a boon.

Special blocks
In addition to changing the wording so they “hit” the opponent and 3 works vs jokers allow them to be cycled. This cycle ability would look like this:

During the draw phase you may reveal this card and then place it on the bottom or your deck. If you do draw a card.

This allows Rook to get these cards out of his hand in the early game when they aren’t very useful and to come out late game when they are useful. It is surprising how often Rook can draw into no normal blocks (or maybe it isn’t so surprising because he only has four ranks of normal block) and when it does it’s awful especially if it’s early game.

2 Likes

Personally I’m not a huge fan of this. While it does somewhat solve the problem of being stuck on special blocks early, imo it’s not very elegant.

My personal favourite fix for Rook is to make special blocks actually work as blocks, but make the ability triggered (I’ve mentioned this elsewhere). For example his 3* would be something like:

3* - Entangling Vines When you block an attack or Joker with this card, instead of drawing from blocking, you may discard this card. If you do, take no block damage, hit the opponent for 5 damage and knock them down. Next turn your attacks and throws are 3.0 speed faster to a minimum of 1.0

And his 5* would look something like

5* - Stonewall When you block an attack or Joker with this card, instead of drawing from blocking, you may discard this card. If you do, take no block damage and hit the opponent for the damage their attack would have dealt if it had won combat

This effectively makes his special blocks 2 additional ranks of blocks that will return on block - blodge just like Gwen’s 10s and avoids them being dead cards in the early game if he draws a bunch of them. It also means that both can act as regular blocks vs Jokers but 3* could also be triggered for its effect Vs GB.

I also should add that I quite like your suggestion of 1 damage to the opp per block/normal block, but perhaps it might be better to make his 3* deal 10 damage a pop? Yours is uncounterable, which I very much like. But doing 1 damage per turn you block feels like it might be stepping on Argagarg’s territory/feel a bit much, whereas I think 10 damage from 3* feels very Rook. It basically becomes a throw that beats attacks and sets up Rock Armor.

1 Like

I’ve thought about something similar for Rook’s blocks. It certainly makes them a ton stronger. I wonder if it’s too good. It is an especially big leap in power for Stonewall.

Yeah the Hard Body innate might have a bit of an Arg feel. It is triggered in a very different way which would lead to different play styles and counter play. The goal was take an existing Yomi character and make him more Green (in the mtg style) for players that like that sort of thing (like myself).

1 Like

I honestly don’t think it would be too much for Rook to get these buffs to his special blocks. Right now he has really bad losing matchups against BBB, Argagarg and Geiger (in that order imo) so needs a moderate positive tweak to help him out. Like with the Zane changes we discussed further up, I’d be really interested in playtesting these options so we actually have some data.

While I’m not available for weekly Yomi right now, getting together once a month to playtest changes in rules-less mode would be something I could manage. Would you (or anyone else for that matter) be up for trying that?

Although I almost certainly have my blindspots, I feel like I could competently represent Grave, Jaina, Rook and Arg and comment on the effect of balance changes. My Midori and Quince are less confident but imo acceptable so I could maybe also comment on them.

1 Like

I’d be down to try them out in rulesless mode. I’ve never played in rulesless so there might be some fumbling around at first. This and next week are pretty crazy but the week of the 19th I should be available to test stuff out.

2 Likes

I would also be interested in playing around in rules-less, if another warm body is needed!

Also, I had a random thought earlier today: what if Zane were required to discard a card from hand in order to use one of his Shenanigans cards in a combo? This would force Zane to pay a little more attention to actually building a hand and also potentially make some interesting decisions, because it means that Shenanigans isn’t a “free” combo card as much as it would be a way to transmute a card in your hand into a different card.

5 Likes

I am opposed to this for moral and ethical reasons.

5 Likes

Simple, elegant, reduces his card efficiency back into the realms of normality… That really sounds promising! I’ll add it to my list of options.

Yes please! I think building a small group of motivated testers would be ideal

2 Likes

This sounds like too drastic a change to me. I think the issue here might come down to the question of what is a v3 trying to achieve. Specifically:

“This would force Zane to pay a little more attention to actually building a hand…”

Why do you (or anybody who likes your proposal) think that this is a good thing?

1 Like

Hi I think the only thing that needs to happen is that Maximum Anarchy needs to go. It is the tool that enables him to be good at everything. I think if you analyze his MU spread without his “weirdo, trickshot move,” Zane looks to be a lot more fair. Maybe the change to Shenanigans where the opponent facedowns after revealing the two cards is also good but that’s very minor.

I did this once (not on the forums), but I theorycrafted MU numbers for Zane without Anarchy, assuming no other character changes. I will post them here at some point later with some brief analysis, but I personally had Zane going from about +8 to +1 with the removal of MA. Perhaps it would be good if he gets something “fun” or “wacky” but not nearly as game-warping as a 50 damage super to replace MA.

3 Likes

Having to build/manage a hand is one of the things that give choices weight. With Zane he’s as close as Yomi gets to straight up RPS.

So Zane continues to be the most divisive character in Yomi. He would love that :joy:

I disagree on Anarchy being his main or only problem. I think the most obnoxious thing about Zane is that his damage efficiency is so much better than the rest of the cast.

His max damage combo is 9Q9J which deals 34 damage. But normal draw plus shenanigans means that 34 damage combo cost him just 2 cards from hand. That’s tied for the best bang for buck in Yomi with Midori’s dK. And Zane likely had it off of a 1.0 speed attack.

He also gets card neutral dodges, and can combo for 19-25 damage from throw pretty often only spending 2 cards from hand. That’s all way above the curve, and why the discussion we had a few months ago in this thread seemed to be leaning towards nerfs to his efficiency rather than to anarchy.

The other reason is that we seemed to have a consensus that he needs Anarchy to balance his matchup against Troq and keep TPoS at bay. Its hard to see how Zane beats the bull without his tactical nuke. I’d be curious to know how much of your +1 theoretical spread was because of a worsened Troq matchup. I’d definitely be interested in reading your theorycrafting @cpat.

5 Likes

I mean, just for the record, I don’t think this is the be-all, end-all idea. It was just a thought I had. :sweat_smile:

My reasoning was thus:

  1. Zane can be frustrating to play against because he can quickly do tons of damage without most of the build up of other characters. As someone pointed out (probably earlier in this thread), Zane can theoretically do up to something like 35 damage in 2 turns starting from a single card in hand.
  2. Zane has fewer interesting decisions compared to other characters in the Yomi cast. 90% of the time, Zane will always want to use a Shenanigans card: it’s literally free damage.

So, I just thought a change like this would make Zane a little less frustrating to play against while also introducing a new, albeit small, layer of decision-making into his game. Nerfing characters in a way that doesn’t simply make them less powerful but also gives their gameplay more texture seems like a good idea, even if this specific idea isn’t good.

2 Likes

Zane MUs without Anarchy (this is mostly copy and pasted from a chatlog, so the formatting is not great and it’s not the most detailed):

Grave: 4.75 -> 4 - MU is only close because of Anarchy. Take that away, and Zane loses pretty hard.
Jaina: 5.5 -> 5.5
Midori: 5.75 -> 5.75
Setsuki: 5.25 -> 4.5 - Now Zane has nothing to play for by spamming block, and Setsuki’s fast attacks run all around Zane. Having a 5-throw is still good though.
Rook: 4.5 -> 4.5
DeGrey: 5.75 -> 5.5 - Anarchy is usually a nonfactor in this MU, but if DeGrey is defensive, Zane can also be defensive and play for Anarchy sometimes
Valerie: 5.75 -> 4.5 - Valerie speeds are very oppressive, until Anarchy
Geiger: 5.5 -> 5 - This MU is all about card advantage. Zane wins because he can convert his cards into damage very easily with Anarchy. Take it away and suddenly something like Geiger J becomes tough for Zane to deal with.
Lum: 5 -> 4.5 - Lum is considered a strong B/B character. Zane is better in this MU. Take away Anarchy and suddenly J spam becomes very real. Lum is a little weak vs. KD Zane (only has recurring Q and AA) so maybe it’s not as bad, but conventional MU charts have Lum winning this MU anyways (I think it’s even because of Anarchy)
Arg: 6 -> 6
Quince: 6.25 -> 6.25
Oni: 4.25 -> 4.25
Troq: 4 -> 3 - This MU is 5-5 if Zane has Anarchy, but it’s hard to get Anarchy sometimes. Take it away and you have one of the most unbalanced MUs in the game.
BBB: 5.5 -> 5 - BBB is actually kind of oppressive at range now that Zane isn’t fine just sitting there at range. Neutral is still in Zane favor but when BBB gets range it’s actually a nightmare.
Menelker: 6 -> 6
Perse: 6 -> 6
Gloria: 6.5 -> 5 (!) - This one is the trickiest to theorycraft. Zane does have good burst still, but Gloria’s healing isn’t to be underestimated, especially when she has a wealth of fast attacks (like J) that can recur. My guideline for this is the old MU charts, which didn’t take my playstyle into account.
Gwen: 5.5 -> 5.5
Ven: 5.25 -> 5.25
TOTAL: +8 -> +1.5 - Indeed, if you pull up the really old MU charts, before my playstyle became popularized, you will see that Zane is around this powerlevel.

In a balancing podcast, Sirlin once claimed that if this playstyle was legitimate, then Zane as a character was a failure from a design standpoint. So if you don’t nerf/rid of Anarchy, but you make his other tools worse, you are just pushing him more towards this turtle/unload playstyle? Zane is supposed to be a rushdown character, but already his block/Anarchy playstyle is so strong. Nerfs to everything but Anarchy will push him towards this other gameplan even more.

3 Likes