Hmmm.
So if we nerf MA, the Troq MU becomes unacceptably poor, which is bad. But if we nerf any of his tools besides MA, then MA only becomes comparatively stronger, which is also bad.
Is there any way to make meaningful adjustments to Zane without completely overhauling the whole character? Or is the answer to simply leave Zane as is and move on to improving other characters’ abilities to deal with him?
Are we doing nothing to Troq in this world? I think J should have its ability removed and Super Lionin Pounce Eagle Totem should be 1.2 speed, for starters.
If something more drastic is needed, there is no reason why War Stomp should make your opponent discard a card.
Eagle Totem at 1.2 speed would be great. But if J has its ability removed too, doesn’t Troq get steamrolled by BBB at range?
So what? Troq can survive another bad match-up, and isn’t BBB supposed to kill grapplers anyways? I don’t think that MU is going to be 7-3 bad if you remove J*, so it’s fine.
2.2 is already an important speed to beat range. Should only make a minor difference vs BBB.
Also Troqs BU is 45 for 1 card. 
I don’t think removing J armor makes an appreciable difference in the Troq/BBB MU. It still ties against ranged Q, and it’s still a pretty good neutral poke at 7 damage a pop. The Eagle Totem to 1.2 speed also probably doesn’t matter much. Maybe the MU goes from even to like 5.5 or 6 for BBB? Still a pretty acceptable MU.
Agreed.
Taking away Anarchy is a nice clean fix. Suddenly characters don’t need to worry as much about playing attacks to defend themselves from his aggression. He still has plenty of dodges and has Ks to set up damage, but he can’t threaten inevitability as well as play good rushdown.
I’ll differentiate between building and managing a hand.
Zane already has to build his hand to a degree so that he doesn’t run out of momentum in the late game and so that he can threaten Anarchy. This hand building would be below the Yomi average, but it’s still significant. And there is good evidence that this hand building is required for the most effective Zane play.
Aside from hand building, Zane has to manage his hand to find the balance between finishing the fight quickly and having the resources he might need later in the game. Even when played purely as a rushdown character, there is plenty enough weight to these hand management decisions. There is a really fun game to be had piloting Zane so that he wallops the opponent quickly enough, but doesn’t leave himself exposed to a critically flawed late game, or disastrous knock-downs or wasted advantage times.
So Zane might be the closest Yomi gets to straight up RPS, but that is really not very close.
Oh I know it was just a random idea for a fix. And I’m only arguing against it as such. The conversation is still pretty useful, even if you are not sure about your proposal, because suggestions like this encourage us to look at the character design in detail, which means we can end up with a better idea of what way a fix should even be attempted.
Your reference to the build up of other characters here is important for me. I would argue that there should be a character (or more than one) who doesn’t have the build-hand-then-unload rythm that the majority of the cast has. Firstly, the game should have some rushdown characters, by definition they can’t be build-then-unload. Secondly, hand building is not necessarily more interesting than other types of decisions.
With regards to Shenanigans being a trivial decision and free damage, I agree. But that isn’t a problem. It is a tool to give Zane strong rushdown and it also randomly misfires and randomly takes important options out of his deck. It doesn’t have to provide interesting decisions to be useful in the character design.
With regards to Zane being frustrating to play against, I’d be very wary of using this as a reason to change a character. I think it’s very easy to describe the particular ways that each of the 20 characters are frustrating to play against. The only difference is that some of them are too powerful so we notice those frustrations more.
Nerfing characters by making them less powerful while also giving them more interesting decisions does sound like a good idea. But in practice this particular example looks more like nerfing Zane while also changing him to be more like other characters. The majority of the cast need to build a hand and then unleash it, there are precious few who can work a different way. Zane does need to be nerfed, but he shouldn’t be changed so that he ends up having to think even more about hand building. That would take away the rushdown feel that his design achieves so well.
The best nerf to Zane in development was removing knock down from queen. He was most definitely broken with that.
The second best change was removing all his straights.
Zane was originally inspired by Bison (aka DICTATOR), right? I just rewatched Sirlin’s old SSF2T tutorial videos the other day, and he mentioned that Bison’s Super didn’t do much damage but was still useful as a way to get pressure off of him.
Zane’s problem (or at least one of them) is that Maximum Anarchy, instead of being the “weirdo trickshot” it was meant to be, is actually just a really good move. There’s risk involved, since you do have to spend all four Aces on a single attempt at it, but it just does so much damage and beats all other attacks if you’re willing to combat-reveal it (yes, I know about Final Authority, but the point stands).
So as a step one, how about we just reduce the damage on MA to, say, 20? Now it’s definitely not something you’ll want to use unless you really need a 0.0 speed attack (though I still think that it should be 0.3 for flavor reasons, but that’s a minor point). Most of the time it’ll be as if that move doesn’t exist, since Slipstream Phase would be almost twice as damage efficient and an Ender, but unlike removing it outright it’ll still be there if you’re really in a position where you just need the option, never mind how much damage it does.
Now, the main problem I see with this is that the name becomes even more unfitting than Maximum Ven is for Vendetta. What kind of Maximum Anarchy is this if it only does 20 damage and nothing else, anyway? Well, it’s supposed to be a “weirdo trickshot” move, right? That made me think that putting an ability on it could help. Inspired by how Maximum Anarchy works in Puzzle Strike, how about giving Maximum Anarchy the ability to force the effect of Creator and Destroyer on everyone, including himself? Now in addition to its use as a (damage inefficient) reversal, it can also reset everyone’s hands, including the benched players in a four-player game, which seems like the kind of chaos that Zane would love. It should probably have a clause that lets him draw a card (or more than one?) afterward to make up for losing 4 aces at once, similar to the Puzzle Strike chip. Now it really seems like a “weirdo trickshot” move, as was originally intended.
All that said, I’m just theorizing here since I don’t have nearly enough experience or skill at this game to make any real balance claims. This was all inspired by seeing this discussion of MA and connecting it to Sirlin’s old SFII videos, and I just wanted to throw it out there to spark more discussion and ideas. Maybe this is good, or maybe it’s garbage as I suggested it but the ideas behind it could be used to find something better!
The preliminary change I had theorycrafted was actually basically this. I was thinking of removing 4* and putting it on a single Ace, 1 damage move that procs the C&D ability when you hit it. Obviously it shouldn’t be 0.0 speed and I haven’t given this much thought but I am a fan of this.
Maybe you have it proc on both players.
I like the idea of a one ace move that just resets everyone’s hand and doesn’t do any meaningful damage, but I wonder if that would be too easy to get often and just prevent the opponent from ever building a hand. Not to mention that it couldn’t be very fast since Zane shouldn’t have reliable access to a reversal… Having it cost four aces probably is too many, but I’m worried that one would be too few.
It should definitely affect Zane, or it wouldn’t be Maximum Anarchy! 
My first thought would be to put it at 4.0 speed, so he can’t use it as anti-cross up defense against 3-attacks.
A fair point very well made. I’d be the first to attest to my lack of affinity with rushdown in this game, so I can only comment on what I find most obnoxious when I play against him.
On that note I’d be up for arranging some time to sit and play a bunch for games against Zane without Anarchy (doesn’t even need rulesless mode) to see what the balance actually feels like for Jaina/Arg/Grave/Rook. My suspicion is that @cpat’s numbers are still too good for Zane without Anarchy but I could be wrong. @attilian you’re on my timezone right? That could make for some easy scheduling 
I really like the sound of this, or @cpat’s single A C&D. Both of those are the first time I’ve heard MA suggestions that aim to add a bunch of flavour to the game, rather than just tweaking speed/damage numbers. I have a suggestion though, for the multi-ace super version, instead of triggering C&D how about the following:
Maximum Anarchy
When this attack hits, both you and the opponent reshuffle your discard piles back into your decks. Then, you both discard and redraw your hands. You draw 2 additional cards.
This is an attempt to mimic codex MA where its acts as a complete board reset, but also aims to retain some of the feel of C&D (especially the “lol I just got rid of all your good stuff” part). Discarding both hands after the reshuffle is likely to be better for Zane given that he’s just played AAAA but you’d need to be somewhat careful about what you ditch. I could also see the 2 additional cards for Zane dropped depending how the ability playtests. It might be that keeping Zane low hand is better given that he’s likely just ruined his opponents day.
Lol Jonny you *cough* technically correct *cough*goon
Good idea. That would be fun. I won’t be able to play this week coming, but I’ll contact you after that.
I haven’t been participating in this thread until now, because I think that Yomi is very well balanced as it is. It’s not perfect of course, but it’s much better than most fighting games. And it’s also never going to get an official third edition, so the topic is pretty much moot.
If we did get a third edition though, the changes I would want are
Shenanigans interacts terribly with facedowns and offloads too much of Zane’s resource management on the RNG, when Yomi is otherwise a game where you can mitigate variance issues to a large extent with correct strategy and valuation. Long Range is a more extreme form of advantage time, with more lopsided RPS payoffs, than any other non-checkmate gamestate. It’s a nightmare for new players, it’s mechanically unprecedented and it makes his match-ups probably the most polarised in the game. He’s not overpowered or anything like that, quite the contrary, but he’s weird and feelbad and I want to bring him more in line with the rest of the cast.
As a bonus, changing these characters lets us nerf Troq without worrying about breaking his worst match-ups.
Troq doesn’t need a big nerf IMO, just something to make him a little less of an omni-character.
Less HP, slow down his Queens, something along those lines. The thing that makes him so good right now isn’t that he has anything in particular that’s outstanding (you could knock some damage off Beast Unleashed if you think that’s the right place to nerf him, but I don’t consider it an issue myself) but that all his options are good and the closest thing he has to weaknesses are his low dodge count and losing blocks to Giant Growth. I don’t know what nerf would work best but just make him a little bit worse and I think he’s in a good place.
Zane is a lot harder to discuss because Shenanigans is an ability I would want to change regardless of whether it was actually good or not -I think it’s some of the worst design in Yomi. (Which is praise by faint condemnation, but that’s neither here nor there.) And if you start by replacing Shenanigans with a different innate you basically have to rewrite most of Zane’s deck.
The “draw 10 discard 3” suggestion for her helps her early game without doing anything for her late game, but it feels inelegant to me.
What does she and Jaina actually need?
Interesting to hear your thoughts @ArthurWynne.
I would agree with you that the game is generally well balanced, for example when I play as Grave I feel that I have a very decent change to win any matchup. However, like you, my experience has taught me that there are a small number of matchups (often involving Zane, Rook or Geiger imo) that could do with tweaking to move them from a pretty feelbad place to somewhere more reasonable.
Even if there is never a v3 of Yomi, I’d still want to figure out what balance changes would make the game better, as tweaking and analysing games is one of my favourite things to do. It’s a sign of affection, rather than a sign of something wrong with the game itself. I’ve modded a number of board games with house rules or fan rules because it adds to the enjoyment of those games. I’m totally up for doing the same for Yomi. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I really love thinking about it.
I absolutely agree Troq just needs some small nerfs to bring him in line with the rest of the cast (small speed penalty to both J and AA imo) but I disagree pretty strongly about BBB and Zane needing a whole redesign, I think BBB can be problematic for some characters (poor sad boulder) but long range is imo a really interesting twist to the usual gameplay rather than a blight on the game. When I’m playing rook vs BBB though I’m not sure I’d say the same 
Zane is…Zane… but despite my frustration with him, I don’t think of shenanigans in quite as negative a light as you. I could forsee a less damage per card character with a similar ability not being an issue at all. For me it’s his resulting damage efficiency that’s irksome. Having that be so efficient *and* having a ridiculously safe big super *and* having 85HP *and* one of the best reversals in the game seems so far ahead of everyone else that I often scratch my head wondering how it shipped as is (probably the numbers, which aren’t as quite as bad as it feels when playing). So I’m for mild-moderate Zane nerfs to try and find something that means he doesn’t crush the majority of the cast straight away but also doesn’t lose extra horribly to our minorly nerfed Troq.
I don’t know what to suggest for Persephone as I don’t tend to play as her, or against her that much. I’m not sure she’s who I would consider the weakest character, as her vortex is real nasty and her hand denial is pretty brutal. I definitely feel like caution with making her better is quite important. Because of her nature, Perse as the strongest character could be really quite feelbadf for the game.
I actually have a barrel-load of suggestions for Jaina! I’ve played with her pretty extensively and feel like I have a firm grip on her strengths and shortcomings. Will post them up here at some point soon for you (and others) to read through.
This is an important point. Too often, people interpret balance wishlists as a condemnation of the current game when that is not the case. Especially for new players, it’s important to remember that pretty much no one who has a deep understanding of Yomi believes the game is poorly balanced, especially when compared to games like it. We might come off more critical than we mean to sometimes though.
I’ve found myself thinking about balance changes lately and some questions came to me.
Why do BBB’s normals trigger range when blocked, instead of when they deal block damage? The latter version would cause Rook’s special blocks to prevent range. I’m assuming there is a negative side effect that I’m missing.
Has making Lum’s Poker Flourish uncounterable like Oni’s Final Authority ever been considered? Lum loses to every character with a counter except Setsuki (roughly even), and it seems like this would make the Arg matchup much better.
I started Yomi as a Rook main and love the theoretical playstyle of the character: building a big hand with blocks & card efficient counterthrows so you can threaten Rock Armor. However, I think long time Rook players can attest that Rock Armor is highly underwhelming, for a number of reasons. It requires a lot of (suit specific) cards, there are so many exceptions where it can’t be used, and Rook’s low combo damage makes it a mediocre trade even if it does work. My conclusion after playing Rook for a long time was that powering up for AA is a much more worthwhile investment of cards. Would making Rock Armor work against Ace attacks really be too good? Or perhaps increasing Q damage so the trade is more favorable?
How bad is Gloria-Arg, and if it’s worse than 6-4 what ideas might alleviate that without nerfing Gloria or buffing Arg too much? What if active Bubble Shield made Hex of Murkwood prevent healing?
What kind of Jaina and Ven buffs/changes do players of those characters think would help? Maybe they’d be in a good place as is after top tier nerfs?
I don’t know about too good, I just think it’s not a relevant change. Rook’s bad MUs don’t hinge on his Rock Armor being better. Better RA still means he gets bodied by BBB. RA isn’t relevant to his Geiger MU. RA beating Aces aren’t going to get him a win against Grave if he’s not already winning that match. RA isn’t what wins or loses him the game against Arg. I think RA beating Aces just makes his winning MUs that much more brutal, which doesn’t strike me as a good choice.
I think Rook is probably overall fine, if only BBB and Arg weren’t such godawful MUs. His MU vs Geiger is pretty bad, but he at least gets to try and win it in the early and mid-game, so I honestly don’t think it needs fixing, really.