Regarding nerfing BBB’s Junkshot to speed 3.0. I’d be okay with this. It is mostly a junk attack anyway. In certain mu it is super oppressive in other mu it is really bad so almost never used. In some mu it might be some where in between but if you use it too much in those BBB can just die once range ends because you gave the opponent too many cards. It’s main function is to serve as a pseudo throw if you haven’t drawn a K yet. I’m more in favor of just scrapping Junkshot completely and giving BBB another throw he can use at range.
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BBB ideas:
-normals set range when they deal block damage instead of when blocked (for Rook’s special blocks)
-Range ends when hit by anything (including Rook’s special blocks)
-Junkshot removed
-Overdrive: Q effect makes Gyro Spin immune to Rewind Time Jokers
-K gains ability: “When this card sets range, return it to your hand.”
I think this makes BBB vs. Rook no worse than 6-4, and helps Midori a bit too. And the K ability helps BBB the most in matchups where he has difficulty getting to range with normals, so it doesn’t hurt Rook/Midori much if at all and helps BBB vs. everyone else.
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I’m trying to figure out the different ways changing Rook’s special blocks and BBBs range would interact with each other, to see what changes are actually needed.
Range is worded as “lose range at the end of a turn in which both players blocked or you got hit by a non-range legal move” so simply making Rook’s special blocks hit the opponent makes them end range without needing to change anything on the BBB side which is quite nice. However the change to be based off of block damage rather than being blocked would be a lot less confusing when Rook special blocks a normal at close range, since current BBB would gain range for next turn, then technically lose range, but since he doesn’t have it already probably keeps range anyway.
I like removing unlockable Q from BBBs kit, but one thing I don’t like about the “immune to rewind time jokers” option for gyro spin is that overdrive JQ++ becomes 28 unjokerable damage that interrupts any attack, which seems ludicrously good. Robo headbutt on overdrive will also max out at an unbelievable 46 unjokerable damage!!! Imo, I think these numbers are way too high.
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I hear Geiger thinks these numbers are just fine.
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Geiger doesn’t combo into his unjokerable damage from a crash bomb though flanglepal 
I’ve been thinking about this a while, and I want to hear other people’s opinions on it: Would this discussion be improved if we had separate topics for each character?
With how long this discussion has been going on within this topic alone (over a year!), a lot of ground has been covered. Pretty much every character has come up at least once, and with almost 200 (!) posts to check, it’s hard to respond to anything except what’s been discussed most recently just due to everything else getting buried.
Making separate topics for each character would keep things focused and clear, and a side-effect of new topics is that whoever makes them could designate one or more of the first few posts as wikis that anyone can edit, which could be used to keep everyone on the same page. The only downside I see is that it’s harder to know where to talk about changes that affect a matchup, but that can be solved by posting suggestions for each character in their own topics and linking between the two.
What do you think?
- Yes, character-specific topics sound good
- No, but making a new thread might be nice
- No, let’s just keep using this thread
0 voters
It seems like a community-wiki post that has all proposed changesets might help. It seems tricky, in general, because some changes are tied to each other to make sense, it seems like (or maybe that’s not true? Maybe each change should be considered independently?)
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I guess one option would be to have a master topic for 3rd Edition in general, then separate topics for discussion of specific characters? Again, these would all be linked together in their first posts, and I imagine that any changes to a character that most of the community agreed on could be copied over to the master topic for easy reference.
This thread or ONE new thread is fine, would clutter the forums too much with specific char topics unless subforums are added. (Not a fan of more sub forums)
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There was another instance where @Leontes suggested that SG was thinking about making character specific subforums for things like char/MU specific advice threads.
How about a new thread with reserved posts for each character to help collate the suggested and tested changes, rather than having separate threads for each character? This thread can remain as a brainstorming thread perhaps?
I’ve had a plan to make a collated thread for a while now, but not gotten round to it yet.
If people like this idea, then I can knock something suitable up
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I’m not sure how wiki-posts work… Can there be multiple wiki-posts in a thread? If it’s not a wiki, I think editing on the reserved posts will time out (plus, only the original poster would be able to edit them).
EDIT: You can make multiple posts wikis!
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Edit: GREAT! I can definitely put something together then 
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If that only results in one additional topic I suppose it’s fine. This is already somewhat dangerous ground in case you didn’t know.
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As far as I can tell it would only add one more topic, yes. I don’t mind if my idea gets shot down here, I just wanted to bring it up to get some discussion going about ways to improve the setup here (since right now it’s a bit of a mess).
Dangerous in that discussion of balance changes in verboten? Or are there some other toe-treadings going on that I’m missing?
That’s fine.
I’m going to put together the wiki post over the next few days, but first…
I finally got the time to put together my thoughts on Jaina for @ArthurWynne! I’ve tried to abridge it and focus it on potential changes, but I have quite a lot to say about my favourite waifu so it remains pretty loooong.
Jaina’s most fundamental problem is how her innate works. In theory exchanging some HP to keep cards is fine as long as those cards contribute sufficient advantage to outweigh the HP loss. If not then you’ve made yourself easier to kill for no net benefit. To counteract this, ideally you’d be able to go in hard and not rebuy many cards, but Jaina doesn’t have a consistent way to fill her hand or combos with damage (unlike Setsuki, Gwen and Zane). So, given she has to spend a reasonable number of cards to deal damage, Jaina can often completely destroy her hand she does in fact take the HP hit. I should add that this cost is deceptively high until she has AA online. If you look at most of the combos you’d actually want to use, rebuying all your cards would deal Jaina 45-75% of the damage dealt out, and this is on a combat win! With all that in mind, I tend to refer to Jaina as “deterministically bad” as opposed “stochastically bad” like Midori, Val and Ven. Her combat wins confer less of a net advantage as she loses HP on those as well as on combat losses. This is quite a different problem to being having your good cards being available too inconsistently.
How would this problem be fixed? Since it’s a systematic issue the only real ways to fix this issue would be a) buff the damage on a bunch of her cards b) reduce the cost of her rebuy or c) give her some other way of building a hand so she isn’t so reliant on rebuying in the early game.
Out of the three options I’ve listed, I’m probably mostly in favour of tweaking her innate so that Burning Vigour -> 2HP/rebuy. That shifts the full combo rebuy (typically essential in the early game) from 45-75% to 30-50% of damage dealt, which seems much more reasonable. It’s also nice to have a systematic solution to a systematic problem.
While I can’t think of an elegant way to boost her early game card draw, one idea for generally buffing her card flow would be to return her Smoldering Embers ability to its V1 state of dealing 2 damage and returning to hand, possibly also removing the power up restriction. If returning 10s doesn’t seem a good fit, we could move it to her J, so she could spend Js without worrying so much about rebuying them. It’s also real nice to have the archer’s projectile card return to hand regardless of how she spent it (even if the V2 version isn’t that good, more on this later). I’d suggest that unstable power should then be moved to her 10 if smoldering embers gets moved to her J, which would free up her fast throws - an often suggested buff.
The two other things that Jaina tends to struggle with are attacks that beat or trade poorly with her DPs and characters who can ignore her chip damage and block up to a winning position. These are the reasons that Zane and Geiger in particular are so rough for her.
In order to address the first of these I suggest we try and buff her dodge follow up, which is terrible without 3 or 4 aces in hand. I recommend we try giving slow J knockdown so it can become her go to work with her many dodges. It would also trade really nicely into Crash Bomb, denying Zane his advantage time. I could see a buff of 2 damage to slow J to further improve it as a card efficient dodge follow up. This damage buff also might help her scare Geiger off of blocking, but it would need to be thoroughly tested vs grapplers, as it might become a bit too oppressive.
The final change that seems somewhat feasible would be to make her 6-throw into a 3CP starter. Knee Bash is extremely underwhelming, and her 6 is probably tied with her J for the trophy of worst card. As it stands, Jaina struggles for sufficient throws that can deal real damage™. This change allows for decent damage with 6AA for 25 through to 6++AA for 33 (yes K++ would be more but who throws into K++ except for lethal), only raising her damage ceiling by 2 damage. The real buff here is that she can throw in the early game without expending her precious blocks - for example, 65J is an efficient 18 damage throw combo using cards she likely isn’t that worried about losing.
The final final change (sorry I’m being 
today apparently) I’d suggest would probably be to make fast J 2.4 speed. At least then it ties with other fireball moves, even if the HP trade to rebuy it is pretty horrible. Since she already has infinity access to K at 2.4 speed once she draws one, it doesn’t seem like it would really affect balance to let her access it via one more card, and having an extra option to contest Geiger Js would seem somewhat helpful. I’m doubtful that giving her better access to 2.2 speed than Vendetta would be very fun so unless it’s really thoroughly tested I wouldn’t be on board with 2.2 speed fast J as a good idea. Feel free to convince me otherwise though!
Now I need to be clear that I’m not suggesting we should implement all of these changes for Jaina. But these are the kinds of lines of thinking that I believe could help her, without compromising her unique style. I know its a lot to read through and digest, but I’d appreciate some thoughts from some of the more experienced Jaina players like @JonnyD.
3 Likes
Jaina is the character I’ve spent the most time with and is also my worst character.
Jaina’s problems to me are :
A. Block/Throw Distribution.
Unlike most characters with 4 blocks (Zane, Setsuki, Gwen, etc?) All of Jaina’s Blocks are her throws. So losing a block or throw can lead to a lot of awkward hands where you can’t do X Option. While Theoretically Jaina likes to “beat” Blocks with either a huge Normal (5/6) or a J when you think about it, it doesn’t at all. She nets 2 damage on a 6 (+ a card) attack or 4 with a J using her buyback. (Recently I just stopped buying back Js I use early game, but yeah.)
Another idea I think people brought up to solve this would to make her dodges better early game like a more efficient J. (Jaina has great dodges late game though!) I feel like if J were more efficient or had a knockdown effect it would definitely need to be slower so it becomes less “dumb” in Grappler matchups.
Proposed solution:
More efficient slow J with knockdown, but slower to compensate. Chip damage also a bit stronger on it giving Jaina an early game dodge follow up and to make her early game anti-blocks a bit better.
I also don’t understand why Flame Arrow is 2.6 speed. Having it at 2.4 and allowing it to trade might give it some more usage in neutral without destroying favorable matchups. Add some slight more efficiency and it might help a bit more. (@thehug0naut)
J Charged Shot (9.6 Speed Attack, Can’t Combo) 10 (10) Knockdown.
J Flame Arrow (2.4 Speed Attack, 1 CP Ender) 7 (5)
I also feel giving Jaina’s Knee Bash to be a 3 CP starter gives her another Early Game throw she’s willing to use. I originally proposed that or a 6.6 Speed throw, but that’d make her late game probably a bit too powerful.
6 Knee Bash (8.6 Speed Throw, 3 CP Starter) 7+4+4
B. Card efficiency/Innate problems/Vulnerability to Jokers.
A lot of her cards aren’t efficient with the buyback cost. I think either 90 HP or changing her innate to 2 buyback and 4 Q/A buyback. Her effective HP is likely the worst or 2nd worst in the game next to Gwen.
An idea I had was to help her late game a bit more buy allowing her to buyback attacks on non-attack reveals like Dodges/Throws. This would allow her to threaten those two options a bit more.
Also I remember people saying to allow her to access her “danger state earlier”
Proposed solution:
Change her innate to increase her efficiency. Also allow her to access her danger state earlier. Allow buyback of all attacks in danger state no matter the reveal.
Burning Vigor:
At the end of combat if you attacked, you may return any of your combo cards to your hand other than Queens or Aces. Take 2 damage for each card returned this way.
Burning Desperation:
If you have 40 or less life, you may also return Queens and Aces and take 4 damage for each. You can now return attacks no matter the combat reveal.
C. Speeds close to important, but not important enough.
Jaina’s worst matchups are Geiger, Argagarg, Setsuki and Menelker likely in that order.
Geiger is a huge problem just because of his speeds and favorable trades. He also doesn’t mind blocking Jaina’s big normals/Js.
Argagarg is pretty obvious. He trades more favorable at 2.4 than Jaina. His AA is also 0.2. Bubble Shield is a huge problem due to Jaina’s Block/Throw distribution and reliance on Attacking Blocks to “punish” them.
Setsuki is a problem just because of Block/Throw distribution and a 0.0 Speed Starter that can easily recur. She also has easy access to Jokers so a Jaina combat win is very risky at times. (please don’t let her bring back 7s with 7s in v3.)
Menelker can banish her 10s, and has a 2.2 Starter that leads to 44 damage. Also his Q is faster than everything she does.
My solution is just give her Q 0.0 Speed and slightly more efficient. (Why is her Q less damaging than Valeries!) This allows her to beat Geiger K, Args AA, and trade favorably with Setsuki Q. Jaina might beat/close to even Setsuki now with this buff/other buffs, but Geiger/Arg are still likely unfavorable, but less unfavorable than before with her other buffs. (Arg moreso since if Jaina can buyback off dodge against a character that likes Attack/Blodge late game.) Menelker I just accept as a better Jaina.
Q Dragonheart (0.0 Speed Attack, 3 CP Ender) 9+5 (1)
D. Random other changes.
7 Draws on use to increase her draw power. Or just change her 7s.
About all I got besides ridiculous other dream changes like making a Yomi Koryu/Rainbow Edition.
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