I don’t mean to disparage the interest in tweaking and balancing Yomi - there are many, many ways to enjoy games, and analysis is absolutely one of them. The reason I say that unofficial tweaks are moot is that if you change the rules, you lock yourself out of playing with the wider Yomi community - not a problem when you’re talking about tweaking a cooperative game like an RPG that only has to please your particular gaming group, but very much one when you’re dealing with a competitive game that’s often played with strangers or in tournaments. It’s like chess variants - they can absolutely be a fun diversion and they can even be improvements on the official rules of chess, but none of them is realistically going to build a community of players comparable to the parent game.
As we’ve both agreed, Yomi is pretty well balanced, so while some characters have to be the weakest, that doesn’t mean they’re bad, or even necessarily that they’re too weak. Someone always has to be the weakest, after all. The reason I say Persephone is one of the bottom two is that she requires a lot of combat wins to get her vortex going (because she deals relatively little damage), and that combined with her low HP gives her very low margin for error. That doesn’t preclude her from being one of the characters I most enjoy playing, or having, in my opinion, a very high skill ceiling on her play.
I 100% agree - I would go so far as to say that as long as there has to be a bottom tier in the game, it’s probably good for the game that she’s in that tier - with of course the caveat that the gap between tiers should be reduced as much as possible.
That’s excellent! I’m a Jaina player myself but I’m honestly pretty mediocre with her so I’d be very interested in reading your thoughts.
Lum’s ability being counterable isn’t really a problem. The problem is that Arg’s counter is too unilaterally good. The same problem Grave’s counter had in v1 before they fixed it. Maybe if Arg was limited to one counter per turn or something.
People underestimate Rock Armor. It’s a fine move and maybe doesn’t need the suit restriction but otherwise works well. If Rook has a clear issue it’s that his special blocks need to work better. As you said, prevent range maybe, work against jokers, perhaps not discard if not triggered. Those 8 cards keep him alive and they’re too fragile.
I don’t think Arg needs any buffs (maybe even a small nerf to his counter) and I doubt Gloria needs any nerfs. I think this is a bad matchup for Arg but it’s perfectly winnable and I think it’s just one that we have to settle on for the good of Yomi.
Ven doesn’t want any buffs, except maybe being able to play Acro on post-Acro turns (it’s a steep cost, and he can only do it 4 times, does it really need to be restricted?). Otherwise he is versatile, high damage, and good payoff on dodge from turn 1. So he’s a little slow. He gets by.
Since when Ven has a 2 he is almost always going to open with it anyway, and it will get minimal use off throw or K starter I’m not sure how that would help.
The idea being to allow him to combo into his 5s and 6s a little easier, since in some matchups they don’t get a lot of use, or require his Queen to be useful.
Yeah but who is gonna waste a 2 for that unless it’s lethal?
EDIT: I just checked my card stats and I have played 5 and 6 attacks more often as combat reveals and combo follow ups than 3, multiple times more often than Q as combat reveals, and 2/3 the amount of times as Qs for combo follow ups.
Honestly the only “buff” I can think of for Arg that helps vs Gloria and doesn’t make him too strong would be to give K another side that is like 6 damage and knocks down at some slow speed. (11.0?) If it was any faster that’d make him a bit too strong vs Rook. He’s the only character I can think of without an answer to KD Gloria 7 Throw Spam during Sphere turns. (Other characters like Quince, DeGrey, Gloria have an Attack that knocks down.)
I was originally thinking that Q at 2.0 would be fine, but thinking about it more it’d just help his strong matchups like (Grave, Menelker) get stronger.
Hmm… It would technically help, but not really by much in my estimation. The knockdown side can’t be a Linker or an Ender or else Arg gets another nasty tool against Rook, as well as a super useful combo card for all his other MUs. So it would have to be like Persephone’s J: super slow and Can’t Combo.
But honestly, as someone who has thought about this MU quite a bit, I don’t really think this would be that helpful. Yeah, it sucks that Gloria can guarantee she keeps up Healing Sphere, but that’s really a minor nitpick in the MU dynamic. Her advantage over Arg comes from two major points:
Her innate mostly negates Arg’s innate.
Generally speaking, she ties or wins any combat where Arg and Gloria reveal the same option.
Any substantial improvement to the MU would have to address one of these two things or else it feels like putting a band aid on a broken arm. Sure, it would obviously be helpful to have an attack that knocks down, but I’m not sure the marginal benefit is worth it.
I’m much more in favor of the idea that Bubble Shield could prevent healing (because that addresses problem #1) but I don’t know how it would affect the Gwen, DeGrey, and Lum MUs.
Arg having an attack KD would allow him to wreck Rook even more. Unless it was a Can’t combo move that was also speed 11.0. At that point I’m not sure you ever use it.
I find this surprising. I’ve found that the times Rook performs best vs Arg is when he plays hard for RA. Arg is among the weakest in game to RA. Doesn’t have a single ace attack and Rook can often do a 2:1 damage exchange or better on RA turns.
Lum and Gwen are effectively unchanged, since Lum can always choose to draw bottom card of deck instead of healing and Gwen should be dodging instead of 10*-blocking when Bubble Shield is up. DeGrey sometimes wants to use TR during Bubble Shield but that’s minor and the matchup is evenish anyway. I’m really liking this idea.
Yeah when I posted that idea I intended to state Can’t Combo. it’d only be “useful” in the Gloria matchup and as a nifty Throw duff for Oki that could be good useful in matches where people use lots of block/throws. If it is useful it opens up more footsies options. Chip would also need to be low so it isn’t too strong as antithrow/block? It’d also have its niche uses as a Dodge Followup alternative to Throw.
I think more access to Knockdown would help vs Gloria, but its not going to make the matchup Even by any means unless Arg’s kit is significantly altered. I think the change to Bubble Shield not healing might make the matchup 6-4. It’d be another way to disable spheres. Combined with an Attack that knocks down maybe 5.5/5.75-4.5/4.25?
I haven’t thought about this a lot, and maybe it’s not at all viable - but what about secondary character cards for all 20 characters? There are Cursed character cards for some of them (10, right?), but these were designed more to make it possible for a more experienced player to not just DESTROY one who is still learning, and also for lore/lulz, correct?
What if ye could pick from two innates per character instead of one…? :o
As far as I’ve considered for right now, I think that the other cards besides the character card would remain unchanged!
I don’t have the exact wordings for the cursed character cards, but they are roughly as follows:
Grave: Innate changed to if the opponent blocks an attack, he gets KtO (In v1, Grave used to pick up a Queen if he revealed that card in combat).
Jaina: Opponent chooses what cards to buyback for Jaina, at a cost of 4, 5, or 6 hp. (This was back in v1 where normals cost 3, specials cost 4, and supers cost 5 to buy back)
Setsuki: When Sets has 0 or 1 card in hand, both players get SoTF.
Midori: Cannot dodge while in DF. (The second part of his innate did not exist in v1.)
Rook: Starts with 50 hp instead of 100.
DeGrey: Opponent gets MHG (if he has less cards than you, his face cards do x more damage.)
Valerie: Opponent can play straights out of order.
Geiger: If Geiger takes block damage, opponent can throw him.
Lum: RtD procs if Lum fails to deal damage with an attack. Modified RtD is as follows:
2-3: Lum loses 4 hp (he couldn’t choose to draw a card in v1)
4-T: Lum is KD or opponent can return face cards to his hand
J-K: Opponent attacks and throws are 4 speed faster
A: Discard 3 cards
!: Gain one life
Arg: Both players take two damage if Arg is not KD.
As far as handicapping the experienced player vs an inexperienced, I find the EX Powerup cards to do a great job at the inverse (boost the inexperienced player). The innates of these are pretty powerful, but if you find that is too much of a boost, then just use the regular character card and just add in the Destiny cards. I think this is a much smoother method of balancing the players.