I'm impressed by your quick and detailed response regardless.
Naturally, I disagree with most things - otherwise I wouldn't have made those changes the way they are. But be ensured I don't want to bicker and I'm glad for the different perspective which has inspired me to make some further tweaks. In any case, thanks for your time.
- I usually play with ascension 15 and strength-based decks work just fine with Amplify as a core card. But if you favor bleed to begin with I can see how strength seems even less appealing now. I think bleed is fine where it is, quite strong in act 2, with a noteable weak spot in act3 with debuff resistant enemies.
- Not sure if I'd rather have Biting Wind or 2x Injury (1 mana, 2 damage + 4 bleed to a single target, common). Biting Wind is more swingy - sometimes you have 3 enemies, sometimes just 1 - and distributing the damage is less efficient than focusing a single enemy. Of course, Injury is pretty strong to begin with and the backbone of all bleed decks I'd wager.
- Deep Kiss: Personally, I think it's still too weak. Not being able to discard cards can be quite the drawback as you are no longer able to get rid of basic attack/defense cards, which needs to be offset by your improved capability of waiting with key cards until the right moment. It synergizes well with some things (Mistress and Tranquility for example, or the 1 def per card in hand talent), but most of the time I'm not so impressed by its performance.
- Estrus: True, but you need to cycle through your deck once before you can use it, in essence costing you 2 cards on top of being slow to use. Also, it's so much lust at once that you might suffer diminished returns (being over the maximum or just not needing as much at once). But I admit the buffs might be a bit too much, might turn it down to 6/8 or 5/7.
- Heat Blood: It's the "2 mana - deal 4 (now 5) damage to everyone per stack of bleed, then remove all bleed" card. Yeah, probably still way too weak with all the setup required to make use of it.
- Mana Residue: Note the upgraded card costs 0M again. I just figured for the unupgraded version "2 damage/card for 1M" would be a lot more viable than "1 damage/card for 0M" to build a deck around, but it also makes it less viable to just stash it into a random deck for some free 0M damage. My main grievance though is that it exhausts, thus you're unable to build a deck around it - might change that in the future.
- Masochist: Hmm, I don't everything that costs hp must necesserily be bad, it's a tradeoff. Using the card draw and mana you might very well be able to block more damage, resulting in a net positive. It's more of a late-game card though, where losing 1hp is less important than not having the right cards in your hand, and I admit it too me a while to get to like it, too.
- Nova: Fair, maybe I should downgrade the rarity to common and/or reduce hp loss to 1. At least then its a nice transitionary card for early fights.
- Rising from Ash: Maybe, but it also takes ages (you need to play the other cards twice on top of playing Rising from Ash as overhead). Yeah, if you can pull it off you'll probably be in a comfortable situation, but for shorter fights it's just going to clog your hand.
- Stoneskin: Fair, this card probably only exists to make a Pounce deck (dealing damage equal to own block). Especially the unupgraded version is super bad for everyone not already highly invested in defense, making it a tough pick. I think I will reduce toughness by 1 for the unupgraded version, but re-add some shield value.
- Mistress: Maybe I didn't write it very clearly, but the upgraded version does not suffer from +2L cost. That is, basic version costs 5 lust (and extincts), the upgraded version costs 3 lust (and extincts). Originally, the basic version costed 3 lust (and extincts) and the upgraded version costed 3 lust (and had passive). Also keep in mind that passive lust generation is doubled with Balance Overhaul.
- Time Delatation: Yeah, it's not much, but it's honest work. Nice defense early on when you're low on mana.
- Tranquility: If you manage to have it on the same hand as Black Hole and Luck of the Draw, I think your skill in deck management should be rewarded. Because if you don't manage it well, +4 mana is probably way too much to be used for the remaining 4 cards on your hand, thus easily turning this into a dead card. Meanwhile, Luck of the Draw might be a dead card in a different hand because you didn't draw it together with Tranquility. Tradeoffs.
- Twisted Love: I think you might be right, but note that the damage output of thorns varies drastically (some enemies multi-attack, others buff/bind/debuff a lot) and you cannot use it to focus a single enemy.
- Chaos Seed: To be fair the debuffs pretty much suck as always (even though I removed the possibility of accidentially buffing your enemy) and the temporary card upgrade is the main appeal. Usefulness depends a lot on how upgraded your deck already is, I think - as a starter common it might be a bit too strong, might push it to uncommon.
- Opportunist: Fair, I think it deserves a buff.
- Strip Down: Well, it has the most powerful effects in the game, for multiple rounds in a row. To avoid the drawbacks stack it with itself or combine it with cards that don't rely on Defensive, like Echoes, Opportunist, Time Delatation or Stigma.
- Heroes Cloak: I'd say it cannot be compared to Rising from Ash, it needs to be compared to other boss relics, and those are all pretty awesome (to be fair, I also buffed S-Excalibur and, indirectly, Clitoris Piercing).
I would like to do a lot more with talents, but sadly modifying them is often very difficult. But even if it were possible, with Devotion being a lot stronger than everything else it seems a lot more sensical for me to nerf Devotion instead of buffing all other talents.
Last edited:
