Thoughts on card balance

[pacovf]

Just thoughts on random cards that feel too powerful or not powerful enough. This is all my opinion, and I am not an expert, though I've played my share of Slay the Spire. This would be easier with a card compendium, but I assume that's already in the list of upcoming features

Boulder stance: the upgraded version that gives 2 defense per played card should be toned down. Maybe it should cost 2 with that upgrade, or only give 2 defense when playing attack cards, instead of any card, or something.

Bolstered (not sure of the name, it's the admiralty card) is bananas. I am unsure of how strong faction cards are supposed to be, but there's a gulf between this one and the rest. It would already be pretty strong if it doubled and increased the resolve of a single argument, or if it only increased the stack of your arguments by one (maybe two) instead of doubling, but right now it's crazy.

Official papers EDIT: Flash badge is kind of underwhelming. It's not bad, it just compares unfavorably with the diplomacy card with the same effect, since you can upgrade that one. And you only get to pick one faction card (besides letting the boss of night 4 escape). You just don't negotiate with admiralty people often enough to justify it.

Scatter: it's already a pretty narrow card, but the upgraded version that requires that you discard exactly 3 cards is borderline unplayable without a lot of support. Make it discard *up to* 3, instead of exactly 3, and then we can start talking about it.

Feint: even when I go out of my way to fight and farm combat xp as much as possible, I've never upgraded this card organically. It's not like it would be broken at 6 xp cost to upgrade it either, most non-starter defensive cards blow feint out of the water and are likely to hog that xp. EDIT: now that feint gives 4 defense, it's more reasonable. Still think 10xp is a bit much, but at least the base version is playable now.

Alleviate: there's just not enough arguments with enough resolve to ever justify drafting this. Most arguments just go down in one blow, or close enough.

Calm: compares way too favourably with pretty much all other sources of composure. Base version could expend, and it would still be a reasonable. Right now, there's few cards I would pick over this.

Cynotrainer: uhhh, anyone had any chance with this? Genuine question. The double-random base card just seems like you would only draft this for the kicks.

Obtuse and Attitude (from Sal's inspiration and its hostile upgrade, I think?) are exactly the same card. That's kinda weird.

Gouge / Vertical slash (from upgraded Sal's daggers): 5 bleed is so close to being strictly better than 2-3 damage and 3 bleed, I don't know why we are given a choice at all. The two cards are also basically identical in a non-bleed deck. One of them could be replaced for something else.

Barnacles: the upgrade that increases the bleed amount by 1 is hilariously worse than the one that reduces the action cost to 1. I would personally only start considering that kind of upgrade if it increase the bleed amount by 3 (to a total of 5). 

More generally: most combat cards that cost 2 or more and don't give an ability are kinda bad, unless you make a point of building a deck around them.

 

Other things that aren't cards:

Can we get the panic/death predictor to take bleed damage into account?

A lot of status effects don't have very clear stacking behaviour. Some effects (wounds) get worse the higher the stack, others (smart) do not. The UI is not very clear about this.

It would be nice if the UI specified which cards will disappear from your deck after a fight, or if there was a keyword for it (ephemeral?). It's also weird that some "ephemeral" cards have the "expend" keyword, and others have the "destroy" keyword, even though they are functionally the same 99% of the time. In the same vein, it would be nice if "tipsy" and the like specified that they will be removed from your deck next time you sleep.

The "trained pet" argument is too strong. It would be more reasonable if it dealt 3 damage instead of 5, but had more resolve. It's already pretty good by itself, but then it goes completely out of control with cards like "bolster" and "elucidate".

Speaking of, could you rename "combo" to something else, like, say, "momentum"? I would rather not have the confusion when saying that card A "comboes" with card B, without having to use the word "synergize".

Bartenders' special ability is kinda crazy. They are borderline impossible to beat if you haven't built your deck in a very specific way, and negotiating with bartenders is all too rare to build a deck around them. Either reduce the damage per manipulate card, or make it start at 1 then scale up for every manipulate card you play, so you can still play a couple at the beginning of the negotiation without being destroyed.

Before a negotiation, let us check what special effects allies have. I had a negotiation that I lost instantly because the other side had two sprees helping them, making me lose all my remaining resolve before I could play a single card. That didn't feel very good.

A lot could be said about grafts, but specifically about the 3-random-upgrades one: this could select a card that is one xp away from upgrading, or one that is 10 xp away. The difference is huge. Either let us choose the upgrades (maybe reduce it to 2 cards), or grant a fixed amount of xp randomly (12-15?), or make it double the xp you gain while you have it.

[flaminghito]

I agree with a lot of this. While most of what I'm going to say is in my P6 LP, worth writing down where I agree and don't because I think this is a really solid base to start from.

Boulder stance: agree, it's one of the strongest cards and could stand to be toned down. Maybe make the decision Pale vs. Ambush or something, instead of 1 vs 2.

Not sure which card you're referring to with "Bolster", so ignoring that one.

For official papers, I think the biggest mark against it is that Negotiation is so easy you would always prefer a Battle faction card than a Negotiation one - I think that they should probably just all be made battle cards, tbh. But yes, even among special negotiations this is a stinker.

Scatter - maybe this is also experimental, don't recognize it either.

Feint - I think Feint has some pretty powerful upgrades (the heal and cleanse ones) that I want to keep until the end. I do think with the Fatigue change it's probably worth re-evaluating whether the xp cost can do down.

Totally agree re: Alleviate.

Agree that Calm is strong relative to other composure sources, but composure in general isn't the strongest thing so I don't think that's so bad. It does seem reasonably thematic that Diplomacy gets inherently better Composure options than Hostility.

Agree that Cynotrainer seems bad even in Discard decks. One or the other should be non-random on the base card.

Agree Obtuse/Attitude being identical is weird.

Agree Gouge is nigh-superfluous. Would be interesting to make it a weak piercing attack instead, so you had something for robots.

re: Barnacles, I think it's maybe a little better to get the action but scaling is not to be underestimated for long fights, esp. with multi-hitting enemies. Though it could probably stand to be a +2 bleed increase instead.

Disagree on 2's being inherently kinda bad. Looking through my unlocks - Cross is fine, Barnacle is strong, Muscle Memory is situational but good with some decks, whatever that one card is called that applies bleed then does bleed based damage. You probably need an energy boss relic if you have more than 1 or 2 of them, but that's no big indictment imo.

I agree with almost everything in your "other" section. I will say the Bartender is not so much "it's borderline impossible to beat without a specific way" - I think both hostility and diplomacy have pretty much "one true deck" at present that only uses 1-2 manipulation cards beyond the starting ones, so my decks are usually bartender safe - as much as "the existence of Bartender makes a lot of purple cards unplayable, and means I will virtually never experimental with manipulation based combos as the core of my deck". So it's still really bad because it limits a huge variety of stuff, but I think the bog-standard "just pick the good cards in your color" decks do fine into it. Just a shame that there's such a powerful incentive to never try anything new.

[pacovf]

Was definitely hoping to start a conversation about this, this forum could use a bit more activity

 

I am pretty sure "bolster" (or whatever its name is) is in non-experimental already. It's a hostility card that doubles the stacks of *all* your arguments and increases their resolve by 3, then expends itself. Costs 1 action. It's crazy, let me tell you that.

Scatter: this one is only in experimental. Discard two cards (exactly), get one power until the end of the turn per discarded card. One upgrade adds "draw a card" at the beginning, the other increases the number of cards to three (exactly).

I don't think "Calm" necessarily breaks negotiations, I agree with you on that. But if the devs are fine with that one, why are most other composure cards so much worse? It would also be worse if the AI was better at "focusing fire" on your arguments, but right now they are kinda scattershot about it.

 

For 2-cost cards, assuming no boss action graft (energy relic -> you've played StS too eh ):

I would not willingly draft cross, even in a "combo" deck, unless the upgrade is really good (I can't remember it right now). You only have one action left to make use of that sudden surge of combo. It doesn't help that if you are unlucky with the damage dealt, you are twice unlucky, because you both dealt less damage and got less combo. Compares unfavourably with "combination", that 1-cost attack that deals extra damage per combo and gives you 2 combo afterwards, though maybe the problem is that "combination" is a bit too good.

Barnacle suffers from the fact that bleed decays very fast. You have to be reaching bleed levels close to 10 before 2-cost barnacles compares favourably to the alternatives. And that's hard to maintain when you only have one other action to apply bleed and do anything else that might be more pressing. If bleed decayed like other conditions, then barnacles would be a lot stronger, though many other bleed cards would require rebalancing.

Muscle memory is situational. I am not sure which one you mean that applies bleed based damage, maybe that one is also ok?

They are a lot more playable with an action graft, I agree with you on that, but in that scenario, I am not sure you are better off adding expensive cards to your deck, instead of card draw. Without the graft, you need cards that encourage you to have expensive cards (Concentrate, Assault, Footwork come to mind).

[jasconine]

I am currently playing Prestige 7 on the experimental server and most of my comments will reflect that.

// [Boulder stance]: seems fine to me. While I usually upgrade my first one to [Initial Stance], I have also tried [Boosted Stance] and can see that they are useful in different situations. Having ambush is by far the better option in my decks because I usually have a high card count of around 30 in my combat deck on Day 4. If I had to wait until the last turn to pull my stance out, I would be dead in most fights. Having [Initial Stance] always available at the start of combat gives me a lot more confidence to survive and win combat. Having a second [Boosted Stance] that appears randomly throughout the combat turn increases my chances of survival, but I feel more assured that I will survive by reducing the randomness. There is also piercing damage which is not mitigated by defence, so defence is not all powerful. All-in-all, there is a meaningful choice between the upgrades which is probably the design intent.

TL;DR: [Initial Stance] gives certainty of survival at the start of every battle while [Boosted Stance] will turn you into a tank whenever it turns up

// Bolster, Official Papers, Scatter, Feint, Alleviate, Calm, Cynotrainer, Obtuse/Attitude, Gouge, Barnacles: Of these, the only card i've used with any frequency is [Feint] as it is a starter card which usually all 4 end up being upgraded by end game. The RNG of some upgrades is painful due to the cost of destroying cards.

...which segues nicely into reducing the size of your deck. There are currently 4 ways that I know of to reduce the unwanted cards in your deck. Not choosing any superfluous cards is the first point - when given a choice of 3 random cards, you can choose to not take any and you get $10 so it is often better to not choose rubbish than to choose a card that might kinda work sometimes. The second way to reduce your deck size is to use your friendly and not so friendly traders (grafts, combat cards, negotiation cards) that appears at intervals south of the main tavern. Destroying combat and negotiation cards cost $50 a pop and I always find money to be at a premium so it is rare to use this option. For the third option, there are quest rewards that can also destroy a negotiation or combat card of your choice. The fourth option I know of is to choose the "destroy" upgrade available on some cards when you don't get any of the upgrade options you want. When it comes to utility cards that you can buy or recieve as gifts, there are only 2 that I use: Nano something (heals) and something else (heals.) All other utility cards I try to expend or refuse ASAP.

TL;DR: It is hard to get rid of cards if you are poor so stay card poor to start with

// Pets: Your comments on pets seems valid, but pets are already balanced in that they start off untrained and are a pain in negotiations until they do get trained up. I have had 2 pets at times and if you can account for that in your negotiations deck, then you should be fine.

// Bartenders: I actually like how there is a lot of variance in difficulty and have beaten a fair amount of most types of enemies, while also being beaten a fair share as well. Bartenders didn't stand out to me as overly powerful in negotiations, my bane (in combat) are the little fleeds with 4 shield (defence) that auto-recover at the start of a turn. In Prestige 6, they wiped my noob toon more often than all my previous deaths totally across P1-5. I also remember a Shrill (actually called a Krill - thanks to mister_eugene for posting about it) or some other big alien 4-star creature with 2 helpers wiped me and a super boss Shrill was one of the toughest fights ever because it had some OP ability that gave it +1 power on "blinking"... and it blinked a LOT (not actually blinking, but it accumulated power at an exponential level) where it ended up doing over 40+ damage a hit after a few rounds.

In terms of overall balance, the only OP cards I have encountered are: [Scorched Earth] (+upgraded that gives 3 damage) and [Caprice] (which can give scorched earth) and the upgraded [Mirrored Caprice] matched with [Duplicity] is pure craziness. Scorched Earth can 1hko even the toughest of opponents given a supporting deck.

For underpowered cards, most of the utility items do not seem to be useful considering the cost. The 2 experimental items do work well however as does the [Aerostat Coilgun] you can find that adds +2 damage for each card used before it in a turn. I think that the utility items like admiralty orders, [Tincture], [Adrenaline Shot] and the like are simply too expensive to buy and I only acquire them when they are gifted... and then use them at the earliest opportunity.

[pacovf]

Ah, we clearly have very different play styles! I usually end up with a deck in the low 20s of cards, and focus on card draw and sifting. I reserve ambush for cards that change the way my deck works. 1-defense-per-card is nice, but it is not one of them, compared to something like Inside fighting for a combo deck.

The price of removing cards in experimental is 100 shills now, which is a bit more in line with its worth, IMHO. 50 shills was too cheap. It's actually only 50 shill the first night, it's 100 after that. I agree with your conclusion that card removal is hard to come by.

For pets, in my experience, I’ve always gotten the option to train them in the first “bonus” event after getting the pet, so the negative argument isn’t a problem for long. Extra health, damage, and the negotiation bonus (instead of malus) is almost certainly the best boon you can get out of a bonus event, so it’s a no-brainer. I agree that pets are “expensive”, but they still seem a bit too good for negotiations. EDIT: I just realized that yotes and vrocs don't give the same argument. Yotes are 5 resolve, 2 damage, while vrocs are 2 resolve, 5 damage. I think yotes are fine, vrocs are too good

The problem with bartenders is that they shut down decks with a large proportion of manipulate cards. They are fine if you have been taking mostly hostility/diplomacy cards. But as flaminghito phrased better than I did, it’s unfortunate that they effectively shut down deck building space.

Fleas are definitely above average in toughness, I agree with that. I haven’t encountered the “shrills”, so I can’t comment on that.

I haven’t managed to draft scorched earth, though I got it through caprice once. It did seem pretty crazy.

For items, you are aware that most of them “replenish”, so they don’t hurt to have in your deck, right? You don’t have to use them right away, you can keep them in your deck until you need them. Personally, I’ve bought mostly healing items and lumin grenades, if I have some money to spare. AoE damage is very rare, and usually the hardest fights are those with multiple enemies. 8-14 damage to everyone for 1 action and effectively 0 cards is crazy efficient.

[jasconine]

I wish I could get my deck that low, that will be my challenge for my next run through... although I still want to experiment with a couple of different decks as I still haven't seen some of the cards.

// Pets TL;DR: good if trained but fragile in both combat and negotiation without aggro management cards

// ItemsTL;DR: very few are good value for money when you are poor

// Grafts TL;DR: be careful of the downsides

// Money TL;DR: hold onto every penny as everything is expensive

// Random encounters TL;DR: don't take every encounter head on, manage your health and resolve

// Deck management TL;DR: keep it lean and upgrade your common cards first

// Card packs TL;DR: don't be afraid to disable some card packs

Lastly, I just started capturing my decks just after I kill the last boss so I can go back and review them.

[pacovf]

Ok some more stuff:

Kidney stun is way, way, too good. It doesn't matter what else your deck is doing, you want it. It needs some sort of hefty restriction or drawback. Stun for 1 action is just too good. Compare crushing blow, which costs 3 (!!). Crushing blow is probably a bit on the weak side, I don't think it needs to expend. But any card that applies stun can't be *bad*.

Menacing air: the argument needs more resolve than a paltry 3. Bulldoze, that costs 2, gives a 10 resolve argument, and it''s not like it's a weak argument either. Menacing air could have the same amount. With just 3 as it is now, it doesn't last long enough to ever be worth it. I really want to like this card, it's just not good enough right now.

Keep cool: the upgraded version seems fine, but the base version doesn't make sense. You don't want to spend most of your turn applying composure during a negotiation, and that's the only situation in which keep cool would do well.

Overextend (experimental): could give two injuries, and it would still be good. Heck, the injury could stay until the next time you sleep, and it would still be playable. As is, it just makes 2-cost attack cards look bad. Note that the description mistakenly says that the injuries go on your discard, even though they go on your draw deck.

"combo" cards: I have to try a run with all non-combo card packs disabled, just to check, but they don't seem viable in normal play. You need a high density of combo-givers and finishers in your deck, since either of those are useless by themselves, and the reward for lining them up is just not that great either. It doesn't help that the finisher from upgraded Sal's dagger doesn't scale with combo. Finally, their design space is already taken by cards that reward you by playing a lot of cards in a turn, which do the same thing but better. There's a lot to say here, but it probably deserves its own thread.

Also, could we get better descriptions for improvise, or a different keyword depending on the card? For example, "slippery" says you can improvise a card from your discard, but you get to choose *any* card you want. But most other improvise cards restrict the choice to one out of 3 cards.

[BlueOrange]

A quick note regarding Replenish cards: they are very nice if you're running a discard deck.  Especially also with that attack that gets bonus damage for every card you've drawn.I very rarely use them for anything other than "I need to discard something, and I don't have a card that gets a bonus on discard right now."  A lot of them should probably be action cost zero, if devs want us to actually use them.

[SoM]

4 minutes ago, BlueOrange said:

A quick note regarding Replenish cards: they are very nice if you're running a discard deck.  Especially also with that attack that gets bonus damage for every card you've drawn.I very rarely use them for anything other than "I need to discard something, and I don't have a card that gets a bonus on discard right now."  A lot of them should probably be action cost zero, if devs want us to actually use them.

Cost are useful if you have cards that 1)give action/deal damage based on hand cost, and 2)set random card (either in hand or draw) cost to zero 

The discard synergy does feel a bit too strong, especially compared to Negotiation where there's no Replenish.

[BlueOrange]

1 minute ago, SoM said:

Cost are useful if you have cards that *)deal damage based on hand cost *)set random card (either in hand or draw) cost to zero

True.  But that's not an incentive to play the card for the card's actual ability, either!

[SoM]

24 minutes ago, BlueOrange said:

True.  But that's not an incentive to play the card for the card's actual ability, either!

Well that's part of their value: you don't have to use it.

I have to disagree with the strength of the cards. Except for the +1 Power one (which is worse than one upgrade of Uppercut) most of the costly item cards are very much above the curve than your average cards. Grenades deal group damage or give debuffs that's akin to 4 or 5 cards, and 1 cost for 10 Health is very strong. There's an item card that gives you and all your allies ~30 defense and it's arguably the strongest defense card in the game.

[TheCoolestFool]

I agree with SoM. I use almost all of the combat item cards. The power up card tends to be used for the replenish effect and same with a couple others but i have to say the healing cards mending/salve and the grenades and stun cards are very useful.

[pacovf]

A few more:

 

Tyrannize: 2 dominance for 1 influence is good. 2 dominance for 1 influence, 1 card and 1 action, not so much. Especially since this only works in a hybrid deck, which will naturally be worse than a focused one. Either make it cost 0, make it give 3 dominance for 1 influence, or make it convert *all* your influence into double dominance at once.

This ends now: I don't think I've ever had my dominance stack be large enough to justify paying 2 actions for this.

Empathy: I am unsure which kind of deck can spare 2 actions for this, while at the same time being afraid of not having enough actions on some turns. One with a lot of second winds? Really niche. Doesn't help that you may not draw it on one of the turns you are flush with actions, and then 2 actions to do nothing is a tough proposition. Maybe if it was "sticky"...

Very convincing: kinda weak for a faction card.

Evidence / Hard facts (? I think that's the name, gives composure per card played afterwards that same turn): too small of an effect.

Cool headed: unless it also imposed "bait" on your influence, or increased resolve instead of applying composure, not really worth the spot in your deck.

 

Hemorrhage: could apply 1 less bleed, it would still be a great card without obsoleting every other bleed card not called Slice.

Lacerate: up base bleed to 4, or make it play twice. It's very weak right now.

Wind up: this is really fun, but also too strong. Returning to hand on discard is a very powerful effect, and getting extra damage until play on top of that pushes it over the edge. Base version could be +2 damage until play or end of turn instead. Then one upgrade could boost that to +4, while the other keeps the +2 until the end of the fight.

Boosted Mud tosser (from Fight Dirty): any reason it doesn't deal any damage, while base Mud tosser does?

Rebound: may have been weak at +1 counter +1 defense per card played, but it's crazy now. Spined rebound especially. It's very easy to play 6, 8, or even 10 cards before you play rebound for the first 2 or 3 turns of a fight, and it's still easy to play 4 or 5 cards before rebound after that. Not like it matters, since most stuff will be dead by then anyway, and rebound even provides you with enough defense to not worry about your safety. It's the full package, and scales like crazy. Either it should expend, or only the counter should scale up. Or maybe it should scale per attack, instead of per card played.

That-spree-card-that-improvises-a-bleed-card: if assault and vital points can cost 0, then so can this. I would pick either of those 2 over this even in a bleed deck right now.

That Flash-blade card that costs 2: Maybe it would be worth it if it put those flash blades into your hand. But shuffling them into your deck? This should cost 1. 

 

Not a card, but grafts:

-the one that gives one extra action, but makes enemies not surrender anymore. It's too much of a penalty. You can't do quests that require you to only beat up people (without killing), you will have everyone hating you in no time, reputation cards make diplomacy decks harder, and you also effectively increase the health of all your enemies (since you are going to the death, instead of to surrender). Might be more reasonable if it halved the surrender threshold instead, or something like that. Or if it forced you to execute all but one of the enemy team.

-the one that gives an extra action, but makes diplomacy cards deal 50% damage. It's just an uninteresting choice. You will always pick it up if you have a hostility deck (since it's a free extra action per turn, which is huge), and never pick it if you have a diplomacy deck.

[TheCoolestFool]

47 minutes ago, pacovf said:

 

Tyrannize: 2 dominance for 1 influence is good. 2 dominance for 1 influence, 1 card and 1 action, not so much. Especially since this only works in a hybrid deck, which will naturally be worse than a focused one. Either make it cost 0, make it give 3 dominance for 1 influence, or make it convert *all* your influence into double dominance at once.

This ends now: I don't think I've ever had my dominance stack be large enough to justify paying 2 actions for this.

Empathy: I am unsure which kind of deck can spare 2 actions for this, while at the same time being afraid of not having enough actions on some turns. One with a lot of second winds? Really niche. Doesn't help that you may not draw it on one of the turns you are flush with actions, and then 2 actions to do nothing is a tough proposition. Maybe if it was "sticky"...

All of these cards have a place in mixed decks and i've used mixed cards to great success. Tyrannize upgrades to 0 cost and used with setup can get your dominance pretty high. This ends now might be to situational to pull of frequently as i've legit had only 1 deck where i wish i had it. Basically Bulldoze/setup/tyrannize/domineer with this ends now for a ridiculously long turn. 

Had another mixed deck with empathy in it and even on day 4 i could get composure where it was needed and end negotiations while taking little damage and your right it is a second wind deck with the improvise from your discard cards. I've been experimenting with mixed decks and i feel like they can be as good as a pure hostility deck. Is pure Diplomacy decks a thing? They feel awkward to me and my combat deck carries me through runs where i use them.

[pacovf]

Pure diplomacy works just fine. They have a lot of cheap cards that you can keep chaining for great results. Solid Point is a fantastic source of Influence, get as many as you can. Good Impression is fantastic damage in thin decks, and one upgrade makes it cost 0. Upgraded Swift retort gets you two 0-cost cards on play (upgraded Ergo, Second Wind or Good Impression are all great targets; Solid Point or Planning are good too), and deals damage. Plead and Appeal-to-Reason cost influence instead of actions, and deal good damage. And of course, Flatter (from upgraded Sal's instincts) is fantastic, and you are guaranteed to have it in your deck. Fast talk are not that great, even upgraded, but they are good enough until your deck is fully formed.

Basically, as long as you can keep drawing cards and have enough Solid Points, your turn doesn't have to end.

[TheCoolestFool]

Yeah maybe ill just have to give more cards a chance before i write them off as dead weight. Right now im fiddling with mixed decks and they are actually a lot of fun but now i want to try out diplomacy decks.

[Daxterr]

The red upgrade for sal's instincts is really bad. The green one is better, even if you're using a red deck.

Calling in all favours is awful, absolutely awful. I think it should give resolve/ composure to your influence. Maybe for a few turns.

Scorched earth can do 100+ damage.