Thoughts on graft balance (again, but shorter)

[pacovf]

Seems time to do a new one, since we've got all the new Rook grafts, and the upgraded grafts update. Last one took forever and a half to write, so I will just comment on the grafts that I think are currently off in terms of power.

COMBAT

SAL:

Nailed glove: should be an uncommon. There's already 2 other common grafts that help with Combo, and this one is one step above them.
Wounding barbs: upgraded version should be 4 wounds. 5 wound is insane and melts all bosses. Base is fine.
Shell: upgraded version should give a bit of extra defense too.
Unstable augmentation: honestly this is just weak. Not sure it's salvageable. Maybe if you knew in advance when you're going to get the extra strength, or if it recurred every 4 turns or so, or something? As is, maybe it's fine at common rarity. Maybe.
Heartless: I think 25% of your health (~15hp or less) is too steep a requirement. Maybe other people have different experiences with this? I would be curious to hear them. Boosting that to 40% of your health, or dropping the rarity to uncommon, would help.

ROOK:

Perpetual charger: should be an uncommon, at least. It's at least +0.5 power (+1 when upgraded), and combos with a bunch of Rook cards.
Flash powder: needs a hefty boost, or else be dropped to common. Still wouldn't be very strong, Rook has less support for burn decks than Sal does for bleed decks.
Power sink: I don't think any card that provides energy should be any lower than rare.
Scan code: feels like a rare to me, especially after the upgrade.
Twinshot: definitely should be a common.
Trench Knife: needs a very sizeable boost, or be dropped to common. It's weak and awkward.

OTHER:

Company band: not only it's weak, Rook wants nothing to do with this. Could use a boost and be made Sal-exclusive. 
Bottom edge: this is horribly weak. +0.5 (+1 when upgraded) average damage... as long as your attack cards have enough damage spread to accomodate it. Not to mention it does nothing when using max-damage effects (from Sal) or stacking concentration (Rook). Both characters have vastly better options at Rare. This feels like a middle of the pack common.
Feedback loop: this honestly feels like an uncommon to me. Needs a lot of support before it starts justifying its existence, and it's not great then either.
Booster clamp: would be nice if the upgraded version had a stronger benefit than the other boss grafts. Its downside is considerably worse than the others.

 

NEGOTIATION

SAL:

Impulse Jack: maybe if you could choose the 0-cost cards it would be better. It's pretty weak for a rare at the moment.

ROOK:

Cranial patch: honestly feels like an uncommon, but Sal has cerebral stimulants at common too, so maybe the devs just don't think card draw should be hard to come-by in Negotiations...
Slug nook: should be a rare. This is, at worst, one extra action every two gambles, unless you're going for a heavy heads-rigged deck.
Thought reverser: a bit too situational to be a rare, and the fact it doesn't have an upgrade doesn't help. Would feel much better at uncommon.
Warding trinket: it's in between Uncommon and Rare in powerlevel. Would feel a bit better if the upgraded version granted 1 composure to 2 random arguments for less variance, or better yet granted 1 composure to all arguments.

OTHER:

I mean, there's only one, aside from the boss grafts. There's not a lot of variety with negotiation grafts at the moment, and this is part of the reason. Rook and Sal both have 4 common-rarity negotiation grafts, and 0 shared ones. For comparison, they have 8 and 7 common-rarity battle grafts, and 4 shared ones, for 3 times as much variety.

A few character grafts (Keenskin, Parietal integrator, Reinforcer) could be made into shared grafts to help a little bit, but eventually it would be good to just have more of them. We don't need as many as battle grafts, just enough to not always end up with the exact same negotiation grafts.

 

Thoughts? Comments?

EDIT: forgot about it, but it would be nice if Muscle Bank and its Negotiation equivalent only dealt damage for cards above 4 in your hand after upgrade. Otherwise, the upgrade is just as likely to help you as to hurt you.

SECOND EDIT: something else is the ratio of low-rarity to high-rarity grafts. By the nature of rarity systems, there should be more of the former. You will see many more common grafts in a game, so if there aren’t that many, you will often get to see them all. This means you will always be able to get the best one(s), if they’re not balanced properly, leading to even *less* effective variety. If instead there are a lot of different common grafts, you’re not guaranteed to get any specific one you want, so you have to make-do with what you find, even if they’re technically suboptimal, so the effective variety matches the real variety.

By comparison, you can currently go many, many playthroughs without seeing some Rare grafts. This is not a problem per se, as long as Rare grafts are not run-defining (I.e., very situational Rare grafts may as well not exist, since you can’t plan on finding them, and when you do find them, you’re unlikely to have a deck that can make use of it).

[TF3]

Impulse Jack has always been situational but always extremely useful whenever it comes up for me. Specifically extremely useful in a  Good Impressions negotiation deck.

[pacovf]

Yeah, that's the one thing I can see in its favour. Only problem is that you then want to limit the number of 0-cost cards in your deck to guarantee it gets you a First Impressions. For the cost of a Rare graft, I would expect it to need less support for what's already a situational advantage. In fact, if it let you choose the 0-cost card, it would potentially enable new kinds of decks, instead of just helping in a rather narrow case.

[SoM]

I always feel card-draw upgrades are too strong (mainly because 1 card -> 2 cards is pretty insane). And on upgrades in general, I understand it adds another layer of player growth, but most of them are just changing numbers and it further devalues grafts that don't have them.

[Gr1m-]

I really do hope we get some more grafts for Burn/Scorched decks, atm it's just lacklustre let's be honest.
Flash Powder is poor... the only way you can get value out of it afaik, is by using cards that let you attack multiple times on your first turn. This will apply the effect multiple times. Something like Induction Crank -> Fully Charged -> Fan The Hammer with Boosted Flash Powder for (5*6) = 30 Burn could potentially be devastating. But what are the odds you'll get that kind of hand on your first turn etc...?
Another way that should work is by using an AOE item card like Lumin/Shrapnel Grenade or RPG to apply 3/6 Burn to multiple targets.
Flint Tips I haven't experimented much with but it seems alright but that's basicaly one OK graft.

[SoM]

What would you guys think if Graft upgrades is manual and uses a collected pool of resources (could still be number of combats and negotiations) instead of being automatic? Make it more like an investment instead of guaranteed power increase based on the time you get them. Heck, I'd be fine if the only way to get graft upgrades is through specific quest rewards (or if you skip a graft reward you get 1 upgrade point or something).