[Experimental Update] - 404969

[pacovf]

In practice, the average heal you can expect from Moxie is much lower than what the geometric series would tell you. Moxie rounds down every turn and settles at 2, any healing over your maximum health is lost, and fights end before large stacks of Moxie run out. Not to mention the variance is huge, unless you manage to keep a constant level of Moxie somehow. Honestly you're closer to the effective healing by assuming Moxie just goes back to 2 at the end of each turn... unless you're stacking large amounts of Moxie early in a fight, from which you will only benefit if your health is pretty somewhat low to begin with. And in that case you're just crossing your fingers you roll high, because the scenario implies you're kinda close to death. Doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me.

Moxie is useful for converting Alleviate healing into true healing though. That's fine. It also gives Smith an innate "heal 1.5hp per turn", which can make a difference in the long run.

I think Juicer only reduces the average health gained by 0.5hp, no? Although it's not like that's going to make a difference about why it's bad.

[RageLeague]

Well you definite shouldn't deal damage to yourself and expect to get a net positive heal without any sort of synergy. That's pretty much certain. Moxie just allows Smith to be more reckless. You need payoff cards such as masochist and biostrike to make Moxie worth it. Biostrike isn't really that good without damage modifiers, but Smith can stack up a bunch of power and temporary power easily, and once you get 10+ power it becomes really, really good.

There's also a graft that gives +1 moxie gain from self damaging(+2 when upgraded), but that's not a boss graft, so you won't encounter it during the bar fight. That graft can single-handedly change a bunch of self-damaging card from a risk factor to active health gain. There are also grafts such as self-damage by 1 every turn and self-damage by 1 every time a bottle is played, and as we all know, self-damage by 1 can actually translate to positive health gain.

[pacovf]

Sorry, didn’t mean to imply I’m expecting net healing from Moxie. Just that even at 2 self damage, you should expect to lose health overall, even with the benefits from Moxie. Despite what the geometric series would imply. 

Masochism is good, yes, but that’s only partially because of Moxie. Bio strike doesn’t make Moxie better, it just gives you more of it. I concede that maybe the idea is to make Moxie shine through grafts. The cards themselves as they are now can’t carry a strategy that relies on Moxie.

Another idea to make Moxie more reliable is to decrease your Moxie at the end of the turn by the amount healed, instead of always halving it. The average heal stays more or less the same (slightly higher because there is no rounding anymore), but severely reduces the variance. It would make cards that self-Damage a much better proposition than they currently are.

Edited April 22, 2020 by pacovf