Feint of Hesh + Temporary Power seems broken.

[AuntHerbert]

I just found a Feint of Hesh synergy, that seems somewhat out of whack. With Sal, it's no big deal to get one or two Heavy Labourer to love her day one, and they give her Heavy Lifting, 4 Defense and 2 Temporary Power each. Now the way Temporary Power works, you get 2 Power and a debuff, that lowers your Power by 2 at the end of turn. If you happen to have Feint of Hesh in hand turn 1, you play it on herself, usually you have no other debuffs active, so the debuff goes away, she keeps her power and fights the whole battle starting with Power 2 (or 4 with two guys, as I have in my current run). This should work the same with all other Temporary Power effects, like from Sparky's Oppressor Cell, Scatter, Robodex and even Krill Ichor (although that one has a different debuff), although I havent tested them yet.

Deckbuilding around that effect should turn Sal into literally She-Hulk in no time, and I she brings a Lumincyte pet, she can transform it into a cannon by turn 3 or so, if there is still any opposition alive on the other side by that time.

[RageLeague]

Funny thing is, adrenaline exists in the game, and some part of the game still rely on temporary power debuff.

The krill ichor debuff should be removed by feint of hesh though. That is literally the purpose of that card: removing debuffs.

[AuntHerbert]

1 hour ago, RageLeague said:

Funny thing is, adrenaline exists in the game, and some part of the game still rely on temporary power debuff.

The krill ichor debuff should be removed by feint of hesh though. That is literally the purpose of that card: removing debuffs.

Yes, at least Heavy Lifting, Scatter and Robodex def. need to replace Temporary Power with Adrenaline, they are much too cheap and easy to come by. Same goes for Anchor, the loot item dropped by Laborers, and Heshian Mask dropped by Zealots.

Lumyncite isn't listed in the compendium, so I am not 100% sure how it works. IF it uses Temporary Power it probably also needs to change to Adrenaline, although it's a bit more clunky to abuse, and a quite expensive and vulnerable pet, so it MAY be fine, if it can be tweeked a bit. After all, Yote and Shrooglet also power themselves up over a combat, even without aid.

Krill Ichor IS quite expensive to buy from Phroluk, and not always for sale, and killing a Krill for it is no easy task. Sparky's Cell is boss loot from one out of 3 random bosses, so it doesn't seem too broken if it can be abused with clever play, so I could see those two keeping the removable debuff. Same goes for Flekfis' Force Spanner.

But for now, I'll just start a new run and abuse the heck out of my newfound wisdom, just for shills and giggles.

[pacovf]

Adrenaline is a relatively recent development though. I wouldn’t mind if all instances of temporary power were replaced with adrenaline. However, it wasn’t done when it was introduced, so I’m not holding my breath. It’s a fun interaction to discover for new players. 

[Scrumch]

I'm almost certain Temporary Power being treated as a cure-able debuff is intetnional. Sal even had her Shadow Mastery card changed from giving 1 Temporary Power to 1 Adrenaline, while Scatter still kept its. The two are meant to co-exist together, that's why Smith still has acess to the former in his story despite Adrenaline being his common thing. There's ways (if unreliable) to turn Temporary Power into regular Power, but Adrenaline lacks that on purpose to make it play differently. Debuff-removing cards are way more scarce than Temporary Power cards, which is why that syngery may seem busted, you don't end up getting enough Debuff-removing cards to turn all of your Temporary Power into raw Power. Also, you're spending an extra action point just to convert 1 Temporary Power into a regular one every turn, while there's already cards that give you more than 1 raw Power ontop of dealing damage, healing, etc.

[AuntHerbert]

1 hour ago, Scrumch said:

 Debuff-removing cards are way more scarce than Temporary Power cards,

Well, Sal starts with 4 Feints, each one selects 2 possible upgrades out of 10. Explain to me if my stochastics are wrong, but there seems to be a 20% chance per Feint it can be upgraded to Feint of Hesh, so in 80% of games Sal will have at least one Feint of Hesh. If you spend your grifts and perks accordingly, Sal can also start the game with all her basic cards except Dirty Fighting and Sal's Dagger ready to upgrade, so you lose almost no time at all by restarting the game to reroll her options.

All you have to do is to keep her deck size slim (chose the Destroy upgrade often, only pick new cards you really need, and pay Rake for removal), which is good practice anyway, and improve your card draw, and she will regularly have Feint of Hesh in hand and ready to play turn 1 and pretty much every turn after.

I can't consider that as unreliable at all.

Heavy Lifting is about the easiest and cheapest boon to acquire and collect in Sal's campaign. Sal will have a lot of job offers from Heavy Labourers on days 1&2, and once a Heavy Labourer likes you, it's 100 Shill to get their boon. At the evening of day 2, there's a 50% chance Fssh will introduce you to Plokka, if you take her quest and convince her not to extract the random graft, Sal will just have won the love of another Heavy Laborer. Ending day 2 with 2 or 3 Heavy Lifting boons and Feint of Hesh ready is really easy.

[pacovf]

34 minutes ago, AuntHerbert said:

Well, Sal starts with 4 Feints, each one selects 2 possible upgrades out of 10. Explain to me if my stochastics are wrong, but there seems to be a 20% chance per Feint it can be upgraded to Feint of Hesh, so in 80% of games Sal will have at least one Feint of Hesh.

The odds of getting at least one Feint of Hesh in any given run, for the 2 out of 10 odds of each getting the option, is ~59%.

P7 disables Mettle, so you are unlikely to know what your 4 feint upgrades are until quite a bit into the run. You are correct that it is more likely to get access to it than not, though. As for me, I usually end up with 20+ cards in my deck (I rarely pay Rake more than once to remove a combat card), so my odds of capitalizing on Heavy Lifting in this way are usually under 25%. It's not guaranteed, so you can't count on it for the battles where it would really make a difference.

Still, I agree that both Feint of Hesh and Heavy Lifting are better than they might seem at first, and this is a big reason why.

[ZeppMan217]

To be fair, Rook has Brain Tick, while Smith has Mouth Wash.

[AuntHerbert]

OK, after a bit of further testing, I must say, I overreacted. Heavy Lifting with Feint of Hesh is still a strong combo, but you have to have some luck with your day 1 quests, chose pro-labor quests over other quests, and invest quite a bit of early money. Also you really have to avoid killing any other civilians, as those laborers will immediately revert to hating you if you do, which is more of a problem in brawls.

Scatter is obviously great to have against enemies that spam a lot of status cards, but to make it universally good it needs a lot of training wheels. With Feint of Hesh alone it's just the chance of an option to spend one entire turn on gaining 3 power, which is decent but not gamebreaking. To get most out of Scatter you want a deck tuned towards discard effects, with cards that benefit from discards as well as probably more sources of discard, extra card draw, and a tendency towards more expensive cards, so you can still use all your actions efficiently. On the other hand, to make maximum use of all that power, you want cards that produce a maximum amount of attacks per turn, which tends to be a combo deck, so a totally different play style.