“very good player stops using item because it makes game too easy” is an excellent indicator of imbalance
Well, for these conducts, there can also be other reasons like replayability, perceived fun, convenience and inching towards more difficulty. So, it’s not necessarily just because it feels too easy. But it’s still a good indicator I guess.
weird “if effects <= 1” condition is added to avoid making too good of a chassis for card construction with Idea.
This makes sense, but also breaks Pawn’s Move as soon as you have an item with a trigger “on card playing” or “on any trigger”.
Perhaps just using fixed “Persist 5” would be better?
Yes, it’d be less tedious to use pawns move+gather magic, and for mage it’s also a powerful and common combo, so this nerf should be fine.
You could also add “cards played -1” and “weight -1” to make it not combo, but more viable to pick up for hand manipulation. Pause and other persistent cards already do these combos enough.
more than 2 effective fatigue reduction … e.g. fatigue rune + pray
That’s still just effective -1?
True, that description was misleading. Practically, heartiness+pray would be -2 fatigue times 4 uses plus 3 extra fatigue for playing it more often, so it’s effective fatigue effect is -5, same as Rally with three upgrades.
So with “effective” I don’t mean including the fatigue cost of playing the card, but including what persistence does in normal circumstances. It’s the effective fatigue reduction effect* that’s capped at 2, so Rally+ is too much.
I understand the general issue. Maybe nerf Rune of Heariness to Fatigue -1 …
I just used it a lot when playing priest, and maybe builds that approach infinite fatigue reduction/draw just feel kinda tedious to play in the long run. But I guess in terms of power and frequency, stuff like pray+heartiness is comparable to pawns move+gather magic, so nerfing it should be ok.
How do you usually mitigate those when using Ribcage Armor?
Draining Touch still heals you, so Renevant has usually not much downsides to using Ribcage Armor. I think it mostly prevents “heal” effects and positive vitality from healing, while vampirism and gaining hp as a non-specific resource still works.
reworked this item by changing the counter increase condition to “played card had zero effects”, same as Large Basket
This sounds like an interesting idea. So far I still haven’t confirmed for myself in what cases exactly a card plays zero effects. I guess frozen counts as an effect, as well as “on card playing”/“any trigger” item tiggers, but unmet conditionals like in sigils don’t.