What do you think of the update?
Not bad. Somewhat more balanced, in that it’s more feasible to win with more than one kind of build. Still pretty unbalanced, but substantially better. Will probably need more tuning over time.
I love the change to not combine scrolls, thank you. That’s especially true if I get multiple Scriptoriums in a row.
Do items have a minimum cooldown? If not, my next goal is to try to get a cat with 0 cooldown. :)
Damage is more fun to take into the endgame. It’s still a die roll, as it gets hard-countered by certain builds. But it’s not as much of a die roll as it used to be. (My first 10-0 with a damage rush build came after a number of builds that got unlucky in matchups and got hard-countered.)
Poison is still best. I had a great damage-rush build with an upgraded cat that had 90+ damage and I’d gotten it down to ~3s cooldown, along with an upgraded axe and a bunch of multi-hit items. Sold all of it to purchase Poisonous Blade and Slowing Bow from the same shop, which was easily the right choice. Got Poison Portal the round after, and that was the game.
Those three together, ideally along with one cheap “use at start of battle” item that does rush or slow, will win 90+% of matchups. The ones they lose to are usually either the same build but faster, or a combo that takes more pieces so it shows up less often (e.g. the bomb and all rush items, or a damage-enchanted ).
Also, aside: I continue to find Meat Cleaver by far the most fun item to find in the early game. Finding it means I’ll have at least twice as much money over the course of the game, not counting compounding effects.
Pain Doll without a doubt. If you see Pain doll at Epic in a shop and don't already have the poison combo. You just buy Pain Doll and sell everything, except hour glass, if you happen to have it. Since any item stealing hour glass procs besides the Pain Doll is just bad. So better to only run 2 items with that build.
Once that is nerfed. We're looking at Ice Axe + Reaper + Face + Mirror + <Insert fast weapon with too high base damage>
Once that is nerfed we're probably looking at bomb + whatever rush/charge items you can find to pair with it. But that isn't all that consistent.
After the new patch dropped I went 10-0 i think it was 5 games in a row? Just being fluid and picking any of Poison/Pain Doll/Weapon spam. To be fair the ladder was filled with absolute garbage builds right after patch. But still. Oh and on the subject of Poison. You don't even need Blade/Portal/Slow or Rush trigger anymore. Just Shout+New uhh, that 4s charge 1s item and that poison gain +4 on rush and that just beats nearly everything on its own.
Once that is nerfed. We’re looking at Ice Axe + Reaper + Face + Mirror + <Insert fast weapon with too high base damage>
That one is powerful, but it has the advantage of requiring more pieces to make it effective.
(That said, it might make sense to make Ice Axe have a slightly longer cooldown, and then slightly increase the amount it charges per damage activation,.)
Yeah, but really the only Key pieces are mirror + Ice axe. The rest is basically just "throw random items with decent CD and damage against the wall and see what sticks". Like it doesn't actually matter if you get the foil or the 3x arrow projectile, etc. It's just a very opportunistic build. And since you can hedge and go pain doll + that build at the same time. Then pivot as needed, it's a bit too consistent imo
What feels the most unbalanced beside the obvious 3-4 poison rush combo?
Pain Doll, definitely; primarily its fast cooldown.
Bleed seems underpowered; I’ve never seen any bleed builds that seem like they survive into the endgame. Poison ends up beating it every time, even though people have shield, because poison scales so much faster. Even if you lean into bleed at every opportunity, and have a board full of bleed items and bleed boosters, it isn’t fast enough to outpace damage-rush or high regen or poison.
It feels like bleed is balanced well for the early game; it just needs more scaling.
I might get rid of the slow bow, it is too broken.
I don’t think the slow bow itself is inherently broken. I think it’s the fact that poison was already strong, and the poisonous sword and slow bow are a two-item combo because they both perform the action that triggers the other, continuously. If you break that two-item cycle, it’d substantially reduce the prevalence of this combo in the meta.
Poison portal will only target 1 poison item instead of all of them
That’s definitely an improvement, though by itself it doesn’t solve the problem. It just means people using a poison build will only keep their best poison item.