The Master's Sai I feel might be a little underwhelming/uninteresting for a Legendary. It sounds like it might just also be the weakest.
EDIT: wow its stats are even lower than what I had thought too. I might rework it or tack on 15 Spd.
With pyris you can see all the little numbers popping up at the same time :D, but yea theres a few named effects that come from different sources that are still the same. Ex Dragon Scale is the same type of Ignite as Pyris' so it can help with the explosion ability. The other big one is Windslicer which applies Zephyr stacks that Parra can use for their abilities too.
Very impressive, especially with the squishier aggro monsters. I like heart + vial to make a spammy healing item. So the merged number is incorrectly counting each time it displayed a merged item preview in the forge instead of when you actually paid for it (this is already fixed for the next patch). But think of all the cool treasure you get from Strig opening those boxes :D. About the debuffs, both of those do not stack with themselves, instead they refresh the duration. Atm I dont have a good way to indicate which debuffs stack and which dont. For instance Gheists curse is also a refresh, but Karakais -Def stacks independently without refreshing duration. I did try to word the Tulwar in such a way that implied it didnt stack, but I dont think thats possible with everything.
I think its somewhat necessary for every build in calamity to not be viable. The main challenge of it becomes more of your build, since there arent as many ways to interact with the game compared to say action game. I think one way to help would be more diversity in useful items for other strategies, but finding the right ones is a whole nother problem on its own.
I havent actually done a ton of runs with the newest monsters too. Mabek was feeling like they might be alittle too clunky to make "work" atm but maybe not! Woads biggest drawback in my eyes is actually his low speed. Alot of my perceptions are in the context of no items too which isnt completely accurate. Also calamity's most punishing aspect is only having 2 wounds at the start, it might be too low cause it means you cant lose even 1 fight.
Ok so this is a quick list of my perceptions of strength, though this is mostly based on normal mode and often around testing a specific monster. I do feel like they might be weak, or at least not up to their full potential.
As for fun combos, most have already been talked about, even a few I never considered but theres a fun one with Scutter (Stealshell) + Seras (Slippery) to stack up a ton of Def on scutter and give him a Shattershard to deal tons of dmg with it. Also Bone Ring on Slagg, plus can include another healer like Hydrim. His decent health can be converted into alot of damage.
The "combination abilities" are called Synergies :D
Wow this is a very comprehensive post! It definitely shows how you've been getting all those calamity wins. I also like that you picked up on some of the subtle strategies I hoped would be useful such as Mabek can sit in the back and eat ranged enemies that hit it. Im actually surprised to see Krog and Urso below the birds, though I definitely havent thoroughly tested every strat on the higher difficulties. Really good read, could almost be used as a quick guide :D
hmm ill look into that, they already should update in response to using items (for instance if you eat all your food during the Help the Old Monster, it gets locked out). this is a good time for me to finally buff this event at the same time since the requires feel like they should warrant a better reward