November 2017 we got the biggest overhaul to the modification system since the modification system was created in the first place with the release of several new tiers of mods and I wanted take a look at how things have changed in the meta since then, and how they have mostly stayed the same.

I think a couple of the most obvious things to point out are that anything below Marquise is not at all useful, and there is no reason to farm for them. Even from the perspective of a new battler, Marquise gems are cheap and readily available so there is really no point in messing around with tear/baguette/cabachon/Moonstone mods, you can maybe make a case for Brilliant if the budget is super tight or if you are trying to only use what you farm early on.

It would be nice if these could be used for something, even if it is grinding them up and creating higher tier crystals at a rate that is probably worse than the market price like 10:1. The way to get some of the mods is actually pretty hard, and there is no reward for going after them. They just sit in our vaults as a byproduct of going for obscure HSTs with no real value.

I think the next very easy to point out flaw is that the defense mods are pretty terrible, and noone uses them, and they are often listed for sale at fraction of their attack counterparts. Only being able to guarentee that blessing uptime of about 33% of the time just isn't good enough. For defense to be useful, it needs to be consistent and predictable or it needs to be powerful, and these mods are neither of those things. At the very minimum, the blessing activation rate should be such that you can have near 100% uptime of the 25 icon defense blessing with 4 mod slots using EOR mods. And I would argue alternatively that just giving EOR mods a 25 icon static defense would probably not be overpowered.

Changing the EOR mods to either of these would probably not be overpowered (with the first obviously being more powerful): +25 Icon Defense or +6 Icons +10% chance for 25 Icon Blessing for 5 turns

Which brings us to the EOR Attack Mods. These right now are the gold standard of offense. However, Parched are really not THAT far behind in terms of offenive potential. On average the curse is worth about 2.16 icons. Giving EOR mods a total of about 8.16 icons per turn IF you completely space them between 4 different icon types. But what Parched does offer is the gold standard in freeze prevention, which at the highest levels is often required on at least 1 weapon. I tried everything to make it work including this set: [Item=Natasha][Item=Tainted Keeper Skull Staff][Item=Manifesting WEapon]

[Item=Earth Eye of Royalty Crystal][Item=Earth Eye of Royalty Crystal] [Item=Fire Eye of Royalty Crystal][Item=Fire Eye of Royalty Crystal][Item=Fire Eye of Royalty Crystal] [Item=Freezing Eye of Royalty Crystal] [Item=Physical Eye of Royalty Crystal][Item=Magma Eye of Royalty Crystal][Item=Magma Eye of Royalty Crystal][Item=Dark Eye of Royalty Crystal] [Item=Natasha][Item=Fire Eye of Royalty Crystal][Item=Dark Eye of Royalty Crystal][Item=Wind Eye of Royalty Crystal][Item=Physical Eye of Royalty Crystal] [Item=Tainted Keeper Skull Staff][Item=PArched Baguette Crystal][Item=PArched Baguette Crystal][Item=PArched Baguette Crystal][Item=PArched Baguette Crystal] [Item=Manifesting WEapon]

The Idea being that I would have a default set that at default would have access to 2 strong attackers with modded out EOR attack mods, and I could quick swap to freeing or stealing defense with just a rearrangement of the set instead of fumbling through the UI of fully swapping out weapons in and out of the set. What I quickly realized was that in the battles I was actually wanting to battle I needed the freeze or steal protection and that it just got too cumbersome of mess around with the attack mods at all.

I have experimented around with different setups to try and maximize the number of weapons that use the offensive mods, but what I keep coming back to is that the relatively small boost in offensive power just is not worth the ease of always having freeze/steal protection at high levels.

Pre-Select makes individual turns of battles go by very quickly. Before pre-select was a thing ending a battle 3 turns early was probably saving you up to a minute or 2 of time per battle. Now with preselect it saves you maybe 6 seconds. To make attack mods worthwhile, they need to be much flashier and higher impact. This probably sounds insane but EOR mods to really have a noticeable impact on a battle probably need to give a +14 icon boost on average. If that is accomplished with a curse or just straight icons I don't think it matter much. But I think it needs to be that high to compete with PArched. Parched literally takes unwinnable fights and turns them winnable. To compete with that, a pure offensive weapon I think would need to cut the battle length in half. At +14 icons x4 mods you would be doubling the offensive power of your weapons compared to parched.

The other thing that has always bothered me about Parched was that there was only the 1 set of icons that can be used for it making all the same mods, even though throwing Parched on some weapons adds 2 extra icon types onto the weapon. It would be Nice if Parched was offered in a couple extra flavors like: 2 Earth 2 Dark 33% Parched 2 Ice 2 Wind 33% Parched 2 Light 2 Physical 33% Parched.

pokes title later

The freezing EoR is interesting. Compared to the marquise, it does one extra attack, one less defense, but has the same freeze rate. They’re practically the same but the marquise is easier to farm. It would be better if the EoR has an 8% freeze rate to make it more worthwhile

Instead of making the lower tier crystals be used as currency for high tier crystals, it would be nice if they can be used to buy intel.

Honestly I forgot about the freezing mods. But they are kinda already borderline broken to begin with, and they are much harder to balance than the other mods. They go from competitive to completely broken over a very thin line. I also have a set of 8 over my SoSS and Wrath and I pretty much just never take out those 2 weapons since they are unreliable when you can freeze, ect.

My biggest point was that we had this huge effort to shake up the mod system, people have experimented with it, me probably more than most, and I'm starting to swing right back where we started with effectively only using Parched and BONA, because none of the other mods compete by a longshot.

It might require taking a couple of mod slots off some lower level weapons especially Shinwas Quill and Lambent Guardian Crystal, but I think in the long run you can still balance it if you take some risks.

Yeah I use two freezing marquise on a couple of my weapons I use 90% of the time on opponents that freeze and it’s solid.

You definitely did a lot of testing but there needs to be bigger changes to the battling system not just the addition of more crystals to ease off on the dependence of parched and bona mods. Bona you can get away from by using weapons that generate steal fodder. Not that many opponents steal though. There are a lot more opponents that freeze and have a high chance to freeze that are harder to get away from parched. I would need to think about it more, but maybe you could have either of these scenarios

1. opponents only used a limited number of OPB freeze weapons, you could attempt to blast or have a defensive blessing activate

2. like you suggested above - 10% chance of 25 def for multiple turns so that this could be active when you’re frozen

It’s more of the ability to chain freeze that’s broken. I wouldn’t worry about taking off mod slots from lower tier weapons. You still need a high tier pet to win the good mods and the defense mods won’t be as cheap as they are now if they are more in demand.

I think every aspect of the BC would benefit from a balance pass, but some are much easier to balance than others.

Most of them would require huge rewrites to either the fundamental code of the BC (probably not happening), or going and rebalancing every challenger (also probably not happening).

Mods, Scrolls, and Potions are probably the 3 systems that could be balanced individually outside of a complete redo of the BC. Mods had a relatively recent overall balance pass, but nother actually changed a year and a half later.

Yeah the only changes I’ve made are the occasional freezing on weapons and swapping out crit strike for EoR stacking

I'm also in favor of giving the latest (almost 2 years old now) mod crystals a higher chance of activation, they're just not reliable enough or do enough blocking/damage. EOR crystals in particular, with the limited availability, should either be exempt from disappearing or be dropped by more opponents than they currently are. The 15th Anniversary opponents would have been a good place.

The switching of the best mods we have is being severely hampered by their scarcity. Sure, once equipped the EOR mods can help tremendously but then you're pigeon holed into battling only the opponents they work best on. Replacing them is a big pill to swallow followed by a gut punch when a new opponent comes out that requires the mods you just flushed down the toilet in order to progress. We don't need flashy, wall hanger mod crystals that barely outperform their marquise counterparts as it's already been pointed out. If they're going to be nearly impossible to replace they should at least give the user a comparable performance.

If there is an update to the mod crystals please announce it in the news!