Curses are a very mediocre mechanic that could be done so much better. Ultimately the big change that I think needs to happen is that they should be made blockable, and I think that many curses should be converted to regular icons instead.

There are now several weapons that grant curses and blessings, and part of the problem is that it can start to get to the point where there is information overload with the shear number of alerts that pop up, and most of these alerts don't actually change anything, they just clutter things up. Making it much more difficult to keep track of things that actually do impact the battle like freezing, weapon/scroll disabling curses, and most blessings.

I would propose 3 things to fix curses:

1. Make Curses Blockable
2. Make a 10th icon type, that does not have a cooresponding blocking. essnetially making the curse icon type blockable
3. Weapons that only have a curse to increase their damage slightly should have their curse rolled into their main icons or as a second attack to free up UI space.

I wanted to go through some of the curses that are found on weapons and show how they could be made better. Wrath of Kahaleitzli [Item=Wrath of Kahaleitzli] :dmg🔥 11-15 :dmg:magma: 11-15 :dmg:light: 12 :block🔥 100 :heal: 10%

Curse 18 Icons 3 turns. ~13% activation rate by my testing (This is inaccurately reported in most guides as 15 and 2 turns)

This type of curse where it is basically a short burst of damage isn't inherently bad game design, but with the number of curses and blessings, it contributes to the clutter of the UI without really changing much of anything. These low activation rate high damage curses don't incentivize you to switch up weapons to not waste any of the curse, its just a small curst of damage that could be achieved in any of a number of ways that don't clutter up the UI

Versus just making the curse a second attack.

New wrath Main Attack :dmg🔥 11-15 :dmg:magma: 11-15 :dmg:light: 12 :block🔥 100 :heal: 10%

Rare Attack 26% :dmg🔥 25 :dmg:magma: 25 :dmg:light: 22 :block🔥 100 :heal: 10%

Same Average damage but doesn't take up a bunch of extra room on the UI. You could make the battle text glow yellow when it activates or something to call attention to the increased damage in the UI.

An example of something interesting you could go with a bomb curse like Wraths would be to set up an opponent like this:

2x Weapon 1 50 water 30 Physical

2x Weapon 2 60 Water 20 Physical

2x Weapon 3 20water 10 Physical Curse 100% activation 120 Dark Icons 3 turns

Scroll 20 water 20 physical blocks 100 water

For an opponent like this the optimal strategy would be to use a set like this: [Item=Intricate energized Helmet][Item=Volatile Energized Mecha][Item=Soma Tablets][Item=Maniacal Essence]

Now for one of the very few times in the history of subeta battle opponents there is an incentive to switch weapons in the middle of the fight. Most turns it would be beneficial to use SoSS + Ether, but with the curse signaling itself ahead of time, it actually makes sense to attempt to block it.

You could also make a weapon that is offensively better to cycle in and out of your rotation:

:dmg:water: 5 :dmg:physical: 1-5 10% Heal

Curse 100% Activation 50 "Curse" Icons 5 turns

Now you have a weapon that is advantageous to use only once ever 5 turns. If you add in a 10th element offensively and do not make any weapons that can block the curse icon type then you effectively still have the same functionality of curses now while adding a bunch of other flexibility.

I’m going to have to disagree with this idea. The main argument is that curses should be blockable is because there are too many pictures below the opponent? You used an extreme example in your screenshot, I often don’t see more than 3-4 blessings or curses active at any given time. We also choose which curses we want to have hit our opponents via the weapons and mods we choose, it shouldn’t be that hard to memorize our own battle choices.

It sounds like a time consuming overhaul to something that no one is complaining about.

No I don’t think you read much of the post

That was a tiny portion of it.

The benefit of making the icons blockable is that you could make opponents that have strategic depth to them.

The benefit of the 10th unblockable icon is that you can still maintain weapons that are capable of breaching defenses, since there are a handful of opponents that people use curses on for that reason.

No, I read your entire post. I’m still not seeing the difference between adding a tenth icon type and the curses we have now. Are you trying to say that some curses should be turned into boosts on the weapons that are blockable whereas others are turned into a tenth icon type that is unblockable? If so, why not just remove the curses from some weapons and boost them while leaving the curses on others? Personally, I don’t find the pictures to be too much of a nuisance because I like see what’s active and scrolling through the battle text would be a headache if that were changed, even with a color change to the text as you suggested.

Right now all curses are essentially a 10th icon type.

If curses were made blockable and a 10th unblockable icon type were added, you would have the flexibility to have something like the challenger I outlined in the OP and you could maintain any unblockable functionality that we currently have.

Right now all of the damage based curses could be replaced by just boosting the number of icons that a weapon does on the turn that it does it. What I'm saying is going foreward, design curses that actually impact the battle and make people react to them. Right now curses basically aren't being used.

If you make curses blockable, you open up much more design space to work with. Right now there are essentially only 7 Classes of challenger on the site: Classic, No-heal, Freezing, Stealing, Transition (think Bauenwrauth), No Scroll, One Handed. Adding in blockable curses would add in a 8th Class of challenger that essentially requires multiple constants. You could also Make a challenger that basically has a bomb curse that could only be survived by a STS or RV. Hydras kill weapon could be converted to a curse that would make it more interesting to interact with.

More options and more mechanics are always better than less to work with, and thats what something like this would allow them to do. They could preserve every opponent and current weapon exactly the way they are, and have new mechanics to go forward with.

After reading the latter part again, I think I understand you now. It could be interesting to switch up weapons in the middle of the battle to block an incoming curse. Like switching to your ME to block the incoming 120 icon curse as you suggested. However, if this were ever to be implemented, I do still want to see the curse picture below the challenger so I can see it incoming without having to scroll through the battle text. I hope there could be a way to go about this without adding a tenth icon type though, that seems like it would be time consuming. Battling is already incredibly nuanced as it is and I feel like this may be too big of a change for people to get used to.

I agree there, I wasn't saying to get rid of all of them. I'm saying I only want to see icons that give me information I might need in the battle in that space.

The fact that my EOR mod generated a 12 icon curse for a couple turns doesn't actually change anything in the battle that I need to act on. What I was trying to say was that the curses that are mechanically the same as a burst of icons, or an extra stream of icons (like Singed baguette) should just be converted to regular icons instead of cluttering up the UI. If they made curses blockable I would 100% want to know that they were coming in the tool bar.

They would only need a 10th icon type if they felt that they needed an unblockable icon type if curses were made blockable. Really from the opponent standpoint the fact that the curse was unblockable almost never really mattered since we were just taking it with heal anyways. The real question is if they want us to have unblockable icon access for something like Forj.

Yeah, I see what you're saying now. Sorry for being curt with you in the beginning, I see now that I missed your entire point on the first read.

I do dislike that battling is a complete RNG sometimes and you're just clicking away hoping for the best. Being able to see which curses are being used next and blocking them could be fun. I do like how they aren't blocked right now though, except when I'm frozen and they still hit me, haha. Maybe there is a happy medium there somewhere. But removing curse icons underneath the opponent does make sense when you put it that way. They're basically just there to tell you when the curse is active or not, which doesn't have too much of a bearing on anything.

You should ping Purge or Cranberry and see how feasible something like that would be. It could be fun for new opponents and weapons. Not sure how they would do it retroactively though, that seems like a headache.