Battling has essentially boiled down to a very simple and boring formula for 90-95%+ of battles: Turn 1 Freeze or Nacho + Stat booster or Bomb Turn 2 Double Blast Turn 3+ Dual constant Turn n Heal PRN with 2 additional healers

Then Scrolls being either the back up healers or the chain freezers on top of thhe strategy

I know there are exceptions, but this formula is the overwhelming majority.

The biggest problem is that most battles are so long, that most mechanics just don't do as much as they used to. I think this is most obvious in blasting/Stealing and 100% Healer vs 100% blocker, and I think the fastest way to bring some variety back to the BC is to fix some of these Over/Underpowered mechanics to make there be some variety to battles.

100% Healers vs 100% Blockers vs Multi-use Shields Overtime 100% blockers have been phased out by longer and longer battles and growing pet sizes, and Shields have NEVER been a meta pick for a single challenger (although I know 1-2 people swear by them, they have never ever been meta). The problem with 100% blockers is that they are a very random, and the problem with shields is you can't make them too powerful or people will grind every turn of the battle with them, and if they are too weak then they see absolutely no play. The goal should be Shields or blockers that can be used a few turns per battle without feeling like you should use them every turn of the battle.

The way to accomplish this is to make curses blockable.

By making curses blockable you can give challengers a predictable damage spike that would be better to block with the appropriate shield or 100% Blocker. If you make the nuke moves of opponents like the Hydra Boss into curses you instantly elevate things like STS and RV from Junk to Meta vs that challenger, without breaking the challenger either since you will eventually run out of 100% blockers.

You can also make Multiuse Shields viable by making more frequent high damage curses that aren't quite nukes, but still significant damage spikes on a challenger with a multihealing scroll, which would make it so you can't sit and defend and chip away the entire time, or you are not going to do enough DPS to ever end the battle.

You lose some utility of unblockable damage, but there are other ways to create unblockable damage if thats really a desired affect.

Blasting vs Stealing These are probably 2 mechanics hated by the Admins and Players alike the most. From an admin side you need to make sure blasting doesn't set up a scenario where it is too easy to beat a challenger, from a player standpoint, the challengers that require a 1/36 chance at blasting the perfect combitation of weapons isn't exactly fun for a slightly earlier win isn't exactly fun either. In an attempt to make the BAs lives easier they load challengers up with 3-4 of each weapon, and give most of them -100% healing. From a player standpoint we use double blasting in almost every set because it is the most powerful of a very mediocre list of things we can do with our other 6 slots after 2 constants. Here is how I would fix these mechanics:

• Remove all -100% healing from all opponent weapons. If you don't want us stealing them, disable stealing
• Make Blaster it's own Limit 1 category or even roll it into Stealing
• Eliminate all multi-stealers (Including Truth Serum)
• Limit challengers to 8 weapons for 99% of cases (Lukien and Bauenwrath spring to mind as reasonable challengers to leave alone as is)
• Remove Steal Defense from BONA
• Limit challengers to OPB stealing weapons, and only give them 1-2 of those weapons.
• Leave challenger stealing weapons as random.

The -100% stealing thing is non-intuitive for most challengers. For something like General Errors SQLs it makes sense that they aren't going to turn on their Leader so they can probably keep it, (or at least a toned down version of it like -10% heal), but it ended up as a way to turn of stealing without just turning off stealing. They could also just be turned into nerfed versions of what the challenger uses. If the challenger has a 100 Icon dark constant, when we use it, instead make it only deal 30-40 icons inline with what we can do with our current weapons. Stealing should be a huge oportunity to give players a fun weapon to play around with for a single battle that would be too powerful for general circulation, instead it is currently just a crappy version of blasting.

Blasting is currently probably the most over-represented mechanic in the game, being used in almost every battle. And it's not necessarily because it is necessary to win any of those battles, but just because it is the highest RNG generator to potentially make a battle much easier, and on average probably decreases damage by about 5-10% depending on how many weapons an opponent has. In combination with the rest of these suggestions it makes blasting powerful, but still easy to design around. It's powerful but in a boring, meta warping way. Limiting it opens up options for some of the other.

Limiting challengers to 8 weapons gives the blasters a little bit of a boost after removing multi-stealing/multi-blasting. It also makes it much more interesting to time a blast after a challenger has used some OPB weapons instead of as an opener. Adding another element of battling that wouldn't be relegated to just mashing the next button.

By defining which weapon is blasted/stolen you need to think a lot less about how to design challengers, and opens up some interesting designs for challengers to make blasting from amazing, to mediocre, to actively bad. You can set it up so it blasts their worst weapon, making blasting mediocre, you can make it so you blast the best weapon making it almost essential, or you could make it so that 2 weapons form a combo like this: Weapon 1 10 icons

Weapon 2 50 icons 10 icons when combined with Weapon 1

So once you blast 1 weapon 1 Weapon 2 suddenly becomes much better, making it actively bad to blast or steal that weapon.

Finally there are the changes I would make to challenger Stealing. Multistealing from challengers is annoying to deal with, without really being difficult to deal with. It's annoying to switch to BONA from Parched, without feeling rewarding for switching to BONA from Parched. If challengers were limited to 1 or 2 OPB stealers it would make it possibile to deal with them with something like a weapon that blocks stealers for X numbers of turns, or to make a set redundant so that stealing a weapon is mitigated. The problem is that I think stealing would need to be random on challengers otherwise we would just put Emo spork in the right spot for every stealing challenger.

Ways to Increase Damage: Bombs vs Curse setters vs Freezers/Nacho Vs Stat Boosters One basic things that could be done to increase the raw power of a set would be to give more ways to combo weapons together to deal more damage. Right now Bombs aren't completely worthless, but they aren't really that powerful either. A bomb/Freezer is never going to win you a battle you weren't otherwise going to win, and unless it reduces the battle to a single turn, it doesn't really speed up the battle much anyways now that we have pre-select.

I think to really feel worthwhile a bomb should probably do 1.5-5x as much as you can deal with a constant depending on what tier your in. Lower tiers even smaller damage boosts can be pretty powerful, but to a MAxed out pet a 250 Icon bomb would probably be needed to make it feel like it was haivng a really noticable impact on the battle. (and it still probably isn't)

The other way you could create a weapon to increase damage over time would be to create a series of curse setting items like this: Poisoned Dager 8 Physical icons 100% chance to curse 30icons for 3 turns. 10% Heal

You could turn it into a full Series: Fat Man OPB 250 Icons

Little Boy OPB 230 Icons 100% Curse 10 Icons 10 turns

SUAP Multiple use 90 Icons (No Heal no Defense)

SAP Multiple use 90 Icons (No Heal no Defense)

Poisoned Dagger 8 Physical icons 100% chance to curse 30icons for 3 turns. 10% Heal

Hidden Dagger 8 Physical icons 100% chance to curse 50icons for 2 turns.

Concealed Dagger 8 Physical icons 100% chance to curse 20icons for 4 turns.

Blood soaked Dagger 8 Physical icons 100% chance to curse 50icons for 2 turns.

If you used this weapon along with 2 constants, with active micromanagment of the weapons you would get an approximately 25-30% damage boost. Just using the Poisoned dagger alone on autoclick you would be getting less damage than a god weapon, but with micro management you get a boost. Thats the kind of interaction you want.

If you create multiple curse setters you could potentially even end up with a set of 6-8 weapons that if you micromanage properly you get would get a huge damage boost.

I'm not really sure how to fix freazers in a meaningful way, except to give some additional boosts to some of the other freezers, or to drop all of the freezers down into T4. IEH dominates the freezer space once you get access to it, It probably needs a nerf, or the other freezers need a buff to be more interesting. Since really IEH should be limited to being an interesting counter to GE and a handful of other opponents, but just ends up being the best one all around.

Stat boosting items really probably just need more of them in lower tiers to be interesting. You could probably make a mecha for every tier. the boosts on them could probably be pushed a bit harder too.

Other Every set will always have 2 constant weapons no matter what you do. The goal should be to make the other 6 choices as dynamic as possible by making as many of those options appealing as possible, either by making the opponents demand different answers or by making them independently powerful. If every suggestion I made here was taken, Sets would idealy look something like: Mecha, Blaster, Constant, Constant/Curse Setter, Shield, Healer/Blocker, Healer/Blocker, Healer/Blocker, but while that is an improvement the goal really should be to try to get even more variety. Another set up that would be possible would be something like: Bomb, Bomb, Constant, Constant, Curse Setter, Curse Setter, Curse Setter, Curse Setter for a max damage set up.

If BONA mods go out the window, you could create a series of items that would be dedicated to blocking the nerfed version of opponent multistealing like: Steal Blocker OPB 100% chance blessing to block stealing for 8 Turns

Steal block Generator Multiuse 100% chance for a blessing to block stealing for 2 turns

Probably pretty mediocre if you dumped them in todays meta, but they would be interesting if opponents multistealing was limited to OPB items and the number of items opponents used limited to 8 so they are using them earlier in the battle. But by removing steal blocking from mods you open up some interesting counterplay with item slots that requires a bit more timing oriented battling rather than setting up a passive set up that just works by clicking a bunch.

You could do the same thing for freezing, although I think the numbers would need to be extended out much further, and with freezing being a much more ubiquitous mechanic it feels better to leave in as something you can put on mods, so I don't think you need to eliminate parched. The benefit of creating an alternative way to freeze block in item slots would be that it opens up your mod slots for damage dealing mods, and gives you more gearing choices.

"A bomb/Freezer is never going to win you a battle you weren't otherwise going to win, and unless it reduces the battle to a single turn, it doesn't really speed up the battle much anyways now that we have pre-select."

Sorry to break it to you but I do this all the time. On one side to win close battles with tiny pets and on the other to speed grinding with my big pets.

I tried to read more but my heart isn't it since we can't even battle right now. I have a hard time seeing updates to battling happening when it's seems a low priority to even make it function at all.

Never was a strong word, fthe next sentence I even say that bombs are better on small pets, and that they grow worse and worse as you get up in tiers.

I dont think we even disagree on bombs for big pets

A 1 turn vs a 2 turn battle is really not that significant either though with preselct. You have only saved yourself an extra 1-2 seconds per battle, vs 5-10 seconds without preselect.

Either way just because they are niche useable doesn't mean they couldn't be buffed further to be less niche.

The goal should be to have many items you want to have in your set and make you think about what is best for the given situation, not a bunch of 1% incremental improvements over just using 2 constants. The goal of game design should be that an optimized set feels much more powerful than a default set, not a barely noticable min/max, which is what every weapon is now.

It'd be nice if a limit could be set on challengers stealing from us. It's not fun if all my weapons get stolen in just a few turns because RNG didn't roll in favor of BONA. At least leave me with the chance of a comeback if I have one infinite use weapon on hand. There really aren't many weapons that have a built-in blessing to prevent stealing, but correct me if I'm wrong cause my memory is crap. Yeah, natasha exists to provide fodder, but it's not always ideal to use if its attack elements are going to get blocked anyway.

I'd be all for better versions of BONA, like higher tier crystals. Make'em rare as hell if you have to (maybe release the rest of the unreleased Super opponents and make them drop these higher-tiered BONA crystals?), or expensive in the battle shop, but please provide more options. Same with the thief and healing mods, those already exist and are being sat on. Release'em, you can't balance something out if you never try in the first place.

(this is completely random and unrelated, but if having a GA gave us the option to carry 1 or 2 more weapons in a set, making 9 or 10 total weapons in battle, I would definitely be more compelled to spend money)

I'd say delete BONA and nerf stealing on the opponents side.

BONA vs Opponent Multistealers is a stupid, dull mechanic that adds nothing to the game.

The way it currently is, you need to keep an obscure blessing up or die to stealing or keep an obscure blessing up and die to freezing. It's not interesting just because it is slightly different.

They could make countering stealing unique by forcing people to either have multiple constant weapons so they are not as adversly affected by stealing, use generator weapons to reduce the likely hood of stealing a weapon, they could make a mod that makes it impossible to steal a weapon modded with a specific weapon.

The problem is that the opponents have super powerful multistealers, and these tactics would only work if the opponents were limited to stealing 1-2 weapons per battle.

Adding a single Subetaball to several challengers item pools would be a quick easy way to shake up the meta towards encouraging different sets. Especially if BONA was deleted. Otherwise if they did something like this, it would just force everyone into BONA since BONA also has freeze protection.

Thief Mods can be deleted too. There will never be a balance between OP and worthless. Back when you would get 2% out of theif mods they were some of the most meta breaking weapons in the game. Small pets could abuse them to beat much harder opponents, usually combined with FoRRC/FoRRP.

Multi-stealing is more powerful than 200% reflect when given any kind of relevant percentage because Either everything on the other side gets stolen, or nothing gets stolen.

(fair warning, tons of spitballing ahead) How about more anti-steal blessings instead? Why take something away when you can simply alter existing stuff to do better? OHS has an anti-steal blessing. It's one of the rare few iirc. Or curses that you can inflict on your opponent that not only chips their damage, but also prevents them from being able to steal (like in Pokemon with trapping moves such as Fire Spin or Infestation)? OR, an anti-freeze blessing AND an anti-steal curse?! And vice-versa?

Or maybe tie Intel/AP also into effectiveness of blasting and stealing; better AP and intel, the more likely chance your pet will blast/steal the worst weapon. I agree that opponents having multiple copies and infinite use of stealers is unfair. Hell, any weapons we steal from them, we can't even use without -99% recoil. It'd be one thing if the weapons they stole from US also gave them recoil, just to even the playing field.

Ya know, I'm glad this topic was brought up because this has been something I've dwelled on in the past myself, but didn't know if it was worth posting a thread about since I'm not very good with getting across my thoughts or words. It's good to talk about these mechanics and see if we can brainstorm better ways to improve battling for everyone. Anything to make it a bit more accessible (even though I think it's way more simple than it was before the tiers system).

I'd give on the thief and heal crystals then if improvements were made to existing weapons so you don't need to rely on mods. We don't need more new weapons.

The goal should be to make weapons that actually matter when you use them. We have 8 weapon slots and 95% of the time a battle could be won with 2

The only reason 95% of battles actually do end up using 6 weapons is because it's so easy to set up an opening 2 turns, but you could almost always do it with 2.

Anti steal blessings are a bad mechanic, but they are necessary right now because the challengers that they get used against are so over powered you must use them. If you nerf the multi-steal opponents, you can kill the stupid anti-steal blessings and let people rely on a couple different ways of combatting the steal opponents. It would make it feel like there are actual decisions you can make in the battle and not just the outcome of the battle being pre-determined after you choose your set. Right now the only way to reliably combat stealing is to load up your weapons with BONA (which have such a terrible uptime, you almost need 4-8 of them over 2 weapons to have a deent uptime) or an item generator like Natasha or The Ether.

If you delete BONA, and nerf multi-steal opponents (give most 1-2 stealing weapons, and probably at most 3-4) you could make the options to fight stealing: 1 ) Use 3-4 constants 2 ) Use a specific weapon that has a anti-steal blessing (O-Staff or OHS) 3) Use a generator 4) Use a Blaster/stealer to kill their stealing weapon (better if they also upgrade blasting to target a specific weapon per opponent.) 5) Make a OPB weapon that has a 100% chance to generate a 7-10 turn anti-steal blessing 6) Make a Multi Use weapon that does nothing but 100% chance to generate a 2-3 turn anti-steal blessing

The goal should be to have multiple unique approaches to a single problem, where now there is only 1. Adding additional anti-steal blessing weapons doesn't really add a unique way of dealing with it, just one more thing you need to keep in your armory for 1-2 opponents.

Got it. Now I'm understanding your suggestion. I don't think BONA would become OP or suck any less than it currently does if multi-steal was limited. One thing at a time.

But that's assuming Purge and cran are listening or interested in the idea.

This would be really cool! I'm a bit stuck with my armory right now since I seem to own most of the standard (obtainable) end game weapons. I don't know what to save up for anymore. I feel like the only thing I can do is boost my intel and get more freezing scrolls or something. I'd be excited to collect more varied weapons for strategies like this! It reminds me a bit of . That was one of my favourite weapons in the lower tiers.

If you think thats cool go back and read the main post about what they could do if they made curses blockable.

It would make full blockers and shields viable even in high level battling

To solve the problem of people running out of endgame items to collect they really just need to crank the OPB items power level to 11 and sell them for 1-1.5bil in the MC.

They could make

500mil Phoenix Quill Feather Duster 1/3 chance of breaking for the rest of the battle 200% heal.

1bil Mystical Glowing Orb 100% OPB Heal 300% Generate Mystical Glowing Orb 80%

Mystical Glowing Orb 80% OPB Heal 200% Generate Mystical Glowing Orb 60%

Mystical Glowing Orb 60% OPB Heal 150% Generate Mystical Glowing Orb 40%

Mystical Glowing Orb 40% OPB Heal 125% Generate Mystical Glowing Orb 20%

Mystical Glowing Orb 100% OPB Heal 100%

Ideally, the anti-steal weapons I mentioned in the previous post should probably be under 10mil and affordable if not easily accessible loot drops (although probably tie them to achievements.)