Tier 1 battling is super bland. In fact, I would argue until T4 its probably barely worth participating at all from a game perspective. The only real viable weapons that you have access to are either super cheap, or super expensive, with nothing in the middle. There is usually a definitive best weapon set in tier 1-4, usually involving the best "Healer" and then one of the super expensive scaling weapons (Trident, Knocker, or LGC), or if you are training an army probably just LGC + Trident or Knocker.

More importantly, this is not an economically important set of pets, because there are already so many of them the loot that these pets are capable of winning is already dirt cheap. So if you give these pets "overpowered weapons for the tier", it doesn't really have much of an effect on the economy even if you do "break" an opponent or 2. If anything people love to "break" things and it would probably be fun.

One of the things that I loved about subeta when I came over from neopets was that I could afford and use all the staples and use them immediately. I was chronically priced out of JadeSS/LEV/STS/H3K, but I was able to buy STS, DDS, Pquill RB, for about 10-15mil each within the first couple days/weeks of grinding out quests, and it felt super OP compared to neopets.

Right now the best T1 set basially looks like this: [Item=Lambent Guardian Crystal][Item=Trident of the Banished One][Item=Fire Blade][Item=Phoenix Quill][Item=Bronze Quill][Item=Life Charm][Item=Mystical Orb][Item=Cursed Irion ChestPlate] Red Reign Staff of Lore and Replica Minotaur Knocker if your on a budget. And probably just forgoing a second healer if your on a super tight budget.

Tier 2 and 3 all you really do to upgrade that set is to use better and OPB better healers, or sub in a different 20K sP healer (RRSoL > Ontra Battle Wand

Zephyr Wand > Malevolent Grimfruit > Freezewand of doom)

What I would propose would be to give people access to the more unique types of weapons from Tier 1 so I would move these weapons to Tier 1 (and in the case of Rainbow Vortex, just set it to be a non-scaling weapon): [Item=Subetaball]

DDS which used to be a staple, has been outshined by the budget Gorgun, and better higher end alternatives like IEH and Wheely Catobas Toy/Poisoned Blowdart. This would give it a place in the metagame as the high end Tier 1 freezer. Gorgun would still be availible for budget people working their way up when they hit T4, but if you wanted to drop a couple hundred mil on your set for a T1 second pet, DDS would have a home again.

STS/RV - These really get outshined quickly, In my planning for the endgame guide in the other forum, I list these things as traps. The times they are best strategically are in fights where the battles are short like no heal battles or in the early game. AON I debate if that should be dropped to tier 1 as well. Could almost certainly be dropped to tier 5 though. Once you are in T9, its very niche.

Blasters - Staples up to Tier 13, seems like it would be nice to just let people use them from the early game too. Adds some depth to battles, with little economic costs.

Subetaball - Stealers suck right now. and stealing weapons that feel overpowered without actually affecting the economy would be super fun for a new player.

These are going to be controversial but I think it would be good for the early game: [Item=Avarice][Item=Shinigami][Item=Lucent][Item=Aemis][Item=Ametsuchi][Item=Riptide][Item=Eternal][Item=Icekiss][Item=Balrog] I would set these all to be Tier 1 weapons. The Legends see almost no play at all. They are overpriced at tier 5 and have a very limited shelf life if you are going to upgrade them the next tier over anyways. By moving them to Tier 1, you give them a longer shelf life, which increases the value of shelling out ~40mil-100mil for them, you don't really break anything economically since the loot you would be getting isn't that good to begin with. They are really not that big of an upgrade even in tier 1, you are only going from 15 icons to 23-25 + some defense and some mods. They kinda scale into tiers 6-8 where they are actually decent weapons but expensive for what they are in those tiers. And even with all of this: 40mil isn't that hard to come by. It's like a week of quests to earn for a newbie.

The Healer Problem: One of the biggest offenders to the fact that there is almost always a definitive best set is the fact that the multihealers outshine basically every other non healing constant. To fix that I would first make every multiheal weapon a "Healer" so you only ever need one. Then instead of making Trident/Knocker basically the best 2 weapons in tiers 1-6 or so, there would be more strategy in picking out which healer would be the best for an opponent. By doing this the best set would most likely end up chanding to some combination of a multihealer + a legend

New items to create: The last thing I would do would be to add some midrange weapons to the MC for something like 10-30mil that scale with your pet, but are once per battle healers/Bombs/Shirines/Mechas

For Example: Eagle Feather 25mil, may equip multiple Tier 1 Heal 40 Tier 2 Heal 100 Tier 3 Heal 200 Tier 4 Heal 400 Tier 5 Heal 600

Pigeon Feather 10mil, may equip multiple Tier 1 Heal 20 Tier 2 Heal 50 Tier 3 Heal 100 Tier 4 Heal 200 Tier 5 Heal 400

Firecracker 20mil, may equip multiple Tier 1 40 Icons Tier 2 43 Icons Tier 3 45 Icons Tier 4 50 Icons Tier 5 55 Icons

Shinwas Temple Shard (Or another STS Clone if you are protecting the value of STS) 30mil Limit 1 100% block everything OPB

Good Shield 15mil Multiuse Blocks 3 of each icon type

When I bought my STS for 12mil when Ttear had always been unobtainable, it felt awesome compared to constantly staring at TTear and being forced to use thick smoke bombs to be competative. I hate seeing valuable items deflate instantly overnight. But from a game standpoint, I think it is very important to keep some of the staples sub 30mil. If you want to protect the overall value of STS, release a clone or upgrade it a little, but I think it would help draw people into the early game if this tool was more readily available.

The other thing here would be that these would probably not necessarily be started just towards new players. These scaling weapons and low tier, but expensive items (like DDS) would be targeted at people with armies, so they don't need to take up 2-3 slots or forgo battling with extra pets until T5.

I think an overall criticism that is going to be of this thread is that it probably makes it look like I am making low level battling super expensive. Which compared to where it was before these suggestions, it would be much more expensive since the best set without one of the scalers was probably 500-750K at most. But if you aim for these weapons to be 10-30mil, and maybe have a few that are 40-80mil, especially when they are long term investments for several tiers, it won't be that bad. You can grind out 100mil in a week or 2 if you are dedicated. Also the super cheap meta would still be there in the background, and more cheap tiered options could be added over time as well

[edit] MSOB and CWS could probably be added to the availible from Tier 1 ist. They are great weapons between Tiers 6 and 8, but for a price tag around 250 each, that is not enough useable time to come close to justifying the price tag.

I actually really like the legendary and stealers ideas. Especially to a player just starting out with battling, it'd feel really exciting and new to use legendaries and stolen weapons. Also it would so fix the issue of no one using them lmao

I like all of this, except really labelling everything that has heal as a healer. I think that has larger repercussions for higher tiers that I wouldn't enjoy and I'm not sure I see the benefit for the early tiers.

But I do think we're past a point where we have to worry about things being OP at early tiers so why not make it more fun!

Would really help to engage people first rather than having to really commit to training before knowing what the payoff could be (aka fun).

I don't think making low level battling super expensive is tooo big of a concern- you can do more than get by with a budget set. I think the best thing is adding more value to full blockers and 100% freezers as well as the legendaries by making them an option right off the bat. And in the case of the legendaries, you make them a better value by extending their useful lifetime (and maybe smoothing over the beating the level 15 boss to beating level 16-19 challengers hump).

Like Keliora, I'm not sure about labeling everything that heals a healer. Forcing you to only use one at later tiers will run right into the fact that nearly everything is triple duty by that point. They'd have to pull the heal off some of them, and then fill in the block/damage holes left with new weapons or you might end up in a situation where you need say earth and wind block but not only can't do that because of 'healer' type conflict, but are no longer able to heal through the damage. Or you're forced into a weapon/shield set if they don't. It may push difficulty up beyond what's intended and mean challengers which are tuned around pets having 15-27% heal per turn need to be rebalanced.

I only meant the everything as a healer for tiers 1-5, maybe up to tier 8 or 9 at most. After that I think it would be too big of a culture shock.

The problem early on is that you lock out any weapon that does not heal. In higher tiers this isn't as big of a problem, because there are only a handful of weapons that do not have healing past T9-10 (and they almost all suck)

[edit] MSOB and CWS could probably be added to the availible from Tier 1 ist. They are great weapons between Tiers 6 and 8, but for a price tag around 250 each, that is not enough useable time to come close to justifying the price tag.

I agree with a lot of these except for the healer idea as well. There are already very little weapons that offer some amount of heal at lower tiers. There is also already a penalty for using the knocker and the trident together when the trident is not transformed into a blessed trident. They both get reduced back to their T1 stats when you have both equipped. Were there other specific healer weapons you were thinking of that you think would only be worth buying simply because it has a heal on it instead of block and attack icons?

I am all for making legendary weapons retain value again. I like the idea of making them scaling weapons, but I would also consider raising the max for legendaries to T6 and combo legendaries to T8 or change their max tier icons to better justify their price tags.

I wasn't saying to make the legends scale. I was saying just set them to Tier 1 weapons because it would have absolutely no economic impact, so why does it matter if you give T1 pets access to legends? But by moving them to T1, you extend their shelf life, and make them useful weapons for secondary pets.

Making them scale is annoying because it makes it harder to remember what it is they do. I think the absolute fewest number of weapons should scale as possible especially for low level weapons. Keep it as simple as possible in T1-5. The scaling weapons I mention at the end of the post would be designed more for pet armies, where you would have 1 combo weapon that could be used across multiple tiers without switching. Those weapons are already essentially available in each tier for a fraction of the cost.

I think if the overall goal is to make low level battling interesting you need to get rid of multiple healer. Even if you gave T1 pets access to legends, and did not nerf healers in T1 to one per set, I would probably use LGC + Trident before ever touching a legend every time.

I guess I didn't mention this in the first post, but In adding a healer tag to the weapons, I would make them all the same amount of healing (Maybe a slightly lower rate on LGC since it does over 2x as much damage as any other weapon in the Tier at 26 icons modded vs 11 modded for Trident vs 4 unmoddable for RRSoL, it even beats out the damage on T4 Malevolent grimfruit at 20-25 icons)

It would open up a huge variety of weapons to the low level battling for things like Shear Sword that used to be a staple. Part of the reason why battling at low levels is so boring is because there really are not many strategic choices to make because to be optimal, you basically need to max out healing. If you put all the healing you "need" in one weapon, and force the other weapon to be something that has high icons no defense vs dual duty vs a shield, those would be actual decisions to make.

They would be really overpowered at T1 if they kept the same stats. The only negative I see is that it may throw off the battling mechanics for when a low tier pet can beat low tier opponents. I’m still not opposed to the idea.

But with LGC and trident, they are harder to obtain weapons and cost more than the average subetan is willing to spend or has to spend. They are the best options possible, why penalize them when only a few people can afford them? I dunno it seems a little unfair to use the extreme cases when there are a lot of other affordable options out there.

Instead I would say make all the affordable weapons more appealing. Give them effects like the shrines or more mod slots so you’re not changing the stats of everything. I find lower tier battling more fun when I can use my OP scrolls, trident or Minotaur knocker. Making legendaries T1 could be that fun affordable option.

Why does it matter? Worst case scenario - a T1 pet can now beat an opponent a T5 can beat (ie i'm giving a bunch of T5 weapons to t1 pets, so by definition this would be the worst case), if they drop 90-400mil more on weapons and win some mage amulets a month early.

I don't think it would ever be the case, I think the more likely scenario would be that maybe a T1 pet could beat 1 T3 challenger with a decent amount of effort, and earn 20 stats per day in BQs, instead of the 10-15 you can earn per day in most tiers right now, for a couple extra days.

Not saying that it matters, just making an observation. Again, I’m not opposed to the idea. I like it. I think you’re right as your pet will still be limited by its stats so the jump to which opponent you can beat when won’t be drastic.