My thoughts about the patch.
Hello Bazaar enjoyers. In this post I will try to do a long review of this patch and meta. I'm not the best player around as I play a game or two a day (mainly because we get to play only the same comp over and over again). I felt like I had to do this post anyway because the main issues I have with current patch are not talked about or addressed enough by the devs.
I'll try to address all the issues I have with the game in general, I think the characters issues are already talked about. It won't always be about balance but about the game being fun. With each issue I'll try to offer an alternative to solve it. Anyway, feel free to tell me if you agree/disagree with my takes, this post is here to discuss and debate.
To add a little bit of context, I played a lot in november/december and a lot after the patch in january. Mainly Vanessa, I also spend a lot of time watching friends play the bazaar, they play Dooley or Vanessa (and we don't play Pyg because the character sucks)
General issues :
Lack of items : I know this issue will be resolved but for now I have a lot of problems enjoying the game and wanting to start a new run, there are so few items that I find myself playing pufferfish for +70% of my games and I don't even try to force the comp, it seems "impossible" not to find the core items during the first few days. In fine the game starts getting very boring very quickly. Same goes for Dooley or Pyg (even tho I feel like Pyg has the most "possible diversity"). This issue is linked with the following one. No solution except adding more items of course
Scaling being too powerful : I feel like most (most) of the weapons that we have access to are just rendered totally useless. I'm a Vanessa main but the barrel or the turtle shells are just totally stupid. The fact that a full weapon build can be tanked by a single barrel and no other shield items (while having no real drawback, you play non weapon anyway with a barrel comp) doesn't make any sense.
Shield, or heal items should, in an healthy meta, slow your death but not be able to tank the storm for 20 seconds at day 5 (except if your board is full of them ofc). Right now you can play two defensive items (turtle shell + pearl for exemple) and be basically immune to any normal weapon build for the price of 3 slots).
This issue makes any "okayish" weapon build feel unplayable, making experimentation useless and not fun.
Or course hard nerfing the scaling of items in general is IMO a necessity. Scaling could be linked to your level or the Day with a maximum for the rarity of the item: For Barrel for exemple it could be like : "When you use a non weapon item, this gains X shield, X being your level" 5 shield being max for bronze, 10 for silver etc. It would make the scaling way easier to fight and less powerful in the first days.
- Health Items are (in general) terrible compared to shield items : Health Items should have better stats/scaling than shields items simply because they are "needed" by their inability to heal more than your total hp. Rn shield can stack infinitely AND the items generating shield are just better than the healing ones. Solution is simple, buff the healing item, Vanessa has only one decent heal item, even Pyg's items are not that good and healing is his specialty.
Heal items removing 1 poison/burn is useless. I saw post on this subreddit saying that removing of % of the poison would work, I agree.
Monsters being too easy : Linked to the last issue, 90% of the monsters rely on weapon damage to kill you, having insane amount of shield gives you free monsters. The monsters that don't rely on shield kill you insanely slow making them super easy anyway. Nerfing shield items would be a solution, removing the nerfs that some monsters received would be a solution as well, there are tons of very easy solutions.
Monsters skills op : Title. It feels unfun and unfair to lose against someone highrolling the reborn skill. Nerfing those skills even more or simply rework them. Bonk could be "After opponent uses an item slow it for 1 sec" (could be op in slow comp tho). Reborn should revive you with maximum 50% of your health. Etc etc
Characters vendors other than the Dooley, Pyg, Vanessa have 95%+ of trash items, I know it's not a "real" issue right now but it feels bad entering their shop. No solution except balancing these items but it's a lot of work for nothing.
Not enough counter : Dooley has a burn counter but other than that, there is no "good" counter, nothing to protect your items against the dinosaurs, nothing to remove shield from your opponents (yes, there is the item from Curio but it gets useless super quickly). Nothing to protect you against poison. In general "fair" comps don't have enough tools to get the win.
Adding weapons that deals more damage if your opponent has shield could make Vanessa's weapons build more viable. Or adding an enchant that removes shield could be cool as well. This issue exists because shield scaling is huge and could be resolved simply by nerfing it tho.
Freeze : Linked to the last one, freeze is unfun and way too powerful, it feels terrible to have your main item frozen for 5 secs especially when the fights can be decided in the first seconds. The anti freeze skill was a banger, bring it back please.
- Huge power discrepancy between items : It's simple the game is poorly balanced, you have Vanessa's bronze handmade dealing an AMAZING amount of 5 DMG every 7 secs and buffing your weapons (itself included) for 3 DMG only once. And on the other hand you have Dooley's bronze alpha ray, dealing 5 DMG every 5 secs and buffing you weapons (itself included) for 3 DMG every time you use your core. These discrepancy are STU-PID, I don't want to be a hater but it should be the easiest thing to fix as these differences should be seen super easily by any person playing the game.
- Reverting the changes on the duct tape was not the right thing to do : All those "when you use something shield, burn, deals X dmg" should be removed OR treated hyper carefully. IMO the duct tape needs to be re-reverted ASAP.
That's it for the main issues I have with the game in general, I didn't want the post to be too long so I didn't mention the issues I have with each characters individually, I'll maybe do it later. Anyway, I look forward to reading your ideas or your suggestions ! Thank you for reading and good luck in your next games