Within three days, the GM count went from 20 people being GrandMaster to 100+! Very interesting that suddenly a burst of people which I can't explaint. So do I like or hate it? Well, honestly, my over all feeling is extremely mixed!

(+) It's quite realistic that not everyone is GM, because it should be difficult to be here.

(+) The reason people hated S2 is that they thought they deserved GM, but suddenly their old way of playing wasn't enough. People (including me) falsely thought they were "the best of the best". But this will be fixed when people know what to expect.

However...

(-) If you fall behind, it's extremely difficult to come back. In other games you face easier opponents when you lose a lot, but now you get matched with better and better builds every day!?!? So you fall exponentially behind. This is extremely bad, because one loss just spirals down and a person that should get into grandmaster can lose -100 points just by having an unlucky start. (If you get bursted, the perma-build items will never activate, so next game you have one less multicast and that makes you lose the next game too... and then you just lose all the games). Would not be a problem if you faced easier opponents.

(-) The first days are very important and also very random. Do you face an opponent that went 0 items? Do you get the cheap items? It's simply luck if you get an easy win. Having two losses early is so bad lategame, but nothing really compensates for this. And if the answer is "git gut"... No! Early game is extremely simple, and since you don't have that much money for rerolls, you are very dependant on the items that pop up.

So unsurprisingly Dream Catcher caught a nerf this patch, but I have to ask, is Permanent Cooldown Reduction scaling good for the game? Sure it feels very good when you start getting items down to 1.0 cds, but is it actually healthy? On top of general RNG in finding the right items to pull a build together, many runs feel futile as I get into the later days simply because I was unable to secure a Dream Catcher early enough to scale my items down, and so instead I just get clocked by opponents who did.

Obviously if we got rid of CDR we would arrive at certain builds being favored simply because they start combat faster, but outliers can always be adjusted

Just interested in other people thoughts on this. Permanent Scaling is very much a part of every build, but my issue right now is it feels like every build wants an early Dream Catcher, so I would love to hear other people's thoughts on Dream Catcher and Cooldown Reduction in the game.

Start of combat is another discussion, but that can be saved for another day.

View Poll

https://preview.redd.it/bnrxsqx3mbkh1.png?width=1790&format=png&auto=webp&s=7a35692c5f59f814e4e185b6eadf782bd712a432

First I want to say I love this game, its one of my favorite autobattlers ever and I have 1000s of hours in the genre. Ranked in this game has one small problem holding it back from being great. The issue is you go against the same players with the same builds where they got RNG just slighty above whats normal. That small amount of gold they saved or items they obtained that make their build strong just makes them a bit better at that round compared to more builds than not. This leads to many 6 win scenarios in runs. Everything under diamond (as much as I hate to say it because I think its toxic in most ways its used) is slightly more of a skill issue than an RNG issue. Once you hit diamond, the moment you cross that line, needing to get another win to gain a small amount of rank makes it much, much harder. Not one rank harder, like 4 ranks harder. This is a very hard thing for a dev to balance. Many others games use a system where you just play against anyone else at that rank, not players who have the best builds. Is that better? I cant say, I dont have access to the backend data that could allow for that calculation. But for me and many I know who love this game, getting to diamond was very fun, and everything after was an absolute chore. The balance just isnt right, and anyone who says it is isnt paying attention.

Again, love this game, and wish I could do something to help the dev with this issue because I know its the only thing this game needs. Getting to grand master in S1 was just way too easy, and now its just not that fun.

https://preview.redd.it/6of0t2lw25kh1.png?width=1911&format=png&auto=webp&s=eda39b75d7ae15866e14a281f640b2cc21239d17

I made 5,27T in the very first second of the match. As i thought with the update there is no item wiich triggeres faster than others and begin of combat is even for all items. So i dont get it my enemy did not made enough damage to go trough my shield. Anyone who coudl explain this to me?

I'm pretty new to the game, still in silver league and I would like to hear from more experienced players

So far, I find the easiest way to win is to abuse the multicast mechanic, with items like Crescentshot, Wand, paired with potions to trigger items that have "whenever you heal" (Redemption) or "whenever you gain shield" (Warrior shield).

It seems to me that mechanics like shock, for example, lack synergies with the rest of the item pool, whereas multicast synergizes with everything (bleed, burn, poison, "when you heal/shield, trigger)

At my rating I hardly ever see sucessful builds that don't rely on multicast, and almost no shock, bleed, dark synergy. Does it stay the same on higher ratings?

I'll keep this short and sweet.

Like:

• less punishing for being bad and/or experimenting with combos in ranked
• item adjustments feel fair for the most part
• fixing the force quit incentive

Dislike:

• matchmaking still feels wonky. rating aside it seems like the average opponent after match ~6 is either living their best life while i'm in the back of the struggle bus or i blow through all 10 trophies.
• it's not great knowing at a glance whether you're going to dominate or get rekt
• sometimes it feels like i'm having a great run but then hit a sudden wall of hard-counters

general insufferable nerdshit suggestions

• pack idea: giant. slower/stronger weapons span two+ squares
• pack idea: dryad. thorns damage to counter multistrike
• pack idea: time. apply slows to enemy attacks / affliction ticks on the player tower

https://preview.redd.it/ao84j7dirojh1.png?width=2553&format=png&auto=webp&s=a4a3bedb6015be27ebea373955c86c9847274bfb

Cruising to day 10, one or two minor losses with like 10 hp difference, everything good.

Had a nice build, didnt need to reroll once, all working towards some nice astral hammer action.

But then it happens again. 6 Trophies, end of fun! Back to back to back grandmaster sweaty towers and the game is over.

it really gets tiring :(

i will say i'm not the best player and experiment much but this matchmaking really destroys the fun of building.

So i really enjoyed the game in season 1, but the nerfs for season 2 made it worse from an fun perspective.

yea, the changes might be nice for those who like the challenge in climbing ranks, i dont critize that. But i really loved to play the game to max, doesnt matter which rank, when trying builds. But the more I'm playing the more i get destroyed by just high rolling towers with 3 epics or complete burn builds on day 5.

this destroys my long term fun of the game cuz i never get to enjoy my builds going full ham. i didnt have that problem in season 1.

Please u/bocary_, if you have something for us "casuals" or fun players that can fix this, it would be much appreciated.

Same highroller builds over and over again. I've been grinding for the last couple of days. Maybe around 4 to 5 hours everyday. Reached Masters yesterday and the first thing today was demoted to Diamond 3 again. Trashed another 4 hours to get back to Masters and I'm done until next patch.

The issues that I've encountered so far.

First of all, you must play the same build that gives you enough damage, but also where you have some kind of spare money so you can level up, because not keeping with level ups debuffs you too strongly. You wouldn't have enough life at day 10, you'll die instantly from basically any build there.

Second thing, I see that I went back to playing the same build over and over again, being it for example arcane build or some sort of storm build or some sort of elven build with multicast or with dreamcatcher, anything that will dish a ton of damage by day six or seven, because if you don't do so, you are basically dead.

Third thing, the edge between leveling up and buying new items is insanely thin. If you don't have good items and level up, you will die at day six to seven to eight. If you see good items and grab them instead of leveling, you will die at day six or seven. So it's basically all over again and doesn't make any sense.

And last but not least thing is the same amount of ghosts that you have encountered during the run. I don't know why, but maybe it's because not a big number of player base. But the thing is that you start to encounter some insanely strong ghosts at around day eight until day 10. So basically I had multiple encounters with endless builds that were already by day nine or by day 10.

As soon as you are in Masters and you don't have enough luck, enough RNG, and you don't have your full build online on day six, you basically can concede the run and start over again because you will be dead. So you will not have any points or even if you don't won the first eight days, you don't even get your break-even point and you will be sure to demote.

Yeah, I can understand that by grinding for the whole day and taking the game really competitively, you will soon enough achieve Masters and also Grandmasters. But it doesn't make sense because the game loop currently doesn't give you any reward at all besides funny stickers or name tags after the season ends. When will the season end nobody knows, so you basically don't have any incentives to stay in the game loop besides getting awesome build up or basically beats endless. But like now beating endless in Season 2 seems just a waste of time because you would get another plus 15 points of rating if you are lucky enough, if not you will maybe lose another 15 points of rating. So it also just doesn't make sense to invest so much time in endless if you're trying to climb.

Sorry for the rant guys, but I'm really annoyed and frustrated and need to vent.

Bocary, please dont take it personally, I know and I see how much great work you do and how much you care for the community. Hopefully somehow this could help.

The new ranking changes feel better, I think they are a great change in the right direction. I am actually going up in rank after winning 80% of my games, rather than losing from winning 8-% of my games.

I know there's a discord section for this but I couldn't post there for some reason :/ so posting my requests here for feedback/support. What stuff would others like to see?

Ability to go back after selecting an encounter

It would be great to have a way to go back after selecting an encounter, but before selecting the encounter option.

For example, you select the lemons/limes lady and then realise you don't actually have an sharp item that can be played with her. Being able to back out at that point would prevent situations where you're locked into an encounter option that can't do anything with or just misclicked.

More item information with Shift/Ctrl

It would be useful to have an expanded item tooltip when holding Shift or Ctrl, similar to other games.

Potential information:

• DPS calculations / expected damage contribution
• Chance of finding the item in the shop
• The effect of Potion of Appearance on the item's shop appearance chance
• Any other relevant hidden/secondary stats

Having this information visible would make planning builds easier.

Mass chest opening + potion + bomb drag QoL

Holding Shift or Ctrl and click to open multiple chests at once using the first option and dragging mass bombs to a cannon would be a helpful.

This is noticeable in Endless runs and Duos. The actual fights can take 1-2 seconds, while managing the shop, potions and opening a large number of chests can take 10-15 minutes. If your partner is running something like a level 3 Hook or Witch build, you can end up waiting for them to manually open a huge number of chests which is a pain.

Not sure what the best solution is for potions without fundamentally changing their mechanics, but potion management becomes a time sink in long Endless runs.

Additional Partner Information in Duos

Seeing their inventory, instead of just their equipped items. Item glows not just on completion, etc.

Tournament Mode

A competitive mode where X players enter a run and play live rounds until there is one player remaining could be really interesting.

I'd imagine this would need something closer to an item pool system rather than completely independent item chances, similar to how some other auto-battlers handle shared resources.

The main concern would obviously be balance. If certain items are essential to the strongest builds, a shared item pool could make those items super powerful/contested. Resulting in items and builds would need to be rebalanced around the new system.

I think this has been mentioned before and probably already on the roadmap but excited to see it.

https://preview.redd.it/8iyceeb7xgjh1.png?width=3813&format=png&auto=webp&s=1f1c43884a60934e8f701047b320784fd7e90ba1

https://preview.redd.it/5bara74q36jh1.png?width=1323&format=png&auto=webp&s=4c959e55966f34292f3594b1d43d2187dcfc0043

Has anyone ever seen this item?