r/balatro

This isn't a hate post, just something that is annoying me. I'm about halfway through working on c++ and I'm by no means consistent with my wins, but the thing that really bothers me is how I almost always only win when I'm playing pairs. Gold stake seems extremely inconsistent and way hardee with any other hand. I've seen Balatro University's videos where he talks about just playing pairs which tells me I'm not alone here.

But that's... really boring? If I try to go for more variety almost always the 5 card hands just never scale fast enough to win in 1 hand. Playing 4 pairs per ante is pretty easy, playing just 2 straights per ante can be really hard. It feels like the difficulty of building the hand to play doesn't scale along with the scoring potential you get from it, if that makes sense. For example, lairs might score half or a third as much as a bigger hand, but they are much more than 2x or 3x as easy to play.

I'm sure the responses will be something like "git gud", but I'm not asking for the game to be easier, I just wish it wasn't so constrained to only one optimal play style for gold stake. I also admit I'm not good at this game so maybe this is just a skill issue, I don't know. No clue what to expect in the next update, but a focus on non-pair builds would be nice.

Sometimes I have runs where I get a solid build going and it becomes clear well in advance that everything up to and including the Ante 8 boss is going to get one-shot. It's nice to win the run with no hassle, but it feels unsatisfying to end it there before the build encounters a real challenge. However, if you proceed it just ends unceremoniously within a couple antes when the blinds skyrocket into 8-9 figures. You go from one-shotting everything guaranteed to suddenly having zero chance even if you draw the perfect hands.

It actually feels way more satisfying when I'm barely scoring enough and have to rely on certain cards to scrape past the final boss, and then can just end the run there.

If I can do that people must have done far more but I'm curious as to what the highest we've seen is and searching for "level" gets people talking about Ante 12 and idc idc