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Ledgem posted:Now, i do think she played diamonds badly and i want to give it a shot myself but given most enemies oneshot summons.I do get where shes coming from. Also the modifier deck upgrades kinda suck. They do for moon-in-star too. I didn't have this experience at all with diamonds. There's a lot of different ways to protect your summons through ai manipulation, your own cards, items, and perks.
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May 3, 2024 19:17
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IcePhoenix posted:I didn't have this experience at all with diamonds. There's a lot of different ways to protect your summons through ai manipulation, your own cards, items, and perks. To an extent yes, but summon HP doesn’t scale with character or scenario level, so you get to a point where any random twin bolt or something can one shot a summon through warden’s robe. You can’t realistically prevent summons from being attacked at all throughout an entire scenario, especially melee ones.
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May 3, 2024 20:13
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Ledgem posted:No stop nerfing the fun cool busted things you can do! Its bad enough how much things like enhancements and items in general feel nerfed dont nerf them again! Yeah I’d rather agree with this sentiment. Community balancing is good, but removing all the synergies can lead to a sense of stagnancy. It’s like opening up a bag of trail mix and finding that someone has methodically picked out all the chocolate chips. If the game is tuned to challenge the most experienced players, then progression can be so difficult and/or specific that you want to follow a walkthrough just to avoid the trap choices that have been nerfed into the ground. Better to let people have fun and try different things, and balance the game with the idea that there are many paths to success.
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May 3, 2024 20:38
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This is a bummer, I am the exact opposite, I love Frosthaven combat considerably more than Gloomhaven because the class balance is so polished, the items don't basically change your effective level by +1 or more, and I feel like every class gets cool and impactful level upgrades with fewer completely broken cards. I just started Diamond/Prism at level 3 and was astounded at how much I wrecked the scenario we were in, and I am extremely excited about some of the perks and level up cards I have planned out. And sorry but to be blunt, it's much much easier to houserule in high powered abilities and combos if you want them than it is to houserule busted open classes like Music Note, Eclipse and 3 Spears to prevent them from stealing the spotlight and turning every single scenario into a steamroll. But hey if you like a steamroll you can literally just import any unbalanced class or item from GH if you have it, or just like, sharpy over item 73 to remove the tap symbol. mightygerm posted:To an extent yes, but summon HP doesn’t scale with character or scenario level, so you get to a point where any random twin bolt or something can one shot a summon through warden’s robe. You can’t realistically prevent summons from being attacked at all throughout an entire scenario, especially melee ones. For Diamond if you're using something like the Jackal Mech or Arcing Generator into later levels I guess that makes sense but then I'd say: don't run low HP level 1 melee summons at high levels. The range summon variety is great in this class, you get higher HP melee summons at mid and high level, this class is designed for you to protect your damaged summons via Mode Transfer, and you also get a "play summon from loss pile" card at level 1. Not trying to be all "get gud" or whatever, but summon classes absolutely should be played with some caution and finesse, you can of course get unlucky but if you're struggling I would seriously consider either swapping classes or dropping the scenario level.
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May 3, 2024 20:43
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Kaal posted:Yeah I’d rather agree with this sentiment. Community balancing is good, but removing all the synergies can lead to a sense of stagnancy. It’s like opening up a bag of trail mix and finding that someone has methodically picked out all the chocolate chips. If the game is tuned to challenge the most experienced players, then progression can be so difficult and/or specific that you want to follow a walkthrough just to avoid the trap choices that have been nerfed into the ground. Better to let people have fun and try different things, and balance the game with the idea that there are many paths to success. I would absolutely love to hear about all the FH trap levels compared to totally dead levels for some classes like v1 Tinkerer. If anything me and my group spend a lot more time fretting over which level up card to get because it's rare to even get a single dud side on any level up card, and there's even fewer opportunities to go "oh level 6 isn't that great for my build so I'll take the second level 5"
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May 3, 2024 20:45
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mightygerm posted:To an extent yes, but summon HP doesn’t scale with character or scenario level, so you get to a point where any random twin bolt or something can one shot a summon through warden’s robe. You can’t realistically prevent summons from being attacked at all throughout an entire scenario, especially melee ones. This isn't true at all. My group almost never has a problem with this because of careful positioning and other party members being willing to tank. It's very rare that we lose a summon
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May 3, 2024 20:49
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dwarf74 posted:Oh absolutely. The scenario before was more interesting - we also crushed it but not quite so dramatically. Spoilers building 90, Coral. We did our last two challenges on this scenario to complete the challenge deck. One was a challenge we had rejected over and over and were dreading - it was the one that lowers your attack strength by one across the board, but gives you retaliate equal to your shield value. This resulted in our lovely coral friend having retaliate 10 at some point, which made elite frost demons much more manageable. At one point I set up a stun and despite the fact that coral was mostly surrounded and at 8 health, it was obviously better to not use it and let them get retaliated on instead.
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May 3, 2024 20:50
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Guy A. Person posted:I would absolutely love to hear about all the FH trap levels compared to totally dead levels for some classes like v1 Tinkerer. If anything me and my group spend a lot more time fretting over which level up card to get because it's rare to even get a single dud side on any level up card, and there's even fewer opportunities to go "oh level 6 isn't that great for my build so I'll take the second level 5"
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May 3, 2024 20:53
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Ledgem posted:No stop nerfing the fun cool busted things you can do! Its bad enough how much things like enhancements and items in general feel nerfed dont nerf them again! I also think the item shop is way more diverse and interesting. The killer GH items don't exist because those collapsed all the choices - which again made things just boring and obvious. Like, boots are a good example here - there's crude and rough - cheap, generic, effective. There's Dancing Slippers which give you an extra move ability reactively, which combos very well with some stuff on Drifter, Astral, Snowflake, etc. There's the flipside - duelist shoes - which do the same but proactively. And then there's the cool effects like flexible slippers - the looty booties - that are amazing, but that you'd be hard pressed to pick if striding existed. There's a real progression to items, which just wasn't present in GH1e. Yeah, some are niche and weird - but others like the Reinforced Shield are extremely useful. Potion-wise, you've got other extremely strong choices than just power and stamina - they're sometimes less straightforward but just... blowing something up directly... is huge. And item 173? Yeah it would absolutely 100% be wildly overpowered if it wasn't a tap item. That would trivialize element generation for a whole party. It would probably be the (or close to the) strongest chest item in the game for many characters and most parties. I think you're underestimating how crazy getting wild elements out of turn, passively, can be. dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 21:31 on May 3, 2024 |
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May 3, 2024 21:23
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:This would have gotten us a round 5 and maybe a round 6 but I think it'd still have been pretty easy. We were levels 9,9, and 8 playing on scenario level 7 so like, not exactly the common case for game-balance.
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May 3, 2024 21:24
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Elephant Ambush posted:This isn't true at all. My group almost never has a problem with this because of careful positioning and other party members being willing to tank. It's very rare that we lose a summon you can also enhance their HP relatively cheaply. That +1 can go a long way
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May 3, 2024 22:09
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Im not trying to defend gloomhaven's bad cards, fake choices, they totally existed. I just feel with frosthaven there are levels where instead of one card being obviously worse, they're just both uninteresting. It's happened a few times for one of our players where they leveled up and went "well this sucks, nothing is worthwile" with shackles and the necromancer starter. And yeah, I read in this thread and elsewhere people with their perfect coordination where summons survive the entire game. Our Diamond player frequently had games where their purpose was soaking up a few hits and losing all their summons or hanging back and doing nothing. Diamond was considered the weakest of our crew for most of their time with us. I think the last scenario (level 9) was the first time she didn't lose a summon and it was mostly thanks to the level 9 summon actually having HP to survive a hit. I do wanna try it myself incase she was playing it bad but im iffy. I get that some groups are drift compatible but for us, people are kinda doing their own thing and making sub-optimal decisions. This also isn't a difficulty complaint, despite our playstyle we can count on one hand the missions we've lost on normal difficulty (and challenges now!). The only one we really struggled with it turned out we were playing with spawns on every turn instead of odd turns (and had winter road event 40 which only triggered because, ok. We sleeved it immediately. Then my partner emailed the dev with YOUR MOVE! cause she was being cheeky. _I_ suggested we flip it at the end of a scenario we've basically won. He emailed her back with the card's backside. _I_ said it didn't count cause it was an email, not the card itself, but my friends wanted to abide by it. Hate that card btw, I don't like someone calling me 'plaything'.). Like, I do enjoy the direction frosthaven has taken some things! Coral being able to burn two cards at high level to just delete multiple enemies and cross rooms or explode a boss, it felt like I actually became powerful. It was also cool to create water everywhere for near-permanent advantage. I will gobble up any gimmick that lets me set up for permanent advantage, though it becomes less interesting if the modifier deck is boring). Meteor was kinda eh at first cause it felt like I had to do annoying setup AND take damage just for a slightly bigger punch than normal and I missed having advantage, but I had item 167 (MORE ITEMS LIKE THIS! Holy poo poo seriously, this is maybe the coolest item in the game IMO. My only desire for it would be a tap instead of burn.) and that helped. When I got to the higher levels I got to remove all the cards that cared about enemies standing on bad terrain and used my extremely slim mod deck to push/pull enemies and grind them on the lava then blow up most of the HP of a room with double burns (THATS what burns should be doing! If my burns didn't give me a giant fuckoff turn or a powerful constant passive I dunno why I'd even bother) But now ive got moon-in-star and I just. So many weak burns on top of her infusions, you'd think she was a gloomhaven character. I also don't like that she has to do all this elemental setup _just_ for an attack 5 or whatever. Attack five isn't that fancy! It's boring! I kinda wanna do her sword summon setup and try to be a retaliate monster like with Coral but she only gets retaliate 1 on a passive or has cards that only last a turn for it. And yeah, with how much her stuff costs elements and how rare other players ever use elements I think it would be cool if I could have her item 173 actually power up her cards all the time instead of maybe pay off 1 card once per game. Not like anyone else ever needs the drat elements, I don't see how it would break the game at all. Most elemental infusions are incidental +1s or mandatory that you would have set up for them yourself with your own character. I'd be curious as to what cards or characters would be broken if 173 was passive, like theoretically. Anyway, this might be nonsense cause I haven't played her yet but I don't exactly have much enthusiasm. Maybe I'll let someone elseplay her if I don't like her. And I guess just blowing up a guy with with a damage potion is useful, but it's not exactly interesting. It doesn't enable anything cool. At least +2 damage on everything combined with multi-attacks _enables_ something. I want my items to combo off each other and not just be generically useful. I don't think gloomhaven 1 had better items, don't get me wrong. I just think they still aren't interesting for the most part. The cool items are rare and far between and often feel like they've been overcorrected in what they can do. I'm surprised 167 even exists given everything else. It's just a shame my friend is resorting to gloomhaven for fun 'cause nothing in frost appeals to her. She just wants a big strong idiot who can punch really hard without having to setup or work with gimmicks. Diamonds was just the worst for her and Bannerspear she had a lot of trouble getting off the positionals so there were many wasted turns. She's going for Sun cause they hand off blesses and are generically tanky. That way she never feels like a turn is 'wasted'. I... don't really feel the same way, I like gimmicks and setting stuff up I just hate it when I put in a bunch of effort to do my gimmick and it ends up feeling underwhelming. if I'm gonna set up for 3 turns I want explode the entire room or be a walking immovable object that retaliates for more damage that it takes! (that last one is only good when its repeatable. Every single time I tried to be the retaliate monster with the geminate the enemies would flip something that hosed me over. If it's a passive atleast it's there when you need it!) Ledgem fucked around with this message at 23:38 on May 3, 2024 |
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May 3, 2024 23:35
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This has come up before in the thread:Ledgem posted:I get that some groups are drift compatible but for us, people are kinda doing their own thing and making sub-optimal decisions. Sorry if that comes off as harsh or dismissive but like with diamonds specifically I was a monster for my group because we worked together. Our "moon-in-star" is having a good time with his build (I am not really paying the specifics any mind so I can't offer any advice for you there) but it's possible he just vibes with it more than you do. I know he runs the wound/muddle on every attack infusion which has helped us out an awful lot. What scenario levels are you guys running? Our group has generally been 2 or 3 for probably 90% of our playtime. e: the collaboration thing is also huge for a banner spear. We have one right now and she is constantly asking if people can stand in specific places, or just where they're planning to be in general IcePhoenix fucked around with this message at 00:24 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 00:13
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Elephant Ambush posted:This isn't true at all. My group almost never has a problem with this because of careful positioning and other party members being willing to tank. It's very rare that we lose a summon Do you not fight shrike demons or multi target lurkers or something? I’m not having trouble with summons dying all the time or anything, but it feels like it only takes one bad set of draws from the nastier ranged monsters at a decently high level to pop them. Not everyone is in the perfect position every round to account for the variety of ability cards that can be drawn, and it only takes one bad monster turn to lose em. It’s more of an edge case annoyance than a showstopper. Edit: the point I’m trying to make is less of a personal struggle with playing the class and more of a game design thing. Characters and most(?) scenarios where you have to protect some AI controlled NPC lets you lose cards to negate damage. It’s a safety valve against bad RNG and prevents things like positioning mistakes from ending a scenario. But most summons are loss cards, are melee and will charge right into retaliating creatures, by default are prioritized by monster targeting over the summoner, etc. It takes active effort every turn just not to make them kill themselves. Many aspects of this game are actively hostile to player summons and I don’t think they are strong enough to warrant that. In an optimal situation they are powerful but there are many situations where they feel like a liability. mightygerm fucked around with this message at 00:30 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 00:18
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Astral/Moon-In-star So there's basically two main "builds" - one that uses elements for hefty attacks (the bruiser) and one that chains Infusions. I think the latter is a lot more fun and powerful - it particularly comes online at 5th with Gemstone Resonance, but it works before then. You've got 11 cards so it's perfectly fine to burn 2 for infusions during your first rest cycle, then 1 more each following cycle. As those build up, they combo off each other massively. When you get Gemstone Resonance you can combo off like that freely. And yeah Infuser is one case where that particular chest item would be broken if it was persistent. It would single handedly solve the element puzzle - which is the core competency for the class as a whole. More to the point, it would solve elements for the whole party. It's a constantly reusable element potion. That's just bonkers. It's already one of the strongest 5 classes in the game. Otherwise - there's a lot there and I can't reply to. What class do you think has dead levels? What cards? I honestly think there aren't any total dead cards in the game so I'm scratching my head there. And yes - the game requires coordination, which is likely a big part of why Prism had such a rough time with everything. 
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May 4, 2024 00:34
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IcePhoenix posted:This has come up before in the thread: usually scenario level 3 or 4 for year 2. Our group levels pretty fast between double challenges and trying to maximize EXP gain every scenario. And like,we still work together but I mean, we don't discuss everything every turn otherwise it'd take forever. If someone goes "hey im low on hp someone wanna take some hits for me" someone will usually help out but like, there's no way to babysit the Diamond's summons when she frequently takes the highest initiative and becomes the target for every attack because when she goes slow, someone else goes after the target she wanted to hit so the summon doesn't do anything anymore. She often blames "the summon AI means I can't control them" for that but that's kinda where I feel like she might be playing them wrong. That's what I mean by drift compatible; IDK how groups cooporate more than we already do in these games without it turning into someone shouting orders and being a That Guy. Edit: Astral being one of the strongest is so weird to me. I don't see anything she can do that feels anywhere near as powerful as Coral or Meteor... Also, the cards well, It was one of our players who had that issue more. I never felt that way with coral or meteor. I think it might have been level 6 for Shackles? I don't remember for the necromancer it was a while ago. For Astral they just look underwhelming. 2, 6,7 and 9... Like yeah they're not weak but Im not gonna be excited to get those cards... 5 though at least I can _sorta_ try to have strengthen up as frequently as possible. def gonna be another major stamina potion character but then who isn't. Ledgem fucked around with this message at 00:52 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 00:37
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mightygerm posted:Do you not fight shrike demons or multi target lurkers or something? I’m not having trouble with summons dying all the time or anything, but it feels like it only takes one bad set of draws from the nastier ranged monsters at a decently high level to pop them. Not everyone is in the perfect position every round to account for the variety of ability cards that can be drawn, and it only takes one bad monster turn to lose em. It’s more of an edge case annoyance than a showstopper. In general, summoners have a lot of good tools in FH to protect their valuable little buddies. There's Wardens Robes, for one. Scenario 4 seeds the Horn of Command, which is an amazing summon defense tool. Boneshaper has cards to protect summons from damage all the way from Level 1 - and can totally neutralize Retaliate. The class in question Has a ton of Transfers - which let them jump into a spot to take the heat for one of their summons. They've got reactive abilities like Long Range Missile. And ultimately they can resort to a more "bruiser" build if a scenario is particularly unfriendly for their summons - like 32 for example. But a summon like the heal bot will come out, stay alive all scenario, damage, and thrown around incidental healing.
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May 4, 2024 00:41
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mightygerm posted:Do you not fight shrike demons or multi target lurkers or something? I’m not having trouble with summons dying all the time or anything, but it feels like it only takes one bad set of draws from the nastier ranged monsters at a decently high level to pop them. Not everyone is in the perfect position every round to account for the variety of ability cards that can be drawn, and it only takes one bad monster turn to lose em. It’s more of an edge case annoyance than a showstopper. Oh yeah of course that happens but it's rare because we know what all the monsters can do and before we pick cards every round we ask ourselves "what's the worst thing this enemy could draw?" and try to plan around that. Obviously it doesn't always work, and I will qualify my initial statement by saying that when I played Boneshaper I lost summons all the time. However those are non loss so it wasn't as big a deal. For loss summons we're way more careful. And if a loss summon dies it's pretty much always near the end of the scenario And to Phoenix's point, the absolute worst design decision in GH was to start every campaign by telling everyone they were all selfish cut throat mercs only partying up out of convenience. I realize that this was one fluffy way to explain the rules about not trading gold and items but it gave way too many players the idea that cooperation is bad and that the best way to have fun is ignore everyone in your party and never help them and just do your own thing and guess what? Tons of those people ended up hating the game because they would lose scenarios and for some reason none of them would consider that the reason they lost is because they refused to help each other People can play however they want but I constantly see people posting about how they didn't enjoy certain classes that I absolutely loved and know for a fact are powerful and it's just weird to me. I don't expect everyone to be a master strategist or whatever because that's what difficulty settings are for, but I see people hating Banner Spear and Boneshaper and they're super powerful if you have a party of people willing to help maximize that potential And while I'm posting I might as well mention that I understand how "doing nothing" during a turn feels bad and seems wasteful, but I would rather back up a couple hexes and effectively skip my turn than insisting on charging into a pile of enemies and attacking on enemy for 4 only to get attacked multiple times and lose a card to avoid dying. We have a guy in our TTS group that I love very dearly as a friend but the rest of us have to do with him probably once every other scenario. He gets really annoyed that he's not contributing to the success of the round but when we point out what would have happened if he'd "maximized" his own turn he calms down. I totally get it. It's happened to many tons of times in the last 6 or 7 years playing this game but that's just how it is in strategy games sometimes
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May 4, 2024 01:04
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Ledgem posted:usually scenario level 3 or 4 for year 2. Our group levels pretty fast between double challenges and trying to maximize EXP gain every scenario. that leveling speed is wild to me lol. We're in year 2 as well and I don't think anyone has ever been higher than 7. Also yeah it sounds like your friend is playing diamonds how she wants it to play and not how it actually plays. Dwarf mentioned the horn of command which I used all the time, I also used the one hander that let's you give a nearby target (either adjacent or range 2 iirc) shield 1, as well as the aforementioned warden's robes. And since those are all tap instead of burn, I had them back after every long rest. And the Diamond's long rest perk is insane so there's pretty much no reason to short rest unless it will cost you your battle goal/mastery/the scenario.
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May 4, 2024 01:15
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Boneshaper was a fan favourite for our group! The skeletons didn't die to retaliate and ganged up on enemies a lot. They also didn't die nearly as much as Diamond's summons, somehow. Diamond's player says its because of the retaliate protection. IDK. She also didn't _hate_ the bannerspear just felt it was weak at DPS. She focused entirely on summoning every banner she could and trying to protect them, then would exhaust early every scenario. It helped the skeletons a lot with the damage banner. Also she refused to long rest at all ever in either gloom or frost until Diamonds, and even then we had to convince her to take that perk after several sessions. Edit: Also for leveling speed, we just try to maximise EXP and often burn all our cards at the end of a scenario when we've nearly won. So higher levels were common. I also intentionally delayed retiring Meteor so I could try out his high level cards and the Diamond/bannerspear player specifically hates retiring until she's experienced everything she can so she picks retirements she can control and we had to house-rule retirement at level '10' so she would have to retire _eventually_. Ledgem fucked around with this message at 01:35 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 01:20
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Ledgem posted:It's just a shame my friend is resorting to gloomhaven for fun 'cause nothing in frost appeals to her. She just wants a big strong idiot who can punch really hard without having to setup or work with gimmicks. Diamonds was just the worst for her and Bannerspear she had a lot of trouble getting off the positionals so there were many wasted turns. She's going for Sun cause they hand off blesses and are generically tanky. That way she never feels like a turn is 'wasted'. I... don't really feel the same way, I like gimmicks and setting stuff up I just hate it when I put in a bunch of effort to do my gimmick and it ends up feeling underwhelming. if I'm gonna set up for 3 turns I want explode the entire room or be a walking immovable object that retaliates for more damage that it takes! (that last one is only good when its repeatable. Every single time I tried to be the retaliate monster with the geminate the enemies would flip something that hosed me over. If it's a passive atleast it's there when you need it!) So I disagree on a lot of aspect of this discussion but this is definitely something I will 100% cop to, Frosthaven is definitely the tryhard sequel to Gloomhaven particularly when it comes to complexity and fiddliness of character classes. The Drifter is realistically the only true low complexity class and the Banner Spear's "2" is like borderline at best. Having 4 of the 6 starting classes in a 2-4 player game rank at or above 3/5 complexity (and in particular having two at a full 5 complexity) is a real own goal IMO. I think in retrospect relegating Geminate to a hidden class (which from early teasers I believe it was) and adding at least one super straightforward 1 pointer class -- even if it was a seeming retread of earlier concepts -- is probably the least they should have done. Even that's being a bit generous, realistically for a 4 player game where there's even the potential for new players you probably want fully 4 classes that each rank at under 3/5 complexity, if they badly wanted to give veteran players more to sink their teeth into then expand the starting classes to 8 and have a spread of like 1,1,2,2,3,4,4,5 complexity rankings. Really even as someone who loves "puzzle" classes, opening up a new class with 2 or 3 left to go has me secretly hoping for some himbo that hits big and does little else even tho I totally realize that is not ever going to be the case at this point.
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May 4, 2024 02:29
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Your friend sounds disastrously bad to be honest.
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May 4, 2024 02:45
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I am eagerly awaiting when GH2e finally gets released. The classes are really awesome. They've been done for well over a year.
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May 4, 2024 02:46
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Failboattootoot posted:Your friend sounds disastrously bad to be honest. To be totally fair summon classes are tricky to play, although in FH and beyond they've gotten a ton of QoL improvements, but just realistically the kind of patient and calculating play required to get the most out of them isn't going to be for everyone (and I mean yeah I know, this is a tactical strategy game, but again being co-op there should be a few "point and click to do simple thing" classes that people can veg out with)
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May 4, 2024 03:07
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I do think there were gloomhaven classes that were "too simple", like Sun. Every turn being like, some small variant of "attack 5" while stacking shields was both really strong and not very interesting.. In comparison, I think drifter is a much better character. You can control how simply he plays by choosing which loss cards you play. That provides a simple path to learn the game or relax with, while giving you plenty of options to switch it up once comfortable. I do think there should have been a second simple class along those lines among the starting frosthaven characters. Banner spear was cool but I think it would have been much harder to use them effectively if I didn't have a boneshaper ally on the board - I can see that being pretty frustrating for a new player. Gloomhaven style loss summons do feel very bad to lose. It's extra demoralizing to have a loss card that is in some ways persistent but can end up just gone through bad luck of the monster deck. I'm really happy the boneshaper design works so well without that - it still feels bad to lose your summons but it's not nearly as crushing.
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May 4, 2024 04:31
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Yeah GH1e had some major design flaws in some classes, unfortunately. Spellweaver had degenerate play patterns where they turned into a Cold Fire bot. Note trivialized encounters. (Sun could get the same way after 100g.) Eclipse had... the whole drat class. Someone actually just asked on Reddit the other day if FH characters are stronger than GH characters, after adding a Blinkblade to the party. I think the fairest answer is - they're stronger than the weakest but weaker than the strongest. They're much better at damage overall but (with asterisks) worse on control. GH2e takes lessons learned from Frosthaven and honestly increases the availability of cc by a measure (but not of course to GH1e levels). As for simplicity - GH2e still keeps that part of things overall. Bruiser is just as simple but now doesn't suck. Silent Knife/Scoundrel is arguably simpler now because the ranged build is a real thing. Sun and Saw - with Saw being way more obviously good without (again) using a single card as a crutch. Spellweaver is a class that functions 1-9 and doesn't have a summon that's stronger than the rest of the character. I think it's got about 5-6 classes that are on Drifter level or even easier tbh. On the flipside, it has some more complicated classes too - and one which is way up there. Again, I'm mad it isn't out yet.
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May 4, 2024 15:25
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah GH1e had some major design flaws in some classes, unfortunately. Spellweaver had degenerate play patterns where they turned into a Cold Fire bot. Note trivialized encounters. (Sun could get the same way after 100g.) Eclipse had... the whole drat class. What was the one saw card? My saw experiene was that if you built murder machine saw, it worked great. High movement and a lot of attack 4+'s.
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May 4, 2024 16:27
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Saw was such a great class. I assume the one card was kill any normal or elite enemy with at least 2 status conditions, which you would of course preceed with one of your attacks that gave those conditions. I also loved enhancing Hamstring with jump for non-loss jump 6 / immobilize self.
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May 4, 2024 16:47
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Gloomhaven 1E had the problem that certain classes were just too good: when I was playing Eclipse, for many scenarios it was clear I could have soloed the whole thing, which meant the whole cooperative element of play went out the window and the other players were getting to do something, but knew they didn't really matter that much. That wasn't fun when I was on the other side watching Three Spears or Eclipse solo a scenario. Music Note could too, but at least the songs typically helped everyone be more awesome. Prism is the only class I've played or seen yet in Frosthaven that seems like it's approaching the edge of too good, and that's if everything is going well. Complaining that things typically don't go well just feels like an odd complaint to me: if you want to steamroller the scenarios, play at difficulty -1 or -2, or keep pushing for retirements to keep monster levels low. The game's clearly trying to produce at least some mixture of "we stomped that scenario hard" with "it looked like we had no way to win but somehow we pulled that off" and the occasional "we didn't pull it off" or "welp, don't run into six ranged attacks that add brittle when we play this scenario again, Bannerspear." I am on the side that I think Frosthaven went a little too far in the direction of character complexity and has too many scenarios that are too challenging or have victory conditions that are too frustrating, but Prism might be the best-designed class in the set. If anything, it's dangerously close to the "I could solo this scenario" line and the constant threat of your summons getting mulched is the only thing stopping that. I can't comprehend why someone who enjoyed Brute and Sun in Gloomhaven would opt for Prism, as it's pretty obviously "extremely fiddly summoning class." Like, more than Circles in Gloomhaven. Even Blinkblade would be a better choice for someone who wants to stab things, though there's only a handful of classes that approach Sun's role for sitting and bashing things. Given that most people's starting impression in Gloomhaven was "My Brute runs up to tank these bandits" followed by getting half killed by them on the first turn, I'd have expected even a player who likes bashing things to understand stuff like the combat initiative dance, and that means Blinkblade is plenty bashy despite the high complexity level. I run the monster turns when we play, so I'm usually the one playing the dedicated summoning class, because you have to really know how both your summons and the enemies will act to do a good job. Prism has a ridiculous number of tools to sustain summons in-play, and I'm wondering if this player wasn't getting too many summons out (one per rest cycle is about right, except in those small-map scenarios where you know things will wrap in 12-14 turns and can aim to have four summons out by your second long rest; more than four is too many IMO). Though I agree getting them killed has the same effect, and that Prism is definitely a reverse-snowball where when things go wrong, you'll rapidly have one or zero summons out and be in trouble. Prism spoilers: I ran Prism with a party of 3 (I think Fist and Bannerspear initially, which was a great fit), and then briefly with newly-minted Meteor and Shackles before I too retired, so I had some help with taking hits at lower levels but was the tank later on. The basic build concept is going to be around whether you're doing more damage, or using your summons to do it, but that will never be purely one or the other. The thing that's easy to miss with Prism, especially if you read build guides, is that you have a toolkit you bring along and you will have to make choices at the start of every scenario, and more choices during the scenario, about which tools you need and which you don't. You won't bring every summons to every scenario and the victory condition and monster mix will determine what does come along; you won't summon everything you bring, except maybe for the XP at the end stages, because you need some of those card bottoms to play and because the situation on the map will dictate which tool you pull out of the kit. An immobile (sort of) ranged summons will be great in some scenarios and worse than useless in others. The Jackal Mech is a liability as often as it is a help and you probably want it along if you plan on using its skin yourself; I suppose if you're stacking melee mechs it can join the dogpile, but that's a high-risk play IMO. You usually want a mix of summons between ranged attackers and melee attackers. You have a handful of summons that can take more than one hit without help. At least the tank is obviously the tank, but it will die in 2-3 turns if you don't provide support for it. The summons combat dance gets more complex for Prism: sure, summon late in the round, then go fast next round, but you need to do a calculation based on the enemies in the area. Ranged summons are usually very forgiving in the absence of enemy ranged attackers who sometimes shoot the furthest away enemy, so this mainly applies to melee summons: how many hits do you expect the summons to take after your turn? How much damage? And how healthy are the monsters it would be engaged with? If you can kill them all, your summons is safe. If your summons (plus items) can absorb the expected damage, you're also OK. If neither case is true, you need a plan to keep your summons alive (unless you prefer it take these attacks and die, which is rare but does happen). Unlike pretty much every other summoning class, Prism has multiple tools for the last scenario. Case 1: There's multiple imps clustered together. At lower level, your tank and leaper can probably tank them (if they don't add brittle, at least), but certainly not at higher level. So you're looking for the Arc Generator to kill all the imps before they get to go. It will naturally move in and take one attack, so you want cards to grant it one or more additional attacks. If it's a risk, play a top command attack card and a transfer bottom so that if an imp or two survive, you take the return fire and keep your generator. Case 2: Usually a solitary enemy at lower monster level, but your tank can tank the hits, so you can leave it be this turn and focus on dealing with something else. "I don't need to do anything to keep this summons alive" is rarer for the melee summons and fairly common for the ranged ones, but this is nice initially and vital once you have multiple summons out, because you probably can't keep them all going. Typically, you'll want to transfer in to pull off the damage and then heal it, but at lower levels your healing mech can keep your tank topped off. Case 3: Your summons can't kill the enemy or survive one round of counterattacks. For most summoning classes, this is just bad: you have to waste a movement command to rescue your summons and most likely it will be in a bad position the following round. But Prism has multiple solutions. The obvious one is to transfer in and take the hits in place of your summons. That isn't ideal, as the summons will miss its next turn, but sometimes it's worth doing if you can add in some damage and perhaps kill a monster (works best with a melee-focused Prism, obviously). But you have other options, especially the summons combat dance. If you have 2-3 summons out and attacking and you have one or more cards with multiple attacks/targets, at higher level (when your melee summons are more at risk) you're going through a substantial amount of modifier cards in a round. You should have stacked that deck with the "Move 2 a summons" modifier cards; if one comes up it gives you a free combat dance to get your summons out of harm's way, and they're usually useful to reposition if you don't need one for that purpose. You can potentially move a second summons in to draw off some of the return fire on the first: you are playing the rare class with multiple summons that can usually take one hit without dying at higher levels. You have multiple ways to heal damage on an endangered summons, including transferring in and then away again on the same turn. If you're summons-focused, you should also have multiple command moves to get that summons out of trouble; often you can play them as a contingency. This works better for the faster summons (hey, Mr. Generator); the tank's utility can drop off at high levels because it can take maybe 1-2 hits but can't get away. Key especially to the summons combat dance is having at least one other character up in the front or wherever your melee summons want to be fighting, so you can dance back and have those monsters focus someone with more health instead. Note that you don't need especially cooperative players to pull this trick off so long as you understand the monster focusing and movement rules, though a player could always run away and abandon your summons to the monsters. But the tricks at higher play levels are that you should have boosted movement on your starting summons and/or should be confining yourself more to higher-level summoning. Also, you're either dishing out lots of damage yourself to shred the more dangerous monsters, or you have lots of tools to take damage or even to resummon if your summons get wiped out (though this happened to me in maybe 3-4 scenarios, with at least one of those being deliberate and one being a general disaster that we lost completely on first play).
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May 4, 2024 16:57
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Failboattootoot posted:What was the one saw card? My saw experiene was that if you built murder machine saw, it worked great. High movement and a lot of attack 4+'s. Saw 2e is probably my favorite class in all the Havens. It still has Support Saw (but way more viable) and Angry Saw (with a focus on attacking hurt enemies.) If you missed it, here's the first few levels. https://imgur.com/a/EBZBNrb
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May 4, 2024 17:21
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What's that condition on the bottom of Blood Transfusion?
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May 4, 2024 17:45
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Cliff posted:What's that condition on the bottom of Blood Transfusion? might be a new regen symbol This is all super good advice. One thing I'd add wrt the immovable summons is that granting something "move 2" is completely different than granting it "move +2." The latter adds the 2 to their base, but if they have no movement (as in a line, not a zero) then they can't move. But the former ignores that, it just lets you move them two spaces. So between the modifier deck and the cards in your loadout there's still a healthy amount of ways to move your little immobile turret buddy through a scenario. Though it will still be a giant pain and nearly impossible for them to keep up in a longer map without becoming them and moving yourself.
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May 4, 2024 18:02
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IcePhoenix posted:might be a new regen symbol It's a new condition called safeguard that prevents you from getting one negative condition, and lasts until you would get one (so like, you walk around with it for several rounds until an enemy tries to poison you, then you remove the safeguard but don't get poisoned). It's neat and much cooler than you might think, and adds a lot of variety in the class of cards that is "heals plus some other effect"
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May 4, 2024 18:14
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Guy A. Person posted:It's neat and much cooler than you might think I dunno man my first thought on reading what it does was "drat that owns"
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May 4, 2024 18:20
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Yeah it is also a stealth buff to Muddle attacks because enemies can also get it. 
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May 4, 2024 18:27
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IcePhoenix posted:I dunno man my first thought on reading what it does was "drat that owns" true maybe I have been playing some Frosthaven classes that are effectively immune to certain conditions for so long that it's skewed my perception of their danger lol
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May 4, 2024 18:27
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Narsham posted:Gloomhaven 1E had the problem that certain classes were just too good: when I was playing Eclipse, for many scenarios it was clear I could have soloed the whole thing, which meant the whole cooperative element of play went out the window and the other players were getting to do something, but knew they didn't really matter that much. That wasn't fun when I was on the other side watching Three Spears or Eclipse solo a scenario. Music Note could too, but at least the songs typically helped everyone be more awesome. That strong? Though I feel like I've heard every class is the strongest at this point from various comments... IDK how it can be so strong dealing with shield enemies. Shield and Retaliate were the things our Diamond player complained about _constantly_. Her summons would plink off and do nothing or die from the retaliate damage. Also she was not someone who paced her burns; all the summons, like all the banners, would be out in round 1 unless it looked like a particularly long hallway mission. I told her she should probably not try to go faster than everyone but she insisted that if she didn't, she wouldn't get to do anything As for picking the finicky class, well. Unfortunately our group (due to gloomhaven) has a mentality of "you play the class you unlock". Since frosthaven doesn't work this way, people just... don't retire until there's a class to switch into. Diamonds player refuses to retire until she's done a bunch at level 9 and one player willspeedrun retirements just to open new class boxes and convinced everyone to never open a new box unless you've retired and are about to play it, so unless you're me and look things up once they're unlocked nobody knows what they're getting into aside from me sharing the gimmick on those who ask (due to nobody wanting to get trapped into picking a trap style class at that point). Diamonds is stubborn and will see things through even if she doesn't like it. The other player ditched trap after opening it after 1 scenario, a boss one, where he did literally zero damage and flipped no cards. (still won. Power of Coral) Anyway, it happened to line up that we unlocked diamonds just before Bannerspear was finally going to retire. We did have Meteor unlocked too at that point but she uh, she believes that gimmicks involving putting tiles on the map "simply do not work" with haven and it just clutters everything up and makes things annoying. So she refuses to touch Meteor and Trap for those reasons and got annoyed at me many times with Coral and its gimmick too. Mind, this player is the one who insisted on playing gloomhaven tinkerer to level '10' and then gloated constantly when she unlocked eclipse. She always says she "figured out" the combo with that one and a few items to delete elites constantly. We had to force her to retire it because eventually the game became three of us walking slowly down empty hallways because she cleared everything before we even got there. Like, I'm all for a big combo that burns out and clears a room but eclipse really was just soloing 4player maps. She's still mad to this day that we forced her to retire and keeps joking she'll bring eclipse back in frosthaven. Not gonna happen. I think I have a bad impression of Saw from how useless I felt with that class cause I retired it around when eclipse did. Into X though, which is my favourite gloomhaven class. It got nerfed since I played it though, its level 8 card is now a level 1 card but it can no longer do millions of damage D= Its summons still seem so weak too. I wanna try it to confirm if they are but man do they look underwhelming)
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May 4, 2024 18:30
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Ledgem posted:That strong? Though I feel like I've heard every class is the strongest at this point from various comments... IDK how it can be so strong dealing with shield enemies. Shield and Retaliate were the things our Diamond player complained about _constantly_. Her summons would plink off and do nothing or die from the retaliate damage. Also she was not someone who paced her burns; all the summons, like all the banners, would be out in round 1 unless it looked like a particularly long hallway mission. I told her she should probably not try to go faster than everyone but she insisted that if she didn't, she wouldn't get to do anything Yeah I mean, it's strong. For shielded enemies you literally have a summon who has pierce 2 and whose mode gives the Hive itself a pierce 5 (tho, true, with -1 attack), and another summon with wound, both at level 1. At mid-level you get access to a poison summon/mode and later you get more wound and pierce. Those are basically 3 of the 5 key ways of dealing with shield aside from heavy attacks and direct damage, and you even get a tiny bit of direct damage as well! It's also worth noting that since these effects are from summons and modes they are persistent/recurring which is huge, since almost any other class usually just gets one or a few cards that do one of these things (see the Brute who gets a single pierce 2 card and another conditional pierce 1 as one example). For retaliate enemies ranged attacks are like the first and only lesson in Dealing With Retaliate 101 and you have 2 level 1 summons with range, a mode that turns all your own melee attacks into ranged attacks (!) and a handful of good ranged cards yourself, plus more of all of this stuff at higher levels. If you summoned melee guys in the first room without paying attention to the retaliate in subsequent rooms, this is exactly what the Transfer ability is for (and don't sleep on the very good Reassemble which allows you to discard a summon instead of just swapping it around, and in a pinch can get back your dead summon with its bottom loss) plus you can get cheeky with the bottom of Long-Range Missile if you have it and swap out on the retaliate damage from a melee summon For enemies with both retaliate and shield this one is admittedly a bit trickier but also luckily fairly rare and you do have options. For like a 1 shield 1 retaliate enemy just stick with the ranged options from your own summons with the Shocking Pulse mode equipped. Something like Flame Demons are a bit scarier because they have high damage AND ranged retaliate, but they already tend to be a challenging and frustrating enemy to deal with for this very reason; I would equip the Shocking Pulse mode again and resign yourself to taking at least one retaliate but probably finishing it off in 2 or at most 3 attacks, otherwise there is also some of the direct damage I mentioned on cards like Interference, Shocking Pulse bottom, Divergent Destruction at level 4 and Heavy Metal at level 9 quote:As for picking the finicky class, well. Unfortunately our group (due to gloomhaven) has a mentality of "you play the class you unlock". oooooof that is definitely not the way we treated even Gloomhaven, and yeah it sounds detrimentally bad to both your groups fun and mental health if you are just launching into the next thing you unlock and then hating it
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May 4, 2024 19:02
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Ledgem posted:The other player ditched trap after opening it after 1 scenario, a boss one, where he did literally zero damage and flipped no cards. (still won. Power of Coral) This sounds like a nightmare and I hate saying "skill issue" but.... Trap is the premiere boss killing character in the game, and can get off Attack 40+. While, mind, using traps to contain and channel enemies through turning the game tower defense. I view Trap as kind of a proxy for player skill - if you can't make it work, that's on you. It's not the top class in the game, and there are some situations that hurt it, but it's arguably the strongest crowd control class in the game. Meteor is the strongest class in the game because it can do all the AI tricks but also do a lot of other stuff. The three check perk makes it so their main shtick doesn't even affect allies. It is so drat strong, that testers thought it was too much. Overlays in general are Frosthaven's version of crowd control, and using them well is extremely important. Monster AI hates negative hexes, and you can send them on a ridiculous long path effectively disarming them round after round. I was playing a class that minors in negative hexes and was able to turn Scenario 59 from hard to easy with 3 negative hexes. I am very sorry if this is harsh but reading that was super  X was irredeemable in its original incarnation. New summon build can get crazy especially with stuff like Rot Maggots. New one is functional before level 8, which should be a low bar for a class to clear. dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 19:33 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 19:31
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I do get that Overlays are crowd control and I think I used them well enough when I could with Meteor, but uh, well, like I said. Cooperation kinda goes as far as "I need help with this guy" or "Im gonna go after this guy, don't worry about him". I gave up on trying to tower defense enemies most of the time because there's always someone who'll go fight that monster anyway. Friends say they don't like the 'tower defense' stuff even when I explain it; I think they would prefer CC was just stuns and disarms. They've also said the rules 'suck' because they think it would be more fun if the monsters didn't ignore bad hexes and simply walked over them and took the damage. I kinda like the tower defense stuff, it's neat the few times I could get it to work, but in the end with Meteor I just had to resort to big damage and setting up pulls/pushes. It's why I'm iffy on Trap cause there's no perk there to protect my allies from themselves. Cause boy howdy do they hate chokepoints. That and uh, ranged/flyers are common and disrupt that plan. Also I wanna add, we don't wanna steamroll the game.Or at least I don't. It's not like we're having difficulty with normal mode or anything. I think if nothing else our team has a good sense of picking whatever cards/builds deal the most straightforward damage, we're doing fine even if scenarios often get a bit spirit islandy where we start weak and then it snowballs. I have definitely carried us a few times by being the only one who invested in high move + jump after Snowflake retired. I just like being able to do dumb combos and setting up for a big turn and setting up either infinite advantage or bypassing the RNG of the deck entirely with Suffer damage. My friends seem to like being able to just walk up to a dude and delete him though. Ledgem fucked around with this message at 20:01 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 19:58
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