Duelist Balance | Patreon Weekly #206

Hey Patrons! In this weekly I’m going to focus on the balance changes I have planned for the Duelist!

Firstly though, there’s a new Shattered Secrets this week! I’m once again sharing some WIP splash art, this time for the demon halls!

Also, here are the results from Patreon Poll #41:
On-Upgrade Talents:     80%
On-ID Talents:                62%
Cached Rations:             50%
Improvised Projectiles: 14%
These results aren’t too surprising, as they largely mimic what you guys have been telling me more informally for a while in places like the Patreon discord. I am a bit surprised that Improvised Projectiles had such little support though, as my goal with it is mainly some refinement versus larger changes to others. I’m unsure if I’ll have any time to make changes here in v2.1.0, but I will keep these results in mind when I do eventually make some existing talent changes.

Is the Duelist Weak?

With development on v2.1.0 wrapping up, and some time for analytics data to build, I spent a fair amount of time last week going over the Duelist’s balance data. The results are quite interesting, so I thought I’d share them!

Firstly, when I look at balance data I primarily focus on players who already have a win. This lets me filter out brand new and lower-skill players, which helps ensure that mechanics are balanced to be viable for skilled play. After running some numbers for the Duelist’s overall success rate from the last few weeks, here’s what we get:

• The Duelist is played 33.7% of the time, quite a lot higher than the average of 20%. This makes some sense as she is a new character.
• Her overall winrate is almost exactly 50% lower than the average. This seems to indicate that she is extremely weak!

Right away this felt wrong to me, as if the Duelist was truly half as strong as other classes you guys would be letting me know quite aggressively. I decided to expand my numbers to include everyone who has at least beaten Goo to see what might change:

• The overall number of runs studied increases by about 5x, there are lots of people who haven’t gotten their first win yet!
• The Duelist becomes played 21.1% of the time, only slightly more than average.
• Her relative winrate shoots up to just 12% below the average. Much better!

To me this very clearly shows that experienced players, who have gotten used to the other 4 heroes over several years, are still experimenting with the Duelist and building their mastery of her versus the other heroes. If I include a wider range of players though, who haven’t mastered any of the heroes yet, this difference becomes less significant, and the Duelist is only a bit below average.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this phenomenon actually. It’s very common that new or heavily changed items perform poorly for 1-2 weeks after release, as players are experimenting with them and figuring their mechanics out. A hero is a lot more complex though, so it makes sense that the time period for this extends for much longer, into the months. Because of this, it seems that the data from less experienced players is a bit more accurate for the Duelist’s overall power at the moment!

With all that in mind, for v2.1.0 I’m focused on a whole bunch of targeted tweaks to the Duelist, rather than overall buffs. These will come together to be a buff to her overall, but it’s more about making more of her gameplay options effective than flatly boosting everything. In particular it seems quite clear that I still need to make many of her more awkward or risky weapon abilities stronger, as the ‘plain but no downside’ cleave ability is still doing quite well compared to other weapon abilities.

With that in mind, here’s a quick list of the weapon ability changes I’m planning to make, sorted roughly by how much of a buff they are:

• Spike damage bonus up to 45/30% from 40/30%
• Runic Slash enchant bonus up to +300% from +250%
• Sneak invisibility duration up to 10/8/6 from 8/6/4
• Block duration up to 8/6 from 5/4
• Lash is now guaranteed to hit the closest target
• Combo strike damage boost up to 45/40/35%, from 40/35/30%
• Spin now guarantees a hit at all levels, instead of just at 3 spins
• Retribution damage bonus up to +50% from +35%
• Defensive Stance evasion boost up to 3x from 2x, duration down to 5 turns from 6
• Sword Dance now gives +25% ACC, up from -20%, duration down to 5 turns from 6
• Heavy Blow exact changes TBD, but I expect to remove the accuracy penalty in favor of costing 2 charges if it is not a surprise attack.
• Charged Shot exact changes TBD, but I expect to make the effect stronger and less likely to harm you.