I just reached unto the end of the Caverns. A fun ride. Lone Elven Pyromancer finished a lone Secbot on 8, and my party tactically camped VSs with only 3-4 kills on 9. I only reached unto to the end, though; I didn't finish it. Once I got to Node 10 for the first time, it all looked scary, but I laid out my plan of attack for a couple minutes before I clicked anything. Flying Monkeys, a Tombstone, the Troll King, and oh wow Chef Ramses .. vs. .. one of the Dwarven Cryomancers, the Elven Lasermancer, and ohhhh goody, Pain. Only the third time I've seen a legendary character. Nice. $:^ ] (I haven't played much Caverns. I've also seen Bolg and some other I can't recall.) During the battle, I became quite disappointed. Not because it was too hard; actually, I nailed Chef Ramses and the Tombstone within 3-4 rounds, preventing them from causing any real trouble at all, meanwhile evading the Flying Monkeys mostly decently (and putting a little hurt on them when safe). I became disappointed because, apparently, my guess is, Pain's deck got printed before the summer balance changes, and ... and she felt almost useless the whole time, unfortunately. People know I love elf wizards. Her low health in and of itself was not the problem. In fact, I love her thematic deck, right down to the Vulnerable! $E^ D Very fun, very funny. I described some of this in World as it was happening, and someone said that stage was bad for Flash of Agony because of so little Blocking terrain for allies; I disagreed; I could hide super easily (thanks to those Elf Wizard Dashes, by the way). When drawing close to nothing but Flash of Agony for the first several rounds, I concluded that she might've been designed during a time when an elf could stack Flash of Agony safely. However, now, no, just no. If I had to use one in a pinch, okay, got it -- but this was Agony after Agony after Agony. I got the theme. Fun theme. Disappointing result. What's worse than dead cards? Synergies that make other cards dead, too. Instead of sending Agony to all the monkeys and hoping for some Ducked chain reactions, she had to merely hide. The legendary character hid while the common elf wiz and dwarf wiz got down to business, almost singlehandedly killing Ramses and the Tombstone. As Grendel got uncomfortably close, this notorious elf of legend had unused Flashes in-hand (which she couldn't use on the troll anyway), a Mighty Spark (which could be positioned for Monkeys eventually was the hope), an Illusory Barrier (nice touch), her lovely racial Dash, and ... ~sigh~ Blind Rage. Long story short, she placed a Barrier to save everyone from Acorns, then sat in place while others worked around her because at that point, I needed to save her Dash to save her life. (I'd given her Unholy Energy previously, not realizing the legendary character named Pain would be better off not drawing any attacks at all. I should've just used it on my common elf wiz. Dash gave her 1 HP of pain.) I like Jonpat despite others complaining about him. I've made the slime priest work, too -- in fact, that priestly Ooze-stack was a winning character on Node 9 during this run, the first time I ever beat Node 9. I like Pain's theme. She feels .. crippled. Not useless, just crippled. Her Path of Knives was the true cause of Ramses' death. Her two Fireballs did what they needed to do. Even her hilarious heal kept my common elf wiz trucking for that bit longer (as her final act). The Nimble Strikes, although funny to have with Blind Rage, I actually just hopped around to keep her 2 HP from going code blue next round. The Flashes of Agony round after round after round, she just couldn't cope with. If I said anything more, it'd probably go in circles. In short, my feedback is, I never got to play Pain as a serious legendary elf wizard (which for me is cool in and of itself), and that's sad. Now, she just feels like the stereotype of why you don't play elf wizards. That's not fun. I'm not saying, "That's too hard." Hard is fine. (I lost my 19 HP dwarf wiz because I don't recall ever facing off against Grendel. You know what he packs. That was hard, and that was my learning experience. That's fine.) I'm saying, her anti-synergistic deck (which I expect would've played quite differently months ago) deadens much of her card focus and cripples her legendary status to that of a grunt, a sad joke, really. Especially sad because her very name lends to the idea of *those are the cards that should be in her deck* (due to item names). I don't even have a suggestion. If the problem is only FoA, then .. Flash of Agony is tolerable on elves if you mitigate. Her only self-mitigation apparently is some brittle Rusty Armor. (Pain Hat, right? lol So funny.) At the same time, it has felt more fair to me when I've been wasting opp characters via Flash when it also hits me, since it's paper quality. Something's just icky here, and I don't really have an answer. ("You take half the damage rounded down" maybe? Normally, take 2. Wimpy, take 1. Arcane Shell, take 2. Unholy Wellspring, take 3. But, I know, dwarves running Searing Pain are the problem, eh? Elf wiz gets the short end of the stick again, even when she's legendary. $:^ ( Regards, Bob P.S. Since I'm here giving feedback on Pain, and mostly I've given glowing review of her thematic design in and of itself etc., I should add I'm not a fan of her immodest costume. I get it, she's a demon, demons aren't known for their good deeds nor humility. But eh. It's a kind of costume I could enjoy throwing a little pizza at (b/c who plays elf wizards anyway, right? lol) if she were just covering some more. P.P.S. Trying for suggesting anything, maybe she could just use a WHOLE lot less FoA now that the nerf utterly changes its dynamics.
I seem to remember Flax admitting that the Flash nerf hurt her too much, and also that they will eventually update the CoC legendaries for CM. Replacing most of the Flashes with Howl and Hex Of Dissolution should help her a lot. Something to remind them to do once they finish the CM SP modules (looks like they already have 2 finished).
You're right. I'd noticed Caustic Pain and thought about Hex Of Dissolution being in her deck, but that might've been before I even got to play as her, just having heard rumor of her deck make-up. $:^ ) Otoh, I hadn't thought about Howling Pain at all and does sound pretty perfect for her, even if it's just one for that chance of Werewolf hilarity. Lol. Thank you, Kalin, for letting it be known that a BM dev has already spoken on this. (I searched for "Caverns" in the Feedback forum and came up empty handed before posting.) EDIT: I had some more time to think about it today, and actually, mitigation of many Flashes via multiple Howl heals makes sense. Actual chances of Lycanthropy are just 1/13 anyway, thus it's kind of a weird, cool concept for a lady named Pain to Howl at the Moon to recover some of her own self-damage and prep some in-your-face Melee damage in the process. ~ Also, Hex is funny because it's just there without any other Acid cards (unless she picked up a couple of those for the full item's sake) (but Hex is already a decent card by itself anyway), yet face off against (so I hear) Greenfang and/or ally with the acid geisha, and suddenly, the legendary elf wiz brings the Pain and brings it up some more notches. $¦^ b
Before reading @Kalin s reply, I was thinking an easy synergy would be to replace the heal for a nimbus and replace rusty armor with Force Field. I know there's quality differences but at this point she sounds like a prime candidate for improvement.
Pain is a joke character - the only changes I'm planning on making to her are going to be adding cards from new "Pain" items. This will dilute the Flash of Agony, but not replace it. And yes, CoC changes are still in the pipeline =)
1. Caverns has a legendary elf wizard, and she's intended to be a joke. $:^ | ~shakes head~ 2. Caverns has levels intended to stomp, and one of the potential roster -- only available on the hardest levels -- is an intended joke instead of extra help. $:^ | ~shakes head~ Thanks, I guess, for the goal to dilute the legendary joke.
Move over Legendary Pain in the ... Make way for the Elf Warrior, Talissa the Skinflint: 3x Fey Silversmith 3x Vicious Thrust 2x Vengeance 1x Penetrating Lunge 5x Silver Bolt 1x Inquisition Bolt 4x Inquisitor's Strike 2x Sundering Strike 4x Warding Lance 1x Violent Spin 1x Purging Strike 1x Wind Dancer 1x Nimble Strike 1x Flight Aura 2x Skillful Strike 2x Subtle Parry 2x Demon Hide Based on Focused Silversmith, Talissa's Trident, True Silver, The Inquisition, Warding Dervish, and Ascendant Dervish. Skillful Strike included for flavor text. Demon Hide to go with the model.
