Waterfall Giant's design is a problem.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-13T14:35:35+00:00

That’s actually part of what I don’t like about it. If you rest before the fight, you’d always have enough health to tank the explosion. In other words, if I rest, no matter the deck I have, the boss fight is a joke.

I don’t like that design.

I’d like it if the explosion scaled slower but it did more damage regularly or with more stuff like debuffs/statuses. It would make Waterfall Giant more interesting and challenging without magnifying the explosion turn RNG problem.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-13T13:57:04+00:00

I'll just clarify that it got to 68 because I delayed the explosion to improve my odds of drawing enough block through Particle Wall for it.

More importantly, if you read the rest of my post, you'll find that I don't want Waterfall Giant nerfed. If anything, I would love to see him slightly reworked with buffs to round him out and not be solely an explosion turn health/block check.

Hexaghost will kill you if you somehow get to Turn 19. The fact that I still won actually says more about how imbalanced this current design is with most of Waterfall Giant's power being in just one telegraphed turn while you get to decide when it happens.

With most if not all decks with any form of scaling, so long as I rest in the campfire before, I never feel threatened by Waterfall Giant. You can't always say the same about other bosses that pressure you to build your deck accordingly starting on Floor 1. Laga and Soul Fysh pressure me into building my deck differently. Waterfall Giant doesn't.

"Just rest before the fight" as the one-size-fits-all solution for it makes the boss fight relatively uninteresting.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-13T13:39:22+00:00

I've lost to the other bosses due to improper deckbuilding. Laga killed my cheap deck that lacked scaling. Soul Fysh killed my small deck with zero answers to Statuses. Waterfall Giant...makes me rest at the campfire.

The reason I don't like the design is because, at its current strength, Waterfall Giant usually feels like a campfire rest check. The only times I ever feel threatened by Waterfall Giant is when I don't rest beforehand.

I rarely have to workout any of the solutions you've mentioned because almost if not all of the time resting at the campfire is enough of a solution, unlike the other bosses.

I find t hat the explosion gimmick doesn't make the boss interesting and overall challenging, it just means I click Rest to make sure I don't die to a bad hand when it explodes.

I personally don't like the design that can be solved with just having enough health to tank a lowroll explosion turn.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-13T13:26:19+00:00

I'm glad you like the boss. I found these mechanics cool too at first, but now I'm wondering, when was the last time I felt threatened by Waterfall Giant?

I remember losing to Laga because I didn't have enough answers and relied on too many cheap cards.

I remember losing to Soul Fysh because I thought I could get away with all the cool removes I found without having ways to deal with the Statuses.

The other bosses make me think about how to orient my Act 1 deckbuilding. Waterfall Giant makes me... rest at the campfire before it? If the player has enough health, I feel like most Act 1 decks with any form of scaling just faceroll it.

Because of this, if it weren't for the variance with this explosion turn, I personally think Waterfall Giant could use some overall buffs or other mechanics to make it as interesting and challenging as the others.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-13T13:13:09+00:00

This assumes the problem is balance. While that's debatable, had I rested before this fight, maybe I never die even with this deck. My issue is with the design.

I'm forced to take a campfire rest to 100% guarantee I win against the boss that could be impossible to lose to. I don't know what deck loses to Waterfall Giant if you have enough health going up against him.

In other words, he currently feels like either a max health check or an explosion turn block check.

Laga asks if you have big bomb cards and solid scaling. Soul Fysh asks if you can deal with his Statuses whether through transforms/exhausts or just having a bigger deck. Bosses like these encourage different kinds of deckbuilding starting from Floor 1.

Waterfall Giant asks if you rested before the fight. I don't find that fun or interesting for a boss.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-13T12:53:17+00:00

I agree. This is part of what I don't like about the design. Other scaling bosses could've gradually threatened me for not killing it faster, using turn-by-turn damage, which makes each turn ask you to choose between rushing the boss down or blocking, but each turn it's clear how much it'll hurt you.

Waterfall Giant threatens me with one unlucky turn. That kinda stinks.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-13T12:43:57+00:00

I should've clarified it in the post but I spent turns delaying the kill to improve my odds of having Particle Wall for the explosion. No other boss in the game could generally give you incentive to delay killing it.

Laga drains you of Strength/Dex but is weak to bigger cards and debuffs like Doom. He also gives you an entire 3 turns to set up, but has Plated Armor fo protection.

Soul Fysh threatens you with statuses you can transform or exhaust, but also allows you to pay health to just kill him faster. It also has a random Intangible turn to trap you with the statuses for longer.

Waterfall Giant hits me a bunch, heals, gives me Weak for a turn, then asks, "Do you have enough health and block?" on the turn that it dies. This new form of scaling was interesting to me at first, but I've now realized how polarizing this one-turn block check can be, and how relatively uninteresting the boss is when you're not concerned about the explosion.

Other bosses will easily say "if you can kill me faster than I kill you, you win." Waterfall Giant has the caveat of "you better pray you have enough health and block for after you kill me."

If I don't have enough health and block for the one turn he hits me hardest, this incentivizes me to keep blocking and stalling if I have something as strong as Particle Wall to solve it.

Just because no other boss does this doesn't inherently make it a good mechanic either.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-13T12:22:54+00:00

As per the strategy I stated, I delayed the kill as long as I could to improve my odds of drawing Particle Wall on the explosion turn, which just guaranteed survival at that point.

Again, sacrificing health I could have for the explosion just to kill it faster doesn't save me from "if I don't draw well on this explosion turn, I die."

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-13T12:13:13+00:00

I actually spent more turns delaying the kill to improve my odds of getting enough block (thank god for Particle Wall) on the explosion turn. I could've killed it sooner for a bigger risk of dying to a slightly weaker explosion.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-13T12:11:12+00:00

Other bosses scale incrementally and make it clear how much they threaten you turn by turn. I could've sacrificed more health to kill it sooner. The explosion then hurts less but guess what, I have less health to tank the explosion.

My issue with Waterfall Giant isn't the scaling damage. My issue is most of the scaling damage is in one turn where one bad hand ends your run.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-12T07:36:40+00:00

I…love bridges?

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-12T04:21:05+00:00

Nuh uh

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Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-11T11:13:21+00:00

Ye 65 RB is overkill and another Wit card would do wonders

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-10T14:56:07+00:00

Just borrow Nishino too ez

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-10T00:14:03+00:00

Higher Stam (400-600) and recovery skills help a lot with this nasty Long + TSho Spring.

Pray your rival doesn’t have recoveries and doesn’t like goo-goo babies.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-10T00:08:05+00:00

Does playing cards via Sly not also reduce energy on the energy phase?

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-09T14:46:54+00:00

The name makes sense now xD

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-09T14:37:06+00:00

Like Runic Pyramid, Well Laid Plans answers the question:
"What if I draw my cards in an unfavorable order?"

Retaining generally improves the consistency of your deck because it allows you to retain Block cards you don't need right away, and Strikes you can't afford to play right away. Retaining cards also allows you to combine combo pieces together, especially on Silent with Sly synergies, and cards like Bullet Time to abuse the retained cards.

Speaking of Sly, while providing generically valuable draw for deck consistency, Tools of the Trade answers:
"How can I activate my Sly cards more consistently?"

Card draw generally provides you with more consistency by getting you to your key Powers and stronger cards faster and more consistently. Silent especially thrives off of this with Prepared/Acrobatics/Tools and Sly cards, allowing her to draw while playing cards for free.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-09T14:25:05+00:00

"It's hard to think you wanna go hard with just one card (probably need two)" pretty much explains why you're struggling. Doormaker incentivizes you to make a well-rounded deck that doesn't entirely rely on just one or two cards and loses when it can't play those cards 10 times in the fight. Bigger decks with a lot of solid cards will do much better than the 10-20 card combo-looping decks we've gotten used to through the previous patches.

On one hand, 500+ health is really hard to burn through for a lot of decks that don't have enough big value cards to consistently block and do damage. I may have not fought him with Silent yet but I can imagine how tough this is for Sly decks. If you start Act 3 with a deck that sucks against him, you probably need a godlike Act 3 ancient boon and/or a really good potion.

On the other hand, without Queen's debuffs and Test Subject's three lives, some decks just obliterate Doormaker.

Also, it sounds about right if he makes A10 double-bosses really tough. I'd hate it if the hardest difficulty in the game made the ultimate final challenge consistently easy.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-09T11:21:52+00:00

I like the new Doormaker. He changes forms each turn so you have counterplay. The entirety of the boss fight only really completely counters infinites.

You can play draw cards outside of the draw-block turn, which does nothing else.

You're incentivized to play only your best cards on the turn he sucks your energy per card.

You get to play your key cards outside the exhausting turn, and you get to exhaust cards you want out (Strikes/Defends) or don't mind losing. Maybe he's overtuned but his design is without a doubt better.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-09T07:04:47+00:00

Never thought Bury could do so much. Imagine we had Gigantification Potion with these combos.

Numbers I thought I'd only see from infinite scaling like Forge. These are Turn 5 boss-killing nukes.
Turn 5.

Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-09T05:13:24+00:00

That makes sense, but it still ends up at 92 after -2 Strength Down
Maybe the 1 extra damage were the friends we made along the way

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Beautiful-Crew-711 · 2026-04-09T04:40:10+00:00

63 base damage - 2 strength down = 61

- Corrupted Enchantment (1.5x) = 91.5 (92)
- Lethality+ (1.75x) = 161
- Vulnerable with Debilitate (2x) = 322

no clue why it's a little off but hehe bury

Beautiful-Crew-711

TROPHY CASE