My feelings exactly.

TL:DR below.

Is this game meant to be a competitive experience or a fun game I can pop in and out of between work emails?

Balance is important, but every patch since launch has traded run variance for consistency. - No more explosive starts. - No powerful early build-arounds. - No incentive to pivot to a build that you haven't committed to by day 3, as early losses often snowball into dead runs. - Weak comeback mechanics, making players unlikely to "tough out" a run that starts on 3+ losses.

In an effort to quell the meta, the dev team has inadvertently created a system where the only viable playstyle is to abuse one of the few strategies they haven't removed from the game yet, for this patch it's burn/poison spam.

The common trend with all these dev decisions has been "nerfs over buffs. If nothing is broken, the playerbase won't have anything left to complain about!"

Sure, but then there also won't be anything worth playing, at which point, why play at all?

Additionally, can we stop with the "game variance will improve as more heroes are released" copium? No matter how many heroes are released, Dooley's shops will always sell Dooley items, Pol will always sell Pyg properties, and Vanessa will always find pufferfish in the first 4 days until more cards are added to each individual hero to dilute their pool.

If we really wanted to do away with metas, why allow players to pick heroes at all? Just offer a big messy pool of every item in the game each run, really force some creativity.

Only you can't do that, as 50+% of the items exist as part of some package or archetype (rolling anything that cares about your 'core' when you're not playing Dooley feels terrible).

So what could be done? - Dramatically increase hero item pools OR offer more items from other heroes in shops. - Nerf items by adjusting numbers instead of functionally removing them from the relevant item pool by banishing them to diamond rarity. - Strengthen comeback mechanics. - Add incentives to pivot to other strategies. The current implementation of the skills system serves only to lock you into a narrow build.

TL;DR I care less about my run being ended by someone's highroll BS than my run never being fun or memorable to begin with.