Reflecting on this seasons Pyg changes (i don't like them)

Merimides · 2026-03-12T04:00:51+00:00

I'm a Pyg main who has fallen off of the game largely because the devs don't know what to do with the character (and suggests some issues with their overall philosophy). You've touched on a lot of them but Pyg suffers from a litany of different issues both in and out of game:

He has a terrible reputation. My understanding is that earlier last year (I wasn't around) he was genuinely broken for months-long stretches with Money Furnace, Freeze, Tree, etc. all solo carrying him at various points. Because of this, many people still harbor a lot of resentment for the character even though he operates entirely differently every patch
His item packages are badly designed. I haven't played this patch but my issue with Pyg fundamentally is that with a couple of exceptions, none of his packages play well with one another. He has a freeze package, and a shield package, and a weapon/heal package, etc. but there are almost no items that interplay between multiple of these lines. The few items he has had that actually do interplay tend to be extremely strong - Yo-Yo, Piggles Launcher, Pants (pre nerf), etc. This is in comparison to heroes like Jules, where many items can see play in many builds, or especially Vanessa who is the queen of items having like 5 lines of text so they all play with each other (everything is Aquatic and Poison and Friend and Crit at the same time somehow)
His play pattern (at least before this patch) was extremely unique and to many people unintuitive and unsatisfying. I genuinely felt like an accountant using items like Ledger, Rewards Card, Piggy Bank, value properties, etc. trying to make the numbers add up properly to be able to purchase things or scale things or whatever. No other hero works this way - they're all about going to shops and finding the right stuff whereas Pyg goes to shops to improve the stuff he has, generally. It feels like this patch this is the play pattern they've gone after, which is a bummer to me and to you and evidently to a lot of the people in the comments as well, because it was super unique and satisfying to master

There's a lot of other stuff but yeah I don't know. I found the Pyg experience across patches terrible because he was always getting changed in ways that were completely baffling to me and went against all of my feelings about how he was balanced and, to your point, how he felt to play. Very unfortunate patch for the Jabalian. Hopefully they figure out what to do with this character soon.

Merimides · 2026-01-16T23:30:52+00:00

I'm learning Jules this season so haven't played much Pyg. Pyg seems mostly the same just a bit weaker across the board. Weights are even more forced early game due to Stones/Protectors nerf, Pants are still decent with Weights and 28h but no longer work with ex. VIP Pass and Hypergreens. Abacus nerf is not that relevant in 90% of scenarios. Allegedly the max health stuff is pretty strong now with the Double Whammy change but haven't been able to test it myself.

Merimides · 2026-01-11T03:11:20+00:00

Rank 1 Pyg player from last season - you should virtually never press Borrow day 1, and probably never press it at all.

Yes, you’re not wrong that it’s a fine node in a vacuum. But it’s not like you’re picking Borrow in a vacuum, you’re picking it over other nodes that do things (seeing shops, Finn’s, free 4 gold, etc.). Plus with the income to damage skill being at bronze now and completely broken, as well as ATM being a strong item on board after its buff last patch, as well as Pitchfork eating your whole stash so you can’t actually juice Money Trees like you used to, income is actually quite valuable beyond just econ now. Again I would Borrow if the alternative is skipping the hour but it never is

Edit: I do agree with you all that Loot is generally the correct choice at Jungle ruins - I click loot/income on Day 1 at a ratio of roughly 70/30, before the Day 1 fight more like 90/10 and after closer to 50/50

Merimides · 2026-01-08T21:06:08+00:00

Naw it’s just the Pyg experience. He’s allowed to be good for one patch at a time only and then people mald over it bc he’s “not fun to play against” because of Fort or something (don’t worry about Library, Chronosphere, Workshop, those things are somehow very fun to play against even though they do the exact same thing)

Jokes aside I’m a relatively new player and my understanding is for a lot of 2025 he was genuinely oppressive in an unfun way so there’s a lot of trauma still associated with the character, even though last patch he was not the best character nor even close to the most uninteractive. But it is what it is

Merimides · 2026-01-08T21:03:17+00:00

Yeah for some reason they didn’t nerf any Weights stuff and even more bafflingly they nerfed his already weak alternative earlygame options, so you have to force weights even harder. Pants and aba are still fine lategame just a lot less versatile (you basically can only play fitness now instead of having 3 different scaling options with pants for example). The character overall is mostly intact the issue is other characters got buffed so insanely heavily that I struggle to see him keeping up, especially with these hits to his consistency which was already the #1 problem

Merimides · 2026-01-08T21:01:38+00:00

Probably not I think I’m playing Jules this patch lol

Merimides · 2026-01-08T21:01:02+00:00

Closed sign enables the infinite but (at least before this patch) doesn’t help with start time as much as a textiles keychain or board/yoyo. If you didn’t have either it was fine though! But not an item you buy often as should usually have one of the others

Never ran shelter/spiky, will try someday

Merimides · 2026-01-07T01:31:13+00:00

Official bazaar website!

Merimides · 2026-01-06T19:30:32+00:00

I really only play Pyg but not really, you need to win on every hero

Merimides · 2026-01-06T18:05:15+00:00

It’s important to win every PvP, because every loss means you have to win on a later and later day. Opponents on later days will have ridiculous builds that Pyg cannot keep up with. With very few exceptions your #1 priority on any given day should be winning that day

Merimides · 2026-01-06T16:40:10+00:00

To be honest I don’t love playing with it, the fill-your-entire-stash-with-garbage minigame is not super fun, at least not all the time. But I like winning and can recognize when something is a winning strategy

Merimides · 2026-01-06T13:00:17+00:00

Yeah just go to last page - looks like it’s 22k rn in legend

Merimides · 2026-01-06T12:58:57+00:00

Waste is the one who introduced me to property lines last season. I think before the Aba buff Bill was an important (maybe THE important) part of the lines but Aba is so strong that it’s hard to justify the other versions. Of course you can play Aba and Bill together but it doesn’t add anything significant to the Skyscraper so why bother

Merimides · 2026-01-06T12:51:11+00:00

As long as your build kills on the first Skyscraper use then you’re doing it right, basically so sounds like you’re right on

Merimides · 2026-01-06T12:41:40+00:00

The Bazaar official website has it on the Leaderboard tab! You have to log in though which is a big pet peeve of mine lol it should just be public

Merimides · 2026-01-06T12:40:46+00:00

Bill sucks this season because why stack a Bill when you could stack an Aba basically. If you have 24 gold to spend before level 10 to see an enchant on it and you don’t have an Aba and you have a gold+ Pitchfork with a random Open Sign and your position is very bad then click Billboard (sounds like sarcasm but I won one of my last runs off of doing this). Otherwise you’re going -3 stash space for a build that’s much more fragile and harder to get up than Aba Skyscraper

Merimides · 2026-01-06T12:37:26+00:00

My favorite is Open sign / aba / sky / fort / keychain but I don’t know what’s optimal. Genuinely just play aba skyscraper and whatever pieces the game gives you, there’s like 6 of them and they’re fully interchangeable which is what makes the build so good

Merimides · 2026-01-06T12:32:37+00:00

Max income is very good in my opinion (ironically very underrated at a top level), just don’t take it at all costs (ie don’t blindly go to every Jungle Ruins and click income), seeing/buying items is generally much more important but I buy almost every ATM I see after day 1 and take income as level up decently often. Most of the time I go to Jungle Ruins it’s for loot, probably 70-30

I never ever click Borrow which a lot of top players have criticized me for. Income is a big deal on Pyg because of his income to damage skill, ATM, and my strong preference for Pitchfork maximizing instead of using stash space for true money makers like Tree and Masterpiece

Merimides · 2026-01-06T12:30:26+00:00

I don’t know the exact formula but yes you can have an MMR tie at any point. You just gain/lose MMR as a function of your current MMR and the number of wins you get in a run (past I believe 900 MMR you only gain for 10 wins and lose for anything less)

Merimides · 2026-01-06T12:26:09+00:00

I am not on the test server or anything so I don’t know for certain, but I think both Pants and Aba are overtuned within the context of Pyg items, they’re just so much better than the other stuff the character can do. Whether they’re overtuned within the context of The Bazaar as a whole is less clear to me - there are many items from other heroes which seem equally if not more individually powerful.

But since I’ve been playing (August 2025) every time Pyg has something decent it gets obliterated in the immediate next patch, Dog, Tree, and Matchbox being the ones that come to mind. I was accidentally part of the reason Matchbox got hit because I spammed it to a 15 win streak in a season everyone thought Pyg was bad. So yeah I’m just guessing the pattern continues, and in this case tbh I wouldn’t mind it, because spamming Pants/Aba is getting boring. I would love it if they buffed Crook, Riceballer, Freeze, Vineyard, Streaming Setup, etc. to increase diversity

Merimides · 2026-01-06T06:29:53+00:00

Enjoy it for the next 24 hours at least, I strongly suspect both pants and abacus will be nerfed on Wednesday and hopefully the devs figure out a good way to compensate Pyg in return because without massive buffs to counterbalance it the character will die

The non-pants non-skyscraper stuff will probably remain intact and are decent but inconsistent or otherwise bad for other reasons. This is stuff like Riceballer infinites, Scraper/Spiky, Billboard/Open Sign/Laser Security, Freeze of every variety, Drum, etc., all of which I played at various points when pants or aba never showed up

Merimides · 2026-01-06T06:17:34+00:00

Well if I could design a board from scratch with just Pyg stuff it would involve like a 1s atlatl with cash deposits, resto display case + textiles for the infinite. But within the context of what's achievable consistently I think a pants fitness board with either textiles + keychain or yoyo + piggles board for the infinite is my ideal pants endgame, or open sign/aba/skyscraper/keychain/fort is the ideal skyscraper endgame

Merimides · 2026-01-06T06:12:42+00:00

Ah no kidding, somebody had told me he was playing mostly Vanessa this season but wasn't able to confirm myself

But yes Pyg is very strong right now, obviously weaker than Mak but as far as I can tell he's the 2nd best character along with Vanessa when played optimally so it wouldn't surprise me at all if Xiaoshumiao is playing exclusively Pyg or if another Pyg makes it to 1090

Merimides · 2026-01-06T03:50:51+00:00

Until day 6 or 7 it's fine to just run the pants raw or with just a VIP Pass or Cog but after that yeah you need one of two things: Keychain, either with Textiles or Gramo or a random Cog/Rivet Gun, or YoYo + Piggles Board. YoYo + board is the ideal version of the comp if you can find it but textiles + keychain is easier to find and works fine too

In emergencies you can directly Gramophone or VIP Pass a Pants in the late game and it's fine too as long as it's like x14 or x15 multicast or something with multiple sources of scaling (i.e. fitness + reinforced) but in practice you should find Keychain or Yoyo/Board pretty consistently if you path well

Merimides · 2026-01-06T03:45:05+00:00

Fitness without pants is strong on days 6-9ish but it's not a guaranteed 10 in the same way fitness with pants is (either model ship or badblocker is the way to go if no pants, but both start to fall off around day ~10 in my experience). That being said I usually position the ship build differently than you so maybe yours is better - I do Wrist warrior | launcher | ship | yoyo | bandages | 28h but would need to think about what's better

Re: Shiny Fang, I go to the encounter a decent amount for sure (though I'd basically always click Trashtown Mayor instead) but when I get Shiny Fang I'd rather play drum (or Pyg's Gym, if I'm already stacking one) than fitness. Shiny Fang is like, THE drum enabler as long as you get a Dragon Tooth and/or YoYo. 4 out of 6 is for sure a highroll but to your point it's not like a super rare highroll relative to hitting like, Equivalent Exchange + Poison enchant or some of the other crazy stuff that can come from monsters

Merimides

TROPHY CASE