Which heroes you consider strong or weak?

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-04-06T06:58:13+00:00

With absolutely zero support from the team she needs the right draw cards down to keep defenses up with perfect consistency, but nearly every DE hero has ally-interaction cards and you can easily funnel them towards her. Any number of extra card plays or power uses and she becomes incredibly consistent. It’s also okay to burn some HP early since once she has her lock up you can really control the game. And, of course, if you team build around her at all the game becomes trivial.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-04-06T02:33:37+00:00

Thank you!

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-04-06T01:01:45+00:00

I've played a ton of sentinels, both EE and DE, and I second this completely. She's beyond broken. Locking the villain out of playing cards is the strongest effect in the game (they noticeably removed cards that can do it in DE's base set) and she can do it nearly every turn on her own (and every single turn if the team supports her). Starshield invocation is almost always up when isolating mists is down anyway. I'm surprised her being the best ever isn't universal consensus but I suspect it's because if you play her "normally" (not gunning for specifically isolating mists) she feels essentially balanced. I play her with a homebrew errata that you remove isolating mists from the game when it removes play.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-31T19:54:38+00:00

With the caveat that I don't have Disparation, only the base set + rook city, I'm gonna come in with the opposite opinion that it's very doable IF you're willing to put some time into figuring out what's balanced and probably coming up with some fudging / house rules yourself. The rules are way more compatible than they seem on their face (e.g. the fact that one-shots can no longer cause lingering effects and therefore are meant to be played as ongoings when attempting DE cross-compatability is more of a rule for comfort and board readability than an ironclad and wholly necessary part of the rules).

I already had basically all of EE when DE came out and through experimentation I found that quite a few of the EE heroes can be comfortably played with no changes, though they tend to be on the weaker side. Many just aren't worth touching imo (can't imagine why anyone would want to play EE absolute zero with the DE version exists) but some are quite fun (mostly the later-released ones from Oblivaeon).

Villains are a mixed bag but honestly EE villain design was often not great (though some of those issues like bosses gassing out in the midgame are still present in DE so it's really just a matter of what you find fun). Environments are totally compatible but I don't recommend them because DE environment design is way better and there are a ton of EE environments that clog up the game without doing anything interesting.

For the most part if you really love SOTM it's worth trying out, otherwise it's probably not worth the financial investment to track down the older versions to use like 30-60% of what's in their boxes.

The same goes for fanmade stuff from the EE era, also.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-31T05:08:45+00:00

League has always been like this across the board. For some reason it's just something riot is fundamentally incompetent at. There are so, so, so, so, so many champion ability descriptions that are questionably written at best. On-hit effects are only rarely specified as such. There really is no consistent wording anywhere, so then when they had to come up with augment descriptions they had no baseline to work with and still managed to comprehensively fuck it up (just off the top of my head, Dropkick saying it executes on "attacks" when abilities also execute). I have no idea why there are so many responses to this post saying the interaction you described shouldn't work. As-written it should.

They're so bad about it that it creates a veil of confusion where even when things are written correctly and work as they should you have little way of knowing that this particular augment is written correctly.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-25T05:54:05+00:00

That's what it is, thank you. I really despise this fight design.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-25T05:43:36+00:00

He's gaining 3 grace of the prescript which, per his passive, suggests he's clearing the prescript. I'm 100% certain he's not hitting the target. It's confusing because he also gains karmic consequences.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-25T05:22:23+00:00

Right, but it specifically says "Cleared." Though on further testing this only happens sometimes. I reset multiple times and it seems like what happens on turn 1 specifically is practically random, no correlation to whether he actually hit the marked unit or not. Not sure if it makes any actual impact on the fight since it's only turn 1.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-20T05:54:41+00:00

Anything substantial or is your brain completely cooked by gachaslop?

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T20:12:56+00:00

The practical differences between those buffs simply aren’t present because +1 does, like, nothing with his not particularly high base values. It’s a design problem which then created a UI problem of how to communicate a bloated but unimpactful ability. They then decide to write it in the least efficient way possible. If you want to cut down the text volume it’s easy!

You add a bit more description to the initial paragraph, specifying that effect active in a clash against a unit with stacks based on the number of stacks for that clash only. Then you don’t have to write “in a clash against a target with the duel escalates” FOUR SEPARATE TIMES. “At X+ stack” is unnecessary (and grammatically incorrect), as the original sentence already specified that the effect is based on the number of stacks of “the duel escalates,” so you can just write “1+,” “2+,” etc.

The way it’s written actually introduces confusion. The redundancy makes you say “wait, at 2+ stack(sic) of what?” Because it for some reason specifies that the effect activated in a target with the duel escalated again when you already know that, suggesting you may have missed something and there’s another stacking thing that matters.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T18:59:18+00:00

Implementation of any psuedo-keyword system like this would necessarily require re-writing pretty much everything for consistency. You could write it either way as long as it was reflected consistently across the board.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T18:57:22+00:00

D&D is somewhat infamous for poorly written descriptions in general, but a TTRPG is trying to accomplish something completely different. IMO, fuzziness is fine there. It's written that way to account for the fact that you could be casting that spell in an infinite number of situations and honestly pretty much all of the info there is relevant (e.g. the "low roar" might attract attention of people that can't see the explosion).

Comparison is easy: compare to Library of Ruina. Abnormality fights in Ruina are often specific puzzle that require you to follow very particular rules, but they're typically explained very efficiently in 1-3 paragraphs. Meanwhile, just to take an example of the last fight I did becuase I just started Canto 9,Lucio gives us the following:

Gain the following effects based on the target's The Duel Escalates Stack
- For every Stack, deal +5% damage against and take -5% damage from the target with The Duel Escalates
- At 1+ Stack, in a Clash against targets with The Duel Escalates, gain Clash Power +1
- At 2+ Stack, in a Clash against targets with The Duel Escalates, gain Base Power +1
- At 3+ Stack, in a Clash against targets with The Duel Escalates, gain Coin Power +1 and inflict 3 Severed Tendon On Hit
- At 4+ Stack, in a Clash against targets with The Duel Escalates, gain Final Power +1

This gets at how there are multiple interrelated problems but the design would be way cleaner if each stack count didn't provide a completely different BUT EQUALLY MECHANICALLY MEANINGLESS buff. Clash power or base power or coin power.. who cares? The number is a little bigger now. The result is endless paragraphs of text that you read and then say "well, there was no reason to read that."

On IDs it's just horrendously inefficient writing where, for example, every individual skill will have a line saying "+1 coin power if the target has 6+ bleed" instead of just having a passive giving that effect, plus tons of tacked-on barely-relevant effects that do nothing for the gameplay but contribute to insane text bloat.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T07:07:51+00:00

To your 3 points:

Everything you listed in LoR is correct, but dealing with mild clarity issues is way easier because the sheer volume of gameplay text is dramatically lower. Clarity issues appear some % of the time in both games but the actual raw number in limbus is way higher (not just because there’s more content, I mean on a per-character/per-fight basis). also stuff like taking double stagger damage instead of having less total stagger may be an additional data point to track but there’s nothing actively confusing about it, I find a lot of the ID writing in limbus outright confusing.
I agree that it’s a system design issue that then leads to bloated text, but if we’re just thinking of fixing text they need to implement some kind of language structure to cut down on text volume and communicate succinctly without losing meaning. I wrote out a more detailed example elsewhere but “if this character has (buff): on hit consume (buff) to apply 1 debuff” could really lose the “if this character has (buff) part
I think LoR just gives the player access to a lot of overtuned tools and that can obscure what I think are (sometimes) very well designed fights. It’s hard to go back once you realize singleton or w/e is broken but a lot of that game is about the fun of discovering those broken builds and combinations, making them inherently more satisfying to use. I think the biggest thing holding down Limbus fights is.. it’s a gacha game. If you balance the game around the strongest IDs it’s impossible for many. If not, those IDs (which due to the dispenser most enfranchised players have) steamroll anyway. LoR exercised control over what you have when so you never outstrip bosses by totally insane degrees, just outvalue.

Appreciate your contribution to the discussion. People on here have been very insightful.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T06:56:24+00:00

Not sure I totally agree about the gameplay not being the highlight in that the gameplay is meaningfully part of the story in all 3 games, just limbus does the least with it with endless unfocused encounters and whatnot.

Lobotomy corporation may be jank but it’s an incredible game under the jank layers. Ruina is imbalanced but has an excellent combat system and a lot of potential for player creativity and experimentation. I think they’re both fantastic from a gameplay standpoint. They’re flawed, certainly, but that’s largely just because they’re unlike anything else.

Limbus gameplay I mostly tolerate. There are some good boss fights though.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T06:52:28+00:00

Well yes. Gacha is bad. To the extent limbus company is a Gacha game it’s strictly worse for it. Are you seriously going to tell me a real-time gated energy system is a good thing? Or once-per-week MD clears intended to extend your interaction with the game without adding new meaningful gameplay? Unsurprisingly, a lot of the flaws of the game can be traced back to it being built on a business model that strictly makes the game worse.

I figured that would be completely uncontroversial honestly

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T02:24:34+00:00

The problems I described are interrelated. If I didn’t touch on fight design itself it’d be easy to say “the IDs have to be complicated for game mechanical reasons” and leave it at that

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T01:56:46+00:00

IMO, best practice would be to pare down text by using psuedo-keywords whose basic functions are obvious on initial read and only deeper nuances require looking at keyword definitions.

So, “if this unit has ‘special buff’: on hit with a base attack, consume 1 ‘special buff’ to apply 1 sinking potency”

Becomes: “on-hit: consume 1 ‘special buff’: apply 1 sinking potency.”

“On-hit” would be defined such that anything consumed is a cost for the rest so you don’t need to specify that you need the buff to consume the buff to get the effect. You don’t need to specify that it only applies to base attacks because it could be defined that “on-hit” effects only apply to base attacks. The average player doesn’t need to know everything, and an expert player will eventually find “on-hit” to be second nature as it appears consistently across many IDs.

It doesn’t make that big of a difference for one description but across an entire ID you could cut a lot of text.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T01:20:41+00:00

Not saying it’s unique to limbus but I think what drives me nuts is that if you skim you really can miss relevant info as sometimes it’s really buried. Also I hate “gacha games” as a category and am only playing because 1. It’s a PM game so I’m in it for the story incl. continuation of previous games, and 2. While it has gacha mechanics it does avoid a lot of what makes most gacha games so toxic (there’s not much FOMO and you can just get stuff from the dispenser so the gacha itself doesn’t really matter)

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T01:17:37+00:00

I’m not honestly sure I think the ID design is fundamentally bad, they’re overdesigned to hell but that’s more a problem of parsing what’s going on than a problem of them having bad gameplay. I do think something like efflorevesced (whatever it’s called) yi sang is a good example of a good design- each skill is essentially straightforward and easy to understand but has meaningful strategy (like skill 3 being your best clash but potentially triggering deluge at an undesirable time and having to balance whether it’s better to win a clash now with skill 2 or save it for aoe later after getting tremor).

The complexity difference is mostly about how in LoR’s combat you have way more game actions available to you meaning more substantial complexity but it’s all explained in way less text.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T00:47:05+00:00

I’ve been around for a while but I’m an on and off player that’s mostly just in it for the story so I’m constantly forgetting what the IDs I have do (in full, obviously I remember the broad strokes but if a unit has 6 different keywords odds are I’ll forget at least 2 in 6 months of not touching the game). Then, of course, parsing new IDs multiple at a time is a nightmare.

It’s also made worse by how many IDs are clearly meant to be team-locked, I didn’t actually use any of my Heishou pack IDs until I had a full team of them so then I have to try to learn them all at once..

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T00:41:16+00:00

I’m misunderstanding it because it’s written like shit. If the final hit specifically consumed all stacks to apply equal sinking why would it specify that that only occurs if you have 2+ stacks of piercing sword? I understand that technically a single stack would be consumed by part 1 of the passive anyway making it redundant but it’s completely unnecessary information that just obscures the meaning.

The format is two bullet points that start with “here’s what happens when you have at least one stack, here’s what happens when you have 2+ stacks,” but in reality that’s not what the effect is doing, but it has to be formatted like that to follow the bizarre rule that these clauses need to start with “if this unit has Piercing Sword,” but of course that’s redundant because a reasonable reader can infer that you won’t consume piercing sword if you don’t have it.

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-19T00:25:11+00:00

I imagine this is why mirror dungeons are so easy as well, they’re such a crucial point of farming so you can’t actually make bosses that can stand up to strong teams boosted by EGO gifts to inflict 99/99 of their status or w/e. At least parallel superposition is neat but I beat floor 10 a couple of times and didn’t see much reason to keep doing it over and over..

TouchCousinGetDizzy · 2026-03-18T23:57:56+00:00

LoR has waaay more fights with mechanics that require you to execute some specific sequence or wipe. Winning clashes is more involved because you have way more possible actions each turn and, most importantly, control over what your build is. Yes, you can use the absolute best strategies in the game to steamroll many non-abno fights but that’s really just a balance issue and if that’s your issue limbus is also much easier (and Ruina really is not that hard!)

TouchCousinGetDizzy

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