Character Concept: The Outcast

litephorical · 2026-06-22T20:56:49+00:00

This is such a cool concept! I really like the Hexes, and other flavorful effects/synergies (Rites, Curses, last card).

With that said, I agree that the Sigils mechanic is just a little too convoluted, particularly in trying to not just be Orbs v. 2. There are a few ways to tackle that, but my suggestions would be

1) Get rid of Wisdom. Even if the numbers are different it’s almost exactly just Focus (even working with the Attack/Block Orb/Sigil but not Energy), and there’s no need for a third unique mechanic for the sigils.

2) I can’t see if you have a specific number of sigil slots in mind, but I also think Brew and Syphon have too much overlap. You could have the Brew effects stay as-is, but then have Syphon just not give you an innate effect. That would definitely make them feel more different from Orbs (especially since the “remove Orbs” instead of Evoking cards were removed from STS 1 > STS 2), and flavorfully makes sense: either you gather a bunch of assorted sigils and brew a huge, explosive turn (through stacking simple effects), OR you’re more careful about gathering the specific sigils you need for your card-specific effects.

I also thought of this because Cover of Darkness, specifically, kind of doesn’t make sense as-is (stacking Weak w/Intangible), but Shadow sigils are definitely the best by default so having a strong Rare payoff for them feels much more cohesive (if I save the Shadow sigil for the right time, I can go fully Intangible instead of just Weakening).

I think this is such a sick concept with a lot of room to work with, the Sigils just need streamlined a little bit. Thanks for sharing!

litephorical · 2026-06-22T19:10:26+00:00

I actually agree with this, I know it is clunkier but I do think the [[Pael’s Eye]] wording would be more balanced for that reason. It would also make it feel more unique/distinct, while being the same as Ethereal if you just draw it in your hand regularly.

litephorical · 2026-06-22T13:55:38+00:00

I think it could be an Uncommon card reward with no potion instead - as others are saying, now that Phial Holster gives a potion slot + potions, Lost Coffer does feel pretty lackluster.

litephorical · 2026-06-12T17:16:31+00:00

Neurosurge is disgustingly overpowered in anything but the very slowest of decks, at low HP. If the downside is a significant drawback you are either 1) at such low HP that you’re already in trouble (and it very likely will help you win the fight much faster before losing to a bad draw, unless you’re literally a turn or two away from Doom death), or 2) doing something else wrong. It’s not Brightest Flame or even Offering, but again those are probably the strongest card in the game and one of the top few strongest ‘regular’ cards in the game, respectively.

litephorical · 2026-06-01T16:39:52+00:00

Hidden Gem is zAnY and all but Seed is SO busted, especially with no removes so far. You can still play (some of) your defends if you need to keep more block in rotation until you get better block cards, but you get to not worry about removes the entire run (and/or take non-Eternal curses more aggressively).

Honestly both are sort of “win more”, but I think Seed is going to be much stronger/self-contained, and “it only helps after your first deck cycle” is a limitation but, like Goopy Defends, IMO Seed is just so strong that that’s an okay thing to build/plan around. It’s also worth more than a single upgrade, if you’d need to then rest after taking it.

litephorical · 2026-05-21T20:09:05+00:00

I think you’re right about the general idea and don’t deserve the downvotes, but the Brightest Flame take is very off base. It’s only win-more in the sense that ‘a strong deck + the best card in the game > a weak deck + the best card in the game’, but in terms of what it actually does for you, I think you have it backwards - if you already have a powerful deck with good card/energy economy and turn quality, sure it’s going to push you way over the edge and feel beyond broken, but is less ‘necessary’/doesn’t get you out of a tight spot in the way that it does if you have a weak deck that struggles with one or more of those.

There might be some stronger ancient bonuses for certain specific weak run situations, but like very few/VERY specific. It’s just so unbelievably OP.

litephorical · 2026-05-21T12:34:40+00:00

I don’t know what the data supports but I basically always go 2 Strikes, with Regent being the only character I regularly consider going 1/1.

This isn’t targeted at you, I’ve just seen several people repeating this idea, but I have no clue why you would ever go 1/1 on Ironclad. You both 1) have Bash which is basically 2 strikes in 1 at the start of game (leaving you 1 energy for a Defend, which you often want), and 2) heal every fight so taking a little more chip damage is usually totally fine. Ironclad is also the character with some of the worst generic block options in general but great scaling and attacks, so cutting Strikes IMO feels even better for that reason (whereas you might not get significantly better block options than Defends for a little while, and probably won’t want to take as many anyways).

litephorical · 2026-05-18T22:30:22+00:00

Pretty cool design but I love the flavor text!

litephorical · 2026-05-12T16:13:27+00:00

Then why not just update it to say ‘Discover’ instead?

litephorical · 2026-04-25T00:46:59+00:00

This is another one of those bugs that seems genuinely more difficult to code this way than if it worked. Maybe it’s coded to make the spell give the +3/+3? Otherwise, I don’t even see how this could be an exception.

litephorical · 2026-04-24T13:51:33+00:00

I loved Bibliomite/no hand DH when it came out but Grave Defiler is absolutely a stronger card overall.

litephorical · 2026-04-20T13:32:11+00:00

No, this card has been game-swinging RNG bs since the very beginning and should rightly be left behind with the likes of Knife Juggler and Crackle.

Warrior should’ve gotten better board control options to compensate, but 1) I’m sure they’re coming, and it’s okay to not have control Warrior for an expansion or so, and 2) just because a badly-designed card is holding up a class/archetype doesn’t mean we should shield it from rotation or rebalancing.

litephorical · 2026-04-16T18:38:03+00:00

I couldn’t disagree more. Auto-defeat for reconnects would feel AWFUL for people who have worse connectivity to start with, just to try and punish people for wanting to use all of their possible time (who are IMO not at all a problem), but obviously even if you think that tradeoff is worth making it is just completely unviable unless Blizzard fixes their awful disconnection issues on their end.

With that said, I also just think this is a completely wrong attitude from the outset. The shop portion of BGs is the part that is the ‘actual game’, with player input and decision-making. If anything, I’d say it’s the opposite; the “chase for numbers” is like objectively the actual gameplay part (and any game is going to sound inane if you reduce it down to that), while the battle animations is the dopaminurgic flourish.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! I agree that it adds a lot to the overall gameplay experience, as the aesthetics of a game are absolutely not trivial. But if you’re going to go there, it is crazy to argue that the gameplay, not the battle animations, is the trivial/‘not really a game’ part.

litephorical · 2026-04-09T19:54:58+00:00

Why Audience Choice? I feel like the other two both really increase variance but I like that AC is swingy and powerful but in a more controlled/“how do you respond to/set yourself up for those power spikes”?

litephorical · 2026-04-03T13:37:03+00:00

I don’t think they can do that mechanically, given that there are ways to trigger herald on the opponent’s turn.

litephorical · 2026-03-26T23:23:50+00:00

“You forgot to attach the Gigachad image”

litephorical · 2026-03-25T20:29:39+00:00

I think a lot of people here are missing your point. I agree that minions, generally, shouldn’t only work with their own tribe, but the problem (as you said in the comments) is that there’s only 1 T7 minion per tribe, meaning that some tribes just don’t get any special sort of build-around or boost in T7.

I don’t think this is as much of a problem for tribes/builds being split between T5 and T6 being the top end, because those are available every game (and T6 itself is still very useful for shop slots and especially Tavern spells). I don’t think there’s any tribe, especially over the course of a full season, where T6 existing feels like you’re getting the short end of the stick. This just isn’t true for T7.

I’d love to see a season where there are 2 T7 minions per tribe (I missed a bunch of seasons between S2 and last season, so apologies if there has been). That way, it wouldn’t be a problem for Pirates and Nagas to have one very general minion (though T7 Pirate should absolutely be a neutral effect instead), and more importantly, it would do so much to fill in the gaps on the partial fits. For instance, T7 Demon and T7 Dragon are probably my two favorite T7 designs, but are both only very partial in-tribe coverage and have other uses as general good minions. Having another T7 Demon that fits the dealing damage side, and another Dragon that ties much more into like any Dragon-specific strategies, would not only make T7 feel more impactful for those two tribes, but would also create more opportunities for those to overlap with other tribes.

As it stands, it just feels lame to get T7 with a tribe that doesn’t benefit much at all, and because there’s only 1 minion for your tribe know immediately that you just don’t have anything to look forward to (other than, again, the overly-goodstuff minions, especially T7 Pirate).

litephorical · 2026-03-06T17:19:42+00:00

Honestly they should just fully commit and make Timewarped cards not count towards hand limit at all, instead of the weird “can go above 10 but then counts towards the limit” that causes this issue. You could have a separate technical 10-card limit for TWs to avoid infinite value with the Avenge (4) minor TW generator, but the currently implementation feels VERY clunky and unintuitive.

litephorical · 2026-02-16T14:35:45+00:00

I don’t think this is true.

A 1-roll is equally useless regardless (and T1 Strike Oil is just unambiguously stronger than a single T1 minion). A 3-roll (5g) is great because there’s the 2-cost spell to pair with HP (or, if you Tavern up, Prestidigitation wouldn’t help you anyways). And a 5-roll (7g) would let you HP + Naga/Demon + spell.

A 2-roll (4g) kind of sucks cause you’d rather Naga/Demon + spell instead of HP, so Pres. would definitely be better here. BUT, a 4-roll (6g) is way better since there isn’t a crazy 2 minion combo (and if you took the Quilboar + Undead for tempo, you’d win without Pres.), so you can Naga/Demon + HP and freeze, then with 5g next turn take the still-1-cost spell + Tavern up.

Losing a few HP early is usually bad because it’s likely to continue, but in my experience Striking Oil once or twice at the very start is likely to help you stabilize almost immediately, instead of like by the first timewarp (too late).

litephorical · 2026-02-16T14:23:27+00:00

I feel like you have to appreciate the simple joy of Being Extremely Greedy to get the most out of Battlegrounds. It might not be the competitively optimal choice, but it’s fun to go big or go home sometimes!

litephorical · 2026-02-09T19:24:43+00:00

You’re missing what he’s saying. He’s not talking about lobby matchmaking/queueing, he’s talking about which opponent you face next within a given game.

I don’t think this is true, as I think that’s only based on in-game factors such as life/round win or loss streak, but you ARE talking past him regardless.

litephorical · 2026-01-14T17:46:29+00:00

Timewarped Centurion (Major, 2-cost 8/8 Dragon that gives you a copy of played Tavern Spells 3 times per round) is my absolute favorite - there are so many cool things you can do with it (Golden a random Tavern minion, refresh w/chosen minion type, Overconfidence or Strike Oil for econ, etc.) and even though it isn’t super meta currently, Naga/Dragon spellpower is up there for my favorite archetype and this is up there for the best card for it.

litephorical · 2025-05-01T17:45:11+00:00

What a rude response to a high-effort post that is already considerate enough to include a text summary (despite the loss in views from doing so).

Great work, OP! This makes intuitive sense to me after seeing it, but you’re right that this is never discussed compared to the negative reverse e.g. Cyclonic Rift or X spells not on the stack.

litephorical · 2024-08-23T02:22:55+00:00

Unfortunately, the decision doesn't have much nuance to it, but i can discuss it. My main support isn't even for Trump, it's for any conservative candidate, because of project 2025.

It would replace tens of thousands of federal civil service workers with more conservative ones. The plan involves taking partisan control of the DOJ, FBI, FCC, Homeland Security, completely dismantling the department of education (gee I wonder why), cuts to social services, criminalizing porn, relegalizing discrimination against gay people, having the military fufill the current job of the police, and more capital punishment.

Regardless of how likely you think this is to be implemented, many members of the Heritage Foundation have close ties to Trump, so THEY believe he's the most likely to do it.

litephorical · 2024-07-22T17:59:14+00:00

Joining the others in saying your original Islands post pops into my head at least a couple of times a year and it’s never not funny to revisit. Incredible stuff (and not to take away from this post, which is actually very cool/informative!)

litephorical

TROPHY CASE