The white cards are meant to be weak. Most are in a good place, except Wet Towel.
Wet towel card is especially weak since it drops when crit damage % is low. My test cases increased damage by: [base tower stats]:+1.2%, [+Wizard skills]:+2.1%, [+Prince Lycaon]:+3.9%. Using Wooden Staff as a reference point, this item is below average in all cases. I propose increasing the bonus to 8% crit chance and adding 5% crit damage. Now the test cases increase damage by [base tower stats]:+2.6%, [+Wizard skills]:+4.3%, [+Prince Lycaon]:+7.5%. It is a good item for Prince Lycaon or other towers with increased crit chance and crit damage, but otherwise it is slightly below average.
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For blue items, there are a few items I think could be balanced: Monster Teeth, Guard Lance, Heroic Cape
Monster Teeth are fairly weak, but they have their use to balance out the -25% crit chance from meat mallet, for example. I think they could be improved and not spoil game balance. I recommend adding 15% crit damage. My test case (20% crit at 150% crit damage) improved by 17% with the current monster teeth, and 21% with my improved monster teeth. Using the Wood Axe as a reference point, the current monster teeth are underpowered, and my suggested change is more in line with what should be expected from a blue item. Without crit potions, monster teeth is a horrible blue item. I think that is fine, because, like the longbow, it doesn't always need to be useful.
Guard Lance seems almost universally bad compared to War Axe. That might not be the case for towers with very low base damage (Shadow, Phoenix), but I think even then, War Axe is often better. The beta is showing +6 base damage since that's what the Guard bonus is being upgraded it. Maybe this could be a "Fine Guard Lance" and give 50% extra bonus? +9 base damage and +30% damage. I haven't done any test cases here because there are too many options (tower type, tower level) in addition to the differences in comparing items normally. --- My one cautionary note is that this item can be eaten by Mr. Iron, and we don't want it to be too good for that reason. I was going to suggest +12 base damage, but I think that's too strong for Mr. Iron.
Heroic cape is in a good spot for the late game, but I think it could be stronger in the early game. Maybe 12% + 0.08%/level, or 15% + 0.05%/level. If the late game value is changed, I would not go above +25% bonus damage since this is separate from all other bonus damage and is surprisingly strong. Early game it feels a bit on the weak side, however.
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For the yellow items, I think they are mostly in a good place. Each has pros and cons and places where they are useful. I just have a few small wishes, but they're more for lore than practical balancing.
I wish Herb Witch's Cauldron and Irish Pub's Barrel would give extra bonus when used on the correct towers. Maybe the bonus would apply to all towers in 2 range instead of 1 range. Maybe the bonus is doubled when held by those towers. -- I'm not sure. But I think it would be fun and give more reason to keep Herb Witch and Irish Pub around after wave ~100.
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For the purple items, I think also think they're generally in a good place. Probably because I am used to playing with them. They each have their use and some are stronger than others at times. I think the Plasma Blade and Mummy Bandages could balancing. And Messerschmidt's Reaver could be clarified. Toilet Paper's behavior should be looked at, maybe balanced as well.
Plasma Blade is very strong and its drop can take a game from the brink of disaster to certain victory. I think that makes the chance of it dropping a bit too game determining. I would like to see it have a lower item level so it can drop earlier, but also less overall power to compensate. That way it doesn't drop late and almost guarantee victory, but instead can drop at an earlier wave and only help a huge deal. I don't know what it's item level is, but I think letting it drop 10-20 waves earlier, while changing it's damage to 10%/level would be a good adjustment.
Mummy Bandages give a huge amount of attack speed per level. At level 99, that's over 300% attack speed from a single item. While it is unique, that's still a wild amount of power in a single item. To avoid disrupting game balance too much, I would recommend a medium change for now. From 10% + 3%/level to 40% + 2%/level. This makes them the same at level 30, and above that level, the item is weaker. Final bonus at 99 goes from 308% to 238%. Or maybe 25% + 2.5%/level, this has a final bonus of 272%, only slightly less.
Messerschmidt's Reaver - The range reduction of 40% is hard to understand with the discrete tile coloring of the map. As I understand it, a 2-3 range is reduced by 1, and larger ranges are reduced by 2. Unless there is partial tile ranges that aren't shown, I think listing this as a 40% reduction is misleading.
Toilet Paper should always give a reward, in my opinion. It is sad when it is one of the last legendary cards and you don't get anything from it when you swipe it. No half card dust and no unique items. The 3 unique items given by it is very good. Maybe consider giving only 2, but giving card dust potions if there aren't any more unique items.
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For orange, expert items, I think Skull of Darkness, Cape of the Specter, Roordahuizum, and Armor of a Fat Knight could use balancing.
Skull of Darkness is good, but the part I don't like is that to use it optimally, you should heal 99 times, then transmute it for card dust. What if the chance to heal is increased to 20-25% and the card was cursed to never be removed after a heal had been used. That way the player gets to pick to use the card, or not. No micromanaging the card to get the most out of it.
Cape of the Specter's armor penetration is probably fine, but it feels weak. Maybe give it 5% more penetration?
Roordahuizum often seems to give about 10-15% additional dps, which feels bad when you need to be either a Viking or holgar to use it. You also need to factor in the 5% (reduced by luck) chance to miss. It isn't a bad item, but for a black market item, it feels weak. Scaling potion effects are powerful, so I don't think this should be improved much. Maybe 13% improved potion effects? I think 15% is the highest that should be considered. Right now, if all stat bonuses came from potions (which would mean it is the only equipped item), the damage might be 33% higher, which is strong. But not all damage comes from potions, so it isn't quite as much. 13% would change the damage boost to 44%. Both of these values are ignoring the 5% miss chance. Another possible way to increase the damage in a unique way is if it gave some base damage. It would increase damage in a way most other items don't (except blood demon blade). Maybe +5% base damage, or 10% if the miss chance was also 10%.
Armor of the Fat Knight is so good for so little penalty. -25% attack speed is negligible by the time this item drops. I think its penalty should be larger, more in line with Trident of Poseidon. Maybe -1 multicrit? Maybe -50% to -75% attack speed? Or, and I think this is best, +10% base attack delay. So a Dandelion would attack every 2.2 seconds instead of every 2.0 seconds. That seems fair for an extra item slot.
Yes this is for the most part something i can get behind most parts are well thought out i think.(I also suggested a plasma nerf in the past)
I have minor problems with the following:
Monster teeth would be too strong on 30% I would argue for something like 30% at lvl 99
Starting at 15 or 20 on lvl 1
Heroic cape is nearly always a bad choice if you have alternatives. So I recommend a slightly bigger boost. At least that’s what I feel I have not not done the number crunch for this. But in late there are just better options by default and early you get 20% bonus dmg effectively also from a war axe. Maybe a bit less but not much.
Mummy bandages are fine the way they are to my mind.
For monster try, I meant change it to 15% crit chance and 15% crit damage.
Heroic cape is stronger than I first thought. At level 50, it gives +15% to bosses and challenges. That isn't 15% damage, but an additional 15% on top of all your other damage. So this is often much better than a war axe, if you already have some damage % from a meat mallet or plasma blade. The downside is that it does nothing against normal, mass, and flying waves. However, this item is more for the towers that don't already excel at single target damage (hitman).
Late game, the heroic cape gives 20% damage bonus, which is half as good as Hydra arrow, but it is applied instantly instead of over time. I'm not sure how items scale with each other, but hydra arrow might not apply to certain effects, like GT1 or solara burn (maybe it does, I don't know). I think the item would be far too strong for a blue item if the final bonus was above 30%.
Yeah, maybe mummy bandages are fine. They are quite strong, so I felt a minor nerf made sense. But they aren't like plasma blade, which can singlehandedly recover an otherwise lost game.
Okay misread the Monster teeth. I have a feeling 15 crit dmg is kinda low. (Compare potions)
I know that cape is a flat 1.2 multiplier for bosses but I seldom have a need to swap an item for it the impact is not that much compared to other options. As most of the time the alternative is not that much inferior if not even better. So most of the time it is an auto transmute for me. My deck has to be really to make me consider use it.
