Balance proposal regarding skills
Changes made on June 5 lowered usability of Gambit, Power Strike and Charge. In addition Soul Shot is too much buffed now, which needs a ceiling.
OVERVIEW
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First off, I want to be clear that I'm not here to complain about nerfs for the sake of it. The pre-patch Gambit was genuinely broken: no cooldown, a 5x ceiling, near-double average DPS with zero downside. It was tripling win rates for a reason. The nerf was overdue.
But, the June 5 patch swung so hard in the opposite direction that it didn't just fix Gambit: it made the entire Power row pointless as a choice. Instead of picking between four viable skills, players will just take Soul Shot as there is no other option.
Gambit and Power Strike are now traps. Soul Shot is the only correct pick. Charge never mattered and still doesn't. None of that makes for interesting gameplay.
My overall position: the nerf direction was right, the magnitude was excessive, and the collateral damage to Power Strike and Charge was unintentional but real. The goal of a healthy patch should be a Power row where Gambit, Power Strike, Soul Shot, and Charge each have a distinct scenario where they're the better pick. Right now only Soul Shot clears that bar.
Below I'll go through each skill specifically.
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ISSUE 1 — GAMBIT [Power]
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Skill description:
Dice-roll mechanic. Roll equal to or above the threshold (starts at 14, improves with level) for massive damage. Roll below and you deal zero damage and waste the turn.
Current state (post-patch):
- 3-turn cooldown triggers regardless of hit or miss
- Max multiplier reduced from 5x to 4x at level 20
- Threshold starts at 14, and since the game uses 2d10, the results follow a bell curve rather than a flat distribution. Rolling 14+ on 2d10 is only about a 21% chance at base level, meaning Gambit misses roughly 4 out of every 5 uses until the threshold improves with leveling
CORE PROBLEM
The patch applied two separate nerfs simultaneously, a cooldown AND a multiplier cut, without accounting for the compounding effect of the existing miss mechanic.
The old Gambit was broken because it fired every single turn with a high success rate (%61) and no cooldown, creating an infinite damage loop. The 3-turn cooldown directly and completely solves that problem on its own. The multiplier cut was not necessary on top of it.
But there's a deeper issue that isn't being discussed enough: the cooldown currently triggers even on a MISS. If you roll a 10, deal zero damage, and then sit out 3 full turns, you've lost 4 turns of offensive output for absolutely nothing.
That's a massive hidden punishment that didn't exist before.
It makes Gambit feel terrible to play even for players who are willing to embrace the risk-reward nature of the skill.
PROPOSED FIX — Conditional cooldown
Implement a conditional cooldown system:
- HIT the threshold → 2-turn cooldown kicks in
- MISS the threshold → no cooldown at all
The miss itself is already the punishment. You rolled, you gambled, you got nothing. Piling a 3-turn lockout on top of a zero-damage turn is a double penalty that completely destroys the risk-reward identity of the skill.
With a conditional cooldown, a successful Gambit delivers big damage followed by a brief 2-turn recovery window. A failed Gambit wastes the turn; painful, but you can immediately try again or switch tactics. That's a real decision space. The current version has no decision space: Gambit is simply not worth using.
ALSO: Revert the multiplier cut
With the conditional cooldown above, also revert the multiplier back to 5x at max level.
Here's the math: at a 35% base hit rate, a 5x Gambit with a 2-turn cooldown on success has an expected DPS value of roughly 1.75x per turn once the cooldown is factored in.
Soul Shot is a guaranteed 3x with DEF pierce and no cooldown. Gambit doesn't come close to Soul Shot in expected DPS; the 5x ceiling isn't what's broken, it's the ONLY reason to ever consider picking Gambit at all.
If we keep the multiplier at 4x, the expected value drops to around 1.4x per turn. That's not a high-risk/high-reward skill, that's just a bad skill. The 5x ceiling is Gambit's entire personality: the rare, explosive moments that make the gamble feel worth taking.
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ISSUE 2 — POWER STRIKE [Power]
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Skill description:
- Massive single hit, but you take recoil damage to yourself.
- 2-turn cooldown added in the June 5 patch. Starts at 1.2x dmg / 25% recoil at level 0.
CORE PROBLEM
Power Strike has always been the fragile skill in the Power row: high ceiling but punishes you for using it. The recoil cost made it a calculated risk: worth it in short fights where burst damage ends the encounter, dangerous in longer fights where HP attrition matters. That design tension was interesting and intentional.
The 2-turn cooldown destroys it. Now the skill costs you HP every time you fire it AND locks you out for two turns. That is two simultaneous drawbacks, and the starting multiplier is just 1.2x; meaning at low investment levels you're dealing less than a buffed normal attack, taking self-damage, AND losing two turns of flexibility. There is no scenario where this is the right pick over Soul Shot.
PROPOSAL A — Reduce the recoil (if cooldown stays)
If the 2-turn cooldown remains, the recoil needs to drop significantly. Suggested values:
- Level 0: 25% recoil → 12-14% recoil
- Max level: scales down to around 8%
The logic: the cooldown already represents a cost in the form of lost turns. The recoil was the ONLY cost when you could fire it every turn, it made sense at 25% back then.
With a 2-turn window, you're using it far less frequently, so the recoil compounds more slowly, but the psychological weight of "I take damage every time I use this skill" discourages investment at any level. Reducing it makes the risk feel proportionate to the reward.
PROPOSAL B — Reduce the cooldown (if recoil stays)
Alternatively, reduce the cooldown to 1 turn and keep current recoil values. This preserves the original fast-paced Power Strike identity while still preventing every-turn spam. A 1-turn cooldown means you're still making meaningful choices about when to fire it, but you're not locked into a rigid 3-turn rhythm that makes the skill feel like a liability.
ADDITIONAL: Fix the damage scaling regardless
Whichever path is taken, the damage trajectory needs work. 1.2x at level 0 rising to 1.3x at level 1 is barely a rounding error above a normal attack. For a skill that costs skill points, self-damage, and now a cooldown, the numbers need to feel rewarding.
Suggested ceiling: 2.0x-2.2x at max level
Without that, there's no reason to invest skill points here even if the costs are reduced. The intended identity, "high burst, high cost", only works if the burst is actually high. Right now it's low burst at high cost.
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ISSUE 3 — SOUL SHOT [Power] (newly overpowered)
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Skill description (post-buff):
3x damage, 70% DEF pierce at max level, 10% HP cost, no cooldown.
Previously: 2.2x max, 50% DEF pierce, 20% HP.
CORE PROBLEM
The buff was well-intentioned as Soul Shot was legitimately underused before the patch. But swinging it to 3x + 70% DEF pierce + no cooldown + only 10% HP cost makes it dominant in almost every conceivable scenario.
Against low-DEF enemies: guaranteed 3x. Against high-DEF enemies: guaranteed 3x with 70% of their defense stripped. The 10% HP cost is noticeable but not prohibitive, especially once Healing Light or Arcane Barrier is in the build. There is no scenario where Gambit or Power Strike is the mathematically better pick.
The problem isn't that Soul Shot is strong: it's that it has no meaningful drawback and no scenario where an alternative outperforms it. That collapses the Power row from a strategic choice to an automatic pick. Every player who reaches the Power tier builds Soul Shot. The skill tree stops being a tree and becomes a hallway. This will homogenize the meta if left unchecked.
PROPOSAL A — Add a 1-turn cooldown
A 1-turn cooldown would not make Soul Shot weak. It would simply prevent it from firing in back-to-back turns, forcing players to build a rotation around it rather than spamming it every turn.
Soul Shot would still be the king against high-DEF enemies, nothing else in the row matches its pierce percentage, but the rotation constraint opens up a reason to have a second Power skill ready. Suddenly Charge's setup mechanic has a turn to breathe. Suddenly Power Strike's burst-on-cooldown rhythm makes sense as a gap-filler.
PROPOSAL B — Dynamic HP cost scaled to DEF pierce used
An alternative approach: make the HP cost dynamic rather than flat. The more DEF pierce is actually doing work, the more it costs:
- Against high-DEF enemies (full 70% pierce active): 15-18% HP
- Against low-DEF enemies (pierce barely applies): 8-10% HP
This creates a genuine resource trade-off. You can still spam Soul Shot against tanky mobs, but it drains you faster, rewarding players who assess when the DEF pierce is actually worth the extra HP expenditure versus when a normal attack or a different skill is more efficient.
NOTE on the buff overall
The buff was clearly aimed at giving Soul Shot a niche against high-DEF enemies, and that goal was achieved. The overshoot came from buffing three stats simultaneously (multiplier, DEF pierce ceiling, HP cost) with no cooldown adjustment. Rolling back any one of those changes slightly, or adding a minimal cooldown, would restore balance without undoing the intent of the buff.
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ISSUE 4 — CHARGE [Power] (untouched, increasingly irrelevant)
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Skill description:
Stack power across turns (max 3 stacks). Next normal attack releases all stacks for bonus damage. 0.5x per stack, max 3 stacks = 1.5x total bonus. No cooldown.
CORE PROBLEM
Charge has a multi-turn setup cost and a single-moment payoff. That payoff is 1.5x bonus damage on release, meaning the full released hit is roughly 2.5x (base attack + 1.5x bonus). That sounds reasonable in isolation, but consider the actual opportunity cost:
You spend 3 turns activating Charge stacks instead of attacking or using other skills. In those same 3 turns, you could have used Soul Shot once (3x, DEF-piercing) and attacked normally twice. The math heavily favors never touching Charge.
The June 5 patch didn't change Charge, but it made things worse indirectly: Soul Shot got significantly stronger, which widened the gap between them. Before the buff, Soul Shot was underused and Charge was merely weak. Now Soul Shot is dominant and Charge is borderline pointless.
PROPOSAL A — Increase per-stack multiplier
Raise per-stack bonus from 0.5x to 0.8-0.9x, bringing the max release to roughly 2.4-2.7x bonus on top of the base attack. At 3 stacks this delivers a total release hit of around 3.4-3.7x, meaningfully higher than Soul Shot in raw damage ceiling, but it requires 3 turns of setup, has no DEF pierce, and can be disrupted if you're forced to use a defensive skill mid-stack.
That's a real trade-off: higher ceiling, harder to access, more vulnerable. A different kind of "high-risk/high-reward" from Gambit, but a distinct and valid one.
PROPOSAL B — Add DEF bypass on full 3-stack release
Keep the current 0.5x per stack but add a conditional effect: releasing all 3 stacks in one hit bypasses 35-40% of enemy DEF.
This gives Charge an anti-armor identity similar to Soul Shot, but with the distinction that it requires committed setup instead of being on-demand. The player faces a genuine choice:
Soul Shot = flexible, immediate, consistent anti-armor
Charge = slower, harder to land, but higher ceiling if you can afford the setup turns
That's a real decision point, not an obvious answer.
PROPOSAL C — Battle Cry synergy bonus (long-term suggestion)
Give Charge a synergy effect with Battle Cry. If Battle Cry's ATK buff is active when Charge releases, the released hit deals an additional 0.5x bonus, or the ATK multiplier from Battle Cry is temporarily amplified for that single hit.
This rewards players who plan their rotation: stack Charge, time the release inside a Battle Cry window, land a combined big hit. It gives both skills a reason to appear in the same build and makes the skill tree feel interconnected rather than a collection of isolated nodes. Right now there is no mechanical reason to combine them.
Charge's identity should be "the patient power move": the skill that rewards thinking ahead and timing a big release at the right moment. Any of the above proposals, or a combination of A and C, would carve out a genuine niche without making it the dominant pick.
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SUMMARY
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GAMBIT
→ Conditional cooldown: 2 turns on a successful hit, 0 turns on a miss. The failed roll is already the punishment, don't add a lockout on top of it.
→ Revert max multiplier to 5x. At 35% hit rate + 2-turn cooldown on success, expected DPS is already well below Soul Shot. The 5x ceiling is the only reason to use it.
POWER STRIKE
→ Either reduce recoil to ~12% base (if cooldown stays), or reduce cooldown to 1 turn (if recoil stays).
Two simultaneous drawbacks at a 1.2x base multiplier is not a skill, it's a trap.
→ Raise the damage ceiling to 2.0-2.2x at max level regardless of which path is taken.
SOUL SHOT
→ Add a 1-turn cooldown, or make HP cost scale with how much DEF pierce is actually being applied.
Keep its niche against tanky enemies without it being the universal answer to everything.
CHARGE
→ Raise per-stack bonus to 0.8-0.9x, or add a DEF bypass effect on full 3-stack release.
→ Consider a Battle Cry synergy bonus for long-term rotation depth.
A NOTE ON THE POWER ROW OVERALL
The whole point of having four skills in the Power section is that players should be choosing based on their build, their enemy type, and their playstyle. Right now the effective choice is Soul Shot plus three unused nodes.
That's not a problem with any single skill in isolation: it's a systemic balance issue where one outlier is too far ahead of the pack. Bringing the others up slightly, and trimming Soul Shot's unconditional dominance slightly, restores the decision space without requiring a dramatic overhaul.