Any hope for a tweak patch?

[Lujo]

^ Yeah, combine the "very, very prefferable early worship" (so people don't really get their moneys worth if they try him out here and there after prepping/starting out with something else), obviously tangible prep penalty (in a sense that you can immagine it being a rather clear bad thing even if it turns out it's not that bad), value of wheytwut being something that's not readily apparent (visually compares badly to getindare, costs a ton of mana without killing anything) and the whole "punishments" bussines (remember, it takes a long time for a player to become comfortable with even taking one hit of any bad thing, let alone subjecting themselves to a string) and what you got is quite an unapproachable deity.

And he's actually pure killer with health guys! You basically need some experience with hum to really appreciate them, tbh, as that healthboost allows for about as much sillyness as the old absolution and he allows easy potion play. Heck, JJ Rogues work, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Playing the PQI with having experience and knowledge of all this and not having that experience and knowledge will produce a wildly different overall experience, and you're not all that likely to go experimenting with JJ on your own on runs which allready look intimidating.

But compare the appeal of JJ to the appeal of Mystera to even moderately experienced folks, and JJ looks like a complete looser. Heck, more people on the forums got into him because of Darvin than anything reasoning of their own. While Mystera did get the occasional "I didn't prep her because I got bored of knowing I'd win" comment, and at least Tinker got her first Vicious VT token on Naga City with her. Vicious VT Naga City isn't small potatoes in my book.

EDIT: Also, didn't Darvin basically get all the stuff JJ was outright abuseable with nerfed at one point? The spellcastery stuff? I mean, he's been way sillier back in the day and he's actually been adressed as a problematic powerhouse many times, while Mystera was just considered underpowered untill that one big batch of buffs / rework and then left kinda like that.

[Darvin]

[Lujo]

[Astral]

[Darvin]

[Lujo]

[Blovski]

I dunno Lujo. My low-energy VT strategy is a JJ Elf/Halfling Transmuter with a Balanced Dagger or something, or a Taurogzerker depending on boss. I really do think it's that Mystera meshes really well with your playstyle and other preps you like than that there's something inherently discouraging about her being so good.

[Lujo]

^ I just wrote you exactly what it is, and how it happened. It's not anything about my strat it's just cheezing the hell out of being able to prep weakening as a "peircing wand with benefits" everywhere because it solves just about any problem a spellcaster could possibly have. It's so powerful and reliable that i never even had to consider bothering with what others consider VT cheeze. Boss has resists - weakening spam, you're fighting a boss who's suddenly weak to fireballs and isn't meant to be. Boss doesn't have resists - screw him, he doesn't have resists and you can deal damage without being hit back. Boss has retaliate: frieball - go something else. Mystera Warlord or Codex EM. Pissorf Mystera Bloodmage - tons of spam, much piery, very spike. Very few bossess with retaliate: fireball in the game.

I didn't "come up with it" so much as "completely blundered into it" and put the two and two togather, but I would've "blundered into it" a long time ago if Mystera had been what she was all along, and anyone could've. I think it's rather impossible to not blunder into right after you decide you've had enough of taurog and decide to see what all those glyphs are actually about. (With a possible stop at EM, because of the lol spike, ofc). If you can locker the boots from the graveyard you can get it going with them and shoot for the Crystal Ball and never look back.

There's no strat to it. It's that simple. I was flaberghasted when I even discovered this and kept disbelieving for a long time myself. I don't even prep extra mana, but magnet:fireball for pure convenience and explosive power. On non JJ spellcasters. I think no mana boots either. I spam Crytal Ball because I don't need to even spend money on stuff most of the time. Not because theres actuall benefit but because I can ignore the fact that there's money in the game, that sort of mentality. I could get more if I do X... but who the hell cares? It's not so much a strat as a lack of one. It's not about getting higher end numbers or better stats or anything - it's about having to think less and ignore more.

Also, this sounds like I never ever played anything else at all - which isn't true, I played pretty much everything I was ever aware of - it's just that giving this thing up was a matter of "getting off the cheeze", never anything else making more sense (except in cases with retaliate fireball and Cursed Oasis) or providing anything anyone'd ever need over it. In terms of playing spellcasters. It's easy to run into (has all the easily acquired preps which make sense), easy to develop a habit, gets the results, is rather non-taxing on the brain and anything else looks like too much effort in comparison.

Big part of the reason is that it's kinda hard to switch over to something which gives you more if you put in more effort into it, because this hardly taps into all you could even get from THIS if you actually went and cheezed it. It's like, yeah, I could get more out of a more complicated thing, but if I wanted to do that, I'd actually be preping this thing differently and, like, thinking while I play and stuff. XD (You do have to think here and there, though, when you run into the fattest bosses. But pretty much only then. Like VT Slime Pits.)

[Lujo]

[Kami]