My thoughts on BLUDTOPOWA and the Bloodmage

[Abraxas]

Now, I understand that I and other people have already touched these topics before, and I have even opened a thread regarding the current Bloodmage not that long ago, but still I can't help but feel bothered when I see updates passing by and these two particular game elements remaining as they are. What follows is more of a personal rant than anything.

Let me start by taking a look at BLUDTOPOWA. It’s a glyph that even in its previous version had some issues, surely, which is why it ended up receiving a nerf. But I don’t think that BLUDTOPOWA’s problem was ever being overpowered.
As far as I can tell, what happened was that we had a time period where pure fireball strategies by themselves were overpowered. Between the old burning cap, the cost-free Crystal Ball, the ability to acquire four schadenfreude potions in a single run and a few other things, there was a potential for dealing insane amounts of damage purely with BURNDAYRAZ.
And of course, in that environment BLUDTOPOWA really shined. But not because it was too powerful, but rather as a consequence of the actual flaw the glyph had - that it greatly favored pure fireball strategies over anything else.


Speaking in very rough terms, the old BLUDTOPOWA, when active, would exchange two equivalent resources. Before taking specific strategies and situations, 1 hp per level per tile and 1 mp per tile of regeneration are equally valued resources. That is to say, the glyph offered no net gain of resources.
As a result, it was only worth activating the old BLODTOPOWA whenever the situation made mp regeneration a more valuable resource than hp regeneration. For most strategies, this would be circumstantially true, often in cases such as needing a tiny bit of extra mana to pull off another fireball or WEYTWUT or ENDISWALL or whatnot. Ultimately, whether or not BLUDTOPOWA was worth the inventory slot and the conversion points came down to how frequent these cases were according to the strategy being used.
Thing is, for pure fireball strategies, the moments where mp regeneration was more valuable than hp regeneration amounted to approximately always. And it's easy to see why, as pure fireball strategies virtually neglect hp and hp regeneration entirely. Couple that with the period of fireball overpoweredness we had, and it's clear why BLUDTOPOWA would look like it needed a nerf.

So the glyph was nerfed. And when I look at how it was nerfed, I can't help but feel that not only did it not really help the problems the glyph had, it actually made it even worse.
While the nerf did in fact somewhat reduce the effectiveness of BLUDTOPOWA when used in pure fireball strategies, so did the many nerfs that happened to other game elements that were making fireball strategies overpowered to begin with, so it really feels like such a nerf for BLUDTOPOWA was ultimately unnecessary.
On the other hand, that nerf made it so that by activating BLUDTOPOWA, a character is actually incurring on a net loss of resources. Again, assuming that hp and mp regeneration are on principle equally valued, and speaking on fairly rough terms, the new BLUDTOPOWA is only worth activating on moments when you value mp regeneration more than twice as much as hp regeneration. For the vast majority of strategies, which will be using physical attacks and thus spending their hp, such moments are substantially rare, making it so that for most of the time, the player stands to gain more by just converting the glyph on sight.
As far as pure fireball strategies are concerned, however, hp and hp regeneration are still virtually useless, so BLUDTOPOWA is only somewhat less powerful for those, but still mostly a no-brainer.
In the end, though that I do think that the old BLUDTOPOWA could have used some change, I don't think a nerf is what it needed, and the nerf it received only worsened the problems it had.


Now that I've said what I wanted about BLUDTOPOWA, allow me to move on to the Bloodmage.
I'd like to start by mentioning that I was very much fond of the old Bloodmage's ability of supercharged mana potions at a health cost. I think it worked fairly well mechanically, having good synergy with the class' other two abilities, and also established a nice theme theme for Bloodmages - they had had access to more magic resources than any other class, at the cost of their own health, and had an ability that helped offset that cost. I still find it hard to understand why the devs thought this wasn't a good direction for the class, and would very much appreciate if anyone could help me try and understand it.

Let's take a look at the current Bloodmage, then.
Part of the issue with the current Bloodmage definitely stems from the aforementioned problems with his signature glyph, BLUDTOPOWA. The glyph is fundamentally unbalanced, heavily favoring pure fireball strategies over anything else.
And it doesn't seem to me like the point of Bloodmages is for them to be a purely fireball based class. Heck, we already have a class with an inherent fireball magnet, and even them have much room for going with other strategies.
Moreover, with the Bloodmage changes, both of their two other abilities are now blood pool-focused, and Sanguine as a whole doesn't really have much synergy with BLUDTOPOWA. Sure, you can use sanguine to offset the health lost with BLUDTOPOWA, approximately bringing the glyph back to its former power. But really, as the Bloodmage isright now, players really stand to gain more by just focusing on raising their health and using physical attacks to get the most of Sanguine, essentially going against the nature of the current BLUDTOPOWA.
Which also brings me to another issue with the current Bloodmage - They have two abilities centered on blood pools.
This was already somewhat of an issue for the old Bloodmages. Sometimes, by virtue of the dungeon layout or its nature, players could simply end up being cut off from their saved up blood pools, or just end up with less of them overall (cases like corrosive enemies and dungeons with lots of very strong enemies come to mind). That possibility of having less access to blood pools, when coupled with BLUDTOPOWA's favoring of pure fireball strategies, really ended up encouraging player playing as Bloodmages to seek strategies that did not rely on blood pools (i.e pure fireballing).
Sure enough, having two blood pool-centered abilities encourages players to not ignore the, but it also worsens the issues that were already present. In Naga City, an extreme case, the current Bloodmage might as well be a blank class (not quite, but you get my point).

Actually, writing all of this and thinking about the question I'll be putting forward next has made me realize something about the question I asked earlier, regarding why the devs changed the Bloodmage to begin with.
The question I want to ask is: what is the Bloodmage's theme supposed to be? Every class has some sort of theme that naturally leads the player into using some sort of strategy or playstyle, so what is the Bloodmage's?
As I mentioned before, I believe that the theme of the old Bloodmage was that of a class which has more magical resources than any other, but at the expense of their own health. I liked that, because I think it worked well mechanically (both in how it was viable and fun to play), and was thematically fitting with the idea of a "Bloodmage". It was a magic focused class, using their own blood as a resource. Sanguine played a "support" role to the main focus of magic.
However, looking at the current Bloodmage, it seems like the devs intend to go on a different direction with his theme. As evidenced by the presence of two blood pool-centered abilities, it looks like they intend for the class' focus to be more on the "blood" aspect.
Now, I don't know if this has always been the direction they wanted to take with the class, or if something along the way made them want to change the class' focus. But I do know that I really don't like this new apparent direction. A broken BLUDTOPOWA aside, the other "mage-ish" aspects of the current incarnation of the Bloodmage (the fact that mana potions are the one to trigger the Sanguine bonus, and the small mana recovery upon drinking blood) feel more like afterthoughts, with the intended main class feature being the Sanguine ability.
Of course, I'm not saying that that is an inherently bad class theme. It's just that, when we have a class called the Bloodmage, which is also the last class from the Wizard's Tower, I really do expect it to be a class whose main focus is magic. And looking at the current Bloodmage, for me he feels like as much of a mage as a class like the Thief, who encourages the use of glyphs so as to not waste potential resources, but surely doesn't have magic as a focal class feature.

Well, that turned out to be a much, much longer rant than I expected it to be. I'd like to point out that, despite everything I said. I do have faith on the devs, and that they have nothing but the best of intentions when making these changes.
If anything, the nature of my concerns may be somewhat egotistical in nature, in that I really, really liked the old Bloodmage. And ever since a while ago, the devs have been hinting that they feel like the game is approaching a point where major changes to game features and balance can end. With that in mind, I can't help but be worried that the Bloodmage will end up being in a final shape that I won't find as fun to play as the old one.

Finally, I suppose I can this post by asking one last question to everyone:
What do you think about the current Bloodmage's theme, and about how it compares to his previous version?

[Darvin]

[The Avatar]

I agree. It uses HALPMEH better than any other glyph. I think he should be tweaked to be more like his alpha incarnation.

[dislekcia]

All three casters are "fireball characters", each of them represents a different way of interacting with the structure of glyphs in the game. Remember that not long ago, going straight caster was not a viable strategy at all - unless playing a seriously mana-pumped Bloodmage and relying on percentage efficiencies to get more resources for free. The sheer fact that Bloodmages were fireball spikers before fireball strats were brought up in power should point to them being a problem.

Wizards are built on the axis of cheapness and flexibility. Sorcerers rely on percentage efficiency by having a larger mana pool and encouraging different casting orders. Bloodmages are about maximising mana resources available, sanguine is all about putting more health on the board so that it can be turned into mana - they will always get more health from that than other characters.

Bludtopowa needed changing, it was a boring ability that you didn't have to think about - sorta like the old alpha crystal ball. There are situations where mana is way more important than health, but those are always small amounts of mana - getting 2 mana off 1 square is much better than getting 20 mana off 10 squares and far more likely to swing a tricky combat result. Making Bludtopowa have a resource cost means that you have to think about when you're going to use it.

The Bloodmage right now plays very similarly to how it used to, it's just that you can't stack huge amounts of mana anymore and unload all of that into damage without giving enemies a chance to regen. Now you do, which means that harder decisions need to be made while playing. The boring part was how they played before, when the only decision was when to start casting fireballs at which enemy.

[Darvin]

[harfatum]

They moved the double-edge from the potion to the spell. I'd be in favor of reducing the health loss on BLUDTOPOWA and giving the bloodmages back their double-edged potions. If this lets certain characters get too much piety off of EM/MA, then that should probably be addressed separately.

[Darvin]

EM isn't an issue since you're limited more by available targets for petrification than for mana. It's Binlor and Mystera that are issues with B2P.

Dracul also gets some nice benefit from BLUDTUPOWA since he's one of the only ways to combo it with lifesteal, but that's something I'd rather see expanded on a bit.

[Kuranes]

[Abraxas]

Reading what Dislekcia has at the very least given me much hope. It looks like the developers really do want the Bloodmage to have the same theme it used to, that of channeling health resources into mana resources. Great.

Still, I think there are still a few problems in the current version of the class/glyph.
You say BLUDTOPOWA needed changing, that it was a boring and straightforward. And I agree entirely, BLUDTOPOWA did need to change. But I still stand by my earlier words. It needed a change, but not a nerf. I really do believe that BLUDTOPOWA as it is right now is just not a strong enough glyph.
Like I've mentioned (and as Darvin apparently agrees), as far as most other classes are concerned, the cases where BLUDTOPOWA is worth the health cost are so few and far between, that it's very hard to justify occupying an inventory slot with the glyph and not getting its conversion points.

Heck, I still remember when I was a novice player, still learning the tricks to the game. And I remember unlocking the Bloodmage and BLUDTOPOWA, looking at the glyph and thinking to myself that I wasn't really gaining anything from the glyph, and that since I focused mostly on using physical attacks, that I was actually ending up with a bad deal if I used BLUDTOPOWA. Point is, even the older, stronger version of the glyph wasn't very intuitive for newer players, and it took me a long time until I stopped immediately converting it on sight. I pity any new players who find the new BLUDTOPOWA for the first time and try to figure out how to make use of it, asides from the maybe more obvious pure fireball strategies.


As for the Bloodmage himself, it looks the intention is for him to play the same as he did before, focusing on using BLUDTOPOWA to channel health resources into mana resources. And that's great conceptually, it's everything I want, but with the current version of BLUDTOPOWA, the truth is that it's plainly more appealing to just focus on sanguine instead, and ignore the glyph entirely. But I suppose that with a change to BLUDTOPOWA, the class as a whole could work again.

[Abraxas]

Had some further thoughts regarding the Bloodmage (I'm sorry, but I can't help it), and thought I might as well reuse this thread.

BLODTUPOWA is an issue of itself. The devs seem to be more or less content with its current workings, only looking to tune it up a bit. I still think it suffers from being too niche (it already was plenty back before the nerf), but okay, it at least it does work at improving pure spell slinging, as one would expect from a mage class.

Now, after thinking about it for a while, I can't help but think that the fundamental problem with the Bloodmage are his other abilities and their synergy with BLUDTUPOWA, or lack thereof.
I may be mistaken, but my understanding of the class' design is that you're supposed to convert life into mana using BLUDTOPOWA (as the class name would imply), and using blood pools to "fuel" the glyph by restoring the life it drains from you.
The thing is, I don't think that's working. And the reason is pretty simple: the life you lose from BLUDTOPOWA is very rarely the bottleneck for how much you can get out of the glyph. Most of the time what limits the power of BLUDTUPOWA are the tiles I need to spend to make use of it, whether because I'm lacking in tiles to explore or because enemies out-regen me as I explore them, and the life that's being drained is mostly an afterthought, at least as far as BLUDTUPOWA usage is concerned. As a result, right now Sanguine is only really helping the Bloodmage if you want to add some physical attacks into the mix.
This becomes even further of an issue with the new Power Hungry, where mana potions improve sanguine, which really just encourages one to use up all magical resources available, regen tiles and mana potions included, and then switch to pure physical fighting, fueled by Blood Pools.