[RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloaded

[Kuime]

Hi guys, it's nice to see Golden Sun is still living !

I just finished GS1 vanilla but I found it too easy compared to what I remembered so I wanted to give this hack a try for GS2, but I'm afraid that if I import my golden password from my save the character stats won't match (like I'll miss a lot of HP and Luck on GS1 characters...) Do someone has a screenshot of their team in GS1 around levels 30 (I found all the stats up items) ? Or at least do someone knows how much hp/luck I should add (and if i should lower other stats) so I can adjust it in the Golden Sun Password Generator ?

I'm hesitating to simply put my GS1 team back at level 1 so they evolve "normally" (but i don't remember exactly what bonus stats every character had.. ugh)


Thanks a lot per advance !

[ShiFT]

@Kuime
It might be a bit tedious, but if you're set on using specifically your file, I could recommend maybe using the password generator that's linked in Caledor's original post under the FAQ section. You could patch a ROM of TBS, then using the editor, compare what stats should be like for your characters in Reloaded vs Vanilla at your current levels and adjust them accordingly, give yourself whatever items, djinn, etc. you had.

Or if you're okay using someone else's transfer data, I actually just finished up a run of TBS last night, I can try and link my save file for you to use once I get home from work. Everyone's level 34, all djinn, all extra psynergy items, Cleric's Ring, and all extra events complete (other than maybe talking to Dora after Lamakan Desert).

Edit: Attached the password, you can either manually enter it from the text file, or if you're using an emulator that supports it like VBA, you can import the .dmp file directly into memory to avoid typing it (instructions in the download for the password generator I mentioned).

[ShiFT]

TBS 1.78 is finished for me, so a few thoughts on it before starting TLA. I opted to stick with mono-elemental classes for most of the run, only switching over to tri-elemental once I collected all the djinn. Up until I had Wish available, I found most bosses I could stick with a very similar strategy and win with little trouble. In fact, Tret (done before Mercury Lighthouse) was surprisingly the only one I died to a couple times lol, two Sleep Stars one one turn to hit my whole party makes for a pretty quick loss the next turn. The main focus for all bosses though was making sure to use Breeze turn 1 (and Corona once I was through Mogall Forest) to tank everyone up significantly, then Granite and Zephyr turn 2. This essentially guaranteed that even with reduced stats from using Djinn, by turn 3 I'd be fast enough to start getting off summons, and still durable enough to survive after. If someone was hit hard on the first two turns, I could heal them with Fizz to set up for more summoning, or worst case, Isaac or Mia delays summoning by a turn to use Cure/Ply. Barring what I mentioned with Tret's Sleep Star shenanigans, no bosses were even able to down any of my party, even Ivan with his paper thin defense stats.

After getting a fourth Mercury Djinni in Altin though and getting Wish, I was pretty pleased that I couldn't just stick to spamming Wish every turn and go full offense with the rest of the party. Hydros Statue actually hit a very nice level of challenge in my opinion, where he had enough AoE damage to outpace healing with Wish every turn, so being forced to do some healing with the other three helped break up the strategy of buff with Djinn -> offensive Djinn -> summon ->repeat, since taking those extra turns to do more healing meant buffs wore off before I could get my summons out. Kraken wasn't too tough though, since I had all Djinn up to that point, I could keep Kite and Granite in reserve while still getting off tier 4 summons. Having those two meant that if Kraken ended up doing too much damage than Mia could heal, all I needed to do was use both the next turn to guarantee no one was downed (Granite) to allow Mia to catch up on healing, and the following turn having Wish available twice. By then, I'd have Djinn starting to recover, after which I could start buffing with them again. This Granite/Kite strategy got me through most of the rest of the bosses actually, and access to Wish Well made it VERY hard to die. Factoring in a Psy Crystal or two, and PP was never an issue either.

Deadbeard was a very, very nice step up in difficulty though, I attempted him as soon as possible when going through Suhalla Desert, I believe I was level 28 for the whole party. Last time I fought him on an earlier version of the mod, it felt doable in mono-elemental classes at this point thanks to the issue of him only using physical attacks after long enough, but since that was fixed, I couldn't find any viable strategy to fight him. It was entirely possible to last quite awhile against him through a combination of Psy Crystals to keep Mia's healing up, with the tried and true Granite/Flash/Kite combo, but keeping everyone alive while doing any meaningful damage just wasn't happening. I attempted it again at level 32 after grabbing all the endgame equipment from Lalivero/Venus Lighthouse, and it went a ton smoother. Still didn't get the win after 4-5 attempts with mono-elemental classes but I definitely think it would be doable. On a whim I tried messing with some tri-elemental classes and found a strategy that won on the first go. I'll have the specific Djinn setup pictured below, but it was Isaac - 3 4 Leader, Garet -  4 3 Samurai, Ivan -  4 3 Divine Mage, and Mia -  4 3 White Mage. While it isn't the intent of tri-elemental classes, this set up worked incredibly well for getting off summons. Mia was able to use all three Venus Djinn while still keeping access to the Wish series, and while this means she isn't healing, both Isaac and Ivan only needed to use one Mars Djinn each to shift into classes that also had the Wish series. With Ivan having Flash, and Garet having Granite, it was very easy to survive an extra turn if I was in trouble and end up with three wish users, which even against Deadbeard was very hard to lose with. Baiting out Break with a couple tier 1 summons to boost elemental power helped lower damage output a bit too. With Isaac ending up as the slowest , it worked out nicely being able to start a turn with only 2 Venus Djinn on standby, but with Ground and Granite both having priority, he could reliable get off tier 3 or 4 summons with minimal setup.

This strategy made even quicker work of S&M/Fusion Dragon, since Isaac and Ivan were the ones with Mercury Djinn, Mia was free to stick to healing rather than trying to work in some Venus Djinn usage while still being able to hit Boreas repeatedly. I was level 34 by the time I got back to them though, so that obviously made things a bit easier too. Both bosses went down on my first attempts, with S&M actually working nicely to let me set up for the second fight. Since Isaac and Garet both get a free PP refill between fights, I could use one of Isaac's Mars Djinn to give him access to Wish after downing Menardi, then refill Mia's PP and essentially auto attack until Saturos went down too. Saturos coincidentally hit after the other three but before Isaac, so it was actually impossible to not have Max HP & PP for Fusion Dragon with that setup.

I think overall though, while bosses still have some challenge, overworld enemies posed very little threat. Single enemies died to Djinn spam, groups of 2 as well since using Ground on one, and Mist/Squall/Scorch on the other basically made both unable to act before killing them. Groups of 3 or more were much better in my opinion, while none come to mind as being actually threatening to the party, they worked well in making me burn PP or items to stay healthy until the area's boss. Djinn spam isn't TOO effective on these groups, since no matter what it's tough to kill 3+ enemies with only 4 Djinn, so they'll generally get a few attacks off. It felt more necessary to use AoE psynergy to avoid prolonging the fight and taking more damage, which feels fitting for, again, wearing me down throughout a dungeon. It's worth noting too I think, the only time I did any kind of grinding was just outside of Bilibin to make some money for new armor (didn't gain any levels if I remember right), and 2 levels of grinding right before rematching Deadbeard, so I feel pretty confident saying I was going through all areas at their intended levels.

If I was going to suggest any changes though, I'd go with this:

- Changing enemy groups for random encounters to lean more towards 3+ enemy groups. 1-2 enemy encounters work as a nice break, but especially later on, it's far to easy to simply use Djinn to stun/sleep an enemy, then use Spritz/Ember to fully recover during the fight. It seems the further into the game you go, the less threatening small groups become. While it might be alot of work, reworking 1-2 enemy groups to favor high agility enemies may give them more of a chance to get some damage in. Possibly even agility buffs to even guarantee they'll at least do something before dying. It might just be me, but I found enemies that aren't threatening on their own weren't too engaging, they were more of a nuisance than anything.

- Most bosses other than Hydros Statue, Deadbeard, S&M, and Fusion Dragon had alot of trouble outpacing the damage that can be healed with the Wish series each turn. While I think they need higher damage outputs, I think there's a few ways that would work well without screwing too much with game balance. 1. Focusing their move sets on higher damage moves that are specifically 3 targets (Eruption, Ray series, etc.) I think focusing damage on fewer characters, but doing enough to them so that Wish can't fully heal each turn means other spells like Cure/Ply see more use, and allow a little more flexibility with the party, rather than one dedicated healer. 2. From what I saw in the editor there's a fair amount of unused ability slots, maybe use those for some boss specific versions of spells? e.g. Rather than, let's say, Manticore getting the same Nova that Garet learns, its version has an extra 10-15 base damage to slot it somewhere between the standard version of Nova and Supernova, or has a chance to inflict a status effect of some kind. This can buff their offense, but would probably require more testing to avoid them possibly ending up unbalanced. Adding boss-specific versions of spells also has the nice side effect of not needing to rework anything the party learns. This principle could also feasibly be applied to my first suggestion about bosses using more 3 target psynergies as well, using stronger boss-specific versions to up damage output on only a few characters. 3. I'd be more apprehensive about this one, but giving bosses some abilities that do percent based damage like summons do. If there's a target level range that each boss should be fought, and thus the general amount of HP any party member would have is known, being able to hit a specific percent of it may work for outpacing Wish healing, with the added benefit of still being effective on a party that's a bit over leveled, and not game ending one that's under leveled. I admittedly  don't know a whole lot about damage formulas for summons, other than it's base damage + percent of HP, but doing VERY low base damage, and having most of the damage come from the HP multiplier might be worth looking at.

- More Wish nerfs lol. Even with a much higher PP cost than Vanilla, it's still entirely possible to use spells from the Wish series without ever really running out of PP. At worst in my experience, I just had to delay an extra turn every now and then to use a psy crystal. I don't think upping the cost would do a whole lot more since that just means using psy crystals more frequently, but nerfing them from 80 & 160 HP (wasn't high enough level to get Pure Wish, so I can't judge that) to something like 70 & 140, or even a touch less, feels like it would be a nice spot to leave them at. Comparing Wish to Cure, it's (80x4)HP healed for 12PP, versus 70HP for 3PP. Wish has a better HP healed per PP ratio, with the convenience of hitting the whole party, which definitely doesn't feel right. Dropping the power further would be nice to make you think more about using, in terms of PP used at least, a powerful single target heal, versus a weaker multi target one. Side note I don't know if this is intended, but the power of Cure Well, Ply Well, Wish Well, and Pure Wish don't match their descriptions, they're all off by 10, 20 for Ply Well.

That's about all that comes to mind though, sorry for a big @#$ wall of text lol. Definitely still a WAY better experience than Vanilla, I'd just like to see a touch more difficulty on bosses and random encounters. As always though, thanks so much for making this mod, it's always a pleasure to play through it! :)

[Caledor]

It's always my pleasure to read feedback after a playthrough.

I think overall though, while bosses still have some challenge, overworld enemies posed very little threat.

It's probably you playing VERY efficiently. The increased difficulty in Reloaded is to encourage smarter plays. You're using djinn to block attacks and recover, it would've been an issue if they died by mashing the atk button or you didn't run out of PP after using psynergy to force your way through a dungeon.

I'm afraid enemy groups of 3 on average might become boring. Difficulty is not the main goal here.

As for bosses & wish i think you're the first one that actually wanted MT heal to be nerfed even more... so it might be your preference? I think i went as far as i could and nerfing wish even more might simply result in more people running dual wish parties, cutting offense for survivability, thus reducing variance of class setups (which i definitively don't want).

Descriptions issue: 2 out of 4 are due to the text compression. Try editing those string youself with Atrius' editor if you don't understand what i mean.

More HP% based damage on bosses is an interesting concept. I can easily add it to any ability. Just a note, doing so replaces the maxPP-based multiplier.

[ShiFT]

I get what you mean, yeah, it's a fine line between a difficulty that still allows all play styles, and one that starts to limit a player to only a few viable ones. I can definitely see it being more of the way I play making encounters a bit easier and 'by the books', 90% of the time I do a play through (Vanilla or Reloaded) I end up focusing almost exclusively on Djinn usage. That would make sense for some of my points (e.g. larger enemy groups) since someone focusing on casting would have a much different experience.

But yeah, for Wish nerfs, it was just based on the idea of single target healing restoring less HP per PP spent while also being limited to one party member. Wish being more efficient AND hitting everyone seemed to make it objectively better in almost all situations. Since I didn't think it made sense to nerf single target heals, nerfing multi target ones ended up being my conclusion. I'd 100% agree with you though that if nerfing it led to party setups with 2+ Wish users, that would be way worse in terms of both balance and fun. I think nerfing multi target heals more would only really be viable in done alongside some of my other points, like higher damaging spells hitting less party members to encourage single target healing. Honestly though that's probably way to much to change to make just one psynergy series POSSIBLY more balanced, especially if I'm the only person asking for it lol.

Also I actually only noticed the description issues while doing my write up for TBS yesterday, but I wanted to get started on TLA so I didn't even bother changing them lol. Just a limitation of the game though I guess, nothing anyone can do.

But thanks for discussing your views on my suggestions, I appreciate it! I definitely have to clarify though since I didn't yesterday, I think the mod's at a very good spot right now in terms of balance for the first game, it's still leagues more challenging than Vanilla. if there weren't any further changes I'd have no gripes with that at all. Hoping I can get through TLA soon though!

[Dark Mits]

I agree with a lot of ShiFT's points, but I disagree on MT healing requiring a potency or PP-efficiency nerf, the main reasons being more evident in TLA where HP bars and incoming damage increase more compared to what MT heals can recover. In fact I'd say that the "easiness" experienced is not as much due to the efficiency of MT heals, but because of the 1-action-per character combat itself; it's an issue that prevails in almost every game where players and enemies get fixed actions per turn instead of fluid turns (like Final Fantasy Tactics, Grandia, Final Fantasy X etc). I will try to explain my train of thought below, so please mention any incosistencies and gaps:

a) Enemies are designed to ensure that, when fought at appropriate level and equipment, they cannot kill the entire player party from full HP and good status condition just because. In order to achieve that, they have their AI designed to never use 2 multi-target devastating attacks in a row without the player having been given the option to recover, reduce incoming damage or prevent an enemy action. In fact Caledor spent a lot of time balancing Dullahan, who gets 3 actions per turn, to achieve this and explains it thoroughly in the latest Dullahan patch (side note, I still haven't beaten him. I need to stop slacking)

b) An important factor of playing video games is to have positive visual feedback of your actions. This leads developers to always favor combat where player actions almost always take place as intended. In order to achieve that in turn-based combat, they favor the players by balancing enemies so that the player will usually go first, then the enemy. This means that if a character is inflicted with a negative status effect, the player is given the option in the next turn to alleviate it without having a turn wasted. In the opposite case where enemies go first, it is entirely possible to have a fragile character die before they act, or your melee characters blinded and waste their current, or your casters silenced and waste their current turn etc.

c) Healing is along with damage-dealing one of the most obvious and easy-to-track and easy-to-manage and make sense of visual effect in a combat-based game: You move a HP bar positively, while damage-dealing moves it negatively. So to ensure that point (b) above takes place, the healer has to act before the enemies. If you encounter enemies that outpace your healer, it is most of the time an indication that the player is underleveled, underequipped, or needs to change their strategy (for example change to a faster class that provides healing, or switch a faster character to be the healer etc).

d) There are now 2 cases: the main healer is able to outheal the enemies' damage or you need an off-healer too.

   d1) If your main healer simply outheals the damage, then the only thing that can break the monotony and force the player to use alternatives is to prevent the main healer from being able to heal. This means either kill them directly, silence/sleep/stun/confuse/whatever them, or exhaust their resource. Directly killing is rarely used, and like mentioned in point (a) it is generally avoided. If a boss can kill a character from full HP in one action, then usually it's an indication that the player is underlevelled (just like how I am when Dullahan simply instakills anyone with Fulminous Edge). A negative status effect or exhausting their resources is prefered because it gives player options: Offload healing to some other character until the silence goes off naturally or resources are recovered, or take immediate action to force the removal of the negative status effect or recover resource. This in turn means that the offhealer must be able to outheal the enemies' damage, or at least recover enough until the main healer is back in action.

   d2) If an off-healer is needed at intended levels then enemy design becomes even stricter and predictable, because the enemies cannot simply prevent one or both healers from being able to perform. Doing so would make the game frustrating and unfun. Games that necessitate an off-healer in a small party (1 to 5-6 members) simply have all enemy threats come in the form of direct damage, which makes combat monotonous in the long run.


Having said all the above, I will also consider here Caledor's point that the mod is intended to promote smarter plays and not turn Golden Sun into a hardcore grindfest. This means giving player options either during combat or even before engaging enemies to ensure that if something goes wrong, the player can always have backups. My take is that this is proof that MT healing cannot be nerfed in how much health is restored, at least not if enemy damage is not also nerfed at a similar scale. The end-game boss encounters of TBS and almost every boss in TLA from Poseidon onward already deal enough damage that the main healer is forced to MT heal every turn (side note: on Hard Mode an off-healer is needed on every boss, including the Chestbeaters at the very start).

Pre-post edit: I just also noticed that Caledor also thinks that nerfing Wish will simply limit party setups due to requiring 2 main healers.

I was wondering if it would be possible to redesign how MT healing works, but I do not know if it is possible to be implemented, and also I cannot yet estimate how it would affect player experience. The idea was to change MT healing from affecting the entire group for equal amount of healing to making it share the same pyramid calculation that offensive psynergy does. What I mean is that the player selects a main target who will be receiving the most healing, then the characters on the left and right receive 80% of the main target's healing, then the next characters 60% hp etc., exactly how damage is reduced to 80% for the 1st-adjacent target, 60% for the 2nd-adjacent target etc.

[ShiFT]

Those are some really solid points, from a player feedback perspective they make a ton of sense. Like I said in my first post though, I was only judging Wish/Wish Well in strictly the first game, I never ended up at high enough levels for Pure Wish, still too low leveled in TLA for it too. Forced grinding is never a good thing though, and Caledor's done an amazing job avoiding making you feel like you have to at really any point, so I'd understand more people being against a nerf if it seemed like it would just lead to grinding it back to being more viable. I'd say theoretically though I'd 100% agree that nerfing Pure Wish against late game TLA bosses is just asking for a bad time, but I simply haven't gotten far enough in 1.78 to have a good opinion on that yet. I think the Aura series is hitting a really comfortable spot in terms of what it heals vs boss damage output, but I'd want to wait until I finish to fully judge anything, I only just finished with Serpent/Orochi today.

I actually really like your point about changing MT heals to use the same damage drop off (well, not damage in this case lol) that offensive spells use though, I've never considered that but I feel like that would be a really interesting system to experiment with.  Keep high powered MT healing, but make you actively think about who needs it most. It's kind of hard to judge how it would impact balance though since that would, as far as I know at least, be a first in the series, but definitely a cool concept!

[Dark Mits]

Keep high powered MT healing, but make you actively think about who needs it most. It's kind of hard to judge how it would impact balance though since that would, as far as I know at least, be a first in the series, but definitely a cool concept!

This was what I was thinking too, I also did some napkin math yesterday on how psynergy should be re-balanced. For the Wish series it would be:
Wish - 3 targets (like Quake) - Main target 125HP, 1st-adjacent characters 100HP. Maximum healing at 325HP which is very close to the current 320HP.
Wish Well - 5 targets (like Earthquake) - Main target 210HP, 1st-adjacent characters 168HP, 2nd-adjacent characters 126HP. Due to a maximum of 4 characters that can be affected, maximum output is 672HP, which is fairly close to current Wish Well's 680HP.
Pure Wish - 7 targets (like Quake Sphere) - Main target 440HP, 1st-adjacent characters 352HP, 2nd-adjacent characters 264HP, 3rd-adjacent character 176HP. Maximum possible output would be when targetting a middle character, at 1408HP which is close to current 1400HP.
All values of course assume 100 Mercury power.

Other idea I had was to have multiple combinations of MT heals. For example the Wish series could retain its current equal healing across the party, Aura series could have 7 targets at all ranks with dropoffs as explained above, and Heal series could have all ranks at 5 targets. Then the main target of Heal would be receiving more HP than the main target of Aura who in turn would receive more HP than Wish. This could add another layer of "how to optimize" by switching your healer for one of the backup healers who has a more appropriate series. For example, if only 3 members are hurt with one having received a harder hit, which isn't a rare occassion, Wish loses value over Aura and Heal with the above design.

Of course I say all the above as an armchair developer.

[Caledor]

The idea was to change MT healing from affecting the entire group for equal amount of healing to making it share the same pyramid calculation that offensive psynergy does.

I did consider it over the years, even though the topic never made it here cause i quickly rejected the idea for 2 reasons.

1) Replacing current Wish with Pyramidal Wish (pWish) is better only for healing damage you're carrying over from the last turn. It's incredibly worse for any slow healer and a huge blow to the Paladin/Holy Knight cause you have to guess where the damage will go. So it can only exist alongside Wish and never replace it.

1bis) this is the same reasoning i always rejected any change to Break. It decreases control you have on the battle and adds to RNG.

2) pWish will undoubtly cost less than Wish which is nice for the players but bad for me, cause i absolutely love the dualism in endgame TLA between psychic and berserk circlet. One of the best side effects of the PP multiplier (if not the best) is healers needing PP regen (and losing in offense) and offensive casters wanting maxPP. If cost of mass healing falls below a critical threshold PP regen becomes useless, decreasing build variance and all that stuff i don't like.

[GSFan94]

Hi Caledor,

I just discovered this forum and your mod a few days ago. I was actually in the middle of my (5th? 7th? 8th? lost count lol) GS1,2,3 run (I just beat Gaia Rock in my vanilla game) that I normally make every couple years when I discovered your mod, and I just HAD to restart from TBS because of good everything sounded. Well so far I have to say I've made the right decision. Your mod has taken the complex combat system of GS and improved it to a significant degree. Just wanted to give you a shout out for how awesome this mod is!

[Caledor]

Welcome aboard, GSFan, and thanks a lot! Hope you'll enjoy your playthrough!

[GSFan94]

Welcome aboard, GSFan, and thanks a lot! Hope you'll enjoy your playthrough!

I just got to the Eastern Sea, and I'm loving the difficulty so far. I google'd/searched a few posts but I wasn't able to find an answer - I can't seem to get the usual RNG method of RN = 31 to work. The only item I've gotten to drop this way so far (to be fair, I've only tried a few) has been the Feathered Robe from GS1's Wild Gryphons. Am I just not doing it right, or would you have some insight for me?

Thanks again for making such an amazing mod!

[Caledor]

All the info I can give is on the guides linked on the first post and the FAQ you can find there.

[GSFan94]

Yeah, I'll tinker around a bit more with it all, thanks though!

[sandokhaan]

Big question time. Is Fire Breath currently a multi target EPA as was stated in the thread a lot of time ago, or still a power based psynergy? It's not in the psynergy doc, and the Acrobat class would certainly benefit a lot if it were a multi target EPA.

[Caledor]

I'm fairly certain it's still a base damage psynergy. I vaguely remember the EPA discussion existing but i don't remember where it comes from, so all instances of Fire breath should still be base damage.

[sandokhaan]

Good to know, thanks for the quick answer. I finally got around to finish my TLA playthrough, and I've been thinking about the item dependent classes, more specifically about when, how and most importantly why use them. On paper they are trading off raw elemental power and slightly butchering the djinni balance for a lot of versatility, both in psynergies and characters able to use them.

Dragontamer is a warrior class with very good physical stats and low PP. It has very bad multitargeting options, but good EPAs, group healing (worst in the game, but still, group healing is big) and can revive. This alone would make it a good compromise between Paladin and Warlord (also usable by the caster characters), but Dragontamer is also the only class in the game with PP restoring psynergy, which is huge. Not gamebreakingly powerful, but very worthy of consideration.

Necromancer is a damage caster with the best PP multiplier in the game and generally fulfills the same role as Inquisitor or Heretic (it's also the only way for Mia and the warriors to get access to single target nuking psynergies). Dullahan has slightly more power than Scourge, but Necromancer won't reach the same Jupiter power, so for elemenatal offense purposes they are generally about the same. The same can also be said about Demon/Dire Inferno compared to Grand Gaia/Dragon Fume, respectively. So the trade off for the fucked up djinni balance a is the versatility of very strong psynergies of 3 elements (the only class with this high PP multiplier and comparable offensive psynergies is Heretic available only to Jenna.) and it also gets access to Drain, Revive and multitarget offense capable of inflicting Stun/Venom. Necromancer would easily be the best  offensive caster class in the game, if it weren't balanced by the drawbacks inherent to the item dependent classes.

And then there is the Acrobat. Lo and behold, the only true hybrid class in Golden Sun: The Lost Age Reloaded. On paper it's quite similar to the other hybrid classes, namely Jonin, Fury, Valkyrie and General. Acrobat has overall similar (but very slightly worse) stats than these four, but one of them is available to every character in the game, so for Acrobat being worthy of crippling your djinni balance, it should be able to offer something the non item depentent classes can't. Sure, it gets base power psynergy of every element. Fiery Juggle and Frost Card are very strong (Frost Card is actually the strongest), psynergies, but Bramble Card is very meh and Thunder Card is just plain old bad. These Jupiter and Venus offensive insufficiencies are somewhat offset by Backstab and Sabre Rain (Sabre Rain has the best EPA multiplier in the game). Then it gets some status effects from the other Card psynergies and the Fire Breath is a complete afterthought thanks to theavailability of Fiery Juggle. Acrobat class isn't inherently bad, but the only thing you get from using it is the elemental versatility (but no actual versatility, as all it can do is attacking and no healing/buffing), and incredibly minor niches in the form of Sabre Rain and Frost Card. It could be borderline useful on account of being a true hybrid if it didn't require gimping your djinni and elemental power, but as it does, there is zero reason to use it, as any benefit is offset by the drawbacks. Acrobat brings nothing to the table, and therefore shouldn't be allowed to sit at it. And if, by some miracle, you find yourself with a class setup that specifically needs an item dependent class on somebody, Isaac, Garet, Felix and Piers are better of as Dragontamers, and Ivan,Mia Jenna and Sheba are better of as Necromancers.

TLDR: Dragontamer and Necromancers would be great if they didn't have the djinni setup restrictions, and the restrictions make them balanced. Acrobat, on the other hand, would be merely balanced even if it didn't have the restriction. Therefore, Acrobat could use a buff that would make it on par with these two and for players to have an actual reason to pick it. It's a hybrid class, so maybe something similar to Shuriken or potentially a EPA that also scales with the PP (not sure if that's even possible, but that could be a very unique niche). Sorry about the wall of text, Caledor, and if you're still with me, a lot of thanks for reading this rant/post/suggestion to the end.

[Caledor]

I actually agree that the acrobat feels the most underwhelming of the bunch. its main niche is being able to debuff with base damage psynergies like thunder and bramble card. maybe i should push that a bit further

[sandokhaan]

Yeah, I actually missed that Bramble and Thunder Card can debuff stats, emphasizing on that idea sounds like a really good idea that would make Acrobat offer something unique, making it more interesting. Thunder Card's 95 power is too small a umber in late game though, even with the resistance drop. Here's an idea. Esentially swap the PP cost, power and level of Bramble Card and Thunder Card and make Bramble Card potentially lower agility. 125 BP Thunder Card  is just good enough to be usable even lategame, and 95 BP Bramble Card with the agility drop is basically on demand spammable Mud/Vine, which would make Acrobat very unique and viable class, but hopefully not too strong. Flame Card is currently a Mad Blast clone, so giving it a defense debuff chance at the cost of a bit lower BP and higher cost accomplishes a) a new strategical option in the early game b) having a Debilitate that is both unique and deals some damage in the late game. Paralyze and Poison are currently a bit underrepresented and somewhat fit the theme of the class, but they'd probably only make the class overpowered in the early game (Djinni fights, for example, but this could be fixed by unlocking the psynergies only at higher class levels) while not providing that amazing value in the late game. A pure hybrid with access to a lot of status effects and can debuff while dealing damage sure sounds like a good niche that isn't overpowered.

[Caledor]

v1.78c is up

A small set of changes to improve the Pierrot line:
- Frost card, Bramble card, Thunder card, Fiery Juggle are stronger
- Flame breath is now a multi target EPA like Shuriken

Also:
- Searing beam +5 power

PS: remember that Dragon Helm (forged from Dragon Skin) teaches this improved Flame Breath.

Notes: Went for a straight buff in the end. I noticed that the spells were a bit underpowered for the level they're learned at, so i fixed it. I want to keep Bramble as the second best card cause it's his only venus attack. I think Thunder card at 100 is already worth it BTW. Consider that your regular res lowering effects don't deal any damage at all. Halve agility on bramble card could honestly work but I want to think it through before doubling up on djinn only effects. Decided to go with Flame Breath as shuriken instead. Its multiplier is 0.1 higher than Shuriken to compensate for the Acrobat's lower atk.