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TFS -> RE: Friday, November 21st Design Notes: Book 2 Reimagined: The Professor (11/22/2025 4:36:28)
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Nice eMana fix!
Just realized I forgot to post my thoughts on the new version of EPL last week after playing with it extensively:
+eNight is a lot better now and definitely worth the candy expenditure, empowered and unempowered versions of the skill are now essential to both rotations
+Increasing the cooldown on eShield seems like the 'correct' fix to the class's playstyle
+Scythe inflicting -Crit is a good improvement, lowers Cysero's Hammer reliance and shifts flexibility towards geode weapons (candy generation)
+Mana Candy is now actually useful, though actually regening Mana is still more of a bonus side effect
+Whip is no longer a redundant move, though I'm still not sure this is something you'll use over the class's numerous other damage mitigation options, esp when it only generates 1 candy
-The high MP costs are extremely annoying for no real reason, it's not like DoomKnight or something where the class is so strong that the MP costs are some sort of justified drawback. This plus candy generation shifts the class towards disproportionately benefiting from / relying on one specific weapon special which seems like emergent design
-Sling Thorns is just a redundant, pointless skill that's just strictly worse than Thorn Cyclone; Thorn Cyclone has a 'long' cooldown (for a multi) seemingly specifically to justify the existence of Sling Thons in case you're ever in the extremely specific hypothetical situation where you need to spam a multi every turn and your actual multi is still on cooldown (which I have not yet had occur in actual gameplay, even in fights against large groups of enemies such as Chaos Slayers). I almost wonder if the class is made this way to avoid 'wasting' the assets for the two multi animations it already has, but it's not like the animations formerly exclusive to the old version of regular PumpkinLord weren't also 'wasted' lol.
-Bramble Shield is also still very niche. I get that the design intent is to layer its damageres with eDrain, but again there are very few situations where you will waste a turn of Roots to both deal no damage and not gain any candy. Realistically you will also be planning your rotation around not being in the situation where you will have to suddenly press an emergency defense button that only works in specific circumstances when the class has numerous other defensive tools.
-eHealth is not useful or something you will ever spend Candy on. Not only is the heal amount very small, the long duration it's amortized over means you won't even get to juice it with healthswap
~Widget doesn't make a lot of visual sense; shows 0 candy in the UI when player has collected nonzero (1, 2, or 3) candy. Also, how can only one of the pumpkin's eyes be lit up lol
~The amount of candy generated by each skill doesn't seem to have been balanced around each skill's effect in mind (which makes sense, since it's not like the animations were designed around this mechanic or anything). For example, Sinister Scythe is already one of the class's best skills that will often be used as soon as it comes off cooldown, and the fact that it also happens to have the highest candy generation seems like icing that wasn't really designed with its powerful skill effect in mind. Meanwhile a skill like Vine Whip has a much weaker effect and only a 1hit animation, so it will very rarely be used.
~The way candy generation is balanced makes the class feel like it disproportionately rely on weapon specials, specifically that of the water geode which has a high hitcount (candy generation), short cooldown, and regenerates MP. Not that this is a bad thing, as I quite like opportunities to fit weapon specials into the gameplay, it just seems like this specific special just happens to patch up flaws in the class's skillset in a way that doesn't seem like intentional design.
Overall the class is in a much better place than it was on launch and I'm finding it much more fun and fluid to play.
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