Any hope for a tweak patch?

[Darvin]

GETINDARE's mana cost should be increased
Reason: This glyph has been really powerful for a long time, and arguably is the most powerful glyph in the game. First Strike is a superb effect, and a dodge chance on the side is just plain awesome. Even Rogues and Assassins, who already have first strike, still find use for this glyph for its dodge chance alone! Despite having one of the most powerful effects in the game, it also has one of the lowest mana costs. The glyph's low cost allows it to easily be worked into extensive spellcasting combos, even by characters without any investment in max mana whatsoever. Moreover, it's the only glyph that remains broadly useful after taking a penalty from Mystic Balance. Everything else just becomes impractical, but GETINDARE is so good that it works just fine even at 5 MP. It's also the only way for most characters to cancel out the penalty for slow strike, and the freebee alone makes people worship Tikki Tooki first despite absolutely no piety. It's just too good. I'd say move it to 5 MP.

Pros: This makes the glyph a little bit tougher to work into casting combos, and generally would require better planning. It'd be harder to spam for accumulating dodge chance, while still not being impossible. It also closes the gap between GETINDARE and its less-appreciated sibling WEYTWUT.

Cons: It'd technically be a buff to Mystic Balance, as "making GETINDARE worse" is arguably its biggest flaw. While obviously that doesn't make anything stronger than it is now, it does mean it's one less consideration and nuance to using Mystic Balance.

[secondserpentarius]

I had an idea for improving Dwarves: What if each conversion healed them slightly?

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

^ All the more reason to maybe look into Mysteras prep penalty. It's way too easy to never have that occur to people. I've never done it once in years and years, and I still don't fell like I missed anything - and I did! If it wasn't for this discussion and all the textwalls it involved it probably would have never occured to me and I'm sure I'd revisit DD at least a bunch of times in my lifetime. Not to mention that the second choice after Mystera would've been EM, so the likelyhood of, say, me ever even trying it would be slim to none. Which is apparently a shame. There's bound to be places which turn from frustration into a deligh if you're aware that this works, but it's a mite difficult to become aware of it (read: very, very difficult).

[Tinker]

Ok, I don't want to blame Mystera for this. In fact, her preparation cost is probably not even relevant here. Your could argue that JJ's preparation cost is too severe (to the point that it limits experimenting with him), but honestly I don't think so. I prepare him often and gladly, and never ever miss the 6th slot.

You could argue, that you would expect that Mystera - with her generally all-castery boon set - looks like the ultimate mage god, and kind of becomes the default choice for most pure spellcaster strategies. And that JJ, which is kind of like a going-wild with everything kind of deity, is not your first thought for a pure build like this. But to me this all just shows that this game is so much more complex than meets the eye!

[Blovski]

I dunno if that's just a playstyle thing, Lujo. I play JJers of all types all the time these days (I think he's probably my most-prepped god atm) but I've never felt they're wacky enough to really go posting about unless it's like the self-cannon strategy or something.

I personally don't really tend to go into Mystera very much at all any more except for assassin builds, if only because I don't really find I get that much out of the boons and I prefer having a utility glyph early on (maybe that's correlated to me not really using Magnet Fireball). Personally I've never found MA's penalty to be discouraging but I rarely find scenarios where I want her boons more than the alternatives and her relative lack of late-game spiking stuff doesn't gel with me.

@Darvin, yeah, a 4-5 mana Getindare is no bad idea.

@Secondserpentarius, it'd be nice if the conversions gave you HP rather than just max health, I think. Having to go regen all that stuff doesn't help the already-niche Dwarves much.

[Lujo]

[Blovski]

Darvin just kept telling us JJ was good and eventually I started believing him, I think

More seriously, I kinda just started trying him with the potion races where you're less worried about having potions. You get into him as a generalist and then realise he's a very strong specialist as well. I think he's scary for new players because punishments and because sacrificing potions but he's really strong once you realise those things aren't actually a big deal.

My general theory of JJ is that you accept a possibly (punishment dependent) slightly inefficient level 1 in exchange for +20 health and Weytwut for a very reliable early game on more difficult dungeons. Then stack on whatever further boosters you want, and then you have a colossal spike with a ding and resistance knocker (which is better than 2 of Mystera's weakenings) and corrosion/weakening wipe if you need one from Chaos Avatar and either a Last Chance for *another* full restore or an easy convert out from piety you get from operation popcorn and converting any spare items with boss gold.

Mystera's mana gain always feels slower to me (and I don't like taking grab-fireball over boosters so it can be a little dicier with my specific style), she doesn't have the HP boost that gets a lot of work done for you (you can run without it but there's rarely a dungeon where 20HP won't help a *lot*), she doesn't come with a free glyph and she doesn't really have the same end-game piety generation for the safe convert out (not that she needs it but that's more that there's not tons to spend her piety on after you've got refreshment (which for non-elves never feels like a huuuge deal to me) and MB and 3 extra mana) unless you want to go for a few weakenings.

Obviously Mystera is probably a bit better (by design) if you want a completely pure caster but I normally always prefer a bit of a generalist myself and in some ways JJ holds up better for the big scenarios for me and these days I just don't really feel like I'm playing a load of scenarios a versatile god like JJ won't do better on than Mystera's mana-only spike. I think it's more a playstyle divergence between us than anything being broken or overshadowed.

Out of interest, what Mystera builds would you suggest for VGT?

Oh man I've just started trying VGT again... my play has gotten *sloppy*.

[Lujo]

[Darvin]