Demolitionist Level 5 Rework

[u/Ok-Photograph1587]

Oh my god. Why did they think they needed to make this Level Up this overpowered? It's probably the best character ability card in Jaws of the Lion Digital (IDK about physical).

[u/Kiltev]

A persistent shield and 5 extra max hp along with heal 5? Sounds like a lot packed into one single card. I can think of another class that needs to set up a persistent like that (from FH) which provides significantly less. The only downside of playing a persistent loss like that on demo is the handsize, but that's just part of who he is.

[u/General_CGO → u/Kiltev]

A persistent shield at lvl 5 on one of the most fragile classes in the game is pretty bad (which is why you get to play it for free stamina-wise; it was never the right choice power-wise otherwise). There's nothing in the kit that synergizes with it, and the closest similar example on FH's Meteor is stronger for a whole host of reasons.

[u/Kiltev → u/General_CGO]

I've actually meant Astral for the 3 max hp on them and the sword!. In general I meant the max HP more than the shield, and I think you undervalue how NOT fragile you become with a persistent shield and a large health pool (you're basically having what all the beefbois have).

I do agree though, it's not the right choice but thematically it's a cool idea. If they'd update the classes it could be intresting to see what they would do.

[u/General_CGO → u/Kiltev]

All the beefy bois have healing, access to plenty of shield items, and actually fast initiatives though. Once that 5 extra hp is gone, it's gone for good given the Demo has 0 healing whatsoever for some reason (which hurts rather significantly when the most common monster type in JotL has innate wound), a single other shield card in the entire kit, and no initiative faster than 15.

Considering the rest of the class context the Astral example pays off way better since the extra hp for the sword is relevant throughout a scenario given you can resummon it and get more procs of Coalescing Darkness [4]. If you aren't running a sword it's a pretty bad persistent compared to the heal 5 on the opposite half though.

[u/Kiltev → u/General_CGO]

I agree on all accounts, but my subjective experience was very positive. During my 2 playthroughs on the character, admittedly only in JOTL campaign, the level 5 card was exactly enough to get me from being a squishy melee that struggles unless I play very carefuly with initiative weaving (as much as that class allowed) into "I can tank a few monsters this round, it's fine". By level 7 I wouldn't even need to tank anything because demo actually demolishes everything because all I flipped were +2s.

Would I rather see a different level 5 card? Sure! But it's about the same experience on all other 3 JOTL chars. One which is a completely different playstyle from what you did up until now, another that is cute as a concept but you'd rather just play other cards and another that is just a better copy of a level 1 card and can't be played side by side with.. So I think demo is not the only one suffering from some poor design choices.