I like the idea of this one and I played it when it was Vex only, but currently I think the paint to effect ratio is way too high. You can very easily make 0 cost paintings with damages of double digits with extremely little effort with the starting deck. Getting a painting that is elite ruining should be more than just a few cards away. Red especially should be looked at.

IMO making paintings 1 mana without huge buff across the cards/painting effects/paintings per turn is a huge mistake. Now it is simply painful to even play the first few floors. We are looking at Brushing Bash which now deals 19 damage for 3 energy (2 to play the card itself and 1 to play the painting) with the starting relic. 19 damage for 3 is almost the same as playing 3 unupgraded strikes. Only after you play Brushing Bash (can''t even shorten the card name cause literally every card name is an alliteration lol) for the second time does it become 2 energy 19 damage, providing you didn't collect the painting.

Darken Drawing is (and has always been) a worse offender as a starter card; it might be an okay card later on, but you are buffing your painting for 2 energy(1 to play the card and 1 because the cost of painting is increased), which means you are doing 8-16 damage for 2 energy depending on how many times you played Brushing Bash.

These two cards have made the first few floors hell mode at least on A20. before the update I have always picked Neow's Lament and now it is normal to take 10 damage on first 2 floors if you don't pick lament cause the starting cards are just too clunky.

I am really struggling to give constructive feedback on how other cards play right now simply because I got so turned off by the starter deck and I needed to lower difficulty to power through the first few floors, but I'll try my best.

Once the base cost becomes 1, strategies that spam smaller paintings are obviously dead, since you're effectively have 1 less energy per turn compared to when paintings cost 0 by default; however at the current state this definitely creates more problems than it solves:
Cards like Glorious Gallery got significantly nerfed: just imagine the defect card All for One now returns all your 1-cost cards instead of 0?
And the bigger problem IMO is what I perceive as a downward spiral effect during combat. The cards that paint all have REALLY underwhelming effects if we removed the painting part (for example drawing a card for 1 energy is as bad as Void). As a result, the tougher the fight, the more likely you have to use a small painting as a panic button/band aid to solve the current problem (for example simply collect the painting to gain 9 blocks against book of stabbing to prevent one wound from its attack), otherwise you're not gonna survive by being weak upfront. But then your deck will be clogged with weak paintings such as 1 energy block 6 draw a card. I have always been a Dead Branch+ shiv defender because by the time you're affected by the bloat the fight is already near the end; but since you WILL be weak at first, you will inevitably redraw the crappy small paintings and sigh.
The above problem makes it obvious that the better strategy is to build up the painting for as long as possible (otherwise who would want to darken the canvas right?), but then how do you even afford to hold it when you are so weak without playing your painting?

Overall it is pretty clear to me that it feels bad to play this character at this state. I know that it was easy to go infinite before, but from my experience, after some patches you needed to struggle against act 1 and really force it on higher ascension.

Last but not least, this mod is not a competitive multiplayer game. I say this not to downplay the importance of balance, I wouldn't have written a wall of text if I believe balance is unimportant. What I want to say is that take your time and change what needs to be changed before releasing it, so our testing is more meaningful; right now I am obviously testing a temporary version of this character which results from what feels more like an emergent hotfix. I need to reiterate that I absolutely love the idea and flavour of this mod, and had hours of fun playing it, so I genuinely hope you succeed in making it more fun and balanced.

Right now I suggest you look at the starting deck and test it on the first few floors on both lower and higher ascension, because I believe that starting deck is players' first impression on the mod. It will probably take more than a few patches to get everything back to being fun and balanced after such a massive change, but you got this!

it is indeed an emergency update I did and out of all the fixes to infinites this is the one I think is the best as it will, after fixes put more emphasis on making a good painting rather than a lot of them, will release a quick hotfix in the upcoming hours

Turns out, purple rainbows are pretty good: https://i.imgur.com/Y4XKDRp.png

Don't take this out of context though. Ice cream with dark yellow paint is nutty. If anything, keep an eye on how the darken mechanic performs.

Originally posted by Diamsword:

it is indeed an emergency update I did and out of all the fixes to infinites this is the one I think is the best as it will, after fixes put more emphasis on making a good painting rather than a lot of them, will release a quick hotfix in the upcoming hours

TBH I really don't think creating ONE large painting (especially with the existence of yellow green and rainbow) should be the sole focus of this character unless you make a huge redesign of this character to make this idea more fun, which may take tons of work. Also diversity what makes the base characters and the best character mods in StS so great.

Yellow feels bad with going large strategy because it exhausts the one large painting so your creation with love is gone for good. Also what do you spend the energy for? You either created such a large painting that the fight is already over, or spend on them to paint the next painting that you can't use for this turn. Take what I said with a grain of salt because this is just my speculation on what would happen if people only went for a single large painting, in practice we might have some smaller paintings in our deck already.

Green took a hit because now there are fewer ways to play cards that are drawn now that 0-cost painting are gone. Green-yellow was a fine strategy but now with one painting per turn I am not sure anymore.

Rainbow is also suffering because you need to paint rainbow, then play the rainbow painting and then play what is painted by rainbow, which now costs at least 2 energy.




Also the higher the ascension, the more likely you can't afford to be greedy about painting, so having a few smaller painting is inevitable. I assume this will remain the same unless you make the base effect of cards that paint not too bad. You can be greedy for one fight, but you'll only bleed yourself out if you have no choice but to be greedy every fight.

There are a few ideas to enable small paintings without it being too easy to go infinite, one of them that I can think of is an effect that makes your paintings cost 1 less until played, so it's not a permanent cost reduction but more like a power spike, and you can simply put the effect on an exhaust card to prevent infinite use of this effect.

I know it's kinda weird that I've been obsessing with the starting deck, but now that Brushing Bash paints 2 reds which is a welcoming change, do you think it's find to make it paint 1 red 1 blue (or 1 blue 1 red) instead? Or maybe make a 1 energy rework of it?

Now the start plays like an ironclad that can't heal.

Imagine a scenario: it is not rare that you face jaw worm on floor 1 that deals 11 damage, or two slimes that do more than that. Ironclad can take damage and heal later; silent starts with 7 cards on first turn and has better defensive options; defect can still play Zap or Dualcast after playing two defends; watcher has Vigilance and Miracle.

What usually happens to the Artist are that:
1. You draw Darken Drawing and no Brushing Bash. You either play DD which means you are not playing BB and the painting on the same turn, making BB a really underwhelming card on turn 2 (but if you don't play BB then you feel even worse). If you don't play DD on turn 1 you effectively drew a curse.

2. You draw two defends and Brushing Bash. Do you say "screw it", play Brushing Bash and take 6 damage (taking 6 damage on low ascension on floor 1 usually indicates that you get really unlucky), or do you skip Brushing Bash and play defends, meaning you're going to end up in a situation worse than case 1, or do you play like a lunatic, collect your painting and deal a whopping 20 damage with 3 energy which probably no one would choose? I mean 12 damage for 1 damage is sweet and you can kill one louse if they have 12 or less health if you encounter 2 lice on floor 1...

This problem can be expanded to almost every single card right now, because at least 80% of cards are super backloaded that requires you to play the painting twice to make the card worth playing after the painting cost change, which means any enemy that deals frontload damage to the player on turn 1 is a massive pain. Not to mention that the AoE ability of this character is just pathetic. Gremlins on Act 1 really exploit these two weaknesses of this character, you can do some test runs to see if what I said is just anecdotal.

The Artist has always been a "greedy character": when infinites was possible you need to give up some Act 1 rules(draft frontload damage cards for example) to assemble infinites. Now that the cards become even less frontloaded, Act 1 has become a even worse experience. I guess I need to wait a few patches before coming back because now I can't stand to play through Act 1 to judge how well it performs later on. Like, can a character like this take on snake plant or slavers without sacrifice an arm and a leg?

I'm not as thrilled by artist as some of you are so i tend to play it less, your remark is good and maybe i'll have brush bash paint 2 blue instead of red but idk yet, it's hard to figure out in depth balance with this char. Also making infinites was way too easy fr

+ I don't want players to make only one painting per combat, just create less of them (0 mana curse 2 isn't really an interresting concept)

Crushing Canvas needs a buff to include any exhausted paintings 🎨
Satanic Surge should prevent Curse from going down permanently ⛧

With the change to painting being 1 cost, "Fantasy Form" got hit very hard. Either needs a buff like first painting per turn costs one less or it's energy cost need to be lowered. 3 cost (2 upgraded) is way too expensive for what it does.

"Purple Purpose", "Ruby Reaper" and "Verdant Vainglory" all need either their energy cost lowered or have the "exhaust" be removed. They all do way too little for their cost to be worthy of an exhaust.

Also, "Yellow Yowling" is a curse card. Pay 2 energy to get 3 energy and 3 "Wounds". Are you joking? You weren't serious when you left that in, right?

I would also suggest making "curses" only drop by one per turn. Since the Artist doesn't have access to a lot of win conditions beyond "Make big paint and smash enemy". It would help at higher ascension level.