Reanimate means Alch can’t claim Phys anymore, since it’s easy enough to confirm. Maybe not a huge deal, I feel like the healer changes are designed to encourage BD to not just blindly execute Alchs, so maybe Alchs can just claim Alch. Problem is, Alch is the only claim that might save you if King calls you non-ally, so you pretty much have to exec Alch claims off King Allies’ since they’re always going to claim Alch no matter they are. This is all highly dependent on how the meta develops though, so it’s hard to predict.
Bigger issue though: Reanimate seems incredibly strong, but specifically against unseen in a way it isn’t against cult. I think it’s clever changing the revived person to a new class to get around the ‘never revive anyone but the prince’ problem, but I think adding this onto a non-unique class that can heal is going to be incredibly strong.
Before we get into cult versus unseen, let me mention that Death Knights can bring all the info they gained while dead back into the game, just like an actual Priest revive. So, possessor is kind of screwed, they now have to kill a Psychic and possibly up to 2 physicians before they can safely jump, whereas before the Priest was the single point of failure. I think possessor is going to need some help here. On the plus side, it encourages being active even while dead more, which I like.
Back to the cult versus unseen problem: The Death Knight is death immune so you can’t touch them. The Phys can easily self-confirm via their revive just like Priest could, so the DK can just guard the Physician. The normal tool for breaking protective chains, bleed/poison specifically doesn’t work on either the DK nor the Physician. Yes, this only lasts 3 nights but for those 3 nights it’s going to be very hard on unseen. But again, this is specifically a problem for unseen. Cult can empowered Eradicate to get around it. Unseen can only break it if they get lucky and convert a class that let’s them.
On the last night, the Knight has no reason not to yolo cold steel someone because he’s going to die anyway. Put who you’re cold steeling in your will an you’ll either kill an unseen or confirm a BD as you go. So all told, the Physician gets: 2 nights of immunity for himself or someone else with the added bonus of potentially killing a bad guy, Auto-confirm for the Physician. Either 1 dead bad guy or 1 confirmed BD. 1 Extra vote for 3 days.
And Physician is not a unique class, so potentially double all the power listed above. Is this gamebreaking? Probably not. But it’s a pretty massive buff from Exhume, which was highly situational and barely useful.
My initial thoughts are it’s a bit strong. Obviously I haven’t played it so I’m not saying it definitely is, but damn, I don’t even know how I’d start to deal with that as unseen. Cult has it a bit easier with empower eradicate as I mentioned but still.
I’m curious though, couldn’t the solution to make the revived player into a unique class have been used while leaving the Priest mostly otherwise as is? You could balance the new class however it needs to be balanced to help with the swing issue, making it stronger or weaker as needed. That seems like a better call and would be less disruptive to other classes, especially the Possessor.
If things are to remain as they are, perhaps Physician could be made into a Unique role, and Alchemist could become a guaranteed role. This would encourage not mindlessly executing Alchs since you might need them, while keeping the Physican somewhat in check.
Could you clarify how Ice Ward works now? The bullet point states it can be used on each player two times, but the developer notes state it is not usable on the same person twice, which suggests you can only use it on each player once. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of this change, as a protective you generally want to read the room and guess who is likely to be attacked, or in the CW’d case, converted. This is often the same person for several days in a row. So not only will you need to use deduction but you’ll have to be fairly lucky to protect someone. I think CW just needed more feedback on their abilities. Let them know if someone attempted to occupy/convert/whatever their barrier’d target, and let the barrier’d target know as well, similar to how heals work. CW doesn’t feel fun because even when you stop a convert attempt, you have no way of knowing you did. It’s possible for a CW to completely shut down the cult/unseen by blocking the conversion of 2 high value targets, but the problem is even if the CW successfully does this, he and the targets will never know it. Hell, even the CL/MM won’t know it was a CW. Without feedback that you actually made an impact, the class isn’t fun to play.