Butler is awful, new change is great but also worse

Feedback/Suggestions
#1

Butler has always been the least fun and useful BD class. Without exception it ranks at or near the bottom of every ToL survey I’ve seen. At best, it’s a worse drunk. Most of what you do in the game is inconvenience random BD, and the only productive feedback you get from your actions is one of two things:

  1. You occupy your target successfully, and no one dies.
    This can be useful, but you could just as easily have occupied a sheriff while the assassin was in jail or happened to target a scorned or something. This is frequently too unreliable to execute on, and your best bet is just to cry for an adult and let a real investigator check them.

  2. You confirm whether a claim is occupy immune or not.
    This is probably the best you can do with the ability, but will also often lead to occupying real BD roles. It’s not that useful to test people who claim occupy-immune classes, as anyone lying about this is probably naturally occupy-immune. Is disabling someone on your own team worth testing - not even proving - their claim? Probably not frequently.

Enter the butler’s signature ability: poisoning the king. With the new patch, the butler is a tremendous threat to the king, having a killing ability that slips past guards. Very powerful, very flavorful.

With one charge and suicide on misuse, I believe the goal was to incentivize the butler to think deeply on whether or not to kill the king. You only get one shot, and nobody wants to die, right?

Wrong. Butlers want to die.

I suspect a large portion of early king kills are butlers who see the action as having one of two outcomes:

  1. Evil king dies. GOT EM.
  2. You die and get to play another game, probably as a different class that’s actually interesting and fun.
    You could argue that this is throwing, but how do you prove that? The butler can just claim he thought king was suspicious. There’s no penalty for being bad.

I believe the solution isn’t to nerf the butler’s poison or to remove the suicide effect. As someone who enjoys playing knight more than most BD classes, I am very cautious with my cold steel. I suggest that the solution is to make the butler fun and interesting, while keeping his devastating check on the king in place.

EDIT: I had included a rework suggestion and have deleted it. It wasn’t a good idea, and it’s detracting from the important conversation: butlers are pseudo-throwing out of boredom and taking the king with them.

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#2

Background check is too investigative in my opinion.

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#3

I think it’s probably less investigative than you think. Remember, a sheriff or paladin can randomly find people N1, but the butler can only make useful investigative checks on people after he’s learned their claims.

That said, I’m not attached to my specific rework idea, I just really think he needs a complete makeover of his primary ability while retaining the lethal threat of royal poison.

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#4

I think butler is better off keeping the occupy ability instead of BC

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#5

Butler needs to stay an offensive class. He’s a provable BD that can lead the court with his defensive ability party too. I think he is way more enjoyable than you give him credit for. Roleblocking a BD still confirms you as Butler to them and gives you information about their possible occupy immunity. That is extremely powerful. He has almost 100% confirmability, the means to force the king on their side and defensive abilities to actually stay a leader in the court through party. We already have 3 investigative classes and only 2 offensive ones at the moment too.

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#6

No this makes butler to much of an investigative already

This is a social ability mixed with an investigative ability with no offensive abilities, I’m sorry but I don’t like this

#7

He’s a provable BD

Converted butlers retain the ability to occupy people. With the king’s poison notification gone, he’s actually quite difficult to prove.

I think he is way more enjoyable than you give him credit for.

I respect that you’ve found a playstyle for butler that engages you, but every class survey I’ve seen for this game has butler at or near the bottom when it comes to classes that people enjoy.

Roleblocking a BD still confirms you as Butler to them

This is not true. It confirms you as a butler, servant, or invoker.

gives you information about their possible occupy immunity. That is extremely powerful.

A drunk does the same, but with the added ability of confirming attackers, not just “hmm no one died tonight.”

#8

This is absolutely a good point though, and an important part of suggesting reworks that I overlooked.

#9

Occupation fits his class really well and he is not even going on any party

Remember a butler can be anyone’s butler he can be a prince’s butler or a CW’s Butler not just king

It’s abilities are already strong and removing all offensive abilities is not the way to go imo

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#10

I agree that occupation fits the class well, but I think in practice, occupying people is not something that a BD class can make very good use of. The only targets that a BD benefits by occupying are assassin, any cult, and reaper. If you know who one of those is, the court, prince, king, or knight can all handle the situation much more productively. Sure, maybe they’re dead and the court already exe’d today, but how common is that?

The problem is not that the butler is inherently flawed, it’s just so much LESS useful and fun than other classes, that people don’t try to play optimally because death is a blessing.

#11

I removed my rework suggestion. It wasn’t good, and it wasn’t even the point of this post.

#12

It confirms you as a class that hardly matters to be found out. MM and the NK are the prime candidates that need to be found. Invoker turned CL will also near instantly be outed if BD plays smart. There is a reason noone attempts to fakeclaim Butler. A drunk has less defensive capabilities without party and does not have royal poison, which is a powerful weapon. Conversely with his royal blood, I’d say they are about even finally.

I’m really surprised you’re complaining about Butler, when you can complain about something like Court Wizard.

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#13

No I do not agree with this at all, occupying confirms you and is a big part of the game and that is very fun

It’s fun for me and it’s useful in the game so much the ability to block an assassin/CL from killing is strong as heck plus giving it an investigative ability will make it more boring since to me all abilities that are investigative are a bit boring and eavesdrop doesn’t fit the class at all if you’re gonna give it to a class give it to noble

#14

Me too

#15

I’m really surprised you’re complaining about Butler, when you can complain about something like Court Wizard.

Court wizard is also a bad class, but they aren’t yolo murdering people in an attempt to escape their fate. I also don’t think court wizard has anything worth keeping - removing them from the game entirely would be an improvement, and I have nothing interesting to say beyond that. On the other hand, I think nightshade wine is a terrific ability and deserves a better shell.

#16

Yes they do I saw many CWs claiming MM on stand and let prince waste an exe on them

#17

Well you called Butler “the least fun and useful BD class”. I simply do not see these large amounts of Butlers poisoning the king and leaving. Court wizards have to exist, because evils need the claimspace.

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#18

Then just remove it then. Why change an amazing class to be a nerfed butler that has investigative/social abilities?

#19

I removed the rework because you’re right, it wasn’t good. My argument is that nightshade wine is great and everything else about butler is bad, so I’ll focus on what has been said otherwise.

It seems the arguments in favor of butler, at least as provided by Solic and htm (who have been tremendously constructive), are:

  1. Targeted occupy lets you confirm yourself to the target
  2. You can guard yourself with party time
  3. You can check if someone is occupy immune or not
  4. You can block evils from killing

1, 3, and 4 are all done by the drunk, but the drunk does them better. His debauchery is a purely upgraded version of occupation.

Debauchery not only tests occupy immunity, it also tests if the target tries to kill someone. It’s not only a visit that the target knows he received for confirmation, it’s a visit and the target knows who sent it.

The only non-poison advantage of the butler is the ability to guard himself by occupying visitors. I concede that this is unique, and I’d be happy to see i42 keep the ability alongside nightshade wine if they rework the butler.

I appreciate that some people enjoy playing butler, but if the surveys I’ve seen are to be believed, the fact of the matter is that those people are in the minority.

I believe that a general lack of enjoyment in the community, combined with the ability to kill yourself in a way that also kills another player, opens up too many opportunities for games to be ruined. It’s bad enough when a bored knight yolo coldsteels someone, but at least in those scenarios it’s only the bored player that dies, and the BD get some kind of confirmation about the coldsteel target’s identity.

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#20

Where are those surveys?