Butler Poison Nerf

Feedback/Suggestions
#1

This is a suggestion to have the Butler Poison be nerfed because it desperately needs it.

Live (Patch 1.1):

  • Butler can use poison starting Day 2, and quite often, they will.
  • King doesn’t know he’s poisoned and most Phys/Alch don’t auto-heal the King N2 yet. Made worse by the fact that Assassins/Cult Leaders can poison/bleed a target (and they should D2 every game until a change comes for Butler Poison).
  • Butler has a 35% chance to kill an Evil King by raw RNG, not by a smart play. Kings shouldn’t be dying by raw RNG, especially not this early.
  • Butler has a 65% chance to kill off both Good King and himself, killing 2 BD with one dumb play.
  • Butler can freely leave when dead Night 3 by his suicide since he gets gold anyway and he’ll just be in a new game quick enough.
  • This isn’t even reportable because it’s technically not game-throwing.

What this is causing is about every 1 in ~2-3 games a King being poisoned D2, and around 1 in every ~4-5 games, said King dying because no phys/alchs healed him that night. If you’ve played King and died N2 due to random Butler poison, you know how aggravating it is to feel this.

So, let’s try to improve it with a well-needed nerf. Here’s a few options we could try:

  • - Option 1: Butler cannot poison the King until Day 4. This option would likely still cause King to be poisoned D4 every time, but at least there’d possibly be more of a reason to poison a King. By Day 2, I’ve never once thought a King was evil and honestly there’s no reason to poison him. This would at least delay the very-likely poisoning by 2 days.
  • - Option 2: Butler cannot poison unless the King Night Executes a BD player. This one is pretty self-explanatory. Those 2 Night Executes the King has are not to be taken lightly and using one of those two precious unblockable attacks on a BD would look very bad on the King. This would cause reason to consider using the poison ability.
  • - Option 3: Butler cannot poison unless the King uses Decide Face to Execute a BD. Like Option 2, except using his Day “Execute” on a BD.
  • - Option 4: Butler cannot poison unless either conditions of Option 2 or 3 is met. Just mash Option 2 and 3 together. This is personally my favorite of the 4.

Hopefully something will be done to put an end to Butler D2 Poison Meta!

#2

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#3

Good to know (had no idea TBH), though I still think Option 1 is a bandage fix and we’ll still see people poisoning D4 like every time, but I guess we’ll find out.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention though!

#4

No problem! This change has only been live for 12 hours, so I’m not too sure how effective it will be. Hopefully it’ll be a bit more than a bandage fix though!

#5

IMO the real solution is probably going to be require more games in casual (or whatever the beginers mode is called). I don’t think we can solve the problem that some people are playing really stupidly, via mechanics.

If players know what the heck they are doing, you discourage behavior by making it negative towards their win chance… as you’ve statistically pointed out it already is.

#6

I’d say so far it’s been a lot better. Don’t think I’ve had any games where it wasn’t just auto-poison D4, but granted I only play Classic so idk about Casual.

#7

Same on the first part, but I still see this happening from time to time on Kings that were playing flawlessly. It’s not happening on every other game like before, but when it happens it basically destroys BD by killing a Good King and the Butler late in the game while also giving Evils a decent chance of getting one of their own on the throne. I’d say the band-aid solution has worked to an extent as this is happening more infrequently, but a bad Butler right now has way too much potential to single-handedly lose BD a game.

#8

To me I still have to say the solution would be to up the amount of casual games required or something similar. Bad/Throwing players always have the potential to completely shatter BD… hunters that random wolf used to be a huge issue. As bad as a misfired butler is, I’d still say a prince misfiring is just as bad, and of course “next level strat - important BD tricking everyone into thinking they are a fool so unseen leave them alone” is something I’d say is 10x more deadly than a butler poison.

I’d say mechanical and problems that occur if players are playing it bad, are pretty seperate issues. I still had to facepalm that time when fool’s occupy was removed because too many butlers tried to act like fools to take advantage of the overlap. (I like hide better anyway, but still was the silliest justification I had seen for a mechanical change). When undesired behavior is beneficial for the team, that’s a mechanical fix that’s needed, but when they are already detrimental, experience is the solution. It’s just a matter of getting people more experience before they reach that position.

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