Goes without saying, but these are my own personal opinions, drawn from about 100 hours of play and around 5-6 hours worth of post-patch matches.
The King:
The most significant change of the patch, and the most disruptive.
I feel that the nerfs to king were unwarranted and not backed up by any sort of data on balance. According to the developers themselves, faction winrates were within 5% of each other last patch; THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BALANCE SPREAD, honestly a godly state of balance considering how complex this game is. There was no pressing need to make such massive changes to a core class, effectively neutering one of the most interesting and dynamic roles.
“Check” was a powerful ability for sure, but that’s not justification for its removal. I mean he’s the king, he SHOULD be powerful, and the pre-patch King was excellent balance-wise and flavor-wise. Sure, as an Unseen/Cult, dying to random King checks can be frustrating…but so is getting assassinated on Night 1, getting reaped, getting yolobombed, etc. It’s just a part of the game and I would argue necessary to keep the gameplay fresh and interesting.
Evil Kings were one of the most difficult/high-skill classes to play as they had to take an active role in misleading the BD without being too damaging to the Cult/Unseen. As it stands now, the King is extremely easy to ignore and his alignment feels much less important. Behavior of Evil/Neutral/BD kings has been homogenized, which is a bad move in my opinion.
In general, the game post-patch feels slower and less exciting. I suspect this is in great part due to the lack of leadership and direction of a central investigative figure, whose personal allegiances are unknown.
The Noble:
The Noble remains one of the least fun/interesting classes to play. The vote-manipulation stuff is cool conceptually, but I think basing the entire class around it (while giving the abilities limited charges) is a mistake. It’s not particularly compelling and frankly, mostly useless unless you are lucky enough to survive into the late game, and by that time, you’re typically either sitting on the throne yourself, or dead by assassin/court.
The Noble when he had “Maid Spy” and “Private Matter” was my absolute favorite iteration of the class. It genuinely felt like I was taking an active role in court politics, compared to the current situation where I do nothing at night and sit pretty during the day. I think Noble would be greatly benefited by combining the first iterations of Noble with the current iteration. Tweaks can be made to his ability charges but overall I believe that direction best suits the class. Bring back hidden whispers and whisper spying!
Oh yeah, and Hearsay is almost entirely useless. The RNG element makes it worthless and most people just troll-whisper. I don’t think this kind of ability RNG has a place in the game. The information you receive from Hearsay is rarely reliable as the source is anonymous. In my time playing the patch I have not received a SINGLE Hearsay message of any value.
Court Wizard
I am not a fan of the direction the CW is taking. The teleportation mechanic feels more like a gimmick than anything else, and is often outright detrimental to the BD. Ice Ward in its current iteration is fine, but it would be vastly better if it were a three-charge ability and you could target other players (including yourself) with it.
Otherwise, I’m not sure what exactly should be done with CW…maybe making the teleportation mechanic a two-charge ability, and giving CW another additional ability? All I’m gonna say is, being a COURT WIZARD should be cool and exciting, let me do cool magic stuff. Right now I groan when I roll CW, it’s one of the more boring roles and often you will be executed because you are hard to confirm as your abilities don’t give any feedback.
Death Knight
It’s difficult to put a finger on the DK changes, particularly because we don’t even see if they exist now. It’s more difficult to confirm Physicians and the impact of a DK will likely be entirely unknown to players, which I feel is not an ideal situation. If DKs were too powerful, a better solution would be just to make them live for 2 days, with 3 ability charges (2 guard, 1 coldsteel). That way they will be forced to choose between guarding or attacking on their last day.
Drunk
I am content with the change to Drunk. Pre-patch Drunk was a bit OP and now it feels more balanced.
Hunter
Hunter was not touched at all during the patch, which I found surprising. The class can be a powerful tool for BD, but it’s a class where you always Bear Night 1 and proceed to do nothing on most other nights. Wolf is a well-balanced ability and warrants no changes, and even Bear is fine. I think Hunter would benefit from an additional minor ability of some sort so you’re not doing “nothing” on most nights. But admittedly this is low-priority.
OTHER
I can’t really speak for the impact of the Sorcerer and the Inquisitor. I have only played a few games with them present, and I think it will take much longer to feel out their effect on the game.
Anyway thanks if you made it this far. I hope the developers continue to consider feedback and improve the game, as Throne of Lies is one of the best games I’ve ever played. Cheers.
