I’m a fan of the annual balance update strategy and the transparency of app changes and how things have been going, great job PP! But I was very confused to find that Brine in Thornfall was heavily nerfed on 11/18, seemingly without explanation.
I usually only glance at release notes since they’re mainly new models being added and typos getting cleaned up, but it’s nice that there’s still release notes we can separately refer to on the PP site to see what’s happening each week. Except…the one/rare time they make a significant balance change to 1 model, it’s just listed as a “Correction” to change Brine’s animus with no apparent rationalization that I could find.
I’m not saying the change was unwarranted, I just want to understand why it was needed and more specifically why now. Rorsh & Brine are certainly very strong and arguably a reason to play Thornfall in the first place. The change is pretty severe in cutting Brine’s power. It looks like it happened in late November, so January balance was right around the corner. What was so bad about Brine to justify immediate action?
Just I’m just curious to hear why this needed to happen and why now? And also just to reiterate I like the annual balance cadence so that I don’t have to constantly double-check my model rules. So if there is a need for some emergency model nerf (which is fine), please PP just give us a heads up and explain why in the release notes/article.
Per those patch notes it was changed to Ravening Hunger (provides snacking). I believe it used to be pig farm which provides an additional die on melee damage rolls against living models and snacking.
I dont have a way to confirm that he had pig farm prior to 11/18 but it has historically been his animus.
If I am correct about the change it is a substantial nerf to Brine’s damage potential
Yeah I’m pretty sure he retained Pig Farm into MK 4. So I was excited about the addition of Helga (thanks PP!!) and creating some new lists last week, got confused about where Pig Farm went, and read through the recent release notes to find that 11/18 comment about Brine’s animus becoming Ravening Hunger.
I could have some false memory going on, but the animus change is in the release notes, and I frankly wouldn’t have been playing Rorsh & Brine much this year with his current animus. They can still do some wild stuff for sure, just way too fragile and risky with the amount of guns in my small meta.
Bump, after no mention of the Brine nerf being contained in the Jan 10 update, I remain curious about why this change was made, and whether it was even intentional.
I will join Michael’s wild speculation, given that the Reptile Hound oddly now has the “Pig Farm” animus (Brine’s old animus), and Brine has Ravening Hunger, which Reptile Hounds used to have. I can’t help but wonder whether a correction intended for Reptile Hound was accidentally applied to Brine.
If you haven’t already, it might be worth raising through the feedback form attached to Brines card in the app.
If you suspect a undocumented issue with Reptile Hounds animus, might be worth doing the same there
It certainly sounds odd, and I think these feedback forms are PPs preferred way to deal with bugs and balance issues