Suggestions

In the current state of the game, stubborn heavily dominates the meta. I don't think I have to go too in depth on why, it's been said a lot; but to make it short: In my opinion, the two issues are Ignores knockback, and with it half the gameplay on ring Basically acts as a permanent -1 damage in higher tempo play, which becomes even more problematic when combined with adamant. My suggestion is a radical rework; instead of reducing damage by 1, effectively rewarding you for dashing head on into structures, we make the dash faster, longer* and immune to knockback, but you take one MORE damage if you get hit by dashing. This would let it retain it's place as a really aggressive, rush stone, but reward weaving through your opponent's attacks at high speed instead of just tanking them, while still leaving the option open to avoid a ring-out or close that last bit of distance at the cost of hp. That way, stubborn would turn into a calculated tradeoff that you have to think about using (like most other stones) instead of making "dash into the incoming structure" the best option in a lot of cases. *I'm not sure if a longer dash would actually be good, let me know what yall think

TL;DR Stubborn is nerfed to be -1 damage and 50% knockback reduction on Dash/Jump, while full knockback/player hitstun negation is expanded to any time damage is fully negated --------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a suggestion for: A nerf to stubborn A general addition regarding knockback + player hitstun negation --------------------------------------------------------------------- A nerf to stubborn itself Currently: "Dashing or Jumping right before you get hit will reduce the damage you take by one, and you will take no knockback." Changed to: "Dashing or Jumping right before you get hit will reduce the damage you take by one and greatly decrease the knockback you take." (Dashing/Jumping with Stubborn would cause a 50% reduction to knockback, halving knockback in general, and negating Volatile's 50% explosion knockback buff while somewhat mirroring the language used to describe volatile) A general addition When fully negating the damage a structure deals, its knockback and player hitstun is also fully negated. --------------------------------------------------------------------- With these changes in combination, Stubborn would still have knockback/player hitstun negation against disks (unless they are damage boosted through something like Surge), but so would Adamant, Guard (presumably), and possible future damage reduction shift stones, resulting in Stubborn not owning a monopoly on this. When combining any damage negation options, full knockback/player hitstun negation could only reach so far, allowing for larger/grounded/moving structures to still cause knockback/player hitstun even if part of the damage is negated. Stubborn would maintain a knockback advantage against larger structures, since it would have 50% knockback reduction. This would help maintain Stubborn's identity and act as a mirror to Volatile's 50% explosion force increase. Surge and possible future damage boosting shift stones could act as counters to full knockback/player hitstun negation since they could help with piercing through full damage negation. Due to an expanded range of knockback/player hitstun negation options, this may also act as a nerf/counterplay addition to Explode/Volatile explosions since the explosive force would presumably be fully negated if damage from the structure was as well, possibly encouraging the application of Explode on larger structures when facing players with more than one damage reduction stone.

In the game's current state, Vigor is perhaps the least used shiftstone, often getting discarded for adamant and stubborn for damage negation effects. Besides just making it heal more or requiring less damage (I'm gonna out some thoughts to these at the bottom, but they're not the main focus of this post), I think a good change would be to allow the healing to go over 20 HP. A problem that all defensive stones share is that they don't really do anything until you get hit. Stubborn, Adamant and Guard however at least interact with that first hit and reduce the damage. Vigor already has the downside of having a limited amount of healing to give each match (6 if the opponent isn't playing damage negation), so in some scenarios getting a 5 damage burst while staying at full HP - something that should feel great - can feel like you just lost 2 HP you could have healed to gain even greater HP advantage. On Changing the Numbers: I feel like a 3hp heal would be justifiable for how hard it is to proc, 4 would maybe even be too much. I'm against lowering the activation number, since that would completely change its current playstyle of going for two hits and follow ups to fishing for singular, strong hits with Walls and Grounded Cubes.

just think it would be a nice little touch, simular to how grounded objects make a rumbling sound.

Using explode on an object that already has explode causes it to detonate either instantly or on a timer, i dont know which one would be better

Holding something slowly builds up spin. Longer you hold faster it spins. Either it builds spin slow enough that it doesn't matter if it gets fast, or it has a max rpm Lighter rocks spin up faster. Larger ones take time. Pros: Rocks that can roll and thus curve intentionally in a direction. Might help "waterbending" tech. Cons: Your held rocks are spinning if you don't release them soon enough. Could cause self damage if not mastered. Doubled edged, but so is volatile. (I keep thinking I've already made this post. (or maybe someone else has...my bad if so for making it again (searching on this site is not so easy)))

Howard is extremely limited in its moveset. It always reacts the exact same when you attack it by just moving away. The attacks it preforms are also extremely limited. First of all, even at the highest difficulty the pauses it does between attacks, and when it stops moving, are by far too long. It is also not able to do pillar, since every time it preforms the move the pillar instantly breaks, probably because it is colliding with the track. Another issue is that due to the track having collision, it can be difficult to hit Howard with grounded moves, especially grounded discs. I think that removing collision from the tracks would both help to make sure that Howard's moves come out without breaking, and to make the player actually hit Howard from grounded objects. I assume that the most logical thing would be to increase the difficulty slider by a couple of values, but maybe there could also exist a seperate slider, since the suggestions I am going to make are quite different compared to how Howard usually behaves, so maybe a toggle would be good? The details on how this should work aren't really that important to this suggestion; you will probably come up with something sensible if you ever plan on including this idea. Anyways, here are some behavior changes I feel would make Howard way more useful as a practicing aid: The pauses it does between attacks, and when it stops moving should be decreased. For the highest difficulty the pause should probably barely be noticeable. Although maybe different moves have different pause durations afterwards. A heavier attack like "wall" should probably make him have to recover for longer than disc or spawn ball, since having literally every move have a cool-down of for example 1 second would make it flow really weirdly if it does a bunch of "huge" moves at the same speed as trowing discs. Make Howard react to attacks in more varied ways. Instead of just trying to move away from the attack to dodge it, it should be able to spawn wall, and spawn pillar. For the highest difficulties it should maybe be able to parry>straight, ground>straight, or maybe even parry>hold right>straight. Make it have a way more varied move set. Howard has a very limited range, and if you put up a wall at a decent distance, it can literally not do anything against you, except maybe uppercutting balls if you are at that exact range. What I feel would be really good to train against (at least at Howard's highest difficulty) would be if he was able to straight>kick walls, since that would cover a very large distance, and which is able to break walls. Another way he could play against the players walls would be if he could utilize explode, and for example do spawn ball>explode>straight, to get rid of the walls. Maybe he could do disc or wall>explode very shortly after, to hopefully hit the player right as their wall falls away. Some more moves he might be able to preform could be hold right, since that would give him way more range, and also makes its attacks way more threatening and fast. It could for example spawn cube>hold right> straight, and maybe even apply explode to it? Another thing it should be able to utilize would be ground. It could for example spawn ball>ground>straight. For the highest difficulties maybe also spawn cube>straight>uppercut, wall>straight>kick (as mentioned before), disc>straight, disc>kick (if you jump). Make Howard have way more situational awareness. If it for example spawns a wall, and moves away from it, it can later sense that there is a wall somewhere close to its track, that it can move behind to be safe from the players attack for a while. It could even potentially start doing spawn ball>uppercut from behind the wall to pressure the player whilst it is safely behind the wall. If the distance between Howard and the wall is too small to spawn a ball, it could maybe straight the wall to give more room for the ball? Give Howard more space. This idea is definitely quite a stretch, but maybe it would be possible to have Howard (Or maybe a replica of Howard) have its own arena, where it has a completely (or at least almost completely) 360 degree track in a circle, so that it can for instance go around a wall, with a hiding player behind it. I feel that it is important being able to play against someone who isn't a real life person without the difficulty of it being absurdly easy. Personally sometimes I get a bit stressed from playing online, and I just want to relax offline, but still have it be difficult and fast enough for it to be interesting. As of right now, whenever I play against Howard I barely ever attack. Most of the time I just stare at it for what feels like ages, until it attacks where I can try to block it and counter. Nothing even remotely interesting is happening. I just created my account for canny.io , and I am not able to change my username. If I have still been unable to do so in the future, I want to just mention that my username should be baksoBoy, and if you were to for some reason want to contact me, my Discord username is baksoBoy#0001, and I am a part of the Bucket head Entertainment Discord server. Thank you for reading through this long suggestion! I really appreciate it!

Explode ricochets have Volatile, flight has Flow, and I think other shiftstones to match with other advanced tech would be cool. A railgun based chiffstone that gives the adamant buff for a long time when you hit someone with a structure, for example. Mechanics/bugs-turned-playstyles like parry stasis and phasing should be encouraged!

If/when 2v2 modes come, I think an interesting idea is to have shiftstones that activate when fistbumping your teammate. Reusing effects like Surge or Adamant to apply for a short while would be cool with the caveat of manually applying them.

before the update after using iron boots you would get your speed doubled, now it is set to 0. this removes tech without adding anything, also makes you MORE vulnerable after iron boots. also also it doesn't allow you to iron boots several structures