I feel Lily Chen's elder sign should be much higher rated. She is pretty good at elder sign fishing and when she has some experience (and multiple disciplines) it can be even core part of the game plan, meaning it is arguably a game changer. (though this is only in later scenarios and still not necessarily every time the best place seems Actually sometimes matters to me). Also it baseline turns both defensive stats from below 4 to 4+, which is always nice for the mythos phase.
Fair enough, I can see putting her one more up. As I mentioned I think the effect is really good, especially once she has more XP, but it just whiffs too often for my liking. I did underestimate that she can fish for it, but one slight negative that I didn't mention is that her weaknesses can prevent the elder sign from working, too.
I gotta say I agree, if Chen Li is built to fish for this effect, and this is the game plan, to use her permanents (which are her characters ability) as often as possible, this has been a blast to play and so powerful. She's up there with Skids for me, top tier. Also highly, highly rate Jenny Barnes' elder sign, with the 3xp Cigarette Case, being able with a big money build to essentially look through your entire deck, of you're art 20+ resources, day running a black fan build, by just having big money + the elder sign + the upgraded case. I play with a small card pool and so don't play with taboo, other than The Double or nothing being forbidden, so this might not be as strong with taboo, but still...
It's somewhat specific but yes, building Lily specifically to fish for Elder Signs means also building her to be able to take advantage of those Elder Signs by using her disciplines every chance she gets. The INT discipline especially, who's effect is "Fill your hand to 5 cards", and which is otherwise almost impossible to recover without the Elder Sign.
I mostly agree with your Ranking list and understand that your ranking is personal. But just for perspective: My Wilson Richards deck featured mostly supply using assets like flashlight, Cleaning kit and Chainsaw. Therefore, drawing an Elder Sign mostly meant refreshing those supplies. It is still not the best Elder Sign, but to me, it was great.
Parallel Daisy likes to recur Schoffner’s Catalog with her Elder Sign. Also, Old Book of Lore(3). Love your analyses; thank you for posting and keep up the good work!
Agreed. I love Patrice and the only time I’m not excited to see her elder sign is when I get two of them in a row. There are so many good things about it: 1)If the Watcher was already defeated, it can stay in your discard pile practically forever. 2) If a particularly nasty basic (or some extra story) weakness was resolved, it can stay in your discard pile forever. 3) If you have the Watcher in your hand and not ready to deal with it yet, you can delay that and stop thinking “I absolutely have to kill it in X turns when my deck runs out”. 4) If you have not draw the Watcher yet, you’re reducing your chances to do so. 5) same with your other weaknesses 6) You don’t need to worry about the sanity hit when looping your deck. Also, if you have no weaknesses in your discard pile yet, just leave your best “play from discard” card there. And it’s not hard to discard the other such cards when you draw them again. O my, I was not expecting to find so many good things when I started writing😂
I misread Stella’s for most of the Forgotten Age and thought it was 1 damage OR horror and still thought it was great. The fact that it’s both feels really nice, alongside her 8/8 pool
I really feel that +1 or higher elder signs are much better on Rogues than on most classes pretty much because they tend to have lower willpower, and willpower is the only stat everyone is going to have to test at some point. Combat? Only for the fighters and flexes. Intellect? Only for the cluevers and flexes. Agility? Pretty much only if you're green or red. But low will means you will often find yourself taking a test you have little hope in passing, and when you're Tony or Skids or Trish and your +1 or 2 puts you over to 3 or 4 will, and then you get goodies on top of it, that can be a real game changer. The actual oversuccess element of these though is not that strong because if you're planning to oversucceed you've probably committed enough to guarantee +2 or you have other tricks to get there like Knight of Swords or Daring Maneuver. I'll also say that is a weakness of Finn's, Wini's, and Jack's elder signs being +1 on gators with already just 1 willpower. Still can help you fail by less.
Great thoughts! I agree with all of it... and yet Sefina has a +3 (the highest printed number, I believe), and yet she already has 4 willpower. Strange!
@@emergency.jergens That's true, esp since those treacheries tend to inflict pain by damage or restricting movement, and so that makes good elder sign numbers slightly more important for Mystics with lower foot score, health, and more action tax.
I agree with your order for Game Changers. One additional thing that makes Parallel Skids' elder sign even better is the number of tests he takes. Rogues already can take a lot with extra actions (from Leo de Luca, Black Fan, etc) but Skids gets those *and* his once-per-turn gambling test.
In response to your call to action at the end, I drew an elder sign as Rita during the mythos phase on the last turn of a run through Guardians of the Abyss, and used that plus my signature to grab all the enemies and do exactly enough damage for my team to finish off the boss!
Excellent video! I like the clear categorisation and the premise of looking at each ES in the context of the concerned investigator. A few random thoughts and comments: 1) I wondered how Evanescent Ascension works on investigators with auto-succeed ES ability in response to an autofail. Turns out the autofail trumps the autowin. Given the rules focus in the channel, I thought this would be worth sharing. I presume you fail by 0 which can matter. 2) I view a number of ES that offer a non-obvious choice (mostly ranked as ‘rarely matters’ here) as good design. Prime examples are Dexter, Saffina, Lola, Patrice. Sure, they are not straight up beneficial and cannot typically be part of a reasonable gameplan, but they offer the player a chance to rethink their situation and come up with alternative plan of action. They test the player’s ability to identify the most advantageous plan. I like their design. 3) Though not as interesting as the ones in 2), the marginal bonus ES - such as Zoey’s - are not a complete waste in my view. Often monsters take 2 swings and drawing an ES gives an extra action. For beefier monsters, an ES on the first swing can also mean that you din’t need your vicious blow for the second etc. Still agree with the ranking though. 4) Some scenarios have barriers with ‘health’ that gets diminished by oversucceeding on tests (e.g. dark side of the moon). The +x ES can be nice here. This very rarely matters though.
Thanks for watching! Let me briefly respond.. 1) Yeah, auto-fail trumps auto-succeed indeed, which means that it's no different than if you hadn't pulled the ES in the first place, you don't fail by 0 unless the skill test was difficulty 0. 2) For sure! I think these are great design as well, and every ES cannot be straight up bangers for balance reasons. The only thing is when the ES just totally whiffs a large number of times. I literally played a game yesterday where the Wilson player on our team drew three elder signs but never had a good reason to use the ability (or straight up couldn't). I get that you could build around it a bit more, but it feels bad when you draw it and you basically have to pass.
I thought automatically failing had two effects: The modified skill value for the test is set to 0. The test fails. Conversely, I understood automatically succeeding causes the following: The test’s difficulty is set to 0. The test succeeds. The rules are clear that automatically failing takes precedence over automatically succeeding. I had interpreted as that the second part of the auto-succeed doesn’t take place, but the other three effects apply: -Test difficulty is 0 -Skill value is 0 -Test fails My comment that you fail by 0 is based on this. Is this incorrect?
I don't think the test difficulty goes to zero because you ignore the auto succeed effects entirely, but I actually do not know if that has been ruled upon. I'll ask around.
It probably won't change your evaluation since an enemy exhausted at your location is not as likely to happen as having a bunch of items as Bob or a lot of money as Jenny, but the logic that high bonus elder signs are slightly better for rogues since they care about oversucceeding should apply to Kymani as well. This is because when you autmatically succeed the difficulty becomes zero, so it's very likely that you will oversucceed the test even if you don't get a big positive modifier.
I think I talked about this? Maybe not. I thought I mentioned that the auto-success matters less for Kymani since you're already trying to succeed by a bunch when you try to evade the exhausted enemy, and you don't tend to leave them hanging around for too long while you're doing other tests, although who knows, maybe that will happen with some of the Parley stuff. But sure, point taken that succeeding by *even more* is reasonable for LCC (3), etc., which I mentioned for Bob and Jenny but not for Kymani.
Does Gloria’s elder sign even matter when she can check the deck every turn with Alyssa? Even an elder sign in the mythos phase wouldn’t do much (unless maybe you always put yourself last, but alyssa is there still). Interested in your thoughts because I might be missing something
Well, like I said, it's nice if you don't have Alyssa out yet. But beyond that, let's say you're playing two player, and you already looked at the top 2 with Alyssa, and you discarded one of the cards. With the ES later on, you again look at the top two, which will be the one you saw before and another new one, so that can be a new choice to make.
I feel Lily Chen's elder sign should be much higher rated. She is pretty good at elder sign fishing and when she has some experience (and multiple disciplines) it can be even core part of the game plan, meaning it is arguably a game changer. (though this is only in later scenarios and still not necessarily every time the best place seems Actually sometimes matters to me). Also it baseline turns both defensive stats from below 4 to 4+, which is always nice for the mythos phase.
Fair enough, I can see putting her one more up. As I mentioned I think the effect is really good, especially once she has more XP, but it just whiffs too often for my liking. I did underestimate that she can fish for it, but one slight negative that I didn't mention is that her weaknesses can prevent the elder sign from working, too.
@@Quick_Learner Yeah I really wish the elder sign was listed as an exception.
I gotta say I agree, if Chen Li is built to fish for this effect, and this is the game plan, to use her permanents (which are her characters ability) as often as possible, this has been a blast to play and so powerful. She's up there with Skids for me, top tier. Also highly, highly rate Jenny Barnes' elder sign, with the 3xp Cigarette Case, being able with a big money build to essentially look through your entire deck, of you're art 20+ resources, day running a black fan build, by just having big money + the elder sign + the upgraded case. I play with a small card pool and so don't play with taboo, other than The Double or nothing being forbidden, so this might not be as strong with taboo, but still...
It's somewhat specific but yes, building Lily specifically to fish for Elder Signs means also building her to be able to take advantage of those Elder Signs by using her disciplines every chance she gets. The INT discipline especially, who's effect is "Fill your hand to 5 cards", and which is otherwise almost impossible to recover without the Elder Sign.
I mostly agree with your Ranking list and understand that your ranking is personal.
But just for perspective: My Wilson Richards deck featured mostly supply using assets like flashlight, Cleaning kit and Chainsaw. Therefore, drawing an Elder Sign mostly meant refreshing those supplies. It is still not the best Elder Sign, but to me, it was great.
Parallel Daisy likes to recur Schoffner’s Catalog with her Elder Sign. Also, Old Book of Lore(3). Love your analyses; thank you for posting and keep up the good work!
I think Patrice’s is really good if you don’t use play-from-discard cards. Its nice to not have to worry about your weakness for a while
Yeah, I sometimes like to put Quantum Flux in her deck just to get that effect more on demand.
@@Quick_Learner yes it’s just a nice lil bonus 😄
Agreed. I love Patrice and the only time I’m not excited to see her elder sign is when I get two of them in a row. There are so many good things about it: 1)If the Watcher was already defeated, it can stay in your discard pile practically forever. 2) If a particularly nasty basic (or some extra story) weakness was resolved, it can stay in your discard pile forever. 3) If you have the Watcher in your hand and not ready to deal with it yet, you can delay that and stop thinking “I absolutely have to kill it in X turns when my deck runs out”. 4) If you have not draw the Watcher yet, you’re reducing your chances to do so. 5) same with your other weaknesses 6) You don’t need to worry about the sanity hit when looping your deck.
Also, if you have no weaknesses in your discard pile yet, just leave your best “play from discard” card there. And it’s not hard to discard the other such cards when you draw them again.
O my, I was not expecting to find so many good things when I started writing😂
I misread Stella’s for most of the Forgotten Age and thought it was 1 damage OR horror and still thought it was great. The fact that it’s both feels really nice, alongside her 8/8 pool
I really feel that +1 or higher elder signs are much better on Rogues than on most classes pretty much because they tend to have lower willpower, and willpower is the only stat everyone is going to have to test at some point. Combat? Only for the fighters and flexes. Intellect? Only for the cluevers and flexes. Agility? Pretty much only if you're green or red. But low will means you will often find yourself taking a test you have little hope in passing, and when you're Tony or Skids or Trish and your +1 or 2 puts you over to 3 or 4 will, and then you get goodies on top of it, that can be a real game changer. The actual oversuccess element of these though is not that strong because if you're planning to oversucceed you've probably committed enough to guarantee +2 or you have other tricks to get there like Knight of Swords or Daring Maneuver.
I'll also say that is a weakness of Finn's, Wini's, and Jack's elder signs being +1 on gators with already just 1 willpower. Still can help you fail by less.
Great thoughts! I agree with all of it... and yet Sefina has a +3 (the highest printed number, I believe), and yet she already has 4 willpower. Strange!
That’s such a great point. Same with foot on some campaigns ig
@@emergency.jergens That's true, esp since those treacheries tend to inflict pain by damage or restricting movement, and so that makes good elder sign numbers slightly more important for Mystics with lower foot score, health, and more action tax.
I agree with your order for Game Changers. One additional thing that makes Parallel Skids' elder sign even better is the number of tests he takes. Rogues already can take a lot with extra actions (from Leo de Luca, Black Fan, etc) but Skids gets those *and* his once-per-turn gambling test.
In response to your call to action at the end, I drew an elder sign as Rita during the mythos phase on the last turn of a run through Guardians of the Abyss, and used that plus my signature to grab all the enemies and do exactly enough damage for my team to finish off the boss!
Excellent video! I like the clear categorisation and the premise of looking at each ES in the context of the concerned investigator.
A few random thoughts and comments:
1) I wondered how Evanescent Ascension works on investigators with auto-succeed ES ability in response to an autofail. Turns out the autofail trumps the autowin. Given the rules focus in the channel, I thought this would be worth sharing. I presume you fail by 0 which can matter.
2) I view a number of ES that offer a non-obvious choice (mostly ranked as ‘rarely matters’ here) as good design. Prime examples are Dexter, Saffina, Lola, Patrice. Sure, they are not straight up beneficial and cannot typically be part of a reasonable gameplan, but they offer the player a chance to rethink their situation and come up with alternative plan of action. They test the player’s ability to identify the most advantageous plan. I like their design.
3) Though not as interesting as the ones in 2), the marginal bonus ES - such as Zoey’s - are not a complete waste in my view. Often monsters take 2 swings and drawing an ES gives an extra action. For beefier monsters, an ES on the first swing can also mean that you din’t need your vicious blow for the second etc. Still agree with the ranking though.
4) Some scenarios have barriers with ‘health’ that gets diminished by oversucceeding on tests (e.g. dark side of the moon). The +x ES can be nice here. This very rarely matters though.
Thanks for watching! Let me briefly respond..
1) Yeah, auto-fail trumps auto-succeed indeed, which means that it's no different than if you hadn't pulled the ES in the first place, you don't fail by 0 unless the skill test was difficulty 0.
2) For sure! I think these are great design as well, and every ES cannot be straight up bangers for balance reasons. The only thing is when the ES just totally whiffs a large number of times. I literally played a game yesterday where the Wilson player on our team drew three elder signs but never had a good reason to use the ability (or straight up couldn't). I get that you could build around it a bit more, but it feels bad when you draw it and you basically have to pass.
I thought automatically failing had two effects:
The modified skill value for the test is set to 0. The test fails.
Conversely, I understood automatically succeeding causes the following:
The test’s difficulty is set to 0. The test succeeds.
The rules are clear that automatically failing takes precedence over automatically succeeding. I had interpreted as that the second part of the auto-succeed doesn’t take place, but the other three effects apply:
-Test difficulty is 0
-Skill value is 0
-Test fails
My comment that you fail by 0 is based on this. Is this incorrect?
I don't think the test difficulty goes to zero because you ignore the auto succeed effects entirely, but I actually do not know if that has been ruled upon. I'll ask around.
Big number elder signs on survivors like agnes and bob never fail to mess up my take heart
It probably won't change your evaluation since an enemy exhausted at your location is not as likely to happen as having a bunch of items as Bob or a lot of money as Jenny, but the logic that high bonus elder signs are slightly better for rogues since they care about oversucceeding should apply to Kymani as well. This is because when you autmatically succeed the difficulty becomes zero, so it's very likely that you will oversucceed the test even if you don't get a big positive modifier.
I think I talked about this? Maybe not. I thought I mentioned that the auto-success matters less for Kymani since you're already trying to succeed by a bunch when you try to evade the exhausted enemy, and you don't tend to leave them hanging around for too long while you're doing other tests, although who knows, maybe that will happen with some of the Parley stuff. But sure, point taken that succeeding by *even more* is reasonable for LCC (3), etc., which I mentioned for Bob and Jenny but not for Kymani.
Does Gloria’s elder sign even matter when she can check the deck every turn with Alyssa? Even an elder sign in the mythos phase wouldn’t do much (unless maybe you always put yourself last, but alyssa is there still). Interested in your thoughts because I might be missing something
Well, like I said, it's nice if you don't have Alyssa out yet. But beyond that, let's say you're playing two player, and you already looked at the top 2 with Alyssa, and you discarded one of the cards. With the ES later on, you again look at the top two, which will be the one you saw before and another new one, so that can be a new choice to make.
@@Quick_Learner thanks for the insight