While it's not quite as drastic as that, there is a notable change coming to Elites & Boss fights, to move them away from being as damage spongey.
- Enemy Buff: Elite and Boss enemies now have an escalating chance to enter Pandemonium by default, starting from round 5 (ally and enemy rounds both increase the round count by 1).
- Enemy Nerf 1: The amount of health on enemies in these battles has been reduced.
>> Previously, there was nothing actually "Elite" about elite enemies. They just had more HP. The introduction of the Essence & Pandemonium mechanics to elites instead of being damage sponges means your decisions matter more.
During Pandemonium:
- All enemy skills are efficient
- All damage taken by allies counts as Weakness (Guard & Full Brace can prevent this)
- You cannot enter Demonform until Pandemonium ends.
Pandemonium lasts 1 round.
This means you must put more care into constructing teams with synergies that combo well together in order to progress into the endgame and final bosses.
The Malice mod version still exists, which allows all types of battles to enter pandemonium, and does not limit it to round 5 and beyond.
I'm running a 35% off sale for 2 weeks, so at least you can trick a friend into also getting blasted by bosses alongside you.
Other Balance Changes
- Black Mask (Enter Demonform 1 time without a charge) and Deva Form's Mother's Mercy (ally not destroyed on entering Demonform) have been removed, because they were ignoring costs that were put in place for an important reason, breaking both boss flow and unit economy.
- Collecting a Nirvana Key will add 1 modifier to all remaining Final Boss nodes.
- Jeff now has the Last Exhale passive. (When an ally becomes a corpse, they deal 3 Arcane Damage to a random enemy, 2 times)
- Last Exhale now has Pierce.
- Fixed bug that was causing Essence-based passives on enemies to not activate. Whoops.