The 10 WORST Jokers w/

Part 1: • The 10 WORST Jokers w/...
Broadcasted live on Twitch (Sat, 29/6/2024) -- / drspectred
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Zaino and I discuss our picks for the Jokers we like least best.
(Version 1.0.1f)

[@ZainoTVLive]

Team Vagabond, comment here.

[@jessevandendoren]

Vagabond to me is like green joker, good, but not fun.

[@roytheshort]

Just get gold cards to solve econ What gives gold cards? That's right, Vagabond

[@nicolasrededeo805]

If vagabond has 1 fan, that fan is me. If vagabond has no fans, I am dead

[@danielj.8876]

I want stand any slander of my man Vagabond. He's the goat and those huge swings of spending all the money and then making a ton of it back each round is loads of fun. Feels like going on tour with the circus, investing all the cash for preparation and then doing the performance for the gold cards in my hand and collecting donations from them each hand in forms of tarots and at the end in form of gold cash is mad fun. Best rounds I have are with my Vagabro.

[@Calixto_XD]

vagabond the goat

[@MD-qt1of]

I get that scaling jokers all start at 0 now, but no one has really said why. Making Square Joker start at +16 really does fix it.

[@DineAuZor]

I think LocalThunk said that starting at something instead of 0 makes it confusing for new players. Like "Did I play 4 hands of 4 cards in my run?" when seeing Square Joker at +16 mult in the shop.

[@greenoftreeblackofblue6625]

​@@DineAuZorI have no idea why that's confusing. The idea of that being confusing confuses me.

[@apolopena]

The only confusing thing was hosing a barley playable theme card in the first place. Now Square is always a hard pass or a trap for a beginner.

[@MD-qt1of]

Then perhaps by default it can say (Starts at +16 chips) then when a hand is played it can change to (Currently +20 chips). There, solved

[@avilionamillion]

i remembered i was telling someone itd be funny to do ancient joker bloodstone all hearts deck and was shocked when they informed me that ancient joker doesnt pick off of the suits you have. it's a really bizarre decision that no other joker follows, and even if it would make ancient joker too powerful (and its already a really powerful joker) it doesnt make sense that it should be inconsistent with everything else in the game the balatro dev prides himself on the game being mechanically consistent, no matter what, so its weird that this one single card isnt

[@silicalnz]

i like the mechanic. Ive done a few runs where I have even suit distribution so i can get the effect easily with flushes. Or full wild card.

[@life-destiny1196]

A big issue with both Ancient Joker and Flower Pot, IMO, is just Lovers only giving you one wild card.

[@avilionamillion]

@@life-destiny1196 oh for sure, wild cards are totally underpowered. 1/6th of the bosses in the game completely nullify them and they're honestly hard to demark from regular suit cards at a glance

[@isaacbee1]

0:01 Prof’s #5 - Vagabond 9:08 Zaino’s #5 - Square Joker 16:31 Prof’s #4 - Flower Pot 24:46 Zaino’s #4 - Hit the Road 34:53 Prof’s #3 - Ancient Joker 41:42 Zaino’s #3 - Red Card 50:56 Prof’s #2 - Blue Joker 57:47 Zaino’s #2 - Rough Gem 1:08:28 Zaino’s #1 - Devious Joker 1:14:28 Prof’s #1 - Green Joker

[@DrSwib]

I always thought that green Joker was referencing when someone is new to something they're "green" and one of the biggest newbie mistakes at poker is to play every hand and never fold.

[@blackapple197]

I would say majority of the jokers are bad if you are chasing for e. But for winning a gold stake run you can make majority of them works, except for some really bad ones.

[@--Josh--]

The other problem with Hit the Road is that it feels less fun to scale compared to other xMult jokers. If you scale up Glass Joker, or Lucky Cat, or another accumulating xMult joker, it sticks around, and helps every hand a reasonable amount; it starts out worse than Trio or Family or similar, but has the potential to get better than those. But I don't think it makes sense to make Hit the Road scale like those by having its xMult stick around from round to round, because then it'd just be a worse Yorick. I think it'd be more fun if Hit the Road scaled multiplicatively, the way Baron does, but slower because you can discard more cards than you can keep in hand. For instance, imagine if it was "multiply by 1.25x for each jack discarded this round". So, discard five jacks and it's ~3x (vs the current 3.5x), discard another five jacks and it's ~9x (rather than 6x), discard another five and it's ~27x (rather than 8.5x), and so on. That's slower than Baron, but if you get yourself more discards you can make it scale, and get a lot of value out of it. The other problem, which I don't see how to fix, is that it doesn't synergize with lots of things the way "play" or "hold in hand" does. Baron works well with steel, or red seals, or Mime. Hit the Road doesn't benefit from any of those. But making it multiplicative would still make it more fun.

[@user-zq1eo2pp5s]

your issue with hating green joker is that you're acting like green joker resets when you discard at 4 hands and 2 discards a round, at worst you're getting +2, so basically you build it up to a point where your discards won't matter, like the difference between 17 and 18 is whatever, the fact of the matter is it can stay a fairly high mult for all cards and you can still discard, you're not BANNED from doing it like playing face cards, you're just slightly more disinclined to.

[@life-destiny1196]

Ancient Joker triggering five times is ~7.6x. Idol triggering five times is 32x. IMO the real solution is to buff Wild cards (Lovers gives two; more jokers that reward you for having them); if we're not doing that, Ancient Joker picking from your deck is fine.

[@andrewhouchin5812]

This might be too complicated but hear me out for square joker: “+1 chip. Increase by 1 chip each time 4 cards are played. Increase doubles when the total is a square number”. I wish I could think of how to write it more succinctly. It’s slow to start but can get pretty crazy and wouldn’t be like any other chip joker we have.This would probably bump it up to uncommon or rare. The sequence of the chip bonus would look like this: 1, 2, 3, 4 (upgrade), 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 (upgrade), 20, 24, 28, 32, 36 (upgrade), 44, 52, 60, 68, 76, 84, 92, 100 (upgrade), 116, 132, 148, 164, 180, 196 (upgrade), 228, 260…

[@DineAuZor]

Love this

[@NatesAnOnion]

what if hit the road was like campfire where it scales until the boss blind and then resets?

[@VirtualMarmalade]

I wanna defend Not Green Enough Joker here a little bit, and I recognize that I'm not the best balatro player out there, but here's why I like Green better than Bus: you can still use your discards if you want. You give up 1 mult to do it, but if the mult is big enough -1 doesn't really do anything, and you almost always have more hands than discards anyway so you can build it back up even if it's more expensive to do so. And Green Joker doesn't have to grow forever it just has to be Big Enough, and then you can ignore it. Whereas with the Bus if you crash the bus by playing a face card one time ever then you're done. Especially on higher stakes where you have only 2 discards, the Bus can be a huge liability because the Face cards are now just dead cards in your hand that you can't get rid of unless you find an Ace.

[@colindanger3396]

Please do more together ❤

[@stevenluoma1268]

Dont murder me. I have a soft spot for flower pot. It's because i had an amazing gold stakes win with it. I really enjoy the mini game. I absolutely adore the idea of it being a scaling joker instead. It would seriously help the frustrations in playing it without removing the mini game. I also think wild cards shouldn't be debuffed for the suit debuffers. Bam. Flower pot is way less frustrating.

[@mouseman6265]

still surprised i never hear about seance, the situations where it's available, attainable, and useful are so razor thin i've never actually seen it matter or be useful in a normal game

[@drspectred]

It's a playstyle thing. What might not fit into most of your runs could still have a place in more of my runs.

[@mouseman6265]

it's a fair point, and i try to use that mindset in general, but anytime i get seance i either can't build into straight flushes, am already scoring enough to where the spectrals wouldn't matter, or would rather have a different joker taking it's place, i'm not saying it doesn't have a use, but i've still never seen anyone get it in a normal run and actually get value out of it, i'd love to be proven wrong, but i don't see the use case.

[@sethchapman1425]

Why do i feel like trying to do all jacks of diamonds deck?

[@greensleevez]

What if it actually was like that? Donate a random amount of money, it adds either chips (whole value) or +mult (bucks divided by 4) (not xMult) to the card, randomly?

[@brakkie_derg]

You should make a video on how bad Blueprint is while doing a run only using it to copy incompatible jokers.

[@orangesya7649]

If you run out of ideas, could always do top ten favorite joker arts (could also include editions)

[@nomnoodlesnom]

I think flower pot would be interesting if it gave money, like an econ joker

[@life-destiny1196]

Hit the Road idea: discarding Jacks doesn't count towards your maximum five cards per discard. You could discard JJ97542.

[@greenoftreeblackofblue6625]

I like the idea that you still have the same number of discards but you can also discard all Jack's you have along with it. So you can get lucky if your hand is full of Jack's and discard all of them but if you have to search for it you still use resources

[@life-destiny1196]

Would Red Card be better if it was retroactive? I'm honestly not sure I'd play into it for like 10 mult, unless I get it super early. But at least retroactively it'd be a nice consolation prize if the booster packs are being bad.

[@acantilado]

Yes

[@jihyeonoh98]

What if green joker is +2 mult per discard and -1 per hand 😂

[@binathiessen4920]

I think the hit the road and castle complaints would be answered by a joker that re-triggers discard effects like how mime retriggers held in hand effects.

[@cameronh173]

Blueprint/Brainstorm kinda fits this bill already. A joker that retriggers jokers would just be too powerful.

[@theawesomepanda1lance241]

@@cameronh173 I don't think you read the comment you replied to.

[@cameronh173]

@@theawesomepanda1lance241 reading it again I definitely skipped over the word "discard" while I read it over. I still think a card that just retriggers discard effects would be too niche to add. Also it would make Yorick completely busted.

[@binathiessen4920]

@@cameronh173 Yorick is legendary. It deserves to be broken. And I don't think it would be excessively niche. It would apply to purple seals, mail-in rebate, green joker, hit the road, burnt joker, maybe trading card, and Yorick. I think that's more interactions than Mime has currently with Gold, Steel, Parking, Baron, and Shoot the Moon.

[@Jertopotamus]

Dnd yo what I wanna play too 😂

[@epthegeek]

Red Card: What if it was rare and always natural negative so it’s a passive bonus instead. eh? EH?

[@greenoftreeblackofblue6625]

No. Am still not skipping packs for that and that also takes up a rare slot. I'll be so damn mad if I got red card over a blue print.

[@dankeykang159]

Do not let roffle hear 1:14:34

[@brandenpence7660]

I always find the vagabond just griefs my Econ permanently.

[@badams52]

The trick is to use gold cards and get those jokers that give money at the end of the round. Eventually I pivot off of vagabond once my economy is good and I use a temperance to fill my coffers.

[@kli.4162]

@@badams52or make lucky cards and if one of them scores it jumpstarts your economy and you can ditch vagabond 5:03

[@acantilado]

In my experience if you play optimally with vagabond you leave each round with at least $10-15. You can get all the vouchers you want and enjoy the shop a bit still. The trick is to have an Econ joker to pair with it, like golden, cloud 9, satellite (sneaky fantastic synergy btw), etc

[@greenoftreeblackofblue6625]

In my experience I always end up with too much money after using it and I have to find a way to spend it

[@life-destiny1196]

Who's out here calling Square underrated? I've been on team "square was fine and didn't need its nerf" since it happened.

[@aprettycoolname4839]

What i would like for flowerpot is to make it a x2 for each different suit

[@aprettycoolname4839]

This would make it combo with ancient joker really wel

[@cheffbread3708]

x2 would be way too overpowered, but interesting idea! Maybe x1.5 would be more tuned

[@silverblade2871]

Could work, but let's take a look at how it would work. Playing a Straight with: 5 Clubs 4 Diamonds 3 Hearts 2 Spades 1 Diamonds Flower pot will be boosted 3 times, as it specifies that it's x2 for each different suit. So it goes from: x2 -> x4 -> x6 Pretty self explanatory why that wouldn't be balanced... The Duo is a rare, yet this Potted Plant produces more than half of it while being uncommon. Now let's take a look at x1.5 Mult nerf cheffbread said. It boosts 3 times like before... x1.5 -> x3.0 -> x4.5 This would be more balanced. When you simply add in another suit, it only gives x1.5 mult. If you add in another suit, it rises a lot to x3. And if you add in the final suit, it goes up to a big x4.5! With that mult, I actually think it would be worth digging for different suits, because the mult is getting quite high. Having three cards with different suits that also contributes to the score are kinda hard to find, maybe harder to find than Three of a Kind. So maybe this is balanced, though admittedly I'm not very good at this game...

[@MD-qt1of]

My idea: Add 1x Mult for each different suit scored. One suit = 1x Two suits = 2x Three suits = 3x Four suits = 4x Make it a rare if you have to, though the fact that it does nothing for flushes might keep it as uncommon

[@anynameinastorm]

You have to have bad cards at each rarity. Creating an environment where everything is even "just ok" means that choices become less meaningful, especially at higher stakes. Also, bad card runs make for great content. The top tier stuff is homogenous enough. We need those meme runs to break it up a little. Except Hit the Road. Outside of special Eratic runs, it's just Bloodstone that fails you in the big blind of ante 5 instead of killing your run on the last hand like true villain. There's no romance there. Hit the Road can find a new game to haunt

[@greenoftreeblackofblue6625]

Completely disagree, you can have cards that aren't bad and are unique and interesting. This is not a binary thing.

[@anynameinastorm]

@greenoftreeblackofblue6625 The necessity of bad cards in deck building games is a proven and important lever in maintaining game balance and replay potential. It diversifies runs, forces creative solutions, and engages top players who get to make bad cards look good. This is a design principle that successful games like Magic the Gathering figured out decades ago to support the draft environment. Balatro is deck drafting at its core

[@edgyteen1337]

Please make a weekly series/podcast(?) with Zaino and maybe invite other streamers/content creators for topics like this. Series name: PhD in Yapping. Also, a challenge Professor. Play only straights. No Straight flush, no high card, nothing else. You play any other hand you lose. Reach highest round by playing just Straights. (Pride month is over, straights are back in town, and they are back in full force)

[@cheffbread3708]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/eXXaZ2d6l7echLssi=UqMvY2LOHVdpk8ht He already did this challenge

[@edgyteen1337]

@@cheffbread3708 That is only Straights will score, so you can play other hands as a pseudo-discard. Also, that is just till ante 8, here we need to make a world record till the highest ante/round with any of the broken stuff.

[@nightbirdds]

Here is how you fix Square Joker. First, you make it an Uncommon or Rare. You up its price to 9$, and you give out 9 chips. It's make it worth having then. Just my off-the-cuff thought.

[@calvintabor5734]

Chicot is too easy and vagabond is too hard? Struggling to see the problem here, i think the upside of vagabond is very worth it. More tarot cards=fun runs

[@DJchoppa666]

he literally says vagabond is overpowered and their biggest criticism was having to roll down your money every shop. vagabond is great for average players

[@stevenluoma1268]

​@@DJchoppa666i don't think I've ever lost with vagabond. Average player or not, its my vote for most powerful joker and it's not even close.

[@MD-qt1of]

I agree about Vagabond. Yeah I enjoy it, but it's so obvious it wasn't created by localthunk. Feels like a fan creation

[@martinthemarine920]

I've mentioned in another comment section: I think green joker should be +1 mult per discard and -1 mult per hand played. right now it's anti-synergistic with the game, much like the other "no discard" jokers, and ironically, having -1 mult per hand played is literally synergistic with most of the game, besides like parking money. It means that you on average get +2 per round if you win in 1 hand, which is what you should be trying to do most of the time anyways. it also would give it a reason to exist, since there's no +mult scaling jokers with discards, but there's a couple chips and xmult scaling jokers like hit the road, castle, etc.

[@acantilado]

Red joker is even worse than presented here - there is just such a low ceiling with the scaling. How many packs would you realistically skip by ante 8? 6 at most? I think it’s basically a joker that scales up to Abstract in the end, but that would be underpowered by the time it gets there

[@roytheshort]

I don't think Green is the worst joker, it's just a lot more limited than people think it is. Like you say, it needs support to work. Something like Burglar can do it. Or card Sharp. To me, Pants seems like the best of the +1/+2 scalers. All the +1s have some nasty disadvantages (Nova with singular hand reliance, Bus prohibiting Face Card usage, Green restricting discards), but pants is just "Use two pair" and it scales twice as fast. Overall I kind of prefer in-hand scoring like Fist and Fib as those start with big numbers and get better with deck manip

[@FyneappleJuice]

40:15 LocalThunk hinted about an expansion?

[@apolopena]

Blue Joker's perfect just as it is, the teacher's not right all the time

[@acantilado]

I’m throwing out Sly Joker as particularly terrible. Using up a joker spot for just 50 chips? Worthless in all circumstances