User:Boothook/Boothook's reasons why the blackjack needs to be rebalanced

The blackjack's diagonal strike pattern
 * With the exception of one ball (bottom row, 7th ball from the left), the blackjack's diagonals all go from the top-corner to the middle. It is important to note that the board is hexagonal, and that the strike rows are actually staggered (as opposed to being directly on top of one another like in the rectangular drop pattern picture).  Blackjack strikes that appear from the top-right corner of the screen are staggered such that none of the diagonals (except the one ball) line up vertically.  This causes many single balls in those blackjack strikes.  This ratio of single balls is extremely high in narrow strikes, which happens to be a very popular thing to do with the blackjack.


 * Note that the rope coil diagonals go from the top-middle to the bottom-corners, and that the ropes would be much more powerful if the diagonals were going in the other direction. Also note that with the bone, there is one diagonal line that goes from the top-left corner to the bottom-middle.  This diagonal line keeps the bone from being overpowered.  The blackjack is the only bludgeon that (except for one ball) all of its diagonal lines are oriented from a top-corner to the bottom-middle.

The one-row board drops
 * It turns out that turbo-sprinklers can get a one-row board drop inbetween their opponent's 3-group strikes, and if the blackjack user doesn't get the exact colors they need right away, the turbo-sprinkler could easily get 2 one-row board drops inbetween their opponent's 3-group strikes. Also, when the board gets lower, uncharged balls can be shot more often because they aren't travelling as far, which means that as the board gets lower, a turbo-sprinkler could easily get 2 one-row board drops inbetween any of their opponent's 3-group strikes.


 * This basically means that unless the blackjack user is spamming 2-group strikes, a turbo-sprinkler could easily get at least 1 one-row board drop inbetween every blackjack strike. This means that the blackjack strikes will never line up, because the strikes are separated from each other by one-row board drops.  The reason why blackjack strikes can line up against another blackjack user is because neither of them are likely to get many one-row board drops, due to the fact that they both are probably spamming strikes at each other, which prevents each other from receiving one-row board drops..


 * A turbo-sprinkler would need to actually sprinkle through blackjack strikes that will never line up. Note that due to the extremely large amount of single balls in the blackjack strikes that come from the top-right of the screen, it is much harder to sprinkle through this mess than it is to sprinkle through the strikes of any other bludgeon in the game.  This slows down sprinkle attacks much more than any other bludgeon could.


 * This also means that the blackjack is the only bludgeon that can spam strikes non-stop against a turbo-sprinkler. All the other bludgeons would need to make sprinkle attacks to protect their strike attacks.  So let's discuss what happens when a bludgeon doesn't need to make sprinkle attacks...

Sprinkle scaling system
 * This is my current theory about the sprinkle system. In the beginning of the game, sprinkles are a 2:1 ratio, meaning that you have to pop at least 18 balls (the balls used to pop groups doesn't count toward this number, which means that you might have to pop 9 groups to reach the 18 ball total) to send 1 row (which is only 9 balls) of sprinkles.  If both players send a sprinkle attack, then you could send a sprinkle attack at a 1:1 ratio.  If one of the players never makes sprinkle attacks, then I think sprinkles are stuck at a 2:1 ratio.  So not only do sprinklers have a disadvantage due to the large amount of single balls in the blackjack's strike pattern, all of their sprinkle attacks are scaled because the blackjack user doesn't need to make sprinkle attacks.

Strike scaling system
 * Since the blackjack user doesn't need to make sprinkle attacks, they can turn the sprinkle attacks they receive into strike attacks. If you look at my strike calculation tables, you'll notice that the 3-group strikes (that only the blackjack can spam) get a much larger width bonus from extra balls than any other group size (the other bludgeons would need to make strikes larger than 3 groups).  This means 2 things:


 * 1) When a blackjack is trading strikes with any other bludgeon in the game, and the amount of added bruises is similar, then the blackjack user will have bigger groups on thier board than their opponent. This means that the blackjack user will get a larger width bonus than their opponent just because they are using a blackjack.


 * 2) Since a blackjack user doesn't need to sprinkle against most people in the game, they can just turn their opponent's sprinkle attacks into strikes. It turns out that sprinkle attacks cause many extra balls, which means that the blackjack user gets free volume added to their strikes, while the sprinkler is still struggling with their 2:1 attack ratio.

Interrupting strike system
 * There are two types of strike attacks: strikes that push balls around the screen, and strikes that scramble balls on the screen. An attack will only scramble balls if it bounces off of at least 1 wall, and an attack usually needs to bounce off of at least 2 walls to scramble well.  This means that scrambling strike attacks generally need to be very wide.  Narrow attacks tend to just push balls around the board.  This can still break up charged groups, but generally this does not work anywhere nearly as well as scrambling attacks.  The reason why blackjack users can interrupt each other's strikes with narrow attacks is because their boards are a strange shape due to receiving repeated narrow attacks from their blackjack opponent.  Since a non-blackjack can't spam narrow strikes, a non-blackjack using narrow attacks won't have anywhere near the interrupting efficiency of a blackjack.  This is especially true since the blackjack user needs much fewer charged groups (and/or extra dropoff balls) on their board than any other bludgeon, which means there is much fewer places on the board that can be interrupted.


 * Therefore, if a non-blackjack user wants to interrupt a blackjack user (which would probably only interrupt an average of 2 charged groups if this strike interrupted all of the charged groups on their board, which isn't very exciting at all), they are generally stuck making wide attacks. If we look at the strike calculation tables, we notice that the non-blackjack user has a width disadvantage due to the amount of single balls in the blackjack's pattern.  The non-blackjack user could use dropoff to increase width, but this would increase the number of 1-row board drops they receive (which was already explained to be a bad idea), so it can't really be done with small strikes since the dropoff-to-extra-volume ratio isn't good enough to justify the extra 1-row board drops.  So the non-blackjack user is stuck making large combos against a blackjack, and the non-blackjack user is much more likely to get interrupted due to 1) the interrupting effeciency of the blackjack, and 2) the fact that the non-blackjack user has many more charged groups on their board, which means that even a cruddy blackjack strike is likely to bootch at least a couple of groups per strike.


 * It should also be noted that when the blackjack user creates strikes out of sprinkle attacks (instead of sending sprinkles to their opponent), their strikes are likely to be wide (with no extra effort on their part), which means that they can interrupt attacks with far greater efficiency than a hybrid opponent (an opponent that uses both strikes and sprinkles as part of their main strategy), as the hybrid opponent would be sending sprinkles... but wouldn't be receiving sprinkles.


 * Also, the skill (and risk) required to build large attacks against a blackjack user that is spamming strikes... is much higher than the skill (and risk) required for a blackjack user to spam strikes.

The "make a massive strike to counter the blackjack" idea
 * This idea might be exciting if it wasn't so luck based. The truth is that regardless of where you put your charged groups, many of them are open to be interrupted multiple times before you can complete the massive strike.  Granted, you can build the strike so that the odds are in your favor, the problem is that you are still relying upon odds.  In other words, you are still relying upon the fact that your blackjack opponent won't get lucky with interrupting your charged groups.  Sometimes I only get 1 charge group bootched, and sometimes I get so many groups bootched that I am literally interrupted 4 times before I am able to complete the attack.  When you have a large amount of groups on your board, and your opponent is spamming small strikes, then you are relying on luck regardless of what the odds are.