Board Thread:Debate of The Week/@comment-28112409-20190613035024/@comment-28112409-20190614012802

DragonClaw66 wrote: Vertroyer wrote: HAWAIIANpikachu wrote: We need to combine some of the mafia roles (preferably weaker ones) so we have more consistent deception (or more likely to get a role that isn't a one trick pony like forger) I'm all for this. I've been wanting for both Disguiser and Consig to be combined since their abilities synergize so well together, far better off than having them separate and it drags the Disg out of the mediocre area. Isn't the Consigliere already considered a pretty balanced role? Wouldn't it be better to just rework the Disguiser (again)? Yes, Consigliere is balanced, even at its first conception/heyday when it was the most powerful non-killing mafia and still remained balanced.

But as years passed by, the town realized that they're supposed to keep their testicles, not amputate them. So they started growing their pairs back in their southern regions and consequently, Consigliere's power has been steadily declining and a good chunk of its former power and utility has been blown out of the water.

What I mean by this is that one of Consig's biggest advantages to the mafia was assisting with kill priority and inhibiting the potential of the town by striking down the big boys before they went on an evil killing spree, which worked particularly great because townies used to be pussies and not as many players dared to reveal their roles as they do today. Now that the jailor meta, VFR, and CC tactics are all being employed so frequently, the already mid-to-low odds of the consig pulling off that use become even lower or absolutely futile since claims are being whispered and thrown out left, right and center in your average Ranked game.

You could try spotting the Ret and killing him before his rez, but why would they save their resurrections any more? Jailor's survivability has skyrocketed due to jailor meta, in addition to emphasis on the importance of process of elimination and maintaining of majority incentivizing retribrokenists to get the value out of their rez as fast as possible. Investigatives have followed a very similar pattern to avoid being suspected or hiding vital information for the late game.

There's the several other uses like finding the jailor's protective layers, spotting the NK, spotting the NE to potentially plan a deal with and avoid killing to maintain their support. However, these uses have their own problems and chances of failure. The odds of finding what would be at least one protective have very low odds, NKs are rarely ever a problem to mafia and have always been one of the big enablers for the mafia's plays in addition to often being easily found out considering their claim limitations, and finding the NE not only has similarly low odds but whispering for a deal arouses suspicion and prompts the observing townies to question both of your claims. Not whispering to the NE also means missed out cooperation potential that might have been the border between winning and losing the game, so you end up being forked trying to make an ideal decision.

Granted, the role is still balanced and should be credited for that but it now underperforms because of how the playerbase has adapted a much more viable style of play, the environment which the role operates in has changed for the worse but the role itself has not changed to handle any of the counters the townies have developed.

The Disguiser on the other hand has been worthless in the smashing majority of the time, from the day it was implemented all the way till now and still going. It has too many restrictions, it doesn't get the luxury of an ability that helps it fake a proper will in conjunction with many of its possible claims, it has to visit every night which forces it to feed information to the spy, it's quite the underpowered role even after the rework.

Not to say that combining roles is the only way the inherent issues of the roles can be fixed, but slot efficiency is a great method for buffing the evil factions. It's a terrible waste for the mafia when they constantly miss out on good role synergies because of the RNG of the random mafia slots or the lack of synergy between some roles entirely. Even when they do get said synergy, it's still only the one thing with all its chances of failure and counters and lack of sufficient value, all culminating along with the usage of 2 mafia slots to form another one of the horrendous disadvantages mafia members face.

It's definitely worth at least some consideration.