Tainted keeper is the most fun because he produces dopamine in every room. Plus he never drags, you either on top of the world or dead and launching new dopamine filled run
@@MikeyForrester i'd say that The Lost is still more fun bcuz it has the eternal d6 as a condiment but Tainted Keeper is just like challenging your guts and positioning but it is very entertaining
Tainted Keeper feels like the whole game should have his mechanics, the risk/reward is perfect and the amazing shops that give access to all the fun items the game is normally so stingy with makes other characters feel barren
It bothers me that making Tainted Eden more difficult is probably the reason why all large-scale rerolling got nerfed to oblivion in Repentance. For a character that would only be fun if rerolls were actually strong.
Step 1: Go to a large Room Step 2: destroy all rocks Step 3: keep spawning a thousand of enemies Step 4: make sure you're playing as tainted samson and give yourself birthright Step 5: *K I L L.*
This is a very relatable comment seeing as though one of the only times I remember dying unfairly was to the spiked rock hitting me twice without even being able to move off the rock lol
It says a lot about Isaac's longevity that 4 of the newly introduced characters are more fun than all of the cast except 1. It also says a lot about Isaac's balancing when 3 of them are so bad they needed a whole new tier just for them.
Well they screwed over Cain, so what are you gonna do /s The fact of the matter is that they got more bold over time, and that makes for more interesting stuff. Some ideas stick, some don't. But "same as the regular character but a bit more HP" is less of a separate character and more like balancing. If they ever make a proper sequel, Maggie and Blue Baby would be cut 100%. Or made into something completely different. They just don't serve any purpose.
@@noxus7462 Agreed. I also think it's fun to play Maggy aggressively by exploiting your reliable regeneration. It makes for easy curse and sacrifice room access, along with a generally tanky strategy. She's both noob-friendly and defensive build-friendly. I'd keep her. But fuck Blue Baby. Least interesting, least fun character in the game, imo.
@@Alactrium Maggie would stay. Innate health restoration is still kind of rare, and she can play sac rooms and different health costs pretty well still. Maybe if they gave her a second thing, or gave her bonus damage at full health.
Idk i kinda like em, there’s still room for big brain plays and seeing a bunch of random synergies is fun! Also i love the simplicity of mor item = guud idgaf abt anything else oh and dodge guud 4hed
Someone who is pissed off at the game rng would like Tainted Cain. Someone who thinks there not enough rng would like Tainted Eden. Yep i think those characters are fine. i cant say the same to Tainted Lazarus though...
So in this one it isn't "Gun to your head, win the next Isaac run" but instead "Gun to your head, you only get one more Isaac run"? Also couldn't agree more that The Lost is the StS of Isaac characters
Lazarus fun tip: Don't treat the revive as "Have to do it to become stronger". Base Lazarus is fine. His actual strenght is being able to make incredibly potent use out of items like Damocles, or basically for free collect the boss item in the mirror world, since he has much less to fear there
Plus he can comfortably take devil deals that would kill him or imagine if you need just one more cent for stopwatch but you don't have any health left for the blood donation machine
In repentance, you can void an item if you click space fast enough while picking the item. Useful, keep it. Trash? Void it quick. This is useful when having curse of the blind. This one run i had, I saved my run by voiding missing no so going off of just that one run, apollyon has to be on so much fun tier for me
Your concept for a better tainted Cain was how I thought he actually worked when you played him for the first time, recipes gave you random items based on how much value you were willing to put in it. Finding out it’s actually just a giant list of codes was a huge bummer
Agreed. I high-key want the rework to work exactly how NL says. It'd make the "fuck it, just toss everything into the bag" playstyle actually WORK, which would justify his title as The Hoarder. :)
But it actually does give you better items by putting in better consumables, it's just not guaranteed. Items have "quality" tiers in repentance, ranging from 0 to 4. It's actually impossible to get high quality items with just basic consumables (keys, hearts, bombs), but it is possible to have the same low tier items with stronger consumables like lucky penny, golden bombs or charged keys.
@@Japie__ no one (including NL) said that wasn’t the case, dude. No one said you could use 6 bombs to make rock bottom, his complaint was that you can make whatever item you want because there isn’t randomness in the recipes. Although I guess this is irrelevant since the rework
Cain (rebuffed) is cool in that it makes it that you are really happy to see pills. A couple of balls of steel and tears up, and you get really powerful without needing strong items.
I really miss when you could cheese out some stuff to make blue baby stronger, like the permanent strenght card hp up and using the lovers in the cathedral to get two spirit hearts.
@@charlieburnham39 It had to be in a super secret room. You could do the same to generate demon hearts in another super secret room but I forgot which one now
im pretty sure thats still how it works with those super secrets, glitter bombs gave me a couple of black hearts once in one of those, and dark bum always pays with red hearts if you dont immediately leave the womb secret
@@cabbageable Ohhhh, I remember the one time I found that room while having Dark Bum and being like "Hell yeah, it's profit time", just to get paid in red hearts. Since I've never generated hearts in those rooms via other methods, I always thought it was a special interaction with Dark Bum as a way to troll the player lmao
Cains recipes could be random, but then I feel like adding a bunch of strong consumables should also guarantee a high quality item. Eternal hearts give angel room, black hearts devil room, rotten hearts curse rooms, bone hearts secret rooms. I think pills and cards should take from the shop pool. Which is fine because the shop is more common too.
Jacob and Esau would be way more fun if they still had a slightly larger hitbox but didn't separate accidentally. like, maybe they just hold hands or something? and separate when u press the button? would be sick imo
There's a mod that basically does that. It's the only tolerable way to play them especially if you're going for alt path cause Jacob just gets stuck on everything and dies immediately when getting the second knife piece
for T cain personally what i like doing is i have this document where im writing down cool items that i find just casually throughout my runs with him. So instead of forcing every run to be exactly perfect the character actually gets better and better each time i play them
Several of the tainted characters, such as Eden, Jacob, and ???, would have worked much better as one-off challenges rather than entire characters where you have to do multiple runs to fill out the post-it note. The gimmick inevitably wears thin even when it isn't actually weak.
I think Tainted Jacob is ALMOST good. There's a mod on the workshop that makes him give you broken hearts on hit instead of lost, except when he goes down to 25% HP, then he does turn you into the lost. This makes the risk reward of dodging him a little less painful while keeping the tricks with stuff like devil deals. He also can't die UNLESS you are in lost form, which means you no longer LOSE THE GAME BECAUSE YOUR RUN IS "TOO GOOD". Which was the most awful aspect of him. He still glitches out and dies at certain boss phases which is dogshit but the mod simply making him unkillable without a fuckup from you makes him a fun risk management challenge character
@@hecetewest5411 IDK, that's already in the game in the form of the TMTRAINER item, and seems a bit too wacky to be a base kit thing. I don't like Tainted Eden but that's kina extreme too
@@mewtastic2409 I agree. Idk where it was, but iirc there's actually been some talk from Edmund about making Esau unkillable - or at least, only killable with Anima Sola active. That alone seems like a good balance. But the broken hearts idea is a splendid idea, too. I can't wait to see the final version of this character.
@@megavore97 Agreed. He's the rare case of a simultaneous Laugh Riot and Jokerfication in a single character. You'll be laughing up a storm while you put on your face paint.
I love how a lot of characters are on different tiers than their "strength" tier. And I don't mean their naming convention. All of your placements seem to be on-point for you dude. Also, love "I'm going to become the joker" and "I will become back my money". They're a laugh riot (HAHA)
I think what I would've maybe done is made it so T. Eden had an active item like 4 or so charges that could change any item into a TMTrainer item, but with slightly improved effects over actual TMTrainer items.
I wish the HP rerolls weren't so detrimental. Because items that give heart containers are set to always give empty containers in rerolls, you can very easily have massive amounts of soul hearts effectively just destroyed for no good reason.
@@fuckgoogle2554 Yeah! Or making the rerolls partial. (E.g., maybe every hit has a chance to change a few items, or every hit reliably changes ONE item.) Then you'd still be "ever-changing," but not TOTALLY unrecognizable from one moment to the next. The health needs a solution too.
Also remove TM Trainer because that shit has ruined like 3 tainted eden attempts for me. And the glitch items can't be rerolled so you just get stuck in clusterfuck hell till you die.
NL's criticism of Tainted Isaac is just a reminder he's only played it like 5 times, definitely the least played of the whole list. He mentions that T.Isaac is anti item synergy but he's a literal synergy magnet. I've never seen or ever even thought of Ludo + Eye of the Occult + Soy Milk outside of T.Isaac, never mind that his ability to drop items enables consistently Diplopia-ing Brimstone (and other cool items that stack but you can almost never double).
tainted laz could have tainted isaac pedestal effect and the opposite item is given to the opposite side (or it sits there and can only be taken by opposite side)
Tainted Jacob hands down. Feels like taming a wendigo, and it's so satisfying to use Esau on the enemies. You basically start with a quality 5 item. He's easy to dodge, and if you do get hit its no big deal because you'll wanna do it anyway to pick up things as the lost and take that devil deal for free. 1 shotting bosses or rooms on the first couple floors is so fun. I think he's better than Azazel, way more versatile and much stronger with less risk as long as you can stay calm and track Esau well. I love regular Jacob and Esau, I don't like to play as anybody except these characters, I feel like they were made for me. I always enjoy lower tier very high skill ceiling characters. Maybe i'm just weird. Heres my list. 1. Tainted Jacob (and Esau) - Pure dopamine and adrenaline. 2. Jacob and Esau - Ultra strong for early floors, double items, double slots for cards/trinkets/actives 3. Blue Baby - I love flies and being able to one shot bosses with a swarm of them. I always take red heart damage so this is good for me. 4. Lazarus, I like to focus on cards so I can get s**cide king. 5. Tainted Forgotten - Feels so strange to use, like a fever dream. Am I the only one that thinks tainted jacob is the best character?
About Jacob & Esau, the way I made to get the completion marks was to give a lot of size reduction itens to one character, than it was passible to fit both of then "at the same spot"... And then, it is "fine" to play as them
I'm gonna put the rankings for each character on both tier lists. Top in both tiers: T. Lilith, T. Bethany Top in power, above average in fun: The Forgotten Top in fun, above average in power: T. Forgotten Top in power, mid in fun: Azazel Top in fun, mid in power: T. Keeper Top in fun, below average in power: The Lost, the Keeper Top in power, bottom in fun: T. Cain Above average in both tiers: Isaac, T. Judas, T. Samson, T. Azazel Above average in power, mid in fun: Samson, T. Isaac Above average in fun, mid in power: Judas, Eden, Bethany, T. Maggie, T. Apollyon Mid in both tiers: Maggie, Cain Mid in fun, below average in power: Both Eves, Apollyon Mid in fun, bottom in power: T. Lost Below average in both tiers: Both Blue Babies, Lazarus, Lilith Below average in fun, bottom in power: Both Jacobs Bottom in both tiers: T. Eden, T. Lazarus
I wonder if his opinion changed for Lazarus after he got buffed and has infinite respawns once per floor that gives a perma damage increase for both Lazarus.
Respect your opinion and agree with almost all of the rankings, but strong disagree on placing normal Lilith under normal Maggie. I actually like the blindfolded gimmick and think it makes her stand out a little more. Also, I feel like it's really fun when you manage to build around Cambion Conception or when you manage to get some more familiars from item rooms. Maggie is very starter-friendly but other than that a bit of a snoozefest imo. Just my opinion. Great video!
Incubi always being up front now makes Lilith a lot more fun than she used to be as well, but Maggy's newfound ability to abuse Sacrifice rooms puts her just a tiny bit higher imo. The Full Health pill leaning into her differences from base Isaac is so much nicer than the Speed Up pill erasing them.
I completely agree with your change sugestion on Tainted Cain. I'm also on the opinion that his mechanic it's kinda tedious for me and that change would do wonders for me.
Tainted Jacob is so underrated, he was such a blast to grind out all marks for and honestly he wasn’t that difficult. Mother mark aside he is definitely a laugh riot
I think people sleep on tainted laz, I really enjoy that sense of building two runs simultaneously, I think it's fun and interesting. It also makes him great for big boss fights since you can tag out when one champ is low
Looking at the time of your comment I'm assuming you're talking about the current version of him that was buffed. The pedestal-flip effect that he has now did not exist when NL made this video and he effectively had half as many items as a normal character. I have to tell you a secret, though... he's been my favorite character since even before the buff. And sometimes when I want an extra challenge, I play with a mod that reverts his flip buff. Getting the speed oriented checkmarks as pre-patch T. Laz was miserable but everything else was so engaging because you were really weak in a way that I think plays to Isaac's strengths, and feels reminiscent of the flash version where you simply had less DPS to work with. And like you said, building two runs at once is really fun - J+E kinda has this too but T. Laz actually has to be cautious with how he splits his items since only one of them is active at a time.
There is a bunch more to say about the lost. He always drop A+ trinket, flight and spectral tears, rerolls HP items, HP down pills do nothing, he finds better items He is the most fun I had playing isaac
J&E are in 'So much fun!!!' for me. The duo mechanic leads to a lot of creative play that you can't do with a solo character. Today I had Esau holding Placebo with Percs for the Beast fight, and after using Placebo on himself for the buff was able to mid fight pass the pill over to Jacob to give him the buff as well. They can be frustrating but it's worth it for 4D chess moments like that, imo.
I think most of the frustration from Jacob&Esau would be removed if Esau just automatically followed you instead of being directly linked to your movement then constantly getting stuck and desynced
Getting separated is obviously the biggest issue, but the extended hitbox makes some attacks straight up impossible to dodge, which can be immensely frustrating. Sometimes I wonder if these characters even get playtested
I'm learning a lot about what Enelle gets out of this game. After so many hours, he just wants to feel something, leading to dangerous and self-destructive levels of zane
I think that an easy gimmicky fix to tainted laz would be double item pedestals. When you find a pedestal there would be two items on it. one in front and another hiding in its shadow the one hiding in its shadow will go to zombie laz and the one in front will go to regular laz. So you have to flip to get the items on the right characters or sometimes you might reject a really good item like brimstone because it means your other half has to put up with a horrible item.
or alternatively (credit to someone called Wizurdous for suggesting this idea) the pedestal could switch between two items similar to T isaac. the one currently on the screen is what alive lazarus gets and the other item is what dead laz gets. for example if there's, say, a pedestal with tech X changing between haemoclaria, taking haemoclaria would give dead laz Tech X and vice versa. I think that could work out well maybe :V
Yeah, she's one of the most variable characters imo. Early game Lilith sucks donkey balls, but Greedmode Lilith is a powerhouse that executes every enemy in the room by firing squad. Which is amazing. So I think she might have been rated a little low here. There's just a wide range.
I think Tainted Cain is because you can build all the cool synergies that you see online but never get in game. You can build those cases where item X is untakable unless you also have item Y and you can actually try them out which is a really cool option to have
am i the only one that loves Lilith man. yeah incubus a little awkward but in the same sense that book of virtues activates a ton of active items that you would rather throw into an incinerator, Lilith does the same for a lot of familiars. i am forced to respect lil Steven. where on everyone else I'm hunting a sacred heart or brimstone, I'm hunting a bff, a rotten baby. and as far as base characters go, one of the most creative ones.
Love lilith too. Definite orange tier. I would also swap tainted forgotten and forgotten around. Running around as bone boy is much more fun than just throwing about the bone boy
Tainted Laz is nearly impossible for Greedier mode. Not only your active spacebar item and card effects dissapear every few seconds (which is bullshit), but you also get staggered every wave... and that is even worst, because room is filled with enemies you cannot even try to hit for a while. With all fairness tho, Tainted Laz feels like it have potential to be kinda Jacob & Isau, done right, with small tweaks and entire big fix for greedier. Tainted Jacob is (almost) incredibly fun. I really had a blast for a while, skillfully dodging and using your evil twin as a weapon. I was like "huh... people really hate him? he is kinda amazing"... aaaand then your twin starting to die incredibly quickly and all that fun is going down Dross. Make it invincible or at least immune to enemy damage and there is tons of fun waiting.
I'm just of the opinion that people who memorize or lookup recipes or just randomly scoop are both wrong. Some consumables are tied to certain item pools, and using that to drive what items you get is better than either way.
@@RalorPenwat the problem is that you reach a point where you'll know what you need to do to get good items which takes all of the fun away from the game where every run is different and you don't know what'll happen. NL's recommend change makes the most sense, you have the same gimmick but you keep the randomness
I've yet to properly play him. I want to unlock a majority of the items first so I can properly log the recipes I find without half of them being breakfast. I really like the idea of writing down good recipes you find instead of using the wiki. I felt so cool when I stumbled into brimstone.
@@RawFishHeader Even when you're manipulating item pools and value by taking some consumables over others you're still going to end up with something different each time. And just because you can influence your run better doesn't make it worse until you're purposefully using a boring build
Okay, so i have a idea for t.lazarus, make them start with a item called the broken d6, this item will spawn another pedestal in a room that has only one pedestal, and it can only be used twice per floor, it only works on item rooms and boss room, and also it rerolls the current item in the pedestal, so you would have to choose if you want 2 items but you reroll the first one, or if you think that the first item you get is strong enough to not be rerolled you do not get the second item
i legit cant see a reason to like tainted lazarus, theyre literally all downside; no double item room plays, no power, no versatility beyond the double hp thing that i hadnt even considered until you mentioned it. at the very least tcain has power on his side and tainted eden has wackiness on theirs as far as unfun chars go. im really hoping the mirrored item id thing happens in the rework because that would make em actually interesting.
Tainted Cain would be really cool if instead of the recipes being global they were based on personal installation of your game, so you would need to find your own recipes
Funny how far we've come. WoTL to Afterbirth, I'd have placed Samson and Blue Baby (aka Hard Mode Isaac) in Laugh Riot. Pre-Holy Mantle The Lost, definitely not.
You have the fun feast or famine characters with Judas being the most tame, then keeper, then the lost, but the tainted lost takes it too far. It’s fun for me now just trying to get the completion marks, but I don’t plan on using the character that much. The lost is the perfect balance of risk/reward, definitely on if my favourite characters to play.
I really like keeper as well, but not for your reasons, i like him because if you get enough tears ups he can get triple shot 5 tears, if you can get to that he becomes op but the cap of health makes him balanced imo
IDK why, but Lilith, Tlilith, and Tapollyon were the most fun for me, the alternative to tears is always fun, the forgotten is near them , but they are the best
Make it to where all recipes except maybe birthright as a difficult recipe, as random, and when u can make birthright, the recipes become set to certain recipes again.
Maggy bores me to no end XD I recently bought the game, and I haven't played a single run with her XD I have already unlocked all the regular character, but I still refuse to touch her XD
Ye, pretty bornig. But you can play the sacrifice room sooo much (if you have the full health pill from doing the April fools Challenger, or even with just the Yum hearth)
I think Apollyon could be better balanced if void was better balanced, you should be able to choose whether or not you’re voiding a spacebar item to continue using it or whether you want to void it for stats like you would with a passive item. IMO with the stat payouts this wouldn’t be broken, it would just make void and Apollyon more fun to play
I think the lost is actually nice in normal rooms because every room refreshes your mantle but the final bosses make me hate the character. Delirium or Mother take way too long, I cant survive with only a single holy mantle protection without a super strong run
"I will become back my money" is probably the best tweet of all time
strike the "probably"
I don't know. "Why does Mario sometimes jump and sometimes fist" is still up there.
"we smokin penises" is a close second
It's up there with "Life is soup, I am fork"
Can't believe it's been 11 years since them slags smashed into the twin towers. Still freaks my nut out to this day - Danny Dyer 2012
Tainted keeper is the most fun because he produces dopamine in every room. Plus he never drags, you either on top of the world or dead and launching new dopamine filled run
@@GombySprangster it feels like something between incremental game and being addicted to heroin
@@MikeyForrester i'd say that The Lost is still more fun bcuz it has the eternal d6 as a condiment but Tainted Keeper is just like challenging your guts and positioning but it is very entertaining
My brain is so used to risking it for coins that I go for the temp coins even at 99 cents sometimes
Tainted Keeper feels like the whole game should have his mechanics, the risk/reward is perfect and the amazing shops that give access to all the fun items the game is normally so stingy with makes other characters feel barren
@@Hedgpig Amen. TKeeper is a stroke of genius.
I think the best evidence that tainted Eden is trash is that birthrights effect is to just remove their mechanic
Yeah that's a pretty sick burn tbh. The unique Birthright buff for T Eden is "stop being T Eden." feelsbadman
The first step to not suffer with T. Eden is to no play it at all
It bothers me that making Tainted Eden more difficult is probably the reason why all large-scale rerolling got nerfed to oblivion in Repentance. For a character that would only be fun if rerolls were actually strong.
@@extantcadence2707 But with the old rerolls T. Eden would just be an automatic win everytime, and that's no fun either.
@@Dan_Capone it would definitely be more fun than what we’ve got now lol
Tainted Samson goes to the highest tier if you install the "DOOM music when berserk activates" mod.
There’s a mod!
Step 1: Go to a large Room
Step 2: destroy all rocks
Step 3: keep spawning a thousand of enemies
Step 4: make sure you're playing as tainted samson and give yourself birthright
Step 5: *K I L L.*
doom ost is too reddit
This is the only dude I can listen talk about his opinions without wanting to rip my hair out.
fitting
he's done it for you
Agreed
@@4NoRaisin
Insert rebuttal here
@@4NoRaisin you are rebutted
Trade offer: You receive putting tainted lost in =) tier, I receive a spike rock death montage.
Also trap chests
Also 0.5 second for you to get away from brimstone beam even though the reaction is already took 0.5
This is a very relatable comment seeing as though one of the only times I remember dying unfairly was to the spiked rock hitting me twice without even being able to move off the rock lol
hearing you say "I'm going to become the joker" before I was actually paying attention made me laugh far too hard
I'm glad I'm not alone in this, lol
It says a lot about Isaac's longevity that 4 of the newly introduced characters are more fun than all of the cast except 1.
It also says a lot about Isaac's balancing when 3 of them are so bad they needed a whole new tier just for them.
Well they screwed over Cain, so what are you gonna do /s
The fact of the matter is that they got more bold over time, and that makes for more interesting stuff. Some ideas stick, some don't.
But "same as the regular character but a bit more HP" is less of a separate character and more like balancing. If they ever make a proper sequel, Maggie and Blue Baby would be cut 100%. Or made into something completely different. They just don't serve any purpose.
@@Alactrium Maggie is the noob friendly character and Blue Baby was the original Lost. But with Lost and Keeper BB is completely useless
@@noxus7462 Agreed. I also think it's fun to play Maggy aggressively by exploiting your reliable regeneration. It makes for easy curse and sacrifice room access, along with a generally tanky strategy. She's both noob-friendly and defensive build-friendly. I'd keep her.
But fuck Blue Baby. Least interesting, least fun character in the game, imo.
@@Alactrium Maggie would stay but Blue Baby would certainly get fucking annihilated
@@Alactrium Maggie would stay. Innate health restoration is still kind of rare, and she can play sac rooms and different health costs pretty well still.
Maybe if they gave her a second thing, or gave her bonus damage at full health.
Eden as a character is at their most fun on the 0th room of play.
i love how there is like 5 seconds of silence, and then ''i'm going to become the joker''
tainted cain has too much consistency, tainted eden doesn't have enough
Well said!
Idk i kinda like em, there’s still room for big brain plays and seeing a bunch of random synergies is fun! Also i love the simplicity of mor item = guud idgaf abt anything else oh and dodge guud 4hed
@@spectacularsceptile3879 "more item = good" doesnt matter when you have a full rack of hearts and taking 1 damage sets it to like two hearts
Someone who is pissed off at the game rng would like Tainted Cain.
Someone who thinks there not enough rng would like Tainted Eden.
Yep i think those characters are fine. i cant say the same to Tainted Lazarus though...
A MIKE fan in the wild! saw him in Philly last April with Sideshow and Slauson Malone. Best show of my life!
they actually implemented his tainted cain idea
So in this one it isn't "Gun to your head, win the next Isaac run" but instead "Gun to your head, you only get one more Isaac run"? Also couldn't agree more that The Lost is the StS of Isaac characters
*uses BASEMENT seed*
Tainted Jacob is the most laugh riot “I’m going to become the Joker” character
When you start a session with him he’s a laugh riot, the more runs you lose the more Jokerfied you become
Lazarus fun tip: Don't treat the revive as "Have to do it to become stronger".
Base Lazarus is fine.
His actual strenght is being able to make incredibly potent use out of items like Damocles, or basically for free collect the boss item in the mirror world, since he has much less to fear there
Pretty much a life insurance. His revive saved my delirium run
Plus he can comfortably take devil deals that would kill him or
imagine if you need just one more cent for stopwatch but you don't have any health left for the blood donation machine
The "I'm going to become the Joker" tier slayed me every time you mentioned it.
...Every time.
Blue Baby unironically getting shit on 24/7
Well deserved imho
"Horror can be a little scary" - Ryan Gary 2021
In repentance, you can void an item if you click space fast enough while picking the item. Useful, keep it. Trash? Void it quick. This is useful when having curse of the blind. This one run i had, I saved my run by voiding missing no so going off of just that one run, apollyon has to be on so much fun tier for me
NL probably knew that already
@@mangostestes9371
And proceeded to forget
This is game changing info, thank you
Your concept for a better tainted Cain was how I thought he actually worked when you played him for the first time, recipes gave you random items based on how much value you were willing to put in it. Finding out it’s actually just a giant list of codes was a huge bummer
Agreed. I high-key want the rework to work exactly how NL says. It'd make the "fuck it, just toss everything into the bag" playstyle actually WORK, which would justify his title as The Hoarder. :)
It's a good idea. And personally I also liked more the challenge where you get cards with randoms item per room that the regular tainter cain.
But it actually does give you better items by putting in better consumables, it's just not guaranteed. Items have "quality" tiers in repentance, ranging from 0 to 4. It's actually impossible to get high quality items with just basic consumables (keys, hearts, bombs), but it is possible to have the same low tier items with stronger consumables like lucky penny, golden bombs or charged keys.
@@Japie__ no one (including NL) said that wasn’t the case, dude. No one said you could use 6 bombs to make rock bottom, his complaint was that you can make whatever item you want because there isn’t randomness in the recipes. Although I guess this is irrelevant since the rework
Rewatching this now I can't believe he pretty much nailed what the rework ended up being.
Cain (rebuffed) is cool in that it makes it that you are really happy to see pills. A couple of balls of steel and tears up, and you get really powerful without needing strong items.
The tier names are killing me lol, I love them
I really miss when you could cheese out some stuff to make blue baby stronger, like the permanent strenght card hp up and using the lovers in the cathedral to get two spirit hearts.
Using the lovers in cathedral gave 2 spirit hearts!!!!!!??? When? I've played since vanilla and never knew about this
@@charlieburnham39 It had to be in a super secret room. You could do the same to generate demon hearts in another super secret room but I forgot which one now
@@sergiomarucci Oh yeah, super secret rooms used to generate all hearts as a certain type depending on their layout i think
im pretty sure thats still how it works with those super secrets, glitter bombs gave me a couple of black hearts once in one of those, and dark bum always pays with red hearts if you dont immediately leave the womb secret
@@cabbageable Ohhhh, I remember the one time I found that room while having Dark Bum and being like "Hell yeah, it's profit time", just to get paid in red hearts. Since I've never generated hearts in those rooms via other methods, I always thought it was a special interaction with Dark Bum as a way to troll the player lmao
Cains recipes could be random, but then I feel like adding a bunch of strong consumables should also guarantee a high quality item. Eternal hearts give angel room, black hearts devil room, rotten hearts curse rooms, bone hearts secret rooms. I think pills and cards should take from the shop pool. Which is fine because the shop is more common too.
Well said, fellow king. 👑
Random within a tier! Somewhat, haha.
nice prediction!
You’ve predicted the future
Jacob and Esau would be way more fun if they still had a slightly larger hitbox but didn't separate accidentally. like, maybe they just hold hands or something? and separate when u press the button? would be sick imo
And the idea of the two bros holding hands through the horrible perils of the basement is........ incredibly adorable. I love it.
@@PermianExtinction I thought I had a good idea, but now that you put it like that it sounds like an even better idea
There's a mod that basically does that. It's the only tolerable way to play them especially if you're going for alt path cause Jacob just gets stuck on everything and dies immediately when getting the second knife piece
Or have Esau drag Jacob arround while he holds Esau's ankle ala thr Bible
for T cain personally what i like doing is i have this document where im writing down cool items that i find just casually throughout my runs with him. So instead of forcing every run to be exactly perfect the character actually gets better and better each time i play them
Aye same here, it's nice to slowly build up a memory of certain more basic recipes as well
Several of the tainted characters, such as Eden, Jacob, and ???, would have worked much better as one-off challenges rather than entire characters where you have to do multiple runs to fill out the post-it note. The gimmick inevitably wears thin even when it isn't actually weak.
Never thought about it that way and you are totally right, the gimmicks definitely do not warrant a full character. A splendid take my friend
I think Tainted Jacob is ALMOST good. There's a mod on the workshop that makes him give you broken hearts on hit instead of lost, except when he goes down to 25% HP, then he does turn you into the lost. This makes the risk reward of dodging him a little less painful while keeping the tricks with stuff like devil deals. He also can't die UNLESS you are in lost form, which means you no longer LOSE THE GAME BECAUSE YOUR RUN IS "TOO GOOD". Which was the most awful aspect of him. He still glitches out and dies at certain boss phases which is dogshit but the mod simply making him unkillable without a fuckup from you makes him a fun risk management challenge character
Saw a comment recently mentioning how Tainted Eden and the meshed item challenge should have their gimmicks swapped and I think it’s a great idea.
@@hecetewest5411 IDK, that's already in the game in the form of the TMTRAINER item, and seems a bit too wacky to be a base kit thing. I don't like Tainted Eden but that's kina extreme too
@@mewtastic2409 I agree. Idk where it was, but iirc there's actually been some talk from Edmund about making Esau unkillable - or at least, only killable with Anima Sola active. That alone seems like a good balance. But the broken hearts idea is a splendid idea, too. I can't wait to see the final version of this character.
"Who's The Most Fun Repentance Character?" AKA "NL craps on Blue Baby for 40 minutes straight"
so that's why the tainted version looks like that
tainted jacob: "they are 10 times more fun than they are powerful"
uuh 0 x 10 is still 0
yes
That's bcuz he got all the completion marks on Tainted Jacob without cheating
Tainted Jacob is fun.
@@megavore97 Agreed. He's the rare case of a simultaneous Laugh Riot and Jokerfication in a single character. You'll be laughing up a storm while you put on your face paint.
I love how a lot of characters are on different tiers than their "strength" tier. And I don't mean their naming convention. All of your placements seem to be on-point for you dude.
Also, love "I'm going to become the joker" and "I will become back my money". They're a laugh riot (HAHA)
in both this tier list and the power tier list NL didn't mention Cain having the paperclip which imo is huge appeal for him.
I think what I would've maybe done is made it so T. Eden had an active item like 4 or so charges that could change any item into a TMTrainer item, but with slightly improved effects over actual TMTrainer items.
+2
i think tainted eden would at least be playable if they removed shard of glass and 9 lives from the pool, not super fun still imo, but playable
I wish the HP rerolls weren't so detrimental. Because items that give heart containers are set to always give empty containers in rerolls, you can very easily have massive amounts of soul hearts effectively just destroyed for no good reason.
They could significantly improve him by making the reroll effects "a chance to" instead of always.
@@fuckgoogle2554 Yeah! Or making the rerolls partial. (E.g., maybe every hit has a chance to change a few items, or every hit reliably changes ONE item.) Then you'd still be "ever-changing," but not TOTALLY unrecognizable from one moment to the next.
The health needs a solution too.
@@Drekromancer Just remove health from the reroll potential completely. Health can be its own separate thing. Oh and on hit items should activate.
Also remove TM Trainer because that shit has ruined like 3 tainted eden attempts for me. And the glitch items can't be rerolled so you just get stuck in clusterfuck hell till you die.
watching this while playing tarkov so i have a perfectly neutral time
24:27 He really did become the joker
The most fun for Ryan Gary is obviously Tainted Lazarus because of how many times he played him
NL's criticism of Tainted Isaac is just a reminder he's only played it like 5 times, definitely the least played of the whole list. He mentions that T.Isaac is anti item synergy but he's a literal synergy magnet.
I've never seen or ever even thought of Ludo + Eye of the Occult + Soy Milk outside of T.Isaac, never mind that his ability to drop items enables consistently Diplopia-ing Brimstone (and other cool items that stack but you can almost never double).
tainted laz could have tainted isaac pedestal effect and the opposite item is given to the opposite side (or it sits there and can only be taken by opposite side)
That's a brilliant idea.
i like this a lot, would help balance it out pretty well imo
You've seen into the future, haven't you?
Tainted Jacob hands down. Feels like taming a wendigo, and it's so satisfying to use Esau on the enemies. You basically start with a quality 5 item. He's easy to dodge, and if you do get hit its no big deal because you'll wanna do it anyway to pick up things as the lost and take that devil deal for free. 1 shotting bosses or rooms on the first couple floors is so fun. I think he's better than Azazel, way more versatile and much stronger with less risk as long as you can stay calm and track Esau well. I love regular Jacob and Esau, I don't like to play as anybody except these characters, I feel like they were made for me. I always enjoy lower tier very high skill ceiling characters. Maybe i'm just weird. Heres my list.
1. Tainted Jacob (and Esau) - Pure dopamine and adrenaline.
2. Jacob and Esau - Ultra strong for early floors, double items, double slots for cards/trinkets/actives
3. Blue Baby - I love flies and being able to one shot bosses with a swarm of them. I always take red heart damage so this is good for me.
4. Lazarus, I like to focus on cards so I can get s**cide king.
5. Tainted Forgotten - Feels so strange to use, like a fever dream.
Am I the only one that thinks tainted jacob is the best character?
Why is judas fun?
'cause it's scary...
and horror, can be a little scary...
NL once again proving to be my favorite youtuber's favorite youtuber
About Jacob & Esau, the way I made to get the completion marks was to give a lot of size reduction itens to one character, than it was passible to fit both of then "at the same spot"... And then, it is "fine" to play as them
I'm gonna put the rankings for each character on both tier lists.
Top in both tiers: T. Lilith, T. Bethany
Top in power, above average in fun: The Forgotten
Top in fun, above average in power: T. Forgotten
Top in power, mid in fun: Azazel
Top in fun, mid in power: T. Keeper
Top in fun, below average in power: The Lost, the Keeper
Top in power, bottom in fun: T. Cain
Above average in both tiers: Isaac, T. Judas, T. Samson, T. Azazel
Above average in power, mid in fun: Samson, T. Isaac
Above average in fun, mid in power: Judas, Eden, Bethany, T. Maggie, T. Apollyon
Mid in both tiers: Maggie, Cain
Mid in fun, below average in power: Both Eves, Apollyon
Mid in fun, bottom in power: T. Lost
Below average in both tiers: Both Blue Babies, Lazarus, Lilith
Below average in fun, bottom in power: Both Jacobs
Bottom in both tiers: T. Eden, T. Lazarus
I wonder if his opinion changed for Lazarus after he got buffed and has infinite respawns once per floor that gives a perma damage increase for both Lazarus.
Respect your opinion and agree with almost all of the rankings, but strong disagree on placing normal Lilith under normal Maggie.
I actually like the blindfolded gimmick and think it makes her stand out a little more. Also, I feel like it's really fun when you manage to build around Cambion Conception or when you manage to get some more familiars from item rooms. Maggie is very starter-friendly but other than that a bit of a snoozefest imo. Just my opinion. Great video!
Incubi always being up front now makes Lilith a lot more fun than she used to be as well, but Maggy's newfound ability to abuse Sacrifice rooms puts her just a tiny bit higher imo. The Full Health pill leaning into her differences from base Isaac is so much nicer than the Speed Up pill erasing them.
There was a certain point in time when I only played lost and ever since I've been absolutely scared out of my mind whenever I lose a mantle
I completely agree with your change sugestion on Tainted Cain. I'm also on the opinion that his mechanic it's kinda tedious for me and that change would do wonders for me.
Tainted Jacob is so underrated, he was such a blast to grind out all marks for and honestly he wasn’t that difficult. Mother mark aside he is definitely a laugh riot
I think people sleep on tainted laz, I really enjoy that sense of building two runs simultaneously, I think it's fun and interesting. It also makes him great for big boss fights since you can tag out when one champ is low
Looking at the time of your comment I'm assuming you're talking about the current version of him that was buffed. The pedestal-flip effect that he has now did not exist when NL made this video and he effectively had half as many items as a normal character.
I have to tell you a secret, though... he's been my favorite character since even before the buff. And sometimes when I want an extra challenge, I play with a mod that reverts his flip buff. Getting the speed oriented checkmarks as pre-patch T. Laz was miserable but everything else was so engaging because you were really weak in a way that I think plays to Isaac's strengths, and feels reminiscent of the flash version where you simply had less DPS to work with. And like you said, building two runs at once is really fun - J+E kinda has this too but T. Laz actually has to be cautious with how he splits his items since only one of them is active at a time.
you made a epic video with your pog Isaac. I will become back a subscriber.
Great video, love ya NL!
There is a bunch more to say about the lost.
He always drop A+ trinket, flight and spectral tears, rerolls HP items, HP down pills do nothing, he finds better items
He is the most fun I had playing isaac
J&E are in 'So much fun!!!' for me. The duo mechanic leads to a lot of creative play that you can't do with a solo character. Today I had Esau holding Placebo with Percs for the Beast fight, and after using Placebo on himself for the buff was able to mid fight pass the pill over to Jacob to give him the buff as well. They can be frustrating but it's worth it for 4D chess moments like that, imo.
you're fucking insane
I think most of the frustration from Jacob&Esau would be removed if Esau just automatically followed you instead of being directly linked to your movement then constantly getting stuck and desynced
Getting separated is obviously the biggest issue, but the extended hitbox makes some attacks straight up impossible to dodge, which can be immensely frustrating. Sometimes I wonder if these characters even get playtested
I'm learning a lot about what Enelle gets out of this game. After so many hours, he just wants to feel something, leading to dangerous and self-destructive levels of zane
Enelle?
We need to stage an intervention
@@Drekromancer i do Think so
@@dennisg.6389 Say it out loud, then read NL
Zane*Zane=Joker
Damage=sleeper
Zane*Difficulty-Damage=money back
(Damage+Zane)*1.3Difficulty=Fun
This is how you calculate damage reduction in league of legends
We found the Tainted Cain player
I think that an easy gimmicky fix to tainted laz would be double item pedestals. When you find a pedestal there would be two items on it. one in front and another hiding in its shadow the one hiding in its shadow will go to zombie laz and the one in front will go to regular laz. So you have to flip to get the items on the right characters or sometimes you might reject a really good item like brimstone because it means your other half has to put up with a horrible item.
or alternatively (credit to someone called Wizurdous for suggesting this idea) the pedestal could switch between two items similar to T isaac. the one currently on the screen is what alive lazarus gets and the other item is what dead laz gets. for example if there's, say, a pedestal with tech X changing between haemoclaria, taking haemoclaria would give dead laz Tech X and vice versa. I think that could work out well maybe :V
I always found Lilith to be the most fun. I just enjoy building an army of familiars.
Yeah, she's one of the most variable characters imo. Early game Lilith sucks donkey balls, but Greedmode Lilith is a powerhouse that executes every enemy in the room by firing squad. Which is amazing. So I think she might have been rated a little low here. There's just a wide range.
greed mode lilith curb stomps everything. I liked her a lot too but in my experience can be awful late-game if you don't have an op build
does greed mode really count? that's just the aram of isaac@@Drekromancer
I think Tainted Cain is because you can build all the cool synergies that you see online but never get in game. You can build those cases where item X is untakable unless you also have item Y and you can actually try them out which is a really cool option to have
This is perhaps the only video about a man giving his opinions without the comment section going crazy trying to “correct” him
NL the placement for Cain is fine with me but PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE HIS EXTRA DAMAGE 😭😭😭
am i the only one that loves Lilith man. yeah incubus a little awkward but in the same sense that book of virtues activates a ton of active items that you would rather throw into an incinerator, Lilith does the same for a lot of familiars. i am forced to respect lil Steven. where on everyone else I'm hunting a sacred heart or brimstone, I'm hunting a bff, a rotten baby. and as far as base characters go, one of the most creative ones.
Love lilith too. Definite orange tier. I would also swap tainted forgotten and forgotten around. Running around as bone boy is much more fun than just throwing about the bone boy
"im going to become the joker" is perfect description
honestly all choices are on point. nl never disappoints
Tainted Laz is nearly impossible for Greedier mode. Not only your active spacebar item and card effects dissapear every few seconds (which is bullshit), but you also get staggered every wave... and that is even worst, because room is filled with enemies you cannot even try to hit for a while. With all fairness tho, Tainted Laz feels like it have potential to be kinda Jacob & Isau, done right, with small tweaks and entire big fix for greedier.
Tainted Jacob is (almost) incredibly fun. I really had a blast for a while, skillfully dodging and using your evil twin as a weapon. I was like "huh... people really hate him? he is kinda amazing"... aaaand then your twin starting to die incredibly quickly and all that fun is going down Dross. Make it invincible or at least immune to enemy damage and there is tons of fun waiting.
Are you even qualified to make a tier list on this? How many hours of Isaac do you have? Oh, over 9000. Nevermind.
The normal lost is hella fun even as a person who sometimes gets 30+ losing streaks I’m happy
*Tainted lost on the other hand…*
13:05 why would you use Void to suck up a bad spacebar item in the first place?
When life gives you lemons, you still suck it up with the Void.
The people saying that tainted Cain is fun are the same people who didn't know every item has its own unique recipe
Also it's people, who unlock hard characters with tainted Cain and clicker
I'm just of the opinion that people who memorize or lookup recipes or just randomly scoop are both wrong. Some consumables are tied to certain item pools, and using that to drive what items you get is better than either way.
@@RalorPenwat the problem is that you reach a point where you'll know what you need to do to get good items which takes all of the fun away from the game where every run is different and you don't know what'll happen.
NL's recommend change makes the most sense, you have the same gimmick but you keep the randomness
I've yet to properly play him. I want to unlock a majority of the items first so I can properly log the recipes I find without half of them being breakfast. I really like the idea of writing down good recipes you find instead of using the wiki. I felt so cool when I stumbled into brimstone.
@@RawFishHeader Even when you're manipulating item pools and value by taking some consumables over others you're still going to end up with something different each time. And just because you can influence your run better doesn't make it worse until you're purposefully using a boring build
Tainted Lilith has the Mom's Knife problem. So strong, but you lose a lot of the fun from synergies.
tainted apollyon stans rise up
Okay, so i have a idea for t.lazarus, make them start with a item called the broken d6, this item will spawn another pedestal in a room that has only one pedestal, and it can only be used twice per floor, it only works on item rooms and boss room, and also it rerolls the current item in the pedestal, so you would have to choose if you want 2 items but you reroll the first one, or if you think that the first item you get is strong enough to not be rerolled you do not get the second item
Tainted Cain is only fun on Greed mode, or if you have the tools to make all the item crafting stuff, which then it makes it the most op character
I am become back my money, destroyer of worlds
i legit cant see a reason to like tainted lazarus, theyre literally all downside; no double item room plays, no power, no versatility beyond the double hp thing that i hadnt even considered until you mentioned it. at the very least tcain has power on his side and tainted eden has wackiness on theirs as far as unfun chars go. im really hoping the mirrored item id thing happens in the rework because that would make em actually interesting.
Just learned that if you choose random and it lands on eden in ab+ it won't cost an eden token.
Tainted Cain would be really cool if instead of the recipes being global they were based on personal installation of your game, so you would need to find your own recipes
Not really; that simply extends the time until you optimize the fun out of it.
Being unique to each save file would be even better
or unique to each seed, but still be based on the quality of consumables in your bag
Funny how far we've come. WoTL to Afterbirth, I'd have placed Samson and Blue Baby (aka Hard Mode Isaac) in Laugh Riot. Pre-Holy Mantle The Lost, definitely not.
You have the fun feast or famine characters with Judas being the most tame, then keeper, then the lost, but the tainted lost takes it too far. It’s fun for me now just trying to get the completion marks, but I don’t plan on using the character that much. The lost is the perfect balance of risk/reward, definitely on if my favourite characters to play.
Egg has made the only tier lists I agree with on isaac , a true god gamer
love those tier names
"I'm taking damage from nothing?" pretty much sums up the Tainted Eden experience
I really like keeper as well, but not for your reasons, i like him because if you get enough tears ups he can get triple shot 5 tears, if you can get to that he becomes op but the cap of health makes him balanced imo
Maybe only because Keeper's health bar is different, or unique😅
If tainted cain had his recipes randomized each save slot, that could be a game in it self.
IDK why, but Lilith, Tlilith, and Tapollyon were the most fun for me, the alternative to tears is always fun, the forgotten is near them , but they are the best
T Lilith starts so strong that it even makes Greedier palatable. Lilith is also fun with a little bit of RNG luck.
30:20 YESSS! I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO FIDGETS WITH THEIR NAIL CLIPPERS!
Watching Tainted Cain get placed in the bottom tier of enjoyment amused me enormously, since I could feel chat seething through the screen.
Argument for eden: what if you start with the d6
Counter counter argument: what if you play Isaac?
i will become back my money
Come for the analysis.
Stay for the many times NL says, "I am going to become The Joker."
Simple way to make Tainted Cain fun would be to randomize the item recipes, but then make it so that every item pedestal give you one of those recipes
Eh part of the fun is using recipes you can remember, looking up the recipes for a perfect build will inevitably make you bored of the character
Make it to where all recipes except maybe birthright as a difficult recipe, as random, and when u can make birthright, the recipes become set to certain recipes again.
Hey NL, you think you'll check out poker quest? It seems right up your alley.
Maggy bores me to no end XD
I recently bought the game, and I haven't played a single run with her XD
I have already unlocked all the regular character, but I still refuse to touch her XD
Ye, pretty bornig. But you can play the sacrifice room sooo much (if you have the full health pill from doing the April fools Challenger, or even with just the Yum hearth)
sac room is the first place i head when playing maggy lawl
I love tainted Jacob, I think he is the best character if you are able to utilize dark Esau correctly
I think Apollyon could be better balanced if void was better balanced, you should be able to choose whether or not you’re voiding a spacebar item to continue using it or whether you want to void it for stats like you would with a passive item. IMO with the stat payouts this wouldn’t be broken, it would just make void and Apollyon more fun to play
Putting the lost so high up is insane!
Yooo they took your idea for tainted cain
I think the lost is actually nice in normal rooms because every room refreshes your mantle but the final bosses make me hate the character. Delirium or Mother take way too long, I cant survive with only a single holy mantle protection without a super strong run
If Lilith isn’t high up I’m gonna be POSSED
I will become back my money, honestly imagine having their power to create and become a whole meme with just one tweet. We truly could never.
“Horror is sometimes scary” no way