I think mastery 12 debuf is too punishing it makes it so that 1/10 or so runs are even plausible to clear D1, you simply do not have the stats to deal with purple and yellow enemies reliably and in orderly fashion, there's the odd run that has the elite rng necessary that allows you to successfully pass it but I personally think it's neither fun or challenging when the only challenge is for your patience to wait for that one run that's playable.
Thanks for the feedback!
The current mastery system is a very early working version. We're planning on reworking it completely in our next major update. We'll be digging deeper into that in the coming devlogs but you can expect:
- Fairer mastery bonuses that give a smoother early game (less focussed on RNG)
- Stronger traits for player characters
- More options in the talent tree itself to give you more access to counters for specific enemy types.
So far we've been more focussed with making the core game fun, but we're definitely at the point where we're happy enough to focus on later game challenges a bit!