Took them long enough to get this announcement out.

Optimizations and Buffs

• Standard ability can now be repeatedly cast by holding down the assigned key
• Standard ability gains a new passive: when Agave destroys a breakable part, all Truth Fragment stacks (resource generated by hitting an enemy's breakable part with Agave's standard skill) to halve the S-Energy cost of Agave's standard ability for 3 seconds (additional Truth Fragment stacks cannot be generated during this period)
• Parts break damage dealt by Agave's standard ability increased based on Phase level
• After casting Agave's ultimate ability with at least 20 Personal Flair stacks (resource generated by hitting enemies with Agave's standard skill, each stack consumed increases ultimate damage dealt, up to 100), casting her standard ability cast within 10 seconds directly skips to Phase 4

What This Means

Okay, so first things first.

Standard ability can now be repeatedly cast by holding down the assigned key

This is just a quality-of-life change to let you stop abusing your keyboard. Can't complain there.

The rest of the changes are a bit more... mixed in usefulness.

Standard ability gains a new passive: when Agave destroys a breakable part, all Truth Fragment stacks to halve the S-Energy cost of Agave's standard ability for 3 seconds (additional Truth Fragment stacks cannot be generated during this period)

This pushes Agave further towards a parts break specialist role and away from actual DPS use. This won't be the only nudge in that direction either, as we'll see in the next change as well:

Parts break damage dealt by Agave's standard ability increased based on Phase level

This is a bigger deal than it initially seems... but also not. It does make sitting at Phase 4 less of an annoyance when parts breaking, as you'll be getting extra parts break damage to make it worth the longer cast time. But for actual HP damage, nothing changes.

After casting Agave's ultimate ability with at least 20 Personal Flair stacks, casting her standard ability cast within 10 seconds directly skips to Phase 4

This appears to be Seasun's answer to to the fact that being forced to shoot enemies once you run out of S-Energy on Agave absolutely sucks because it resets all your standard skill damage potential. And sure, it makes sense - after you spend all your S-Energy, you can ult and have a grace period where you can shoot to regenerate back S-Energy before jumping back into casting your standard skill at Phase 4. This doesn't really help her performance against bosses as she'll still want to be ulting at max stacks to do as much damage as possible (which you certainly can't do without running out of S-Energy at least a few times first), but it's a much more tolerable gameplay loop for general-purpose trash mobbing.

Except, uhhh...

Yeah, you still lose all your weapon buffs. So it certainly sucks less to run out of S-Energy, but it still sucks.

Overall, these changes, while certainly better than nothing, seem to be misguided in what they attempt to accomplish. They double down on her parts-breaking effectiveness while also throwing in a half-baked attempt to fix her S-Energy problems. I honestly find it so strange that Seasun would forget to also buff her weapons to accommodate the intended period of DPS downtime where Agave has to refill her S-Energy, as if that wasn't already enough of a weakness. Will most players notice? Maybe not, considering that the vast majority of enemies in the game are made of paper and die to a stiff breeze. But it still leaves a bad taste in your mouth knowing that this is a very simple change that Seasun either forgot or refused to do.

This means that if you want to sustain Agave's standard skill Phase levels, you will eventually have to whip out the gun and shoot, because Seasun still refuses to give her any other forms of on-field regen. Instead, there's a band-aid fix that further reduces the cost of skill casts after breaking a part. I mean that's great, but you're still slowly running out of S-Energy. It's like plugging up some of the holes in a boat - sure, you're sinking less quickly now, but you're still sinking. At the same time, having S-Energy to stay at Phase 4 is even more important now that parts break damage scales with Phase level as well.

So what did these "buffs" actually accomplish?

• Less keyboard mashing
• Less S-Energy consumption, but still a mandatory period of downtime for sustain
• More parts break damage
• Playstyle shifted towards spamming sub-optimally stacked ults to maintain standard skill Phase level, but not weapon buffs

In the end, it seems like it's actually the casual side of the playerbase that suffers more, as parts break utility is just not very useful in most general content despite most of the changes going towards increasing Agave's parts breaking power. And even then, we'll have to see how the exact numbers shake out to potentially solidify some niche use for her.

Returning to that sinking ship analogy, I can't help but be reminded of the one that features in Agave's movie collection, the Titanic. Much like the doomed ocean liner, Agave seems to have been designed with a sense of blind hubris that she would "just work" and that her drawbacks were not as big of a problem as they ended up being. And just like the steel vessel currently lying at the bottom of the ocean, Seasun's attempts to turn things around seem to be too little, too late once that iceberg of reality finally hit.

But hey, they're also adding an S-Energy cost indicator so now you know how fast your S-Energy bar is being drained. That's nice, I guess.

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