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Tldr You make weak characters strong while leaving the strong characters strong by adding hit based health and number based bars WITH hit based stress bars and number based stress bars.

This is about both games but mainly DD2 as that is the "current" game. 

For context I have played over 1000 hours with both games combined and I don't struggle with either of them. 

This is specifically about the general balance of heroes not enemies.

Lastly I make new saves and do a Grandslam run with the entire roster every year, which brings us to the title.

Jester DD2 and Runaway DD2 suck turbo ASS

Why? The damage is poor with the setup taking to long all while having no max health NOR survivability.

You can see this with the patch notes over the years but for example Runaway had 3 carterize that only worked if they were bleeding vs now where you have three charges that heal regardless of bleed but a lot more with bleed.

I want to rant so hard rn but I won't.

The point is this there are characters that are clearly weakened because of preceieved broken value while actual broken value remains strong. 

Example MAA does MORE stress heal than jester while having more damage, healing, health, protection, mitigation, and buffs... like bruh. 

Same thing happened in dd1 with the houndmaster man's had a less than a 75% chance to heal 20/800 stress... where he had less self heal than leper while having a protect ability???

I can go on and on and on.

You either get value by killing fast or by killing slow over time with sustain. That not easy to balance with the current ideologie.

But they know how to. With dd2 they change the stress system away from a whole number and made it a counter. 10 hits you're out. No more reduce 10 stress by 20% uselessness. 

Which is a good change for SOME characters while absolutely BROKEN for others. Leper for example.

Runaway and jester both suffer from having low max health while the leper and flag output more damage and more damage over time. 

You get hit once on jester it's gg meanwhile flag wants to get hit. 

So the fix? 

Had both systems hit based health bars and number based health bars WITH hit based stress and number based stress bars. 

Jester would have hit based health and number based stress. That way he is no longer the worst stress healer in the game and he is easier to heal up from low health.

Let's say he has 5 hits and 1 hit is 1 less hit and any number of dot is 1 less hit. 

Healing dot would restore 1 hit and healing numbers would restore 1 hit unless it is a 40% healing in which case it would be 2 hits healed. 

This way a 1 heal dot for 3 rounds is grated for jester and Runaway but useless for leper as it would be 1 hp, good for deaths door but not much else. 

This also means you can have the healer character with an ability that does 1 dot heal and say 30% heal.

Its 2 hits / 40% heal for the squishy and just 31 percent heal for the tanks while keeping both potentially off deaths door.

Stress heal would work the same rather than crusader healing others while stress healing them better than the jester. You can have his stress be great for those weak to stress with the hit based but poor at mending those resistant to stress with the number based stress. 

Or you could chnage the stress system to match.

Regardless of the in depth math. This would fix vestal and houndmaster from the first game too.

Houndmaster stress heals 4 people at 75% for 2 hits each or 10% number based. That's 8/40 or 40/400. 

Enemies stress damage maybe 15% or 2 hits making  the hit based bars higher risk

Or the opposite where 15% only hits for 1 but stress hits only heal a hit no matter the %

This would fix the broken vestal in the first game healing the party for +28 health vs PD single target 3 hp.

Idk for me this fixes lots of trash abilities and thus character interaction. Make weak characters playable. 

Like runway literally lights herself on fire??? To do less dot than both healers and tanks???

She will literally apply 3 stacks of 2 fire to do 3 stacks of 3 get hit by a 40 banger crit and start her turn and FUCKING DIE ???????????? Why are we not rewarding the high risk gameplay? Why is she even taking 2 for 3 when 1 for 3 would also kill on deaths door? To prevent her dot heal from saving her from her OWN stacks? ?????????

The balancing problems and how to fix it for DD3