Blubert started as a joke. The story we tell ourselves: the King got tired of one Uvulite mouthing off, jammed a piece of Rotten Roast into its forehead, and somehow the result could heal nearby allies. We thought it was funny. Then we had to make him worth playing.
The problem
Blubert is the Healer. He's the most fragile unit in the roster — lowest health by a good margin — and his own attack is weak. Early on, nobody brought him. Why spend the energy on a unit that barely fights and dies if you look at it funny?
The honest answer for a while was: you wouldn't.
What we changed
We mostly left his raw numbers alone and changed how he acts:
- He heals at range and lobs a healing blob, so he can sit behind the front line instead of walking into the meat grinder to do his job.
- He supports while moving toward hurt allies, instead of stopping and standing still to path. He used to waste real time just getting into position.
- We gave him rules so he can't be dumb. He won't heal other healers (no healer-healing-healer chains), and he won't waste heals on farmers. If there's nobody worth healing in range, he just attacks like any other ranged unit.
We also made his heal a real, explicit number instead of something derived from his attack stat. Small cleanup, but now his behavior is legible — we can reason about exactly what a heal does.
The lesson
Blubert isn't the strongest unit. He's the honest one. A Brute has a huge health pool, and a Brute that keeps getting topped up is genuinely miserable to fight through. You don't bring Blubert because he wins fights; you bring him because he makes your other units refuse to die.
The mistake we almost made was judging him by whether he got picked. The better question was whether fights lasted longer when he was in. They do. That's the number we should have been watching the whole time.
What's left
His heal and attack animations still need a polish pass, and we're not sure he's "done" as a design — he might get one more trick that's truly his. For now, he's earned his slot.