While there is some discussion over whether it's better to focus on one DPS crusader or two, there is mechanically no reason to level any crusader except DPS and Tanks beyond the level of their highest useful upgrade. The idol rewards encourage you to level your lower-level characters, but only right before resetting.

My proposal is intended to mix that up a little.

Proposal:

Replace each Crusader's standard level 200 upgrade with one that reflects their role in the formation, based upon their mission tags.

At level 200 and each 25 levels thereafter, crusaders receive the following benefits according to their tags. Crusaders with 2 of these tags receive 80% of this benefit and Crusaders with 3 of these tags receive 60% of this benefit.

DPS: Multiply the Crusader's DPS by 400%.
Support: Increase global DPS by 10%.
Tank: Increase the Crusader's max health by 10 hit points.
Healer: Increase every Crusader's max health by 5 hit points.
Gold: Increase gold find by 5%
Click: Multiply click damage by 400% and increase critical multiplier by 5% (additive)

As a unique case, I would propose giving Mindy the Mime all five tags at 50% efficacy. Can't think of anyone else that would have more than 3.

I agree with EP, and would have made a similar suggestion before I heard so much about the upcoming crafting system-- I don't want to make any proposals about mechanics that are *already* changing.

And yeah, this does fundamentally change the game's balance; that's the point of it. But I don't think it makes the game necessarily easier, as any gold you spend leveling Crusaders other than your main DPS is gold you're not spending on your main DPS. This proposal actually reduces the efficiency of any DPS Crusader with more than one tag.

Okay, yeah, that's a bit more profound of an effect than I was thinking of.

About XP, the whole idea is that you have to focus on a specific crusader, instead of swapping in the best one in any given moment. It takes planning, and I support that.

For EPs and 200-level abilities (and XPs), I'd really like them to boost formation abilities. All crusaders have those, and they are specifically identified in the code (because in certain objectives they can get disabled). The only thing to decide is the actual amount that gets boosted, which can also vary between different crusaders. Generally I'd do something like +0.1% per EP, so that with 1000 EPs the effect of an ability is doubled (and it would have diminishing returns as well). Most of the crusaders that I can use as viable DPSers have around 3k EPs (but I do have more than 10k unopened silver chests, so the number should be higher), so formation abilities would be about 4 times stronger (this doens't include a similar effect from levels or XPs, however). Of course, this requires a rebalancing of monster scaling... thinking of incresing our DPS/gold in such a drastic way without making the game harder as you progress is insane.

Honestly, I think the best solution for EP would be for each EP to grant a percentage bonus to the Crusader's gear bonuses, excluding gear which grants damage or cooldown reduction. Crusaders which have gear that grants those bonuses just... only get EP bonuses to the other two pieces of gear.

Which means that EPs are useful for every Crusader, EP bonuses depend on having better gear, and EPs enhance the function of Crusaders within their role.

The idea has been around (and I know the devs are aware that the idea has been around) for a long time that the perks of EP (and XP and level 200 abilities) could stand to be looked at and reworked. It really is kind of hard to speculate about what would be reasonable and propose new ideas without first seeing what the game will be like after the addition of crafting and legendary gear though. We've only seen an example of 1 legendary and 1 golden legendary but it already looks like the change in crusader strengths and crusader synergy is going to be very significant. (Huge boosts in the existing bonuses plus being able to level up brand new bonuses (Bush Whacker suddenly becoming DPS support for robot formations was one of the examples) on top of that.)

I've posted some thoughts on this before (maybe not here, but on Steam at least and maybe also on Reddit or Kongregate) and one of my thoughts has been having the idea about adding some sort of EP based bonus onto gear (supporting the crusader's intended role by enhancing the bonuses granted by their gear). Legendary could possibly push that idea off the table. That leaves the idea to scale up specific abilities and the idea to limit the changes to only affect what EP does directly.

Random thought I came up with while reading this topic. Spitballing an idea for Dark Gryphon... Looking at three of her abilities here: Brave Bonk, 100% self DPS. Chivalrous Cuff, 100% self DPS. Courageous Chop, 100% self DPS. Ummm... On a character whose intended role is 2 different forms of support (protection provided with Under My Wing + 2 of her gear items, global DPS buffing provided by Heart Brimming Bravery + 1 of her gear items), what good are these three self DPS abilities doing for her?

My random idea is that I propose removing one of her self DPS abilities and replacing it with something like "Spiked Wing Guards, when targets protected by Under My Wing take damage an energy spike deals X% damage for every Y EP that Dark Gryphon has". Including of course some sort of cap on the maximum amount of damage and/or a cooldown before another spike can be triggered. X and Y would be chosen carefully to hit whatever the devs feel would be an appropriate balance.

Actually... I basically just gave her an ability comparable to Montana's gun, Veronica's bow, and Greyskull's handcannon except with EP based damage instead of a fixed rate (and triggered in response to damage received instead of just happening every few seconds regardless)...

Anyway, basically the thought is that they would just sidestep the concerns about what EP would do if it scaled the protection and health benefits on Under My Wing by just leaving those benefits as they are and applying the EP to something else instead. (And this new thing would be its own separate formation ability, so the gear that enhances Under My Wing would not affect spike damage.)