Mega Crit Says Slay the Spire 2's Doormaker Boss Is Not Overpowered

Mega Crit is pushing back against the claim that Slay the Spire 2’s Doormaker boss is simply too strong, even as players hammered the game with negative Steam reviews after the latest update. In beta patch v0.104.0, dated April 24, 2026, the studio said it has been tracking the fight through in-game feedback, social media posts and metrics, and that the data does not match the outrage.

The numbers Mega Crit cited are blunt. From millions of runs, Doormaker’s overall difficulty and win rate are in a good place, and the boss is “slightly weaker than the other Act 3 bosses” in both kill rate and damage dealt. That is the heart of the dispute: a fight can feel oppressive to the player even when aggregate statistics say it is not ending runs as often as its peers.

The reason it feels so punishing is baked into the design. Doormaker cycles through phases that exhaust anything the player plays, block additional card draws or tack on extra mana costs every time a card is played, even when that card costs zero. For decks built around draw-heavy chains, zero-cost loops or careful combo turns, those mechanics do not just raise the difficulty. They can collapse the entire plan in a single encounter.

The backlash widened after the April update, with Steam’s user rating falling to Mixed as review-bombing began around April 17, 2026. The criticism was not aimed only at Doormaker. Broader difficulty and balance changes, including Ascension adjustments and buffs to other enemies, also fueled frustration among players who felt the update had pushed the game too far in the wrong direction.

Mega Crit said in its April newsletter that Slay the Spire 2 has been out for about a month and that most of its work has focused on fixing major issues, improving feedback systems, polishing visuals and reworking balance. The studio also said the in-game feedback tool gives it more data than emails or meme posts, which helps explain why it is resisting immediate overcorrection. The company says the base game is “quite hard right now” as it tries to make it more accessible, while keeping high-Ascension clears a “monumental achievement” for only a fraction of players. That leaves Doormaker at the center of a familiar roguelike problem: a boss can be statistically fair and still feel like a build killer in the hands of the wrong deck.