The newly buffed Eight Ball joker in Balatro is interesting because the buff puts that squarely into the spot of being one of the best early jokers but also being kind of a trap for high score runs, like a lot of good early jokers.
Changing it from generating planets to generating tarot makes it so it now self-enables. Tarot mainly enables deck manipulation; eight ball generates deaths, hanged men, and strengths that then go on to add more eights to your deck, which lets you trigger eight ball more. I think eight ball might now be the strongest early deck manipulation joker, which is saying something; it may be easier to turn your entire deck into one card with eight ball than if your early pick up is Trading Card or DNA.
This is because it is very plausible to get to the point where eight ball is creating two or three tarots per round, without the blatant drawback that Vagabond has. Eight Ball is great for Idol runs; it also pairs well with the also newly-buffed Bloodstone, especially alongside Oops All Sixes.
But the problem is, you then turn your entire decks into eights. And eights are one of the bad scoring ranks.
Y'see, in Endless high score runs, there's really only three builds in Balatro. There's High Card, which basically demands that you make your deck all kings. There's Perkeo builds, but the vast majority of seeds won't even spawn a Perkeo. And there's Flush Five builds that are built around actually playing a card, usually a very optimized card like a polychrome red seal glass.
The only way to get to ante 16 and beyond in the flush five build is through numerous x-mult triggers created by effects like Idol or Bloodstone. But to get enough triggers, you need to be retriggering your cards a lot. This is where all of the middle ranks, and also aces, fall off completely. Eights don't have a natural retriggering effect like Hack or Sock & Buskin. You can sort of get by with Dusk or Seltzer, but those are inferior options. Notably, while both Dusk and Seltzer work well alongside Sock or Hack, they are terrible alongside one another.
