Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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Leinfors, when will the balance changelog be released? :D

I'm not sure if I'll be allowed to release the balance changelog early, it may come at the same time as the full changelog when 1.4.1 hits.

Probably nothing else I can share publicly until then, unfortunately! I'll be sure to ask about making it public a day or two early though, if I get the chance. :)
 
The best bet for an early summoner armor without adding anything new would be Pumpkin, imo. Maybe the 10% damage could change to 10% summon damage and it could be given an extra minion

-It isn’t “off” thematically, summoner armors are often a bit more “strange” than traditional armors, ex. Bee or Tiki.

-It’s obtainable relatively early while not being there the instant you start, and is fairly “hidden”, meaning that experienced summoners have something to fall back to not get pummeled. This would also help make Summoner have a broader prehardmode “niche” and not just really exist after Queen Bee. However, new players can’t just snag the bonuses of an extra minion right away. Only issue with this is Halloween, but Christmas gives some good starting loot relatively quickly so it’d be fair if Halloween did too.

-It isn’t a very big loss for other classes, as most people won’t bother with Pumpkin currently and rather just use ore armors or skip to Ninja or Crimtane.

-The low defense for its state of the game would encourage players to only use it if they plan on running a summon build, as if they aren’t, they would often opt to go for other, more defensive or universally offensive options. Therefore it doesn’t stick out as an overpowered option for hybrids.

Just a random thought I had, not really a big deal at all but it’s there
Most of the time you won't have a minion at that point in the game, I'd rather keep the classless 10% damage but an extra minion slot can be thrown on to distinguish it from ninja armor a bit better.
 
As this was not intentional, it was changed when we tweaked the amount of time that the forehead eye was open, and should fit a more strict pattern now. (This was changed back in 1.4 though, there are no pending changes to Moon Lord for 1.4.1).

Now that parenthesis has me confused. Is the Moon Lord synchronized in 1.4, or not?
 
Most of the time you won't have a minion at that point in the game, I'd rather keep the classless 10% damage but an extra minion slot can be thrown on to distinguish it from ninja armor a bit better.

Only reason I said to shift it to Summon damage is a popular argument against early summon armors is they’d be too powerful if hybridized and giving them a universal damage boost would only worsen this, so if the boost were only to minions it would help that issue
 
Only reason I said to shift it to Summon damage is a popular argument against early summon armors is they’d be too powerful if hybridized and giving them a universal damage boost would only worsen this, so if the boost were only to minions it would help that issue
I don't see much of a point in adding a summon focused armor at this stage of the game when all the minions at that point are super rare.
I just don't see 10% damage, 1 minion, and 7 defese ibreaking the game balance. Especially since the slime staff and vamp frog already start hitting iFrame limits with two minions (which you can reach without armor).
 
Slime Staff not.
It's new 1.4 mechanic.
It still causes iFrames, but the iFrames are only shared by the minions, it won't stop your primary weapon from hitting but it will prevent other slime minions from hitting.

None of the old minions gained proper local immunity they seemed to have gotten a completely new immunity system where all the old piercing minions share iFrames, but is seperate from primary weapon attack.
 
I don't see much of a point in adding a summon focused armor at this stage of the game when all the minions at that point are super rare.
I just don't see 10% damage, 1 minion, and 7 defese ibreaking the game balance. Especially since the slime staff and vamp frog already start hitting iFrame limits with two minions (which you can reach without armor).

I’m pretty sure that 1.4.1 will buff the obtainability of early minions, as there have been tons of critiques on the drop rates of said items. We know already that the Vampire Frogs are going to be more common as the devs said specifically they were rarer than intended, and I’d expect to see at least Finch get that same treatment.

And yeah, the other early minions are currently rare, but if you still happen to chance upon one, it’d still be too strong of a combination.

Besides, Imp Staff is readily available pre-Bee. If you were able to hybridize on, say, Minishark with Imp Staff, that’s already a powerful combination for the pre-Bee stage, and would be made stronger with an extra minion. Same applies to having 2 Finches on top of a Gold Bow preboss if you played around Halloween, still a big jump in damage.

That third minion would still affect Imps and Finches anyway, and I’m pretty sure Frogs too as they technically attack via projectile so they don’t get up to 6 hits per second until you get several minions

That’s why I said to make the damage summon only, as by buffing both other weapons and minion damage in the one set, the hybrid builds become just a bit too strong for their state of the game.
 
It still causes iFrames, but the iFrames are only shared by the minions, it won't stop your primary weapon from hitting but it will prevent other slime minions from hitting.

None of the old minions gained proper local immunity they seemed to have gotten a completely new immunity system where all the old piercing minions share iFrames, but is seperate from primary weapon attack.

Not entirely true, though true in part.

Some of the minions have static immunity (where the specific type of projectile itself shares iframes with others of itself, and only itself) and some have local immunity (where each individual projectile, even of the same type has their own frames entirely). And some of the minions don't have special immunity at all, either because their attacks aren't piercing, or because they didn't really need it. This is all accurate to what you said.

The part that isn't strictly accurate is that I did indeed assign true local frames to several minions, as needed. These were determined based on the best way to maintain "roughly" the same balance as they had before the change, barring the overlap with other weapons.

For example, Slime Staff, being relatively powerful if you get it very early on due to RNG, was not something I felt warranted a true "buff" to its raw performance. And so I assigned it a static immunity, so that its maximum DPS was roughly the same per-Slime as it was before . . . except now it no longer conflicts with your other weapons. The goal here was the removal of the piercing conflict, not a true buff to maximum potential.

On the other side of things, Raven Staff WAS in need of a substantial buff, given that by the time you get it, you were swimming in minion count, and so it was assigned true local immunity, so that none of the Ravens conflict with each other. There should be a direct proportional increase in DPS per minion cast.

All addition of specialized immunity was based on perceived need on the part of the projectile, with the goal to maintain the overall DPS status quo whenever possible. I very strictly analyzed and documented DPS at multiple minion counts for all of the affected minions, both with and without immunity frames of both types, to determine which would be the most equivalent to their pre-change performance. When it was impossible to maintain that DPS precisely, I erred on the side of slight buff rather than slight nerf.

I did just check what you mentioned before, and it looks like Vamp Frog was NOT given any form of special immune timers. It should be using static, so I'll look into assigning it standard static frames.
 
With the exception of the deadly sphere and desert tiger, all the minions with 'bad ai' were added before 1.3, these minions feel more dated if anything. This is why all the top tier minions were added in 1.3+ (and I'm counting the spider since it gained the ability to latch onto enemies in 1.3).


I've never had issue with Terrapirsma's AI it may need LoS to start attacking things but once it does it completely disregards tiles until everything is dead.
I haven't used the blade staff yet because, I can't be bothered to grind for super rare items. What I do know is that the spider minion is extremly good at dealing with caves dungeons, and other tight spaces so even if the blade staff can't do caaves you got a super easy to obtain minion that can replace it for that job.


This is a bit more of a minor incovienience for me, I think the reason sentries are like this is because unlike minions there's no debuff to desummon them, there should be a proper way to de summon your sentries.

Also while we're at it I just want to mention how imbalanced the sentries are, you got the queen spider which is strong, maybye even a little too strong, you got the frost hydra which is quite weak since it is too innacurate for bosses, and the lack of piercing makes it underwhelming for crowd control, and even if you get all its shots hitting it barely out dps's the far more accurate queen spider, then you got the moonlord sentires which are better than the queen spider but quite underwhelming compared to the other moonlord weapons.

Then you got the DD2 sentries, the ballista and lighting aura are fine sentries, but the flameburst is a bit weak and the explosive trap is complete trash, also I'm a bit bothered by the fact that the queen spider is better than the t2 dd2 sentries which require you to kill a mech to obtain.

I'd be in favor of buffing all the DD2 sentries so that the t2 sentries are a bit better than queen spider, and the t3 sentries could also use a buff, especially since a lot of players find t3 OOA event to be too hard. Also buff the frost hydra to around the point of the buffed t3 dd2 sentries.

about Explosive Trap sentry, first thing is, every OOA sentries need their own set bonus to be good, while I testing each sentry, at first I think the same thing with you but I got an interesting results.

first thing I realized is Lightning Aura and Explosive Trap are better than dealing with both ground and flying.

Ballista and Flameburst have better range but when trying to attack flying enemies in OOA, they're more like "distracted" by them leaving you and Crystal very vulnerable to ground enemies and you know they're not good at aimming at flying enemies they may wasted all their time try to hit them, putting Ballista on platform can help but also greatly reduce the effectiveness against ground enemies making piercing projectile meaningless.

Ballista is somewhat worse than other in practice for OOA even with setbonus. Flameburst take less penalty when placed on platforms due to it's AoE and don't have to contact multiple target to hit multiple target.

Flameburst sentry with setbonus is actually very good outside OOA, having one of the longest attack range among all sentry in the game with good projectile speed, it's the true generalist, not Ballista which is slow and shorter range until you got Valhalla which allow Ballista to attack ~25% faster than Flameburst when panic but again, Flameburst can do better overall dps.

When it come to dps, Explosive Trap can make a lot better dps than Lightning Aura, okay listen, with Red Riding Hood, it attack rate is around 0.5 second per attack(faster than panicking Ballista) plus having base damage near Ballista(only a few point away from it), it's one of the most powerful sentry I ever seen. It can even solo MM Biome Mimic with proper use in less than 10 seconds or even annihilate MM Hardmode Dungeon which no other sentry can do it like Explosive Trap, it's one of the best sentry to spam because it dps alone can outdps Coin Gun with Platinum Coin as ammo. the only downside is short range it really limited it power especially against bosses, but since you can annihilate most of the thing that touch the ground, you're pretty much ground-version of crawltipede. also it's very good as a kickstart for Lunar Cultist because it dps is crazy.

in Master Mode OOA, Explosive Trap(with setbonus) is the most effective one, while Lightning Aura can only massively damaged enemies, it took a lot of space and many flying enemies can go off unless you have to feed them Ichor, Ballista need to constantly panic to be "reliable" like other sentries, Flameburst is somewhat weak but very good outside, Explosive Trap can do 90% of all the damage for you though entire event, the only thing that survive are mostly bosses and Drakin, and some flying enemies summoned by Betsy but most of them are heavily damaged.

while people say Explosive Traps need a buff, tbh I think it's a fair trade for it power, if it's too powerful, reduce base damage a little should help but I think it already good.
(.. wait why am I replying old message.. oh sorry)
 
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Not entirely true, though true in part.

Some of the minions have static immunity (where the specific type of projectile itself shares iframes with others of itself, and only itself) and some have local immunity (where each individual projectile, even of the same type has their own frames entirely). And some of the minions don't have special immunity at all, either because their attacks aren't piercing, or because they didn't really need it. This is all accurate to what you said.

The part that isn't strictly accurate is that I did indeed assign true local frames to several minions, as needed. These were determined based on the best way to maintain "roughly" the same balance as they had before the change, barring the overlap with other weapons.

For example, Slime Staff, being relatively powerful if you get it very early on due to RNG, was not something I felt warranted a true "buff" to its raw performance. And so I assigned it a static immunity, so that its maximum DPS was roughly the same per-Slime as it was before . . . except now it no longer conflicts with your other weapons. The goal here was the removal of the piercing conflict, not a true buff to maximum potential.

On the other side of things, Raven Staff WAS in need of a substantial buff, given that by the time you get it, you were swimming in minion count, and so it was assigned true local immunity, so that none of the Ravens conflict with each other. There should be a direct proportional increase in DPS per minion cast.

All addition of specialized immunity was based on perceived need on the part of the projectile, with the goal to maintain the overall DPS status quo whenever possible. I very strictly analyzed and documented DPS at multiple minion counts for all of the affected minions, both with and without immunity frames of both types, to determine which would be the most equivalent to their pre-change performance. When it was impossible to maintain that DPS precisely, I erred on the side of slight buff rather than slight nerf.

I did just check what you mentioned before, and it looks like Vamp Frog was NOT given any form of special immune timers. It should be using static, so I'll look into assigning it standard static frames.

Hey @Leinfors , could you please tell which minions use static resistance and which ones use local resistance?
Also, I agree that the Slime Staff is very powerful if you get it early on, but I don't find the static resistance in it an appropriate option. In order to have more than one minion before killing Queen Bee, you either need to fish in the underground jungle, which is not easy at all, or you have to search the dungeon and thus defeat the Skeletron. If it succeeds, he naturally counts on a reward of two minions attacking together. Meanwhile, after this effort, we have two Baby Slimes that take turns to impose a resistance frame on the enemy and this does not affect DPS as it should, leading to a disappointment due to the difficulty required to see the second min early. Therefore, I believe every Summon should use local immunity, but that is just my opinion.
 
Not entirely true, though true in part.

Some of the minions have static immunity (where the specific type of projectile itself shares iframes with others of itself, and only itself) and some have local immunity (where each individual projectile, even of the same type has their own frames entirely). And some of the minions don't have special immunity at all, either because their attacks aren't piercing, or because they didn't really need it. This is all accurate to what you said.

The part that isn't strictly accurate is that I did indeed assign true local frames to several minions, as needed. These were determined based on the best way to maintain "roughly" the same balance as they had before the change, barring the overlap with other weapons.

For example, Slime Staff, being relatively powerful if you get it very early on due to RNG, was not something I felt warranted a true "buff" to its raw performance. And so I assigned it a static immunity, so that its maximum DPS was roughly the same per-Slime as it was before . . . except now it no longer conflicts with your other weapons. The goal here was the removal of the piercing conflict, not a true buff to maximum potential.

On the other side of things, Raven Staff WAS in need of a substantial buff, given that by the time you get it, you were swimming in minion count, and so it was assigned true local immunity, so that none of the Ravens conflict with each other. There should be a direct proportional increase in DPS per minion cast.

All addition of specialized immunity was based on perceived need on the part of the projectile, with the goal to maintain the overall DPS status quo whenever possible. I very strictly analyzed and documented DPS at multiple minion counts for all of the affected minions, both with and without immunity frames of both types, to determine which would be the most equivalent to their pre-change performance. When it was impossible to maintain that DPS precisely, I erred on the side of slight buff rather than slight nerf.

I did just check what you mentioned before, and it looks like Vamp Frog was NOT given any form of special immune timers. It should be using static, so I'll look into assigning it standard static frames.
I don't think giving the slime and the vampire frog local immunity would be bad. When you get them you only have access to two minion slots, and once you get more minion slots you should have access to better minions... even though the hornet an imp actually perform worse than them.

The imp staff and hornet staff feel very weak right now, the shear jump in power from imp/hornet to spider is greater than just about every other weapon type and its early hard mode upgrade (aside from dart weapons). I feel like they should be twice as strong as they currently are.

The spider staff in its current state is very strong the only issue I have with it is that once you get 3 spiders you're hitting iFrame limits which means there's relatively little value in actually investing into summon gear. I think it should get local iFrames BUT it should get its attack speed reduced.

The optic staff heavily suffers from its own iFrames and as of right now underperforms compared to the spider staff and sanguine staff. I would suggest removing the piercing from the retnimini laser, even with this buff it's still not going to outperform the sanguine staff so it's not going to be any more powerful than that.

The deadly sphere definitely need local iFrames, you get it around the same time as the raven staff which you said needed local Iframes... even though... the raven staff never had iFrame issues I jumped back into 1.3 and tested it I found that 10 ravens have roughly twice the dps of 5 ravens, this minion never had iFrame issues... I do appreciate the buffs the raven staff got but iFrames was never an issue it had.

All the 1.2 minions need to be reworked in some way I feel, the spider and raven got reworked and are great minions now, but all the other pre 1.3 minions still feel dated.
 
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I know this is an issue that is probably slightly more 'global' than just specific number changes, but I feel like differences and disparity between Corruption and Crimson accessories is extremely glaring, especially for making lategame combined accessories, with Corruption being seemingly better for Mages and Summoners and Crimson favoring Rangers and Melee. Mostly this is referring to how plainly critical Band of Starpower in creation of mage accessories, while Panic Amulet is just... kind of only useful for melee, who probably have better defensive options later on. I know its possible to create corruption world and grab it from there, but I really don't like content that just doesn't have direct alternative or way to acquire it without worldhopping, and accessories used in recipies are the biggest offender (both pre- and post-hardmode ones).
Nah, it’s just that crimson is tougher and gives better stuff
 
The whips and new summons are really awesome but the summoner class still gets a very raw deal (especially in pre hardmode) compared to what most of the other classes get to survive. I think the problem is that much of the summoner gear is locked behind bosses, events and rare drops (15% bestiary completion for the first whip is not as easy as it sounds especially on Master) .

Anyway, us summoners have learned to do things the hard way over the many years and we will continue to do so, so our happy little slimes can continue to feast on the moonlords carcass but it would be nice just once to get a bit of a break ya know? :sigh:

P.S Oh yeah, the requirement to get the Terraprisma?!? No words. :confused:

P.P.S don't want to make it sound like I am complaining. Journeys end is more than I could of dreamt for!
The Terraprisma is the best summon in the game, it makes sense it’s hard af to get.
 
Obsidian Rose (Buff)
- Increased the lava damage reduction from 30 to 45. This change applies to all of its tinkers, however, as a consequence, lava damage has been moved to its own immunity timer, as the change would allow lava to very easily be reduced to 1 damage with the proper loadout.
- Is now a component in the Lava Waders, extending its lava damage reduction to the Lava Waders, Hellfire Treads, and Terraspark Boots. This change is retroactive for people who have already crafted those items, of course!

Since Obsidian Rose will be such an important element in Terraspark Boots now, it should have a higher drop rate and drop from an additional enemy.
 
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