Weapons & Equip Accessories modifiers and side stuff.

[KuroShinryu]

Critical hits modifier: Critical hits formula now increases the damage before applying the reduction from enemies defense. This makes low damage items with rapid fire rates or multi-hits benefit more from higher critical hit chances and gives a reason to have critical strike on accessories at all, since a lot of items don't benefit from critical hits and currently it gives the same amount of dps than having a damage roll would. Two tiers also added. Edit: Added critical strike damage, because it was a simply worst modifier than the others.

• Calm: +1% critical strike chance and +2% critical strike damage.
• Zen: +2% critical strike chance and +4% critical strike damage.
• Favored: +3% critical strike chance and +6% critical strike damage.
• Lucky: +4% critical strike chance and +8% critical strike damage.

Now critical hit modifiers have a niche. This is fixed. Simply changing the formula didn't have the effect I assumed and instead of being better than damage against armored enemies after the change, it ended up being simply EQUAL instead of weaker. Given that I've even given the damage modifier a buff, it feels necessary to buff this as well.



Movement speed modifier: Buffed to 2% movement speed per tier. Movement speed is good, but it seems less desirable than other reforges, we could try increasing it and see if more people are enticed to actively seek this modifier. This means 48% increased movement speed with 6 accessories with a tier 4 movement speed modifier.

• Brisk: +2% movement speed.
• Fleeting: +4% movement speed.
• Hasty: +6% movement speed.
• Quick: +8% movement speed.

Important side-note: This means that the movement speed limit capacity should be increased, as we are not counting any potion, boots or sunflower movement speed boosts and the limit is 60%. 120% seems like a good new limit.



Melee speed modifier: Now gives 1% damage (to everything) and 1% melee attack speed per tier. Swords and spears could use the buff. Yoyos, boomerangs and flails only get a range (and I think velocity?) increase from the attack speed.

• Wild: +1% damage and melee attack speed.
• Rash: +2% damage and melee attack speed.
• Intrepid: +3% damage and melee attack speed.
• Violent: +4% damage and melee attack speed.

Related: Flails return speed should be increased significantly, kiting with them is really bad, they hang in the air trying to catch up to you while you can't attack again or control where your weapon goes. As melee this leaves you with little options for piercing mid-range attacks early on (I think some spears are still good, those with a decent range, they are better for the knockback and multi-hits and benefit from attack speed decently with the new auto-swing). Number wise they look strong compared to before, but after actually playing a melee character on Master mode, they are weak. Also their drop ability should be moved to the right-click, so that they can benefit from shooting out rapidly with the melee auto accessory, like boomerangs do. I had an idea to move boomerangs damage back to "thrown damage" but that's an entirely different topic...

Unrelated:

Spoiler: Random underworld stuff

As for other topics I'd also like to mention dungeon and underworld. Nothing separates the progression from Skeletron to underworld. OK, sure, some items require Skeletron to be dead at least once in that world to drop, but the dungeon items, for the most part, especially melee, are highly unnecessary, at best being crafting materials for underworld weapons. Somehow making the underworld monsters stronger doesn't seem like the solution either... as that'd just be even more annoying rather than a difficulty gap. So I thought just now, what if the underworld was guarded by a mini-boss that spawned if you stayed too long in the underworld to prevent farming underworld items ill-prepared? A kind of flying demon-mini-boss maybe, with a tile piercing projectile. He would show up if you stayed like, 1 or 2 minutes in the underworld but leave you alone and despawn if you managed to get back out of the underworld. Killing it would unlock voodoo demons spawns. A new type of demon could be added to the underworld to give the player a monster to farm to re-summon that boss again for the drops (which won't be mentioned here, this is just the general idea). It would have a similar projectile as the boss but it wouldn't pierce walls (Imps are annoying enough).

Magic capacity modifier: Now also gives mana cost reduction and has tiers.

• Enchanted: +2% mana cost reduction, +5 maximum mana.
• Magical: +4% mana cost reduction, +10 maximum mana.
• Arcane: +6% mana cost reduction, +15 maximum mana.
• Cosmic: +8% mana cost reduction, +20 maximum mana.

This would be ideal with the high mana-consumption items.



Damage increase modifier: Straight up damage increase has been merged with melee attack speed, so this one is repurposed.

• Jagged: +1 defense and +7% thorn damage increased.
• Spiked: +2 defense and +14% thorn damage increased.
• Angry: +3 defense and +21% thorn damage increased.
• Menacing: +4 defense and +28% thorn damage increased.

Important side-note 1: The damage increase of thorns is applied to the final damage.
So NOT : monster damage * (thorn multiplier+thorn damage increase)
BUT INSTEAD: (monster damage * thorn multiplier) * thorn damage multiplier.

Important side-note 2: Any thorn damage knockback can now be increased with potions or items. Thorn potion damage increased to 150% damage returned (one and a half time) before any damage reduction occurs and the damage is now dealt in a small area around the player (between 6-8 blocks radius). New yellow spikes visual effects around the player representing the damage area for thorn potion triggers, the angle at which it spawns random each time. Cactus armor set bonus now deals 25 returned damage across all difficulty levels, also deals damage in an area, same visual as thorn potion, but green, random determines which effect between cactus and thorn potion appears over the other, and because of the random angles, we should be able to see both most of the time. Turtle armor set bonus thorn damage increased to 300% (three times damage received) before any damage reduction occurs. This damage also occurs in an area, this time even larger (12-16 tiles), and the visual will be red. All of those are thorn damage and benefit from this accessory damage modifier.

Important side-note 3: Ideally, defense wouldn't get more efficient in Expert and Master mode. But this would require other balancing, so I'm leaving that out, as it would take a lot of small changes and testing.



Defense increase modifier: Repurposed, but still a defensive modifier.

• Hard: 1% damage reduction.
• Guarding: 2% damage reduction.
• Armored: 3% damage reduction.
• Warding: 4% damage reduction.

For a total of 24% damage reduction with 6 accessories using this modifier. Stacks with other similar boosts like Worm Scarf and Turtle Armor set bonus (+ not *).



NEW! Projectile efficiency modifier:

• Balanced: Bullets, arrows and thrown weapons (excluding explosives) velocity increased by 2% and they now ignore 0.5 armor.
• Stabilized: Bullets, arrows and thrown weapons velocity increased by 4% and they now ignore 1 armor.
• Advanced: Bullets, arrows and thrown weapons velocity increased by 6% and they now ignore 1.5 armor.
• Sonic: Bullets, arrows and thrown weapons velocity increased by 8% and they now ignore 2 armor.

Armor reduction is rounded up.



Slightly related:

Spoiler: Magic stuff

I've also got other ideas, like mana shields, which could be a common bonus on melee items. It would transfer a % of damage to the mana.

If you have other ideas you think I should add, write them below, if I like it, I'll add it.

 

[J Bame]

Critical hits modifier: Critical hits formula now increases the damage before applying the reduction from enemies defense. This makes low damage items with rapid fire rates or multi-hits benefit more from higher critical hit chances and gives a reason to have critical strike on accessories at all, since a lot of items don't benefit from critical hits and currently it gives the same amount of dps than having a damage roll would. Two tiers also added.

• Calm: +1% critical strike chance.
• Zen: +2% critical strike chance.
• Favored: +3% critical strike chance.
• Lucky: +4% critical strike chance.

Now critical hit modifiers have a niche. This is fixed.

I don't think extra modifiers are necessary, and even if there is much harm in changing the formula, the difference it makes isn't that big at the end of the day. Not really a needed change.

Movement speed modifier: Buffed to 2% movement speed per tier. Movement speed is good, but it seems less desirable than other reforges, we could try increasing it and see if more people are enticed to actively seek this modifier. This means 48% increased movement speed with 6 accessories with a tier 4 movement speed modifier.

• Brisk: +2% movement speed.
• Fleeting: +4% movement speed.
• Hasty: +6% movement speed.
• Quick: +8% movement speed.

Important side-note: This means that the movement speed limit capacity should be increased, as we are not counting any potion, boots or sunflower movement speed boosts and the limit is 60%. 120% seems like a good new limit.

Interestingly enough the Movement Speed cap seems to have been completely removed at one point in 1.4.

That being said it takes 100% movement speed to just reach the speed of Hermes Boots, and this take on Quick less than half of that at most. It's not worth it to go all out on the Movement Speed stat when you can just equip Hermes Boots and get all the speed you'll need out of those.

Melee speed modifier: Now gives 1% damage (to everything) and 1% melee attack speed per tier. Swords and spears could use the buff. Yoyos, boomerangs and flails only get a range (and I think velocity?) increase from the attack speed.

• Wild: +1% damage and melee attack speed.
• Rash: +2% damage and melee attack speed.
• Intrepid: +3% damage and melee attack speed.
• Violent: +4% damage and melee attack speed.

Violent is awful and the true melee weapons that benefit the most from it are almost always bad, so sure, not a bad idea.

Magic capacity modifier: Now also gives mana cost reduction and has tiers.

• Enchanted: +2% mana cost reduction, +5 maximum mana.
• Magical: +4% mana cost reduction, +10 maximum mana.
• Arcane: +6% mana cost reduction, +15 maximum mana.
• Cosmic: +8% mana cost reduction, +20 maximum mana.

This would be ideal with the high mana-consumption items.

Rule 6 of Terraria: Thou shall not have an amount of max mana that isn't divisible by 20.

That being said, giving a mana cost reduction to this modifier is a perfect idea to make it viable.

Damage increase modifier: Straight up damage increase has been merged with melee attack speed, so this one is repurposed.

• Jagged: +1 defense and +7% thorn damage increased.
• Spiked: +2 defense and +14% thorn damage increased.
• Angry: +3 defense and +21% thorn damage increased.
• Menacing: +4 defense and +28% thorn damage increased.

Important side-note 1: The damage increase of thorns is applied to the final damage.
So NOT : monster damage * (thorn multiplier+thorn damage increase)
BUT INSTEAD: (monster damage * thorn multiplier) * thorn damage multiplier.

Actually an interesting way to buff Warding, however Thorns is generally an unreliable way to deal damage so it really won't be doing all that much for you, even with the AoE. Still an interesting proposal.

Defense increase modifier: Repurposed, but still a defensive modifier.

• Hard: 1% damage reduction.
• Guarding: 2% damage reduction.
• Armored: 3% damage reduction.
• Warding: 4% damage reduction.

For a total of 24% damage reduction with 6 accessories using this modifier. Stacks with other similar boosts like Worm Scarf and Turtle Armor set bonus (+ not *).

24% Damage reduction is a permanent Frozen Turtle Shell, that is not ok. There is a reason that item is only active when below half health. It'd be very easy to reach absurd levels of tankiness with this modifier.

NEW! Projectile efficiency modifier:

• Balanced: Bullets, arrows and thrown weapons (excluding explosives) velocity increased by 2% and they now ignore 0.5 armor.
• Stabilized: Bullets, arrows and thrown weapons velocity increased by 4% and they now ignore 1 armor.
• Advanced: Bullets, arrows and thrown weapons velocity increased by 6% and they now ignore 1.5 armor.
• Sonic: Bullets, arrows and thrown weapons velocity increased by 8% and they now ignore 2 armor.

Armor reduction is rounded up.

High-Belocity bullets used to be literally 8 times faster than a normal bullet and yet nobody used them until 1.4.1 made them pierce. A bit of velocity and a tiny bit of extra damage (replaceable by Ichor, STN or other sources) doesn't cut it.

 

[Toxophilite [East]]

Modifiers already have a niche & are fine as is. Yeah, the system isn't perfect, but it's already evolved in just 1.4.0, enough to understand it's universal usefulness.

For example:

• Warding was the King of 1.3.5, Expert Mode.
• Menacing is the new King in 1.4.0+, Master Mode.
• Other Modifiers are decent placeholders in early game.
• Lucky is useful with the DD2 Equipment if you want lesser Mobs to explode!
• etc.

Honestly, no one could've foreseen the evolution of this meta, no matter what they claim. That's why balancing is supposed to be a gradual process, so you can see the long-term effects of your small adjustments. This series of buffs should be pretty much left alone, as none of them are useless & are partially an improvement in some way or another, depending on your progression state. I'm sure the devs understand this now, given the balance changes we just got today, so yeah... cool ideas, but totally unnecessary. *sigh of relief*

 

[KuroShinryu]

I don't think extra modifiers are necessary, and even if there is much harm in changing the formula, the difference it makes isn't that big at the end of the day. Not really a needed change.

I think it's one of the most important changes. To give it a different role than just being damage. This makes it a counter to high defense enemies, this makes weapons like vilethorn really good, an effect which you could only get else wise by switching to a different weapon entirely. If that hasn't convinced you let's agree to disagree.

Interestingly enough the Movement Speed cap seems to have been completely removed at one point in 1.4.

That being said it takes 100% movement speed to just reach the speed of Hermes Boots, and this take on Quick less than half of that at most. It's not worth it to go all out on the Movement Speed stat when you can just equip Hermes Boots and get all the speed you'll need out of those.

Then you need to play more Terraria. Pure movement speed gives you an acceleration and a mobility you cannot obtain with speed boots unless you use a dash item.

24% Damage reduction is a permanent Frozen Turtle Shell, that is not ok. There is a reason that item is only active when below half health. It'd be very easy to reach absurd levels of tankiness with this modifier.

You'd have to sacrifice all those other useful modifiers to get that much. I think it's entirely fine. Absurd levels of tankiness don't save you in terraria if you don't dodge (I only play master since it has released). Ok sure maybe with vampire knives, a nice armor, some potion buffs... but at that point I'd say you just prepared well and it ain't op. Also the spread has been nerfed so much you have to be really close. Even if it WAS completely broken, if I was competent enough to make a mod I'd take a look at the game mechanics and item balance across the board. Assume that expert and master modes don't give you extra value for each point of defense, as it should, and maybe you'll understand my point of view.

High-Belocity bullets used to be literally 8 times faster than a normal bullet and yet nobody used them until 1.4.1 made them pierce. A bit of velocity and a tiny bit of extra damage (replaceable by Ichor, STN or other sources) doesn't cut it.

I think you're wrong again there, that amount of armor penetration with shark tooth necklace combined would make minishark a deadly weapon viable against nearly anything. It's actually a really useful. Multi-hit arrows would also delight in fast projectiles with a lot less damage reduction.

the system isn't perfect

Completely agree, so maybe don't shoot me down so fast?

Lucky is useful with the DD2 Equipment if you want lesser Mobs to explode!

If by useful you mean you get to see big numbers, sure, but being actually more useful than simply pure damage on your accessories? Never. It's literally the same amount of dps increase, I did the math and that only applies to no defense monster, literally you LOSE damage if you use crit instead of pure damage. About no monster in the game will have no defense. So here's why it's bad:

IE 20% damage = 100*1.2 = 120, now crits, 20% crit chance = 1 crit every 5 hits so lets calculate 5 hits where one is a crit and do the average , ( 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 200 )/5 = still 120.

Now the monster has 20 defense.

20% damage = 100*1.2 - 20 = 100, 20% crit = (80 + 80 + 80 + 80 + 160)/5 = 96 damage in average.

AKA crit is bad and you should not actively seek it. With my new formula.

20% crit = (80 + 80 + 80 + 80 + (200-20))/5 = 100, no dps loss. Still the worst affix I have wow thanks for making me realize that, I'll fix that soon.

Everything else

Sounds like you're saying if it's not broken don't fix it. Well to me it's broken. And the evolution of the "meta" was because of changes to mechanics, and yes, it was predictable... easily, because I look up the mechanics and understand how they work from my many hours of playing. I agree that balance should be a gradual process but I think I did a good job for starting numbers to try out. If I could I'd test them myself!

Because it sounds like you simply disagree but you can't explain why, I'd encourage simply using the poll.

 

[Toxophilite [East]]

Completely agree, so maybe don't shoot me down so fast?

Sorry for the lightning reaction, but we just got balance back on track, with the 1.4.1.2 updates & people are already asking for more buffs! With the changes to debuffs & DoT, we don't really need any more power leaks. I don't mind Menacing & Warding being the meta, but I wish you were around when I was fighting so hard to keep Summoner in check much earlier, 'cause I really felt alone out there.

If by useful you mean you get to see big numbers, sure, but being actually more useful than simply pure damage on your accessories? Never. It's literally the same amount of dps increase, I did the math and that only applies to no defense monster, literally you LOSE damage if you use crit instead of pure damage. About no monster in the game will have no defense. So here's why it's bad:

IE 20% damage = 100*1.2 = 120, now crits, 20% crit chance = 1 crit every 5 hits so lets calculate 5 hits where one is a crit and do the average , ( 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 200 )/5 = still 120.

Now the monster has 20 defense.

20% damage = 100*1.2 - 20 = 100, 20% crit = (80 + 80 + 80 + 80 + 160)/5 = 96 damage in average.

AKA crit is bad and you should not actively seek it. With my new formula.

20% crit = (80 + 80 + 80 + 80 + (200-20))/5 = 100, no dps loss. Still the worst affix I have wow thanks for making me realize that, I'll fix that soon.

I'll give you the benefit of doubt & run a DD2 gauntlet with raw Menacing vs. raw Lucky buffs, to see if my assumptions are correct vs. your hard numbers. Keep in mind, there are numerous methods to ignoring enemy armor & DoT methods are now able to be stacked because of changes to buffs/ certain Classes. We also have Class-neutral DPS such as the Bone Glove to curve diminishing returns on burst DPS, meaning, enemies will explode with big numbers more consistently, especially with each DoT tick having the potential to crit every single time.

Sounds like you're saying if it's not broken don't fix it. Well to me it's broken. And the evolution of the "meta" was because of changes to mechanics, and yes, it was predictable... easily, because I look up the mechanics and understand how they work from my many hours of playing. I agree that balance should be a gradual process but I think I did a good job for starting numbers to try out. If I could I'd test them myself!

Don't worry, I'll run the tests for you to explain exactly why I disagree with your position. For a person who can predict the meta, I find it odd that you are suggesting more buffs with the improvements we've already had in 1.4.1, that will obviously impact balance in a negative way. DoT has never been in such a good place & the ability to stack debuffs is pretty obnoxious right now, this is excluding buffs & Class specific quirks. Also, if you didn't know, Cool Whip just got the Frostburn debuff... crit is looking more & more appealing right now IMHO.

Because it sounds like you simply disagree but you can't explain why, I'd encourage simply using the poll.

Already did, but I plan to run some tests to show you exactly why I disagree. Keep in mind that you're a numbers person, who also suggested the ability to predict the meta, as an obvious. Once I do this breakdown, I look forward to seeing your response.

 

[Toxophilite [East]]

Welp, that didn't take very long at all considering all the newer buffs we got! It's exactly as I suspected & I can explain to you exactly why it's easy to draw a false conclusion here. Here are the collection of observations I made that are likely deceiving the average player about Critical Strike chance & explain what's actually happening with with what I gathered from my test runs.

• The in-game DPS counter is noticeably lower on a Critical Strike build, when compared to raw Menacing DPS.
• Tankier targets tend to resist Critical Strike chance much better than lesser Mobs, which means it's likely less effective against Bosses.
• Most players have poor fundamentals when it comes to stacking their DoT & DPS sources, along with synergy, which means they're likely leaving damage potential on the table.

Test Numbers 1 & 2: Menacing focused build, the well-known Meta of Master Mode.

Here I got lucky & was able to show two things, an impressive number of DPS, clocking in around 9100+ damage per second & also an example of how the damage is spread out, as you'll see the lesser Mobs contributing highly to that smexy number. Though it's obvious to see that the lesser Mobs are dying faster, it's important to note that they are still alive & absorbing a rather large portion of the damage spread. This may be confusing to most, which I understand, but allow me to explain later in my testing to clear things up.

Test Number 3: Lucky (Critical Strike) focused build, the lesser-known Meta of any mode.

As you can clearly see, the DPS meter isn't nearly as attractive as 9100+ DPS, clocking in at about a consistent 4200+ with a Cricical Strike build, but I want to point out two very imprtant things that might get easily overlooked.

1. Notice that the enemy counter is significantly lower & the progression bar is filling up much faster, only leaving behind the more powerful, tankier enemies (12 compared to approx 26).
2. Also notice how much more often the lesser enemies explode, before ever posing any real threat to the crystal, save for the more powerful opponents who might need to be focused-down to kill.

I only needed to do a total of three test because the evidence was pretty obvious & pretty conclusive IMHO. The numbers, yet again are pretty deceptive, especially when context isn't taken into account at all. Just to ensure that anyone can duplicate exactly what I did here, I'll share my build I used for this experiment below, so there's no misunderstanding & any conclusions I've made here can be effectively challenged.

Weapons: North Pole (Godly), Flying Dragon (Legendary, side arm)
Trap Weapons (always active): Clinger Staff (Mythical), Nimbus Rod (Mythical)
Sentries (always active): Frost Hydra x4 (free), Ballista Tier 3 (Legendary)
Armor: Valhalla Knight Set
Accessories: Fishron Wings, Summoner's Emblem, Papyrus Scarab, Star veil, Volatile Gelatin, Lightning Boots, Worm Scarf (+modifiers, Menacing vs. Lucky)
Buffs: any DPS buffs, though Rage Potion was not used during this test.

This build was the most obvious choice to me, because the the potential for individual hits, per projectile, all counted separately, plus DoT, gave the highest ideal chances to crit. I wanted to maximize the potential to do critical damage as much as humanly possible, using what I already knew, which I'm sure isn't the best possible set-up. All testing was done on Master Mode difficulty, to ensure the most possible enemy resistance to the effectiveness of my strategy. If my findings weren't sound, it was my hope that the enemies would steamroll my strategy & run-amuck, OOA enemies being the perfect candidates to do so. I also had the Frost Moon Event on standby, just incase my findings weren't definitive enough, but I found that it was ultimately unnecessary.

 

[J Bame]

I think it's one of the most important changes. To give it a different role than just being damage. This makes it a counter to high defense enemies, this makes weapons like vilethorn really good, an effect which you could only get else wise by switching to a different weapon entirely. If that hasn't convinced you let's agree to disagree.

As your tests show below it's not a big difference. Yes, the solution is simple and it would make it equal to Menacing but you'd only ever notice or care if you are min-maxing to the extremes, I really don't think it's that important.

Then you need to play more Terraria. Pure movement speed gives you an acceleration and a mobility you cannot obtain with speed boots unless you use a dash item.

Yes, I know about the acceleration and I also don't care about it. Movement Speed is only a minor acceleration boost all things considered, and I'm not going to make it less minor when I can just equip a dash, which would do it infinitely better (you cannot beat instant speed) and doesn't require me to sink all my accessory modifiers into it.

I think it's entirely fine. Absurd levels of tankiness don't save you in terraria if you don't dodge (I only play master since it has released). Ok sure maybe with vampire knives, a nice armor, some potion buffs... but at that point I'd say you just prepared well and it ain't op.

There is a certain point where a hypothetical all-out defense build would reduce all damage taken to 1. In this case, it doesnt matter if you can't dodge, or if your damage is so low that you can't kill anything because you are effectively unkillable. Since this game has no kind of diminishing returns on defense or DR, making Warding good risks creating a new meta where the best way to play is to go all out defense and facetank everything with no skill involved.

To avoid this, the solution is obviously to rework defense/damage reduction, which means looking through every single defensive item throughout the game and tweaking them so they'd fit into this new system, and that's so much work that you begin to wonder if there is truly an issue with Warding being below average before starting it.

I think you're wrong again there, that amount of armor penetration with shark tooth necklace combined would make minishark a deadly weapon viable against nearly anything. It's actually a really useful. Multi-hit arrows would also delight in fast projectiles with a lot less damage reduction.

Alright, sure. It'd would be pretty useful with Minishark and maybe a few other weapons that deal very low damage. What about every other weapon in the game? This kinda just sounds like a redundant alternative to Menacing.

 

[KuroShinryu]

all

I simply don't understand what your tests prove, if anything. Seems you put a lot of work in that reply, so I'll give you mine

It's simply obvious that a critical build would spike more and be more random, so you can't really test it in game, any other way than formulas to get the real truth has uncontrollable variables. The only reason to test anything in game, in my opinion, is to use items in their proper period of hypothetical value (when they have any, sometimes balance is pretty bad and some items need to be found earlier) and see if they feel good to use, because it's pretty easy to tell if it's useful, op or useless.

Moreover, I don't know why you used summons and dots, which just come mucking up the test results, even tho the test is already useless because of what I mentioned earlier.

Also, what synergy. Dots don't have synergy with anything as far as I'm aware, it's a flat rate and there's no way to modify it.

You mention enemy counter... You can't rely on that as data. Pretty sure the spawns are somewhat random and even if it wasn't, for the test to be accurate you'd have to fight in the EXACT same manner in both tests. So that has no value as well.

I think it'd be pretty easy to have someone knowledgeable of the game mechanics confirm (or deny...) the maths I used.
Despite the test being... broken. I think you still managed to confirm that straight menacing outperforms crits, which was my claim to begin with.

 

[Toxophilite [East]]

I simply don't understand what your tests prove, if anything. Seems you put a lot of work in that reply, so I'll give you mine

I think you're misunderstanding my intentions. Any time I question certain portions of the game, or have a theory, I test. I take what I know about the game already & apply it to actual scenarios. I come from the FGC, we test, bold claims with nothing to substantiate them are useless information. I just proved that a Critical Strike chance build has some use, Menacing being better or not would depend entirely on what the player's goals are. I could easily see a co-op playthrough of crit & Menacing working together, I'm always thinking about context, not just numbers. That test showed me that my suspicions were true & yours are still to be determined. In fact, it might be possible that a crit-based build might be better for the Moon Events, since so many players are having trouble raising the progression bar in Master Mode.

It's simply obvious that a critical build would spike more and be more random, so you can't really test it in game, any other way than formulas to get the real truth has uncontrollable variables. The only reason to test anything in game, in my opinion, is to use items in their proper period of hypothetical value (when they have any, sometimes balance is pretty bad and some items need to be found earlier) and see if they feel good to use, because it's pretty easy to tell if it's useful, op or useless.

I could've easily raised my 53% crit chance rate to 63% with Rage Potions, in addition, Desert Tiger has been significantly buffed. There's a LOT of things that can effect that Minions DPS as well, making it rather unique among it's peers. I'm not sure how you can claim anything is obvious, when the meta has likely shifted again with the newer balance patches. I've concluded that Lucky competes with Menacing with the right build, took the time & proved it. Unless you have some evidence that suggests otherwise, I've done my part.

Moreover, I don't know why you used summons and dots, which just come mucking up the test results, even tho the test is already useless because of what I mentioned earlier.

I don't think you understood the test, which is why you're likely reaching. You can always make adjustments to set a new standard you feel more favorably suits your opinion, as that's what I did. You can't really argue prefix swaps, with the exact same build, it's too direct. In both cases I was persuaded to go on the offensive, with no real extraneous obstacles, as it's a tower defense battle. It's about as pure as pure can get & the results were very revealing IMO.

Also, what synergy. Dots don't have synergy with anything as far as I'm aware, it's a flat rate and there's no way to modify it.

I don't remember listing them, but insert Minion [here] if you want, Desert Tiger actually inflicts crit damage so... if it's that important to you, feel free?

You mention enemy counter... You can't rely on that as data. Pretty sure the spawns are somewhat random and even if it wasn't, for the test to be accurate you'd have to fight in the EXACT same manner in both tests. So that has no value as well.

Nope, I did two runs of Menacing for a reason, the fights were pretty much the same. Once I saw a significant difference in pace with Lucky, that was all the data I needed (I took the snapshots to also show the visual differences between fights). The pace of a Tower Defense battle doesn't just change randomly, the progression bar exists for a reason. I don't think I need to explain this, as anyone competent in Terraria knows what that entails, especially with Moon Events, so I'll move on from this point, as it's kinda throwaway.

I think it'd be pretty easy to have someone knowledgeable of the game mechanics confirm (or deny...) the maths I used.

I'm suggesting your math is limited & likely missing a formula that isn't being taken into consideration. I don't know what that formula might be, but this looks like a flat math equation, which doesn't seem flexible enough to consider alternatives or intention.

Despite the test being... broken. I think you still managed to confirm that straight menacing outperforms crits, which was my claim to begin with.

Not sure how you came to this conclusion but... okay, I guess? Just so we're clear, I always engage in discussion like this to learn about the game. I just collected useful information that'll serve me much later on. It's not important to me if you understand what I just showed you or not, someone with more battle intellect will understand what I just revealed here. Lucky is not really something I've explored outside of PvP & using a Sniper Rifle-based build, so this was all pretty informative.

Conclusively, I think you're wrong about prefixes; you're free to disagree, of course, but I don't see any of your suggestions happening anyway. The quality assurance team is back & in rare form. I'm 1000% sure a suggestion like this won't make it past review.

Edit: I did some testing & Lucky Modifier is already pretty OP [view]