NPCs & Enemies Buff Lunatic Cultist

[Dispenser (Engineer)]

The Cultist is too weak at the moment and feels like a pretty weak excuse for the final boss before Moonlord. It's a cool concept having the player fight a player-like boss but its damage is poor and its health is low. I propose that the Cultist gets reworked into more of a glass canon boss, keep it's health the same but massively crank up the damage and make it move around much more frequently so that the idea of you fighting another player can be more developed helping to create a more unique experience for the player.

I also feel that the Cultist could use a treasure bag with an expert mode drop as it is the only boss in the game (besides the OOA bosses) that doesn't have these.

• Cracked Mask (Accessory - Expert mode drop) - 2 copies of the player are created that use the player's active weapon at 25% of the damage and aim at the player's cursor, gives the player a 10% chance to dodge attacks
• Ancient Light (Weapon - Any difficulty 50% drop chance) - Summons a spread of 5 ancient lights that deal 60 damage each, bounce off tiles infinitely and home onto enemies
• Lightning Orb (Accessory - Any difficulty 50% drop chance) - Summons an orb that strikes at nearby enemies with lightning at the cost of mana
• Ancient Energy (Crafting material - Any difficulty 100% drop chance in batches of 14-24) - Used alongside luminite to craft endgame accessories

I feel that these changes would make the Cultist more of a challenge which would incentivize players to complete more of what the game has to offer pre-lunar events due to more gear being required and would also help the Cultist to feel more rewarding to beat. If possible I would like to know if my proposed changes make the Cultist strong and rewarding enough or whether they are over or under tuned.

 

[Modding Salmon]

The Cultist is too weak at the moment and feels like a pretty weak excuse for the final boss before Moonlord. It's a cool concept having the player fight a player-like boss but its damage is poor and its health is low. I propose that the Cultist gets reworked into more of a glass canon boss, keep it's health the same but massively crank up the damage and make it move around much more frequently so that the idea of you fighting another player can be more developed helping to create a more unique experience for the player.

I also feel that the Cultist could use a treasure bag with an expert mode drop as it is the only boss in the game (besides the OOA bosses) that doesn't have these.

• Cracked Mask (Accessory - Expert mode drop) - 2 copies of the player are created that use the player's active weapon at 25% of the damage and aim at the player's cursor, gives the player a 10% chance to dodge attacks
• Ancient Light (Weapon - Any difficulty 50% drop chance) - Summons a spread of 5 ancient lights that deal 60 damage each, bounce off tiles infinitely and home onto enemies
• Lightning Orb (Accessory - Any difficulty 50% drop chance) - Summons an orb that strikes at nearby enemies with lightning at the cost of mana
• Ancient Energy (Crafting material - Any difficulty 100% drop chance in batches of 14-24) - Used alongside luminite to craft endgame accessories

I feel that these changes would make the Cultist more of a challenge which would incentivize players to complete more of what the game has to offer pre-lunar events due to more gear being required and would also help the Cultist to feel more rewarding to beat. If possible I would like to know if my proposed changes make the Cultist strong and rewarding enough or whether they are over or under tuned.

What would these endgame accessories be perhaps ?

 

[Mille Marteaux]

The Cultist is fine difficulty-wise. It serves as a basic competency check to ensure the player understands how to deal with projectiles spam from multiple directions and has enough damage to deal with the invasions it spawns. If you can't defeat the Cultist, then you have no business dealing with the invasions afterwards, let alone the Moon Lord.

This boss is nine years old and many players have had plenty of time to learn its attack patterns. Players who have practiced the battle many times are of course going to call it easy, but new players will still struggle with it. Making any aspect of the game harder because people who have been playing the game for a long time think it's easy is a bad idea and how Master mode came to exist.

 

[random terraria fan]

The Cultist is fine difficulty-wise. It serves as a basic competency check to ensure the player understands how to deal with projectiles spam from multiple directions and has enough damage to deal with the invasions it spawns. If you can't defeat the Cultist, then you have no business dealing with the invasions afterwards, let alone the Moon Lord.

This boss is nine years old and many players have had plenty of time to learn its attack patterns. Players who have practiced the battle many times are of course going to call it easy, but new players will still struggle with it. Making any aspect of the game harder because people who have been playing the game for a long time think it's easy is a bad idea and how Master mode came to exist.

ok but it still needs some more items it has the most great potential for drops but it has no real useful drops outside of the manipulator also somebody suggested a great idea for an upgrade i dont remember the name but basically at the end it gets a phase based off of one of the pillars randomly generated

 

[Mille Marteaux]

it still needs some more items

If the Cultist had more drops than the Manipulator, Mask, and Trophy then players would complain that you have to go through the entire Pillar event and Moon Lord to get another chance at what it drops. I personally consider Pillar weapons a part of the Cultist's loot pool since it drops the crafting station to make use of them.

 

[random terraria fan]

If the Cultist had more drops than the Manipulator, Mask, and Trophy then players would complain that you have to go through the entire Pillar event and Moon Lord to get another chance at what it drops. I personally consider Pillar weapons a part of the Cultist's loot pool since it drops the crafting station to make use of them.

fair point what about giving it one or two great and well rounded drops so you get both some ideas are a wand of multiple elements/attack types which you can cycle through with other button an accessory that makes potions bottomless and some sort of item that adds a unique buff depending on class

 

[Mille Marteaux]

a wand of multiple elements/attack types which you can cycle through with other button

A weapon drop from the Cultist wouldn't work because it either has to be on par with Celestial gear or it gets immediately replaced by the upcoming Celestial gear

an accessory that makes potions bottomless

This wouldn't work because you would just swap to it before buffing and swap off of it afterwards

some sort of item that adds a unique buff depending on class

there are no classes, there's just damage types and some armor boosts specific damage types more than others

this kind of item would either have to give all its buffs at once, or it would have to see what your highest damage modifier is and use that to grant one, neither of which really works when you already have Celestial Shell giving you boosts to everything

This is why I say that actual mechanical items don't work from Cultist, everyone already complains that all the gear from Golem to the Moons gets immediately outclassed and replaced with Celestial gear so why add more stuff to that pile? What would a new magic weapon do that Nebula Blaze and RBT aren't already doing? It can't reasonably drop a summon, you either already have Terraprisma or you're about to get a Stardust Dragon. Melee players are content to keep swinging their Terra Blade around and maybe dip their toes into using Daybreak, while Range players have an entire small nation's worth of options at this point and a Cultist drop is not going to improve their arsenal in any meaningful way.

 

[Benry Gaming]

Cultist feels epic to fight, but he needs to be buffed so he actually is epic too fight, if that makes sense

 

[Shilaila]

hmmm, I was watching a throarbin vid before and he was talking about the stellar tune from empress and then he had an idea that there could also be a lunar tune. Maybe one of the minions the lunatic cultist spawns in (eg ancient vision / phantasm dragon) could have a chance to drop this "lunar tune " weapon after ML is defeated, it could make the fight a bit more interesting also as the player would have to intentionally make the fight harder for themselves as they hit the wrong cultists to spawn in the minions which would still only have a small chance to drop it. The player would still probably pretty easily wreck the cultist still though because they have ML weapons.

Just an idea I had floating around in my head and this seems like the right place to put it out there.

 

[J Bame]

Cultist gets reworked into more of a glass canon boss, keep it's health the same but massively crank up the damage

If anything it should be the other way around, the whole point is to gatekeep the pillars until the player is ready, and a hard boss with a lot of HP forces you to bring the best gear into the fight.

If he is a glass cannon it's much easier to brute force it with early post golem gear.

 

[geniusbot]

no please no, i hate fighting this thing and it's one of my least favorite bosses

 

[Benry Gaming]

no please no, i hate fighting this thing and it's one of my least favorite bosses

I actually thought this at first too, but once you know all his attacks it's mind numbingly easy. What part are you struggling on?

 

[Coleyohley]

The Cultist is fine difficulty-wise. It serves as a basic competency check to ensure the player understands how to deal with projectiles spam from multiple directions and has enough damage to deal with the invasions it spawns. If you can't defeat the Cultist, then you have no business dealing with the invasions afterwards, let alone the Moon Lord.

If anything, the problem is the reverse: he is too easy. The developers have explained that the boss is explicitly a bait-and-switch; it's supposed to look like a grand epic battle is about to take place, but he is intentionally very easy and usually goes down in seconds. This causes a number of problems:

1: new players can kill Golem with low-power weapons, discover the Cultists at the temple, and then have a pretty engaging bossfight, the low health of the boss making their low-damage weapons seem adequate, when in reality they are incredibly undergeared for what is to come. Then, they get stuck in Lunar Pillar hell because those events are balanced around weapons from Empress, Duke, Martians, and the Seasonal Moon invasions, and Cultist's lack of difficulty didn't give them any impetus to look for upgrades to whatever they were using to fight Plantera and Golem. The pillars don't go away either, so now they'll be bothered by the Pillars while trying to look for new ways to get stronger.

2: Experienced players know they can beat Cultist with very weak equipment without much difficulty and not do any of the side content between him and Golem. One Pillar later and they have a weapon stronger than everything which came before it, making all of the rewards for content between Golem and Pillars feel pointless, giving little reason to engage with this content aside from doing it just for fun.

3: A player who actually completes all of said optional content (perhaps because they simply want to) will get powered up tremendously, and then curbstomp Cultist in a few dozen seconds, leading to an immensely unsatisfying battle and a hollow feeling that all that time they spent completing the optional content was wasted since Cultist died in 30 seconds and soon they'll get a weapon that's stronger than everything they're currently using.

This boss needs to be tougher, both to keep new and undergeared players from fighting Pillars too early, and to provide a satisfying battle for players who completed all the optional content before all that gear gets replaced anyway.

This boss is nine years old and many players have had plenty of time to learn its attack patterns. Players who have practiced the battle many times are of course going to call it easy, but new players will still struggle with it. Making any aspect of the game harder because people who have been playing the game for a long time think it's easy is a bad idea and how Master mode came to exist.

People also found him too easy nine years ago, and new players still find him too easy today, even on harder difficulties. He is woefully underpowered in comparison to every other piece of content surrounding him, and the content locked behind him is so much tougher than him that he cannot serve as an effective gatekeeper.

 

[Benry Gaming]

Yes, I've always thought Cultist should be a begining of the end sort of boss, not on the exact same level of difficulty as the previous boss

This boss is nine years old and many players have had plenty of time to learn its attack patterns. Players who have practiced the battle many times are of course going to call it easy, but new players will still struggle with it. Making any aspect of the game harder because people who have been playing the game for a long time think it's easy is a bad idea and how Master mode came to exist.

I've played this game for far less than 9 years. I beat him in like one hour after my first time fighting him, I've never died to him since. So, no, people don't only find him easy because they've practiced him a lot

 

[Mille Marteaux]

If anything, the problem is the reverse: he is too easy. The developers have explained that the boss is explicitly a bait-and-switch; it's supposed to look like a grand epic battle is about to take place, but he is intentionally very easy and usually goes down in seconds.

This is inherently the problem with the entire design of the event being "defeat this miniboss to start an invasion series to summon the final boss." If the battle becomes too difficult then repeated attempts to battle the final boss become much more tedious, while the battle being easy leads to the list of issues you go into.

1: new players can kill Golem with low-power weapons, discover the Cultists at the temple, and then have a pretty engaging bossfight, the low health of the boss making their low-damage weapons seem adequate. Then, they get stuck in Lunar Pillar hell because those events are balanced around weapons from Empress, Duke, Martians, and the Seasonal Moon invasions, and the player is fighting them with a Megashark. Cultist being too easy didn't give them any impetus to look for upgrades; what they were fighting him with felt adequate, despite being woefully underperforming for the Pillars.

This is a design flaw with the event itself and I feel that there need to be more failsafes in place to prevent this. Outside of Hardcore, the Cultist is the only fail state for the invasions until Moon Lord begins, and you can overcome them through sheer attrition. I'd sooner see the Pillars have a fail state where if enough time passes without a Pillar being defeated then the invasion should get repelled or something, and the fail state could be similar to throwing too large a stack of Guide Voodoo Dolls into the lava in the underworld and it could just cause a "ripple" effect to kill all current living players and NPCs. It'd still need to be a fairly long timer, but starting the invasions itself should be a commitment and there should be some pressing feeling you need to at least try.

2: Experienced players know they can beat Cultist with very weak equipment without much difficulty and don't do any of the side content between him and Golem. One Pillar later and they have a weapon stronger than everything which came before it, making all of the rewards for content between Golem and Pillars feel pointless, giving them no impetus to do them to begin with.

This is a design flaw with the Celestial-tier gear more than anything else. In my own ideal world I'd rather see those items all be brought down to Moon/Duke/Empress/Betsy-level performance and then see Moon Lord drops be the next tier up with enemy HP adjusted to match so you have more agency over your equipment and so cool items get to be used longer than six minutes.

3: A players who actually complete all of said optional content (perhaps because they simply want to) get powered up tremendously, and then curbstomp Cultist in a few dozen seconds, leading to an immensely unsatisfying battle and a hollow feeling that all that time they spent completing the optional content was wasted because Cultist died in 30 seconds and soon they'll get a weapon that's stronger than everything they're currently using.

See past point, but overpreparation trivializing bosses is far from only relevant to the Cultist.

This boss needs to be tougher, both to keep new and undergeared players from fighting Pillars too early, and to provide a satisfying battle for players who completed all the optional content before all that gear gets replaced anyway.

Ultimately, this is not an easy goal to reach. You cannot balance for all levels of player investment - leaning too far to accessibility leads to an overly easy boss encounter while leaning into making it more difficult leads to something that could be unapproachable for users.

There really is not an easy and elegant solution to this outside of giving it a temporary stat boost until you defeat it and then lowering its stats to make future encounters easier similar to other Pillars, but that feels awkward. Maybe Cultist could just get special scaling on Expert and above outside of special seeds so it can be more challenging for more skilled players, while retaining feeling approachable on lower difficulty levels? That's the only solution I can think of that isn't just adding health gates to prevent immediately deleting the boss or adding high levels of HP/damage to make it even worse to fight on higher difficulties.

The boss should be challenging the first time you face it, but you often do not only face this boss once. Repeated farming has to be taken into consideration, as even with the Celestial Sigil, you are eventually going to run out of fragments and have to battle this guy again, especially while you're still getting your armor set up or you didn't actually get the Moon Lord weapons you wanted.

 

[random terraria fan]

A weapon drop from the Cultist wouldn't work because it either has to be on par with Celestial gear or it gets immediately replaced by the upcoming Celestial gear


This wouldn't work because you would just swap to it before buffing and swap off of it afterwards


there are no classes, there's just damage types and some armor boosts specific damage types more than others

this kind of item would either have to give all its buffs at once, or it would have to see what your highest damage modifier is and use that to grant one, neither of which really works when you already have Celestial Shell giving you boosts to everything

This is why I say that actual mechanical items don't work from Cultist, everyone already complains that all the gear from Golem to the Moons gets immediately outclassed and replaced with Celestial gear so why add more stuff to that pile? What would a new magic weapon do that Nebula Blaze and RBT aren't already doing? It can't reasonably drop a summon, you either already have Terraprisma or you're about to get a Stardust Dragon. Melee players are content to keep swinging their Terra Blade around and maybe dip their toes into using Daybreak, while Range players have an entire small nation's worth of options at this point and a Cultist drop is not going to improve their arsenal in any meaningful way.

alright let me redo it some of these are inspired by other posts

A weapon drop from the Cultist wouldn't work because it either has to be on par with Celestial gear or it gets immediately replaced by the upcoming Celestial gear

alright how is this it has 4 modes shift like with shell phone

water mode: upgrade to the Ice Rod no mana cost shoots a Razorblade Typhoon like attack but block sized and less damage turns to ice block when it hits where curser was pierces once chills faster not really a damage weapon but freeze and block placing makes it useful

air mode: kinda upgrade to Magic Missile same controls but if you hold you can trap the mob in tornado and move it (within reason the heavier the mob the less well it works doesn't work on bosses) if you stop controlling while in a mob it will disappear if it is not in a mob it will go in the general direction you last moved it and home a little towards mobs if it hits them when your not controlling it it does high knockback

fire mode: hold to charge let go to fire it can to anything from spam click to quickfire to max charge to do a great damage fireball/fire stream with infinite pircing through walls that goes to curser and exploads like Inferno Fork exact detales like damage and stuff size would need to be scaled to not be op

earth mode: lets you burow though the ground does a pop up explosion of rocks and maybe a bolder in each direction when you leave the ground

lightning mode: summons a lightning bolt from the sky that hits one ememy and spreads to all ememy within range of an zapped emeny for chain lightning no max hit limit but cant go through walls

maybe a combo mode that costs alot of mana i can think of some cool ones

This wouldn't work because you would just swap to it before buffing and swap off of it afterwards

alright few options

1 makes all good effects infinit but they imediatly disapear when taking it off even if it was only on for a second

2 slows down time of potion loss maybe by half only while on

3 doubles all potion effect only while on

there are no classes, there's just damage types and some armor boosts specific damage types more than others

this kind of item would either have to give all its buffs at once, or it would have to see what your highest damage modifier is and use that to grant one, neither of which really works when you already have Celestial Shell giving you boosts to everything

alright how about it enhances depending the class of the weapon your holding just some ideas for effects

ranged: 1 gets infinite ammo

2 cycles through bulets in inventory bullets can be togled off


melee: 1 gets one of these doubled range extended by a hologram weapon thing around the weapon

2 the power to use shields if none in inventory summons a magic one they get striking moment buff Striking Moment

3 force field with cooldown can ether take one hit and disapear or have a damage limit


magic: 1 charge up spells by holding makes them bigger or deal more damage

returns mana if spell dident hit or based off and/or based off of damage it should have delt but dident this includes armor blocked damage

summoner: allows 2 wips per attack but each only do half damage

no class(empty hand/anything other then a weapon): % boost to stats(probably not all of them)




i think i have fixed or reduced all

This is why I say that actual mechanical items don't work from Cultist, everyone already complains that all the gear from Golem to the Moons gets immediately outclassed and replaced with Celestial gear so why add more stuff to that pile?

i would keep using that stuff

What would a new magic weapon do that Nebula Blaze and RBT aren't already doing? It can't reasonably drop a summon, you either already have Terraprisma or you're about to get a Stardust Dragon. Melee players are content to keep swinging their Terra Blade around and maybe dip their toes into using Daybreak, while Range players have an entire small nation's worth of options at this point and a Cultist drop is not going to improve their arsenal in any meaningful way.

i think the arsenal is improved by not making them strictly weapons the wand is more versitile then heavy the potion is an accesory not somthing you get from celestial and the class stuff is generaly usefull

if this is op all this is a genral guidline it would be reasonably easy to nerf

 

[Coleyohley]

This is inherently the problem with the entire design of the event being "defeat this miniboss to start an invasion series to summon the final boss." If the battle becomes too difficult then repeated attempts to battle the final boss become much more tedious, while the battle being easy leads to the list of issues you go into.

While this is true, there are many solutions to this problem, but that depends on the problem you wish to solve. The Cultist is not an effective gate to secure what is locked behind it; new players can too easily get in and get stuck. Both the "new" and the "stuck" in that sentence are important.

One solution is to make the Pillars have a failure condition, be that time elapsed or number of deaths or whatever other metric you desire. This will allow players who go in too early a chance to explore other options of powering up without being bothered by the incredibly dangerous and ever-present pillars. This does mean that new players will still stumble into an event they have no business dealing with, and that can still be frustrating even if it does go away eventually. It also robs Cultist of its chance to be a fun, engaging bossfight, and doesn't solve the issue of making all the optional side content feel a bit pointless.

Another solution is to make the Cultist a difficult, engaging boss that does his job as a gatekeeper well, and to simply make the Celestial Sigil cheaper. They've already done the second part, yes, but not nearly to the degree they would need to in order to make this change work, especially with how quickly the Moon Lord can kill a new player, allowing them no time to learn his attacks. Reduce the cost to 1 of each sigil each; hell, make it cost 10 of each but have unlimited uses. This detracts from the feeling of the Celestial Invasion being a gauntlet, but it also lets the Cultist be his own, satisfying bossfight. I also don't find redoing the whole event over and over just to fight Moon Lord to be compelling gameplay, either, so this would be my preferred solution.

These solutions are also my answer to many other parts of this message, so I will not be responding to those specifically.

This is a design flaw with the Celestial-tier gear more than anything else. In my own ideal world I'd rather see those items all be brought down to Moon/Duke/Empress/Betsy-level performance and then see Moon Lord drops be the next tier up with enemy HP adjusted to match so you have more agency over your equipment and so cool items get to be used longer than six minutes.

Is it a design flaw, though? If Cultist was an effective gatekeeper boss, you'd have a reason to go nab these weapons. The developers consider him to be the next level of progression after all of the optional content, but his difficulty just isn't worthy of giving access to gear from a tier ahead. If he was, it would be fine if the Fragment Gear was stronger than anything before it.

Nerfing them down a tier also simply doesn't solve the problem; the fragment gear actually needs to be worse than the gear from the side content, since Lunatic Cultist is easier to beat than all of them. Making it the same power level still means everything gets skipped. Making Cultist difficult both gives incentive to go out and power up, as well as justifying fragment gear being as strong as it is.

See past point, but overpreparation trivializing bosses is far from only relevant to the Cultist.

This is true, but Cultist is by far the most impacted by it, to the point that I cannot in good faith even call it "overpreparation" that kills him too fast. Yes, every other boss can be trivialized if you prepare hard enough; Cultist, however, gets trivialized by gear from several tiers before him.

Ultimately, this is not an easy goal to reach. You cannot balance for all levels of player investment - leaning too far to accessibility leads to an overly easy boss encounter while leaning into making it more difficult leads to something that could be unapproachable for users.

This is true, so you should balance around the new players. Cultist is not balanced around new players, he is intentionally too easy in order to facilitate a surprise victory that causes many problems. Those problems need fixing, one way or another.

There really is not an easy and elegant solution to this outside of giving it a temporary stat boost until you defeat it and then lowering its stats to make future encounters easier similar to other Pillars, but that feels awkward.

You could make it unnecessary to refight him (or at least not very often) to fix this issue. I personally don't think that's an aspect of the fight that needs to stay. I'd prefer to have a satisfying bossfight.

Maybe Cultist could just get special scaling on Expert and above outside of special seeds so it can be more challenging for more skilled players, while retaining feeling approachable on lower difficulty levels?

Isn't that the entire point of expert mode? To provide a challenge for skilled players?

 

[Mille Marteaux]

I pretty much agree with everything you say here, so I won't really mince words and just skip to the points I can reply to with more than just an "I agree"

This is true, so you should balance around the new players. Cultist is not balanced around new players, he is intentionally too easy in order to facilitate a surprise victory that causes many problems. Those problems need fixing, one way or another.

Yeah, on further reflection and research it is much more of an issue than I once thought it was. It has almost half the effective HP of Golem, and barely has more HP than Plantera, while not even having the Defense stat to back up its frailty. In fact, its defense goes down as the fight progresses.

If anything, I think its stats on Expert mode wouldn't be out of line for normal mode. I worry how it would scale with further difficulties, though, but that's a problem I genuinely do not have enough caffeine in me to process when I think that otherwise, its attack patterns are mostly fine? It just needs more numbers to really slow down and make you stop and think if you're ready for whatever is about to occur.

There's not even an indication that the pillars will happen after you defeat it, either - without context, the guy is just another enemy to mulch.

Isn't that the entire point of expert mode? To provide a challenge for skilled players?

Yeah, absolutely. It's just everything else in Expert is a flat multiplier while most enemies don't get any special treatment, and only really For The Worthy's difficulty modifiers apply any kind of special treatment to anything at all. It's a sort of "slippery slope" argument that leads into asking why we're giving Cultist in particular special treatment only for higher difficulties instead of addressing core concerns with the battle as a whole.

 

[Coleyohley]

Yeah, absolutely. It's just everything else in Expert is a flat multiplier while most enemies don't get any special treatment,

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and either assume you either haven't played classic mode in a long, long time (I admittedly haven't either), or you're talking about Master mode, which  actually doesn't change anything aside from stats.

Spoiler: Expert Mode Boss Changes

•Eye of Cthulhu's rapid dashes
•Brain of Cthulhu's illusions
•Eater of Worlds' vile spit
•Deerclops's Shadow Hands
•Queen Bee getting faster at low health
•Skeletron's homing skulls after a certain HP threshold, having very high defense if hands are still alive, and spinning at you much faster
•Wall of Flesh's speed boost at low health
•Skeletron Prime spinning at you much faster
•Plantera's tentacles being attached to her hooks as well as her bulb, shooting poison seeds occasionally, shooting her seeds through blocks, and all seeds having slight homing.
•Empress using her daytime pattern all the time
•Duke Fishron's entire third phase
•Lunatic Cultist adds Ancient Light to his attack pattern at 50% HP

and only really For The Worthy's difficulty modifiers apply any kind of special treatment to anything at all. It's a sort of "slippery slope" argument that leads into asking why we're giving Cultist in particular special treatment only for higher difficulties instead of addressing core concerns with the battle as a whole.

For The Worthy does give some bossfights significant changes, but many of these are made to be annoying or funny, and many others are just simply unimpactful. They are not supposed to be well-designed or fun to engage with.

As for Cultist, I think I find "He's actually hard now" to be a meaningful-enough Expert mode 'mechanic.' Of course, I would make him harder in every difficulty, not just Expert+.

 

[Mille Marteaux]

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and either assume you either haven't played classic mode in a long, long time (I admittedly haven't either), or you're talking about Master mode, which  actually doesn't change anything aside from stats.

Yeah, I haven't played Classic in ages, and while I remember Expert has a few mechanical changes, I don't remember the Cultist having any meaningful ones since most of the impactful ones were in PHM.. but I've also never fought some of these bosses on Classic mode (everything from 1.3 onwards), to the point where seeing EoL on Classic mode leads to her using attacks that I have simply never seen.

My last playthroughs in recent memory have been Legendary FTW, multiplayer Master, duo Expert with someone mostly new to the game so I wasn't playing minmaxy, and then Legendary GFB followed by a solo Expert detox where everything was so much easier than what I remember I just chalked it up to playing on a sane difficulty level rather than anything else.

So yeah, my memories of Cultist are very, very skewed and full of Phantasm Dragon/Prophecy's End OHKOs, and buffs on lower difficulties also impact higher difficulties indirectly. That's my main fear and concern with all of this, but I think a slight statistical bump wouldn't hurt anything on the sane difficulty levels anyway since Master and FTW are basically just "is this too easy for you?" difficulty levels.