Items Buff the Biome Weapons
- Thread starter Lynxical
- Start date
Snapshot03
Official Terrarian
I think the only buff the desert tiger could use would be creating another summon after the max level is reached, and some AI improvements but that goes for most minions.
Lynxical
Plantera
The desert tiger is like the stardust dragon so it wouldn't make sense to me, but to me the only thing I could think of is reducing the pounce cooldown by 1 second, so instead of 6 seconds for level 1, 5 seconds for level 2, and 4 seconds for level 3, it would be 5 seconds for level 1, 4 seconds for level 2, and 3 seconds for level 3, but even then I don't really know it's a really good weapon
Snapshot03
Official Terrarian
The thing is the dragon can go through blocks and fly, but the tiger is limited my jump and dash making it much less effective. Having more slightly compensates, but as you can at most have 2 it doesn't really mess up the playstyle.
Lynxical
Plantera
I originally thought that as well, giving the weapon armor penetration due to the lower base damage, but it really didn't fix the problems with, in fact, it just created more. Vampire Knives benefit from from the Sharpening Station and flask of Ichor, giving 27 armor penetration, if the Vampire Knives had let's say an armor penetration of 10, then it would deal way too much damage with 37 armor penetration is absurd, seeing as a lot of enemies in hardmode tend to have 20-40 defense, it would allow a lot of broken stuff to happen. my point is to slightly revert the awful nerfs to the vampire knives while not making it completely overpowered. giving armor penetration could break the game and allow you to do you know 56 damage with the Vampire Knives and also bypass all the defense of an enemy. 56/14 is 4 so you could easily get up to 4 health from a full damage setup and bypass defense which would give you more health so around 6 health per hit and that would just be broken.
for the Piranha gun, giving it a higher damage of lets say 48 will also giving it 10 armor penetration wouldn't be a bad idea, it would still be a commitment to use but it would also deal better damage overall while not being completely broken
yeah that could work quite well for the desert tiger, it would make a lot of sense as well if when you reach the final tier you got a second tiger that was also final tier
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Mage-of-Rage
Duke Fishron
I understand the issues but I think the Vampire Knives are in a good place at the moment, the things are simply way too volatile so adding a little added numbers here or there can really swing these things into "too good" land. I'd say keep the Life Return and Life Cap increase but keep Damage and Knockback the same as the tradeoff for sustainability being poor crowd control seems fair.
Don't agree with this one as SoC after the 1.4.1 buffs is a really strong crowd control weapon in contrast to the Vampire Knives. It has the ability to absolutely shred invasions and has the nice ability of being a "fire and forget" weapon meaning unlike other Melee weapons the SoC can keep consistent DPS which is a rarity among Melees. The main downside is that it tends to struggle against bosses mostly cause outside of Golem everything past Plantera moves at all like Mach 10 or something...
The Piranha Gun is weird I agree. It's basic niche is it's a zero ammo cost, semi-homing projectile ranged weapon that can help decently with crowd control as a lot of ranged weapons are mostly single target. The main issue with this gun is that the Stynger exists as a more reliable, easily-farmable, low cost monster that basically fulfills everything the Piranha Gun wanted to be by times ten except for the homing part.
Though I agree with you that it needs some damage buffs I'm not sure if that's enough to warrant it being used over anything else so my suggestion is to make it so that swapping to a different gun doesn't make the piranha's latch off. That way it fulfills a new niche of being an added "support" weapon doing some ok but still free DPS.
I can see your reasoning with this one but I don't think the damage needs to be increased at all from the Rainbow Gun as it's a "fire and swap" Magic weapon like Magnet Sphere but I agree the size of the rainbow and duration kinda hurt it in that regard. The duration and size buffs would do it wonders in my opinion but perhaps lower the duration to only 30 seconds? The increase in time it stays straight might help as well.
Lynxical
Plantera
yeah that would work quite well, I actually went ahead and revised my thing. to me the reason for increasing damage on SoC was because Vampire Knives are just better due to life steal, but I assumed that SoC traded Life Steal for raw damage, but maybe I was wrong and they are really good at crowd control but I just never used them because VK are better?
qwerty3.14
Terrarian
I don't use vampire knives very often because I'm not the kind of player that grinds for biome keys, but in my most recent playthrough the rng gods had blessed me with a crimson key, and after using them I'd have to say.
VAMPIRE KNIVES ARE ABSOULTLY BUSTED
Ok sure you can't face tank with a glass cannon build but if you put at least a little effort into dodging attacks you're practically invicible, when I was doing wave 15 of the pumpkin moon and getting chased by about a dozen pumpkings, the vampire knives were more than enough to keep me alive, and I wasn't even using them constantly I just pulled them out between dark harvest swings. I would have died so many times if I didn't have the vamp knives.
Also using 'hearts' to describe healing rate is kind of unusual. Saying heart makes it sound like it scales off of max life which it doesn't. Usually when people talk about healing and life regen they use hp/s.
Looking at vampire knives in de compiled source code it seems that in normal mode they heal at a rate of up to 36hp/s, and expert 30hp/s, which is reached when doing 480dps or 400dps(depending on difficulty). Which is INSANE!, and you can heal even faster if you haven't used vampire knives in a while since your 'life steal' stat builds up when not using them.
In 1.3 everyone was freaking out about how op valhala was and that was just 8 hp/s. There's also spectre armor which uses the same life steal formula, but requires you to use an armor set with negative offensive stats, and is still generally considered to be op.
The desert tiger is still a bit weak. Yeah it has a high damage per hit but when you realise a flock of ravens has around the same dps as powered up tiger, it doesn't look that great anymore. Especially when you consider that the raven staff is surrounded by a bunch of other good loot, while there is no good post plantera items in the desert, and the fact that the raven staff is able to handle most flying enemies like the martian saucer and Empress of light with little trouble, while the desert tiger for some reason goes into a ball and just hovers over Empress of light without doing any damage.
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Lynxical
Plantera
The saying "hearts" refers to a cap they implemented in 1.2.2 I believe, which yes implemented a cap of 36hp/s and expert 30hp/s as you said, the official wiki said 2 hearts but that's inaccurate, what I wanted was a slight increase to that cap, of maybe 46hp/s and 40hp/s for expert, the reason being that if someone were to use a glass cannon build they wouldn't be able to heal past the cap per second, I don't know a lot about the life steal element but Vampire Knives aren't close to being "busted". They are good, yes, but they aren't ridiculous as the base damage of 29, combined with the 7.5% lifesteal rate, which means you have to deal 14 damage if you wanted a single point of health gained. Again I don't know a lot about the way lifesteal works but having a slight increase to a cap would generally help the life steal element has the low base damage and low knockback keep the weapon in check
Edit: I'm a long time Melee player and I know the Vampire Knives extremely well, besides the internal data of course, But I know the weapon and it's strengths and weaknesses, the life steal part is both good and bad, increasing the life steal from 7.5% to 8% would lower the damage needed to get health back by 1(14 damage to 13 damage) and increasing the cap would help me heal a little bit faster
Edit again: they don't need to be changed I was just hurt when they got nerfed and I was being petty that they needed a buff
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SuperSkeletonboi
Skeletron
The courrpt spear doesn't need a buff, its the second most powerful and could kill lunatic and the pillars with ease, If anything I think vamp knives should be buffed, the damage is the lowest and the knives only heal 3-6 hp, Piranna gun really needs a buff, the damage is weaker than most post plantera weaps and needs a different attack style, it is a very weird ranged weapon I woudn't bother using it needs a seirous buff, frost hydra is kinda bad against most enimies because they only shoot in one direction, ONE. they can't move because they a sentry and most fast moving mobs can easily avoid the dragons frost beam
Snapshot03
Official Terrarian
I don't think the corrupt spear is very good against multiple enemies, maybe 3 enemies at best, and the vampire knives are probably better than the corrupt spear. Lifesteal, good against 1 enemy and can hit 5 enemies. Also the amount it heals depends on the amount of damage and caps out so you're not imortal and for balanceing.The courrpt spear doesn't need a buff, its the second most powerful and could kill lunatic and the pillars with ease, If anything I think vamp knives should be buffed, the damage is the lowest and the knives only heal 3-6 hp, Piranna gun really needs a buff, the damage is weaker than most post plantera weaps and needs a different attack style, it is a very weird ranged weapon I woudn't bother using it needs a seirous buff, frost hydra is kinda bad against most enimies because they only shoot in one direction, ONE. they can't move because they a sentry and most fast moving mobs can easily avoid the dragons frost beam
qwerty3.14
Terrarian
Vampire knives have a very fast attack speed, you get 4-8 knives per throw. Even if you get just 1 health per knife that's up to 22.5 health per second. The base damage may be low but with some ichor and a decent reforge you should have no trouble hitting that life steal cap.
Lynxical
Plantera
I have been using Ichor recently due to me not healing for that much due to enemy defense and whatnot
Etotheipi
Retinazer
I feel like a lot of people don't really understand quite how good lifesteal is, if there were a potion that converted 1% of your damage into healing, I would argue that it needs a nerf. Vampire Knives have way more than a 1% heal:damage ratio and people are asking for buffs.
Lynxical
Plantera
They don't need to be changed actually, after looking at the fact that you can just use Ichor+Sharpening Station can let you bypass the low damage of the knives, I was just being petty about the knives because of how hard the nerfs hit them. the low damage combined with the low KB is a downside but the healing is good, I was just hurt because they were hit so hard
qwerty3.14
Terrarian
WIth ichor, reforge vamp knives and a warrior embelm, and nothing else I'm able to do enough damage to get a very fast heal rate againt Empress of light that puts pre nerf valhala to shame, and this is nowhere near the knive's max potential.
Now sure if you have literally no buffs the vamp knives can't do enough damage, but even just a little investment and you're healing like mad.
Travlordian01⚡️
Torch God
vampire knives don't need any buff, they are really good, and can get you from low health to almost full really quickly, which saves you, so i don't see it needing any of that.
Lynxical
Plantera
Yeah I completely forgot about how easy Ichor is to get, as you only need 2 for a single flask of ichor(which is incredibly busted), and a few buffs I can mow down enemies with tons of healing, I haven't tried out ichor out yet but it should give me some insane healing, now that we established that VK are still amazing can we move on to the actual bad weapons?