I’m not sure how you got 120hp/s, if it heals 1hp per hit the maximum per second is 60hp/s, unless I’m missing something because I’m not smart to this game sometimes, but if it heals 1hp per hit that’s only 2hp/s at base stats
But onto the actual “healing” issue is that the healing equates to .8hp/s in practice, which is less than a Band of Regen, my original idea was to lower that “heal charge” from 6 seconds to 4 or 5 seconds(5 seconds=1hp/s, 4 seconds=1.25hp/s) the stats are poor but if you want us the focus on the healing then it needs to have that healing compensated immensely to make up for its sad combat ability
Bat Bat, while not auto-swing, has a use time of 30, so you could be hitting up to a theoretical 120 times per second, not accounting for useTime boosts via prefixes, Well Fed, Feral Claws, armor stats, etc, which would only add more. So a straight 1 HP per hit was more than I was could consider justified for a Day-1-accessible item.
The question is not whether the healing is less than Band of Regen or not (since it stacks with Band of Regen) but IMO, whether it's lack of combat performance is offset by the free healing. It's weaker than weapons like Bone Sword, but it isn't weak per say, if you get it early enough. But I'm listening, and will be considering what, if any buffs (or if we can figure out a less weird way to get the healing going).
It’s hard to say because Well Fed gives stat buffs, so it’s hard to gauge how strong it becomes with Well Fed, as we’re not sure what’s exactly being affected
As for the Life Drain effect, that would be a “preferred” option to give it a niche over the other weapons like Frostbrand, and it would be more unique as well, if it were simple stat buffs, I’d just remove use turn and lower the use time from 20 to 18, and increase the damage from 50 to 58 and I didn’t even realize that I accidentally made it stronger than Excal by a lot, so it’s hard to make it not as strong, maybe even buff the stats from Well Fed, but I’d rather it gain a Life Drain effect
Ham Bat gains an additional 5% damage per tier of Well Fed.
A normal 50 damage weapon with Tier 3 Well Fed deals 55 damage (a 10% bonus). Ham Bat deals 63 (a roughly 25% bonus).
Yeah, can agree with this point of view. Creating another Fetid Baghnakhs will hurt balance rather than improving it.
As I understood (maybe incorrectly) is that Ham Bat is best used with T3 food without abundance of other offensive buffs/accessories etc. (Food must be given a focus)
So let's try Ham Bat against Frostbrand and Beam Sword with and without buffs on top of T3 food in defensive/offensive builds:
Yes the gap is larger between Ham and Frostbrand when Well fed is the main buff, but Beam sword can keep up with Ham bat.
Abigail
I'm not even close to being an expert in game balancing, but I think Aby is okay as of now. Making her much more powerful at all progression stages may repeat the fate of Calamity's Legengaty weapons (they scaled throughout all the game and were so powerful, that one could finish the entire game with only one weapon). Alternatively, OP Aby may just make all Pre-HM minions not worth trying.
I consider Aby as a plan B in summoner progression, or as a patch for this class' weaknesses. Prior to DST crossover update, summoner struggled against early-HM bosses (QS and Dread for Blade and Sangune respectively). Now Aby serves as an effective minion for both, while having way above average mobbing/invasion potential with FC. This is a very strong niche, good job on balancing that one. As for pre-HM, yeah, she is weak-ish on some bosses (good on BoC though), but ultimately, it doesn't matter to me.
Pew-Matic horn... I understand you as a person responsible for game balance. It is just hard for me to think that easy EoW can give access to stronger Molten Fury, while much harder Deerclops give you weaker Pew-Matic horn. Difficulty is a highly subjective concept, but for the sake of objectiveness EoW is an easily cheesable boss. These factors make a lot of contrast and diminish the value of Pew-matic horn. I suggest just closing the gap between molten/hellstone and Pew-matic horn in this case from 40% to like 10%.
Yes, it is useful. But in pre-HM, enemy defence values are not that high (low health QB is an exception, so as Skeletron Head with arms alive) and this thing hits not too often (6 times/sec).
I assume you focused on Blade staff defence pierce, but that thing is a completely different beast. Firstly, HM enemies need defense reduction more than pre-wall ones. Secondly, 7 Blades hit at an approximate rate of 30 times/sec and utilise defense reduction perk 5x more effectively. So the difference is just incomparable. I would rather prefer more long-lasting and non-conflicting with other piercing projectiles for Weather Pain.
Please, I literally cry inside, make Rainbow Gun not to conflict with other piercing projectiles, please, please, I beg you, dear developers
As indicated previously, it sounds like I simply miscalculated somewhere with Pew-Matic, and come Monday, I'll be re-evaluating my data and taking this thread's feedback into account to see where I went wrong. I might have just copied the wrong final number.
With Weather Pain (let's not talk about Blade Staff, it's a whole different beast, as you say). I believe Weather Pain is already using static immunity? It shouldn't be conflicting with other piercing projectiles, unless I'm remembering incorrectly.
Because you requested more feedback on Weather Pain as a sidearm, I started using it in my bows-only playthrough.
Highlights:
-Great in Old One's Army tier 1 vs everything. It pierces ground troops, catches wyverns and its damage reduction and hovering really hurts the Dark Mage, who is slow.
-Good vs ranged, slow attackers like dark caster in dungeon
Mixed results:
-Vs Queen Bee, occasionally chased after a bee, putting it out of commision
-Vs Skeletron and Deerclops, good DPS but the projectile lifespan is just short enough that I felt like I constantly had to switch weapons to reapply it, making the boss fights shorter but much more challenging.
I was using Bees Knees as my main weapon, and switching to weather pain meant missing out on 3-4 shots. Since it doesn't last very long, I constantly had to switch, making it a lot harder to avoid the ice toss and the head spin.
My recommendation:
-Buff the duration of the projectile. Even 1 second would help make switching less awkward. I don't think it needs a HUGE buff, but a little one would make it a fun and viable sidearm IMO. Damage-wise I think it's actually already relatively powerful and would be a little too strong if damage were buffed any more.
Thanks for the insight, will take into consideration with others.
I can see why you’d be hesitant to compare it to some of these things, but the issue isn’t simply Molten weapons. Everything seems to suggest that the Pew-Matic is worse than many of its competitors: Demon/Tendon Bows, Boomstick, even Minishark all do substantially better than it (remember that Queen Bee is a terrible boss for Minishark due to her defense spiking, and still got faster times). It simply doesn’t cut it DPS wise. Furthermore, I can see why it shouldn’t be compared to Phoenix Blaster, but Molten Fury is simply more available (comes right after an easier boss boss tiered earlier). Pew-Matic could really just use a good DPS buff, especially considering it doesn’t fare all that well to a couple weapons that come *before* it.
I get the comparison to other cave drops, but Bone Sword and Chain Knife are considered a somewhat low tier choice much of the time, and are sort of a weak basis of comparison for Bat Bat. As another point in comparison, it ends up having around half the DPS of Ice Blade with a number of other weaknesses relatively speaking. It barely compares well to Platinum Broadsword (also never been considered a “good” weapon), and of course, it’s current state of healing corresponds to just over pre-buff Band of Regen’s (aka, insignificant).
There’s also a lot of other weapons to compare it to, like Flaming Mace, bows, snowball cannon, etc. Comparing it just to other C-tier melee weapons seems a bit risky, all things considered.
It really isn’t all that hard to catch 2 frogs. Near a Jungle Pylon, frogs actually have an incredibly high spawn rate, and catching 2 should take no more than 30 seconds (no, this is not an exaggeration). Getting a Seafood Dinner with the most optimal fish to use takes significantly longer, and Seafood Dinner lasts only half as long.
Edit: On the topic of Abigail, she actually seems all right. A small buff to her early game speed would probably be for the best, but she doesn’t need all that much. She’s a valid stepping stone for Flinx, and seems to be a good airborne minion capable of dealing with Queen Slime or Dreadnautilus, filling the missing niche here. Making her a bit more common won’t hurt, though.
I've already stated that it sounds as if Pew-Matic just straight up fell short (and will be re-evaluating tomorrow). I made the initial Molten commentary because initial feedback was heavy on comparing things like Lucy to Fiery Greatsword, which is not an apt comparison for these purposes.
I think the two aren't really comparable anyway because saying "you have to dedicate time to fishing" means nothing in higher difficulties where you're fishing to amass stuff like Lifeforce and Endurance Potion materials, and when you play a lot of multiplayer with friends you will end up with a lot of fish.
As far as I'm concerned, the difference between 2 and 4 minutes is having to press the B key more often... when most of my Potion buffs are already 4-5 minutes regardless. As a frequent Melee player neither really bothers me since Tipsy is also on 2/4 minute timers, and I'm also a heartless monster that isn't above making Golden Delights.
This item in particular, feels like a balance conversation that doesn't really need to even happen, and from what I can tell a lot of this conversation as a whole seems to be worrying about "balance" in regards to weapons you won't even use for most of a playthrough, so frankly the best way to balance them would be making them easier to get outside of a specific seed so you don't have to spend a ton of time worrying about it.
e: i'm tired of editing this post so i'm just going to stop looking at it and click save and whatever state its in from here is the state it exists in
In servers I've played on, extra Seafood Dinner fish are found in such abundance that Seafood Dinner is basically on infinite tap. But that is not the same as in single player, and I can acknowledge that a few minutes spent in a Jungle Town might have a pretty good output of Frogs.
T3 well fed is only 33% better than T2, but even T2 on its own is one of strongest buffs in the game just because of how many stats it can give. Another thing is that Seafood Dinner is really the only source of T3 that's easy to get; all the others seem to be tied to Rare Drops to enemies in hardmode; unless you farm for RoD every run and get tons of Apple Pie, you won't stack up on T3 food easily without Seafood. This makes me think that T3 is "special" and shouldn't be so easy to get (you could even say that Seafood Dinner is too cheap but that's another topic).
Finally, you are seriously underestimating Frog spawn rates. You know how the Jungle has higher Spawn rates than other biomes? Well, build a house there, and all those enemies become Frogs, and you end up with a ton of those per second just courtesy of living there. That's why I think it's fair to Make Sauteed Frog Legs T1, they may be from a harder biome but if you know what you are doing you'll find way more Frogs than Bunnies or Squirrels.
I mean sure, but Bat Bat is way too rare, even more so than Chain Knife and Bone Sword (which almost everyone finds too rare to ever use in a run). It's also a crossover item, so people have higher expectations for those than normal weapons.
I don't see why it couldn't simply have healing like Vampire Knives, where it doesn't matter how much damage you deal or how fast you hit, the healing is always the same. Could easily make it so its healing cap is 2 hp/s (which, while a big buff from its current implementation, it's just a Regeneration Potion), with a max of 6 hp/s if you haven't attacked in a while.
Consider this (Tweak numbers as needed):
- Buff base DPS to 200-300 through damage and/or Use Time buffs
- On hit, lifesteals 10% of its damage in HP, however it can't heal more than the damage taken in your very last hit. (so, if you take 100 damage, you won't be able to heal for more than 100 until you get hit again)
this is literally what I did to Fetid Baghnakhs in TRAE which btw you should check out
Its short range is balanced out by the ability to heal on hit, which is also limited so that it will never heal more damage than what you are taking, and will never make you immortal unless its attack speed is so jacked up that it can hit consistently 10 times in less than what your Iframes last.
It would end up as a less polarized version of Fetid Baghnakhs that could even be used as an interesting burst heal if you are willing to take a little risk, something much more interesting than "Ore Sword except that a buff that you'll almost always have with you is a little better when holding it".
I don't know if I'm comfortable, or able to get approved, a change to Sauteed Frog Legs at this time. But I'm definitely considering the options. Maybe a duration degrees instead of a tier decrease might be more easily authorized.
Bat Bat is meant to be rare, in much the way that Chain Knife and Bone Sword are. People might be holding Bat Bat to higher standards, but a healing weapon at this tier is nearly unheard of, and stacks with other sources of healing. It's not going to likely be comparable to powerhouses like Enchanted Sword, but a slight boost to healing or damage may be in order. I'm not going to boost it to a maximum of 2 hp/s healing, I do not feel that amount is balanced at this point in the game when stacked on top of all of the other pre-existing sources of healing already present. That was the whole issue in the first place with me not doing it's 1 per second.
The only other consideration I could think of that cleanly resolves it is to dramatically increase it's use time (45 or higher), boost it's damage to offset, and then go back to 1-heal-per-hit. That would establish a much lower hard cap on the healing, and would differentiate the weapon as a hard, slow hitting healer that feels more consistent. Might boost it's size a tad as well, if I were to take that course of action.
Ham Bat having any sort of direct healing is not going to be approved. I can say that outright. The healing condition you've just proposed also suffers from the confusing-jank that Bat Bat is already suffering from, and I'd like to not double down on that mistake (as I'm actively seeking to rectify it as it is). LifeDrain buff is more plausible, and then buffs to damage to counteract it's balance concerns, is a more plausible outcome.
When it comes to Lucy, an idea I had was to make it so she gets a temporary buff of some type (melee speed?) when cutting down a tree. It would fit flavor-wise since she already seems to get pretty excited when you cut down trees, lol. If it's a speed buff, then it could be made to affect both swing speed and mining speed, which would give her a niche both as a weapon and as a tool. (I suggest "Beaver Fever" as the buff name.)
If Ham Bat gave a Life-Drain-esque regen boost on hit, even something like 2 HP/s, then it would probably be fine without any other buffs at all. Would make it a decent facetanking weapon similar to Baghnakhs, except instead of winning DPS races with damage you win them with survivability.
A Lucy-tree cutting frenzy was one of the first things that came to my mind, and I immediately realized how annoying that would be to try and utilize. It's only good in surface biomes, and people are going to be trying to prep trees around/cut down trees in the middle of the fight just to use it . . . nah. Too many hoops to jump through to make her "good". If needed, I can improve her via more traditional means, as silly as a Tree Frenzy could be.