Items DST Equipment might need a huge buff...

Baghnakhs are brokenly powerful. Even after I heavily nerfed it's potential upscaling, it's RAW DPS far outstrips any other pre-Mech melee weapon. The weapon honestly should have been nerfed far more than it was, and though it sets an ostensible "ceiling" on melee damage, it should never be treated as the standard.
Yeah, can agree with this point of view. Creating another Fetid Baghnakhs will hurt balance rather than improving it.
Have any of you guys looked into Ham Bat's Well Fed systems at all? Some of it's balancing was based on players optimizing around it and using it at it's best tier, where it gains a fairly decent amount of DPS.
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)
I see Frostbrand being thrown around a lot; this is a good choice. I specifically used Beam Sword as part of my consideration.
So let's try Ham Bat against Frostbrand and Beam Sword with and without buffs on top of T3 food in defensive/offensive builds:
Ham-bat-comparison.gif
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.
Aby.gif

Similarly, Pew-Matic Horn (underpowered or not) should not be approaching Molten Fury or Phoenix Blaster in power.
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%.

As an aside, did you guys notice the Defense piercing? Thoughts? Did that factor into any of the considerations? I've found that Defense piercing has been a great boon to me with balancing certain weapons, and it seemed like it was a useful one here. But I'm not seeing a whole lot of negative feedback here for Weather Pain, so I guess I'm asking for more feedback, since it does not seem quite as one-sided as other items.
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
 
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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.
 
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In Terraria's pre-HM, most Molten/Underworld-tier items are "top tier". Though not 100%, they are consistently among the best items available, and almost always out-perform items of the "Dungeon/Jungle/Queen Bee" tier, the same tier at which Deerclops ostensibly falls. This, any comparison in which Deerclops items fall short of Molten tier items is, if anything, intended. The PRIMARY item which I balanced Lucy against was not Fiery Greatsword, but Muramasa (attempting for each to have some advantages over the other), with the understanding that Fiery Greatsword would typically be better than both.

Similarly, Pew-Matic Horn (underpowered or not) should not be approaching Molten Fury or Phoenix Blaster in power.

There is an argument to be made (based on the ease of acquiring Molten tier items at this tier) that this <Molten universal approach is a poor decision. That may be the case, but I'm in no position to overrule and overhaul the entire second half of pre-HM at this time, and so the paradigm will stand (this is also part of the justification for the infamous Reaver Shark nerf . . .). But within the QB/Dungeon tier, I'm open to consideration and evaluation.

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.

Bat Bat, somewhat unavoidably, IS a lot like Chain Knife. It's literally a weapon you either do or do not get early enough to be useful. I primarily balance it statistically against it's cousin, Bone Sword, which is a very nice, large sized weapon that can make your early game a lot easier if you get it. Bat Bat is fairly large, has fairly high knockback (higher than Bone Sword), but less DPS overall. This was true even before it's healing ability was added; it did more damage, but still less than Bone Sword in DPS. My approach at the time was "higher knockback, higher damage-per-hit, but less DPS". With the implementation of it's healing ability, I had to dial that damage down even further.

On the subject of the healing . . . this was a tricky one to figure. Original concepts were "1 HP per hit", but if you scale that up, a Bat Bat could, in theory, heal 120 HP per second (about 2.4 Lesser Healing Potions in a minute). And this is a Day 1 available item, and I couldn't justify that much. LifeDrain too would have been a ton of healing for this point in the game.

We had to settle on SOME sort of inconsistent healing. (Hence the "jank" I've seen people describe it's healing as). As it currently stands, the weapon can carry up to 2 "charges" of 5 healing, which recharge every 6 seconds (meaning a maximum possible healing of 50 HP per minute, not counting the extra charge saved up from the beginning). These hits have an RNG on them so you don't typically get "2 heal hits in a row", but it's not high enough to make them rare, so generally speaking, if you are hitting constantly, you should be seeing a healing charge roughly every 6-8 seconds.

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.

Believe it or not, I was very torn on how to approach Froggle Bunwich. I actually had a VARIETY of proposals, and ran them by the testers for feedback, but was never quite satisfied with any solution.

For starters, I do want to point out that Well Fed Tier 3 is only 33% more powerful than Well Fed Tier 2. I'm sure you know that, but sometimes it's a good reminder. So there is a question to be had here: are my 2 Frogs worth more as 20 minutes of Tier 2 Well Fed, or worth more as 8 minutes of Tier 3 Well Fed? A 33% increase in relative bonus, but only 40% of the duration. I DID feel that investing 2 at once should provide more power in some regard than just consuming 1 twice, whether that took the form of longer duration or more power.

#1. I'm not averse to 25 minutes of Tier 2. This was one of my initial considerations for Froggle Bunwich, and so shifting to it now would be entirely within my expected power for this item.

#2. I'm LESS comfortable with retroactively nerfing Sauteed Frog Legs now . . . this is expanding the scope of the balance out of 1.4.3 and that is a slippery slope. Most other critters are found in safer, closer to home biomes than Frogs, and so I do think there is some merit to Frogs simply giving more than, say, Squirrels.

#3. I don't think 3 is reasonable. Seafood Dinner is comparably quite easy to get, and gives only 4 minutes, and even that is almost too short to be useful. 2 Minutes of T3 well Fed for 2 Frogs? You'd be sacrificing 90% of the duration for an exceedingly short lived 33% boost. I don't see that one being worth it.
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.
 
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#3. I don't think 3 is reasonable. Seafood Dinner is comparably quite easy to get, and gives only 4 minutes, and even that is almost too short to be useful. 2 Minutes of T3 well Fed for 2 Frogs? You'd be sacrificing 90% of the duration for an exceedingly short lived 33% boost. I don't see that one being worth it.
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
 
#3. I don't think 3 is reasonable. Seafood Dinner is comparably quite easy to get, and gives only 4 minutes, and even that is almost too short to be useful. 2 Minutes of T3 well Fed for 2 Frogs? You'd be sacrificing 90% of the duration for an exceedingly short lived 33% boost. I don't see that one being worth it.

For starters, I do want to point out that Well Fed Tier 3 is only 33% more powerful than Well Fed Tier 2. I'm sure you know that, but sometimes it's a good reminder. So there is a question to be had here: are my 2 Frogs worth more as 20 minutes of Tier 2 Well Fed, or worth more as 8 minutes of Tier 3 Well Fed? A 33% increase in relative bonus, but only 40% of the duration. I DID feel that investing 2 at once should provide more power in some regard than just consuming 1 twice, whether that took the form of longer duration or more power.
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.

Bat Bat, somewhat unavoidably, IS a lot like Chain Knife. It's literally a weapon you either do or do not get early enough to be useful. I primarily balance it statistically against it's cousin, Bone Sword, which is a very nice, large sized weapon that can make your early game a lot easier if you get it.
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.

We had to settle on SOME sort of inconsistent healing. (Hence the "jank" I've seen people describe it's healing as). As it currently stands, the weapon can carry up to 2 "charges" of 5 healing, which recharge every 6 seconds (meaning a maximum possible healing of 50 HP per minute, not counting the extra charge saved up from the beginning). These hits have an RNG on them so you don't typically get "2 heal hits in a row", but it's not high enough to make them rare, so generally speaking, if you are hitting constantly, you should be seeing a healing charge roughly every 6-8 seconds.
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.

Baghnakhs are brokenly powerful. Even after I heavily nerfed it's potential upscaling, it's RAW DPS far outstrips any other pre-Mech melee weapon. The weapon honestly should have been nerfed far more than it was, and though it sets an ostensible "ceiling" on melee damage, it should never be treated as the standard.

This is not to say that Ham Bat may not need buffs. But it needs to be compared against other weapons akin to it. I see Frostbrand being thrown around a lot; this is a good choice. I specifically used Beam Sword as part of my consideration. I had the intent that Ham Bat should be doing more "contact DPS" under optimal conditions than Beam Sword, but less DPS when taking perfect-beam use into account. I believe that metric is still accurate, though it may simply be that it should be doing more damage entirely, even taking the projectiles into account. I'll be running some numbers around this.

Believe it or not, at one point in development, I was under the misunderstanding that a Life Drain effect was INTENDED for Ham Bat, and I began re-evaluating it for such. It was only later I found out that the healing effect was meant for Bat Bat (which . . . I'll get back to that), and so there was no such effect added. Have any of you guys looked into Ham Bat's Well Fed systems at all? Some of it's balancing was based on players optimizing around it and using it at it's best tier, where it gains a fairly decent amount of DPS.

However, I'm not opposed to investigating having it grant Life Drain buff on use, nor am I against a damage/use time buff, but the question is how much. I'll also need to clear a Life Drain buff for approval (a simple stat buff requires less authorization, I can just make the change).
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".
 
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Hyperkatmanders, I hope you don't mind, I changed the name of the thread to "DST Equipment", since Mathbrush1's post mentioned feeling like the accessory discussion was out of place. I think this thread can serve fine for both.

I'm going to start some of my considerations today, to lay down some of my thoughts here. I'm going to start at the beginning and work my way up, so this may be somewhat lengthy.

I'll start by saying, overall, I made an effort to avoid "increasing the cap on the meta and power creep", and when in doubt, I err'd weaker than stronger, because I could always uptweak later and make people happier rather than downtweak later and frustrate people with nerfs. I knew full well I'd be having these conversations, and though I had reasons for much of what I did, I also knew I'm only one person and would want to discuss this out with you guys.
For the sake of pre-HM balancing, I need to establish a standard I used with the balancing here, and you guys may not agree with it, but it's a pre-existing system that I am not going to be attempting to change.



In Terraria's pre-HM, most Molten/Underworld-tier items are "top tier". Though not 100%, they are consistently among the best items available, and almost always out-perform items of the "Dungeon/Jungle/Queen Bee" tier, the same tier at which Deerclops ostensibly falls. This, any comparison in which Deerclops items fall short of Molten tier items is, if anything, intended. The PRIMARY item which I balanced Lucy against was not Fiery Greatsword, but Muramasa (attempting for each to have some advantages over the other), with the understanding that Fiery Greatsword would typically be better than both.

Similarly, Pew-Matic Horn (underpowered or not) should not be approaching Molten Fury or Phoenix Blaster in power.

There is an argument to be made (based on the ease of acquiring Molten tier items at this tier) that this <Molten universal approach is a poor decision. That may be the case, but I'm in no position to overrule and overhaul the entire second half of pre-HM at this time, and so the paradigm will stand (this is also part of the justification for the infamous Reaver Shark nerf . . .). But within the QB/Dungeon tier, I'm open to consideration and evaluation.
Fetid Baghnakhs is, almost without a doubt, the worst possible basis for comparison for any where any item should fall in balance.

Baghnakhs are brokenly powerful. Even after I heavily nerfed it's potential upscaling, it's RAW DPS far outstrips any other pre-Mech melee weapon. The weapon honestly should have been nerfed far more than it was, and though it sets an ostensible "ceiling" on melee damage, it should never be treated as the standard.

This is not to say that Ham Bat may not need buffs. But it needs to be compared against other weapons akin to it. I see Frostbrand being thrown around a lot; this is a good choice. I specifically used Beam Sword as part of my consideration. I had the intent that Ham Bat should be doing more "contact DPS" under optimal conditions than Beam Sword, but less DPS when taking perfect-beam use into account. I believe that metric is still accurate, though it may simply be that it should be doing more damage entirely, even taking the projectiles into account. I'll be running some numbers around this.

Believe it or not, at one point in development, I was under the misunderstanding that a Life Drain effect was INTENDED for Ham Bat, and I began re-evaluating it for such. It was only later I found out that the healing effect was meant for Bat Bat (which . . . I'll get back to that), and so there was no such effect added. Have any of you guys looked into Ham Bat's Well Fed systems at all? Some of it's balancing was based on players optimizing around it and using it at it's best tier, where it gains a fairly decent amount of DPS.

However, I'm not opposed to investigating having it grant Life Drain buff on use, nor am I against a damage/use time buff, but the question is how much. I'll also need to clear a Life Drain buff for approval (a simple stat buff requires less authorization, I can just make the change).

I'll also say this: ideally, Ham Bat should not be putting Excalibur to shame. I know that that may be a low bar (and other weapons may have done so already), but part of my trying to remedy the issues of old is trying to at least begin respecting the issue of tier discrepancies that have been here for many years, and not continuing to make the same mistakes. And if I HAVE to make a mistake, I would rather have another pre-HM sword that is not meta, than add another weapon to the pile of weapons that make the post-mech tier non-viable.

So in closing on that subject: If we implement a Life Drain effect, it'll come at the cost of less stat buffs for Ham Bat. If we don't, I'll probably be able to leverage more stat buffs overall.

Am interested to hear ballpark DPS estimates, in addition to the ones already provided, which I've taken notes on.
Abigail is a really complex discussion, and took more time balancing than any other item in this update. She has like a DOZEN stat factors, and I can adjust most of them. I've heard more feedback than just here that she is too slow, but keep in mind also that her speed increases with every +Minion count expended. I could increase her base speed at the cost of a reduction in her per-cast growth, within reason.

Her Flower's growth rate is something I'm looking VERY closely at, based on feedback. It's also something that is difficult to balance, because (as it is coded), it is PURE RNG, and no matter what I set it to, someone is going to get it 30 seconds in and someone is going to get it 10 days in. If I set it to low, it's trivial, and everyone has it, and if I set it too high, she's too rare and it's not plausible to get her within any reasonable period of time. There is no way to "Scale it" to my knowledge to increase the rate over time in a reasonable way.

I'm currently leaning in favor of a small buff, but I'm still waiting to hear more input here. Also, I'd love any "great ideas" for redoing her tile growth code in a way that is actually do-able. I'm not a very advanced programmer, so I have to run everything by Yorai, we had a lot of dead end ideas here on the "can it be coded reasonably?" front.
Bat Bat, somewhat unavoidably, IS a lot like Chain Knife. It's literally a weapon you either do or do not get early enough to be useful. I primarily balance it statistically against it's cousin, Bone Sword, which is a very nice, large sized weapon that can make your early game a lot easier if you get it. Bat Bat is fairly large, has fairly high knockback (higher than Bone Sword), but less DPS overall. This was true even before it's healing ability was added; it did more damage, but still less than Bone Sword in DPS. My approach at the time was "higher knockback, higher damage-per-hit, but less DPS". With the implementation of it's healing ability, I had to dial that damage down even further.

On the subject of the healing . . . this was a tricky one to figure. Original concepts were "1 HP per hit", but if you scale that up, a Bat Bat could, in theory, heal 120 HP per second (about 2.4 Lesser Healing Potions in a minute). And this is a Day 1 available item, and I couldn't justify that much. LifeDrain too would have been a ton of healing for this point in the game.

We had to settle on SOME sort of inconsistent healing. (Hence the "jank" I've seen people describe it's healing as). As it currently stands, the weapon can carry up to 2 "charges" of 5 healing, which recharge every 6 seconds (meaning a maximum possible healing of 50 HP per minute, not counting the extra charge saved up from the beginning). These hits have an RNG on them so you don't typically get "2 heal hits in a row", but it's not high enough to make them rare, so generally speaking, if you are hitting constantly, you should be seeing a healing charge roughly every 6-8 seconds.

We discussed some other possibilities . . . 1 HP heal-on-hit on a 1-second timer, 2 HP heal-on-hit on a 2-second timer, and all of them felt just as awkward. All of the "clean" solutions provided way more healing than this point in the game could afford, and all of the other solutions ended up awkward like this one. I'm open to suggestions, but more for the approach of "cleaning it up" and less "buffing it". It's potential healing is roughly where I want it, it's just awkwardly implemented.
At no point was I satisfied with Tentacle Spike. It's source is where I was instructed to put it (rare drop from Corrupt/Crimson enemies) and this is a pretty awkward place for a weapon. Because if you make it too weak, then it's no good for anything after all of the farming, and if it's too strong, it invalidates Light's Bane/Blood Butcherer. I ultimately went with a "Shadow Armor set approach", so that if someone were investing the amount of time to get pieces of Ancient Shadow Armor, they'd likely be picking up a Tentacle Spike as well. The balance between these weapons is extremely subtle; if I add even 2 points of damage, it is roughly equal to Light's Bane/Blood Butcherer (just with subtle differences), and I add 3 points, it is demonstrably superior, aside for being slightly smaller. If I boost it by 2 damage and make all three of them "equal", will that satisfy people? I suspect not, but it wouldn't outright invalidate the items either. Input is appreciated.

I've seen some mention of this weapon being destined to simply be a generic melee weapon with no bells and whistles. Well . . . that's what Tentacle Spike is. I'm not passing blame, but this was a weapon that I did not create, that I had a pre-assigned tier/placement for, and have minimal justification to "redesign", as it is someone else's IP. I feel as if my hands were somewhat tied, and there isn't a whole lot I can do here. It WOULD have been nice if it could be more fancy in some way, but that didn't seem plausible at the time, and honestly, given how early in the game it is, how much could really be done with it? Almost anything "interesting" would likely have to be offset by stat nerfs anyway (shooting some projectile spikes come to mind, but they'd have to be really weak, and go through approval).
Lucy is not going to have a rework/boomerang functionality. She may be "boring", but her design is also keeping in truth with her item's origins. And tbh, she's also a tool AND she talks, and that makes her fairly unique, given that most tools don't even approach combat viability intent. Her range was a major aspect of her design in the initial process, so much so that I had to have her resprited to be bigger, and she still wasn't big enough IMO, but I'm probably not going to be able to get her resprited again.

So if she is changed, it'll be stat changes (I can probably increase her scale just a little to make her slightly bigger), but it's not going to be a rework. I can also look at her axe power again . . . I thought I had her axe power worked out correctly, it's odd hearing you say she isn't a decent axe. Might have been a mistake there, sometimes a number change is missed when I'm making adjustments.

Just checking, but you guys were aware that Lucy has a +10% critical chance? Just in case that didn't factor into considerations.
I need to go back to the drawing board and see what went wrong here. My numbers at the time seemed alright, but it sounds like either something went wrong somewhere or maybe my math and testing were wrong? The high damage variation IS intended (and in fact, the average damage of the weapon skews higher than the listed damage . . . over time, you will get slightly more higher damage projectiles than lower damage projectiles), but I need to re-evaluate what might have gone wrong here. I'm not even going to quote all of the comments because it sounds like it just needs a straight buff, and I'll discuss some proposed numbers to see what you guys think before it's through.
I've seen a lot of discussion of this weapon as a "side-arm", and I'm glad you guys caught onto that, as it is intended. My primary concern with Weather Pain was that an enterprising Mage could launch a Hurtnado, swap to another weapon for 3 seconds or so, then back to Weather Pain, to keep a consistent amount of "extra damage" in play at once, much like I've used Magnet Sphere for in the past. In fact, Weather Pain's balance is intended very much to be used like an early game Magnet Sphere in a way; only 1 projectile, "cast and forget" targeting, and bonus damage that stacks on top of your other weapons.

With that in mind, I was extremely hesitant to make it too strong. Someone mentioned Crimson Rod; you can use Weather Pain and Crimson Rod TOGETHER! They aren't rivals, they synergize. And unlike nearly every other weapon here, this was my primary fear. Weather Pain should not be viable as a primary weapon, it is designed to supplement, and as a supplement, it might add too much raw potency to previously balanced tiers of Magic weapons.

So I was conservative with it's damage, heavy with it's manage usage, and kept it's duration/longevity somewhat short. Because, like I said before, I'd rather have it too weak and uptweak it a bit later, rather than make it OP as hell and have to nerf it.



This is a lot of buffs here. A 10% boost to projectile speed probably won't make much of an impact either way, but this is increasing it's potential damage per cast by 50%, and dramatically increasing it's "duration of overlap". I'm not sure I'm quite comfortable doing BOTH, but I'm interested in more thoughts here.

As an aside, did you guys notice the Defense piercing? Thoughts? Did that factor into any of the considerations? I've found that Defense piercing has been a great boon to me with balancing certain weapons, and it seemed like it was a useful one here. But I'm not seeing a whole lot of negative feedback here for Weather Pain, so I guess I'm asking for more feedback, since it does not seem quite as one-sided as other items.
Believe it or not, I was very torn on how to approach Froggle Bunwich. I actually had a VARIETY of proposals, and ran them by the testers for feedback, but was never quite satisfied with any solution.

For starters, I do want to point out that Well Fed Tier 3 is only 33% more powerful than Well Fed Tier 2. I'm sure you know that, but sometimes it's a good reminder. So there is a question to be had here: are my 2 Frogs worth more as 20 minutes of Tier 2 Well Fed, or worth more as 8 minutes of Tier 3 Well Fed? A 33% increase in relative bonus, but only 40% of the duration. I DID feel that investing 2 at once should provide more power in some regard than just consuming 1 twice, whether that took the form of longer duration or more power.

#1. I'm not averse to 25 minutes of Tier 2. This was one of my initial considerations for Froggle Bunwich, and so shifting to it now would be entirely within my expected power for this item.

#2. I'm LESS comfortable with retroactively nerfing Sauteed Frog Legs now . . . this is expanding the scope of the balance out of 1.4.3 and that is a slippery slope. Most other critters are found in safer, closer to home biomes than Frogs, and so I do think there is some merit to Frogs simply giving more than, say, Squirrels.

#3. I don't think 3 is reasonable. Seafood Dinner is comparably quite easy to get, and gives only 4 minutes, and even that is almost too short to be useful. 2 Minutes of T3 well Fed for 2 Frogs? You'd be sacrificing 90% of the duration for an exceedingly short lived 33% boost. I don't see that one being worth it.

If I had to make a change of the 3 listed, it would be #1, but I'd like to hear more thoughts here before I commit to anything.
I know you said you're in no position to change the Molten balancing situation, but I thought I'd just throw out a (probably worthless) idea. Why not make it so that, in addition to requiring Hellstone Bars, crafting Molten equipment also requires materials/weapons from biomes that aren't The Underworld? This wouldn't be unprecedented, either; the Phoenix Blaster already requires a Handgun, which you can only find in the Dungeon.

As far as Tentacle Spike is concerned, I think making it as powerful or even slightly more powerful than Light's Bane/Blood Butcherer would be the right choice. Statistically, getting a Tentacle Spike is much more troublesome than getting a Light's Bane/Blood Butcherer, and I think players should be rewarded for such persistence. And if a player gets really lucky and gets it day one? Let them have fun bending the game's progression a bit. In the context of Terraria's lasting appeal, being somewhat overpowered on occasion can be refreshing. Furthermore, it's not like pre-HM's balancing hinges on Light's Bane/Blood Butcherer. Besides, the player will probably want to get Light's Bane/Blood Butcherer anyway so that they can craft Night's Edge, so it's not like those weapons would be rendered worthless. However, Tentacle Spike, in its current state, is about as useless as a weapon in Terraria can get because the player is very unlikely to get one until well after it's obsolete.

Edit: As for Weather Pain, I would consider letting the tornado linger around for a bit longer before disappearing. I like the idea of a magical support weapon, but I think getting a significant DPS boost from it in its current state requires a bit too much switching for a game that doesn't have much emphasis on switching weapons to maximize DPS.
 
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I think Abigail is pretty good as she is tbh, devs did a masterful job balancing her so she can remain useful for such a long time. It would be cool to see other summons get something similar where they get stat buffs at specific points in progression, but I know that probably won't happen at this point. If Abigail needs anything, it's probably a speed buff as others have said, and I also agree that the flowers are just a tad too rare.

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.
 
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.
 
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.
Aren't use time boosts effectively capped at 1? Can a weapon hit more than once per frame? If not, then the maximum amount of times any weapon could ever hit per second is 60, isn't it? 1 HP per hit is still too much for Bat Bat, though.
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.
I was thinking that maybe it would be a relatively small buff, something like 5-10%, but it would last for a while (1-2 minutes?). So people then might try cutting down a tree right before a fight, but usually wouldn't need to refresh it in the middle of a fight.

Alternatively, it could get procced on enemy kills too, although she doesn't seem to get quite as excited about chopping enemies as chopping trees. Though apparently in DST she has some unused quotes for killing enemies that make her seem pretty bloodthirsty.
 
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.
I don't understand what's the issue with a free 2hp/s. I understand that Regeneration, much like Defense can end up making a player unkillable if spread around without care... but it's just 2hp/s. "all other pre-existing sources of healing" amounts to about 5 hp/s (2 from Regeneration Potion, 1 from Band of Regen, 1.5 from Heart Lantern and Campfire, and an extra 0.5 just in case i forgot anything). 2 hp/s brings it up to just 7... what build are we talking about, and in what context, that regenerating 2 more hp per second, up from 5 can ever be overpowered, considering that you have to be point blank with a true melee broadsword with bad DPS, even among those of its kind?

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.
So you are telling me that an increase in regeneration equal to one fifth of a Band of Regen justifies what would be at least a 50% DPS nerf? On a weapon that already has below average DPS when compared to weapons with below average DPS?

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.
About the condition, "partially heals the last hit's damage", as arbitrary as it may be, fits cleanly in a single tooltip line, and explains almost everything there is to know about the effect. Personally I don't think Bat Bat storing healing is any "jank" either.

About Ham Bat getting any form of direct healing: Lifesteal with a condition that restricts it to about 2 HP/s, such as Bat Bat's ideal healing mechanics, and making it inflict Life Drain's debuff, which translates to 2.5 hp/s of regeneration... is basically the same idea with a different execution, isn't it? What's exactly the problem with Direct Healing on hit, that you are absolutely sure it won't get approved?

P.S. I don't think you can just make it inflict Life Drain's Debuff, as I think that's hardcoded to only work if you are attacking with the Life Drain weapon itself. Take that with a grain of salt, though.
 
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.
The healing on Bat Bat does stack with other healing, but what makes it insignificant is that it isn’t enough to be worth it. Less than 1 hp per second isn’t worth using a 38-dps, relatively slow, short ranged weapon with no autoswing over anything else. That in mind, either a significant buff to its offense to make that 0.6 hp/s worth going for or a significant buff to its healing to effectively compensate for lost DPS are definitely deserved (or both, to smaller degrees).

I also still don’t think Chain Knives and Bone Sword are fair bases of comparison. Both are considered relatively weak, C-tier-at-best options that people don’t really use. If comparing it to Ice Blade is too big an order (already made that comparison, it’s not friendly to Bat Bat), then it should be compared to other cave weapons that *are* considered good choices. Gold Bow with Flaming Arrows already nets slightly more DPS while not being limited to two blocks of range. The gap just increases with Frostburn Arrows, which can be obtained effortlessly, or if your world has Platinum. Ruby Staff has an even bigger DPS advantage, autofire, pierce, and almost as much knockback per second, while also not being limited by range. Mace’s DPS is hard to calculate, but it does definitely have more range, disruption (can hit multiple targets and hit them multiple times), and crowd control. These are all obtainable at the same stage you could initially get Bat Bat in if lucky, and will almost always be more available as well due to Bat Bat’s drop rate. When compared to more things beyond its cousins, it becomes apparent that Bat Bat needs a buff ((and obviously its cousins, but I understand that’s outside the scope of what you’re allowed to do)).
 
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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

I think it's obvious that my brain is fried right now because I TWICE mistyped 120/m as 120/s. My bad.

So you are telling me that an increase in regeneration equal to one fifth of a Band of Regen justifies what would be at least a 50% DPS nerf? On a weapon that already has below average DPS when compared to weapons with below average DPS?

If I wasn't clear enough in that message, the intent would be to slow the weapon down but increase it's damage to an equivalent degree to maintain (or increase) it's overall DPS. Not a nerf.
 
I think the Houndius Shootius could stand to have its projectile speed increased. As is, the bullets struggle to hit slimes.

Edit: Sorry, Leinfors.
 
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Baghnakhs are brokenly powerful. Even after I heavily nerfed it's potential upscaling, it's RAW DPS far outstrips any other pre-Mech melee weapon. The weapon honestly should have been nerfed far more than it was, and though it sets an ostensible "ceiling" on melee damage, it should never be treated as the standard.
The culprit you're really looking for is Titanium Armor's shards. Fetid is only viable because of exactly that.

To add insult to injury, after Destroyer is downed, Megashark with Crystal bullets actually slightly outclasses Fetid for facetank DPS... despite Megashark being a ranged weapon.

Nerf Titanium armor's set bonus and it will indirectly but immediately nerf Fetid into being average, if not arguably mediocre. Hell, it's not even all that OP currently, as I keep saying it's Titanium armor that's the problem.
but I think getting a significant DPS boost from it in its current state requires a bit too much switching for a game that doesn't have much emphasis on switching weapons to maximize DPS.
Whips and also a few other weapons proved that optimal play tend to revolve around switching weapons to maximize DPS.
 
Lucy is already a 'meme' weapon (I used her as my sidearm melee weapon, dumping murasama for her, and then kept her in hardmode for choppin' wood).

What if we added more meme-ability?

What if Lucy had 2.5x damage to plant-based monsters? That would include Man Eater, Snatcher, Angry Trapper, Plantera, Hopping Jack, Scarecrow, Splinterling, Mourning Wood, Nutcracker, and Everscream. It would be coded like the stake launcher and vampires.

With 2.5 damage Lucy would be almost exactly like a shorter version of Excalibur (65 damage and 20 use time vs 66 damage and 20 use time). In pre-hardmode, it would be fun to kill the annoying Man Eaters really quick, without unbalancing anything, and no one fights hardmode bosses with True melee, so it wouldn't cause any problems.

You could even go to 3x damage without unbalancing anything; it would still be worse than fetid baghnakhs.
 
Something someone in TRAEcord(hi Bry) said is that you could make it heal every X amount of swings for Bat Bat, like every 6 swings heals 4 health(1.25hp/s)
 
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.
Even in single player you'll probably have enough Seafood Dinner to use for short times or tide you over between random Golden critters, which will basically last two full Terrarian day cycles.

I understand an interest in balancing the game, but sometimes you can balance too much - it's just not something I feel needs addressing compared to other common complaints (primarily older Minion AI) since the vast majority of these items are pre-Hardmode, and most of those common complaints basically aren't going to happen at this point since it's numerical tweaks.

The DD2 crossover gear had similar growing pains, but it had extra tiers to its gear as the game progresses, so you can keep the same mechanical playstyle of the weapons while being able to keep up with progressively stronger and stronger enemies. With these.. you mostly can't. Outgrowing collab items is kinda lame, but that's just what happens when all your character progression is tied to gear and you can't offset it with higher levels or crafting/upgrading old gear into stronger versions to keep it modernized. (Note that I'm not even beginning to suggest Terraria should have EXP/Levels because that'd just be an annoying timesink that takes away from the rest of the otherwise solid progression from tiering gear up and whatever Terraria 2 ends up looking like shouldn't touch EXP mechanics at all IMO.)

I think it's okay for a few items to under-perform as well, because for players that have basically shifted to only playing optimally, the progression is already solved. As long as you can pick up a weapon and it's gimmick is straightforward enough to offset any potential damage loss then I think it's fine, as long as its within reason for when you obtain it.

(I wonder if I'm just trying to be the devil on your shoulder at this point...)
 
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About the Froggle Brunchwich... I think we forgot to mention something important: Frog Statues, which give the player an infinite number of frogs with little setup. The Exquisitely Stuffed buff is quite powerful, and having access to an infinite source of it so easily seems pretty overpowered to me. Also, the game's systems actively encourage the player to have a Jungle town, which, as pointed out before, gives you tons of frogs. In fact, because of these reasons, I'd say both frog foods need a nerf, but I acknowledge that you said you didn't want to rebalance items that weren't introduced in 1.4.3, so I'd say nerfing the Froggle Brunchwich is almost necessary, probably by simply making it so that it gives you the Plenty Satisfied buff but for a longer duration than the Sauteed Frog Legs does.
 
In between bug reporting/fixing, I'm starting to get together a list of candidate changes for a later hotfix (I think we are hotfixing today, but it won't have very many balance changes, I'd rather do them mostly in a batch). I'll probably share what I'm thinking here later today or perhaps tomorrow for some extra thoughts. Note, also, that if the balance changes aren't out by Wednesday, it is unlikely we will see anything until NEXT Monday at the minimum due to Thanksgiving weekend.

About the Froggle Brunchwich... I think we forgot to mention something important: Frog Statues, which give the player an infinite number of frogs with little setup. The Exquisitely Stuffed buff is quite powerful, and having access to an infinite source of it so easily seems pretty overpowered to me. Also, the game's systems actively encourage the player to have a Jungle town, which, as pointed out before, gives you tons of frogs. In fact, because of these reasons, I'd say both frog foods need a nerf, but I acknowledge that you said you didn't want to rebalance items that weren't introduced in 1.4.3, so I'd say nerfing the Froggle Brunchwich is almost necessary, probably by simply making it so that it gives you the Plenty Satisfied buff but for a longer duration than the Sauteed Frog Legs does.

Good thinking, but we made it so statue critters couldn't be caught back in (I believe it was) 1.3.1.

I've been mulling over the Pylon/Jungle Town concern though. It's a good point. Sauteed Frog Legs were added and balanced before we had the Pylon systems implemented. I'll have to discuss with the rest of the team.

The question is, if we make such a change, what would be ideal for the final two recipes? Sauteed = Tier 1 10 minutes? Where does that leave Froggle? Nerfing it all the way to Tier 1 would be such a huge change . . . so I'd say it should end up somewhere in Tier 2. If we were to make such a change, what would you guys expect to see from Froggle?
 
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