This is a false equivalence fallacy. "Chloro arrows smart bouncing with no penalty would be fine, because Crystal Darts can be effectively the same thing". The thing is, that arrows and darts have VERY different standards. Ichor dartss split into 2-5 this multiplies the DPS of your Dart gun by at LEAST 2x and can go up to 5x with some luck. Cursed darts leave a trail of flames that deal 75% of the dart's damage. If you shoot a dart at a boss there will be one flame created right before the dart connects, and the boss will be hit by both the flame and the Dart, so you will deal 1.75x, potentially more if more of the little flames hit.
Dart ammo is insanely strong, and that's because the dart guns themselves are actually low on stats. If any gun or bow could use dart ammo, it would become insanely powerful. This is why Chlorophyte Arrows are fine on bosses, but Crystal Darts are not. And why Crystal darts with a penalty on each bounce would be fine, but Chlorophyte arrows with 1 bounce with no penalty would be overpowered.
I honestly don't understand what you're trying to get at here. First you say that crystal darts are ridiculously op, then you tell me that the other darts are vastly superior in certain situations, but now you're saying that they're allowed to be insanely strong, but apparently crystal darts are just so incredibly broken even by that standard?
Chloro arrows bouncing a single time without penalty is not balanced, it's the best arrow in the game for general use. Ichor/Venom arrows will have similar DPS and a debuff but Chloro Arrows will be far more accurate. Holy Arrows will have higher peaks, but they need a lot of Armor Penetration, a Magic Quiver to improve their velocity, and above all they need you to move relatively little so the stars can actually hit. Piercing arrows all use Global or Static Immunity making them useless since every bow from now on is multishot. With these buffed Chloro Arrows all you need to do is shoot, and then you'll realize 90% of your shots hit things across the entire screen. They would have an extremely good side effect with no downside. It's like if you gave Chlorophyte bullets the same base damage as Venom Bullets. Nerf the homing all you want, so long as there is no real downside to the homing they would still be the best.
I think that's the part you don't understand. Yes, the smart bouncing with 67% penalty isn't very good. But the arrow itself is. You have to compare it to the alternative, which is simply inflicting Ichor on every hit.
Okay firstly, you can't say that the damage difference is going to be negligible compared to Ichor and Venom arrows when the sole purpose of these debuffs is to
increase your damage and deal significant damage over time. Secondly, holy arrow stars hitting their target is mostly dependent on an enemy's horizontal movement, their vertical movement has much less of an effect. Thirdly, I'm not asking that Chlorophyte arrows be given piercing, just that they don't incur such a harsh damage penalty after bouncing.
And lastly, okay please don't take offence to this but now I have to ask, have you actually
tried using chlorophyte arrows? Even if you're intentionally going for smart bounces, you are
not going to be hitting 90% of you're shots. Even in the best case scenarios, 90% is an exaggeration. You can't just ignore the limitations of smart bouncing and say that they'll be just as bad as chlorophyte bullets without the additional penalty.
Huh? Crystal bullets split on every single shot. The shards appear literally right next to the enemy, and while it's hard to tell if it gets hit by 1 or 2 of the shards, this is guaranteed with every shot and will always be better peak DPS than any other bullet can get.
They're guaranteed to split with each shot, but what isn't guaranteed is those shards hitting your intended target, or any target for that matter. It's pretty likely if it's moving towards you, but a lot less so if it's moving away. Just like with holy arrows, it'll increase your damage overall compared to other ammo types but can still be pretty circumstantial.
Multiplying damage by 0.3 ends up in very low damage per hit. Very low damage per hit gets affected very very significantly by a flat damage reduction by defense. Conversely, ignoring defense has a much better effect on low damage than on high damage. That's why both holy arrows and crystal bullets need armor penetration to peak.
Oh so you only meant that they're effected by defense a little more, not differently. Yes we can agree on that much lol.
what would be the point, they are already good. In fact something like this would be bad for the game, it would be an arrow that wants you to mindlessly spam to get below average DPS instead of actually trying to aim. Dont make Chloro Bullets again.
The point is that a 33% total damage penalty is disproportionately harsh compared to a lower base damage for just the ammo and that smart bouncing isn't anywhere near as reliable as you're making it out to be, especially compared to chloro bullets homing. You simply wouldn't get the same results from mindless spam with chloro arrows as you would with bullets. Earlier you said that the only thing balancing chloro bullets are them having a lower base damage compared to other ammo types. So let's just do the same thing with chloro arrows, simply remove the penalty and instead lower the base damage of the arrow itself, resulting in less damage compared to other arrows whether they bounce or not all while having a much weaker homing ability.
Look, I think that we're going to have to agree to disagree again because these posts are starting to turn into essays lol.