J Bame
Terrarian
1- Taking hits is obviously detrimental; it brings you closer to death. In Expert Mode it's easy to die from just 4-5 hits, and in Master Mode it's perfectly reasonable to expect one or two-hit deaths from some enemies. Therefore, these items need to do something that makes up for the potentially massive cost of taking a hit. Spawning a couple bees or moving faster is not what we look for.
2- Damage values in this game vary a lot, but these effects do not. It doesn't matter if you just took 20 damage from a Blue Slime or 422 from a Master Mode Sroller, some "when hurt" items will always do the exact same thing when you get hit. If their effects got a massive buff, but they were still consistent, they would be much, much better against something that hits rapidly with low damage than against something like Master Mode Rock Golems or Clowns that can almost literally take out +90% of your health in one hit.
3- Almost all of these items have no secondary effects, so they are a dead slot until you take a hit. Not as big of an issue as the two above, but it's something to keep in mind.
This thread will aim to rework all of the "when damaged" items into something that can work well in almost every situation.
Before starting I should point out that the numbers proposed for the effects wouldn't be set in stone. One of these is bound to end up under or overpowered, and they would be refined through playtesting. If you want to criticize these, try not to focus too much on the numbers given as an example and more on the concept itself.
Increases movement speed by 50% for 5 seconds after getting hit.
Every single aspect of this item is something that is not implemented well in this game.
* It has all the issues with being an item that works only when you get hit, which I explained above.
* It only affects the worst stat in the game, Movement Speed. A mobility stat that doesn't affect a single one of the main mobility options in the game (Boots, Wings, Balloons, Mounts, Hooks, and others).
* The whole concept is flawed to begin with. The idea is to have a short burst of speed to "make some distance". The issue with that is simple: The character is already way faster than almost any enemy in the game with just one or two of any movement accessory equipped, so if movement speed was a good stat this would just be an inconsistent movement option that would wear off before you can get any good use out of it.
This item is borderline useless in its current state, and it has an effect that can't be good unless we rework the entire Movement Speed stat which would be a ton of work balance-wise. This is one of the things that most need a rework in this game.
I have two different ways of buffing this item:
NEW
Increases movement speed by 50% and damage by 20% for a time [3 seconds + 0.075 per point of damage] after getting hit.
OR
NEW Increases movement speed by 50% and allows the ability to dash for a time [3 seconds + 0.075 per point of damage] after getting hit.
First of all, we improve the Panic! buff because Movement speed won't ever cut it. One of these makes it much more general and easy to balance, and the other keeps the "panic" theme by giving you an actually useful movement option: a dash.
Then we make it scale by increasing the duration based on damage taken, so with weak hits like those from Zombies (30~ damage) it's not too strong (just 5 seconds) and with something like Master Mode Srollers that hit for 422 we get it for a very long time (34.5 seconds in total) to compensate for the fact that you literally just lived a 422 damage hit.
Also, let's make it so that if you already have the buff, you can't receive it again until it runs out, because if those 34 seconds of Panic got refreshed due to a Blue Slime (10 damage at this point, 4 seconds) that sneaked into the Solar Pillar we would all be mad.
Reflects 33% of damage taken back to the attacker on a contact hit.
Reflects 200% of damage taken back to the attacker on a contact hit.
NEW
Reflects damage taken to nearby enemies [say, a 20x20 area around the player]
NEW
Reflects 300% of damage taken [before defense and damage reduction] to all enemies.
A buff made to the current design will invariably end up having to instakill whatever touches you to be worth it, so turning it into an AoE is an easier way to buff it. This new effect would be way better for dealing with crowds and keeping them away from you (remember that thorns has 10 (Extremely High) knockback), and it would remove its weakness of not working on projectiles since it would now trigger off of all damage.
The Thorns Potion will now have a cool role against Eye of Cthulhu (kills its minions) and Eater of Worlds (reflect damage to a bunch of segments), and Turtle armor would also get the final push it needed to become a relevant armor set since the 15% DR it got in 1.4 wasn't quite enough.
Also, now that we are at it, can we simplify Thorns Potions' recipe?
Seriously, why does no one talk about this?
Releases 1-3 bees after taking a hit.
Bad for pretty much the same reasons Thorns is. On paper it would be fine to just increase the number of bees spawned based on damage taken, but since the bees have a set base damage (and a low one, so have fun with enemy defense), that could be harder to balance than it sounds.
This also has a tinker with half of Pre-Hardmode, so we have to keep that in mind as well when coming up with a buff for it.
NEW
Releases 1-3 bees after taking a hit. Increases life regeneration [by 1 hp/s].
Repurposes it into something much more general and useful keeping the old effect as flavor, fits the item (Honey has healing properties in this game), and makes its tinkers much more interesting. Most notably Honey Balloon, which would go from being a waste of a Balloon and an Item ID to an interesting alternative to its Double Jump cousins and the Frog Leg.
The regen increase would not stack with other Honey Comb items (that could get degenerate pretty easily), and it would increase to 2 hp/s if a Hive Pack is equipped, because flavor.
Causes [3] stars to fall after taking damage.
Another weak "damage reflection" effect like the two above. Damage is so low (90 damage total if somehow every star hit) and covers such a pathetically small area around you that it may as well just be a visual effect. We need to buff more than one thing to bring this into relevance:
NEW
Causes stars to fall after taking damage.
Yes that's the exact same tooltip, these changes can't be reflected there:
* First of all, the stars would now spawn above the cursor instead of above the player. This will cause the stars to fall in what is almost always the best place for them to fall, increasing their accuracy drastically.
* Now their damage needs to be noticeable. Their base damage would be raised to 125 from 30 and instead of piercing, they'd make an AoE explosion on contact with an enemy or block. Now the accessory becomes a notable help for crowd control, with a bit of a role for single target DPS. With an explosion, the stars would also be much more likely to hit a target than before.
* Finally, we need to let it scale with damage taken as we have been doing with all of these. Instead of always spawning three stars, it will now spawn only spawn two at minimum, with the amount increasing by one for every 33 damage taken. So getting hit for 50 causes 3 stars to fall, 132 damage spawns 5, and Master Mode Srollers that hit for 422 spawn 14.
That's still not very powerful, but it will certainly help Star Veil and Mana Cloak a bunch (particularly the latter, which would now make more stars to pick up).
However, the last of its tinkers is still so bad that it needs even more help. I'm talking about Bee Cloak here:
Causes stars to fall and releases bees after taking damage.
I don't think anyone will disagree with me if I call this the worst Non-Material accessory in the entire game. Giving it the buffs to the Star Cloak and Honey Comb would probably make it decent enough to equip as a filler item, but we can get more creative:
NEW
Causes Starry Hives to fall after taking damage.
Identical to Star Cloak in spawning mechanics, the difference lies in the different Stars.
On contact, Starry Hives would not deal damage or explode. Instead, they will release 4 "Cosmic Stingies" (these little things
) that deal damage equal to half the amount taken. These would act similar to regular bees, but they would hit only once, move much faster, and have the ability to go through blocks.
100 damage taken would make 5 hives fall towards the cursor, which spawn a total of 20 Cosmic Stingies with 50 base damage each, which will deal around 1000 damage in total.
250 damage taken makes 9 hives fall towards the cursor; which spawn a total of 36 Cosmic Stingies with 125 base damage each, which will deal around 4500 damage in total.
A Master Mode Sroller that hits for 422 makes 14 hives, which spawn a total of 56 Cosmic Stingies with 211 base damage each, which will deal around 12k damage in total.
(there are other factors such as enemy defense, so this is not 100% accurate)
To summarize it, every single time you take damage, many times the amount taken would be split semi-randomly across the entire screen.
The ultimate thorns effect, one that would gradually get stronger the more damage is taken. Pretty neat, right? Better make good use of these screen nukes, because you can only unleash so many before you die.
Restores mana when damaged.
This, right here, is a "when damaged" item done right. It scales with enemy damage as items like these should, and the effect is far from being useless. This item has a separate issue, and it's one that it shares with other mana efficiency stuff:
Just drink a Mana Regeneration potion, you can stack those up like Crystal Bullets. If you can't do that, just middle click for a Mana Potion, those are even easier to mass produce. And if you can't do even that, just pick up a mana star, there is always at least a few of those on the ground (Celestial Cuffs is actually a massive help for this, but by the time that effect is the most useful, the Celestial Emblem is available).
Now don't get me wrong, this is far from a bad item (it's by far the best in the thread) and I can't just pretend that there are no downsides to those three methods, but it's also wrong to say it doesn't need a buff. Something that'd make the Celestial Cuffs more worth crafting over the alternative Celestial Emblem:
NEW
Restores mana when damaged. Increases pickup range of stars. Allows the wearer to overload mana.
This allows you to have more mana than what your Maximum Mana allows. So, if you are at 260/300 mana and you suddenly gain 100 (either by a mana star or a 100 damage hit), instead of "leaking" 60 mana, you will be left with 360/300 mana. However, this will only work once (mana won't overload again until the extra is used up), and unequipping the Cuffs would cause this extra mana to drain rapidly.
Despite the limits, the ability to hold 100-400 maximum mana (depending on the hits taken, of course) would finally let this sit as the ultimate mana efficiency item. This may make it too strong for pre-Hardmode, but that can always be fixed by including some Souls in the recipe.
Now that we are at it, we can give a similar buff to the Magnet Flower, one that also allows it to overload mana from Mana Potions, just so that tinker gets some more value as well.
Increases length of invincibility after taking damage [from 0.66 seconds to 1.33].
No matter how bad you think you are at this game, you are almost never going to get hit twice in one second and this will sit as a dead slot most of the time. The keyword there is "almost", because this effect can matter, and when it does, it matters a lot. Destroyer's Laser/Body Hits spam, using the Fetid Baghnakhs/Psycho Knife properly, Plantera phase two and maybe something else I'm forgetting.
These are not a lot of situations, but in almost all of these Cross Necklace can quite literally halve damage taken. It would be hard to buff to this item without breaking it in those situations (and it arguably doesn't need a change at all) but I have an idea that I'm pretty sure will work:
NEW
Increases length of invincibility after taking damage. More effective against strong hits.
Basically, on weak hits the accessory will work the exact same way as before (1.33 seconds of invincibility), but every single point of damage past 100 will add 0.015 seconds of invincibility. If damage taken exceeds 250, each point above 100 would add 0.02 seconds instead. For example:
151 damage would leave you with 2,09 seconds of invincibility;
251 gets you a total of 4.35 seconds;
A Master mode Sroller that hits for 422 would give you a whopping 7.7 seconds. Use this time wisely, because you'll need it after taking such a hit.
This buff would barely affect it in where it's good at (rapid low-damage hits), but against stronger attacks the effect would become much more apparent and efficient, giving it way more uses than before.
2- Damage values in this game vary a lot, but these effects do not. It doesn't matter if you just took 20 damage from a Blue Slime or 422 from a Master Mode Sroller, some "when hurt" items will always do the exact same thing when you get hit. If their effects got a massive buff, but they were still consistent, they would be much, much better against something that hits rapidly with low damage than against something like Master Mode Rock Golems or Clowns that can almost literally take out +90% of your health in one hit.
3- Almost all of these items have no secondary effects, so they are a dead slot until you take a hit. Not as big of an issue as the two above, but it's something to keep in mind.
This thread will aim to rework all of the "when damaged" items into something that can work well in almost every situation.
Before starting I should point out that the numbers proposed for the effects wouldn't be set in stone. One of these is bound to end up under or overpowered, and they would be refined through playtesting. If you want to criticize these, try not to focus too much on the numbers given as an example and more on the concept itself.
Every single aspect of this item is something that is not implemented well in this game.
* It has all the issues with being an item that works only when you get hit, which I explained above.
* It only affects the worst stat in the game, Movement Speed. A mobility stat that doesn't affect a single one of the main mobility options in the game (Boots, Wings, Balloons, Mounts, Hooks, and others).
* The whole concept is flawed to begin with. The idea is to have a short burst of speed to "make some distance". The issue with that is simple: The character is already way faster than almost any enemy in the game with just one or two of any movement accessory equipped, so if movement speed was a good stat this would just be an inconsistent movement option that would wear off before you can get any good use out of it.
This item is borderline useless in its current state, and it has an effect that can't be good unless we rework the entire Movement Speed stat which would be a ton of work balance-wise. This is one of the things that most need a rework in this game.
I have two different ways of buffing this item:
NEW
OR
NEW
Increases movement speed by 50% and allows the ability to dash for a time [3 seconds + 0.075 per point of damage] after getting hit.First of all, we improve the Panic! buff because Movement speed won't ever cut it. One of these makes it much more general and easy to balance, and the other keeps the "panic" theme by giving you an actually useful movement option: a dash.
Then we make it scale by increasing the duration based on damage taken, so with weak hits like those from Zombies (30~ damage) it's not too strong (just 5 seconds) and with something like Master Mode Srollers that hit for 422 we get it for a very long time (34.5 seconds in total) to compensate for the fact that you literally just lived a 422 damage hit.
Also, let's make it so that if you already have the buff, you can't receive it again until it runs out, because if those 34 seconds of Panic got refreshed due to a Blue Slime (10 damage at this point, 4 seconds) that sneaked into the Solar Pillar we would all be mad.
- Enemies usually have the same if not more health than the player, and there can be dozens of them on the screen.
- Bosses have tens if not hundreds of times more HP than a player.
- A lot of threatening attacks are projectiles, not simple contact hits.
NEW
NEW
A buff made to the current design will invariably end up having to instakill whatever touches you to be worth it, so turning it into an AoE is an easier way to buff it. This new effect would be way better for dealing with crowds and keeping them away from you (remember that thorns has 10 (Extremely High) knockback), and it would remove its weakness of not working on projectiles since it would now trigger off of all damage.
The Thorns Potion will now have a cool role against Eye of Cthulhu (kills its minions) and Eater of Worlds (reflect damage to a bunch of segments), and Turtle armor would also get the final push it needed to become a relevant armor set since the 15% DR it got in 1.4 wasn't quite enough.
Also, now that we are at it, can we simplify Thorns Potions' recipe?
Seriously, why does no one talk about this?
Bad for pretty much the same reasons Thorns is. On paper it would be fine to just increase the number of bees spawned based on damage taken, but since the bees have a set base damage (and a low one, so have fun with enemy defense), that could be harder to balance than it sounds.
This also has a tinker with half of Pre-Hardmode, so we have to keep that in mind as well when coming up with a buff for it.
NEW
Repurposes it into something much more general and useful keeping the old effect as flavor, fits the item (Honey has healing properties in this game), and makes its tinkers much more interesting. Most notably Honey Balloon, which would go from being a waste of a Balloon and an Item ID to an interesting alternative to its Double Jump cousins and the Frog Leg.
The regen increase would not stack with other Honey Comb items (that could get degenerate pretty easily), and it would increase to 2 hp/s if a Hive Pack is equipped, because flavor.
Another weak "damage reflection" effect like the two above. Damage is so low (90 damage total if somehow every star hit) and covers such a pathetically small area around you that it may as well just be a visual effect. We need to buff more than one thing to bring this into relevance:
NEW
Yes that's the exact same tooltip, these changes can't be reflected there:
* First of all, the stars would now spawn above the cursor instead of above the player. This will cause the stars to fall in what is almost always the best place for them to fall, increasing their accuracy drastically.
* Now their damage needs to be noticeable. Their base damage would be raised to 125 from 30 and instead of piercing, they'd make an AoE explosion on contact with an enemy or block. Now the accessory becomes a notable help for crowd control, with a bit of a role for single target DPS. With an explosion, the stars would also be much more likely to hit a target than before.
* Finally, we need to let it scale with damage taken as we have been doing with all of these. Instead of always spawning three stars, it will now spawn only spawn two at minimum, with the amount increasing by one for every 33 damage taken. So getting hit for 50 causes 3 stars to fall, 132 damage spawns 5, and Master Mode Srollers that hit for 422 spawn 14.
That's still not very powerful, but it will certainly help Star Veil and Mana Cloak a bunch (particularly the latter, which would now make more stars to pick up).
However, the last of its tinkers is still so bad that it needs even more help. I'm talking about Bee Cloak here:
I don't think anyone will disagree with me if I call this the worst Non-Material accessory in the entire game. Giving it the buffs to the Star Cloak and Honey Comb would probably make it decent enough to equip as a filler item, but we can get more creative:
NEW
Identical to Star Cloak in spawning mechanics, the difference lies in the different Stars.
On contact, Starry Hives would not deal damage or explode. Instead, they will release 4 "Cosmic Stingies" (these little things
100 damage taken would make 5 hives fall towards the cursor, which spawn a total of 20 Cosmic Stingies with 50 base damage each, which will deal around 1000 damage in total.
250 damage taken makes 9 hives fall towards the cursor; which spawn a total of 36 Cosmic Stingies with 125 base damage each, which will deal around 4500 damage in total.
A Master Mode Sroller that hits for 422 makes 14 hives, which spawn a total of 56 Cosmic Stingies with 211 base damage each, which will deal around 12k damage in total.
(there are other factors such as enemy defense, so this is not 100% accurate)
To summarize it, every single time you take damage, many times the amount taken would be split semi-randomly across the entire screen.
The ultimate thorns effect, one that would gradually get stronger the more damage is taken. Pretty neat, right? Better make good use of these screen nukes, because you can only unleash so many before you die.
This, right here, is a "when damaged" item done right. It scales with enemy damage as items like these should, and the effect is far from being useless. This item has a separate issue, and it's one that it shares with other mana efficiency stuff:
Just drink a Mana Regeneration potion, you can stack those up like Crystal Bullets. If you can't do that, just middle click for a Mana Potion, those are even easier to mass produce. And if you can't do even that, just pick up a mana star, there is always at least a few of those on the ground (Celestial Cuffs is actually a massive help for this, but by the time that effect is the most useful, the Celestial Emblem is available).
Now don't get me wrong, this is far from a bad item (it's by far the best in the thread) and I can't just pretend that there are no downsides to those three methods, but it's also wrong to say it doesn't need a buff. Something that'd make the Celestial Cuffs more worth crafting over the alternative Celestial Emblem:
NEW
This allows you to have more mana than what your Maximum Mana allows. So, if you are at 260/300 mana and you suddenly gain 100 (either by a mana star or a 100 damage hit), instead of "leaking" 60 mana, you will be left with 360/300 mana. However, this will only work once (mana won't overload again until the extra is used up), and unequipping the Cuffs would cause this extra mana to drain rapidly.
Despite the limits, the ability to hold 100-400 maximum mana (depending on the hits taken, of course) would finally let this sit as the ultimate mana efficiency item. This may make it too strong for pre-Hardmode, but that can always be fixed by including some Souls in the recipe.
Now that we are at it, we can give a similar buff to the Magnet Flower, one that also allows it to overload mana from Mana Potions, just so that tinker gets some more value as well.
No matter how bad you think you are at this game, you are almost never going to get hit twice in one second and this will sit as a dead slot most of the time. The keyword there is "almost", because this effect can matter, and when it does, it matters a lot. Destroyer's Laser/Body Hits spam, using the Fetid Baghnakhs/Psycho Knife properly, Plantera phase two and maybe something else I'm forgetting.
These are not a lot of situations, but in almost all of these Cross Necklace can quite literally halve damage taken. It would be hard to buff to this item without breaking it in those situations (and it arguably doesn't need a change at all) but I have an idea that I'm pretty sure will work:
NEW
Basically, on weak hits the accessory will work the exact same way as before (1.33 seconds of invincibility), but every single point of damage past 100 will add 0.015 seconds of invincibility. If damage taken exceeds 250, each point above 100 would add 0.02 seconds instead. For example:
151 damage would leave you with 2,09 seconds of invincibility;
251 gets you a total of 4.35 seconds;
A Master mode Sroller that hits for 422 would give you a whopping 7.7 seconds. Use this time wisely, because you'll need it after taking such a hit.
This buff would barely affect it in where it's good at (rapid low-damage hits), but against stronger attacks the effect would become much more apparent and efficient, giving it way more uses than before.
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