The issue with the frog buff, is that the new hitbox is always active and deals damage EXTREMLY quickly, this wasn't just a reliability buff but a massive dps buff thanks to the increased attack speed. Tone down the attack rate to be the same as the speed it sticks out its tongue.
So the vampire frog's tongue cycle is 20 frames (though it could hit for more than just a single frame in the original version).
This would be a very dramatic nerf, literally cutting its DPS by 50%, and leaning more towards "decreasing returns for more frogs" that people are trying to advocate against.
I agree that Vampire Frogs need a nerf, but I’m gonna go against the grain here and say that nerfing the rate at which their body deals damage, at least all the way down to the rate of their tongues, probably isn’t the way to go about it.
Leinfors and qwerty already established that this change would tank an individual frog’s DPS while improving their group capabilities. However, at the state of the game Vampire Frogs become available, group capabilities aren’t the priority. You have 3 minions max, 2 whenever you’re not in battle because summoning potions take time to make. Additionally, although Vampire Frogs are the ‘hog hitframes’ type of minion, due to their unique jumping patterns they usually aren’t hitting the same enemy at the same time, so for the first two minions or so, having extra minions does make a difference. This is especially obvious against groups of enemies where the frogs jump back and forth, and anything that can fly. This means that cutting down the rate of their lasting hitbox so much may just be a fatal hit and not actually let frogs redeem themselves until post-QB when the player has four or more minions.
Second, I’m assuming their role in progression is to bridge summoners over the world evil bosses, by their mechanics and what you need to actually kill blood moon fishes. Their lasting hitbox lets them take care of the Worm efficiently, similarly capable to a Vilethorn or Demon Bow with Jester Arrows. However, if anyone remembers 1.4 release, they didn’t hit anywhere near often enough to do jack to the worm. They’d hit two segments at a time, pause for about a second as they jump to try to follow the segments they attacked, and hit two completely separate segments. And honestly, a snapthorn doesn’t cut it for the worm because of its diminishing piercing and limited firepower on its own. Their lasting hitbox is pretty essential to take care of the Worm. Right now, they may be a bit too good at the worm, but that’s better than incompotence, and honestly, breaking the worm applies to 30% of weapons at the world evil tier already.
I can also bring up the Brain because I play drunk worlds almost exclusively now, and honestly they only do ‘okay’ against the brain already. The creepers are erratic and airborne, which Vampire Frogs obviously wouldn’t have strenghts against, but they manage due to the fact that they can jump through several at once. This gets weakened if the lasting hitbox is nerfed. However, that’s a lesser issue because a Snapthorn can take care of the creepers somewhat well. The second phase is the problem because whips don’t have nearly enough knockback to keep the Brain away. Their lasting hitbox, I noticed, is the only reason the Brain can’t just run you down in the second phase.
And lastly, although they need a nerf, they don’t need a major nerf. They already struggle against flying enemies and only really show their teeth in grounded combat, as well as beinf admittedly kind of stupid. They already pull around the same DPS as the post-worm minions on average, more when grounded but being quite a bit worse as soon as they have to jump to reach their target. They are also quite a pain in the
to get, even with all the buffs to blood moon fishing, because you still have to kill (usually multiple) Blood Moon fish to get it.
Vampire Frogs do need somewhat of a nerf in my opinion, I’m not going to argue that. But it doesn’t need a huge one, and I would prefer if it wasn’t in the form of nerfing the rate of the lasting hitbox by such a substantial amount. Nerfing it somewhat may be fine, but too far and it takes a fatal hit for the reasons I mentioned above.
Instead of nerfing the hit rate of the body, I personally would make the body deal less damage than the tongue, down to maybe 8 or 9 (about 2/3 that of the tongue). This would allow the body to be nerfed while keeping the tongue attack’s ability (and helping to establish the tongue as its “main attack”) as well as keeping some of its potency in the niche it’s meant for.
If that’s too hard to make, then I would just cut the overall damage down to ~11 and/or give the body hitbox a *slight* nerf in how fast it can hit.