Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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Not fine, dps is very comparable to Shadowflame Knife and is worse than Bananarang, they do need some sort of buff because they’re just weak and never worth getting because something always does its job better
I personally think you should be able to stack them up to 10, alongside with a velocity increase.
You can literally run away from them when they return!
Of course, in Twins fight missing costs several seconds of not doing damage
 
A few things that my friends and I have discussed:

-Making corruption or crimson not destroy the jungle would be an incredible change, although it may go against the design philosophy of the game. So instead, how about giving mud blocks (and their grasses) a chance to resist infection so that crimson and corruption take longer to affect the jungle.

-Enchanted Boomerang should take more fallen stars than 1. I think that 10 would be a decent amount.

-Dark Lance is hugely overshadowed by Sunfury, so I think it needs a buff. I really like the idea of giving it a short range projectile that functions similar to the Storm Spear for some extra range, but a small damage increase might work just instead. It needs to be able to compete with the Sunfury but not overshadow Night's Edge in raw DPS, which is why I think the projectile would work best, it simply gives the weapon additional range.

-Why does sapphire staff have no pierce and no autofire, while emerald staff has both in addition to already superior base stats? This one has bothered me for a long time, since it makes tungsten so much better than silver. Instead of splitting gem staves into 2 tiers (one with pierce and autofire and one without), I suggest making three tiers, such that both sapphire staff either pierce but have no autofire, or have autofire but no pierce. I would prefer the former.

-This one isn't necessary, but it might be interesting to tweak the stats of the amber staff and amber robe so that they aren't exactly the same as the ruby staff and robe. For example, amber staff could get an extra pierce, but have slightly lower fire rate and damage compared to the ruby staff, giving it a separate niche of lower dps but more crowd control. The amber robe could have more defense but less magic boosts, or could trade out the reduced mana usage for something like increased mana regen.

-Nebula Floaters honestly should not have contact damage. While this could apply to many projectile based enemies, especially teleporting ones like fire imps and dark casters, nebula floaters in particular are a huge source of telefrag deaths. Their projectile is already enough of a threat as they teleport around, so when they practically teleport on top of you it doesn't really feel fair.

-I could mention many other weapons in desperate needs of buffs (thunder zapper, flamethrower, elf melter, etc) but other people have already mentioned them and I don't have anything to contribute with regards to exact stat changes.
 
-Making corruption or crimson not destroy the jungle would be an incredible change, although it may go against the design philosophy of the game. So instead, how about giving mud blocks (and their grasses) a chance to resist infection so that crimson and corruption take longer to affect the jungle.
I believe corruption and crimson already take longer to take over jungle grass than normal grass as-is. What I would instead suggest is preventing the initial generation of Corruption/Crimson in Hardmode from overtaking the jungle. 1.4 already changed the initial world generation of Corruption/Crimson to not spawn next to/inside the jungle, so why not the Hardmode generation too? I've had several worlds have their jungles get ruined by the evil biome generating inside the jungle biome as soon as the Wall of Flesh is killed, and no amount of slowing the spread is going to fix that.
 
After some amount of thinking until nearly 6 AM I compiled a list of ideas so far. Here's what I got:

A great, S-tier accessory which is perfectly fine as-is. But I think it'd be cool if, being a 'melee' weapon, it could inherit weapon flasks. A small change that I think would be cool because then every class has a reason to use the Imbuing Station (and possibly be rewarded for successful bonking).

In truth, any of the older minions suffer from their AI, so a raw stat change wouldn't help this guy much. While giving them Flinx AI would be awesome, it might make them too powerful as well. What about something like giving them the Breaker Blade effect by dealing more damage to healthy enemies, or something similar? To symbolize pirates' brute strength. Might not help them much in the long run, but it at least sets them apart.
EDIT: Giving them the inherent Midas ability, allowing them to drop coins from enemies they hit, would give them permanent usefulness without them having to do well in combat.

I once encouraged a friend to go into the Desert to look for the Thunder Zapper on a Mage run, and to our dismay, it was weaker than the gem staff they used to get there. For being in the most inhospitable biome in the game, this magic staff feels underwhelming despite its niche as a fast, single-target solution. I propose a simple damage buff; at least to 20 will do.
If not, there's always the route of keeping its damage the same but giving it a "chain lightning" effect; so that struck enemies also release an equal-damage or weaker Thunder Zapper projectile towards nearby enemies.

I think this accessory is pretty cool on its own. But I think it would be fitting as a component for the Greedy Ring, which would inherit its effect. I know the Greedy Ring is composed entirely of Pirate drops, so if you'd rather keep it that way, that's fine by me.
In addition, someone suggested making it a component to craft the Celestial Magnet, which I think would be wonderful. Perhaps by combining it with a Mana Crystal at a Graveyard or a Demon Altar. Though, if you think that'd ruin its "uniqueness" of being a Traveling Merchant item, that's all right.
(On that note: Celestial Magnet for Greedy Ring component?)

It's already been suggested and considered, so I'm glad, but I'd like to show my support; having its i-frames not affect other weapons would put it in a nice spot as a niche area control sidearm.

We all know the Optic Staff has i-frame issues of its own, but there's something I'm more worried about; it has terrible speed when catching up to a flying player, leaving so much downtime without doing any damage unless you're dangerously close to a boss at all times. I feel like even the Imps are more reliable in that regard (even though they have way less damage output).
What makes a minion good is not always its damage, but its reliability. That's why Sanguine Bats and Blades are so good. And making the Twinions catch up faster would make them more reliable, probably even nullifying the i-frame issue if it's done well enough.
On that note, though... I feel against the philosophy of nerfing Sanguine and Blades. They are so used because they are among the only 'good' summons in early Hardmode, and many other summons just don't compare. Plus, other classes have an easier time doing that sort of DPS and more, with less effort. That's why I feel more on the side of "just buff other summons."

I'm gonna be honest, I'm rather against an Obsidian set nerf. In 1.4's release, Summoner struggled so greatly against Master Mode Wall of Flesh; the Obsidian set and Spinal Tap were the answer to that, and I was very grateful. Obsidian was already nerfed once, so it kinda makes me frown that people still want it toned down.
A lot of what makes Obsidian special is that it has a unique niche of being the only whip-based armor. So, if I'll be honest, I'll be more willing to accept an Obsidian nerf, if some of those whip stats were transferred to Tiki armor instead. Tiki currently serves as a direct upgrade to Spider armor, but only in the form of a bit more defense, 2% more summon damage and 1 more minion. And that's a jump from early Hardmode to post-Plantera. On top of it being a stepping stone for Spooky armor which takes one event after Plantera to obtain. So turning Tiki into a souped-up Obsidian armor would be wonderful to see (assuming it doesn't break lategame balance).

It's already been stated, but I do agree it's not the most suitable starting whip unless you hold off going on your first trip to the Jungle. Since it takes some exploring anyway to get the Zoologist to spawn, gating it behind a hefty earlygame price seems a little much. A simple price reduction will do.

First of all, shoutout to fellow Summoner Shyguymask.
I'll parrot the interesting idea of a Cool Whip buff in the form of giving it tag damage, should the Blade Staff defense oversight get fixed. Maybe even having the snowflake minion affected by tag damage too. Shouldn't mess things up too much, I imagine.

This is not necessary in the slightest, but I think it'd be funny if all the snow pieces had a set effect of like, an infinite Warmth Potion effect (although I guess by that logic that would apply to Solar Flare armor too but eh, details).

So someone suggested boss health bars displaying their current/max HP. If that's possible, I'd love to see that.
Also, I don't use any player health/mana bar except Classic because I can actually see the health numbers on the screen without having to hover over it (there's also the issue of Fancy bars where I don't think I'm at low health until it's too late because the health bar still looks full in my peripheral vision; a problem that Classic style doesn't have because I can easily tell when there's less hearts in the corner of my eyes... does that make any lick of sense to anyone else?).

I'm gonna be honest, I see the vanity accessory slot restriction with 1.4's release to be an anti-quality of life change. It was very nice for players to have another loadout to swap to with a couple of clicks if the time called for it, but now that only works if the accessories have a visual appearance. On top of this, right-clicking an accessory in your inventory only swaps it with whatever's in your first slot, assuming all slots are occupied. In general, this leads to a lot more inventory clutter during crucial moments where you can't just stop to open your Void Bag.

While the Don't Starve seed is quite interesting for novelty purposes, I noticed that it's rather difficult and luck-based to gain any food at the start of the game within the 10 minutes you have before you start going hungry. Within that time, you have to either shake trees and hope they drop a food item, or rush for iron to craft a Cooking Pot and make a Bowl of Soup, which requires getting the Merchant for a Bug Net. To supplement this, I propose that eating a simple Mushroom will set your hunger back by one stage, without actually giving you any Well Fed buff. It'll just keep you at Peckish at the very most.

Now this one's a bit low priority for me, now that Summoners no longer have to rely on RNG to get a good start, and can just dive into the ice caves to craft a Flinx Staff. But someone suggested the possibility of making a Finch Staff drop from shaking trees rarely like the Living Wood Wand. Considering how unlikely the drop chance would be, I don't see an issue with it, as it removes letting the worldgen decide if you're allowed to have one or not. Besides, knocking a bird nest out of a branch and having him be chill with it sounds pretty gnarly.

They are pretty fun/funny items to use, but I think they're greatly outclassed by everything at their tier. Having a short-range, high damage Ranger weapon would give them a nice niche. If not just a damage buff, they could also inflict the same, stronger On Fire debuff from the Magma Stone, which would help a bit, I think.

This isn't really a buff suggestion, but I think the Stellar Tune should still make guitar strums even if it's out of mana, so that one could still use it a cool instrument if they decide to.

I've grown attached to this thing after doing a no-weapons run in Master Mode, so I have to say; while it's fine to use as passive damage in Expert Mode, I do believe it feels too underwhelming to be useful in an average Master Mode run. All I'd like is for the Bone Helm's damage to scale up a bit in Master Mode, maybe by like 1.5x at most.

I kinda feel bad for this thing. Its super wide spread makes it more unreliable than the Boomstick, despite it having higher damage, requiring you to either get lucky or shoot the enemy at point-blank range so more bullets hit. Currently it's only a reliable choice for the Wall of Flesh since it's such a large enemy.
Besides, it's not even a true quad-barrel.
My idea is this: Revert it back to four bullets, even if that requires adjusting the damage accordingly, and lower the spread by some margin. If you insist on having it be a wide spread, you can go the Poison Staff route and make it so that at least one bullet is guaranteed to point at the cursor, while all the other bullets fly wherever the heck they want.

For a pre-mech boss, Queenie seems to be wildly overwhelming if you don't have extreme mobility in the form of a mount or a Frog Leg. Her second form chases you so aggressively that I find it easier to evade Spazmatism of all things. While she does throw out projectiles in a somewhat recognizable pattern, they're not exactly feasible to dodge when she's in your face most of the time. Not to mention the sheer velocity and audacity of Bouncy Slime projectiles which are rather hard to see until it's too late.
Maybe there's something I'm missing, but I'm of the opinion that Queenie needs a tone-down, either in damage or movement speed. I want her to feel like a beginning-hardmode boss, but currently, she's on par with the mechs.

This isn't a suggestion at all, but I see Hallowed drawing some fire in this thread, and I'd like to say that Hallowed deserves to be as strong as it is now. In the past, the best armor in 1.1 became overshadowed when 1.2 released, by an armor that comes before it. Now Titanium's Shadow Dodge is moved to Hallowed, which I think is far more deserving for what it is. As for Summoners, someone mentioned that an offensive Chlorophyte Summoner set would be a nice alternative to Hallowed, but it's been established that it might not happen. Besides, we still have Spider, Forbidden, and four Old One's Army sets to choose from.

The last thing on my list because I'm sure Red has made his stance on this very clear, but I still believe there should be little to no penalty in prices from NPCs being unhappy. It turns the concept of towns and pylons into a 'requirement' instead of an incentive. I understand mobs in 1.4 now have a chance to drop additional money as a sort of counter-balance, but still. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth for a sandbox™️ game to punish you for building how you want.

...Phew.
Hope that's everything I wanted to address. If I think of something else I'll be sure to post it. Thanks for reading and for giving us another chance.
 
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I thought of another problem with another summoner related item or more so a summoner related armor set and thats
the bee armor, the main reason is because the obsidian armor outclasses it way too much (considering that obsidian is post EOW/BOC and bee is post queen bee
who is usually fought after the EOW/BOC) resulting in bee armor not being worth it to make (outside of vanity purposes)


1641498585330.png
Obsidian's Stats

compared to

1641498645505.png
Bee's Stats.


While obsidian armor could get a nerf again to make bee armor viable (which is likely), another option that could also be used aswell would to buff the bee armor and I think I know how it could gain
a buff.

The minion slots are fine although feel free on changing it if you like.

1. Allowing it to boost damage from bee weapons, that way it would combine well with the hive pack and make the useless hornet staff a bit better.
2. allow it to increase summon tag damage, there arent really any summoner armor which increase the tag damage from a whip and giving bee armor
a boost in whip range or speed doesn't really work so maybe make it increase tag damage by 8%-13% (its your choice but I honestly choose that range of tag damage increase to avoid making it too high or too low.) could make the snapthorn effective alongside
the spinal tap with the tag damage stacking. (if allowing tag damage stacking is intentional)
3. maybe increase the minion damage by 4% to make the minion damage increase by 27% overall instead of 23%

the final thing I can say really is that the Bee Armor (as of posting this) has yet to receive a buff or nerf and since its been introduced in 1.2.4, It doesn't really stand up
to any of the 1.4 or even 1.3 stuff.

Also remember the slime staff buff suggestion I said, like many other older summons, I-Frames are a problem with the weapon.
 
3. Terra Blade
I'm seeing a lot of back and forth on Terra Blade, and this is especially compounded by the fact that it was so historically underpowered for so long. I think that its crafting quest and "role" afford it a bit more power than other weapons, so I'm not sure if I think it really deserves a nerf. Also, melee generally doesn't need to be nerfed much on the whole anyway.
I would like to say that melee in general at this stage of the game definitely does not need a nerf, but I'd also like there to be more than 1 viable melee weapon. As it stands, Flying Dragon & Starlight(the biggest competitors to Terra Blade I can see, outside of arguably Scourge of the Corruptor) are nearly completely overshadowed by it at the moment. Flying Dragon being overshadowed is especially problematic as it comes a full tier later at the end of a very difficult event. It doesn't help that the main group-like fighting its doing after that is Pillars, where for some reason Selenians can reflect Flying Dragons projectile but not Terra Blade. Starlight has a minor niche with it's infinite piercing in a slightly higher range than Terra Blade but still suffers from not benefiting from melee Speed.
I don't think Terra Blade should be severely nerfed, but at the very least it's DPS needs to be brought down below Flying Dragon levels, or Flying Dragon needs a substantial buff. The main issue is the 14 melee speed of the Terra Blade combined with the projectile dealing more than base damage means it's a monster both at long and close range, and it would be nice if a weapon a tier later could compete in at least one of those areas.
If you don't want to nerf Terra Blade, I recommend buffing Flying Dragon from 25 to 20 melee speed. This would allow it to compete with the Terra Blade on the DPS front, with its superior piercing abilities making up for a significantly slower projectile. I don't think this is ideal though as this starts to look a lot like powercreep. I would much prefer Terra Blade get nerfed to increase variety than specific other weapons get buffed.
 
I'm gonna be honest, I'm rather against an Obsidian set nerf. In 1.4's release, Summoner struggled so greatly against Master Mode Wall of Flesh; the Obsidian set and Spinal Tap were the answer to that, and I was very grateful. Obsidian was already nerfed once, so it kinda makes me frown that people still want it toned down.
A lot of what makes Obsidian special is that it has a unique niche of being the only whip-based armor.
I’ll try to say this as bluntly as I can without being rude.

Obsidian not only breaks Terraria balance but also breaks balance for Modders who want to add more PHM summoner sets, you’d have to create extremely blatantly broken armor sets to compete, or nerf the set, one of my friends @Storm Diver said that he might actually Nerf Obsidian armor in his mod(Storm Diver’s Additions Mod) to create another Whip Summoner set due to Obsidian armor being that strong, numbers like 35 and 50 are downright unacceptable numbers for a post evil boss armor, the damage as well is not ok, it’s higher than Tiki armor, a Post Plantera set.

Also keep in mind that it wasn’t only Obsidian armor that made Summoner more viable against WoF, but also Spinal Tap, which seems like it was deliberately designed for the Hungry.
 
There’s a few mobility items which I do think should be covered, that I haven’t seen mentioned yet.

Frog Leg
Alright, let’s get the beast out of the way first. Frog Leg is *very* popular among veteran players, but the fact that it’s the centerpiece of mobility for most of the game and considered a must-have on every loadout, and that having multiple would be OP probably means that it’s OP.
It should get a nerf from 48% to maybe 32%ish, but definitely don’t stop there, because that would be really poorly taken.
As compensation, I’d say frog legs should be deliberately allowed to stack again (additively, if nothing else) so that you can still achieve great jump speed with a few slots and one on its own isn’t as polarizing.
I expect this to be controversial especially to other people in this thread, but that’s how I’d go about it.

Gelatinous Pillion
The amount of omnidirectional speed this offers is incredible. Its grounded speed is equal to Lightning Boots with more accelaration. Rapid short hops can match and outpace the Unicorn, and its pure vertical speed makes it absolutely phenominal versus the Mechs and Plantera whilr carrying you sideways as fast as Wings. I’d honestly start with a horizontal speed nerf, making it a lot less fast left and right would make it more of a vertical mobility mount instead of being an omnidirectional beast.

Soaring Insignia
Ah, yes. Infinite flight is actually really nice on its own, *arguably* worth a slot already, but the speed is just insane when on top of it. Picture it as a Frog Leg and Magiluminescence thrown on top of infinite flight. I’d give it the same Frog Leg treatment, and maybe look at how it interacts with hover wings (they tend to be really strong for kiting in combination with infinite flight and more speed).

Angel/Demon Wings
As a weak set of wings, it’s clear these are meant as an introductory wing set, but they’re just too expensive for such a role. 25 souls is a lot especially by modern standards, and combined with the Soul of Flight requirement, should honestly be lowered to 10-15.

And as a tangent, I’ll just bring up one enemy in particular that I’d classify as flat out unfair: Necromancers. Their projectile has 600 velocity and bounces in chambers, making it a free hit most of the time, and the only way to avoid it is to get around corners and be lucky or to hit and interrupt it. I’d make them have a longer time before firing after spawning so you can more realistically interrupt them before the incoming free hit. (They should *really* have a telegraph on their laser, but I know this is beyond the scope of the thread, so this is a second best.)
 
I would like to say that melee in general at this stage of the game definitely does not need a nerf, but I'd also like there to be more than 1 viable melee weapon. As it stands, Flying Dragon & Starlight(the biggest competitors to Terra Blade I can see, outside of arguably Scourge of the Corruptor) are nearly completely overshadowed by it at the moment. Flying Dragon being overshadowed is especially problematic as it comes a full tier later at the end of a very difficult event. It doesn't help that the main group-like fighting its doing after that is Pillars, where for some reason Selenians can reflect Flying Dragons projectile but not Terra Blade. Starlight has a minor niche with it's infinite piercing in a slightly higher range than Terra Blade but still suffers from not benefiting from melee Speed.
I don't think Terra Blade should be severely nerfed, but at the very least it's DPS needs to be brought down below Flying Dragon levels, or Flying Dragon needs a substantial buff. The main issue is the 14 melee speed of the Terra Blade combined with the projectile dealing more than base damage means it's a monster both at long and close range, and it would be nice if a weapon a tier later could compete in at least one of those areas.
If you don't want to nerf Terra Blade, I recommend buffing Flying Dragon from 25 to 20 melee speed. This would allow it to compete with the Terra Blade on the DPS front, with its superior piercing abilities making up for a significantly slower projectile. I don't think this is ideal though as this starts to look a lot like powercreep. I would much prefer Terra Blade get nerfed to increase variety than specific other weapons get buffed.
The main reason Terra Blade has crazy DPS and outclasses other weapons is because of melee speed whips. As I suggested before, changing "melee speed" from whips to "whip speed" will significantly nerf Terra Blade already. Leave Terra Blade as it is after whip melee speed changes and then buff other melee options.
 
A small change, but could the UFO mount be able to go through water? Doesn't make a lot of sense that it dismounts in water, UFO's are often depicted as being able to traverse through the ocean.

A bigger change, and not really related to balance, but could the Radio Thing be made to work like a monolith? It's strange that it's the only item of this type that works like an accessory instead of being placeable.
 
The main reason Terra Blade has crazy DPS and outclasses other weapons is because of melee speed whips. As I suggested before, changing "melee speed" from whips to "whip speed" will significantly nerf Terra Blade already. Leave Terra Blade as it is after whip melee speed changes and then buff other melee options.
Beetle Scale Mail makes Terra Blade OP too, just as DH.
 
The main reason Terra Blade has crazy DPS and outclasses other weapons is because of melee speed whips. As I suggested before, changing "melee speed" from whips to "whip speed" will significantly nerf Terra Blade already. Leave Terra Blade as it is after whip melee speed changes and then buff other melee options.
If their melee speed is changed to whip speed... wouldn't it start stacking multiplicatively with other melee speed sources? And thus making them an even bigger buff for whips?

That's not necessarily a balance issue but it should be pointed out.
 
The main reason Terra Blade has crazy DPS and outclasses other weapons is because of melee speed whips. As I suggested before, changing "melee speed" from whips to "whip speed" will significantly nerf Terra Blade already. Leave Terra Blade as it is after whip melee speed changes and then buff other melee options.
as someone who didn't even know the whip exploit existed until checking out this thread, i think the terrablade's strength definitely isn't tied to whips.

while i did suggest just moving it back in tiers a bit earlier, i think a similarly helpful solution would be to nerf it's projectile's damage back to what it used to be (25% more than the sword) and buff the flying dragon's projectile a little bit in turn. though, i don't think the flying dragon will ever be in a good place tbh since it just seems like a weapon that'll always be outclassed by the solar eruption.
 
It's already underpowered as is. If it required 10 stars no one would ever craft it.
I do agree, I tried doing some dps tests on my own but I couldn't pin down exactly how much to buff early boomerangs. Imo wooden boomerang, enchanted boomerang, shroomerang, and ice boomerang should all get between 5 and 8 increased damage. Thorn chakram and flamarang also definitely need a buff, probably by more.
Buff or no buff, it just feels wrong to be upgrading a weapon with only a single fallen star.
 
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