Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

[whoneedsnamestbh]

Spinal Tap:
Not seeing much discussion here . . . what are people's thoughts? Good? Bad? Spinal Tap was my "if I could add ONE SINGLE ITEM for Summoners" in 1.4.1, so I'm very curious to see if it had an impact. Is its presence just overshadowed by the Obsidian Armor prominence?

Spinal Tap is great. Enough damage and range to succeed as a post-Dungeon item, the right amount of tag damage, and the mechanic gives it a much needed niche for Wall of Flesh. Doesn’t need any change imo.

The issue with the brokenness Obsidian Armor + Spinal Tap combo is majorly Obsidian Armor. Spinal Tap is perfectly fine as is.

 

[qwerty3.14]

Vampire Frog:
So I think we can all agree that AI improvements are generally always a good thing, and since I fixed a lack of static frames and we buffed the collision box on the Frogs, I don't want to "unfix" those now. So here are my options with Vampire Frog.

It currently uses Static Immunity (unlikely to change, given the conversation, as Local would be a dramatic buff, and removal entirely is not a good thing)

It deals 11 base damage, and the Static Immunity time is set to 10 frames (aka, 6 hits per second max). This is somewhat atypical, as most minions are set to use higher than 10 frames.

So what I can do is either reduce the base damage, or I can increase the immunity frame time. Both would accomplish the same goal, and if I do both, then the buff might be too dramatic.

For instance, if I increase the immune time to 12 AND drop the damage by 1, it would be a whole 25% loss of optimal DPS (in a no-defense, base damage scenario).

So I'm interested to hear perspectives on that, either immune time of 12 (roughly 16% loss), or damage reduced by 1 (roughly 9% loss) or 2 (roughly 18% loss)

This is literally just nickle-and-diming its damage, but because a 2-damage buff + AI changes had such a profound impact, its worth the nitpicking, I think.

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.

 

[SsIras]

Spinal Tap:
Not seeing much discussion here . . . what are people's thoughts? Good? Bad? Spinal Tap was my "if I could add ONE SINGLE ITEM for Summoners" in 1.4.1, so I'm very curious to see if it had an impact. Is its presence just overshadowed by the Obsidian Armor prominence?

I think it complements the power of Obsidian Armor a bit, Obsidian Armor would still be pretty good if you were using Snapthorn for the rest of pre-hardmode, but if we didn't have this armor set, it would be pretty mandatory to craft Spinal Tap, it is a great whip.

I did some testing to see if it was actually too good, and I found it's a lot worse compared to its upgrades, Firecracker and Cool Whip, so I think it is fine (and some people even say those two are the worst whips in the game, so Spinal Tap being far away from them is a good sign in terms of balance).

 

[Lythael]

As we are on topic of whips.
Is there a possibility that some higher tier whips would be granted innate autoswing? (Without needing to use the Feral Claws or its tinkers to achieve this)

Or is that out of the question?

 

[whoneedsnamestbh]

As we are on topic of whips.
Is there a possibility that some higher tier whips would be granted innate autoswing?

Or is it that out of the question?

I’ve thought of that before too. Maybe Durendal or Dark Harvest onward could gain autoswing? It would be helpful, to say the least.

 

[Leinfors]

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 think almost everyone has expressed only wanting to see a minor adjustment here, so that seems way too dramatic to me, and one that is literally shifting in favor of an unpopular mechanic that I'm not trying to make worse. This would make groups of frogs actually weaker than they were in 1.4.

 

[J Bame]

So I'm interested to hear perspectives on that, either immune time of 12 (roughly 16% loss), or damage reduced by 1 (roughly 9% loss) or 2 (roughly 18% loss)

As said above the new hitbox hits too quickly, it's probably better to increase the immune time on that, the tongue attack doesn't need a nerf

Christmas Tree Sword:
I'll look into buffing the projectile damage here, but as the projectiles deal the majority of the damage, I'm not confident a shift from 50% to 100% is warranted (it would almost double it). I'll look into 75%.

In 1.4 this was comparable to Terra Blade, which wasn't good given that it was much harder to obtain and came later in the game, and now Terra Blade got a major buff. This was the same issue the Flying Dragon suffered from, you would expect this weapon to be at least as good as the Influx Waver (which was at its strongest almost 3x more powerful than old Terra Blade).

I don't think 100% damage on the projectiles would be broken, you need to remember that these projectiles don't have a lot of range.

Spinal Tap:
Not seeing much discussion here . . . what are people's thoughts? Good? Bad? Spinal Tap was my "if I could add ONE SINGLE ITEM for Summoners" in 1.4.1, so I'm very curious to see if it had an impact. Is its presence just overshadowed by the Obsidian Armor prominence?

Was this Whip specifically designed to be good against the Wall of Flesh? Because it's definitely good at that, the low falloff helps a ton against the Hungries and makes for an overall safe WoF fight. Also a nice tag damage buff that Blade Staff especially likes. Very good weapon.

 

[Dr. Endie]

Hey, so I tried out the Bone Glove. Very cool, for some reason I thought it'd shoot directly in front of you and not follow your aim. Which made me wonder: could the Volatile Gelatin be changed to be like it? It's got a lot of things in common with Bone Glove: accessory, (I think) class neutral damage, bouncy projectiles. But it cannot be aimed, and as a result, it's less of a complement to your DPS and more of a weird one-off accessory that you put on your character when there's literally nothing else to equip, like using a white string for prefix bonuses at the beginning of the game.

I think it'd be cool if it was basically an upgraded Bone Glove. They're both Expert-exclusive, too.

 

[qwerty3.14]

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 think almost everyone has expressed only wanting to see a minor adjustment here, so that seems way too dramatic to me, and one that is literally shifting in favor of an unpopular mechanic that I'm not trying to make worse.

it's not going to be a 50% nerf because... iFrames. 1 frog can attack so fast that even going to 2 vampire frogs yields very little benefit.

 

[Leinfors]

Was this Whip specifically designed to be good against the Wall of Flesh? Because it's definitely good at that, the low falloff helps a ton against the Hungries and makes for an overall safe WoF fight. Also a nice tag damage buff that Blade Staff especially likes. Very good weapon.

I took the Hungries into consideration specifically when designing it, as well as early Hardmode "enemy swarms".

Originally, I had considered a different mechanic where it did increased damage after you took damage, but this ended up sounding just exploitable but also not fun, so I went with the low Shadowbeam Protocol instead.

it's not going to be a 50% nerf because... iFrames. 1 frog can attack so fast that even going to 2 vampire frogs yields very little benefit.

This just sounds . . . like an incorrect philosophy of analyzing minions to me.

Right now, Vampire Frog has a 10 frame hit timer. So it can literally hit 6 times per second, ASSUMING it is actively in contact for the entire time. At face value, changing this to 20 frames is literally a direct nerf of 50% DPS for a single frog.

But in contrast to 1.4? Now, originally, it could only hit during the animation phase, but the frame time was still low, so "5 vampire frogs" could still hit up to 6 times per second, they just wouldn't individually hit more than 3x per second.

If I change the frame count to 20, then there is a hard cap of 3 hits per second from ANY vampire frogs, which would be less than 1.4's system, where you could hit more than 3 times per second (even if the hits were less common and did 2-less damage).

I also think this is really an inaccurate way to perceive minions given that A) having more minions can mean they are attacking different targets at once B) more minions means more active coverage of the field, less downtime. Not being a nerf only would be true if there was only ever a single frog on a single target 100% of the time, which they aren't likely to be doing because they are constantly moving in and out of effective range.

And to reiterate, this is much in contrast to a lot of other feedback in the thread advocating for only a minor nerf. So this does not sound like the proper course of action to me.

 

[SsIras]

So . . . the tl;dr . . . minions that do not use local frames already are unlikely to be changed to use local frames now, it would be a massive buff that was not approved. Should such a change be made, the minions would likely have to be "counter-nerfed" to make up for it, which both takes time and risks breaking them in a bad way.

Does this apply to Deadly Sphere?

idk how much it needs of a buff and if that would make it very strong, but it is another minion that I don't see used very often.

 

[Lythael]

I’ve thought of that before too. Maybe Durendal or Dark Harvest onward could gain autoswing? It would be helpful, to say the least.

Yea. I don't think it would make them unbalanced or anything and they would certainly be more comfortable to use Especially for people with carpal tunnel syndrome.
Like i said it doesn't have to be on all whips but following the Terraria balancing fashion : lower tier whips = no autoswing , higher tier whips = autoswing.

Unless there is a really good reason why they cannot have innate autoswing at all?

 

[Leinfors]

Does this apply to Deadly Sphere?

idk how much it needs of a buff and if that would make it very strong, but it is another minion that I don't see used very often.

Generally speaking, it applies to everything. Switching it to local frames will probably warrant a full re-evaluation of it and I may have to nerf its stats to offset the change. Its also "outside the scope" of the tweaks I'm trying to make here, in all honesty.

 

[SsIras]

Yea. I don't think it would make them unbalanced or anything and they would certainly be more comfortable to use Especially for people with carpal tunnel syndrome.
Like i said it doesn't have to be on all whips but following the Terraria balancing fashion : lower tier whips = no autoswing higher tier whips = autoswing.

Unless there is a really good reason why they cannot have innate autoswing at all?

1 accessory slot more is a big change, of course, you could opt to not use gloves, but this was discussed before and the conclusion is that a lot of weapons are A LOT better with autoswing. I think the late whips are pretty good and I dunno if they need more adjustments, but I do agree that autoswing is pretty comfortable to use, that's why I wear gloves for whips.

 

[whoneedsnamestbh]

Speaking of whips (again), would it be outlandish to suggest a buff to Cool Whip in any form?

Cool Whip is outclassed by its alternatives in the same tier. Firecracker’s gimmick is obviously superior, and 9 damage on each minion hit is more reliable than 1 extra "minion" that hits for 10. Obviously, Durendal deserves to be stronger than Cool Whip, but the gap is pretty substantial. The only niche it really has is the Destroyer.

One flaw with Cool Whip is the snowflake’s inability to keep up. It moves kinda slow and can’t actually always get any damage off against a lot of bosses.

I’m asking that the Cool Whip’s snowflake projectile could get a movement speed buff, is possible? Maybe a damage up on the snowflake too would help.

 

[SsIras]

Generally speaking, it applies to everything. Switching it to local frames will probably warrant a full re-evaluation of it and I may have to nerf its stats to offset the change. Its also "outside the scope" of the tweaks I'm trying to make here, in all honesty.

Yeah. Still, maybe look into Deadly Sphere Staff power? I think it's the only minion that hasn't been talked here a lot.

Speaking of whips (again), would it be outlandish to suggest a buff to Cool Whip in any form?

Cool Whip is outclassed by its alternatives in the same tier. Firecracker’s gimmick is obviously superior, and 9 damage on each minion hit is more reliable than 1 extra "minion" that hits for 10. Obviously, Durendal deserves to be stronger than Cool Whip, but the gap is pretty substantial. The only niche it really has is the Destroyer.

One flaw with Cool Whip is the snowflake’s inability to keep up. It moves kinda slow and can’t actually always get any damage off against a lot of bosses.

I’m asking that the Cool Whip’s snowflake projectile could get a movement speed buff, is possible? Maybe a damage up on the snowflake too would help.

I think the problem with Cool Whip is that it offers no benefits for Summoner whatsoever, it deals summon damage and that's where it ends, the snowflake doesn't gain any bonus from being a summoner or even from attack speed.
If I were to change it I did add like, 3 tag damage to it and end it there.

 

[Leinfors]

I’m asking that the Cool Whip’s snowflake projectile could get a movement speed buff, is possible? Maybe a damage up on the snowflake too would help.

That would probably be a pretty simple change to make. Adding tag damage to it now would be a bit more work, so I'd rather find alternative solutions like buffing the snowflake or the whip's damage itself. I'll put it onto my list for evaluation.

 

[Dr. Endie]

Sorry to repeat myself, but an old post of mine got buried pretty badly by all the Summoner talk. It had to do with Solar Flare armor's Shield being dyed by chestplate dye, while the Stardust Guardian from the Stardust set is dyed with pet dye. I think that if the shield was dyed by pet dye, it would allow for more versatile vanities, since it'd remove the occasional clash that occurs when dying certain armors a certain way and having the shield look bad in the process.

And while I'm bringing the subject up again, I was wondering if the beetles from the Beetle armor set could be changed to where they could be dyed. It's kind of odd, Beetle armor is the only armor whose set bonus objects can't be dyed (Solar's Shield, Stardust's Guardian and Forbidden's Circle thingy all can be dyed).

 

[Leinfors]

I'll have to ask, none of those are balance related and they are generally subject to Yorai's design approach. (Side note: The Ronin's fireflies also use the chestplate dye, so if anything, Stardust Guardian is the exception to the rule here)

This is more content changes at the last second and not exactly what I'm trying to "get more of" here.

 

[Dr. Endie]

Ah, okay, that's fair.