Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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So, I'm dumb and just realized this thread exists. Don't know if this topic has been touched yet, but here, I'll just quote the opinion on whips & minions I gave on a different one:

Left clicking the whip should just swing it without a targetting effect, and right-clicking should have it work as it currently does. It'd help summoners fight minion-spawning and/or multi-part bosses like uh... Most of them (I can only think of the twins, duke fishron (except when he shoots sharknadoes), the empress of light, the Lunar Cultist, Betsy and maybe the Moon Lord as exceptions to this).

Please make targetting (granted by whips or right clicking staffs) extend the agro radius of minions. Like, I understand the concept of them having limited agro in order to stay close to the summoner and keep him safe while exploring and whatnot, but for such a squishy class, one that's desperately lacking for better means to defend themselves, not having the means to punch the boss that's just outside the screen without taking massive amounts of damage (looking at you, Empress of Light) while the mage and range class can blindly shoot homing projectiles and hope most of them hit... now that's unfair.

I'm not asking for it to be extended to infinity and beyond, just letting them deal damage while you take a breath and realize that 1 random projectile you didn't dodge for the sake of landing a few more hits left you with 20 HP because your armor is literally made of spooky-looking wood.

Oh, and maybe for the finch and raven minions to be a little bit faster, so they can actually land hits with a bit more consistency... that'd be neat too.
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Aaand I'll also add a couple extras:

The finch is somehow superior to the vampire frog when dealing with bosses. This should be obvious, since it's a flying minion with a passive hitbox vs a non-flying one with an active one. As it is, most players would just skip the frog and go straight for the hornet staff, as it is far easier to farm for it (specially if you're not on a summoner-only run), and a clearly superior option as a summon anyway. A passive hitbox would really, really solve this, without the need to make it fly.

Summons are dumb and their inability to go through blocks makes fighting enemies in narrow areas annoying, this could be easily solved by granting them said ability if they haven't hit anything for 5 seconds. Freedom of movement would at the very least dodge the issue.

And now on to my opinion of the pre-hardmode pigmy necklace:

If you compare the performance of literally every other class (specially rangers now that they have the power of bees and grenades on their side) vs the WoF, one more minion ain't really that big of a deal. If you want it to be behind the queen bee, just chuck it to the dryad; theres no better NPC for that role, given that the witch doctor already considers her a "kindred spirit", and you need to beat a boss anyway for her to spawn, a condition that's already a gargantuan task with just one to two finches.
 
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I really love the new update and only have some minor complaints/suggestions about items, listed in order of importance to me (I usually play the ranged class so my suggestions are focused there) :

- Please, please increase the drop rates of the bloody tear and all non-chum bucket items obtained through blood moon fishing. It's ridiculous that you can fight these enemies 5-10 times and only get chum buckets as a reward. I think the Dreadnautilus should be guaranteed to drop a special item considering the difficulty of that fight and the rarity of pulling it up.

- Chlorophyte bullets are just too effective considering their ease of use and the abundance of chlorophyte in the world (of course this has always been an issue...). Their damage should be harshly nerfed; a global percentage-based penalty like that applied to the Lunatic Cultist and what's done in the Calamity mod would be good.

- Cursed flame needs to somehow be balanced with Ichor. With even medium speed weapons there's no way that a damage over time effect is going to be competitive with a defense reduction effect unless the damage over time is absurdly high, since the player will almost always be attacking more than once per second. I think the debuff design is essentially hopeless, so I would actually suggest that the base stats of cursed flame-derived ammunition be boosted to compensate. Not sure what I would do about the other classes.

- In expert mode all of the cool new minecarts become pointless for efficient travel once you get the mechanical cart. I think either a vanity slot for minecarts or a consumable that boosts all minecarts' speed to that of the mechanical cart (in an expert or master world) would be nice. This doesn't really matter though because pylons make minecart travel mostly obsolete anyways.

- Dry bombs should be permanently added to the Demolitionist's shop once dry rockets are available from the Cyborg (so post-Plantera).

- Music boxes should be available earlier in the game (possibly from the merchant), and should reliably record faster. The town music, being the same in all biomes, gets a little old after a while. A good alternative to this would be to have the option to disable town music in favor of the biome music.

- An option to disable gun zoom without having to unequip the accessory/weapon would be a nice quality of life improvement. Trying to right click on things and having the screen shift around when I miss is a little annoying.
 
I think a lot of people have forgotten the name of this thread. I mean, there are still suggestions for item changes, but more and more, we're seeing general balance discussions here. So everyone keep in mind the original post:

Leinfors said:
- Balance changes we've made that you think were not enough, or were too much/disagree with
- Old items that were overlooked in our changes
- New items/equipment that you feel needs adjustment

[snip]

My focus is primarily items. It is very unlikely that I will be making changes to enemies/bosses. It is also very unlikely for me to be able to completely overhaul weapons in the style of the Charged Blaster Cannon or Medusa Head. We are talking stat changes here, rather than overhauls.
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Apple Pie said:
AYOOOOOOO Let's get darts added into the game, we got 4 special darts and seeds but where's "Plain Dart"? 🤔
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Adding items for just a couple of weapons seems like a... terribly bad idea.

And this is coming from the guy who wants a flask equivalent for whips (though flasks working on whips would be neat too, it'd give pure summoner a means to deliver more debuffs)

Speaking of whips, given the fact that size modifiers exist, is there a particular reason speed affects the size of the whip aside from being a more common modifier? If it were up to me, I'd keep those two things (the size of the whip and the speed of it) into their corresponding modifiers. It'd be a neat buff to them in general, which they need, specially for those people that want to play a "pure summoner".

Minor but necessary side-tracking: Yeah, I know, summoners are meant to be played as hybrids. But there's a reason why this is a common complaint.
The same duckling reason people want the Reaver Shark to come back to it's old glory.
The same reason people are trying to allow meteors to spawn pre-EoW/BoC.
The same reason the feature-which-we-shall-not-speak got removed.

"This is a sandbox game, let me play however I want."

That said, let me give my input on those two things:

The reaver shark is fine as it is, just make it a bit more common to compensate for it's nerf and give it a bit more speed so it can be more useful as a mining tool and an early game weapon, that should make it relevant again, I guess?

The other one is even supposed to be part of this topic? I thought this was entirely about weapons and items, lol. But while we're on it: how about making explosives work only if you have a meteorite (or hardmode) pickaxe in your inventory? Both things prove either of the following conditions:

1.- You've spent enough time manually mining the meteorite to have experienced the risks it involves.
2.- You're way past the point where the meteorite represents any interesting threat, at this point, meteorites would be a nuisance at best, so explosives would just be saving you the time to mine them.
 
More on the primary topic: why is the Dual Hook the only "Individual" hook style?

Am I the only one who hates the various "Simultaneous" hooks? I love using the Dual Hook as a movement tool, and I can't stand the kind of hooks that suspend you between multiple points, which forces you to jump just to get somewhere.

The problem is that there's no upgrade... ever. Yeah, the Static hook is nice, but that's a completely different kind of motion, and not one I want most of the time. It just seems so strange to me that the developers made so many of these simultaneous hooks and only one individual.

Take the Christmas Hook and turn it into an Individual-style hook.
 
Nicol Bolas said:
More on the primary topic: why is the Dual Hook the only "Individual" hook style?

Am I the only one who hates the various "Simultaneous" hooks? I love using the Dual Hook as a movement tool, and I can't stand the kind of hooks that suspend you between multiple points, which forces you to jump just to get somewhere.

The problem is that there's no upgrade... ever. Yeah, the Static hook is nice, but that's a completely different kind of motion, and not one I want most of the time. It just seems so strange to me that the developers made so many of these simultaneous hooks and only one individual.

Take the Christmas Hook and turn it into an Individual-style hook.
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What about the hook you get from Queen Slime that instantly teleports you to the spot?
 
Rebalancing Darts and their respective weapons wouldn't be a bad idea actually. They get so little love. Yet Unreal Blowpipe was the first weapon I ever found when I started playing terraria many years ago.
 
I have another quality of life request now that I've reached the endgame: is it possible to turn down the volume of the firing noise on the chain gun and the vortex beater? If I want to hear the music for a boss fight while continuously firing these weapons (or just don't want to get annoyed at the constant loud noise) I have to turn the sound meter down to around 30%, which practically mutes all other sounds.
 
Yeah about that there was even in changelog quote "Reduced the volume on Vortex Beater, Sniper Rifle and Solar Eruption" and I didn't tell the difference it's still to loud.
 
Some quick summoning changes:

-buff Pygmy throwing velocity through the roof
-remove piercing from Retinazer (as mentioned before)

Some not-so-quick summoning changes:

-remove tag damage "debuff" immunity from all enemies
-change Sharknado AI to slower version of Raven AI while keeping the projectiles as they are
-change Deadly Sphere damage to non-piercing
-make Desert Tiger actually latch onto enemies like Spiders do, instead of bouncing on them and easily falling off. Simply changing AI to spider should be an improvement
-make Frost Hydra deal contact damage and knockback

other:
-remove diminishing returns from shadowbeam staff and blood thorn
-add knockback to magical harp
-make chlorophyte claymore orb bounce on the ground
-make poison/venom staff fangs converge at cursor location, forming an elliptical shape similar to sanguine/zenith
-make CB Cannon and jousting lance angle adjustable
 
Not sure if this has been brought up yet, but it seems like you guys have worked pretty hard to make most items available in 1.4.x regardless of worldgen differences. For instance having the Dryad sell seeds from the opposite evil biome or having the beastiary entry of the missing member of the salamander, crawdad, and gaint shelly trio automatically unlock. So it seems kind of off that the vampire knives/SoC are hard locked behind a specific world type.

Also I'm pretty sure this has been suggested but I'd like to add another vote to buffing the blood thorn. It looks really cool and I don't think I've seen anyone have anything good to say about it.
 
qwerty3.14 said:
Probably because Everyone thinks that now that there are whips, it's viable to go pure summoner, when it isn't. The summoner class is plenty strong but not if you limit your options so much. Minions are extra dps on top of whatever main weapon you're using and whips are best used every once in a while to boost your minions.
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Baconfry said:
Some quick summoning changes:

-buff Pygmy throwing velocity through the roof
-remove piercing from Retinazer (as mentioned before)

Some not-so-quick summoning changes:

-remove tag damage "debuff" immunity from all enemies
-change Sharknado AI to slower version of Raven AI while keeping the projectiles as they are
-change Deadly Sphere damage to non-piercing
-make Desert Tiger actually latch onto enemies like Spiders do, instead of bouncing on them and easily falling off. Simply changing AI to spider should be an improvement
-make Frost Hydra deal contact damage and knockback

other:
-remove diminishing returns from shadowbeam staff and blood thorn
-add knockback to magical harp
-make chlorophyte claymore orb bounce on the ground
-make poison/venom staff fangs converge at cursor location, forming an elliptical shape similar to sanguine/zenith
-make CB Cannon and jousting lance angle adjustable
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I agree with the summoning changes. Sanguine and Blades outclass and are better then almost all hardmode summon weapons. The only ones that could be justified to use (besides stardust/terraprisma) are the UFO's and Ravens. The Sanguine and Blades have such good a.i. and are so consistent that unless the other weapons are made to be consistent, there is no reason to use them.
 
Baconfry said:
-make Desert Tiger actually latch onto enemies like Spiders do, instead of bouncing on them and easily falling off. Simply changing AI to spider should be an improvement
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A great set of suggestions, but this suggestion in particular I think is easier said than done. It would require significant mechanical and animation adjustments. Thematically and visually, I don't think the change would suit it. Changing the AI would be far too much work for the devs, especially when there's nothing preventing the current AI from being improved.

I think the best solution is to improve the current AI's reactivity, accuracy, and ability to stay on target. It should be harder for the Tiger it to fall off as it leaps back and forth, and it should remain "locked on" to the enemy it's attacking. If it gets separated from its target, it should instantly use its sphere attack to get back on target and keep attacking. Alternately, it could be changed so that it's impossible for it to fall off, with enemies just carrying it along with them as it bounces back and forth.

Also, while it's attacking it should be able to go through blocks.
 
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Now that summoner has been made a pseudo-melee class with the introduction of whips, they should no longer have the lowest defence in the game out of all four classes. Summoning armors – including Bee armor, Spider armor, Forbidden armor, Hallowed armor (specifically Hallowed Hood), Tiki armor, Spooky armor, and Stardust armor – should all receive significant buffs to defence.

Furthermore, all whips should receive a buff to range. Also, whip range should no longer be inversely affected by whip speed, so that whips are able to fully benefit from speed increases.

It would also be interesting if the Titan Glove, Feral Claws, Power Glove, Berserker's Glove, Mechanical Glove and Fire Gauntlet provided their full bonuses to whips (in addition to all weapons that deal melee damage).
 
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If you are going to increase range, you can’t increase defense. The reason why you’d increase range is because of low defense
 
JohannSimm said:
Summoners being a pseudo-melee class
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Oh yeah, I forgot this was an option.
This should be the easiest option.

If you can't let them avoid damage that much by being effective in long distances, at least let 'em tank it so letting summons stay in the range where they actually hit the enemies isn't suicide. I mean, it still is when it comes to the most important summoner drop (the Terraprisma), buuuuut.

It'd be a massive improvement to their survivability in pretty much every other situation, which is something they need when they don't have things like the vampire knives or specter hood.
 
JohannSimm said:
It would also be interesting if the Titan Glove, Feral Claws, Power Glove, Berserker's Glove, Mechanical Glove and Fire Gauntlet provided their full bonuses to whips (in addition to all weapons that deal melee damage).
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Whips benifit from melee speed and the titan glove autoswing already
 
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