Hellfire Treads: Now, if the Terraspark boots didn't exist, these would be completely fine. However, now that they
do, making these completely screws you out of them.
Nobody with a sense of self-preservation is going to want to craft an expensive show-off vanity when they could just slap the Flame Wakers into a Vanity slot, make the Terraspark Boots, and call it a day.
Unless you add some sort of extra functionality that provides an interesting alternative to the Terraspark Boots (and I know that's not an option to you guys), these boots are bad design.
This accessory should be removed, though the sprites could be used to replace the Lava Waders', as they look much nicer and less-visibly old.
I fundamentally do not agree with removing content. Sorry, I will never support removing vanity items just for their own sake. I think you might need to just accept this one as-is.
Flower/Fairy Boots, again: Now, the only real convenience to the Fairy Boots is the increased mobility, but if you already have a pair of Spectre Boots or better, you can just swap out a
different,
non-running boots accessory and get the same benefit. The tinker is only relevant if you just don’t use running boots during normal play, but with the Terraspark Boots now existing, the chance of that is a LOT slimmer, even if it is still possible. I’m not
completely opposed to the Fairy Boots, but they don’t do anything that you couldn’t have done already. Not like you can make the “opening up new slots” argument for this accessory; nobody ever wears it for any longer than it takes to plant the flowers they want, which typically isn't for very long.
Giving it a more permanent function that lets you justify equipping it permanently might be the only other good solution to this problem. Reminder to everyone that the flowers the Flower and Fairy Boots create CAN drop critters; you just need to not have them equipped for that to work.
I think we've been over this, nothing new to say. These aren't changing.
Sandstorm in a Bottle: The only other alternative I can think of that's not moving this to the Oasis and Mirage Crates is to turn it into an uncommon Sand Elemental drop/have it be craftable with a Cloud in a Bottle and 1 Forbidden Fragment. I don't know if that'd be any easier of a sell, but it's less-preferable to the crates, so this idea is suggested as a last resort.
I have a feeling that, much like "Basilisks drop fossils", it would be not relevant anymore at that point. I'm still looking for a better solution I can sell.
Magma Stone, again: This is something I need to correct myself on, as I earlier said a 40-DPS debuff would be a perfect increase in damage for the point in the game players would get the Magma Stone, pointing to a Rebalancing mod I'd recently tried out that did just that for an example. It turns out I had been missing an important piece of info: the weapons that the mod made naturally inflict a 50-DPS debuff only had such a high DoT debut because their damage output would be abysmal without it. My correction for this idea is to have the Magma Stone instead inflict a new debuff that deals
15 DPS, still with the ability to be inflicted on more enemies than On Fire. This rebalanced debuff would carry on over to every tinker it has, save for one.
Fire Gauntlet, again*: This is the one. I stand by the original buff to the Magma Stone’s fire damage, but only for this tinker. You are required to fight the three Mechanical Bosses in order to get the Avenger Emblem needed for the preceding tinker, which is an accessory that, fittingly for this buff, grants a raw damage boost. Again, this debuff should have more flexibility on what it can be inflicted on so that it doesn’t become completely useless like On Fire.
Will be a hard sell, and I'm of the opinion that people will just continue to insist "its not enough" anyway. Once I (hopefully) fix the 2% issue on Fire Gauntlet, then its literally just free damage. Doesn't matter if its trivially low, free damage is free damage. Doesn't make Magma Stone much better, but IDK.
Molten Quiver: This one's a nitpick more than a balance idea, but the Magma Stone? I'd be fine with this if the Magma Stone wasn’t specifically a Melee accessory, though I admit that it would be a decent upgrade IF you implement the Magma Stone changes. I’m still disappointed you guys couldn’t have put in the effort to come up with a new ranged accessory for this kind of tinker, though.
Not sure what the problem is. Combined with Infinite Quiver, this is effectively Infinite Fire Arrows. We weren't going to add Infinite Quivers for every type of arrow, but that's what this allows. I think that's is sufficient.
Feral Glove: I believe Bame suggested this already, but the Feral Glove should get the Autoswing bonus instead of the Titan Glove, as Autoswing is much more helpful in PreHardmode due to Melee's underperformance. Yeah, it makes the Titan Glove less useful on its own, but at least IT has unique functionality, unlike the Anklet of the Wind and its being a slightly-better Aglet except not really because you don’t even have justification to use it, ever.[/SPOILER]
Titan Glove: ...Well, I guess the Titan Glove would then become another “never equipped on its own” accessory. Fine, I‘ll propose an effect to take the Autoswing’s spot, though I don’t think this is
completely necessary and also this isn't the right plaaace for that.
As Titans are inherently
l a r g e, perhaps the Titan Glove could increase the size of melee weapons by 20% alongside the knockback bonus? That number might need adjusting, but I think an item that increases weapon size is a pretty neat addition.
I'm not sure about this, would be a difficult sell but . . . maybe. I have no idea the technical limitations of this, and it wouldn't work on a lot of melee weapons. I'll put it in my notes.
On the topic of Thorns effects: Every effect that directly returns damage to attackers (Thorns damage) needs to deal a lot
MORE damage to be actually worth the cost of getting hit, especially since enemies can easily circumvent it with projectiles. You shouldn't have to worry about these doing excessive damage
too much, since, again, you need to take damage, yourself, for the effect to work, and Thorns damage is directly proportional to how much damage YOU take. I also noticed that Turtle Armor overrides all other Thorns effects; these effects should be able to stack.
- Both the Thorns Potion buff and Dryad's Blessing should deal 350% Thorns damage; still not much individually, but it definitely provides much more of an effect.
- The Turtle Armor's Thorns bonus should deal 600% Thorns damage to compensate for the heightened toughness of the armor. This could potentially instantly kill stronger enemies.
- The Turtle's Armor, in general, seem to be a little lacking. The Thorns buff won't be enough on its own; some minor stat buffs may be required.
I am EXTREMELY hesitant to make a blanket Thorns buff of that severity. I already felt like the Turtle Armor buff was playing with fire. An additional 3x increase will never happen in one update. MAYBE in small iterations. And making Thorns Pot/Dryad's Blessing 2x as strong as current Turtle Armor is a pretty bold push. More iteration please, this is too sledgehammer.
I'd be interested in looking into buffs for Thorns Pot/Dryad's Blessing, but not a 10-15x increase.
Cobalt Shield, Obsidian Skull, and Obsidian Shield: This isn't
too significant of a problem, but their defense feels tacked on for the sole reason that the Cobalt Shield and Obsidian Skull are just Shackles with additional effects. I know said effects are the only reason people even wear them, but if they’re going to grant a defense bonus, it should at least be noticeable.
A simple bump to 2 defense for both of them would be enough, with the Obsidian Shield granting a combined 4, just like the Ankh Shield. If you wanna bump up the Ankh Shield's defense after that, sure, but I don't think it's entirely necessary. The Paladin's Shield is probably a better option in Singleplayer, though.
Free defense is free defense. It doesn't need to be higher just because it exists. These are not bad items that need a buff.
Pocket Mirror: Yeah, we all knew this was gonna get mentioned at some point. With an incredibly low drop rate, the situationalness of the Ice Skates, and the complete lack of tinkers, the Pocket Mirror really doesn't get any use at all. Obviously, everyone and their mother is just gonna suggest to throw it into the Ankh Shield, but here's a more
creative idea, if you're up for that: let it occasionally reflect incoming projectiles. This suddenly lets the mirror be applied to literally
any situation with projectiles, and, as an added bonus, you could even get Medusa to petrify herself! The Pocket Mirror not having a tinker suddenly isn't a problem, though you could throw it into a tinker with the Ankh Shield if you, uh, really think that's necessary. That seems like a Red thing to do, at this point.
This is not a balance change. This is a content addition which would probably create dozens of bugs and require a phenomenal amount of testing and dev time. Nuh-uh.
Could we possibly get a buff to the turtle armor/chlorophyte armor? I understand that you have to defeat the mech bosses multiple times to get enough hallowed bars for a full armor set, but to even mine chlorophyte you need to beat all the mech bosses and mine for it. The mining isn't hard work; and the turtle shells aren't super bad to get, but turtle isn't even a sidegrade. With turtle you only get around 10 more defense than hallowed melee; but you don't gain the attack speed buff of hallowed nor the ridiculous shadow dodge. The passive 15% dmg reduction is decent but shadow dodge just does way better; and the thorns ability really doesn't matter because the amount of damage you can deal out in that part of the game is way more than what thorns would do.
Well, there are a few things to say here:
1. Turtle Armor did get a buff in 1.4. Did it get to where it needed to be? IDK. I've gotten some feedback that it can be used to be a little too facetanky in Expert mode, which is concerning. But its worth noting that it HAS been buffed to a degree.
2. Power creep concerns. Titanium's buff was ALWAYS crazy good, and I think we weren't satisfied with that buff being where it was. So we moved it to Hallowed instead, because we knew it was too popular to remove outright, and if one set has to be "too good", we'd rather it be Hallowed than Titanium. As such, yes, this is going to introduce some issues with Chlorophyte not necessarily being a great option. And I think maybe that's sorta a foregone conclusion. If we set Shadow Dodge/Holy Protection as the "bar", and then everything else needs to meet that bar, then everything is just going to get massively buffed. I don't think I agree with that. I'd rather nerf Holy Protection, if it really came down to it.
However, I'm not fundamentally opposed to some continuing assessment of the two sets, but there is a definite power creep concern to work around here and if anything, Hallowed Armor is the outlier, and should not set the standard.
I have a suggestion.
Now that there are whips in the game the ivy whip, which is a grappling hook, should be renamed.
Perhaps swap the names of the snapthorn and the ivy whip.
I brought this up a few months ago when we added them, was denied. Guess its a legacy thing.
- A small crystal bullet nerf would help balance.
Don't. The shards don't even hit targets that effectively.
Testing Ranged DPS in a variety of situations and ammo types was one of the things I did a phenomenal amount of focus on leading up to release. And I gotta say, I'm pretty strongly of the opinion that Crystal Bullets ARE too strong. The increased DPS they grant to many guns is insane, they basically give it an entire tier's worth of DPS, oftentimes doubling the damage dealt. Yes, they are more subject to defense, that is entirely valid and true. Even so, outside of Chlorophyte Bullets, there are few scenarios where using anything other than Crystal Bullets is ideal. They are like the Holy Arrows of bullets.
Medusa Head
Medusa Head is far less useful now than it was before.
Before, even though it was underpowered, at least you could use it defensively; hide, charge, and then pop out with a big blast and go back into hiding.
Now, even in the reveal gif you guys posted, weak enemies like common eyeballs weren't defeated until they already rammed the player, 9 hits later, with absolutely no option for defensive use, since you have to be in the face of the enemy to even use it. Testing the weapon myself, I've found literally no way to use this weapon without being really close to an enemy and letting it ram you for free, since this thing does not knock anything back, and requires constant prolonged use up in their face with no defensive options whatsoever.
The limit to 3 enemies does not make things better. The weapon is currently worse than most pre-hardmode items.
I don't really know what to say here other than . . . I disagree with you? I used the new Medusa Head to great effect in multiple playthroughs. Its possible its range is too low, but your proposals of buffing its range to 2x/3x AND removing the enemy cap? There's no way. Its basically an auto-aiming multi-hitting/can't miss attack. Uncapping it and giving it high range would be far too powerful IMO. As for the gif where the player was hit, this was taken to show how the weapon works, and they were literally standing still while a pack of HM enemies charged at them. Is that how you are trying to use it? Because its not designed as a weapon where you can just stand still and it kills everything coming at you. Especially not in Master mode.
This is not "ramming range".
I'm not opposed to a minor range increase, but I simply don't agree with your assessment.
I have a minor suggestions at buffing the crystal shard. Compared to most of the other mimic weapon weapons it feels mediocre. I decided to look at its strengths and flaws. First of all, there is little point in spamming multiple shards because of the pierce I-frames. Secondly, the DPS is fairly low, compared to stormbow, and there's not much of a reason to use it. I figured it'd be unfair to compare it to a really good item, so I'll compare it to the other mimic drop, the flying knife.
I'm not entirely satisfied with where CVS is currently, but it was buffed in 1.4. I'm trying to iterate carefully with my changes, and I didn't want to make it too strong, so I had some more gradual adjustments. There is also a new defense piercing system I can use, and I likely would have used, on CVS, if it had been available at the time, but it was a last second addition so it was too late.
But I'm not sure I like the idea of making it a stun-lock/minimal damage thing, people already seem pretty displeased with its damage. For what its worth, one of the things I changed was making its duration somewhat longer, if that is relevant.
- Some Jungle drops are weak .
- 3 Hornets have 13 dps. 1 Musket has 55. (1.3 hornets used here)
- New beekeper 49. New fiery greatsword 53 (and way better range and easier to get)
I'd like to point out, the difference here is that a Summoner isn't JUST using the Hornets. That Summoner can also use a Musket, or a Bee Gun, or a Snapthorn, and they end up doing a lot more DPS. I'm not saying Hornets don't need some re-assessment, but comparing raw Summon DPS without weapon use versus just a weapon doesn't capture the entirety of the situation.
Spectre Mask
I'll reference
Jota's post again: 'Little known fact, the orbs spawned with the Mask each have a cooldown, this means that with something that hits very rapidly you will initially get a massive burst of balls, and then very disappointing DPS. "Something that hits very rapidly" is how you describe every good Post Plantera weapon, so this a
worse choice than Hallowed armor.'
The rapid fire weapons deal low damage on each hit, but the Spectre Mask's projectiles just copy that base damage. Combine that with a long cooldown on the projectiles, and this means that its magic DPS is actually worse than Chlorophyte armor and Hallowed armor. Spectre Mask should have its orb cooldown reduced, so that it is able to synergize better with rapid-fire magic weapons like Razorpine – either that or boost the orbs' damage even further, or have them deal a flat high amount that isn't affected by weapon damage.
Worth noting that 1.4 increased the cooldown "recharge rate" rather substantially, as well as increasing the damage of the projectiles (they consume more cap, but are less impacted by defense), which can't be ignored here. Any calculations made considering 1.3.5.3's cooldown may need to be redone.
Also, the orbs are homing, and that is a relevant consideration people often do not factor in when looking at raw damage.
I'm open to further changes to this, but it would probably take the form of "increasing recharge rate" even further.
Ore Swords
Ore swords are currently useless. Here is a change to increase their utility:
– While wearing the matching armor set, ore swords restore damage to you as health on a crit
This would apply to both shortswords and broadswords. My inspiration here is the game Bloodborne, which utilizes lifesteal as a combat mechanic to reward aggressive gameplay. I'm not sure how good this would actually be, but the healing on crit might increase survivability and mitigate the danger of getting close to enemies. They'd also synergize well with anything that boosted crit chance.
Just saying, new sources of health stealing are probably never going to happen, in any form. I'm surprised Red didn't remove the old ones years ago.
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.
Nuking HM Meteors seems reasonable to me. I'm not opposed to rapid clean-up, only that pre-HM Meteors shouldn't be a 3-second endeavor with no risk. Will definitely look into it.
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
Some of these I'm on board with. I'm interested in looking into Pygmy velocity, "tag damage immunity" is basically a bug.
For the Sharknados, are you proposing the tornados themselves chase after enemies? That would be a pretty dramatic change . . . I'd rather look into increasing their attack speed or velocity in other regards, presumably to better match the power of Xeno Staff. Which, on that note, I think Xeno Staff might be a tad too strong, tbh.
Diminishing returns on Blood Thorn? It doesn't have Shadowbeam Protocol, unless I'm tremendously missing something. I've already discussed Blood Thorn with you previously, but I haven't started any balance change process, so it might be best to wait and see what happens.
I'd actually like to look into
reducing Shadowbeam Protocol on Shadowbeam Staff, but not removing it. I think it was a tad overnerfed, but the fundamental concept behind the change was fine.
Chloro Orb bounce could be neat, I don't know if its an easy change or not though, haven't tried. If it requires AI rewrites, it isn't likely to happen.
I don't think you "can" make Deadly Sphere non-piercing, though it could feasibly have local frames, where each projectile has its own timer, and they don't conflict with each other. I'm not sure it needs it though, same with Retinamini. Both would require a lot of testing for me to make those adjustments. I don't really consider them bad summons.
Tiger Staff probably can't latch on like you describe. I'd like to boost it, but its not going to have Spider AI . . .
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.
Ironically, a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to "fix" Summon AI. Its kinda funny to say that changing it to use Spider AI would be too much work, while then saying "just fix all of its other AI issues", which would be a ton of work. It would probably be easier, actually, to just make it use Spider AI, but I don't support that change.
Flower/Fairy Boots, again: Now, the only real convenience to the Fairy Boots is the increased mobility, but if you already have a pair of Spectre Boots or better, you can just swap out a different, non-running boots accessory and get the same benefit. The tinker is only relevant if you just don’t use running boots during normal play, but with the Terraspark Boots now existing, the chance of that is a LOT slimmer, even if it is still possible. I’m not completely opposed to the Fairy Boots, but they don’t do anything that you couldn’t have done already. Not like you can make the “opening up new slots” argument for this accessory; nobody ever wears it for any longer than it takes to plant the flowers they want, which typically isn't for very long.
On the topic of Thorns effects: Every effect that directly returns damage to attackers (Thorns damage) needs to deal a lot MORE damage to be actually worth the cost of getting hit, especially since enemies can easily circumvent it with projectiles. You shouldn't have to worry about these doing excessive damage too much, since, again, you need to take damage, yourself, for the effect to work, and Thorns damage is directly proportional to how much damage YOU take. I also noticed that Turtle Armor overrides all other Thorns effects; these effects should be able to stack.
Cobalt Shield, Obsidian Skull, and Obsidian Shield: This isn't too significant of a problem, but their defense feels tacked on for the sole reason that the Cobalt Shield and Obsidian Skull are just Shackles with additional effects. I know said effects are the only reason people even wear them, but if they’re going to grant a defense bonus, it should at least be noticeable.
