Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

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This is unlikely to be approved by Re-Logic but I'll write this anyway as it's something I've always found odd and unfair.
Nearly all of 1.4 items that have been introduced or overhauled don't seem to abide by the general iframe & piercing rule (i.e. each piercing projectile makes the enemy invulnerable for 10 ticks, during which time nothing except summon damage can attack it). This in turn creates an unfair balance where some weapons will deal significantly less damage, just because they do follow the rule. Just as an example, here's a few weapons that have received buffs that allow them to bypass the 10 tick rule:

- The Poison and Venom staff have been balanced such that every single one of their projectiles can hit their enemy despite being piercing.
- The Piranha Gun has been balanced to fire 3 piranhas, and while they are affected by the piercing rule, each projectile is capable of dealing its own damage every 10 ticks instead of dealing global invincibility frames. Wiki has an animation that shows what I'm talking about.

And here's a few weapons that have been introduced in 1.4, that are very powerful because they bypass the 10 tick rule (alongside their counterparts that don't)

- Eventide with Wooden arrows will deal damage 5 times without triggering invincibility frames, contrary to the Tsunami and Jester arrows which will only register a single hit, instantly decreasing the weapon's damage five-fold.
- The Blade Staff will let multiple blades deal damage at the same time, which is understandable because the weapon would instantly reach F tier if this weren't the case. Because this is exactly the reason why the Optic Staff is so bad: summoning more twins will not increase your damage because it is limited by the piercing invulnerability.
- The Zenith completely neglects iframes, allowing you to deal damage every single tick. I can't complain about this weapon, it is supposed to be end-game. But if it did follow the rule its damage would be reduced tenfold.
- Every single one of Nightglow's projectiles can pierce an enemy up to 3 times, with each projectile having their own piercing timer. Compare this to the Spectre staff, which also has projectiles that can pierce enemies up to 3 times, but which deal generalized invincibility.

I really wish that some of these weapons and projectiles would get a rework similar to the one the Poison and Venom staff received. This would actually make, say, the Shotgun with Meteor bullets not a suicide synergy, while the Shotgun with Luminite bullets isn't impeded by the 10 tick rule.
I did say some because if this were applied to Beenades or the Wasp gun, it would totally break them and make them abhorrently overpowered.

Worst contenders: Optic Staff (cannot deal more dmg due to 10 tick limitation), Jester Arrows with bows that shoot multiple arrows, Meteor Shot.
 
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Here's a further question. Is anything made with Cobalt or Mythril currently worth it? What about the Palladium and Orichalcum tools and weapons? Some of those could be buffed as well, or have their costs reduced.

Well, the Tier 3 ore doesn't mine itself, so getting out of your way to get a couple Tier 1 or 2 ores for a quick Repeater isn't too bad of an idea for when you will inevitably have to fight enemies while mining.

There is one solution, which is similar to my solution to fix Copper / Tin and Iron / Lead armor. Reduce the crafting requirements to zilch. I'm thinking about 5 bars or less to craft each piece of Mythril or Cobalt armor. Currently, these armor sets require a hundred or more ore to produce. You could even divide the current requirements by 5. Each Cobalt hat piece could cost 2 bars. The leggings would cost 3, and the breastplate 4. That's about 27 ore for a full set. Mythril has the same cost ratio, so the same reductions could be done for it. Then the armors could be an easily-obtained stepping stone on the way to Adamantite / Titanium.

Maybe not reduce it by that much (the full set should not cost less than the pickaxe lol) but it's not a very bad idea. The issue here though that it will be super odd for a new player to see these two bars having their armor sets so much cheaper than their 1.2 counterparts and Adamantite.

I also would like to once again mention my idea of having ore swords gain +20% or +15% crit chance while used with their matching armor set. Phaseblades and Phasesabers could have an innate +20% or +15% crit chance, as well as apply a debuff that reduces enemy defence by 10 (Phaseblades) or 20 (Phasesabers). I also think the Night's Edge could have an innate +20% or +15% crit chance, in addition to gaining autoswing.

If the Keybrand and Psycho Knife buffs tell us something, is that if we want true melee weapons to be good, their DPS should be extremely high to make up for the super short range. Just +20% crit chance is not going to be enough enough to make the Ore Swords good (it is enough for Night's Edge though).
 
Maybe not reduce it by that much (the full set should not cost less than the pickaxe lol) but it's not a very bad idea. The issue here though that it will be super odd for a new player to see these two bars having their armor sets so much cheaper than their 1.2 counterparts and Adamantite.
Unfortunately, it is a weird and lopsided solution. Considering that Cobalt and Mythril are already the cheapest of the six, maybe that justifies it. In terms of the costs, it might be better if the breastplate cost 10 and the leggings and helmet each cost 5. I don't know if making Palladium and Orichalcum armor, or Adamantite armor, similarly cheap would unbalance things.
Perhaps something like this could be done, which brings everything more in line:

Hardmode armorCurrent bar cost (with one helmet)Proposed bar cost
Cobalt4515 or 20
Palladium5445
Mythril4515 or 20
Orichalcum5445
Adamantite5445
Titanium5954 (pre-1.2.3 cost)
Frost46 (Adamantite or Titanium)38 (Adamantite or Titanium)
Forbidden46 (Adamantite or Titanium)38 (Adamantite or Titanium)
Chlorophyte5445
Turtle54 (Chlorophyte)45 (Chlorophyte)

There's one issue for which there is no solution, which is that if you have Palladium and Mythril in a world, you have no reason to get Mythril after Palladium. Not having a useful set bonus really makes those armors so much worse. Maybe Mythril could have innate damage reduction as part of its set bonuses, like Turtle armor. It would be lore-appropriate, and less flashy than the alt-armor bonuses. But I don't know if even that would be allowed.

I'd really wish that some of these weapons and projectiles would get a rework similar to the one the Poison and Venom staff received. This would actually make, say, the Shotgun with Meteor bullets not a suicide synergy, while the Shotgun with Luminite bullets isn't impeded by the 10 tick rule.
Meteor Shot really needs to be reworked to function the same as Luminite Bullets.
 
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There's one issue for which there is no solution, which is that if you have Palladium and Mythril in a world, you have no reason to get Mythril after Palladium. Not having a useful set bonus really makes those armors so much worse. Maybe Mythril could have innate damage reduction as part of its set bonuses, like Turtle armor. It would be fairly lore-appropriate, and less flashy than the alt-armor bonuses. But I don't know if even that would be allowed.
Best solution is to buff Adamantite, Mythril and Cobalt set stats, at least they will have the advantage of being objectively better armor parts (no set bonus). The way it is, Palladium competes with Mythril in stats (which is a tier higher), Adamantite competes with Titanium (practically losing) and Cobalt... competes with Molten Armor at best.

Also I did suggest making Chlorophyte easier to craft too if no changes are made to make it worth your time.
 
My initial concern with such an idea is that it is not possible as described, and after conferring with Yorai, this appears to be the case.

Oiled works because the enemy is oiled as a result of player damage, and thus the game can say "If Enemy is oiled, then DoTs do X". It is the combination of two Enemy-side debuffs, Oil + DoT, that results in the combination.

You can't have a player worn set bonus dictate that enemies take increased Frostburn damage due to multiplayer situations. There is no "player ownership" of enemy debuffs, so there is no way to assign that an enemy had Frostburn inflicted by Player A, and so needs to take bonus damage.

This is not to say that there is no solution here, but all solutions I'm aware of require entirely new Debuffs, which is "less likely to be approved". My proposal writeups have some alternative solutions as a result.
I assumed this would be the case, and I should have specified my thoughts on how this would be implemented. I can only think of two solutions. 1) As others have mentioned, your attacks while wearing the armor could inflict a secret second debuff that boosts the damage of Frostburn. 2) This solution also uses the same secret debuff, but instead of being tied to your attacks, it's periodically applied to enemies within a wide radius. But this could slow down performance, and the first solution achieves all the same goals for less effort.

I think the easiest, and cleanest, solution is to just replace the debuff inflicted with a nearly identical one that does more damage with a different name. Its less amount of work and less convoluted. Easy isn't necessarily lazy, if its also the best solution, and the easier it is, the more likely it is to be approved. Still less likely to be approved, but its on my proposal list.

Oiled, in my opinion, was a very messy mechanic to begin with, and it was added because it was a direct mechanic in Dungeon Defenders 2. It was a better fit there, as its more of a strategic game with more time to think. I don't seek to replicate it in a new form.
Will it be easy to sort out the immunities with that? Can it be coded so that enemies with immunity to Frostburn will also have immunity to this debuff? If this isn't the case, adding yet another debuff seems like it would be a nightmare in terms of enemy immunities.

Also, having a secret debuff that amplifies Frostburn seems to me less along the lines of Oiled and more along the lines of summon tag damage. It wouldn't be mentioned at all, but would really just be a secret mechanical implementation of the proposed Frostburn boost. It doesn't seem to me like it would be any more or less difficult than adding an entirely new debuff, unless the code involved would be really ugly or something.
 
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My armor balance suggestions, these should all be easy to impliment.
Reduce the cost of this armor from 60 fossils to 12, if this is supposed to be early game armor it needs to be cheap, as of right now it is much easier to get ninja armor. If your character is early game enough to benifit from fossil armor they're early game enough to get a bigger benifit from extra bone javelins.
Reduce the crit bonus from 15% to 10%, this armor needed a buff but I think it got buffed a little too much
Give this armor 'exotic' stats, it might still be a bit weak but it will at least be more interesting, mages get mana regen, warriors get knockback, and rangers get erm... bullet damage?
Give this armor the best pre mech raw offensive stats, maybye reduce it's defense a little to compensate.
Make the offensive stats on this armor a bit lower than mythril but add 5 defense to each piece (total of 15 extra defense). It won't have the damage reduction of later armor's like turtle so this shouldn't be too overpowered.
It should have a little less defense than adamatite, and a little less raw offense than mythril.
The legs need damage or crit, if you're doing melee then melee speed is too niche of a stat to stand on its own, if you're a ranger then you don't even care.
Buff the debuff it inflicts.
I like the idea of adding a dash, but if that isn't approved I'd simply suggest converting the crit bonus to more damage. Summoner is the best hybrid class and it can't benefit from crit boosts.
Holy guard is overpowered.
Instead 'dodging' attacks make holy guard reduce damage by 50%.
This would have been weird if it was still called 'shadow dodge' but the 'guard' implies damage reduction instead of evading completely.
GIve the leaf crystal homing, it will make it more reliabe, and considering that chlorophyte ammo has homing properties it certainly fits thematically.
I understand the concern with spamming the specte bolts, they create lot of dust and when you have a lot of those projectile it hits the dust limit very quickly. I've seen this happen in a mod.
Maybye you could make the armor 'track' how much damage you've delt then while it's on cooldown then add some of that to the next spectre bolt.
If you feel that's too hard than simply add some stats too the mask, shroomite armor gets past its mediocre set bonus with good stats.
 
Will it be easy to sort out the immunities with that? Can it be coded so that enemies with immunity to Frostburn will also have immunity to this debuff? If this isn't the case, adding yet another debuff seems like it would be a nightmare in terms of enemy immunities.
NPCs that are immune to poison are automatically immune to venom, the same can be applied to forstburn and frostburn 2.0.
 
NPCs that are immune to poison are automatically immune to venom, the same can be applied to forstburn and frostburn 2.0.
when will we have an enemy that's only immune to the poison debuff and not the venom debuff? What about an enemy thats only immune to frostburn 1 and not 2?
 
NPCs that are immune to poison are automatically immune to venom, the same can be applied to forstburn and frostburn 2.0.
What? I can understand some creatures would be intrinsically immune to "anything of the sort", but especially now that more pre-hardmode enemies continue to spawn in hardmode, there really should be some weaker enemies that are immune to "ordinary" poison, but fall prey to the stronger Hardmode version. Similarly to "On Fire" versus Cursed Flames and especially Shadowflame.
 
What? I can understand some creatures would be intrinsically immune to "anything of the sort", but especially now that more pre-hardmode enemies continue to spawn in hardmode, there really should be some weaker enemies that are immune to "ordinary" poison, but fall prey to the stronger Hardmode version. Similarly to "On Fire" versus Cursed Flames and especially Shadowflame.

I mean... does it really matter? Poison DOT is even less relevant than On Fire or Frostburn, at this point weapons that inflict it do so because of flavor rather than anything else.
 
The "enemies immune to Poison are automatically immune to Venom" thing is being done away with in my debuff immunity review. Well, assuming its approved anyway. Lets not get ahead of ourselves.

But, we could easily implement the same thing for a new debuff if needed.
 
Is there any hope to see more secret World Seeds in further updates? I did enjoyed playing the "For the worthy"-World Seed with my friends in Master Mode.

Two ideas I had would be a world filled with water, where swimming tools/potions or bubble blocks etc. would have more usage, or one where the strength of mobs/bosses is adjusted to pre/post-Moonlord equipment.
 
Is there any hope to see more secret World Seeds in further updates? I did enjoyed playing the "For the worthy"-World Seed with my friends in Master Mode.

Two ideas I had would be a world filled with water, where swimming tools/potions or bubble blocks etc. would have more usage, or one where the strength of mobs/bosses is adjusted to pre/post-Moonlord equipment.
I think Red said he wanted to do more (?).
Though this isn't the right thread to ask this.
 
Can we improve the way non-autofire weapons work? I'm not really sure if this is a balance decision, but it has a huge impact on DPS of non-autofire weapons, especially for less skilled players.

In most games, with weapons with cooldowns, such as guns firing, if you click and hold while a weapon is on cooldown (during recoil, etc), the weapon will fire again as soon as the cooldown ends if you are still holding the button.

If Terraria gets a button press event and your weapon is on cooldown, the game currently consumes this input and does nothing, so if you click too early, clicking does nothing and you need to click again. What the game could do is instead of consuming the input, retry a cancelled input event every frame until the input (mouse/button) is released.

This way you get maximum DPS on single fire weapons by simply watching for when the gun fires/weapon swings, then quickly releasing the attack button and pressing it again, instead of having to press precisely when the cooldown ends.

There are more games that work like this than ones that don't, so for examples of this try pretty much any action-oriented game.
 
This may be a bit off-topic, as this topic primarily focuses on already existing items, so I apologize in advance, but I find it odd that Clockwork Assault Rifle has no upgraded versions. Burst firing is such an interesting, satisfying shooting mechanic, yet it ends up getting tossed into obscurity fairly shortly after its introduction.
 
This may be a bit off-topic, as this topic primarily focuses on already existing items, so I apologize in advance, but I find it odd that Clockwork Assault Rifle has no upgraded versions. Burst firing is such an interesting, satisfying shooting mechanic, yet it ends up getting tossed into obscurity fairly shortly after its introduction.
Unfortunately there are many such weapons that are just simply introduced and not given upgrades. I'm most disappointed about the Shadowbeam staff, which you get in the post-Plantera dungeon, and which has a comparable DPS to the CAR.
 
Can we improve the way non-autofire weapons work? I'm not really sure if this is a balance decision, but it has a huge impact on DPS of non-autofire weapons, especially for less skilled players.

In most games, with weapons with cooldowns, such as guns firing, if you click and hold while a weapon is on cooldown (during recoil, etc), the weapon will fire again as soon as the cooldown ends if you are still holding the button.

If Terraria gets a button press event and your weapon is on cooldown, the game currently consumes this input and does nothing, so if you click too early, clicking does nothing and you need to click again. What the game could do is instead of consuming the input, retry a cancelled input event every frame until the input (mouse/button) is released.

This way you get maximum DPS on single fire weapons by simply watching for when the gun fires/weapon swings, then quickly releasing the attack button and pressing it again, instead of having to press precisely when the cooldown ends.

There are more games that work like this than ones that don't, so for examples of this try pretty much any action-oriented game.

At this point, autofire being a DPS boost to weapons is a balance decision. Not having autofire is the same as not having Knockback, not piercing, or shooting very slowly; a weakness that balances out a certain weapon. The best example of autofire impacting balance is seen in Venus Magnum; that thing is ridiculously overstatted for its stage of the game and the only reason it's not broken is because the lack of autofire :red:s its theoretical DPS.

Your proposal here is practically a massive buff to a lot of weapons (mainly in pre-Hardmode) and one that a lot of them don't need.
 
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Jota Bame is right. While, 10 years in hindsight, not having auto-fire/autoswing on all weapons might not be an ideal quality of life situation, completely overhauling it (either by adding autoswing to everything, like Mobile, or by making pre-clicks valid for the next attack) would have sweeping impact on far too many weapons to just be done at a whim.

Venus Magnum is definitely my favorite example of that, and my experimentation while testing it (looking at how much effective DPS it could put out at various UseTime levels, versus "predicted" DPS assuming 100% optimal firing) really showed me the impact such a thing can have on a weapon.

Its actually my finding that non-auto-reuse weapons CANNOT reach optimal DPS, or at least do so for such short bursts of time as to be irrelevant. I had scenarios setup where I used four different fingers from 2 different hands clicking at abnormally high rate and I still couldn't even reach 95% "predicted" optimal DPS on weapons like Venus Magnum. The impact the Autoswing removal had on Bee Keeper was likely even more significant in practical context than the actually damage/use time changes made, which is why "just giving it back autoswing" is one possible solution I have on the table.

Its a good learning experience for future projects, for sure, but I'm not comfortable just sweeping that element away at this point. The addition of Titan Glove's Melee-centric benefit was added, in part, because Melee's effective DPS and range issues already leave it far behind Magic/Ranged in terms of effective DPS in most scenarios. It was one of several efforts taken to slightly bridge the (likely unbridgeable at this point) gap between the classes.

Improving single-fire behavior would also improve consistency between mobile and console/pc, since mobile has autofire on nearly every weapon.

We tried to remove autofire on Mobile, for the sake of consistency, because not having autofire on everything is part of the game's core design philosophy from 1.0. It was met with some pretty extreme backlash, and so we added it back in as an option, but in the end, that is more "because Mobile had it from the start" and because Mobile is a different device and input system than K/M.

Keeping it on Mobile was a concession, not a sign that we would be adding it to PC. It would be MORE likely to be removed from Mobile than to be added to PC.

Unfortunately there are many such weapons that are just simply introduced and not given upgrades. I'm most disappointed about the Shadowbeam staff, which you get in the post-Plantera dungeon, and which has a comparable DPS to the CAR.

Funny you should mention CAR.

For starters, Shadowbeam Staff's base damage is significantly higher, and so it is far less subject to defensive effects. CAR generates roughly 6 projectiles per second, so defense comes into play 6 times, while Shadowbeam Staff fires about 4 times a second, so it is only subject to defense 4 times. Of course, it pierces, so it could be theoretically coming into play 12 times, but that is tripling its damage output in the first place. So a raw DPS comparison between the two is not the best way to look at them.

However, more importantly, I think CAR is (or was) one of the most broken weapons in the game. Not in any overt way like Stormbow/Holy Arrows, but in an insidious way that, in my opinion, completely derailed Ranged weapon balance going all the way back to 1.1. CAR, in tandem with Crystal Bullets, deals some pretty intense DPS. And so, Megashark had to be an upgrade on it.

Except . . . CAR is a WoF drop, and if you compare it to its peers (Breaker Blade and Laser Rifle), its on an entirely different level of potency. It does, or did, more DPS than quite a few post-mech weapons. And because of this, it set the stage for years to come, because "If Megashark has to be an upgrade, then so on and so forth", which led to a TON of Ranged content just . . . doing way more damage than Melee and Magic. And it went like that, all the way up, until Moon Lord tier, where the trend is finally broken.

But the consequences of that are even more profound, because the difficulty of pretty much everything post-1.1 was likely balanced against this "high DPS ranged class", which further and further left Melee (and to a lesser extent, Magic) weapons flagging behind. And so in the end, the balance of weapons in all classes, as well as the difficulty of enemies and bosses, were inexorably sent off course because of the echoes of this initial balance discrepancy. And so, returning to my original point . . . using CAR as a basis for comparison on DPS matters is a very poor choice. It only serves to emphasize the potency of CAR (something I very slightly reduced in 1.4).

tl;dr - Leinfors believes that CAR being too strong in 1.1 led to 9 years of Class inequality and balance disparity that likely cannot be overcome
 
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At this point, autofire being a big DPS boost to any weapon is a balance decision. Not having autofire is the same as not having Knockback, not piercing, or shooting very slowly; a weakness that balances out the weapon. The best example of autofire impacting balance is seen in Venus Magnum; that thing is ridiculously overstatted for its stage of the game and the only reason it's not broken is because the autofire :red:s its theoretical DPS.

Your proposal here is practically the same thing as just giving everything autofire, which is a massive buff to a lot of weapons and one that a lot of them don't need.

I strongly disagree that it is a huge buff, because it depends heavily on how willing the player is to brute force hammer the button extra to make up for failed inputs.

Missing a shot due to clicking too early feels terrible. I spent a lot of time using the zapinator, and I often find myself having to click multiple times per shot to try to optimize my dps during boss battles and it makes me hate using it. I can get almost the same DPS as if it had autofire, but it is extremely tedious.

The worst part about this game mechanic is that, after playing a bit of multiplayer, I am finding that some players are resorting to auto-fire scripts to compensate for the the awkward single fire mechanics, and it just ends up punishing more casual players and making certain weapons unpleasant to use for people who don't want to run a third party program in the background.

I think making weapons feel worse to use is a terrible way to balance them, especially if it can be bypassed with auto-clickers.

Improving single-fire behavior would also improve consistency between mobile and console/pc, since mobile has autofire on nearly every weapon.
 
... completely overhauling it (either by adding autoswing to everything, like Mobile, or by making pre-clicks valid for the next attack) would have sweeping impact on far too many weapons to just be done at a whim.

I take it this is a hard no? What about auto-clickers? For me and many others this just makes a third party autoclicker mandatory for the best experience.

I don't think pre-clicks should be that difficult of a change, and the balance shift should be within a margin that is not game breaking.

It just feels so much better I would hope that you would at least try it internally before rejecting it, even if it never sees release due to balance problems or other complications.

EDIT: Nevermind, I was able to make a mod with this feature changing only a few lines of code.
 
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