Game Mechanics Rework Ichor

[whoneedsnamestbh]

Ichor is a notoriously powerful debuff. It's essentially an increase in damage of 7-8 against anything with defense (which is an oversimplification, but helps explain what I'm getting at here), which can be insanely powerful combined with rapid weapons with low damage, the entire game.

The best example of how dangerous this can get is Megashark with crystal bullets - the fragments are supposed to add a small amount of damage to each shot, but with Ichor applied by a bow or a Golden Shower, the amount of damage they deal relative to how often they are created is insane, and then you add in the increase in base damage from the bullet itself of about 10%. Another example is Vampire Knives, with a base damage usually less than 40 in most melee builds, limited even further by defense, and need a very hard cap on how high their damage is due to lifesteal. Throw another 7-8 damage on this weapon basically for free, and not only do you buff its damage by way too much, but also its lifesteal as well.

Ichor obviously needs some sort of a nerf, but the matter is that another nerf to its power would only hurt its utility with certain weapons without fixing the core issue. Nerfing it to something like -6 defense (+3 damage) would make it more balanced with the weapons it synergizes so well with, but would also cripple its utility with anything with a higher base damage.

I think Ichor should scale with damage. For every 5 points of damage a hit deals before defense, Ichor would ignore another 1 defense. For example, a hit with a damage of 35 would ignore 7 defense and gain +3-4 damage, but on a weapon with 70 base damage, it would ignore 14 defense and gain +7 damage. It should also have a minimum cap of -2 defense (+1 damage) so weapons like Blades can still profit from it, and a maximum cap of -15 defense (+7-8 damage) to avoid scaling too well into the late game. This would, of course, carry over to the player version too.

This would hopefully keep Ichor down and prevent it from gaining insane synergies with the right weapons, without crippling it against anything else. This same kind of rule could be applied to Shark Tooth Necklace, Sharpening Station and other forms of defense ignoring, but it's most urgent with Ichor. Any thoughts?

 

[>>Terrarian<<]

I didn't like the idea. I prefer leaving it as it is now.
My suggestion is to you make a voting poll to see the opinion of the community.

 

[qwerty3.14]

Here's my idea to try and 'fix ichor'

First thing This Bug needs to be fixed for my idea to work, otherwise my suggestion would make things worse.

Some weapons have armor penetration built in since thier low base damage would make them react volitlely to enemy defense simply give the problematic synergies some armor penetraion, then nerf them in other ways to compensate.

Lets say crystal bullet shards have about 20 armor penetration, Phase 2 twins have 25-28 defense so this means ichor would only be able to add up to 8 armor penetration to the shards. Of course the shards themselves would need to be made weaker to compensate for this.

 

[J Bame]

Honestly outside of the interaction with Crystal Bullets I've never truly felt like Ichor is game-breaking.

I like that it adds strategy to the game, with the way you have to find ways to keep it applied on the enemies which can force you to either stick to specific Ammo or micromanage between multiple. Nerfing it to be relatively unimpactful like Cursed Inferno or Venom would be a bad change, in my opinion.

I also don't see a point in reworking it so it scales better with higher damage weapons, when your damage is in the hundreds the 10-25 damage loss from enemy defense barely does anything anyways.

 

[whoneedsnamestbh]

Here's my idea to try and 'fix ichor'

First thing This Bug needs to be fixed for my idea to work, otherwise my suggestion would make things worse.

Some weapons have armor penetration built in since thier low base damage would make them react volitlely to enemy defense simply give the problematic synergies some armor penetraion, then nerf them in other ways to compensate.

Lets say crystal bullet shards have about 20 armor penetration, Phase 2 twins have 25-28 defense so this means ichor would only be able to add up to 8 armor penetration to the shards. Of course the shards themselves would need to be made weaker to compensate for this.

Honestly outside of the interaction with Crystal Bullets I've never truly felt like Ichor is game-breaking.

I like that it adds strategy to the game, with the way you have to find ways to keep it applied on the enemies which can force you to either stick to specific Ammo or micromanage between multiple. Nerfing it to be relatively unimpactful like Cursed Inferno or Venom would be a bad change, in my opinion.

I also don't see a point in reworking it so it scales better with higher damage weapons, when your damage is in the hundreds the 10-25 damage loss from enemy defense barely does anything anyways.

Making it scale with base damage was supposed to make it not so powerful with Blades, Crystal Bullets and the like without being unhelpful on mid-strength weapons. I didn’t think it would be too weak and wasn’t trying to make it ineffective, since it would be a 10% DPS increase on average across the weapons of its tier and just wouldn’t be so monstrous on certain weapons, and I personally would still use it myself, although that’s probably bias at play.

Although I wasn’t aware that damage reduction was bugged, but it makes a lot of sense in hindsight seeing as how ichor adds a ton of damage to Blades even though they already ignore defense. The bug could be fixed and Vampire Knives and Crystal Bullets could be reworked (they probably need it anyway), but imo there’s still an issue to be posed with almost any rapid weapon when you add a flat amount of damage to them, especially since almost every important target has some defense.

Maybe the debuff could still have a scale, but the scale would be less severe, with a lower reduction on low base damage weapons than I said originally.

 

[qwerty3.14]

Although I wasn’t aware that damage reduction was bugged, but it makes a lot of sense in hindsight seeing as how ichor adds a ton of damage to Blades even though they already ignore defense. The bug could be fixed and Vampire Knives and Crystal Bullets could be reworked (they probably need it anyway), but imo there’s still an issue to be posed with almost any rapid weapon when you add a flat amount of damage to them, especially since almost every important target has some defense.

Sure Rapid fire weapons will just in general get more out of ichor, but this only seems to be problematic on crystal bullets, holy arrows, vampire knives, and the phantasm (blade staff just needs the bug fix). Fix those 4 weapons.

Now even after these changes ichor will still be better than other debuffs for the average weapon however I think that other debuffs should get buffed to be as useful as ichor. Right now the only flasks I ever use are the flask of ichor and flask of party.

 

[whoneedsnamestbh]

Now even after these changes ichor will still be better than other debuffs for the average weapon however I think that other debuffs should get buffed to be as useful as ichor. Right now the only flasks I ever use are the flask of ichor and flask of party.

I can agree with that. I was trying to keep Ichor relatively strong in this post because I feel like it shouldn't lose utility, and I think other debuffs could be buffed as well, but that's for a different topic.
Maybe DoT debuffs should add much more DPS, but have a shorter duration so you can't just shoot an enemy once and let the DoT kill it, because then it's too effective against multiple targets.

 

[CantWontDo]

Sure Rapid fire weapons will just in general get more out of ichor, but this only seems to be problematic on crystal bullets, holy arrows, vampire knives, and the phantasm (blade staff just needs the bug fix). Fix those 4 weapons.

Now even after these changes ichor will still be better than other debuffs for the average weapon however I think that other debuffs should get buffed to be as useful as ichor. Right now the only flasks I ever use are the flask of ichor and flask of party.

why do you use flask of party?

 

[Leinfors]

What's fascinating is that after DRAMATIC increases to the damage of some DoTs (some in the range of a 5x increase in DPS), reduced immunity spread, the addition of a handful of new, relatively potent DoTs, and then a 25% Ichor nerf + more Ichor immunities . . .

. . . that after all that, Ichor is still just so potent compared to most DoT setups. Whew, it really WAS out of balance wasn't it.

On a personal note:
I think its kinda interesting that Ichor benefits from rapid hitting weapons, dealing more "per hit", while DoTs get their full benefit from a single hit, and don't scale up with more hits. Kinda gives a pro/con sort of dichotomy.

 

[qwerty3.14]

What's fascinating is that after DRAMATIC increases to the damage of some DoTs (some in the range of a 5x increase in DPS), reduced immunity spread, the addition of a handful of new, relatively potent DoTs, and then a 25% Ichor nerf + more Ichor immunities . . .

. . . that after all that, Ichor is still just so potent compared to most DoT setups. Whew, it really WAS out of balance wasn't it.

On a personal note:
I think its kinda interesting that Ichor benefits from rapid hitting weapons, dealing more "per hit", while DoTs get their full benefit from a single hit, and don't scale up with more hits. Kinda gives a pro/con sort of dichotomy.

I think a good example of flat damage vs. fixed dps is shark tooth necklace vs bone glove. That's effectively -5 defese vs. a flat 25dps increase.

Apply this ratio to ichor vs. cursed flames, since ichor does -15 defense I think it'd be appriate for cursed flames to do 75dps.
Right now ichor becomes a better option with just 3+ attacks per second which can basically always be reached if you use minions.
After this change you would need 10 attacks per second for ichor to beat cursed flames which at least takes a little effort for a build to reach.

 

[whoneedsnamestbh]

Added a poll like was suggested, because I see a lot of mixed opinions on this.

 

[CrimsHallowHero]

Let's be honest, most DoTs from 1.3 were purely aesthetical thing giving no visible impact on the battle. They were really out of balance (and Poisoned still is). Now they do something. And I suppose there are situations where they are actually useful. However, it seems like most players measure debuff effectiveness by its performance against bosses only.
One of the reasons why DoTs are considered weak (still) is lack of "good" targets, where they would outshine any or nearly any other means of inflicting damage. What I mean is an enemy with low health but obscenely high defence, for example.
If the problem is in Ichor superiority over other debuffs, it would be better to make other debuffs useful rather than make Ichor useless. I see no other way of balancing debuffs other than making them situationally powerful, especially since Ichor and Cursed Inferno are direct competitors in a single world in 1.4.
If the problem is in something else, I do not understand where.
I expect implementing this suggestion would make usage of Ichor a bit more mindless.

Edit: It actually were noticed correctly that most of endgame ranged weapons grow their power by increasing number of projectiles rather than base damage (except for sniper rifle). This favors Ichor too much. However if Ichor would be made dependent on damage then it probably won't fix the problem since their base damage is still quite low.