Weapons & Equip Sentries are unbalanced and need serious buffs/reconsiderations (Full breakdown).

[Masked Koopa]

Intro
In this post I am going to mostly focus on the Tier 2 old one's army sentries, using the full set of buffing armour associated with them. However, given that the sentries are just differently upgraded versions of one another, pretty much everything I am exploring here should be applicable to the other tiers.

First and foremost, I would like to emphasize that my main concern here is for pure summoner, outside the bounds of fighting the OOA. This is because the OOA sentries and armour represent the overwhelming majority of sentry options available to summoner. I am well aware that the armour sets do in fact encourage hybrid play, but I would also like to counter that by pointing out that none of the Dark Mage/Ogre/Betsy drops are summon weapons. The part of the event that gives summoner time to shine is primarily in the sentries, and so I feel like it is fair to treat them as summoner-focused. Additionally, between the existing whips and the large number of whips in the upcoming Dead Cells update, a summon-based playstyle no longer leaves your hand slot open, so it's not exactly unfair to expect to be able to effectively use a whip. Finally, gear like the Frost Armour is entirely competitive when used as Melee-only or Ranger-only, even when compared to full Titanium Armour with the appropriate headgear slot. Just because an armour is hybrid doesn't mean it needs to force the user to hybridise to get use out of it.


Info on the tests/gear:
My accessories weren't really relevant as I wasn't using anything that wasn't % based in terms of damage boosts, so 10% or 15% more or even 50% less still amounts to the same % difference between sentries in terms of DPS. I used a sentry-capacity boosting accessory as well as the war table in order to maximise focus on sentry play.

For Armour, I used a full set of T2 OOA armours (Squire, Huntress, etc), based on the sentry I was testing.

For high damage per shot sentries, I used a legendary Firecracker.

For low damage sentries I used a combination of legendary Leather Whip, Snapthorn, Spinal Tap, Cool Whip, and Durendal, as these are the tag-damage whips available at the same time as T2 OOA.
For the whip combination, I used a macro to cycle through all five whips in rapid succession. While this is arguably an unrealistic level of consistent tag application, I wanted to give every sentry the maximum possible benefit of the doubt, as the current winner (Ballista) works better when holding M1 with the Firecracker anyway.

The target of the sentries was a single Super Dummy, and when summoning the sentries I made sure to summon them in such a way that they shot a (relatively) constant stream of projectiles, meaning no significant fluctuations in DPS outside of when using the firecracker.

Ballista Cane:
Right off the bat, the 5 ballista are dealing a meh 550 or so dps (I am on a dungeon spike to ensure ballista panic is always active).

Although not super impressive, adding on the firecracker gives us a very meaty single-target DPS value.

All things considered, the T2 Ballista is actually quite effective. That having been said, the combo leans heavily on the Squire Armour and Firecracker, if you don't use those enhancers the Ballista is practically worthless, which is probably fine for the T2 and T3 ballista, but leaves the T1 ballista in a pretty awkward position. If we were only considering T2 and T3 Ballista and nothing else, I probably wouldn't be making this post at all.

Flameburst Cane:
Okay so this is already pretty underwhelming, right off the bat. We're looking at pretty much half of the DPS the ballistas have. But alright, maybe we can redeem this with whips...

Well whatever redemption we're looking for, the Firecracker isn't really providing it. This is also where I would like to point out that for all sentries other than ballista, I took outlier DPS values in order to give the sentry as much leeway as I could. 924 dps would be a letdown, but that isn't even accurate - the actual DPS is sitting more around 800 or so.

Switching to whip-cycling also doesn't really bring us any futher.

Explosive Trap Cane:
Explosive traps are dealing a cool 612 damage per second, putting it around the ballpark of the Ballista, which is pretty bad considering calling it melee range would be generous.

Adding on the Firecracker, we can get a neat... 1400. Let's be extra-generous and assume that it's the same as Ballista as well. Once again - not worth it considering the tiny attack range.

I am not even going to pretend as though the explosive trap would benefit more from summon tag damage, so let's move on.

Lightning Aura Cane:
We have a pretty lousy 350 DPS without whips, but that's OK! After all, the Lightning Aura was nerfed with whip tag damage, it must be comparable to the Blade Staff, right?

Oh. Bear in mind, this is me applying five sets of tags to the enemy, an amount that the average player is probably never going to bother applying consistently.

In fact, I actually went out of my way to test just using Durendal with a single Snapthorn use every once in a while to refresh the whip speed bonus, and I ended up with pretty much the same DPS - stacking tags isn't even useful!

"But the Flameburst has extra range!"
One might argue that the big boon of the Flameburst is that it has a much larger range than the Ballista with the armour set equipped. And that would be a good point, if the only thing we were swapping out would be the summon. But we're not. We're also swapping out the Squire Armour for the Apprentice Armour. And the Squire Armour also features very substantial health regeneration, as well as a LOT of defense points. It actively compensates you for the smaller range of the Ballista by giving you the means to tank the occasional hit in order to keep the enemy from moving too much.

And here's the kicker: The Flameburst may as well not even have extra range in the first place. For one, it has a smaller viewing radius than the Ballista, meaning no shooting directly up (good luck stopping an enemy from flying overhead). But much more importantly, the projectile speed of the fireball is complete arse. Unless the enemy sits completely still the Flameburst can and will whiff its shots constantly.

"You're ignoring the Lightning Aura's defense penetration!"
Some people will probably argue that the Lightning Aura's main boon is ignoring enemy defense, but that's also just not a worthwhile reason to use it. For one, the Ballista's high damage per shot means that defense isn't a big blow to its damage in the first place, but for another, most enemies don't even have that much defense to begin with outside of Master mode, and even then the Lightning Aura doesn't even attack particularly quickly to begin with, the delay between attacks with full monk gear is 0.42, meaning less than 2.5 attacks per second. Not to mention - you're trading the Squire/Vahalla's sustain in exchange for the Monk/Shinobi Armour, which only really has the benefit of enhanced whip speed. And whips are absolutely AWFUL with this sentry, as demonstrated.

I also want to just make clear that these tests are also being unreasonably charitable to the Lightning Aura by assuming you're able to fit the enemy within its radius at all times. If you were playing solo, I am willing to believe that you might be able to manipulate the movement of an enemy to remain within the aura at all times, but if you play multiplayer, you will doubtless have experienced the phenomenon of a boss running around an arena, switching its primary target willy-nilly. Now obviously all of the sentries will suffer from this to some degree, but the sentry currently least affected by it is the Ballista, as it gives you stats that make it more reasonable to be the one deliberately taking enemy aggro via your team's Flesh Knuckles/Putrid Scent use, and you can move in a way to ensure enemies are hit by your Ballistas.

"But the Lightning Auras/Explosive Trap sentries are meant for crowds!"
Ok, so first and foremost, I would like to show you this:

This is the an unassisted test (i.e no Firecracker) of the Ballistas vs SEVEN target dummies, because that's how many targets they are capable of hitting at the same time. Now I want to ask you: given the crowd control capabilities of these things with that much pierce, what niche do the other sentries have?

If I am looking for "round" AOE, I can also just use the Firecracker with these in order to produce even more meaty DPS, which also covers crowd control even better than just the pierce alone. And sure, if I had a giant pile of like 100 or even as low as say, 50 or even 40 enemies, the Explosive Trap or Lighting Aura might start to pull ahead. But I want to ask: how often does that actually happen? Even during the Pumpkin Moon and Frost Moon, the grounded clumps of enemies aren't really the main threat, it's the Pumpkings and Snow Queens. Sure, the projectile spam of the Everscreams/Mourning Woods/Santanks is an issue, but the sentries aren't going to kill them before they can do that, all they're potentially providing is a little more DPS during a specific period of time, while being completely out of range of the more pressing threat - the flying things. And even if we assumed they were perfect for the moons, they'd still be worse for single target, as well as worse against literally everything else. That still wouldn't be good enough to justify 6 entire sentries existing.


"Ok but what about the Oiled debuff?"
You can only have one source of damage over time applied at once (so no stacking fire debuffs with oiled), and the oiled debuff is just an extra 25 dps on top of whatever fire debuff you are using. It doesn't even scale with the debuff's intensity - on fire, cursed flames, hellfire, shadowflame, frostburn, frostbite? All just get 25 DPS. If you can't see why that's a meaningless amount, I don't think I have the ability to persuade you otherwise.

"These weapons are fine/useful during OOA"
Honestly? I don't know whether or not that's true and I don't care. I don't hate OOA as much as a lot of other players seem to, and I do play all 3 tiers every time I do a playthrough with my friends, but I have never found myself needing to do anything other than spam Ballistas to win. If you think the traits of the sentries are suitable for the OOA, I have absolutely no problem if they are only changed outside of OOA. My issue lies entirely in the power level of sentries when used outside of OOA, where we can't throw down fifty sentries using Etherian Mana, and are limited to at most three, five, or six sentries at a time.

That having been said I would absolutely at least consider using the non-Ballista sentries during OOA if these changes were applied there as well.


MY SUGGESTED BUFFS/CHANGES:

Ballista:

• Ballista Panic removed from the game.
• Valhalla Armour:
  • No longer reduces base attack cooldown of Ballistas.
• Ballista Rod:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 1.67 second (Current attack speed cooldown of Valhalla Ballistas.)
• Ballista Cane:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 1 second (Current attack speed cooldown of panicked Squire Armour Ballistas.)
• Ballista Staff:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 0.5 seconds (Current attack speed cooldown of panicked Valhalla Armour Ballistas)

While I did imply that I think the T2 and T3 Ballista are fine, I think the best way to fix the T1 would be to remove Ballista panic as it is the cause of the issue, and buff the attack speed of base Ballistas to compensate. This would serve to make the T1 sentry much more powerful, and make using the Ballistas with a different OOA set, or with a minion-based summoner build much more realistic and reasonable. The Squire and Vahalla Armours are already incredibly potent armours, and they already provide the Ballista with more projectile speed and +3 pierce. The Ballista Panic mechanic is also just very poorly thought out as it forces you to periodically slam your face into a dungeon spike or enemy just to keep your DPS somewhat consistent.

For the Cane and Staff I just went with the attack cooldown you could achieve anyway, but for the Rod I decided to take the Valhalla's base attack cooldowm. The Rod is in a bit of an awkward position, as sentries are effectively "free" pre-hardmode, outside of a single accessory slot for the scarf, and summoner is going to be running that anyway for the 10% extra summon damage. That having been said it is still far too weak for how difficult it is to make it land hits on enemies, especially given it is only available after EOC and Eater/Brain. The only real utility it used to have was repeatedly summoning it to skip the attack CD.

Flameburst:

• Flameburst Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • Now have homing on fireball projectiles. (If DD2 consistency is a concern, bump the projectile speed up high enough to make it almost always hit)
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd could be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Now have substantially increased rate of fire, reducing the difference in single-target dps when compared to the Ballista (probably around 20-30% less than the Ballista or so).
  • Field of view weakness removed (Or keep the FOV limits but make it still able to shoot projectiles within its FOV that then home in on enemies outside the FOV)
• Flameburst Rod:
  • On Fire! -> Hellfire
  • 25% more range.
• Flameburst Cane:
  • Hellfire -> Cursed Inferno OR Something with equivelant DPS if we're worried about visuals/DD2 lore consistency.
  • 50% more range.
• Flameburst Staff:
  • Hellfire-> A fire-themed DOT effect with about 100 to 150 DPS or so.
  • 100% more range.
• Apprentice Armor Set Bonus:
  • No more projectile speed bonus.
  • 50% extra range on Flameburst Sentries for a total of (75%/100%/150%more range).
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Flameburst Sentry explosions are now twice as large.
  • Flameburst Sentry now applies ichor for (3/5/8 seconds)
• Dark Artist Armor Set Bonus:
  • No more projectile speed bonus.
  • Infinite range on Flameburst Sentries.
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Flameburst Sentry explosions are now three times as large.
  • Flameburst Sentries now apply Betsy's Curse for (3/5/8 seconds)

This is a LOT of buffs, but the Flameburst is genuinely awful right now and is completely outclassed by the Ballista in every meaningful way. I think the best way to handle these is to lean into the whole "ranged" aspect of the sentries, giving them homing (or really high projectile speed) to make them a good choice for playing with a friend running a more tanky build, as well as a good choice for non-sentry summoners to use when playing a high-evasiveness summon build, as you won't have to worry about making the boss stay still like you might for other sentries.

I bumped up the DOT debuffs of the sentries quite substantially, as On Fire! is FAR too weak for an item that is both post-Brain/Eater AND post Dark Mage. Hellfire is also a ridiculously weak debuff for a post single Mech Boss post Ogre item - you can get Cursed Inferno inflicting weapons via flask, arrow, tome, dart, and bullet before doing literally anything else in HM, even if you have a Crimson world. Cursed Inferno wouldn't suffice for a post-Golem post-Betsy item, so a new debuff would probably have to be added. You could argue the DOT debuffs could probably be buffed even further given how easy it is to get Venom as summoner immediately into HM via Spider/Spider Queen staves, but the latter is competing for the same slot as Flameburst and neither synergise well with high-mobility long-range play, so it'd probably be fine.

As mentioned, the homing combined with the additional range might push this over the edge in terms of being too reliable as free damage, so forcing the player to commit to summoner via a whip wouldn't be a bad idea + it'd force the player to at least occasionally risk running in to go for a tag, while not requiring the same level of commitment as Ballista or Lightning Aura.

The Ichor/Betsy's curse application is primarily intended to make using the Flameburst with the intended Armour set more rewarding without invalidating the use of Flameburst on other armour sets. (I.E We don't want to lock long-range or homing capabilities behind the armour as reliable long-range damage is the primary benefit of this sentry when compared to Ballista). It'd also be a decent team-support option, which would fit well with these sentries being good in multiplayer situatuions where you cannot rely on the boss moving predictably.

The explosion radius boons are primarily intended to compete with the Vahalla's Pierce boons in terms of adding multi-target capabilities to an otherwise less crowd-damage-focused sentry.


Overall I envision this sentry as being akin to the Sanguine Staff/Xeno Staff - Consistent, reliable damage that works well against enemies with a lot of mobility but worse if you can control the enemy's movement or the enemy is slow. Enemies like the WOF, Skeletron, The Twins, Empress and Duke Fishron come to mind, but if your friends are anything like mine practically any boss can becoming an erratically-moving unpredictable mess that is more suited to lower-damage never-miss weapons.

Explosive Trap:

• Explosive Trap Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • MASSIVE damage increase, AT LEAST 150% more, possibly within the range of 200% more.
  • Attack cooldown 1.5 seconds -> 3 seconds.
  • Now have much faster summon item use times and lower Mana costs to make re-setting traps mid-combat more practical.
  • Explosions now briefly stun some enemies, with bosses being unable to be stunned and stun length being different based on the enemy type.
• Huntress Armor Set Bonus:
  • No longer reduces trap attack cooldown.
  • Oiled debuff now scales based on the type of fire applied instead of being static 25 extra DPS.
  • Oiled debuff now also makes DOT effects tick faster, making the overall damage of the DOT finish sooner and raising the DPS they inflict.
  • Increases both explosion size and activation radius of traps.
• Red Riding Armor Set Bonus:
  • No longer reduces trap attack cooldown.
  • Oiled debuff now scales based on the type of fire applied instead of being static 25 extra DPS.
  • Oiled debuff now also makes DOT effects tick even faster, making the overall damage of the DOT finish much sooner and further raising the DPS they inflict.
  • Explosive Traps also apply Betsy's Curse for 20 seconds.
  • Increases both explosion size and activation radius of traps.

Explosive Traps are honestly not a bad concept, the entire problem they run into is that they don't reward the player for consistently leading enemies onto the tiny area that the mines take up. Having a sentry that punishes an enemy for coming to you is a solid alternative to a sentry that can keep its distance, as instead of dealing consistent damage at range, they can deal all of their damage in a very short period of time. The entire crux of the issue currently is their overall DPS being on the level of the Ballista Cane, but that DPS is achieved by lowering the attack cooldown of the traps. Considering that the traps are much smaller than the Ballista and getting an enemy to run over the trap is much more work than the Ballista, it only follows that the focus should be on rewarding the player as much as possible for getting one hit off with the Trap instead of trying to promote repeated hits.

The Oiled debuff sucks and needs some severe buffs to be at all worthwhile, considering this sentry has about the same range as the Fetid Baghnakhs. If the Dark Lance can inflict shadowflame (25 DPS), this thing should be doing something WAY more substantial.

For the Red Riding Armour, the post-Golem stage of the game is so full of flying enemies and other annoying-to-maneauver foes that giving the player an extra-long Betsy's Curse seemed an appropriate bonus.

The main concern would be that the Firecracker might be disproportionately powerful with this unit, but with how good Ballistas are with Firecracker currently, this doesn't strike me as a huge problem, especially given you're combining a relatively short range whip with an even shorter ranged stationary sentry.

Lightning Aura:

• Lightning Aura Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • 50% reduction in tag damage -> removed.
  • Attack cooldown 0.5 seconds -> 0.25.
• Monk Armour Set Bonus:
  • Lightning Aura attack cooldown Bonus 0.12 less -> removed.
  • Whip (and melee weapon(?)) size increased by ~50%.
  • Crit chance of Lightning Auras increases past base 12% if the enemy has been tagged.
  • Lightning Auras now inflict Electrified on enemies for 32 DPS if moving, 16 DPS if stationary.
• Shinobi Infiltrator Set Bonus:
  • Lightning Aura attack cooldown Bonus 0.12 less -> 0.05 less (0.25 -> 0.2).
  • Whip (and melee weapon(?)) size increased by ~100%.
  • Crit chance of Lightning Auras increases past base 25% if the enemy has been tagged.
  • Lightning Auras now inflict Electrified on enemies for 32 DPS if moving, 8 DPS if stationary.
  • Electrified's DPS now scales with tag damage (4 damage per tag per tick if moving, 1 damage per tag pick tick if stationary)

I genuinely cannot understand why the tag bonus was nerfed on these sentries, I can only assume that they were tested with super master legendary mode crowds of enemies with very high defense,with all of them being hit by the lightning. Or maybe the idea of this Sentry being disproportionately beneficial to whip usage was assumed to be OP given the sentry was assumed to be balanced, which it isn't - it sucks. Either way making the Sentry benefit a lot from whip tags is honestly a great way to set this sentry apart from the more burst-heavy sentries, with them tending to benefit a lot more from Firecracker. It is of course entirely possible that these buffs I have given over-correct for the current lacklustre state, but given they're effectively an even more niche version of the already niche explosive traps in terms of getting enemies to consistently remain within range, I feel like you could easily let these be the highest-DPS option available to players willing to go through the fuss of stacking whip tags. You're already filtering out anyone who doesn't want to grind for the defender Medals needed, as well as anyone who finds whip-stacking too much work.

Bear in mind that the specific stats I suggest are moreso meant to be a guideline that needs adjusting. I think the overall goal should be that using ONLY Durendal + Monk + Lightning Aura Cane should edge out to ~2000-2200 DPS or so on a single target, so around 33%-40% more than Ballista + Firecracker. That seems fair given the small range of the Auras + the worse defensive stats of the Monk armour vs Squire. The DPS for adding on other whip tags would depend on how difficult Re-Logic considers whip stacking to be. I am less familiar with post-golem and post EOW/BOC dps values, but I imagine they could be scaled appropriately given pre-hm only has 3 tagging whips while post-mech boss adds things like Kalaedescope.

I tried to lean into the whip focus a little more with the extra size making it easier to use lower-grade whips like the Leather Whip/Snapthorn. Scaling the crit chance is also meant to encourage the same behaviour, while the Electrified DOT is meant to compensate a little for enemies with a lot of movement speed leaving the aura more frequently. If Re-Logic were feeling spicy they could even just outright convert the Melee bonuses of Monk/Shinobi to Whip ones, as it'd remove Melee having two Hybrid sets and work well with the upcoming Dead Cells update whips.


"What about the other sentries?":
The problem with the other sentries is that there are not a lot of them, and the place they fit within the game is a lot harder to sus out given every sentry-boosting armour set also boosts a specific OOA sentry further, and sentry-boosting sets are also only available after beating a mech boss. That having been said, I will still give my thoughts on where they stand/should stand.

• Houndius Shootius:
  • This thing sucks. Even if pre-hm sentries are "free" compared to having to commit to OOA armour for HM sentries, the Houndius still manages to be absolutely attrocious.
  • I reckon you could easily bump up its damage per shot and rate of fire pretty substantially.
  • That having been said it also just suffers from the issue of not really standing out over the Ballista/Flameburst.
  • Funnily enough the Houndius is also supremely underwhelming in Don't Starve Together, with its primary purpose being a stationary meat shield that outlasts enemies rather than outdpsing them.
  • With that in mind, it might be good to give it the ability to inflict confusion on enemies to emulate "drawing aggro".
  • Even if you do the above, the DPS it deals still needs to be bumped up a lot, Deerclops is not exactly easy and a lot of people think she is meant to be fought post-Skeletron.

• Spider Queen staff:
  • This thing is honestly perfectly fine.
  • I think if we were to get some sort of OOA stage 2 or even pre HM sentry armour id want this thing to be bumped up in reliability/damage at least a little, but right now it is essentially gifted wholesale to summoner players and makes for a very effective way to control area in early HM.
  • I think the walking spiders and venom would keep it better at that job than any of the buffs I proposed to T1 sentries, and buffing the Houndius to be better than this thing would be an astounding achievement.

• Staff of the Frost Hydra:
  • This thing screams outdated and is strictly worse than the Ballista Staff. So I guess you could use it to beat Golem to unlock OOA T3, and then immediately replace it.
  • I haven't bothered testing whether it even manages to outclass the Ballista Cane, because truthfully this weapon is incredibly boring and not worth grinding for an Ice Key, especially compared to the much more unique and interesting Desert Tiger Staff.
  • It doesn't even have local immunity frames, meaning using it with a sentry build is entirely pointless.
  • I think the most interesting way to rebalance this weapon would be to make it consume all of your sentry slots and scale in strength, similar to the Desert Tiger/Stardust Dragon/Abigail.
    • This would set it apart from the OOA weapons, as well as make it unique enough to feel like a worthwhile reward from a Biome Chest - the other Biome Chest weapons are much more unique for their class type.
    • This would also harken back to how sentries worked before the introduction of the OOA sentries.
    • The way I imagine it'd work is that placing it would immediately eat up all of your sentry slots and delete any sentries filling a slot to do so.
• Lunar Portal/Rainbow Crystal Staff:
  • I don't care about these very much, they make Summoner feel like an Afterthought and there's no way to specc into a sentry-focused playstyle post ML - you just get gifted a few sentry slots wholesale.
  • In my experience using them before the most recent changes, they had been worse than the Ballista Staff when using Vahalla Armour (the best option for sentry-focused summoner even post ML), and the Rainbow Crystal has only been nerfed since then despite having completely awful accuracy. The buffed Lunar Portal Staff seems okayish, although I haven't tested it nor do I particularly care for it.
  • I feel like one of them could have probably been turned into a minion instead.
  • Giving Stardust Armour the ability to convert its minion slots into sentry slots could also make them more interesting.
  • Either way like I said I don't care about them very much and I find them to be much less satisfying than other ML weapons as well as less satisfying than the Terraprisma or Stardust Dragon Staff.

 

[J Bame]

First and foremost, I would like to emphasize that my main concern here is for pure summoner, outside the bounds of fighting the OOA.

These armors are not made for pure summoner, using them as pure summoner is ignoring over half the bonuses of the sets. Designing them around a pure summoner means they are broken if used as intended.

You can't use a Ranged weapon and a Melee weapon at the same time. The only benefit the Frost armor gives you is the ability to consider using keeping Ranged and Melee weapons in your hotbar. And even that isn't good, you will need class-specific gear to make weapons good, meaning you will confine to one of the two classes unless you are just ing around.

For summoner hybrids it's different: You summon your minions only once and then use the classed weapons. Whips exist as a main weapon for summoner, but the base DPS of whips is only a fraction of the DPS of the Summons, and pales in comparison to the base DPS of a another class' weapon. This difference in base DPS is compensated by the tag, but if you are wearing an armor that buffs the other class' weapon, you will have a lot more DPS than a whip even with the tag included. You can also just, apply the tag and use the other class weapon during its duration.

Because of this a Summoner-hybrid armor must always have less summoner bonuses as a pure set, and you can't think of these armors as pure summoner set.

This is the biggest problem with your thread, you are ignoring that all of the Old One's Army armors could have their sentry slots removed and would still be fairly decent armor sets. The sentries are an addon for crowd control and mobbing, most people opt to not even use the sentries and replace the armor pieces that give sentry slots with those that just give more stats to their class.

For low damage sentries I used a combination of legendary Leather Whip, Snapthorn, Spinal Tap, Cool Whip, and Durendal, as these are the tag-damage whips available at the same time as T2 OOA.
For the whip combination, I used a macro to cycle through all five whips in rapid succession. While this is arguably an unrealistic level of consistent tag application, I wanted to give every sentry the maximum possible benefit of the doubt, as the current winner (Ballista) works better when holding M1 with the Firecracker anyway.

Sentries dont work on bosses, their static nature only works if you are sitting in one spot, not moving all over the place in an arena against a flying boss. Testing the single target DPS of these is completely pointless, you care about area denial/crowd control. This is especially true for the Trap sentries, you will never have all 5 traps hitting one enemy.

also, dude THREE whips is already considered impractical for a lot of players, and four is only done by those who practiced whip stacking too much for their own good. FIVE is just a meme these tests are literally worthless

Houndius Shootius:

• This thing sucks. Even if pre-hm sentries are "free" compared to having to commit to OOA armour for HM sentries, the Houndius still manages to be absolutely attrocious.
• I reckon you could easily bump up its damage per shot and rate of fire pretty substantially.

Let me skip ahead a bit because this take affected your entire thread. I've done killtimes against Skeletron using summoner sets. Killtimes are a much more consistent way of measuring weapon performance than DPS meter, they take missed shots/player skill into account, and the DPS variance from crits and the natural damage variance averages out over time.

I also tried not to move that much to let skeletron get hit as much as possible, so these tests will let us see the DPS impact of the prehardmode sentries on an actual build.

All these sentries add a lot of DPS (Except for laura, rip). And Houndious is a step above all of them.

The real issue is that it's a deerclops drop... . Deerclops is tiered before Old One's army but you shouldn't expect much from 1 sentry, and the other 2 sentry slots are locked behind old one's army, but so are the other 4 sentries. It has a clear niche over in single target DPS, but you wont really use sentries if it's not for crowd control, so you just use those sentries, always.

can't give it pierce or AoE because it will clash with Ballista or Flameburst... this is just in a balance limbo

Ballista:

• Ballista Panic removed from the game.
• Valhalla Armour:
  • No longer reduces base attack cooldown of Ballistas.
• Ballista Rod:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 1.67 second (Current attack speed cooldown of Valhalla Ballistas.)
• Ballista Cane:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 1 second (Current attack speed cooldown of panicked Squire Armour Ballistas.)
• Ballista Staff:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 0.5 seconds (Current attack speed cooldown of panicked Valhalla Armour Ballistas)

Dont ing sextuple the DPS of the strongest sentry in the game that's absolutely insane. Ballista has high and consistent DPS (for a sentry), high reliable piercing, and the armors attached to them are overpowered from their regeneration alone.

Ballista Panic makes its DPS go from good to absolutely insane, and your proposed change lets you have all of that with every single armor, with every single class. I agree that ballista panic is problematic, but removing it and adding it to the base DPS is just wrong.

• Flameburst Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • Now have homing on fireball projectiles. (If DD2 consistency is a concern, bump the projectile speed up high enough to make it almost always hit)
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd could be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Now have substantially increased rate of fire, reducing the difference in single-target dps when compared to the Ballista (probably around 20-30% less than the Ballista or so).
  • Field of view weakness removed (Or keep the FOV limits but make it still able to shoot projectiles within its FOV that then home in on enemies outside the FOV)
• Flameburst Rod:
  • On Fire! -> Hellfire
  • 25% more range.
• Flameburst Cane:
  • Hellfire -> Cursed Inferno OR Something with equivelant DPS if we're worried about visuals/DD2 lore consistency.
  • 50% more range.
• Flameburst Staff:
  • Hellfire-> A fire-themed DOT effect with about 100 to 150 DPS or so.
  • 100% more range.
• Apprentice Armor Set Bonus:
  • No more projectile speed bonus.
  • 50% extra range on Flameburst Sentries for a total of (75%/100%/150%more range).
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Flameburst Sentry explosions are now twice as large.
  • Flameburst Sentry now applies ichor for (3/5/8 seconds)
• Dark Artist Armor Set Bonus:
  • No more projectile speed bonus.
  • Infinite range on Flameburst Sentries.
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Flameburst Sentry explosions are now three times as large.
  • Flameburst Sentries now apply Betsy's Curse for (3/5/8 seconds)

this just needs a damage increase, don't overthink it. It is actually very accurate (sentries are awful against flying enemies in general, if anything it's good it doesnt always target them and focuses on other things), it just has awful DPS.

Explosive Trap:

• Explosive Trap Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • MASSIVE damage increase, AT LEAST 150% more, possibly within the range of 200% more.
  • Attack cooldown 1.5 seconds -> 3 seconds.
  • Now have much faster summon item use times and lower Mana costs to make re-setting traps mid-combat more practical.
  • Explosions now briefly stun some enemies, with bosses being unable to be stunned and stun length being different based on the enemy type.
• Huntress Armor Set Bonus:
  • No longer reduces trap attack cooldown.
  • Oiled debuff now scales based on the type of fire applied instead of being static 25 extra DPS.
  • Oiled debuff now also makes DOT effects tick faster, making the overall damage of the DOT finish sooner and raising the DPS they inflict.
  • Increases both explosion size and activation radius of traps.
• Red Riding Armor Set Bonus:
  • No longer reduces trap attack cooldown.
  • Oiled debuff now scales based on the type of fire applied instead of being static 25 extra DPS.
  • Oiled debuff now also makes DOT effects tick even faster, making the overall damage of the DOT finish much sooner and further raising the DPS they inflict.
  • Explosive Traps also apply Betsy's Curse for 20 seconds.
  • Increases both explosion size and activation radius of traps.

there is a LOT to unpack here so let's go bit by bit.

Explosive Trap Rod/Cane/Staff:

• MASSIVE damage increase, AT LEAST 150% more, possibly within the range of 200% more.
• Attack cooldown 1.5 seconds -> 3 seconds.

This, im fully down for. Makes their DPS way more consistent, you dont need to lure enemies into the range for that long to get your damage. This is the only change you need.

The Oiled debuff sucks and needs some severe buffs to be at all worthwhile, considering this sentry has about the same range as the Fetid Baghnakhs. If the Dark Lance can inflict shadowflame (25 DPS), this thing should be doing something WAY more substantial.

Just ignore it, Oiled is a doomed debuff. Few things even inflict fire DoTs (especially at red riding's tier), and Damage over time works best, well, over time. You inflict it on an enemy and let it slowly wittle down its health. A close ranged nuke is literally the worst possible sentry for this kind of thing, it will just kill it before the DoT can do anything.

• Now have much faster summon item use times and lower Mana costs to make re-setting traps mid-combat more practical.
• Explosions now briefly stun some enemies, with bosses being unable to be stunned and stun length being different based on the enemy type.
• Explosive Traps also apply Betsy's Curse for 20 seconds.
• Oiled debuff now also makes DOT effects tick faster, making the overall damage of the DOT finish sooner and raising the DPS they inflict.
• Increases both explosion size and activation radius of traps.

this is all bloat and not what the sentry needs, some of these arent even feasible to code.

Lightning Aura:

• Lightning Aura Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • 50% reduction in tag damage -> removed.
  • Attack cooldown 0.5 seconds -> 0.25.
• Monk Armour Set Bonus:
  • Lightning Aura attack cooldown Bonus 0.12 less -> removed.
  • Whip (and melee weapon(?)) size increased by ~50%.
  • Crit chance of Lightning Auras increases past base 12% if the enemy has been tagged.
  • Lightning Auras now inflict Electrified on enemies for 32 DPS if moving, 16 DPS if stationary.
• Shinobi Infiltrator Set Bonus:
  • Lightning Aura attack cooldown Bonus 0.12 less -> 0.05 less (0.25 -> 0.2).
  • Whip (and melee weapon(?)) size increased by ~100%.
  • Crit chance of Lightning Auras increases past base 25% if the enemy has been tagged.
  • Lightning Auras now inflict Electrified on enemies for 32 DPS if moving, 8 DPS if stationary.
  • Electrified's DPS now scales with tag damage (4 damage per tag per tick if moving, 1 damage per tag pick tick if stationary)

The tag bonus wasn't nerfed because it never actually had it. It's not that it was nerfed from 100% tag damage, it was buffed to receive 50% of tag damage. I dont really think it would've been that strong, but i also dont want another blade staff to take off. Only the Tier 1 needs a buff, the rest isn't that bad, it covers a lot of ground so it's always dealing constant damage to all enemies around you. it certainly doesn't need double DPS.

Shinobi and Monk armors dont need a buff, you need to realize it's Squire and Valhalla that are too strong. The high melee speed, summon damage and defense makes them surprisingly good whip sets, the lack of a range bonus is compensated by the fact these armors have the defense of a melee set. I can guarantee you double range on whips will break the game, kaleidoscope with Obsidian armor was already stupid before 1.4.4

Staff of the Frost Hydra:

• This thing screams outdated and is strictly worse than the Ballista Staff. So I guess you could use it to beat Golem to unlock OOA T3, and then immediately replace it.

it's only worse than ballista with a full set, and that is literally how post plantera to late post golem progression works. outside of a rework to local immunity to make it more consistent, the sentry doesnt need that much.

 

[Leaffen]

These L.Aura takes are kinda wild, did you actually try it on bosses and not on a dummy?
It does considerably well compared to other sentries because you can kite bosses to keep them in the aura. And a note, DPS meter isn't going to be accurate here because of the critting from Monk Armor. On top of that, the critting from Monk Armor also effectively increases the tag damage, and effectiveness of the piercing, so there's a lot of things not being taken into consideration here.

Also, nobody says it's for crowds, not sure where you got that take from. It's known for excelling at fighting single targets.
It's my go to for pure summoner, despite explosive traps technically yielding faster kill times (Even being able to take out ML's top eye before it closes, in Master, while Laura can only take it out before the first laser.), just ETs are a bit harder to work with imo.

Tier 3 Laura with Shinobi Armor even yields faster average results on bosses than Spooky Armor. Albeit, only by a couple seconds (sometimes even tying) for bosses like Empress, and Spooky is easier to use as you don't need to worry as much about kiting and getting close.
Shinobi does have the greater defense advantage to somewhat counter that, however.

But I digress, if I were to change anything about it, I would make Monk Armor increase its size. Not sure why it doesn't already.
Also yes, please give Frost Hydra local already.

 

[Masked Koopa]

These armors are not made for pure summoner, using them as pure summoner is ignoring over half the bonuses of the sets. Designing them around a pure summoner means they are broken if used as intended.

You can't use a Ranged weapon and a Melee weapon at the same time. The only benefit the Frost armor gives you is the ability to consider using keeping Ranged and Melee weapons in your hotbar. And even that isn't good, you will need class-specific gear to make weapons good, meaning you will confine to one of the two classes unless you are just ing around.

For summoner hybrids it's different: You summon your minions only once and then use the classed weapons. Whips exist as a main weapon for summoner, but the base DPS of whips is only a fraction of the DPS of the Summons, and pales in comparison to the base DPS of a summoner weapon. This difference in base DPS is compensated by the tag, but if you are wearing an armor that buffs the other class' weapon, you will have a lot more DPS than a whip even with the tag included. You can also just, apply the tag and use the other class weapon during its duration.

Because of this a Summoner-hybrid armor must always have less summoner bonuses as a pure set, and you can't think of these armors as pure summoner set.

The majority of the buffs that I have described here are either buffs to the base damage of the sentries to make them competitive with the Ballista at base (Flameburst, Trap), or I change the sentry/armour specifically to improve synergy with whips. I don't see any issue with doing so at all - in the case of the former I am using an existing OOA sentry that I consider to be in a reasonable state. My changes either close the gap between supplemantary sentries, OR add synergy for anyone choosing to use them for full summoner, which I think is perfectly in line with how the Frost Armour functions.

This is the biggest problem with your thread, you are ignoring that all of the Old One's Army armors could have their sentry slots removed and would still be fairly decent armor sets. The sentries are an addon for crowd control and mobbing, most people opt to not even use the sentries and replace the armor pieces that give sentry slots with those that just give more stats to their class.

This is entirely irrelevant to my post. The Armours were designed to be able to used as sets, that's why they have set bonuses, and that's also why my changes specifically focus on the set bonus. Outside of speculation on the Monk/Shinobi armour potentially losing melee-specific stats I literally don't mention any changes that affect armour mixing at all.

Sentries dont work on bosses, their static nature only works if you are sitting in one spot, not moving all over the place in an arena against a flying boss. Testing the single target DPS of these is completely pointless, you care about area denial/crowd control. This is especially true for the Trap sentries, you will never have all 5 traps hitting one enemy.

It's really interesting how I can make multiple attempts both to address this exact point, to discuss it in detail, to give suggestions that attempt to take this into account better, and then have you try to explain this point to me as though it is something I did not address.

But OK, maybe I just worded it poorly or did not explain myself, so I will try to reiterate what I said.

In my opinion, Ballista is relatively effective against a lot of bosses because Squire/Valhalla Armour makes you tanky enough to be able to afford being a bit more stationary, as well as being able to afford drawing aggro in multiplayer for your teammates.

The reason I show the DPS of the Trap and Aura is to display how poor their DPS is in completely ideal conditions. This isn't me trying to showcase their potency, it is me trying to showcase how even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the player is hitting every single shot these sentries fire, they still underperform compared to the Ballistas, which are also better at dealing with bosses and the like.

also, dude THREE whips is already considered impractical for a lot of players, and four is only done by those who practiced whip stacking too much for their own good. FIVE is just a meme these tests are literally worthless


Let me skip ahead a bit because this take affected your entire thread. I've done killtimes against Skeletron using summoner sets. Killtimes are a much more consistent way of measuring weapon performance than DPS meter, they take missed shots/player skill into account, and the DPS variance from crits and the natural damage variance averages out over time.

Once again, I literally address this in my post. And I Quote: "Bear in mind, this is me applying five sets of tags to the enemy, an amount that the average player is probably never going to bother applying consistently.". The reason I did this was specifically to give the Lightning Aura and Flameburst every possible benefit of the doubt - after all, Re-Logic went out of their way to nerf the summon tag damage of the Lightning Aura, so I wanted to make sure I was giving it every possible chance to be effective. The purpose of stacking whips was to show that even in a best-case-scenario, the Lightning aura and Flameburst fall short of Ballista in terms of single target dps. And like I said, the Ballista's sets give you the best possible chances of consistently getting hits on bosses by being very tanky.

Dont ing sextuple the DPS of the strongest sentry in the game that's absolutely insane. Ballista has high and consistent DPS (for a sentry), high reliable piercing, and the armors attached to them are overpowered from their regeneration alone.

Ballista Panic makes its DPS go from good to absolutely insane, and your proposed change lets you have all of that with every single armor, with every single class. I agree that ballista panic is problematic, but removing it and adding it to the base DPS is just wrong.

I find the Ballista to synergise perfectly with the Squire/Vahalla armours, so in my eyes all this does is promote variety in terms of sentry usage. Where you see Ballista's DPS being sextupled, I see Ballista's DPS being cut down by 5/6 because you dared to not use the one specific set of armour you have to use in order for it to function as it honestly always should. And bear in mind you're losing out on both projectile speed and pierce by sacrificing a set of armour that is already very very good.

If you reckon Ballista/Valhalla is OP that is fine, but I think the fact that so few people bother with the OOA gear despite the supposed overpoweredness suggests that it's probably not a pressing balance concern compared to how chronically unfun it is to use the other OOA sentries. My primary goal here is making Sentry-mixing less punishing without removing the benefits of using a full set, and I reckon that Squire/Valhalla already synergises well enough with Ballista to not need Ballista Panic to remain relevant, while Ballistas absolutely need Ballista Panic's attack speed to be worth using outside of OOA.

this just needs a damage increase, don't overthink it. It is actually very accurate (sentries are awful against flying enemies in general, if anything it's good it doesnt always target them and focuses on other things), it just has awful DPS.

If you just increase the damage it becomes a bland version of the Ballista. The entire reason I suggested the changes I did was specifically to address poor sentry performance in situations where you cannot control the movement of the boss. Because while it might be able to predict a flying enemy going in a straight line, it isn't going to hit an erratically moving flying boss. The changes I suggested are specifically to make it a lower-damage, consistent option against enemies Sentries would normally have a poor matchup against. The reason I chose this sentry is because part of its identity is having longer range than Ballista, or indeed other sentries, meaning the limited area that sentries can cover is much, much less limited for the Flameburst.

Just ignore it, Oiled is a doomed debuff. Few things even inflict fire DoTs (especially at red riding's tier), and Damage over time works best, well, over time. You inflict it on an enemy and let it slowly wittle down its health. A close ranged nuke is literally the worst possible sentry for this kind of thing, it will just kill it before the DoT can do anything.

My goal with making DOTs tick faster was to allow the player to apply another DOT immediately after setting off a trap. Say you have ~100 DOT over about 3 seconds applied to the enemy in cursed inferno - oiled would enhance that DOT by ~50-100 or so, and make the DOT happen faster, so you get ~150-200 damage applied over 1 second or so. I do agree that oiled is a poor mechanic for a trap, but I figured it would be better to stick to the spirit of the idea rather than forget about it outright. Would my suggestion fix it being mediocre? Probably not, but I feel like it's better to at least try to redeem the mechanic than forget about it.

this is all bloat and not what the sentry needs, some of these arent even feasible to code.

Being able to relocate traps faster and more consistently is absolutely not bloat. Being able to reposition them based on where you are waiting for a boss or enemy to chase you is a useful and relevant trait for a trap like this. The other mechanics are speficially to sweeten the deal of using full Huntress/Red Riding armour as I gutted the rate of fire enhancing effect of those set bonuses since the trap having a low CD generally makes it harder to use than giving it a lot of damage with a long CD. Obviously one could think of better bonuses for the sets, but it'd be a hell of a lot better than giving them nothing at all.

The tag bonus wasn't nerfed because it never actually had it. It's not that it was nerfed from 100% tag damage, it was buffed to receive 50% of tag damage. I dont really think it would've been that strong, but i also dont want another blade staff to take off. Only the Tier 1 needs a buff, the rest isn't that bad, it covers a lot of ground so it's always dealing constant damage to all enemies around you. it certainly doesn't need double DPS.

If the lightning aura is going to have three different tiers and two sets of armour dedicated to it, I would prefer it to be more than "not that bad", and the sentry barely covers any ground. The primary goal with these changes was specifically to allow it to function like Blade Staff as the Blade Staff is an example of a summon that worked extremely well with summon tags. I get that the Blade Staff may not be your cup of tea, and it isn't mine either, but I think it is better to make the Lightning Aura focus on doing something other than crowd control, because right now doing crowd control is already a feature of the Explosive Trap and the Ballista, as well as minions like the Optic Staff, Sanguine Staff, Abigail, Pirate Staff, Deadly Spheres, etc. And crowd control isn't even that useful in most situations. Sure, you could use the lightning aura as a QOL during day-to-day activities, but minions are a portable version of that while the Spider Staff works fine as a way to lock down areas while not taking up 3 entire tiers of sentry and two sets of armour.

Either way the stats listed were primarily a guideline for the direction I think the Lightning Aura should be taken - which is a sentry with much worse range than Ballista/Flameburst, but much stronger DPS if you can get the enemy to remain in range of several of them while you keep them tagged. Is doubling their raw DPS too much? Yeah, probably, but like I said, guideline, not final draft. What I was trying to get across is that I would prefer to see them deal more than the Ballista if you are able to keep an enemy within range of all 5 of them, as well as provide a sentry option similar to Blade Staff for those who enjoy whip-stacking as a playstyle.

it's only worse than ballista with a full set, and that is literally how post plantera to late post golem progression works. outside of a rework to local immunity to make it more consistent, the sentry doesnt need that much.

The problem is that ballista sits behind a notoriously easy boss while the Hydra sits behind a very low drop chance in a biome you will likely not spend that much time in if it doesn't happen to be your Hallow as well.

But the real problem is that it's incredibly boring for such a rare weapon and fails to distinguish itself from more a more readily available alternative that also actually WORKS with sentry summoner instead of being actively anti-synergistic with it.

The only thing giving it local immunity frames would do would be making it a minor upgrade to the Ballista you can use for the easiest boss in the game before immediately replacing it with a clearly superior weapon that wasnt RNG dependant to obtain.

 

[Masked Koopa]

These L.Aura takes are kinda wild, did you actually try it on bosses and not on a dummy?
It does considerably well compared to other sentries because you can kite bosses to keep them in the aura. And a note, DPS meter isn't going to be accurate here because of the critting from Monk Armor. On top of that, the critting from Monk Armor also effectively increases the tag damage, and effectiveness of the piercing, so there's a lot of things not being taken into consideration here.

Unless you're specifically saying that DPS meters fail to take into account crits, or that super dummies ignore monk's crits, this is incorrect.

If that isn't the case, then the only other possible argument I can assume you're trying to make is that you're saying it's good for multi-target bosses, but you specifically say it's not for crowds after so I really don't know what's up here unless the lightning aura staff is radically different to the cane in some way.

Also, nobody says it's for crowds, not sure where you got that take from. It's known for excelling at fighting single targets.
It's my go to for pure summoner, despite explosive traps technically yielding faster kill times (Even being able to take out ML's top eye before it closes, in Master, while Laura can only take it out before the first laser.), just ETs are a bit harder to work with imo.

Tier 3 Laura with Shinobi Armor even yields faster average results on bosses than Spooky Armor. Albeit, only by a couple seconds (sometimes even tying) for bosses like Empress, and Spooky is easier to use as you don't need to worry as much about kiting and getting close.
Shinobi does have the greater defense advantage to somewhat counter that, however.

Truthfully stats like these do not matter to me due to the perview of "how fast can I kill X boss" not really being a metric I particularly care about due to how wildly that can fluctuate between difficulties and whether or not one is playing MP or solo. For me DPS is a baseline I use as a starting point, and then ask how much work a player has to put into achieving that DPS, hence why I suggested big buffs to the potential DPS/damage of lightning aura and traps due to the small ranges presenting a need for controlling the enemy's positioning, while I focus more on consistency for Flameburst.

 

[J Bame]

My changes either close the gap between supplemantary sentries, OR add synergy for anyone choosing to use them for full summoner, which I think is perfectly in line with how the Frost Armour functions.

This makes them overpowered for every single class except for pure summoner which doesnt use these armors in the first place. I already explained this.

The majority of the buffs that I have described here are either buffs to the base damage of the sentries to make them competitive with the Ballista at base (Flameburst, Trap), or I change the sentry/armour specifically to improve synergy with whips.

You just gave massive buffs to both the base and the set bonus. That technically adds more synergy, but you are really just making them overpowered.

This is entirely irrelevant to my post. The Armours were designed to be able to used as sets, that's why they have set bonuses, and that's also why my changes specifically focus on the set bonus. Outside of speculation on the Monk/Shinobi armour potentially losing melee-specific stats I literally don't mention any changes that affect armour mixing at all.

You didnt understand, i also wasnt talking about armor mixing there

My point is that you want the sentries to be the focus for these armors, when people value these armor sets for what they are right now, with the sentries being secondary. You want the sentries to be the focus of the sets without changing anything else, that makes everything overpowered.

Once again, I literally address this in my post. And I Quote: "Bear in mind, this is me applying five sets of tags to the enemy, an amount that the average player is probably never going to bother applying consistently.".

The tests dont show anything of value, is the point. it honestly just makes your thread harder to follow, it's hard to gauge exactly how much of a buff these sentries need if you show unrealistic use cases as your basis.

it can also just be misleading to judge by DPS. The Lightning auras are meant to cover a wide area and just wear down enemies that stand around it. The ballistas shoot at things around them. You wont stack all your traps outside of facetanking, and you wont expect the traps spread out to have the same single target damage as a Ballista panic concentrated fire.

if you say "i dont think they are strong/large enough for what they do" i can agree or disagree with that without needing to see a macro quint-stacking test

I find the Ballista to synergise perfectly with the Squire/Vahalla armours, so in my eyes all this does is promote variety in terms of sentry usage. Where you see Ballista's DPS being sextupled, I see Ballista's DPS being cut down by 5/6 because you dared to not use the one specific set of armour

This is strange because it contradicts every other change in the thread, every other sentry got massive buffs to its respective set bonus, but Valhalla just loses it entirely, keeping only the two parts that matter the least.

But that's not important, you dont sextuple the base dps of the strongest sentry in the game. You just don't.

but I think the fact that so few people bother with the OOA gear despite the supposed overpoweredness

the event has been a slow, repetitive and grindy experience with underpowered weapon drops for most of its existence. As of 1.4.4 all these issues have been fixed, just give it some time for people to learn to appreciate the event.

If you just increase the damage it becomes a bland version of the Ballista. The entire reason I suggested the changes I did was specifically to address poor sentry performance in situations where you cannot control the movement of the boss.

There are only two ways to make a sentry useful against bosses: Facetanking, or infinite range that can't miss no matter what. Facetanking is the kind of thing you leave in for people to play around until it becomes too strong, and the latter doesnt need explaining.

The flameburst sentry just needs to be good enough to be worth using with Apprentice/Dark Artist, it doesnt need to be significantly different from Ballista because those 2 sentries are going to be used by different classes, with different armors. you can try 3 debuffs, homing shots, massive explosions and infinite range, or you can just improve the DPS, because that's where it lacks.

the lack of linear pierce or lingering area of effect will probably still make it the worst option against old one's army, but what are you supposed to do about that? Make every explosion cover half the screen? can't try too hard to salvage something that fundamentally doesn't work well, if it has slightly higher DPS against the OOA bosses (massive targets that dont move a lot, in an event where you also dont move a lot) than ballistas then that can be its niche.

My goal with making DOTs tick faster was to allow the player to apply another DOT immediately after setting off a trap. Say you have ~100 DOT over about 3 seconds applied to the enemy in cursed inferno - oiled would enhance that DOT by ~50-100 or so, and make the DOT happen faster, so you get ~150-200 damage applied over 1 second or so. I do agree that oiled is a poor mechanic for a trap, but I figured it would be better to stick to the spirit of the idea rather than forget about it outright. Would my suggestion fix it being mediocre? Probably not, but I feel like it's better to at least try to redeem the mechanic than forget about it.

it's easier to just increase the DoT damage, has the same effect.

Being able to relocate traps faster and more consistently is absolutely not bloat. Being able to reposition them based on where you are waiting for a boss or enemy to chase you is a useful and relevant trait for a trap like this. The other mechanics are speficially to sweeten the deal of using full Huntress/Red Riding armour as I gutted the rate of fire enhancing effect of those set bonuses since the trap having a low CD generally makes it harder to use than giving it a lot of damage with a long CD. Obviously one could think of better bonuses for the sets, but it'd be a hell of a lot better than giving them nothing at all.

betsy's curse out of nowhere, a whole stun mechanic, double explosion size after a rework that makes the sentry more consistent, minor QOL that is worse than just positioning your sentries right so you can keep attacking, is bloat

The problem is that ballista sits behind a notoriously easy boss while the Hydra sits behind a very low drop chance in a biome you will likely not spend that much time in if it doesn't happen to be your Hallow as well.

i said "with a full set" for a reason, you need the valhalla set bonus to make it better than the hydra

 

[chewythebigblackdog]

One point I'd like to add about the ballistas, while they are very effective at crowd control when they have the opportunity to use their linear pierce to mow down grounded enemies, they become considerably less effective when they aren't able to do that. This can happen if they get distracted by a flier (which lightning auras and explosive traps won't do) or if the enemies reach the ballistas so now they start shooting at much less favourable angles (which happens a lot when not fighting OOA, and even when fighting OOA if they don't do enough damage).

Also, ballista panic isn't supposed to be an effect you have on constantly. It lasts for 5 seconds after you take damage, so you shouldn't treat it as the base dps of the weapon. While you can use intentional damage to have it be active all the time, it shouldn't be what the weapon is balanced around and definitely shouldn't be the baseline for it's "rebalanced" dps.

 

[Golden Heretic Snakeboat]

One point I'd like to add about the ballistas, while they are very effective at crowd control when they have the opportunity to use their linear pierce to mow down grounded enemies, they become considerably less effective when they aren't able to do that. This can happen if they get distracted by a flier (which lightning auras and explosive traps won't do)

exactly this has happened so many times with the ballista sentry that i just don't use them anymore for old one's army. you can either stack enough lightning aura sentries on top of eachother that they don't allow any wyverns to slip through and distract ballistas, or you can go all in on the lightning aura sentries and completely shut down one gate until an ogre comes through it

 

[Meowlegend]

Just ignore it, Oiled is a doomed debuff. Few things even inflict fire DoTs (especially at red riding's tier), and Damage over time works best, well, over time. You inflict it on an enemy and let it slowly wittle down its health. A close ranged nuke is literally the worst possible sentry for this kind of thing, it will just kill it before the DoT can do anything.

Can't you just buff all hardmode DoT (except Daybroken), add more fire DoT (or make more DoT debuffs count as "fire") and solve the problem?

 

[J Bame]

Can't you just buff all hardmode DoT (except Daybroken), add more fire DoT (or make more DoT debuffs count as "fire") and solve the problem?

you dont "just" do a rebalance on that scale but semantics aside thats not the problem

DoTs deal damage over time. You spread them to a crowd of enemies and let them die down. If you want DoTs, you want them on things that can hit many enemies easily, the goal is to just get 1 hit and let the damage over time add up.

The explosive trap has very short range, but very high dps. If enemies arent in range, it cant do anything. If an enemy enters its range, it will basically just die on the spot

Conclusion? Explosive trap kills enemies really quickly, but has trouble hitting them. DoTs work best when you spread them with something that can hit enemies very easily, without the need to deal much damage, just spread the debuff. These two things literally cannot work together.

But what about bosses? Explosive traps are extremely bad at hitting a boss, even for sentry standards, so thats out of the question too. Unless one hit applies oiled for so stupidly long that it may as well just be a passive effect.

 

[Masked Koopa]

Alright ive given it a bit of extra time to fully gather my thoughts on some of the responses here, because truthfully I got pretty annoyed at some of the replies clearly not reading my post before replying, but I also recognise that my post also assumed a lot of things in terms of how one would approach balance that I should have clarified. I'm gonna try to clarify the key misunderstandings of what my approach actually was, as well as address some of the common things brought up.

OOA:
Ok so for some reason I have seen a couple replies on here talk about the OOA event in relation to these sentries. I put it near the top of the post, but I will reiterate it once more: NONE OF THIS POST'S SUGGESTIONS OR COMPLAINTS ARE ABOUT OOA. If the changes I suggested here are only applied outside of the OOA event, I would see absolutely no problem with that. In fact you could argue that it only makes sense to buff the sentries outside of OOA given you can have 20-50 turrets down at the same time during OOA wheras outside of it you can only ever have 3/5/6. I would very much prefer if people would bear this in mind when responding, because it's pretty tiresome seeing OOA being brought up on a post explicitly not about OOA.

Your sentry changes are wrong/overcomplicated:
First of all, I want to clarify that a big part of my changes was trying to make the sentries good for bosses rather than just hordes of enemies. I am of the opinion that the T2 and T3 Ballista is aready a powerful tool against a lot of bosses in large part because its associated Armour sets give the player enough HP to be able to reduce how much the boss moves around. This can take the form of tanking outright of course, but it is also entirely viable to do "minimalist" dodging where you use a combination of platforms, hook usage, and basic movement. If you keep control of the enemy's aggro, you can massively reduce how much they move by limiting how much you yourself move when dodging. And Re-Logic has clearly gone out of their way to give you options to control enemy aggro between the Putrid Scent/Flesh Knuckles and their many tinkers, Invisibility potions, and Shroomite/Vortex set bonuses. You can absolutely control the movement of a boss enough to make Ballistas a consistent source of damage, even in multiplayer.

I have seen sentiment here implying that sentries conceptually do not work against bosses, because the assumption is that the only way to deal with bosses is to use wings and excessive movement. And with that reasoning seems to come the assumption that because sentries do not work against bosses, that they shouldn't. So when I suggest that the Flameburst sentry be given the tools to hit enemies aggroed onto a player using high-movement kiting techniques, this is somehow being treated as a misdiagnosis of what sentries are "meant to be".

I also want to make it clear that my goal with these changes was to make every sentry fundamentally different in terms of what playstyle they encourage/reward. I think it is perfectly fine to have sidegrades for weapons if they are either a higher tier version (i.e Wasp Gun vs Bee Gun) or come from different sources (I.E Marrow/Ice Bow/Shadowflame Bow). My issue with the OOA sentries is that they all come from the same source, meaning making them do the same thing is incredibly redundant - if I get an option of four different sentries I want them to do four different things. With that in mind, here is my vision:

• Ballista:
  The sentry of choice for people wanting to take a low mobility approach and draw boss aggro. The armour has enough HP/Sustain to make things somewhat easier on you, as well as enough range on the sentries to work well at medium ranges.
  
  I think Ballista already does this job perfectly fine, my only issue was that I think the sentry is disproportionately weakened when not being used by Squire/Valhalla. (I discuss Ballista more in the segment after).
  
  
• Flameburst:
  The sentry of choice for people who want to take a high mobility approach or for supporting a high mobility friend who is taking aggro. This would have worse DPS than Ballista, but be significantly more consistent for situations where Ballista just doesn't have the range or consistent aim to actually land hits. You could use this sentry in the same sorts of situations youd use something like Sanguine staff or Xeno staff.
  
  The reason I took this approach is that in pretty much every situation Flameburst is a complete downgrade to Ballista with no actual redeeming qualities, but if it could use the extra range it gets from the armour more consistently it'd have a clear niche over the Ballista. What I don't understand is why people are against the idea of solving one of the key weaknesses most other sentries have in exchange for a much lower DPS. We already have minions with poor aim/tracking against fast/flying bosses (Sharknados, Pirates, Slimes, Ravens, etc), so why can't we have sentries with better peformance against enemies like this? Just because sentries are currently all bad against high mobility enemies doesn't mean that they have to be that way.
  
  
• Explosive Trap:
  An alternate sentry of choice for people who want to take a high mobility approach, although less suitable if your friend is taking aggro instead of you. This would (ideally) give the player an option that is closer if not better than Ballista in terms of DPS while still letting you use your mobility tools. The main downside of this sentry would be that it would be much higher effort than Flameburst. The idea is that you lay down either one big pile of traps, or you spread them out throughout your arena. You then try to kite the enemy attacks in such a way as to make them barrel into your traps as frequently as possible. Spreading them out makes it easier to get hits but makes getting max DPS more difficult, while compressing them makes it harder to get hits while making max DPS more consistent once you know how to move the boss into them.
  
  The reason I took this approach is that currently explosive traps don't actually do anything differently to Ballistas - they have similar rates of fire and damage, but the Ballista just has way more range. The entire point of a trap is to deal a lot of burst damage at once to offset the time you spent laying your trap as well as waiting for the enemy to step on it, but the explosive trap sentries seem to assume that you're going to have an enemy just standing on top of it all the time. The idea of a trap isn't a bad idea at all, the problem is entirely down to the fact they have extremely short cooldowns and damage on the same level as ranged sentries. A burst damage sentry is also very much transferable to mobility-centric play specifically because you don't have keep the sentry in range to get the most out of it - you can do it occasionally and still see a lot of effective DPS (I.E 160 damage every 8 seconds vs 20 damage every second is the same average DPS).
  
  
• Lightning Aura:
  An alternate sentry of choice for people wanting to take a low mobility approach and draw boss aggro. The armour doesn't have a lot of sustain, and the sentry's range is significantly worse than the Ballista. But the upside is that you deal a LOT more DPS if you are consistently using a whip that applies tags, and you have the potential to deal even more DPS if you go through the effort of stacking different whip tags. The sentry is also significantly more consistent at hitting close range enemies even if they are doing rapid dash attacks and unlike Explosive Trap and Flameburst it won't have its shots wasted on fodder enemies. Similar to the explosive traps, this sentry requires a greater level of commitment and skill level than its playstyle alternative (Ballista vs Lightning Aura for low mobility, Flameburst vs Explosive Trap for high mobility), but it rewards that skill and commitment with more damage.
  
  The reason I took this particular approach with Lightning Aura is a combination of a few factors:
  • For one, the Lightning Aura is very similar to the Blade Staff in a LOT of ways - it has a high attack speed, it ignores enemy defense, it has nerfed summon tag damage built into it, and it is very consistent at hitting enemies compared to its alternatives.
  • Another factor to consider with Lightning Aura is that it sits in a bit of an awkward position - while the other OOA sentries have AOE and/or crowd damage to some degree, Lightning Aura is the only one of them, if not the only weapon in the entire game, that focuses almost entirely on AOE damage as its selling point. It is kind of hard to come up with a solid niche for this level of hyperspecialisation when the primary challenge most people are concerned with is bosses, and most bosses have a couple of segments at most.
  • There was also the matter of the other three sentry types benefitting primarily from the Firecracker rather than from any other whip type, despite tag damage being a pretty major part of summoner and whips as a whole.
    
    
    To me, leaning into the whole "deal way more DPS with summon tags compared to other minions" approach to the Lightning Aura seemed like the best solution to these issues. It gives a reason to use whips other than the Firecracker for supporting sentries. It makes the Lightning Aura more similar to an existing weapon that summoner players use often and enjoy. It gives Lightning Aura a unique niche over the other sentries that doesn't depend purely on AOE capabilities. And it gives the Lightning Aura a way to deal high single target damage without turning it into a "place this down and all enemies in the bubble will die without you having to do anything" weapon by requiring the player to be actively whipping the enemies.
    
    I am personally not big on stacking summon tag damage myself, but I feel like giving players a sentry that rewards that particular skill is still a good idea and makes it distinct from the other three sentry types.

TLDR:
Lightning Aura:

• For low movement.
• High effort.
• High dps.

Ballista:

• For low movement
• Medium effort.
• Medium dps.

Explosive Trap:

• For high movement.
• High effort.
• High dps.

Flameburst:

• For high movement.
• Low Effort.
• Lowest dps.

You are buffing X sentry too much:
Alright so this one is a lil' complicated, but i'll try to break down both my own reasoning while giving room for nuance where I can.

1. T1:
   So for T1/pre-Hardmode, I think there is a valid argument that my changes are too much. The problem with pre-Hardmode sentries is that summoner doesn't have to sacrifice anything really substantial in order to be able use them. You can keep every single minion slot granted by Bee/Obsidian armour while also having 2 sentries and getting another one at the "cost" of wearing an accessory that also boosts your minion damage by another 10%. That accessory slot can be pretty valuable in Hardmode, but in pre-Hardmode your accessory slots are often much less precious as you don't have that many amazing options in the first place. The fundamental problem is purely the lack of sacrifice needed in order to specc into sentries, and I doubt Re-Logic wants to go through the additional effort of making the changes required for that to not be the case.
   
   With that having been said I am of the personal opinion that it is probably OK to make the sentries "OP" in pre-hardmode. Both the T1 OOA and Deerclops are entirely optional fights that can be pretty challenging. With that in mind I think that if we can reward players with weapons like the Night's Edge/Terra Blade/Star Cannon for going out of their way to do more difficult/high effort content, it's probably not a real problem if the sentries are genuinely strong despite the lack of sacrifice. I understand why people might disagree with this particular take, but I think it is more important for these sentries to feel rewarding than to worry about whether they provide too much "free" dps.
2. T2/T3:
   • Ballista:
     If we're talking in terms of it being a buff for Ballistas when used by Squire/Valhalla armour wearers, I can really only say that I fundamentally disagree with the premise that keeping Ballista Panic active is at all costly or difficult. Dungeon spikes only deal 60 damage while Squire Armour has 58 defense. You chuck on an Ankh Shield or even just a Bandage to stop the bleeding, maybe drink an Ironskin or throw down a Bast Statue, or even just use a couple of warding modifiers and you'll be good to go on every difficulty level. I can understand why people would think that something like stacking several different whip tags is an unreasonable level of micromanagement, but five seconds is an absolutely massive time window for what amounts to "touch a block from any direction once". You can easily throw down several of them in your arena if you find using a single spike too restrictive. Keeping Ballista Panic active isn't challenging even if you completely ignore actual enemy attacks also proccing the buff.
     
     
     If the problem is boosting Ballistas on other loadouts I have to ask - why is it specifically Ballistas that need to have their damage cut in half for not using a specific armour set?
     
     Because if the problem is that it makes the armour not worth using, the Squire and Vahalla armours are already extremely powerful sets. They don't need exclusive reign over decent Ballista sentries to be useful sets, they already give huge summon damage boosts and sentry slots while having much better defense than other OOA sets AND a LOT of extra hp regen.
     
     If the problem is that it gives the buffed Ballistas to other loadouts, I have to ask - why is it OK on the Squire/Vahalla armour, but not on other sets? It'd be one thing if Squire/Vahalla were kind of mediocre armour sets propped up by Ballistas, but they're not. I fail to see how they're OK on those excellent armour sets but not OK on armour sets that have worse synergy with Ballistas to begin with. I'm going to get a lot more out of Ballistas using a high defense high hp regen armour than I am using Spider Armour, even if we remove Ballista Panic from the equation.
     
     And if your argument is that the current Ballistas are OP in general, kindly go away and make your own post asking for them to be nerfed instead of bringing it up here. I am making these suggestions under the assumption that the current balance of Ballistas is considered by Re-Logic to be an appropriate level of power. I didn't spend hours writing this out so you could suddenly remember that you've always considered Ballistas OP and you now want to soapbox about it. If they're OP, then they're OP regardless of what I said here.
     
     
   • Lightning Aura:
     Alright so this one is partially my fault for suggesting concrete stats instead of being vague about it, but I DID clarify what I meant with these stats in description below them. But to be absolutely, one hundred percent clear: my numerical suggestions for Lightning Aura were intended primarily as rough guidelines for the type of changes I reckon the sentry needs to fill the role I think it should fill. As I said, I am well aware that the stats I suggested would probably end up making the Lightning Auras hideously OP, because they were not meant to be anything more than guidelines.
     
     My actual intent was to specifically to suggest Re-Logic scale the way that the sentry deals damage to be a lot more favourable toward summon tags to the point where using a single, high tag damage whip would result in higher single target DPS than using the Firecracker alongside Ballistas. Re-Logic could then have the option to figure out how much they want to reward whip-stacking. If they buff the damage per hit of the sentry that makes adding more whips relatively less effective. If they instead buff rate of fire it makes them relatively more effective.
     
     Whether or not the end result would/should raise their baseline DPS is entirely up to Re-Logic to decide, because I don't see what they must have seen in the tower for it to be as it is. I personally find the sentry to be complete and utter garbage at base, and in my eyes no amount of multi-target capability is going to make up for a baseline that has worse range and DPS than both the Ballista and the already underpowered Flameburst. I would consider a buff to the Lightning Aura's baseline DPS to be a good thing, but it is not at all my primary concern which is why I didn't specify what DPS I think the baseline should deal.
     

These Sentries are meant to be bonus damage for other classes:
To be quite frank I heavily resent this conceptualisation of sentries. We are well past the point of summoner being the "you use other weapons as well" class, and "sentries are extra damage sources you can collect as the game progresses". Summoner is a full fourth class, and it is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that the armours and summon weapons provided from the OOA should cater only to the other three classes when they have both more options overall AND each also have drops from the Dark Mage, Ogre and Betsy that deal their damage type. If Melee can have Flails, Yoyos, Boomerangs, etc, and Ranger can have Guns, Bows, Rocket launchers, etc, and Mage can have a bazillion different weapon types I don't see why summoner can't have sentries that can actually be relied upon.

I also want to clarify that I'm not saying that I want the Melee/Ranger/Mage bonuses to not exist for OOA armours, but what I am saying is that those bonuses existing shouldn't justify making ten summon weapons useless because it might make the other three classes stronger if they use them as well. The entire reason I suggested things like "Flameburst homing could require a whip tag" was to help provide suggestions for Re-Logic if they find the buffs suggested to be too powerful on other classes.

My perspective is that (outside of during OOA) sentries should first and foremost facilitate an alternate playstyle for summoner. I get that Re-Logic probably doesn't want to go through the extra effort of adding more sentries/sentry armours/sentry accessories, but I think they should at the very least make the existing sentries proper weapons instead of glorified Nimbus Rods.

On Oiled/DOT:
This one is very complex, but fundamentally I consider it to be in a (somewhat) similar situation to the "Ballistas are already OP" argument. As in, I think it is a valid discussion to have, but it is outside the bounds of a discussion on leveling the playingfield between Ballistas and the other sentries. Is the balance of DOT damage in Terraria a little questionable? Yeah, definitely. But at the end of the day my main concern with Flameburst was that its DOT buffs are not appropriate for the stage they occupy in progression, NOT whether or not DOT effects are useful right now.

And that also extends to the Oiled debuff - my suggestion was primarily intended to make it work better as a trap by having it turn DOT effects into something more like burst damage. If you think Oiled needs to go, that's W/E, but if you think the problem is DOT I kindly ask you to make a seperate post instead of bringing it up here. My goal with this post is to make sentries more consistent with each other when considering current game balance. Like I said, it's fine if you think oiled is a bad concept. I just personally prefer trying to keep close to the "spirit" of weapons when suggesting changes, as I know developers are often quite fond of the ideas they have for weapon concepts.

On Other Sentries:
I don't think I made it clear enough, but the inclusion of other sentries was not intended to be a concrete list of suggestions but rather a list of my opinions for the sake of being thorough. I mostly say this because I haven't done any thorough tests with the Moon Lord sentries or Frost Hydra to determine exactly how effective they are when compared to the OOA sentries. This is mostly because the Moon Lord Sentries don't have an associated subclass and are just an extra you tack onto your minion summoner loadout, while the Houndius and Frost Hydra don't actually do anything significant when compared to the Ballista or Flameburst. I'd prefer they bring something more unique to the table, regardless of how they compare to the OOA sentries.

 

[J Bame]

First of all, I want to clarify that a big part of my changes was trying to make the sentries good for bosses rather than just hordes of enemies

They cant be good for bosses. The fundamental nature of sentries, that being static support with limited range, makes them hard for them to function against bosses.

This just doesnt have a realistic fix. "fixing" it actually implies adding a whole new layer to summoner balance, that being sentries' contribution in bosses, when before it was negligible.

Sentries that work on bosses would need a huge rebalance. That rebalance would need a lot of nerfs. Lots of nerfs to sentries is not what anybody wants.

Armour sets give the player enough HP to be able to reduce how much the boss moves around. This can take the form of tanking outright of course, but it is also entirely viable to do "minimalist" dodging where you use a combination of platforms, hook usage, and basic movement.

This is basically just facetanking. "Minimalist dodging" as you want to call it lets anything work safely.

Defensive tools are way too strong in this game when stacked, Valhalla and Squire arent even the only problem here.

With that having been said I am of the personal opinion that it is probably OK to make the sentries "OP" in pre-hardmode. Both the T1 OOA and Deerclops are entirely optional fights that can be pretty challenging. With that in mind I think that if we can reward players with weapons like the Night's Edge/Terra Blade/Star Cannon for going out of their way to do more difficult/high effort content, it's probably not a real problem if the sentries are genuinely strong despite the lack of sacrifice. I understand why people might disagree with this particular take, but I think it is more important for these sentries to feel rewarding than to worry about whether they provide too much "free" dps.

The thing is... this is how things are right now.

Dark mage essentially drops a better summoner emblem for prehardmode (1 sentry is not worth less than a mere 5% summon damage), war table doubles the contribution from sentries without affecting a loadout at all, and every sentry in the game has significantly more DPS than any minion on tier. This last reason is why sentries are actually a huge contributor to speedkills (that manipulate a boss to get the highest possible DPS)

So yes, if you go out of your way to include sentries in your loadout, you will see a pretty big improvement outside of bosses. Hell, even summoning 2-3 sentries against a boss, and having them sit idly 95% of the time is better than just not having them at all. And if you try hard to make their shots hit, like I did in my skeletron tests, they give a very noticeable increase to DPS.

Sentries dont have a problem of not being strong enough (some may need a buff, but not all). This is a sentiment i see everywhere and I feel like it wont change until sentries  do get absurd buffs and end up breaking everything.

Sentries simply dont have enough dedicated gear, and there are barely any sentries in the game to begin with. That is their problem.

If the problem is boosting Ballistas on other loadouts I have to ask - why is it specifically Ballistas that need to have their damage cut in half for not using a specific armour set?

Because ballistas shouldnt get triple DPS (ballista panic is actually triple attack speed, who allowed this...) on top of everything else Squire and Valhalla give.

why is it OK on the Squire/Vahalla armour,

It is not OK on Squire/Valhalla armor. these armors need a nerf and Ballista Panic needs either a big nerf or a rework. Both these things cant be used as a good baseline for anything, but especially not the latter.

Summoner is a full fourth class, and it is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that the armours and summon weapons provided from the OOA should cater only to the other three classes

The sentries on these armors are like, 25% of the importance of the full set. Dare i say less important than the raw summon damage they give.

If you ignore this and buff the hell out of them because that 25% isnt enough for your vision, this is what happens: The armors become grossly overpowered, and True Summoner still doesnt use them. Because true summoner would rather have Minions than rely on fundamentally flawed sentries.

These are not armor sets for summoner. Buffing them for summoner isnt a "might make other classes stronger". It will make the other classes broken, because these armors are already good using the sentries as a side bonus. You really shouldnt shrug this off.

Make new armor sets with a sentry focus and save yourself the trouble.

And if your argument is that the current Ballistas are OP in general, kindly go away and make your own post asking for them to be nerfed instead of bringing it up here. I am making these suggestions under the assumption that the current balance of Ballistas is considered by Re-Logic to be an appropriate level of power. I didn't spend hours writing this out so you could suddenly remember that you've always considered Ballistas OP and you now want to soapbox about it. If they're OP, then they're OP regardless of what I said here

Ballista Panic is overpowered. Squire/Valhalla are overpowered. Ballistas with just the base attack speed/velocity/pierce buffs from these set bonuses are fine, these are actually what the baseline of sentries should be.

If you can spend hours writing out how you are going to ignore the problems that makes your ideas bad for the game's balance, you can spend hours changing your thread to make it actually improve the game's balance overall.

Nobody points these things out because they want to be irritating and shoot down your thread, people point these things out because they are problems.

To be blunt, this thread has some of the most outrageously overpowered ideas i've seen and almost every idea here would end up breaking sentries. And this isnt a matter of not knowing the right numbers, because your thread explicitly ignores that Sentries are a mere complement to your DPS, and thats what the OOA sentries and armors revolve around.

You dont want them to be like this, but your proposal is to buff sentries to be a main DPS, without changing a single thing associated to them to compensate. No matter how you try to justify it, there is simply no way this doesnt break sentries.

 

[Masked Koopa]

Honestly I think it is just as well I made that reply because I had already suspected you and I have fundamentally differing views on balance that we are not going to be able to reconcile. My post shouldn't be the reason or place you start talking about Ballistas being OP because it implies that the problem is specifically my buff to them when as we have just established you think Ballistas and defensive tools are too strong already.

I know you're not trying to be irritating when you approach it like this but that's literally what it is. I don't think it's at all unreasonable for me to use the current state of a sentry that has gone basically untouched for almost eight years as a baseline. You shouldn't just expect me to know that you think they're OP and bad for the game's balance. You shouldn't expect me to know that you don't like how strong defensive tools are. And you shouldn't expect me to cater my ideas based on your idea of what the game's balance should be.

And I don't mean that in some sort of snooty "you can't tell me what to do" way either, I mean I'm trying to balance my ideas based on what is already in the game. The game shows with weapons like the Terra Blade and Star cannon that it is OK to have an objectively better choices if you go out of your way to do extra work. The game shows that defensive options are allowed by giving you many, many tools that facilitate that as well as even adding new options like the Hero's Shield. There is no objective balance here because the game isn't PvP at it's core, it's a PvE game. Your vision of the game's balance conflicts with a lot more than just my suggested changes.

As I already said, go make a seperate post asking for everything you think is OP to be nerfed because this is a waste of both of our time. You'd be much better off directly trying to get the changes made that you think are needed, you're not doing yourself any favours by assuming that everyone already "knows" these things about the game.

 

[Meowlegend]

The game shows with weapons like the Terra Blade and Star cannon that it is OK to have an objectively better choices if you go out of your way to do extra work.

This is a terrible example. Star Cannon is strong because it justifies its strength with its ammo cost. Terra Blade on the other hand, while does deserve to be strong, is debatable for a few reasons (mainly because its strength is way too centralizing).

What does Sentries have that makes them "require extra work"? (I hope I don't understand this wrong)

 

[Masked Koopa]

What does Sentries have that makes them "require extra work"? (I hope I don't understand this wrong)

I'd argue that is between the need to set them up at the start of every fight and the fact that both beating OOA and clops is optional content that a lot of people don't engage with (based on steam achievements more people have gotten Zenith than beaten clops, and I think it's fair to say a lot of people do not do OOA in their playthroughs). I certainly find them to be more effort than collecting Fallen Stars or making a sword out of materials that don't really require scavenging for unusual materials or farming for rare drops outside of maybe the Broken Hero Sword.

If that reasoning doesn't persuade you, it is better if we agree to disagree. I am not interested in having an endless back and forth about this that goes nowhere and isn't relevant to the premise of the post.

Terra Blade on the other hand, while does deserve to be strong, is debatable for a few reasons (mainly because its strength is way too centralizing).

Also once again - if you or anyone here have a problem with the strength level of an existing mechanic, please make a seperate thread asking for nerfs instead of using that assessment on this post. This post is based on the existing state of game balance. When I say "it is OK to have an objectively better choices if you go out of your way to do extra work", I mean that Re-Logic is demonstrating what they consider to be fine in implementing these weapons in such a way. I'm not saying it is the objectively best way to balance the game, because there is no such thing as objective best balance in a PvE game.

 

[Golden Heretic Snakeboat]

the thing with the ooa sentries is the fact that they all have different strengths. flameburst sentries have a hilarious range, but almost no ability to deal with crowds unless they're packed in so tightly that you'd think they came from a sardine can, lightning aura sentries have consistent damage in a small area, but can't do much aside from softening up enemies for the heavy hitters, due to their constant attacks and armor penetration, explosive traps have very high damage but pathetic range, and ballista sentries hit like a truck and have good range, but are as slow as they come, so if they miss it hurts.

now lets take a look at their affiliated armor sets. apprentice/dark artist armor gives flameburst sentries even more range (both), and increases it's explosion range (dark artist only), shoring up flamebursts ability to deal with crowds, but not by an incredible amount. monk/shinobi infiltrator allows lightning aura sentries to crit (both), increases attack speed (both), and increases effective range (shinobi infiltrator), increasing their ability to damage enemies significantly. huntress/red riding armor allows explosive trap sentries to inflict oiled (both) and increases attack speed (both), not helping with it's range issue in the slightest, but still giving it alot more damage potential and consistency.

and then squire/valhalla knight armor allows ballista sentries to pierce more enemies (both) doubles general ballista attack speed (valhalla knight), and triples ballista attack speed when hurt (both). i repeat, TRIPLES BALLISTA ATTACK SPEED. there is almost no number in this game you can triple without needing to balance it in some way

the dps values for the t3 sentries, both with and without their respective armor sets are as follows (all tested against either the highest amount of target dummies they can hit, or 7 target dummies, whichever is lower), with all sentries but lightning aura targetting a mimic so it actually will attack, are as follows:

t3 old one's army armor set that isn't the one it fits with:

flameburst sentry (hitting 2 target dummies, the maximum it can hit): around 2000 dps
lightning aura sentry (hitting 7 target dummies): around 9000 dps
explosive trap sentry (hitting 4 target dummies, the maximum it can hit, along with previously mentioned mimic): around 10k dps
ballista sentry (hitting 4 target dummies, the maximum it can hit): around 4000-4500 dps

t3 old one's army armor set that is the one it fits with:

flameburst sentry (hitting 4 target dummies, the new maximum it can hit, twice as many as last time): around 4000 dps
lightning aura sentry (hitting 7 target dummies, same as last time): around 14k dps
explosive trap sentry (hitting 4 target dummies and mimic, same as last time): around 23k dps, sometimes jumps to nearly 30k dps
ballista sentry (hitting 7 target dummies, the new maximum it can hit): around 11k dps
ballista sentry, but this time with ballista panic (same amount of target dummies): around 23k dps

so in short, the effective damage multipliers for the armors are, for the most part, going from 1.5 times the amount of damage to 2.2 the amount, and then there's ballista with 6 times the damage per second with the panic. (also note how the short range sentries have higher dps then the longer ranged ones. hmmmmm)

now, since the terra blade was mentioned, let's compare these damage values to that one, considering that weapon is widely considered one of the best weapons in the game.

no damage boost aside from reforge: around 1.5k dps
damage boost from full solar armor, warding celestial shell and werewolf buff: around 3.5k dps
maximizing damage boost: around 6.5k dps
maximizing crit chance up to 100%, then focusing damage: around 7.7k dps
maximizing crit chance up to 100%, then focusing attack speed: around 7k dps
maximizing attack speed: around 6.9k dps

attacking the same number of target dummies (7) as before, by the way. hmm.

if these "underperforming" sentries can outperform one of the best weapons in the game by this significant of a margin (explosive trap has almost 4 times the dps what the is that), then they aren't underperforming, they're insanely overpowered. but test dummies are a terrible way to gauge a weapons actual usability, kill times usually are, leading into the next part

all of these were tested on classic mode plantera, with no other weapons then the ones listed all unreforged, using the appropriate ooa armor for the listed sentry, war table for a 5th sentry slot, beetle armor for terra blade, and a fire gauntlet, mechanical glove, power glove, feral glove, and a warrior emblem, all warding.

5 flameburst sentries: 1 minute 8 seconds
5 lightning aura sentries: 35 seconds
5 explosive trap sentries: 16 seconds
5 ballista sentries: 22 seconds
terra blade: 21 seconds

not quite the "2 to 4 times the effectiveness" i was hoping from any of these, but note how all of the accessories are entirely skewed towards melee, and not summoner, and the terra blade just barely beat ballista and didn't beat explosive trap with literally just 1 armor set, 1 buff, and no other boosts. now let's throw a minion, whip, and another minion slot in with the sentry tests.

5 flameburst sentries, 2 sanguine bats, and durandal: 34 seconds
5 lightning aura sentries, 2 sanguine bats, and durandal: 21 seconds
5 explosive trap sentries, 2 sanguine bats, and durandal: 12 seconds
5 ballista sentries, 2 sanguine bats, and durandal: 17 seconds

if these sentries are so terrible that they need at minimum double damage to be worth anything, then explain these kill times being almost matched with one of the best weapons in the game.

 

[Masked Koopa]

@Golden Heretic Snakeboat
The problem with your approach there is that you're missing or ignoring a significant amount of additional context I provided both in the post and in the replies. I already made it abundantly clear that I am of the opinion that wearing Valhalla/Squire armour is not a compromise because the armour sets are excellent with or without Ballista Panic and the boosts to Ballista firing speed. Because of this, I do not think it is unreasonable for said stats to be backed into the base Ballista because quite frankly even if you did the Squire/Valhalla sets would still have the best synergy with the turrets.

Additionally, you seem to have fundamentally misunderstood my point about dps. When comparing the DPS of the sentries, I am not using it as the sole determining factor as to why the sentries suck.

My assertation is that Flamebursts don't capitalise on their extra range because the reason you'd want extra range on a sentry in the first place is because you expect the enemy to be moving around a lot and thus not always within the sentry's range. The problem there is that an enemy that moves around a lot isn't exactly going to be getting consistently hit by a projectile as slow as the Flameburst's. You might have noticed that I suggested that the Flameburst receive homing because I specifically wanted to facilitate the exact advantage you think it has over the Ballista. I suggested it have notably lower DPS than the Ballista in exchange for a higher level of reliability, because I think that it Mirrors the design philosophy behind minions like the Sharknado vs the Xeno staff or the Sanguine Staff vs the Spider Staff - one deals more DPS while the other is more reliable against a moving target.

As for Explosive Traps and Lightning Aura, one of my fundamental claims is that more effort is required from the player to squeeze out the maximum DPS when compared to Ballista. They have much worse range and their enhancing armour sets have stats that make a close range playstyle less forgiving. The reason I bring up their DPS is to point out that even when you go through all the additional effort required to make them hit consistently, you still see no better, if not actively worse DPS than the much easier to use Ballistas.

Directly comparing TTK entirely misses the point of the changes and the comparison. The point I was making isn't that their TTK is bad. The point I was making is that two of the sentries are more difficult to use effectively than the Ballista and should thus have higher DPS if you can use them properly. The point I was making is that the Flameburst isn't actually able to make proper use of it's additional range while also being worse than Ballista at ranges where it can hit consistently.

You can show me your TTK on as many bosses as you want and it wouldn't change my point in the slightest, because I don't care how fast you killed the boss. What I care about is whether or not the effort you put into your strategy was proportional to the reward. What I care about is whether or not the sentries each provided you with a different and fun approach to taking on the boss. Balance is more than just comparing TTK on a boss and trying to get the numbers to be the same, especially in a PvE game. If every weapon had the same average TTK it would feel unrewarding and pointless to use higher-skill alternatives. There is a very good reason ranger is a popular class despite generally having middle-of-the-range DPS - and you'll notice that despite the Tera Blade giving worse TTK in your tests, it is still an immensely popular weapon to use while the OOA sentries are not.



As for you using it on multiple target dummies at once, it's pretty clear you didn't understand the point I was making about multi-target damage, so I am going to do my best to break it down for you. In my opinion, Terraria does not contain a large or consistent enough quantity or challenges that reward AOE to the point where hitting more than 2-5 targets is a redeeming quality for the majority of the game. The Eater of Worlds is pre-OOA outright, so the only relevant boss with more than three segments is the destroyer. Outside of that, what does AOE actually have? You can try to argue events, but most people don't treat the events as a serious matter in the same way as bosses - they're entirely optional and don't penalise dying. And as I said in the original post, this is a pretty poor justification for focusing on AOE damage, especially when the Ballista can already provide you with a lot of AOE as-is. It's not like you're choosing between direct damage and AOE damage, you're choosing between direct damage and more aoe damage in a situation where the direct damage option will get you by in 99% of situations. And as I also pointed out in the OP, even if the other sentries were perfect for Pumpkin/Frost moon, that still wouldn't be good enough. I could accept that on a single weapon, but these things have three tiers each, and the third tier isn't even available until post-Golem, while the moons are post-Plantera.

We could try to make an argument for things like Skeletron/Prime's hands or Plantera's vines or whatever, but the reality is that you can also just shoot directly at the boss - you're not being rewarded the same for a multi-hit as you are for an additional hit on the main body. If we wanted good AOE damage to be a truly sufficient reason to justify 3 tiers of Lightning Aura, we'd have to add a whoooooooooooooooooole lot more multi-segmented bosses. I haven't specifically tested it, but I am perfectly willing to believe that the Lightning Aura stacks up well in Calamity or any other mod that adds a zillion worms.

 

[J Bame]

I calculated the DPS of all the old one's army sentries, including the bonuses from the armors, and some extras to use as a reference.

Do what you will with these numbers.

 

[random terraria fan]

does all this need this much debating i dont even know half of what your talking about

 

[Golden Heretic Snakeboat]

I already made it abundantly clear that I am of the opinion that wearing Valhalla/Squire armour is not a compromise because the armour sets are excellent with or without Ballista Panic and the boosts to Ballista firing speed. Because of this, I do not think it is unreasonable for said stats to be backed into the base Ballista because quite frankly even if you did the Squire/Valhalla sets would still have the best synergy with the turrets.

I suggested it have notably lower DPS than the Ballista in exchange for a higher level of reliability, because I think that it Mirrors the design philosophy behind minions like the Sharknado vs the Xeno staff or the Sanguine Staff vs the Spider Staff - one deals more DPS while the other is more reliable against a moving target.

the problem here is the fact that the proposed buffs to the ballista outright make it 6 times more powerful, there's no amount of reliability you can give to the flameburst sentries that can even come close to comparing with that, especially considering that even without the boost, ballista is outright better then flameburst.

with ballista staff and valhalla knight armor, you can literally just facetank almost any enemy in the game and they will die before you do. especially if you load up on defensive buffs, which i didn't do in the fights i did, and i could still do so with ballista/valhalla knight. there's nothing about combining sheer damage output (which the ballista does not have by itself) and extreme survivability (which the valhalla knight armor is the absolute best at barring solar flare armor) that could ever be balanced. the changes to ballista you press forward simply give the ballista massive damage output while shaving off none of the survivability of the valhalla knight armor. it's not a balance improvement, it's just simplifing being absurdly overpowered.

As for Explosive Traps and Lightning Aura, one of my fundamental claims is that more effort is required from the player to squeeze out the maximum DPS when compared to Ballista. They have much worse range and their enhancing armour sets have stats that make a close range playstyle less forgiving. The reason I bring up their DPS is to point out that even when you go through all the additional effort required to make them hit consistently, you still see no better, if not actively worse DPS than the much easier to use Ballistas.

The point I was making is that two of the sentries are more difficult to use effectively than the Ballista and should thus have higher DPS if you can use them properly.

again, the ballista sentry with valhalla knight armor is so strong that the amount of buffs necessary to make explosive traps worth using over ballista for short range combat would boil down to "it instantly kills everything weaker then a santa-nk1", same with lightning aura.

also, the star veil and it's line of accessories were changed so their effects couldn't be procced by spike damage, so why relogic hasn't gotten to changing ballista panic yet is beyond me

and you'll notice that despite the Tera Blade giving worse TTK in your tests, it is still an immensely popular weapon to use while the OOA sentries are not.

and the reason people use the terra blade so much is because it's one of the best weapons in the entire game, as it combines significant damage output against both groups and single targets, extreme accuracy, and an actual benefit from attack speed bonuses. about the only downside to it is the fact that you need to sacrifice survivability to push it to it's full potential, as it synergizes poorly with defensive beetle armor.

it is trivial to get that weapon to kill the moon lord with no buff potions, no life regeneration, and no flight capabilities. there is nothing else in the entire game barring the zenith that can pull that feat off, even ballista/valhalla knight armor can't facetank moon lord long enough for the ballistas to do enough damage before you die. and remember that weapon is tiered lower then the tier 3 old one's army weapons, and performed worse in my tests that were skewed heavily towards it.

in fact, let's look at the proposed buffs to the sentries:

Ballista:

• Ballista Panic removed from the game.
• Valhalla Armour:
  • No longer reduces base attack cooldown of Ballistas.
• Ballista Rod:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 1.67 second (Current attack speed cooldown of Valhalla Ballistas.)
• Ballista Cane:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 1 second (Current attack speed cooldown of panicked Squire Armour Ballistas.)
• Ballista Staff:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 0.5 seconds (Current attack speed cooldown of panicked Valhalla Armour Ballistas)

attack cooldown changes: t1 becomes twice as powerful, t2 becomes 3 times as powerful, t3 becomes 6 times as powerful. nothing really to clarify or point out, this is pretty straight forward

Flameburst:

• Flameburst Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • Now have homing on fireball projectiles. (If DD2 consistency is a concern, bump the projectile speed up high enough to make it almost always hit)
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd could be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Now have substantially increased rate of fire, reducing the difference in single-target dps when compared to the Ballista (probably around 20-30% less than the Ballista or so).
  • Field of view weakness removed (Or keep the FOV limits but make it still able to shoot projectiles within its FOV that then home in on enemies outside the FOV)
• Flameburst Rod:
  • On Fire! -> Hellfire
  • 25% more range.
• Flameburst Cane:
  • Hellfire -> Cursed Inferno OR Something with equivelant DPS if we're worried about visuals/DD2 lore consistency.
  • 50% more range.
• Flameburst Staff:
  • Hellfire-> A fire-themed DOT effect with about 100 to 150 DPS or so.
  • 100% more range.
• Apprentice Armor Set Bonus:
  • No more projectile speed bonus.
  • 50% extra range on Flameburst Sentries for a total of (75%/100%/150%more range).
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Flameburst Sentry explosions are now twice as large.
  • Flameburst Sentry now applies ichor for (3/5/8 seconds)
• Dark Artist Armor Set Bonus:
  • No more projectile speed bonus.
  • Infinite range on Flameburst Sentries.
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Flameburst Sentry explosions are now three times as large.
  • Flameburst Sentries now apply Betsy's Curse for (3/5/8 seconds)

the homing aspect: honestly not a bad idea, but as previously said, it's not even close to enough to make flameburst staff worth using over ballista, even with everything below
increased rate of fire: also not the worst idea, but how fast do you think this sentry will need to shoot to balance it's reliability with ballista's sheer damage output?
field of view weakness removed: ironically enough, this would probably make it alot better during the olds one army then anywhere else, make it the only weapon with enough of a field of view to attack wyverns, kobold bombers and other flying enemies, and have everything else be better at handling the ground enemies
the debuffs (weapons): the problem here is that cursed inferno doesn't have that much more dps the hellfire, 24 over 15, compared to on fire almost quadrupling when converted to hellfire
the range boosts (weapons): honestly not necessary, flameburst sentries already have insane range when mixed with apprentice/dark artist armor. speaking of that
removed projectile speed bonus: no, the projectile speed on flameburst sentries is barely higher then the projectile speed on ballista sentries
range boosts (armor set): considering this is how it already is, and doesn't need a change, this is fine as is
explosion size increase: would make it better for crowds rather then bosses, another change that would make it better for old one's army then anywhere else
the debuffs (armor set): honestly, not the right armor set for this in my opinion, but considering that the flameburst sentries inflict fire debuffs, having the armor set inflict oiled instead would be a much better way of buffing both the sentry and oiled

Explosive Trap:

• Explosive Trap Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • MASSIVE damage increase, AT LEAST 150% more, possibly within the range of 200% more.
  • Attack cooldown 1.5 seconds -> 3 seconds.
  • Now have much faster summon item use times and lower Mana costs to make re-setting traps mid-combat more practical.
  • Explosions now briefly stun some enemies, with bosses being unable to be stunned and stun length being different based on the enemy type.
• Huntress Armor Set Bonus:
  • No longer reduces trap attack cooldown.
  • Oiled debuff now scales based on the type of fire applied instead of being static 25 extra DPS.
  • Oiled debuff now also makes DOT effects tick faster, making the overall damage of the DOT finish sooner and raising the DPS they inflict.
  • Increases both explosion size and activation radius of traps.
• Red Riding Armor Set Bonus:
  • No longer reduces trap attack cooldown.
  • Oiled debuff now scales based on the type of fire applied instead of being static 25 extra DPS.
  • Oiled debuff now also makes DOT effects tick even faster, making the overall damage of the DOT finish much sooner and further raising the DPS they inflict.
  • Explosive Traps also apply Betsy's Curse for 20 seconds.
  • Increases both explosion size and activation radius of traps.

sentry damage increase: not a terrible idea, but with ballista's enormous boosted damage output, it just wouldn't be enough
attack speed reduction: this one honestly just confuses me, increase the damage per hit of the sentry by an extreme amount, but then nerf the attack speed so it's almost matched with how it is now?
summon speed increased: not specifically for this weapon, but honestly all of them, why are they so ing slow anyway
explosions stunning enemies: honestly not too sure how i feel about this one
armor set no longer reducing attack speed: no, none of the changes here justify this one
oiled debuff scaling: the funny thing about this is that it used to do this before, but it was changed to the straight 25 dps boost it is now
oiled debuff increasing dot debuff tick rate: honestly a pretty good change, although it is worded confusingly
explosive traps inflicting betsy's curse: no, this isn't the right sentry for a defense reducing debuff
armor set increasing explosion size and activation radius: again, not a bad change

Lightning Aura:

• Lightning Aura Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • 50% reduction in tag damage -> removed.
  • Attack cooldown 0.5 seconds -> 0.25.
• Monk Armour Set Bonus:
  • Lightning Aura attack cooldown Bonus 0.12 less -> removed.
  • Whip (and melee weapon(?)) size increased by ~50%.
  • Crit chance of Lightning Auras increases past base 12% if the enemy has been tagged.
  • Lightning Auras now inflict Electrified on enemies for 32 DPS if moving, 16 DPS if stationary.
• Shinobi Infiltrator Set Bonus:
  • Lightning Aura attack cooldown Bonus 0.12 less -> 0.05 less (0.25 -> 0.2).
  • Whip (and melee weapon(?)) size increased by ~100%.
  • Crit chance of Lightning Auras increases past base 25% if the enemy has been tagged.
  • Lightning Auras now inflict Electrified on enemies for 32 DPS if moving, 8 DPS if stationary.
  • Electrified's DPS now scales with tag damage (4 damage per tag per tick if moving, 1 damage per tag pick tick if stationary)

tag damage reduction removal: on rod? no, whips at that point give out alot of tag damage compared to minion damage
attack speed increase (weapon): not the worst change
attack speed increase (armor set): again not the worst change
whip size increase: no, increasing the size of whips by that much will just look absolutely insane. kaleidoscope will almost reach offscreen with a 70% size boost
the debuffs: electrified might fit thematically, but i think a better debuff to throw on lightning aura is a defense reducing debuff, have monk armor inflict ichor, and have shinobi infiltrator inflict betsy's curse. considering the wide range that lightning aura can hit and it's high attack speed, especially with shinobi infiltrator armor, and it's practically impossible to not get hit by that debuff if it's on this sentry
debuff dot scaling with tag damage: again, not too sure how i feel about this change

literally not one of these changes on any of the other sentries allows said sentry to come even close to boosted ballista's potential, and considering that nothing changes with ballista here to make it any worse at short range at all, let alone comparing with the 2 short ranged sentries, it needs to be said again

BALLISTA PANIC IS THE PROBLEM​