Weapons & Equip Vortex Beater+Nebula Arcanum change proposal

Phaseburst

Terrarian
Currently, the Lunar Events offer a large variety of weapons and armors, obtained via the Ancient Manipulator with materials from each of the pillars and the Moon Lord.

Each armor and weapon have unique, never-before seen forms of augmenting the player's abilities or damaging the enemy. However, two of the weapons, specifically Vortex Beater and Nebula Arcanum, seem to lack behind all of the other weapons.

Vortex Beater:
-Low Accuracy
-Inferior Damage compared to Phantasm
-Colossally out shined by the SDMG in both damage, fire rate, and accuracy.
-Only thing that separates this from an upgraded Gatligator is a smaller spread and its ability to fire homing missiles with a tight turn rate.

We can see that this weapon is very low in power, especially due to its spread and fire rate. It lacks the area coverage of Celebration, and the shredding power of Phantasm and SDMG.
In order to make up for these weaknesses, I propose the following:

(-) will be for nerfs, (=) for unchanged, (+) for buffs

Statistical Changes:

(-) Damage: 50 -> 5
(=)Knockback: Unchanged
(+)Velocity: 20 -> 14
(-)Crit chance: 4% -> 0% (just a small nerf, you can still get crit chance from armor bonuses, since crit chance is additive)
(-)Use time: 20 -> 37
(+)66% chance not to consume ammo -> 95% chance not to consume ammo
(+)New: Projectiles fired by this weapon ignore 100% of the target's armor

Functionality Changes:

(-)Spread: ~25degrees -> 60degrees
(+)New: Missiles have a chance to inflict the Distorted debuff, immobilizing enemies (CAN apply to enemy players in PVP, but not bosses)
(+)New: Now spools up over 12 seconds, increasing fire rate by decreasing use time at a rate of 3 per second, down to a minimum use time of 1. WILL affect fire rate of missiles.
(+)New: Bullets dash to enemies within 6 blocks radius to and gain a homing effect at max spool, similar to chlorophyte bullets, regardless of bullet type. (Slower bullets will have better homing capabity, hence the buff symbol next to reduced velocity.)

Aesthetic and Audio Changes:
(=)Sound effect changed to that of Laser Machine Gun (Come on, its PEW PEW and boom boom, not BANG BANG and boom boom)
(=)Bullet sprites are replaced by a simple cyan blur. (At 60 shots per second, your graphics card will be crying just as much as your targets.)

With these changes, players can feel more impactful when compared with their other damage type allies instead of just sitting in the back and missing most of their shots with the Vortex Beater and then just deciding to swap to a more reliable weapon such as the SDMG or the Sniper Rifle.

Nebula Arcanum:
-Low damage to small enemies
-High Mana cost
-Explodes after hitting a tough enemy, effectively decreasing its damage
-Out shined by Nebula Blaze as the inferior, lower damage homing weapon

From what Nebula Arcanum does, players just do not feel the same impact when landing an attack with it compared to landing blue projectiles with Nebula Blaze for over 1000 damage. It lacks the widespread damage of Nebula Blaze and Last Prism, and also the terrain-ignoring utility of Lunar Flare. In order to make up for these weaknesses, I propose a change towards greater utility:

(-) will be for nerfs, (=) for unchanged, (+) for buffs

Statistical Changes:

(-) Damage: 70 -> 30
(+)Mana: 30 -> 20
(+)Knockback: 5 -> 9
(+)Velocity: 7 -> 13
(=)Crit chance: Unchanged
(=)Use time: Unchanged
(+)New: The damage caused by this weapon ignores 80% of the target's knock back resistance (no effect on bosses)

Functionality Changes:

(+)New: Masses, rather than exploding, will now implode, knocking enemies within 5 blocks radius towards the center of the implosion, but not past. Flying enemies are dragged towards it, worm enemies are unaffected.
(+)New: Projectiles emitted by its detonation can now pierce up to 3 times.

With these changes, Nebula Arcanum should be much better at controlling hoards of fast enemies (Cough cough corites), and in general, bring even more mechanical diversity to the already mechanically broad Mage class.

TLDR: Vortex Beater now starts off slow and increases speed until it sprinkles out a storm of homing shots and missiles, missiles gain chance to inflict distorted debuff on non-boss enemies.
Nebula Arcanum now has a secondary function: masses which don't explode by hitting enemies can converge and eventually form a large, damaging slow field.
Damage numbers have been adjusted as to keep weapon power in balance.

Thanks for reading! Please comment your thoughts on the changes in order to shine some light on these weapons.
 
Last edited:
The Vortex Beater's damage should be higher, as the dafense of some enemies at that point would make it rather weak anyways. It should be at 25-30 or so.
 
The Vortex Beater's damage should be higher, as the dafense of some enemies at that point would make it rather weak anyways. It should be at 25-30 or so.
You right...i Saw that the Vortex beater does 20 DMG only ( I Thought it will do 20- damage and not 20 )...the Vortex Beater should be Weaker by only 20 Damage points then the Phantasmn( I dont know how you Spell it) but it should have a more Unique and Powerful ability
 
Vortex Beater:

20 Damage is too infeasible. Basing it on the wiki's defense formula on expert a weapon with base 20 + 10 from Chlorophyte will result in a final 7 damage ceiling against a Selenian. Against a spinning Skeletron Prime, it deals a whopping 1 damage.

On normal, you deal 15 dmg per tick on a Selenian, or 6 dmg on a spinning Skeletron Prime.

For the record, Megashark deals 25 damage.

That's rather underpowered as a Celestial-tier weapon, even with the increased fire rate. Suggest to increase the damage to at least 28-30, then it is workable. Also maybe include the 4% standard crit; I see no reason why this shouldn't be included considering it doesn't deal as much damage and you haven't discussed how much damage each missile deals.
 
The Nebula Arcanum is significantly more powerful then the nebula blaze in most situations, I don't see I point in changing it.

Giving either of these weapons such low damage will make them borderline useless and extremely unappealing. No support from me.
 
The Nebula Arcanum absolutely wrecks large amounts of enemies. It decimates invasions. It can kill Plantera in seconds. It explodes when in contact with tough monsters for a reason: It shreds them apart instead of doing damage over time so there's no need to wait for your enemies to die. I love it.
There is absolutely nothing underpowered about this thing. On the contrary.

Nebula Blaze is an entirely different weapon and the two should not be compared at all. If anything, the Arcanum is much more useful, since the single impact bolt from the Blaze eats way too much mana for only damaging a single enemy and is incredibly not useful in tight spaces thanks to its inaccuracy.

I also don't get your changes to the Vortex Beater at all, since it's obvious to me that you're nerfing the crap out of that thing.
It's not completely outshined by the SDMG. You'll save more bullets with the Vortex Beater, you'll get a free homing missile every couple of shots and 99% of enemies will die instantly from its fire anyway.
 
I thought the Nebula Arcanium was OP i get more damage with it than anything else including last prism i even beat my first moon lord with the NA. weird i guess i just suck in a particular way.
 
The vortex beater suggestion is moderately good, though as said before, the damage should be raised or else all the potential DPS will be lost and it is freakin OP with Ichor (actually, either Ichor will be OP or the weapon will be unusable without Ichor). The RoF cap you set (30 shots per second) is also a bit extreme, even for a spooled weapon. I'd say to cap Use Time to 6 and Ichor will be less of a problem. (Those 300 extra DPS do make a difference.
As for Nebula Arcanum, the simplest thing to do would be just a raw damage increase. The thing you're suggesting would just definitely kill the weapon.
 
I've added a mini revamp to both weapon suggestions, seeing that this thread has somehow been dug up.

New mechanics. 60 bullets per second. Visual changes so that your graphics card does not die. Throw mini black holes.
 
Vortex Beater is the best pre-Moon Lord ranged weapon against Moon Lord; just use Chlorophyte Bullets. You're at a point in the game where your Chlorophyte farm is sitting around without much demand; just make Chlorophyte Bullets. That's more DPS than Phantasm can ever reliably get on Moon Lord without Luminite Arrows because it is consistent. The issue with the inaccurate gun weapons (and the same reason why Chlorophyte Bullets dominate) is that, well, a good chunk of your DPS is wasted when not facing a crowd. This isn't exclusive to the Vortex Beater, so if there's something to fix, it's that some bullets should fix the accuracy issue by making the bullets simply fire in a straight line. If you ask me, Venom and High Velocity Bullets should do this as the spread is still good against groups of enemies.

Nebula Arcanum deals stupid amounts of damage at a high cost and slow projectile speed, it's unique and it doesn't need changes.
 
Back
Top Bottom