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.
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.
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