The Storm
Golem
No, never mind, I said nothing.
Game Mechanics Way to Nerf Ranger Class
- Thread starter King Victor
- Start date
No, never mind, I said nothing.
Dapling
Duke Fishron
They take about the same amount of effort tbh, it's just nerfing has a negative connotation, so people give it a lot of untrue stereotypes.
Mille Marteaux
Empress of Light
On the subject of Mage, magic users have ways of getting around Mana downtime.
Using a Mana Flower allows you to sacrifice raw damage and inventory space for non-stop casting at the cost of the Mana Sickness debuff. If the weapons you use aren't very Mana heavy, it isn't too debilitating;
Magic Cuffs allow casters that are willing to risk a little danger to have an endless supply of Mana at the cost of taking damage regularly. If you really like sitting on Spikes, this gets very powerful if you have friends willing to draw enemy aggression for you;
More modern Mages that are willing to dip into technology (and have worldgen on their side) can hook up Wire to Star Statues and time their Mana Star production to give them an endless stream of Mana at no cost to their safety or inventory space, but at the cost of needing to time their dispensing and needing to hang out in a small area for refills.
A straight nerf like this really has no way to play around it - yes, you can swap out weapons to try and get around it, but that's complicated and a lot more work depending on the duration of the debuff effect. If it lasts too long, you have to dip into weapons below the current gear tier before you can go back to your main weapons. That feels bad.
The primary problem I have is that personally speaking, it's stepping on the very niche that Ranged damage provides - no-nonsense, pick up and play power.
If I just want to sit back and enjoy a Terraria playthrough with friends, I always recommend Range damage specs to my more casual friends just so they can contribute easier.
Every endgame damage type has incredible power, some just have more gimmicks to them than others. Range's gimmick is you need to dedicate a lot of inventory space to bullets, but it's a small price to pay for being able to just sit back and tear through enemies leisurely.
Is it powerful? Absolutely. Is it a little bit over the power curve? Not really. It's just easier.
And that's totally fine.
Easier options exist to let players of all skill levels enjoy a game.
Using a Mana Flower allows you to sacrifice raw damage and inventory space for non-stop casting at the cost of the Mana Sickness debuff. If the weapons you use aren't very Mana heavy, it isn't too debilitating;
Magic Cuffs allow casters that are willing to risk a little danger to have an endless supply of Mana at the cost of taking damage regularly. If you really like sitting on Spikes, this gets very powerful if you have friends willing to draw enemy aggression for you;
More modern Mages that are willing to dip into technology (and have worldgen on their side) can hook up Wire to Star Statues and time their Mana Star production to give them an endless stream of Mana at no cost to their safety or inventory space, but at the cost of needing to time their dispensing and needing to hang out in a small area for refills.
A straight nerf like this really has no way to play around it - yes, you can swap out weapons to try and get around it, but that's complicated and a lot more work depending on the duration of the debuff effect. If it lasts too long, you have to dip into weapons below the current gear tier before you can go back to your main weapons. That feels bad.
The primary problem I have is that personally speaking, it's stepping on the very niche that Ranged damage provides - no-nonsense, pick up and play power.
If I just want to sit back and enjoy a Terraria playthrough with friends, I always recommend Range damage specs to my more casual friends just so they can contribute easier.
Every endgame damage type has incredible power, some just have more gimmicks to them than others. Range's gimmick is you need to dedicate a lot of inventory space to bullets, but it's a small price to pay for being able to just sit back and tear through enemies leisurely.
Is it powerful? Absolutely. Is it a little bit over the power curve? Not really. It's just easier.
And that's totally fine.
Easier options exist to let players of all skill levels enjoy a game.
Companion Cube
Retinazer
I think a better way of balancing is providing higher skill weaponry in exchange for better stats (not the damn xenopopper) to sway higher skill players to the other weaponry. Rocket launchers are a ripe market for change
King Victor
Skeletron Prime
Wdym? The whole reason I want to nerf it is because I think it breaks the game with how OP it is.
It might not need nerfing, but I'm 100% it does not need buffing.
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King Victor
Skeletron Prime
I totally understand your position, It's very reasonable. It just aggravates me that Range has almost no drawbacks in my opinion. Like how you said that inventory space being used up by ammo is a drawback, it's really not. Ranger's have 4 whole ammo slots that can store almost four thousand bullets, just for them. Also, endless bullet pouch.
And I know, Melee doesn't really have a drawback, but it kinda does. At first glance, Melee seems super OP. Like how it has some of the most damage for weapons, and highest defense armor. The problem is, if you really want to fight, you gotta get in close quarters. I once tried a pure Melee playthrough, and I could not beat it, and it wasn't even on expert mode! When people usually say they 'play' melee, they actually mean they use melee armor, and carry a gun or something.
Mille Marteaux
Empress of Light
For casual play, yeah, that's true. But if you branch out to using multiple types of weapons, in the late game you'll be carrying tons of ammo on you in your inventory as well as in your ammo slots, and if you really want to minmax, you end up not using your ammo slots at all and you carry your ammo in small stacks to let it get consumed in order to apply debuffs such as Ichor with a small stack of maybe 10~20 bullets, then go back to using your high damage bullets, then those run out in time for Ichor to need to be re-applied, etc...
Intense, min-maxy Ranged gameplay uses a lot of your inventory.
This becomes less of a thing the further into the game you get - as bosses become faster and more complex, and closer and closer to becoming bullet hell-like encounters, everyone starts getting ranged options that use their primary damage type. Bananarangs, Light Discs, Paladin's Hammer, projectile-launching swords, Flairon, Daybreak...
And yet, despite all of these powerful ranged options that scale off melee damage, the most powerful is still a YOLO-tier autoswing weapon.
I post this a lot but this is still a really good example of melee gameplay against one of the most dangerous, anti-melee bosses in the game - you whittle it down with your melee-class projectile weapons before going in with a high-damage, "true" melee weapon when you safely can.
Extensive melee gameplay can involve tanking, and it can involve sheer attack speed DPS, but nothing really beats getting in your target's face and hitting it. Higher risk, but great payout.
And this all loops back into the opening post - a mechanic like this adds nothing to gameplay. It would make a character with a gun unironically worse at sustained ranged damage than a melee dude throwing a hammer.
It's okay to be frustrated that a class can have an easier time doing something than your preferred class, but that doesn't particularly mean the other needs to be brought down to your level when it means yours could just be brought up to their level instead.
And I say this as somebody who prefers fighting Martian Saucers on foot with melee-classed weapons.
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King Victor
Skeletron Prime
It is 100% possible to beat the game pure melee, it's just a lot harder in my opinion.
If you ask any seasoned Terraria player on how to defeat Duke Fishron, they'll tell you that the tactical shot gun paired with chlorophyte bullets will destroy him quicker than you can say 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'.
King Victor
Skeletron Prime
It really does become very versatile, I'm not denying that. It comes in a very close second place in terms of classes in my eyes. But this suggestion is for nerfing Ranger class, not melee. Although I do believe melee needs a rework aswell. The devs really don't try to hide the fact that melee was once the only class there was. Thus making it have way more armor and weapons then any other class. Thus making it able to adapt to the player better.
J Bame
Terrarian
what
No one does this, or at least no one should. Applying Ichor is as easy as attacking for a second with a Golden Shower or a secondary Gun/Bow armed with Ichor Bullets/Arrows. Applying Ichor with this method isn't "minmaxing", it's just complicating your life for no benefit at all.
This isn't a good example. You basically did a normal fight against Expert Duke with a below-average weapon and then you skipped the third phase using a busted weapon that shouldn't be considered when speaking about how a class works in general. The only reason the second part of your strategy worked was because the Fetid are broken and they would've probably beaten the fight on their own; you wouldn't have done it with any other true melee weapon since nothing gets close to the DPS they have.
That fight against Duke would've been a lot easier if you had simply used the Terra Blade in your first Hotbar slot and fought him at a distance, instead of facing him in a way you are not supposed to with close ranged weapons and barely any mobility. Melee weapons in general have always been weak and outclassed for bosses due to either short range or below average DPS, and one outstanding weapon or two that happen to work incredibly well does not suddenly make it a good class for bossing since the average is just bad.
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Companion Cube
Retinazer
I'm pretty sure he means buffing the other classes
Companion Cube
Retinazer
How is it that there is a way your "not supposed to play"? Should we just not use any weapons deemed by your one man council as "wrong"?
J Bame
Terrarian
You are free to use whatever weapon you want. If you want to use a short-ranged weapon with average DPS against a boss that destroys you in close quarters and is much easier to defeat at a distance with stronger weapons then do it, but if you are talking about how good a class is objectively you can't simply say that that is the best way to do the fight and that Melee is a good class for bosses.
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Companion Cube
Retinazer
How about instead of waiting for a cooldown or having clips it's a heat bar that when it reaches full, you have to do a minigame to lower it, with higher fire rate guns having bigger cooldown bars but harder minigames.
We interrupt this boss fight to give you MINIGAAAAAAAME!!!
Oh, is that Golem taking potshots at you right now? Naaaah, don't worry about hi- *dead*
Companion Cube
Retinazer
Maybe something like timing trigger pulls at certain times during cooldown with an indicator as to vent the gun