Open thread on combat balance. (Main focus on bosses)

[Misery]

I don't use the detectability enchants either as well, they're up there with shields in power level and ruin the game IMO.
Maybe I should get some longer range, but that's still not going to solve things like boss jellyfish throwing 150 damage sliding shots at you from farther than you can shoot.
It's not a problem for me personally, I enjoy it. I just wanted to mention that on TCO you get less situations of bosses being stupid and not moving towards you or attacking you properly.

Aye, that particular difficulty setting is proving to be alot more entertaining than any of the lower ones.


Dont find the Jellyfish bosses all that tough, myself.    It's those damn wasps that cause me the most trouble.  You'd think they'd be easy, but noooooo, not when I find some wacky way to crash into them every time!


Also, on the subject of bosses..... fairies.   I've done a mantis report on them simply being WAY too common in caves, but other than that, they're also really kinda tedious to fight.   Could do with an overhaul.

[Nanashi]

Did some extensive testing with different difficulty levels and debuff mods today -

-Projectile speed isn't such a huge deal even when it stacks. Sometimes (rarely), it even makes bosses a bit more difficult because it leads to higher bullet density. It doesn't decrease boss bullet range by as much as I thought it would, but in the extremely large boss rooms (i.e. more than half of them), it can be abused.

-Haste debuff is a bit strong.

I dislike TCO intensely because the style of gameplay I adopt isn't very fun (I tend to end up using exactly the same snipe and run + summon bullet soak + teleport tactics on every single boss), but -haste spammed on a fast spell can rapidly turn the boss into something more similar to Adept level difficulty. It grossly decreases the damage output of bosses (can stack it with summons too). It stacked on the overlord (Continent 3) so much that I was getting only one attack every three seconds on TCO. Not that I ever saw the overlord past a piece of his fist. 

The difference that -haste made was much less noticable on Hero difficulty.

Edit: I personally find boss jellyfish are some of the most irrelevant bosses in the game even on TCO because of how slowly they move and how easy it is to snipe them. Even the spammy green toads are depressingly easy because their green shots have no range whatsoever and they have a ridiculously large hitbox to snipe.

[Misery]

Did some extensive testing with different difficulty levels and debuff mods today -

-Projectile speed isn't such a huge deal even when it stacks. Sometimes (rarely), it even makes bosses a bit more difficult because it leads to higher bullet density. It doesn't decrease boss bullet range by as much as I thought it would, but in the extremely large boss rooms (i.e. more than half of them), it can be abused.

-Haste debuff is a bit strong.

I dislike TCO intensely because the style of gameplay I adopt isn't very fun (I tend to end up using exactly the same snipe and run + summon bullet soak + teleport tactics on every single boss), but -haste spammed on a fast spell can rapidly turn the boss into something more similar to Adept level difficulty. It grossly decreases the damage output of bosses (can stack it with summons too). It stacked on the overlord (Continent 3) so much that I was getting only one attack every three seconds on TCO. Not that I ever saw the overlord past a piece of his fist. 

The difference that -haste made was much less noticable on Hero difficulty.

Edit: I personally find boss jellyfish are some of the most irrelevant bosses in the game even on TCO because of how slowly they move and how easy it is to snipe them. Even the spammy green toads are depressingly easy because their green shots have no range whatsoever and they have a ridiculously large hitbox to snipe.

As for the sniping bit, they need to do something to tone that down, I think.   If the boss/whatever isnt even near the screen area, you shouldnt be able to hit it.   It is a bit too easy to do this right now (I simply refuse to though).

Also, the -haste effect needs to NOT STACK.   That actually seems like an oversight.   Hitting it 5 times with the same projectile that has this should not increase the effect each time.

Actually, NONE of these should stack.   Having them stack is a bad idea.   It's just asking for balance issues.

[Bluddy]

Part of the problem with sniping is that it's not clear what resolution the game's supposed to be played at, and therefore what the range of projectiles is. Ideally, 90% of enemies would only be able to fire at you when they appear on your screen, and you'd only be able to fire back when they're on-screen. Variable resolutions without scaling really complicate this, though.

Homing projectiles also encourage sniping and should be toned down significantly. If an enemy fires homing projectiles at you, the only chance of dodging is if he fires them when he's really far away and you have time to shoot down/dodge the homing projectiles. BTW I really don't like homing projectiles.

[Misery]

Part of the problem with sniping is that it's not clear what resolution the game's supposed to be played at, and therefore what the range of projectiles is. Ideally, 90% of enemies would only be able to fire at you when they appear on your screen, and you'd only be able to fire back when they're on-screen. Variable resolutions without scaling really complicate this, though.

Homing projectiles also encourage sniping and should be toned down significantly. If an enemy fires homing projectiles at you, the only chance of dodging is if he fires them when he's really far away and you have time to shoot down/dodge the homing projectiles. BTW I really don't like homing projectiles.

Aye, I'm not too fond of the things either.

Though, I find that how dodgeable they are varies pretty wildly.

The crashed speeders for example:   even on TCO difficulty, I dont have too much trouble getting up close and pelting the thing with attacks.  It fires alot of those things, but their movement makes it easy for me to leap between them and dodge them in general.

Wheras the Green Fairies....  my central tactic against them is to absorb the smaller fairies with my shield (which often takes less than a second), and then pelt the larger fairy with some heavy melee attack.    If I DONT have the shield to absorb them, I end up running around like a moron, firing wildly at the main ones, and it's a pain in the rear.   The fire seekers used by dragons, too slow to be much threat, so I dont worry about them (kinda a boring fight though, that one).

[Bluddy]

Part of the problem with sniping is that it's not clear what resolution the game's supposed to be played at, and therefore what the range of projectiles is. Ideally, 90% of enemies would only be able to fire at you when they appear on your screen, and you'd only be able to fire back when they're on-screen. Variable resolutions without scaling really complicate this, though.

Homing projectiles also encourage sniping and should be toned down significantly. If an enemy fires homing projectiles at you, the only chance of dodging is if he fires them when he's really far away and you have time to shoot down/dodge the homing projectiles. BTW I really don't like homing projectiles.

Aye, I'm not too fond of the things either.

Though, I find that how dodgeable they are varies pretty wildly.

The crashed speeders for example:   even on TCO difficulty, I dont have too much trouble getting up close and pelting the thing with attacks.  It fires alot of those things, but their movement makes it easy for me to leap between them and dodge them in general.

Wheras the Green Fairies....  my central tactic against them is to absorb the smaller fairies with my shield (which often takes less than a second), and then pelt the larger fairy with some heavy melee attack.    If I DONT have the shield to absorb them, I end up running around like a moron, firing wildly at the main ones, and it's a pain in the rear.   The fire seekers used by dragons, too slow to be much threat, so I dont worry about them (kinda a boring fight though, that one).

If I remember correctly, you use tab-targeting, right Misery? That means that you should have a much easier time dodging than people who don't. So take all those reactions and multiply them by 2 for people who use keyboard+mouse (or by 3 for people who use keyboard-only, like me). I find it very hard to both dodge the crashed speeder's projectiles AND shoot the crashed speeder, for example. And the little fairies take too many hits -- anything that homes in on you should be easily destructible at the very least.

[Misery]

If I remember correctly, you use tab-targeting, right Misery? That means that you should have a much easier time dodging than people who don't. So take all those reactions and multiply them by 2 for people who use keyboard+mouse (or by 3 for people who use keyboard-only, like me). I find it very hard to both dodge the crashed speeder's projectiles AND shoot the crashed speeder, for example. And the little fairies take too many hits -- anything that homes in on you should be easily destructible at the very least.

I use it, yes......

......but not against the speeders, or most enemies with seekers (unless I'm fighting fairies without a shield).   I generally use un-aimed melee-range attacks against these (ice cross, circle of fire, insect orb), or Cleft Smoglet.

The reason:  Targeting ANYTHING when there are seekers around is a MONSTROUS PAIN IN THE ASS.  I hate doing it.   Hate hate hate.   I dont WANT to fire at the bloody seekers.    Even if I DID try to use ranged attacks, it's not as easy as you'd think, because the game often just does NOT want to target the thing actually firing them.   I have to keep hitting the damn target button, WHILE dodging, and I'm inevitably going to click too many times, and that means I have to click it even MORE times.... while still dodging.....   And chances are, I'm not using a piercing attack, so that doesnt help.   So yeah, I melee this particular sort of enemy.   I melee alot of things though.

The targeting system, when I first started on the game, seemed like it might be an unfair advantage.   That is, until I got used to it..... and found that it can make some things really unnecessarily complicated.   I cannot lead targets, for example.  It ALWAYS fires *directly* at them, and as you can probably guess, this often is not the right way to attack certain things.   I often have to use funky tricks to actually have the shots connect at all, which usually brings more risk of getting blasted.   It depends on the enemy.   And if there's more than 3 enemies on the screen at once, then it can be a huge pain to get it to target the one I want it to, while I'm leaping all over the place.  I cannot move and select targets at the same time, either, as I need the d-pad for movement, but I need L3 (pushing left stick in) to switch targets.


And I agree on the fairies.  I find that each fairy usually only takes one Ball Lightning to kill..... but for every ONE that goes down, 2 kersquillion more will be fired at me.   So.... completely..... irritating.....

Those stupid fairies are definitely my most hated boss type.

[yllamana]

I've written about it before in other threads, but I agree with the stuff in the OP. Some of the gameplay mechanics promote a really uninteresting style of play.