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Grace Xisthrith -> Recent Spell Booster Weapons (3/31/2024 20:10:05)
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Recent weapons, starting with Heroic Titan's weapons, continuing with Lovestruck, Sleepy (rebirth) Staff, and Legion Monsterlord Reaver, all have magic weapons that pay an extremely high amount of SP to inflict a status on spellcast.
These statuses are variable, including burn, bleed, choke, and more burn. I'm also convinced I'm missing one, but probably not.
I have two main issues with these weapons, one is an opinion related to game design and balance, and one is an opinion about an item standard these weapons use. They are related. The overall goal of this post is to propose to staff and players whether the game might benefit from having these weapons' outputs reduced.
The first opinion is that these weapons are able to pay too many resources to increase the output of something that already costs a lot of resources, spells, and results in the player being able to do too much, too easily, in a single turn. 392 SP is a lot of SP, and spending all of that on a single status effect, as all four of these weapons do, is a very powerful tool, especially considering we already have spells that spend this much or more on that same status effect (many fire burn spells, a few ice burn spells, 2? water burn spells) or similar statuses (fire panic spell). It's just a huge amount of player power to be adding on, and I think half of the amount, 196 SP, or 50% melee, being dedicated instead, would still provide a significant boost to player output without necessarily going crazy.
Secondly, these weapons use a hitcount standard, which practically doubles their output. They assume two hits per turn, and reward the player for hitting up to four, by doubling the output of the status effect. I view this as a problem because, quite simply, I can't even name 3 2 hit spells off the top of my head (this is hyperbole). Most spells are more than 2 hits, there's only like, 4 spells in the whole game I know of that are one hit, so I view it a standard that in this case (unlike with normal attacks, which are mostly actually two hits), basically gives the player free power with no downside. This takes 100% melee sent to a status with a 50% save to 100 /.5 x 2 = 400% melee, or more than most spells ever inflict in a status in the first place.
That being said, I think implementing both of these ideas (lowering the payment to 196 SP and halving output, and removing the per hit standard) would result in an overnerf. These are from my understanding and observation, well enjoyed and often used items by a lot of mage players. With that in mind, I think a way to limit these items power without making it feel really bad, is to only implement the first change, lowering the SP cost to 196 SP, and not the second. That way, the player is still getting a very powerful boost on their spells, but it's just not to such a crazy degree as it is currently. As well, following this idea wouldn't even be a nerf in many situations. Paying 392 SP if a player isn't say, spamming EO, or has END to spam EO, can be pretty tricky. Dropping that down to 196 would have lower output, but be much more manageable of a cost per turn. In some situations (like bosses with damage caps where too much burn doesn't really help much), it would actually be a buff, which makes me hesitate to even post this honestly.
Overall: These new "pay 392 SP to inflict massive status on spellcast" weapons are really, really powerful. I'm of the belief they're too powerful, and should be toned down, in either output, efficiency, or both, but I propose output alone. They also open the door for powercreep, as was seen directly when Legion Monsterlord Reaver used 200% melee on release (before it was adjusted to 100% melee like the rest). I'm confident if these weapons used only 50% melee, we'd never see such a massive jump in power like that. Edit: Also, for Lovestruck, Monsterlord, and Heroic Titan, the melee and ranged weapons generally do the same thing, paying ~the same amount of resources for a status. I'd advocate these also be lowered in the same way as the magic weapon, otherwise it would be weird that 2 of the sets weapons would be 2x the cost and output of the third weapon. Other melee and ranged (and magic) weapons pay equal to or more than 100% melee for select effects on basic attack, but I don't want to widen the scope to those items, as they come from a much wider range of time in the game than just these four sets of items (Nov 2022 is the oldest I know of if I recall correctly), and I believe would make making these adjustments much less likely to actually happen.
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