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lolerster -> A List of Balance Issues and Suggestion to Address Them (9/18/2020 21:23:10)
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1. Purple Rain
While Purple Rain was balanced at release, with the release of all the QC effects and the infinite use of EO, it is no longer the case. This is what I am suggestion:
Increase the cost of the rewind significantly
Implement a larger save penalty.
If the spell is successful, reduce you SP after the rewind by the cumulative cost of the attempted rewind (e.g. If you have 1000 SP at the rewind point, the cost per rewind attempt is 150 SP and it took 3 attempts for the rewind to succeed, you will end up with 550 SP after the rewind). If the cumulative cost of the rewind exceeds the amount of SP you had before, then the excess SP cost should be subtracted from your HP, 1 HP = 1.125 SP. If this exceeds your total HP, you die.
There are other more interesting suggestions such as adding a status effect after the rewind, but I feel like this is the most straightforward change without butchering the spell.
2. Immobilization effects and Celerity (and Endurance sort of)
Celerity and immobilization effects have always been extremely powerful. This is especially true for items like Shadowfeeder Pendant, Love Potion and Mesmerize - basically skills/items that can be used multiple times in a turn. Their powers have been further catapulted with the new status change as now they can be stacked, which is particularly problematic when comboed with Purple Rain and Essence Orb. We can address the items themselves so that the extremely powerful ones are toned down, but this potentially limits the design space for future items as the mechanics themselves are unchanged. So I am suggesting a change to the mechanic itself:
Implement a diminishing return on all immobilization effects/celerity. This includes paralyze, celerity, control, petrify, fear, spirit rend, hypersalinate and all similar effects that forces the opponent to skip their turn.
All these effects share the same diminishing return multiplier, DR.
Success Rate of Immobilization Status = DR * Base Success Rate, where Base Success Rate is the current success rate of these statuses (for example, if we are talking about Love Potion #736, it is 100%).
At the start of a battle DR = 1.
Each time celerity is successfully activated or an enemy is successfully immobilized, then DR *= 0.7 (0.7 is just an example, it can be adjusted), up to a minimum of 0.7^4 (or *0.24).
Each time celerity/immobilization fails (or none of the statuses are present), then DR /= 0.7. If DR =1 then this is not checked. If DR is >1, then DR is set to 1.
Endurance can be buffed by making it reducing the DR penalty (for example, instead of 0.7, the DR penalty for them is 0.9 per stack).
3. Essence Orb
This has been addressed before, but the lower levels of Essence Orb do not have outleveling formula, meaning the lower level versions are far more efficient than the higher level versions. In addition, the conversion rate is on the old HP standard. Simply do the following:
Update HP conversion rate to the modern standard: 1 HP = 1.125 SP.
Add the Poelala outleveling formula to all versions of Essence Orb.
4. Penalty/Costs of Items when used in Combination with Weapon-Based Skills
Many items in the game will give you additional damage at additional cost (e.g. Bloodzerker's Armours' HP cost) or penalty (e.g. Thrale's Scorn makes you take 25/1.4% damage). However, when used in combination with weapon-based skills the bonuses they provide are doubled but their costs/penalty are not doubled. My suggestion is as follows:
Treat these costs/penalties the same way spells treat similar costs penalties (such as how Bloodmage costs 100% melee in HP), have it modified by the skill modifier. For example, when using Bloodzerker with Thrale's Scorn, the blood cost should be increased from 25% melee to 50% melee in HP and Thrale's penalty should be increased from 25/1.4% to 50/1.4%. Magic attacks should get a similar treatment (for example, blood cost should be increased from 50% melee to 100% melee). This should apply to all weapon-based skills.
5. Burst Spells
These items (Destruction Burst, Arctic Tornado, Creation Burst, Cysero's Explosive Teleport Booth, Warmaster's Burst (both versions)) have a cost of 50% melee in HP, which is outdated since the previous Bloodmage update. The suggestion here is:
Increase HP cost from 50% melee to 100% melee (90% for warmaster).
6. On-click Weapons
With the update of Morningstar Cross/Gauntlet of Xanos and the release of Anchors Away Bow, all similar weapons should be updated accordingly to the same standard. This includes Zabura's Hammer, Zakiya's Spear, Blade of Thornful Rose and Blade of the Briar.
7. Booster Pets/Guests
I know they were recently nerfed, but in theory, they are still too strong as they break a fundamental rule of the game - pets scale with Charisma, not main stat. These pets fundamentally skew balance behind the stat designs. Furthermore, their accuracy is not tied to Charisma whatsoever. This is what I suggest (again):
Make all booster pets and guests (Poelala/Therndas/Dunamis/Ramssy/Mog Lightnaut/Chilly/Veywild) scale entirely from Charisma like Lepre-chan and Manifestation.
If this reduces omnibooster's damage too much (due to their *0.6 compression penalty), then their penalty can be changed to something similar to Chickencow's.
This still preserves them as the absolute best option for 0 Charisma builds, as their accuracy does not scale with Charisma and their boosts continue to scale with skill multipliers/elecomps/etc, but tones their power level down by quite a lot. Remember 0 Charisma builds are not supposed to have extremely powerful pets, but this change still preserves them as the top choice for 0 Charisma builds.
8. Old-Standard Armours
I know this has been brought up countless times, but old standard armours need to be changed to modern standards.
9. Elemental Vulnerability
Elemental vulnerability stacks in extremely strange ways. I haven't even worked out all the details, but it should be changed to be more consistent to prevent insane stacking results. I suggest the following (which I think is how it's supposed to work anyways, just a bit buggy).
Each application of any Elemental vulnerability should have its own debuff, rather than stacking with previous applications in the same debuff and turns.
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