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lolerster -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/14/2021 15:28:14)
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Alright, so I'm actually going to make a case that this item is not quite as OP as everyone seems to be making it out to be. I admit, I too reacted and thought it was OP. However, I have meditated and come to the conclusion while this item is extremely powerful even without the active effects, the active effects' power are being blown way out of proportion and the item is not in fact as broken as many seem to believe..
Now I will look at some aspects of Quadforce to make my argument.
1. Boosting Charisma to power up booster pets/guests: Let's first address booster pets/guests. Elemental booster pets, barring Lepre-Chan and Manifestation, can already be boosted to their absolute maximum boost 45.32 with no Charisma, through the use of Arcane Intellect/Buffalot + Celtic Wheel/CIT. Where elemental boosters are concerned, with exception of Lepre-chan/Manifestation, it is worthless. Now, it does boost regular boosters a bit. At 405 main stat, Dunamis will boost you +23.48% (35.22% on guest). With Triforce, you can boost Dunamis to...+27.2% (+40.8% on guest). A whopping +3.7% damage boost on the pet and +5.6% on the guest, giving the misc. overall +29.3% (+32.4% on Poelala) boost for 177 SP. Now compare this to Blood Contract, which provides an incredible x1.2 (x1.2667 for magic) damage for 0 SP. For those that do not know, due to the way multiplicative boosts interact with additive boosts, these effects, especially for more optimized builds, are just about the same. The difference is that the former also gives 50 luck but costs 177 + 75 = 252 SP/turn while the latter costs nothing.
2. Boosting Charisma to power up regular pets/guests: Admittedly, this is quite a big power boost, as boosting your Charisma from 0 to 250 is about a +50% melee in effectiveness per turn (more if we look at stuff like Shogun&Ansatsu, Hedgemog, Mimic, etc). This means that for 252 SP/turn, you are getting +50% melee in damage. Is it worth it? Arguably, yes, this is pretty strong. But you know what else can do that? Just a regular Beastmater running 250 Main Stat/Dex/Charisma. But Lolerster, you can boost your luck or endurance to 250 and use Quadforce to boost your Charisma! Yes, yes you can. But let me tell you why that's trash. Endurance is worthless when you can get a 10K+ mana shield/barrier in a single turn. Luck is fine, always having 250 luck for the initiative and lucky strike damage is nice, but the cost is 177 SP/turn. You and your 252 SP/turn are still worse off than your true beast master counterpart who can use a different misc. such as Blood Contract or Rattle to boost their damage further than what you are able to with your extra luck.
3. Boosting STR on Mages/0 Strength Characters to Use Melee/Ranged Weapon: Congrats, you are spending 177 SP/turn to do what Warriors/Rangers do for free. If your character also depends on booster pets/guests/boost spell, you now need to run another set of boosters to effectively take advantage of your newfound strength, costing even further buy reducing the number of slots available.
4. Boosting INT on Warriors/Rangers/0 INT characters: This is even worse. You still has no access to MP, magic weapon attacks are weaker and armour skills now cost more.
5. Using Quadforce as Status Potency: Admittedly this is fairly strong with quick-cast effects, as you can actually turn off the active to refund the 177 SP after you gain the benefit of the boost on your status roll. However, your selection is quite limited as the majority of QC statuses are in the misc. slot, which cannot be sued with Quadforce - so no Love Potion, Shadowfeeder Pendant, Zfinity Gauntlet: Power, Prime Chaos Orb, etc... However, for the QC statues locked in other slots like Mesmerize and Snarl, this is indeed very strong potency boost while not needing to "waste" a slot solely for potency (as the misc's +20% damage, *0.5 Light res, 50 LUK is very strong on its own). Other major rolls that come in mind are Purple Rain and Father Time, but I don't think anyone in living memory has ever failed a roll on those as they can be spammed. For non-QC status rolls, ye, it's fine. You do get a significant boost to you roll on some rolls, but at the cost of 177 SP/turn, which I would argue is fine.
6. Interaction with Leeches/Metroid Pets/Infinita Staff to have Infinite Uptime: OK, yes, you get Infinite Uptime on these boosts. But WHY do you want that? The Leech/Metroid deals 8% melee in damage just to keep up your Charisma boost or so you can run 250 END/LUCK, which as I explained in point 2, is not really that good. This is literally worse than running a regular pet, Dunamis and co. or better yet, an Elemental Booster. Ofc, leech pets can heal SP outside of this, but you are still giving up damage for it. Infinita Staff is a similar story as it has a -25% damage in the SP regen modes. Mages will also need to toggle strength to use Infinita Staff's SP regen, doubling the cost, but it's not a big deal as Infinita with the right setup can always full regen your SP. Think of it this way - you are using items that do less damage in order to sustain an effect to help you do more damage.
7. Dragonlord full heal: OK yes, you can infinitely sustain yourself and the item, but you can infinitely sustain yourself without Quadforce, and as discussed above deal just as much or even more damage with other miscs.
8. Interaction with Level 5 EO/Purple Rain: Right, because interaction with Quadforce is the biggest problem with those item.
9. Backlash Builds: At last, we have situation/build that truly benefits from Quadforce. Unlike mage/warrior/ranger builds, Backlash builds makes is able to make full use of more than 3 stats - Endurance, Charisma, Luck and a main stat. However, Backlash is still a niche build and at best situationally very powerful. I would argue it is a good thing that they are getting a buff.
10. Hybrids: Traditional hybrid builds and even Werepyre Hybrids will get a lot out of this item. However, they are kind of in the same situation as Backlash. Traditional hybrids are so far behind pure builds in terms of performance that I would argue it's a good thing that they get something OP. Even werepyres can use a nice buff compared to the pure builds.
Of course, I'm not saying this item is weak. By no means - even without the active effects, it is a good item. However, whether or not the active effects are so strong that they need to be nerfed does need some very careful consideration to how useful these stats/costs actually are. For me, the biggest strength of the item is the versatility it brings. It allows you to do things that are normally off-limits to your build, which is of course very powerful. It can even lead to new builds. However, in pretty much every case other than maybe the backlash case, you are doing it less effectively and less efficiently by a decent margin than another build.
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