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Mananite -> RE: Backlash (9/19/2023 20:02:34)
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Echoing @CH4OT1C!’s sentiment, Backlash is a mess. Nothing about the status is balanced, and it breaks basically every single established standard in the game. I'll avoid retreading his main talking points too much for the sake of brevity, but Backlash in its current state cannot exist (and arguably should have never been released to begin with, considering just how game-warping it is):
1. Backlash works like Essence Orb (another game-warping item that everyone knows is due for a fix) insofar as it enables you to dump a hypothetically infinite amount of resources (in this case, HP) into an infinite amount of potential damage. No other mechanic or item exists right now that can say they do this.
2. Backlash by design encourages the player to subvert the very standards the game is built upon, optimizing resistances to take as much damage as possible instead of taking as little, and dealing an equally excessive amount of damage back (which ties into my first point and what @CH4OT1C! has described in length).
3. Backlash's implementation means every single source of Backlash is considered its own hit, completely bypassing damage caps, negating the one mechanic that was created specifically to stop bosses from being deleted in a single round.
4. Backlash uses the old HP standard, giving it an arbitrary 2.3x multiplier to player Backlash, while simultaneously making monster Backlash a nonstatus by having their damage divided by 2.3. Granted, this is arguably more of a bug than anything, and fixing it would go a long way in reining in the status.
5. Miscs that reduce damage taken by healing a percentage of damage taken instead of reducing it (IE Irt of Osiris, Hollow Dragon Amulet, and Shattered Horizon) synergize with Backlash in a way that's probably not intended, effectively "doubling" the amount of damage you can deal. Granted, those items have their own implementation issues brought about by modern changes, which while relevant to the issue at hand would be veering off-topic.
On top of this, the sources of player Backlash (barring Doomlight, which requires an entirely separate GBI thread due to functionally having nothing but "free" effects due to how synergistic the penalties are for Backlash) should probably get a balance pass. Specifically, I feel that Dreadfiend (and its Ice clone) should not be funnelling all of its damage into Backlash; as it stands, it provides roughly half of a character's total Backlash damage by itself. No other status can say they have a Guest (or item) that provides such a disproportionate amount of power relative to what else is available.
I feel Backlash needs the following changes to be properly "balanced":
1. Update the HP cost to the modern standard, which would fix one of the biggest issues of Backlash, reining in player sources, and making monster sources a credible threat you have to genuinely account for.
2. Make Backlash work like all other statuses in that it does one hit of damage total per element, instead of one per source (IE having Doomlight, Angra Linorm, and a Dreadfiend would deal one hit of Harm Backlash and one hit of Darkness Backlash, instead of three hits of Harm and one hit of Darkness). This would solve the damage cap bypass entirely, and make nuking with Backlash much riskier. Implementation would likely be similar to Dodgelash, where it calculates each time you're hit (rolling as necessary), then deal all the damage at the start of the player's turn.
3. Introduce a soft damage cap on Backlash damage with massive clawback, with a potential hard cap on damage. At its core, Backlash is a status that scales with damage. Given that until recently, Imbues are a similarly game-warping effect that sometimes provides statuses that are damage scaled, a similar cap with clawback on Backlash seems natural. I feel the clawback would also have to be much harsher, given how much easier it is to take massive amounts of damage than deal it. A hard cap is also something I'm not entirely comfortable with, but just like the Imbue justification, modern status eaters are also hard capped at +200% of their base value. Not having a hard cap on something like Backlash would come off as an arbitrary exclusion from standards.
4. Remove elemental Backlash entirely, making Backlash deal exclusively Harm damage. This is basically as "nuclear" as a fix can get without outright deleting the status, but given how much stronger elemental Backlash is (as shown by Dreadfiends), this would massively reduce the upper limit of what Backlash is capable of. Granted, the example I'm using is also extremely problematic as I outlined above, which is definitely introducing bias. But given just how much stronger elemental Backlash is compared to Harm Backlash mechanically, this is probably necessary.
Even if my proposed changes all go through, I'm still not entirely convinced Backlash wouldn't still be a problematic status, and my measures are arguably more draconian and nuclear than what was proposed in the start of the thread. An alternative solution would be the actual nuclear option: deleting Backlash entirely, and replacing it with s similarly-themed effect.
Instead of reflecting a percentage of damage taken (which is problematic enough to justify this GBI thread), Backlash would instead work like the one-off status of Caltrops, dealing a fixed amount of damage when hit, regardless of how much damage was taken. This would naturally operate like Dodgelash, where all the damage is dealt as once hit, instead of ticking once every single time damage is taken. Swapping Backlash over to work like Caltrops would solve most of the issues with Backlash while still retaining its flavour of a status that requires being hit:
1. A flat amount of damage would remove the infinite damage scaling nature of Backlash.
2. The player would no longer be incentivized to subvert balance standards by taking as much damage as possible without dying, as the damage reflected would be a static value, instead of being based entirely on how hard they get hit.
3. Tying into point 2, no longer requiring "assumed damage" would also fix the issues of old HP standards completely skewing the math.
4. Heal-style resistances Misc items would no longer provide an excessively large amount of "safe" damage by reducing the amount of effective damage taken without actually reducing the original amount.
5. Changing it to a flat amount would also make monster Backlash much more threatening by punishing the use of hitcount to bypass damage caps (which ties into a broader balance issue that's outside of this thread's scope).
Admittedly, converting Backlash to Caltrops might create its own set of balance nightmares, but given the genie of Backlash can no longer be contained, changing the status completely might be the "simplest" solution to the problem, especially since Backlash by design breaks just about every single assumption and balance standard the game has.
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