Life-steal Weapons Are Severely Underpowered

[KittenOfDoom]

I've played this game since December 2019, and one of the biggest things I noticed is the problems with the life-steal aspects/powerups on weapons. To put it bluntly, they're terrible.

It feels like a punishment to play using these aspects/powerups because of the steep penalty of roughly -70% to total max health AND healing AND max health upgrading items.
This would be warranted if the weapons had really powerful life-drain, but they don't, they heal about 1 health per hit, and healing one health per hit isn't really going to help at all when you can die from being hit one time (and I'm not exaggerating).

Aspect of Guan Yu is especially frustrating to use because not only is the life-drain ability tied to only one specific attack, but that attack is hard to hit, as it is a slow-moving projectile and most enemies will move out of the way by the time you release it. Additionally, charging it leaves you wide open to enemy attacks, on top of that, it only heals ONE health per hit of this attack.

The Stygian Blade Daedalus Hammer upgrade does this slightly better, with using a percentage of health regain instead of a flat number, but 5% restoration is still way too little for the penalty of -70% health!

The way I personally think this could be fixed is by removing that penalty, or at the very least removing the penalty to max-health and max-health increasing items, it would make sense to penalize healing items because you can already heal yourself with life-drain, but penalizing max health is very counter-productive and just makes the weapons painful to use, especially given the miniscule health gain.

Life steal weapons can be incredibly satisfying to use, but these weapons are so dissatisfying to use that I would never use them unless I was forced to, and even then I'd probably rather just not play at all. A powerup shouldn't feel like a punishment.

Thank you for reading this, I hope my feedback helps, I love this game and hope I didn't sound too harsh! I just really want it to succeed.

[Lorska]

I would actually say the exact opposite... They are too good.

I tend to not pick them because I know that if I do, I should ALWAYS be able to win. Usually fights are designed as a resource trade, health for power/currency. Lifesteal completely upsets this balance. The infinite defiance upgrade is actually similar in that regard, but the difference is that you lose your safety net and that there is a cap on the amount you can generate resources (health).

So this risk has to exist, otherwise it becomes free.

[KittenOfDoom]

Originally posted by Lorska:

I would actually say the exact opposite... They are too good.

I tend to not pick them because I know that if I do, I should ALWAYS be able to win. Usually fights are designed as a resource trade, health for power/currency. Lifesteal completely upsets this balance. The infinite defiance upgrade is actually similar in that regard, but the difference is that you lose your safety net and that there is a cap on the amount you can generate resources (health).

So this risk has to exist, otherwise it becomes free.

I see what you mean, but again, you have so little health that you can just die instantly before even getting to hit anything, negating the life-steal completely. It's high risk low reward, almost no reward, actually. Having 30 health but gaining 1 health per hit doesn't really work because 30 health is way too little.
I think a better way to handle this would be to disable all other methods of healing, so you could only heal with the life drain, but leaving the max health alone, or even disabling healing and max health gain, but letting you keep your max of 100 health. That way there's still risk, but it isn't so unreasonably steep.

[Ambassador of Benevolence]

At first I thought that too, but I recently beat the final boss with the Aspect of Guan Yu, and there are definitely strategies to learn that make them more viable. One part is just learning when and where to use the whirlwind attack -- for instance, when monsters are spawning, you can usually line up and time an attack that hits two or three monsters risk free, getting you 10 health for each monster spawn.

Once you manage to get this in for free, it ends up being more like 10-20 regeneration per room (risk free) which is pretty powerful. (And some enemy clumps give you LOTS of hitpoints.)

My main problem at first was that I wasn't prioritizing when to use the life steal, and so ultimately lost more health than I stole. But after time I got better.

I agree though, that it's tough at first, and I never really felt that it as "powerful" like the other fourth aspects -- although maybe that's still my lower skill level.

[KittenOfDoom]

Originally posted by Ambassador of Benevolence:

At first I thought that too, but I recently beat the final boss with the Aspect of Guan Yu, and there are definitely strategies to learn that make them more viable. One part is just learning when and where to use the whirlwind attack -- for instance, when monsters are spawning, you can usually line up and time an attack that hits two or three monsters risk free, getting you 10 health for each monster spawn.

Once you manage to get this in for free, it ends up being more like 10-20 regeneration per room (risk free) which is pretty powerful. (And some enemy clumps give you LOTS of hitpoints.)

My main problem at first was that I wasn't prioritizing when to use the life steal, and so ultimately lost more health than I stole. But after time I got better.

I agree though, that it's tough at first, and I never really felt that it as "powerful" like the other fourth aspects -- although maybe that's still my lower skill level.

That makes sense, but there's still the issue of bosses, which hit very hard, and can kill you instantly with almost every hit with health so low. The penalty is just way too steep for how little healing it does.

I don't deny that part of this is me being unable to use the weapon properly, but with the way the weapon works I don't even WANT to use it because of how bad it feels to play. I can't really practice, because it just feels like I'm doing a chore instead of playing a game while I use it, and I really want to be able to have fun while using it, but I just can't.

[Ambassador of Benevolence]

That makes sense, but there's still the issue of bosses, which hit very hard, and can kill you instantly with almost every hit with health so low. The penalty is just way too steep for how little healing it does.

I don't deny that part of this is me being unable to use the weapon properly, but with the way the weapon works I don't even WANT to use it because of how bad it feels to play. I can't really practice, because it just feels like I'm doing a chore instead of playing a game while I use it, and I really want to be able to have fun while using it, but I just can't.

I totally agree. I had no fun using the Aspect of Guan Yu, and kind of resented that it was on the List of Fate. I thought Aspect of Arthur was kind of a blast to learn to use, which I didn't feel about Guan Yu.

And the boss battles were always nightmarish and felt stringently reliant on RNG of boons and hammers. (Some trinkets are helpful, like the one that prevents boss damage, but I find that one dull and not fun either.)

[KittenOfDoom]

Originally posted by Ambassador of Benevolence:

That makes sense, but there's still the issue of bosses, which hit very hard, and can kill you instantly with almost every hit with health so low. The penalty is just way too steep for how little healing it does.

I don't deny that part of this is me being unable to use the weapon properly, but with the way the weapon works I don't even WANT to use it because of how bad it feels to play. I can't really practice, because it just feels like I'm doing a chore instead of playing a game while I use it, and I really want to be able to have fun while using it, but I just can't.

I totally agree. I had no fun using the Aspect of Guan Yu, and kind of resented that it was on the List of Fate. I thought Aspect of Arthur was kind of a blast to learn to use, which I didn't feel about Guan Yu.

And the boss battles were always nightmarish and felt stringently reliant on RNG of boons and hammers. (Some trinkets are helpful, like the one that prevents boss damage, but I find that one dull and not fun either.)

Exactly! If we're comparing the two, Aspect Of Arthur should be considered "Overpowered" if Aspect of Guan Yu is considered balanced! You gain so much health from Arthur without even having to upgrade it first, but you get heavily penalized with Guan Yu even after upgrading it.

Overall the game is VERY heavily reliant on RNG, and I suppose that's par for the course with this type of game, but I felt like I couldn't even play Aspect of Guan Yu at all unless I got insanely good boons. And in the end I couldn't even beat the final boss, no matter how good my boons were. Using trinkets like Cerberus Collar didn't even help, because Guan Yu changed the +50 health to about +15, giving me barely any advantage.
I don't much care for that trinket you mentioned either, because it's really situational and specific, since it only works on bosses, so I tend not to use it, but maybe I should try using it and see if it gets me through the boss fights.

[FerretBomb]

Lifesteal weapons are very skill-oriented. They allow you to take the occasional hit, but you're expected to be focusing heavily on re-building or compensating for your lost life pool through centaur hearts/synergistic boons.
They are definitely NOT newbie weapons, or nuke cannons. They're there to allow you to break a tenet of the game in a non-standard manner: that healing is uncommon.
Normally people circumvent this just by stacking health and relying on intermittent percentage-based heals. It's one reason that burritos (gyros) got smashed to death with the nerf bat a few updates back... carrying a certain trinket meant they popped up everywhere, and you effectively were invincible even with extremely lazy play.
Lifesteal weapons getting a solid buff WOULD make them more new-player friendly, but they'd be obscenely *broken* in the hands of experienced players.

They're in a good spot at the moment. The only thing I'd change is to include knock-on damage as credit toward kills for things like the knuckles' uppercut, or sword slice. Certain boons can make it nearly impossible to GET a kill with the correct part of the attack, rendering the lifesteal aspect nearly nonexistent. Most of the boon Specials, in fact, aside from Artemis.

[Gregor]

On my way through the Heats on the Spear to 20, which I've done exlusively except the run on 0 with Guan-Yu before the -10% dmg on the special I never dared relying on the attack. There are spots it's good useable, though I thought of it more as a "gimmick" . The true strength is hidden in the special. Which is a great way to play it, if you can manage to reposition and get a charge through great, though without the Spiked Collar you'd start at a minimum of 17 Health, which should make quite clear, that dodging and using the special as a way to succeed is the gameplan on it. That goes up to like 50HP , if your character else would start on 100 HP. Taking no damage is the best plan to avoid the need of lifesteal overall.
I assume it's a feature, that it's also capable of healing, while you don't need to stay stationary while the attack is on its move, though playing it over the attack as reason to win was out of consideration for about all of my attempts, because even with supportive boons it felt as an inferior choise to dodging and using the special and cast as way to win.

There are spots in Styx where it's quite easy to fill on HP , depending on the enemies spawns, but besides that , that should be a tool used in situations of dire need, or extreme safety, though depending on the personal performance can be considered nearly irrelevant.

The Blade I realy liked when I've first got access to it "Cursed Cut", though I failed my run which was at low heat, high in difficulty for my assumptions back then, I felt it was super strong, and the reason I lost was a horrible performance from my side.

Did they bring up the healing to 5% ? Back then Cursed Cut offered 2 HP for every successfull hit.