Relic Balance? Lets talk about it!

[BenstarDev]

Over the last few weeks since release, I have seen quite a few negative reviews centered around Relic balancing and whether Relics are worth their buy in price in HP.

Since its usually impossible to discuss things in the context of reviews, since steam barely even allows that, I thought it might be good to start a thread about this!

Additionally we also have a Balance related channel on our Discord [discord.gg] So if you wanna discuss stuff directly together with other members of the community and in a place where its a bit easier for me to actively join the conversation, feel free to hop in there and Lets talk! I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions! Lets keep making this game even better! =D

[Kito Ballard]

Kivi님이 먼저 게시:

I used burning aura to beat denial without shooting and it took like 10-15x usual time.

That's pain mate. I did it with Dodge grenades x,x took me like, 6 minutes of dodging haha

[Jamjars]

Relics would be better if HP were easier to get.

Let shields not count towards missing the boss relic.

Or have bosses drop less max hp depending on how often you get hit. But don't lose the whole heart container at once. You have quarter heart piece drops, use them!
1 hit = 3/4ths a heart
2 hit = 1/2th a heart
3 hits = 1/4th a heart

The full heart relic can drop as normal.

[BenstarDev]

Kivi님이 먼저 게시:

Sun and moon medal could be celestial.

Agree with Kito on DOT effects being too weak. I used burning aura to beat denial without shooting and it took like 10-15x usual time. They also don't scale with your damage as far as I noticed which makes them even more useless on later stages.

Also agree that miracle needs a huge buff. With only 2% chance the "massive" damage must be something in the same order of magnitude as boss health. I also like the idea of having it one-shot any regular or elite enemy and take a fraction of total health from bosses, like 1/3.

DoT effects scale with your damage, meaning they get stronger the stronger you get. You'd be surprised at just how strong they can be =P
Miracle I feel like also doesn't really need a buff, usually you see it at least trigger once, if not multiple times per boss, dealing 30 times your damage in the process. 1% is a lot higher than it might seem at first, thats only 1/100 bullets with 2% only 1/50

[BenstarDev]

Kito Ballard님이 먼저 게시:

I LOVE Back Shield with item that makes familiars larger. But after picking the Rare version up, it's now on my "avoid" list. It's still good, but now you can't shoot past it. It follow your mouse instead of which way Revita Kid's back is.

I forgot to bring up Provision Bag: This item is a huge avoid if I'm early in the run, as draining my damage the longer the run goes is a "No go" for me. Now, if it gave 5% per Area while it's base damage was 5~10% to start, I'd grab it more often.

Surprised to hear the dislike of provision bag, at worst its a 1 max hp up, with -5% damage attached. That is if you don't upgrade it once and take it from the first area to the last. If you find it at any point past the second area, its genuinly a really good common.
And yes Back shield desperately needed the nerf, it is still very strong, allowing you to block entire enemy attacks, but its not ridiculously overpowered anymore =P

[Kito Ballard]

BenstarDev님이 먼저 게시:

Kito Ballard님이 먼저 게시:

I LOVE Back Shield with item that makes familiars larger. But after picking the Rare version up, it's now on my "avoid" list. It's still good, but now you can't shoot past it. It follow your mouse instead of which way Revita Kid's back is.

I forgot to bring up Provision Bag: This item is a huge avoid if I'm early in the run, as draining my damage the longer the run goes is a "No go" for me. Now, if it gave 5% per Area while it's base damage was 5~10% to start, I'd grab it more often.

Surprised to hear the dislike of provision bag, at worst its a 1 max hp up, with -5% damage attached. That is if you don't upgrade it once and take it from the first area to the last. If you find it at any point past the second area, its genuinly a really good common.
And yes Back shield desperately needed the nerf, it is still very strong, allowing you to block entire enemy attacks, but its not ridiculously overpowered anymore =P

Hahah I agree with it needing a nerf, but it's a pretty sharp one. I figured it'd be like "Block a few hits then recharge" or som'in.

I'll have to look at Provision Bag again then. I still not a fan of "draining" items, why I generally pick it up if I see it on area 4~5.

I still don't like Miracle though. The lack of info on "massive" damage and it's abysmal low value is a major "avoid", given that it's a legi... Took it last stream and talking to my viewers about it and they say they only seen it pop maybe once or twice out of 2 areas (before it went poof from a loop). And the 4 hearts to max it to 2% is not a good enough incentive to snag it. Usually I out perform the item, killing things much faster than a "really rare chance" moment. A "super crit" won't make or break my run, and rather put som'in else in my inventory at that point.

Oh I should add:
Black Hole + Mini-Missile: Shouldn't work together, or be nerfed in some form. Had some..... nutty... moments where I created so many missiles, that's all i could see haha XD https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRg-p5CXwAkAufh?format=jpg&name=large for an example hahah (image contains a spoiler. Linked from my Twitter as a raw photo)

[Kivi]

Kito Ballard님이 먼저 게시:

Black Hole + Mini-Missile: Shouldn't work together, or be nerfed in some form. Had some..... nutty... moments where I created so many missiles, that's all i could see haha XD https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRg-p5CXwAkAufh?format=jpg&name=large for an example hahah (image contains a spoiler. Linked from my Twitter as a raw photo)

Can't stop laughing on that image xD

BenstarDev님이 먼저 게시:

DoT effects scale with your damage, meaning they get stronger the stronger you get.

Oops, then I must've missed it. Anyway, it feels underwhelming compared to your regular damage. I mean, yeah, I can make DoT stronger by stacking up +300% damage modifier but do I even need DoTs with that strength?
What if it didn't scale but was stronger from the start? Then it would be a great help in first couple of biomes and become less powerful later in the run, making DoT items ideal sacrifice at some point. I feel like introducing more items with value dependent on the stage would make the game more dynamic.

[Kivi]

Not sure if this is a bug or intentional balancing... Continuator now gives 1 damage laser. It ruined the run instantly at the tower top even though I had triple shot. I also had around +90% damage multiplier and regular base damage (no bug spray, triple shot should only affect multiplier) so it literally turned ~20 damage into 1. Fire rate difference is not even close to covering that gap. So yeah, if it was an intentional nerf then it was too radical xD

[Kito Ballard]

Kivi님이 먼저 게시:

Not sure if this is a bug or intentional balancing... Continuator now gives 1 damage laser. It ruined the run instantly at the tower top even though I had triple shot. I also had around +90% damage multiplier and regular base damage (no bug spray, triple shot should only affect multiplier) so it literally turned ~20 damage into 1. Fire rate difference is not even close to covering that gap. So yeah, if it was an intentional nerf then it was too radical xD

Continuator is a sharp damage reduction. I picked it up once on a run and it put my damage to 4. 100% I think was 6. It does need to bot be as sharp, really. Compared to the Continuous Beam gun, it's a stark contrast.

Also all bullet split items (outside Twin Beak or what ever it's called, from what I've seen) divides the damage a bit. So your triple shot is "- damage" plus a shot division reduction. So the beam doing 1 damage makes sense.

[Kivi]

Kito Ballard님이 먼저 게시:

Continuator is a sharp damage reduction. I picked it up once on a run and it put my damage to 4. 100% I think was 6. It does need to bot be as sharp, really. Compared to the Continuous Beam gun, it's a stark contrast.

Also all bullet split items (outside Twin Beak or what ever it's called, from what I've seen) divides the damage a bit. So your triple shot is "- damage" plus a shot division reduction. So the beam doing 1 damage makes sense.

So it was 6 for you and 1 for me with similar multiplier, right? "Division" from triple shot is definitely not by the factor of 6 normally. It wouldn't really make sense to divide the base damage by 6 for triple shot. I'm pretty sure there's none to very slight effect, besides reducing your fire rate and damage multipliers by 50% and 20%.

4-6 damage continuator is still decent considering its wide range, 1 damage continuator is unusable.

[BenstarDev]

And not really intentional either to be honest. =D
Continuator as well as Constant Blast gun can be fairly buggy atm (not broken though, which is why other stuff has been prioritized) So they'll get a proper fixing sooner or later =)
Same as Mine Rocket launcher which is still high on my todo list

[Kito Ballard]

I can be invincible with the right set up with them both, Ben (The beams I mean XD). I'd say it's pretty broken hahah I stopped using it as I've been relying on it too much. Glad I did XD

Reverting the Love Key is a good choice, as damn that got STRONG. Bounty change is a bit of a nutty idea, but I'm here for it.

[Kivi]

Just figured out triple shot doesn't affect celestial soul gun's blade. It becomes a pain to use since melee is its main strength and it only gets nerfed by the item. Some interaction would be cool, like swinging 3 blades at the same time in some formation around the player. Stacking all 3 in one swing is what I expected before taking the item, but well, if it's not implemented yet, you might as well want to go for a more interesting thing :D

[whirr]

idk if anyone already said this but the second upgraded version of starting gun (the charged crit one) doesnt work with the relic charger (the hold the button one). i think it should work together and if it get fixed thats pretty nice qol.
love the game tho thx!

[铅谜]

Can you change the loading sniper rifle, before this gun is very nice, but now is too bad, determine successful reload time is long and determine failure is longer, only three bullets, and into the next room default is ordinary bullets, 30 in difficulty, this gun is a nightmare, when the monster blunt come over to me, I'm reloading, When the barrage of monsters came up, I was still reloading, and after I finally finished reloading, it was highly unlikely that I could kill any of them, this gun has no fault tolerance rate. Have you ever wondered what it was like to be in a small room with this gun, facing a boss Slim with a shield or damage aura? It's hard for me to describe. I suggest you feel it for yourself.
In general, the current mechanics of this gun I don't think are suitable for high difficulty at all, and I haven't used it on low difficulty since other guns are more fun to play with. In fact, other guns also have bad, such as grapeshot, very short range, to hit the damage needs to be close and easy to hurt; RPGS, you hit yourself harder than monsters, the only advantage is that you can get into the hidden room with one shot, and speaking of which, loading a sniper rifle even requires a reload to get into the hidden room, which is ridiculous.
In a tough game, players need to deal with possible narrow room, a large number of monsters and trap, these difficult enough, this gun need players trying to avoid at the same time pay attention to in the bullets, the crux of the problem is that it can't kill the monster, can't guarantee all the bullet hit upon a strange, players in moving, monsters are mobile, But the pressure is mounting.
The battle speed of this game is not slow, the ammunition change time is too long, lost a lot of output opportunities, can not kill the monster, often lead to more and more bullets, and finally forced into a dead end by bullets and monsters.
I remember That Enter The Gungeon also had a gun that could be reloaded, I don't remember the name of the gun(I think it's called the Rad gun), reloaded successfully to increase the damage, you can continue to increase, but the judgment rate is faster and faster, if you fail to restore the original damage, I think you can refer to this design, the gun's current reloading time is too long by any means, I think it was fine the way it started.

[cappone]

Why was famine nerfed so heavily, now its basically a death trap not worth its hp cost ever since it takes you down to 1 hp for 3% per heart. Even with 5 or 6 max hearts spent on it, its stat increase iis worse then upgradable common relics when it comes to fire rate and range and damage. That was a great item prior to the update that gave an excellent risk reward mechanic, if you could survive with it, now its completely ruined. I can see thinking 10% may be a bit to powerful but a nerf down to 3% makes it a useless item. What about 7.5% per heart that seems like the right number for it.