Tender Cactus :(

[james.wanders]

Had a neat run going with two level-3 Orbori chaining their Echo with Strange Brew and extra crit. Beat the Ballista boss and decided to try out the new Tender Cactus relic, assuming the "2+ bonus damage" was a limit on things like Miniscule and Spiness. To my chagrin, I soon realized that it was limiting my _total_ damage, entirely ruining my Echo build 😞

I realize the damage for each peg is powerful with the right build, just not the one I happened to try it with. Maybe the wording could be clearer, but not exactly sure how to improve. It does make more sense now that understand what it means, of course.

[royba607]

I kinda had an on peg hit build going on, the "increase peg by +1 when refreshed" works on the damage increase, but I kinda feel like this relic is basically never worth it.
The 2 dmg already kinda falls off in stage 2, not to mention the final stage.
Having a ball with special effects (pierce for instance) hit for 6 damage per peg and having it reduced to 2 (but instant) is just abyssmal sadly.
Not a fan of the rework to the relic that locks direction in 4 directions but you get multiball have a 50% damage reduction now either.
Last relic patch was a bit of a miss imo, and tender cactus def falls under this.

[phillip_lynx]

Originally posted by royba607:

I kinda had an on peg hit build going on, the "increase peg by +1 when refreshed" works on the damage increase, but I kinda feel like this relic is basically never worth it.
The 2 dmg already kinda falls off in stage 2, not to mention the final stage.
Having a ball with special effects (pierce for instance) hit for 6 damage per peg and having it reduced to 2 (but instant) is just abyssmal sadly.
Not a fan of the rework to the relic that locks direction in 4 directions but you get multiball have a 50% damage reduction now either.
Last relic patch was a bit of a miss imo, and tender cactus def falls under this.

The cactus is NOT for the damage at the shot but for the damage at the flight.

So clearly the cactus is not for an echo-build.
But test it with the endless upragdeable orb. Absolute Overkill !!!. Combine this with durable Pegs and WOOOW !!!

And for the wording "The shot damage is limited to 2 + bonus" I do not find misleading.

And the runs are not so long. So when you do one run and then grasp the meaning of an relic all succsevie runs can be planed accordingly.

[Dust D. Reaper]

Yea I had the option to take it in my last run but didnt because I had no real clue what its actually gonna do.

[romorosso]

I also picked the Tender Cactus because the wording was unclear and I wanted to see what it does. What it did was nuke my build. I'm still not sure what it does. It seemed like it was scaling as you progressed in the round? What does the +X^1.3 / +Y^1.3 mean? Usually that means the bonus to regular shot / bonus to crit shot is increased, but then the bonus is limited to 2? Seemed more like the damage was limited to 2? Really unclear.

[phillip_lynx]

Originally posted by romorosso:

I also picked the Tender Cactus because the wording was unclear and I wanted to see what it does. What it did was nuke my build. I'm still not sure what it does. It seemed like it was scaling as you progressed in the round? What does the +X^1.3 / +Y^1.3 mean? Usually that means the bonus to regular shot / bonus to crit shot is increased, but then the bonus is limited to 2? Seemed more like the damage was limited to 2? Really unclear.

The ^1.3 means, the Basedamage is increased by the power of 1.3. Sounds minimal, but because you do the Basedamage with every peg you hit it is massive.
And yes, the damage on the shot is limited to 2 (plus bonuses as Pegs with numbers or Golddamage with the pig ball).
But as I said, the purpose of the cactus is NOT the damage of the shot, but the damage of the fligth.

In general, you do the same damage (to the power of 1.3). Only the damage is done at the fligth and distributed on the next target, if the first dies. So with a high Basedamage Ball you easily can clear a board in on shot.

[james.wanders]

So is the damage per peg min(2, basedamage^(1.3))+bonis? I'm guessing I'm still missing something, as that seems the same as min(2,Base damage), i.e it's always going to be 1 or 2 per activation (plus peg bonuses).

Don't get me wrong though, I do get that it's a Roguelike: the first time you experiment with something it's going be a learning run, and everything has a build that it will shine in. In fight vs. fired damage is huge, I just think it could be a little clearer.

That said, there's maybe only 20% of the orbs/relics that I feel improve my build or have a build they work in. The majority I've tried and been unimpressed enough times that I no longer even consider them.

[phillip_lynx]

No.
The damage per Peg is Basedamage^1.3
The damage at shot is 2+Bonus

If you have a ball with 10/20 and Bonus of 10 then the damage per Peg is
19,95 / 49,13
and the shot does
12 Damage

So if you hit the first peg with crit and then hit 50 pegs you do a total of
2468,46 Damage.
So you could kill over 20 Monsters with 110 Life in one go

[edit]
Do NOT look DOWN where the numbers are seen. This will be in most cases 2.

Look UP to the Monsters and see (in my example) 19,95 or 49,13 disappear from the monsters life, everytime when you hit a peg. Instantly. In Fligth.
Three pegs critically hit means a 110 HP Monster is dead and removed and the damage for the next peg goes to the next monster.

[edit2]
And do not underestimate the power of power (^1,3).
In my example you see, the ^1,3 of 20 is more then the sum of 2 times of 10^1,3

Other formulation:
20^1,3 is more then the double of 10^1,3

[romorosso]

Originally posted by phillip_lynx:

No.
The damage per Peg is Basedamage^1.3
The damage at shot is 2+Bonus

If you have a ball with 10/20 and Bonus of 10 then the damage per Peg is
19,95 / 49,13
and the shot does
12 Damage

So if you hit the first peg with crit and then hit 50 pegs you do a total of
2468,46 Damage.
So you could kill over 20 Monsters with 110 Life in one go

[edit]
Do NOT look DOWN where the numbers are seen. This will be in most cases 2.

Look UP to the Monsters and see (in my example) 19,95 or 49,13 disappear from the monsters life, everytime when you hit a peg. Instantly. In Fligth.
Three pegs critically hit means a 110 HP Monster is dead and removed and the damage for the next peg goes to the next monster.

[edit2]
And do not underestimate the power of power (^1,3).
In my example you see, the ^1,3 of 20 is more then the sum of 2 times of 10^1,3

Other formulation:
20^1,3 is more then the double of 10^1,3

So I just fought against the super sapper with the cactus. I had all my orbs level 3, with a bunch of bonuses from items. The stats in the window on the left were like 10/14 or something. Every time I hit a peg the number 2 appeared next to the enemy. It didn't matter which orb it was, even the Horriball. The enemies lost 2 life every time I activated an orb. It took me multiple shots to beat even weak enemies, and this was with all my pegs having durable. It seemed to me that the only effect of the cactus was to make my orbs terrible. (Luckily my build was dumb OP and I still beat him on C20.) What am i missing?

Here's my build. I had to grind through all the little sappers to beat the super sapper.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3434464523

[phillip_lynx]

Originally posted by romorosso:

Originally posted by phillip_lynx:

No.
The damage per Peg is Basedamage^1.3
The damage at shot is 2+Bonus

If you have a ball with 10/20 and Bonus of 10 then the damage per Peg is
19,95 / 49,13
and the shot does
12 Damage

So if you hit the first peg with crit and then hit 50 pegs you do a total of
2468,46 Damage.
So you could kill over 20 Monsters with 110 Life in one go

[edit]
Do NOT look DOWN where the numbers are seen. This will be in most cases 2.

Look UP to the Monsters and see (in my example) 19,95 or 49,13 disappear from the monsters life, everytime when you hit a peg. Instantly. In Fligth.
Three pegs critically hit means a 110 HP Monster is dead and removed and the damage for the next peg goes to the next monster.

[edit2]
And do not underestimate the power of power (^1,3).
In my example you see, the ^1,3 of 20 is more then the sum of 2 times of 10^1,3

Other formulation:
20^1,3 is more then the double of 10^1,3

So I just fought against the super sapper with the cactus. I had all my orbs level 3, with a bunch of bonuses from items. The stats in the window on the left were like 10/14 or something. Every time I hit a peg the number 2 appeared next to the enemy. It didn't matter which orb it was, even the Horriball. The enemies lost 2 life every time I activated an orb. It took me multiple shots to beat even weak enemies, and this was with all my pegs having durable. It seemed to me that the only effect of the cactus was to make my orbs terrible. (Luckily my build was dumb OP and I still beat him on C20.) What am i missing?

Here's my build. I had to grind through all the little sappers to beat the super sapper.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3434464523

This is curios.
When I shoot a Ball with 10/14 then every Peg I hit in fligth substract 10^1.3 or 14^1.3 life from the aimed enemy.
Down at the pegs there is displayed a 2 every time, as this is the damage you deal, when the orb drops out of the field. One time.

I see, that I do a short video (with a custom game) to show what I mean.

But, as I read you answer is something at CB 19 or 20 which can causae this? The highest I tried it was CB 18.

[phillip_lynx]

Here is the Video of the first two Boards.

https://youtu.be/gM1ecOOiaWw
No Commentary in the Video

You can see that in the lower region always a 2 is shown, but in the upper part the real damage (mostly 8) in fligth.

You also see, that the first board is finished, before the last Ball is shot, due to all enemies dead.

And, as shown, this is CB 15

[Edit]
And 5 (Basedamage of the Orb) to the Power of 1.3 is 8