Explosive skill discussion.

[Douchlas]

Explosives are risky, low damage and generally pretty bad. Especially when you mix in playing in co-op where you can accidently kill your friends.

My suggestion is to remove friendly fire with explosives all together. With how this game handles the netcode with peer-to-peer. Even with extremely stable connections, you WILL kill your friends and yourself on multiple occations.

Remove that enemies that hit bombs makes them explode. This makes no sense unless they themselves are using explosions of course. A larva hitting a bomb does not make it explode, cmon. It makes bombs less viable to have this IN the game than taking it out and making more bombs useful in more situations, creating more creative gameplay.

The skill tree is... Not good imo. Most skill trees have extreme buffs to reach specific ranks in the skill tree. The exposive tree... not so much. The only viable way to play explosives is the same as with ranged. Minion set, ranged attack speed. But even then explosives are beaten by charkram every single time, and it's not even close.

Currently. The mortars is great for mining, nothing else. Ranged has a better skill tree in itself for it's own progression. Putting down bombs on the ground for higher dmg can be triggered by any melee attack from an enemy = killing yourself or a friend in the process.

I get that explosives should be risky. But the reward is lackluster at best. To put it simply.
The only good thing with the explosive skill tree is to get Adrenaline Rush and play Melee.
When a skills ability's BEST thing about it is to buff something else, it's not a good skill tree.

I play explosives in every game i play, it's a very autistic enjoyment from my side. But you have managed to make the most infuriating way to play with it. Which is:
1. Do not aggro anything, just stand on range and throw/shoot until it does before noticing you. (not fun, and ranged already can do that and is better.)
2. A resource heavy way to play that can't be farmed (waiting for Dung instead of actively searching for mats.)
3. A skill tree that does not reward your playstyle WITH explosives at all. No damage buff to the bombs, no interesting combo play with other skills. It's a filler skill that buffs other things but nothing buffs it.
4. No end game gear, it's blast gear and that's it.

This skill feels rushed, not tested and the balance is so off compared to any other damage build you can make. I don't want to have to play Grimset, power in numbers with 8~ minions to get that 80% attack speed again. I did that with ranged already and demolished everything on hard. I wanted something different, but instead i got a downgrade in all ways. It's just worse in all ways possible. In safety, damage, control, effectiveness and cost. What's the benefit from increasing the skill? To get resistance from misusing it yourself?

Does anyone disagrees? And why in that case? Does anyone want this to change or does it feel fine for the skill to feel this... untested?

[Faust]

I'll do you one better, lad. The entire combat system across all of its skills and equipment is unbalanced, untested, and un-thought-out.

Armor is worthless, enemies one-three tap you most of the time.

Magic barrier is worthless for the same reasons.

Based on the previous two statements thorns as a mechanic are worthless.

Mana regen is nearly worthless because the real way to keep your mana up is a rapid fire crit build since every crit restores 10% of your mana.

Most regeneration is worthless because most of it is a flat value where you heal like 2HP per second in a game where at endgame I have 1.6k. Even funnier when you see a passive in Cooking that restores .5 HP per second and a passive in Vitality that restores 1 HP/s and it doesn't even work above 50%. Nevermind that you have access to healing potions that heal 30%-40% of your HP per use and are on a laughably pathetic 5s cooldown.

Dodge is absurdly overpowered, you can get up to 90% without any consumables.

Melee weapons get mogged by ranged weapons because why risk catching a stray oneshot if you can just stay safe in the distance?

Consequently, most devastating melee weapon in the game is neither melee nor a weapon. It's Stormbringer, a mining tool that doubles as a lightning cannon, and I have no idea how that's supposed to count as physical melee.

Movement skill tree has two main branches - one that BOTH requires to NOT move AND gives you extra movement speed for not doing so, and one that doesn't work on nearly every weapon because it requires you to consistently move while someone designed weapons to stop you dead in your tracks during every attack.

Mining has a skill that restores durability to mining tools for digging ore in a game where all endgame mining tools have infinite durability. And you are forced to take that skill if you want to get the + Explosives damage.

Summoning is just the worst summoning system on the market. Plays and feels like resprited magic.

Entire swathes of weapons feel either blatantly inferior to their counterparts or even straight up unusuable, like the explosive magic staff that BOUNCES its projectiles off the damn enemies.

Most ingame effects trigger on a per-hit basis, which means rapid fire weapons such as the Arcane Staff or the Quill Rifle or the aforementioned Stormbringer wipe the floor with slow fire rate weapons.



And that's just off the top of my head. Whole skill trees need rebalancing, whole weapon lines, whole mechanics...

[Douchlas]

Originally posted by Faust:

I'll do you one better, lad. The entire combat system across all of its skills and equipment is unbalanced, untested, and un-thought-out.

Armor is worthless, enemies one-three tap you most of the time.

Magic barrier is worthless for the same reasons.

Based on the previous two statements thorns as a mechanic is worthless.

Mana regen is nearly worthless because the real way to keep your mana up is a rapid fire crit build since every crit restores 10% of your mana.

Most regeneration is worthless because most of it is a flat value where you heal like 2HP per second in a game where at endgame I have 1.6k. Even funnier when you see a passive in Cooking that restores .5 HP per second and a passive in Vitality that restores 1 HP/s and it doesn't even work above 50%. Nevermind that you have access to healing potion that heal 30%-40% of your HP per use and are on a laughably pathetic 5s cooldown.

Dodge is absurdly overpowered, you can get up to 90% without any consumables.

Melee weapons get mogged by ranged weapons because why risk catching a stray oneshot if you can just stay safe in the distance?

Consequently, most devastating melee weapon in the game is neither melee nor a weapon. It's Stormbringer, mining tool that doubles as a lightning cannon, and I have no idea how that's supposed to count as physical melee.

Movement skill tree has two main branches - one that BOTH requires to NOT move AND gives you extra movement speed for not doing so, and one that doesn't work on nearly every weapon because it requires you to consistently move while someone designed weapons to stop you dead in your tracks during every attack.

Mining has a skill that restores durability to mining tools for digging ore in a game where all endgame mining tools have infinite durability. And you are forced to take that skill if you want to get the + Explosives damage.

Summoning is just the worst summoning system on the market. Plays and feels like resprited magic.

Entire swathes of weapons feel either blatantly inferior to their counterparts or even straight up unusuable, like the explosive magic staff that BOUNCES its projectiles off the damn enemies.

Most ingame effects trigger on a per-hit basis, which means rapid fire weapons such as the Arcane Staff or the Quill Rifle or the aforementioned Stormbringer wipe the floor with slow fire rate weapons.



And that's just off the top of my head. Whole skill trees need rebalancing, whole weapon lines, whole mechanics...

I agree with you that many tree's have major issues. None has come close to being as useless as explosive damage.

(Also, Summons is the most broken tree in the game, 80% ranged attack speed, 600 magic barrier. Chakram thrown close bounce inside targets. Without the forced cycles on bosses, you would 1 cycle everything in the game pretty much.)

But overall. Melee is too weak for it's horrible range. Ranged is overpowered. Explosives is by far the worst and many skill trees needs a good redesign. Like the finish one that gives fishing skill to ranged damage... Why not all damage? Why only ranged? Why LIMIT build potential instead of making it for everything?
I would love to rattle the brains of the devs on their thought process and give them honest feedback that isn't clouded with how fun the game IS TO PLAY. Because it is. But it has major flaws.

[Faust]

None has come close to being as useless as explosive damage.

Running is right there, lad.

Also, Summons is the most broken tree in the game

My vote goes for Magic.

Why not all damage? Why only ranged? Why LIMIT build potential instead of making it for everything?

Truth be told that's not a universally applicable philosophy. Limits are what makes buildcrafting exciting. It's just a question of whether the current limit is reasonable. That perk is garbage anyway so I don't have an opinion on that.

[Vukmir]

Originally posted by Faust:

I'll do you one better, lad. The entire combat system across all of its skills and equipment is unbalanced, untested, and un-thought-out.

Armor is worthless, enemies one-three tap you most of the time.

Magic barrier is worthless for the same reasons.

Based on the previous two statements thorns as a mechanic is worthless.

Mana regen is nearly worthless because the real way to keep your mana up is a rapid fire crit build since every crit restores 10% of your mana.

Most regeneration is worthless because most of it is a flat value where you heal like 2HP per second in a game where at endgame I have 1.6k. Even funnier when you see a passive in Cooking that restores .5 HP per second and a passive in Vitality that restores 1 HP/s and it doesn't even work above 50%. Nevermind that you have access to healing potion that heal 30%-40% of your HP per use and are on a laughably pathetic 5s cooldown.

Dodge is absurdly overpowered, you can get up to 90% without any consumables.

Melee weapons get mogged by ranged weapons because why risk catching a stray oneshot if you can just stay safe in the distance?

Consequently, most devastating melee weapon in the game is neither melee nor a weapon. It's Stormbringer, mining tool that doubles as a lightning cannon, and I have no idea how that's supposed to count as physical melee.

Movement skill tree has two main branches - one that BOTH requires to NOT move AND gives you extra movement speed for not doing so, and one that doesn't work on nearly every weapon because it requires you to consistently move while someone designed weapons to stop you dead in your tracks during every attack.

Mining has a skill that restores durability to mining tools for digging ore in a game where all endgame mining tools have infinite durability. And you are forced to take that skill if you want to get the + Explosives damage.

Summoning is just the worst summoning system on the market. Plays and feels like resprited magic.

Entire swathes of weapons feel either blatantly inferior to their counterparts or even straight up unusuable, like the explosive magic staff that BOUNCES its projectiles off the damn enemies.

Most ingame effects trigger on a per-hit basis, which means rapid fire weapons such as the Arcane Staff or the Quill Rifle or the aforementioned Stormbringer wipe the floor with slow fire rate weapons.



And that's just off the top of my head. Whole skill trees need rebalancing, whole weapon lines, whole mechanics...

Damn, i can't believe i agree with every single sentence in a comment from steam discussions. Beautifully put.

[TH3G4M3GRL]

Originally posted by Faust:

I'll do you one better, lad. The entire combat system across all of its skills and equipment is unbalanced, untested, and un-thought-out.
(Snip)

Absolutely agreed. I don't HATE the combat of the game, but pretty much the only thing encouraging me to finish this game is the exploration and seeing the pretty environments. The game itself is incredibly atmospheric, but everything else feels like an afterthought.

[Swift_Talon]

Explosive is just re skinned fishing and crafting exp farms, you can get net positive material gains with crafting tree bonuses for bombs, alongside explosive free explosives and material drop from explosives. The end result is leveling fishing with flashbangs for free tin.

[BoiledTeaBag]

You are aware that the mortars are explosive and ranged right?
So any boost to either makes them effective weapons, and levelling explosive and ranged to 100 each is basically a +100% damage bonus to mortars.

Each hit procs a ranged damage hit and a explosive damage hit, you are hitting two times per shot.
Add in the temporary melee and crit bonus's from them and you can hybrid in melee.
20% chance for napalm, means 20% damage for burning with a burning damage modifier in there too that you can use for fire/burning weapons or the mortar itself.

I'm seeing a trend where people go "X thing about game is not balanced well" yeah there are some flat out bad things in the game, and some equipment is meant to replace what you currently have in terms of item level or scaling, conversely some weapons aren't even worth using and so they are just free scrap for materials.
But the skill tree's are designed to compliment each other and you are meant to combine those bonus's, not make a smooth brained ranged build or "muh magic is not good unless I make it the crit mana gain build" and let that be the end of it.

I genuinely think a majority of you people choose to live in the game and thus you get jaded by things you perceive are "bad" without experimenting new things.

I do however agree that summoning is straight up bad, upgrade it and you can only summon 1 or 2 minions or leave it at base level and have weak minions.
Currently the minions are imo just a support system, like the minion that deals radiation damage to combo up with the commander gear set for example, core keeper doesn't have true summoning builds, it has summons that act as supports or free dps.

[TH3G4M3GRL]

Originally posted by BoiledTeaBag:

You are aware that the mortars are explosive and ranged right?
So any boost to either makes them effective weapons, and levelling explosive and ranged to 100 each is basically a +100% damage bonus to mortars.

Each hit procs a ranged damage hit and a explosive damage hit, you are hitting two times per shot.
Add in the temporary melee and crit bonus's from them and you can hybrid in melee.
20% chance for napalm, means 20% damage for burning with a burning damage modifier in there too that you can use for fire/burning weapons or the mortar itself.

But the skill tree's are designed to compliment each other and you are meant to combine those bonus's, not make a smooth brained ranged build or "muh magic is not good unless I make it the crit mana gain build" and let that be the end of it.

Okay so ♥♥♥♥ the normal bombs somebody with interest in explosives would be interested in using because the mortars double dip? Skill trees are not made to complement each other. Occasionally they will have something to encourage hybridization but that is not the norm. Running provides global buffs as well as one specific reward for dodge. Melee has a single skill that gives a % chance to improve ranged damage. Ranged has a single skill that improves Melee. Farming provides a % chance to poison and buff against poisoned targets. That's just an addition than a complement to any build. It does complement crit builds by just giving them increased raw damage. Cooking gives a global damage buff and complements melee with an attack speed buff. Magic gives crit chance. Summoning provides a small magic damage buff per summon. Explosives provide a melee buff to complement melee builds and can refill a meager amount of mana on explosion for magic builds.

That is all of the skills that affect other things. A lot of these "complements" are not synergies but just global buffs and MOST trees are self centered. This also still heavily punishes lower attack speed playstyles because of how many things are just straight up % chances to proc and stacking from multiple hits.

Along with that, this still doesn't help the fact that explosives suck and the only one that's decent is the mortars. Actually look at the game before you start saying things about it.

[Faust]

I genuinely think a majority of you people choose to live in the game and thus you get jaded by things you perceive are "bad" without experimenting new things.

You know, except for that one thing I perceive as bad, that one's correct because it's my opinion.

[Maho]

the whole skill system needs a rework, a lot of things are just worthless filler to the next useful upgrade and the ceiling and floor between different play styles are far too apart...
melee needs a strong form of sustain or very strong buff to make the risk worth it or more manageable, summoning lacks substance right now its just a sub dps skill "cast and forget"; either fully commit to being a "support" to add more damage or make it do more things...and overall the game needs another meta outside of atk speed because that its the end of all builds.