Silvan Shell is underhwelming

[Legionnaire0311]

Game is amazing, great addition to this dopamine rush genre. Just wanted to make that clear before my criticism. I'm really enjoying it.

That being said, Silvan Shell is a very underwhelming weapon. It behaves like a worse version of the Storm Javelin (which is a solid weapon). It drops one relatively small patch of poison on the ground, which doesn't happen very often and doesn't do much damage. This is a game where you are running around constantly, so having one small patch of poison on the ground a full screen away doesn't really do much good for the player. The evolution doesn't really help the situation, especially since I'm not even sure what Curse does.

I've tried it multiple times, focusing on it and acquiring/evolving it very early on in a run to give it a fair shake. The end of run damage breakdown showed that it had barely done any damage whatsoever. I don't have the exact numbers, but it was roughly 28k damage, whereas Whirlwind Pickaxe and Volcanic Orbs consistently get 200-300K damage and most other weapons are comparable.

I'm not sure what I would do to make it better without essentially turning it into Storm Javelin, but it's not working in its current state.

Anyone else have thoughts on Silvan Shell?

[WaaghMan]

Hi! Thank you for the feedback, it's much appreciated. Being its first iteration, it's understandable that some of the new weapons are unbalanced, and feedback like yours is very welcome in tuning them to make them useful and interesting.

By the way, enemies in Cursed state will receive additional damage from any source.

[Thane Krios]

Originally posted by WaaghMan:

Hi! Thank you for the feedback, it's much appreciated. Being its first iteration, it's understandable that some of the new weapons are unbalanced, and feedback like yours is very welcome in tuning them to make them useful and interesting.

By the way, enemies in Cursed state will receive additional damage from any source.

I dont love this weapon too, it's too much random and not very effective. I think buff weapon with poison is necessary, not one time I said to myself I take this weapon for poison effect.

[Soulsniper1313]

Yea either it needs to be a constant around the player pool, shotgunned out like javelin, or 3x as strong super puddle players can chase around for protection

[Wunju]

Originally posted by WaaghMan:

Hi! Thank you for the feedback, it's much appreciated. Being its first iteration, it's understandable that some of the new weapons are unbalanced, and feedback like yours is very welcome in tuning them to make them useful and interesting.

By the way, enemies in Cursed state will receive additional damage from any source.

Is there a list somewhere of what ailments do? I have no idea what poison does, for example.

[WaaghMan]

There's a page on it in the How to Play.

In the next update (which will take some time, as we've started working on new features) damage caused by Burn and Poison will be shown while playing.

[Troubles The Cat]

Yeah I can't seem to make shell work either. There's a number of ways to go about changing it but I'm not sure what would be best really. The fact that poison/curse/burn doesn't stack really hurts it as well

[WaaghMan]

Originally posted by Troubles The Cat:

The fact that poison/curse/burn doesn't stack really hurts it as well

Hi! Since the last patch, poison and burn do stack.

[Troubles The Cat]

Originally posted by WaaghMan:

Originally posted by Troubles The Cat:

The fact that poison/curse/burn doesn't stack really hurts it as well

Hi! Since the last patch, poison and burn do stack.

Oh? That's weird. Is there a cap then? Because 2 poison weapons on a boss and the most it ever ticks for is 7

[WaaghMan]

No, but that they stack doesn't mean that the effect can be increased indefinitely.

If a single hit deals 20 damage over 10 seconds (that means a "Tick" of 1, as they're shown twice per second), and a second one is applied halfway (10 damage remaining of the first hit), the new effect will be 30 damage over 10 seconds.

In that example, if we repeat the same hits with the same frequency, we're limited to a maximum of 40 damage over 10 seconds ( just multiply damage by attack frequency ).

That said, we'll be buffing a few DoT effects of weapons the next update.

[Troubles The Cat]

I didn't understand that :/

[WaaghMan]

To be honest, the mechanics of DoT stacking can be quite complex.

In short, DoT damage is stacking, but except for attacks with very high hit rate such as Rotting Coil (it hits 4-5 times per second), you won't notice a huge increase in the damage dealt per tick, and within 5-10 seconds, it will probably settle close to its maximum theoretical value.

Just for fun, here's a guide for poison damage on Diablo 2, which we used as documentation when implementing stacking: https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Guide:Calculating_Poison_Damage_v1.10,_by_onderduiker

[Troubles The Cat]

Hmm if it stacks like that seems like it will be never worth vs instant damage