Constructive Feedback + Tier List [All Maps VII cleared, all classes 60+]

[Sdric]

Proof: All maps max difficulty & all chars 60+

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2893891634
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2893891853

I will focus on aspects of the game that, in my eyes, need improvement. feel free to discuss or add more points to the list below

Enemies

At max. difficulty the game becomes pure survival. A circus of red circles. Generally, there are 2 viable strategies: 1) Get summons to draw enough aggro or 2) Use the Holy skill "Exorcism" combined with massive layers of def to tank random hits.

"But what about glasscannons & dodging? Well, you should dodge whatever you can - while certainly my FPS are partly at fault, as a veteran of bullet hell games Soulstone Survivors has quite a few "Oh come on!"-moments, that result in ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ death or severe hitpoint loss out of nowhere.

1. Fire-Boss-Flamethrower: 2 to 3 screens longs. Poor visability. Hits significantly outside of the shown hitbox. Relatively high turn speed.
   
2. Pala-Miniboss-Cone (Holy): Very fast travelling speed. Outranges shown hitbox. Extremely high cast speed. 1HKO even through heavy defense investment.

Honorable mention:

• Vodoo-Boss-Circle: While easy to avoid, the sheer frequency at which this is cast essentially renders all lower range builds unviable. With so many red circles around, being completely forced away from the bosses leaves the player with no other option other than to outrange his AoE, otherwise a significant amount of relevant stacks (e.g., Brittle or Fragility) is lost everry few seconds. Overall the sheer power of its zone control is harmful to player build variety

Perks

Trash tier:

• Rotating Fire-Orbs: Laughable damage. Even has trouble destroying green crystals. It could have had a spot in pure summoner builds as a last line of defense, but as is this ability is a must-banish.

Bottom tier:

• Armor / Life / Block: Those stats ONLY ever work if you have Holy skills to heal up and then you need EXTREME investment to get reach significant breakpoints. Many classes die in 1, 2 or 3 hits of major boss attacks. Even if one is survived the green crystal / level-up healing is low that you end up dead before you're healed up. Block is too few and too unreliable. Armor takes to much investment to hit significant breakpoints. Flat damage reductrion can be somewhat useful to reduce pokes, but overall defense is a lackluster stat that comes at the cost of sacrificing a lot of offensive power.... And dead enemies deal no damage. Overall armor should have it's formula changed to provide a bigger advantage with less investment, but stronger diminishing returns for full self-heal tank builds. By armor having higher value life is automatically buffed passively. Block could either get an increased change or be changed to block 1 guaranteed hit every X seconds.

Runes

Needs Improvement

• Focus Fire: As mentioned in the boss section, you can't afford not to have range. While the damage is nice, Executioneer easily does the same and more with better synergies. Generalist also is easily better.
  
• Purity: Flat damage builds are not functional, due to how strongly bosses scale. While Purity can work in a pure Frailty + Brittle or Frailty + Bleed build, overall the opportunity cost is too high. Purity would need either a significantly higher starting value or a reduced penalty per status in order to be a viable option.
  
• Center of Attention: While I love the idea behind this, this needs A LOT of lucky roles into area size to be playable at higher difficulties. Personally, I would like to see it featuring a slight area increase by default.

Classes

Slight difference from before: Here I will list all classes and not just the bottom.

S-Tier

1. Beastmaster - With the Singular Rune (allows multiple copies of the same skill) Beastmaster is arguably the best character in game. Wartigers are balanced for the highest difficulty of the game and even there, slightly overtuned. The pure DPS makes up for lacking the ability to target enemies and Bestal Wrath makes his beast go even more crazy. On top of that, having meatshields to bait some red circles away from you, is God-given. Even if RNG doesn't line up and you fail to get multiple copies of Wartiger, Beastmaster can combine some of the most reliable meta AoEs with their strong single-target DPS.
   
2. Paladin - As mentioned earlier, Paladin is the one class that can poperly stack defense and sustain (and confused). On top of that Brittle, Fragility, Dazed and Crit Bonus grant him an above average offense.
   
3. Necromancer - Beastmaster, but arguably slightly worse due to less build flexibility and weaker companion buffs.
   
4. (Update according to feedback x3) Arcane Weaver - Since my initial runs suffered from bad RNG I ended up undervaluing him. After giving him another shot based on feedback here, his Shield and Orb (combined with access to Chaos Golems and multiple Brittle appliers) can indeed lead to very easy and successful runs.

A-Tier

1. Barbarian - Chaos Golems to tank + screen-filling AoE stacking conditions with "Synergetic"-rune or classic bleed/fragility/builds grant the Barbarian enough clearpower against trashmobs and elites, and distraction to only care about bosses and larger AoEs (e.g., "Lasting"-type build).
   
2. Hound Master - Chaos Golem to tank & stacking overlapping AoEs to rapidly ramp up Fragility stacks can allow the Houndmaster to quickly scale out of control. However, he's really dependant on getting AoE Size bonuses early on to really take off (thus slightly lower ranked than Berserker)

B-Tier

1. Pyromancer - Arguably A-Tier. Has access to Golem meat shields & strong AoEs that can even scale to out-of-screen range, BUT getting the right skills in time can be tough if RNG doesn't go your way.
   
2. The Sentinel - Spread Shot is an incredibly scaling Fragility applier when combined with the "Multi Cast Mastery"-Rune. Chaos Golem is there to tank. However, low range combined with a 50max health reduction is a hefty starting penalty and will require you to pick up some blue max health modifiers where possible to not get 1-shot killed.

C-Tier

1. The Death Knight - Arguably B-Tier. Great base stats. Solid early clear and scaling.... BUT having no dash will eventually break your neck in Endless runs, sometimes the red circles just spawn too awkward to dodge everything. OP in lower difficulties, though.
   
2. The Elementalist - Requires off-class bodies to tank for him, wasting some rune capacity when compared to Pyromancer. However, he has access to multicast buffs & brittle which grants him a good bosskill potential, though his AoE is limited.

D-Tier

1. The Chaoswalker - Doesn't really offer anything that the Synergistic-Rune doesn't offer any other character. "Controlled Chaos" rune is mandatory and takes up 2 capacity. Overall the numbers seem undertuned for the amount of RNG layers this character suffers from. Requires a lot of upgrade luck to really get going in higher difficulties.
   
2. Spellblade - Has to sacrifice a rune to either get sustain or bodies to block for him. Vulnearable, Exposed, etc. scale ralatively poorly in the highest difficulty, where Fragility and Brittle are king.
   
3. Assassin - While he has access to Chaos Golems, which could potentially enable his positioning gimmik, his extremely low range is just too much off a downside to reliably work at the highest difficult level. He can be decent if you manage to roll multiple general area modifiers early on, but most offen he's just frustrating to play and fails to scale properly before the 1st bosswave arrives, which leaves him to really struggle.

Trash-Tier

1. The Legionnaire - Struggles to kill even basic mobs. Equippiong defensive skills has significant opportunity cost. Damage reduction / tanking is worthless without consistent heal at the highest difficulty. Essentially has to go completely off-set through runes to work. Doesn't snowball well.

[Ulyaoth]

Only the dots applied by the passive. Same dots applied by active skills can only be increased in damage by increasing the damage of the active skill.
They are handled as seperate instances.

-Modifiers that increase the damage of a certain active skill do not increase the damage of status effects from passive skills applied by the active skill (it does affect status effects that are applied by that active skill itself though, shown in the skill description.)

https://soulstone-survivors.fandom.com/wiki/Attributes

[LastIcedragon]

Fire-Boss-Flamethrower: 2 to 3 screens longs. Poor visability. Hits significantly outside of the shown hitbox. Relatively high turn speed.
Pala-Miniboss-Cone (Holy): Very fast travelling speed. Outranges shown hitbox. Extremely high cast speed. 1HKO even through heavy defense investment.

<---that!!! this 2 made me go far to often: "Come the duck on! That hit isn't my fault!"

[Zerea]

I disagree with one of your core pillars of viability being "The ability to not get ping-ponged". Every single character has the ability to not get ping ponged, it's called picking up enough movement speed/slows/area so you can offscreen everything before it exists.

Defense stats are completely and utterly irrelevant in the long run because instantly killing everything on the screen is the supreme defense. 95% of runs I immediately banish Block, Armor, and HP because no amount of stacking any of them pays off. I feel you've severely underrated several classes I find are incredibly good at instantly nuking the entire screen (yes including bosses).

Elementalist with Weapon Expert starts with two of the best abilities in the game that greatly synergize with the rest of the skills offered. Call Lightning is literally cosplaying as Thor and it continually wipes the entire screen. Lightning Beam has obvious synergy with either Arcane or Light Beam (or both if you're feeling frisky), and provides incredibly easy access to a high-damaging debuff stacker for Doom/Fragile/Slow, etc... I literally don't even need to replace the starting abilities, how many other characters start with 2/6 of a Curse 7 viable build? Lightning Beam, Call Lightning, Arcane Power, Might, Light Beam, Death Vortex is a personal favorite build. Instant screen clears, significant single target DPS and debuff stacking, and with sufficient Area and multicast Death Vortex instantly grabs everything that isn't a boss and pulls them off to the side, making it insanely easy to focus on the scary AoEs.

Sentinel is a monster at both wave clear and single target. Shoot, Storm of Arrows, Ricochet Shot, Sniper Shot, Bloodlust, Chromatic Bolt and just hard stack cast frequency, multicast, and debuffs. Storm of Arrows is just Bladestorm but Projectile, and it also has the added benefit of being pseudo-single target the closer you get to the target. Be a giga chad and stand on top of the boss and their HP evaporates.

I do agree though in general that summons are very very strong. Tigers seem very overtuned, in nearly every aspect. You get too many, all of them can individually tie up significant aggro, and the damage and range on their attacks is probably excessive. Chaos golems are notably weaker Tigers, but still very strong. All of Necros kit is rather strong, and you're at a greater risk of dashing into an attack not meant for you, than one actually aimed at you.

[Andycrapped]

Assassin is junk tier with Legion. Even with Chaos Golems his dmg is still pathetic.

Remake this char.