Make Dr. Fetus the lowest priority tear modifier.

[darkflames9]

With how pitifully weak Dr. Fetus is right now, it doesn't make any sense for it to override obviously stronger tear effects, like brimstone. Until appropriate buffs are made, I propose Dr. Fetus be made as the lowest priority tear modifier (second only to cursed eye, though people learned just to not play with it at all).Dr. Fetus doesn't benefit from bomb modifiers (it didn't with fire bombs so I'm guessing it doesn't work with any of them) except maybe Mr. Mega but reducing your effective damage item pool to just one item is not fun. (Apparently Dr. Fetus scales better with damage upgrades now but I haven't seen them do jack diddly squat) Brimstone is an obvious upgrade to Dr. Fetus, and so is Monstro's lung, heck basic tears are in some situations better than Dr. Fetus. It really sucks when you pick up Dr. Fetus early because it's more convenient at the moment, but then have to pass up brimstone because the game has decided weak ass bombs are a better pick than a laser of doom.

Tl;Dr Brimstone > Dr. Fetus. (Everything pretty much > Dr. Fetus)

[-ERROR]

Also high tear stat is useless and even unwanted if you have Dr. Fetus.

[Curious Duck]

All I'm seeing is..."waaaah Dr Fetus isn't OP like in Vanilla".

People seriously need to stop complaining and just play the game.

[-ERROR]

Originally posted by Matt ♠ #BOIR:

All I'm seeing is..."waaaah Dr Fetus isn't OP like in Vanilla"

What's your problem with that statement?

[darkflames9]

Oh yes, Edmund McMillan and Nicalis are gods and no one should ever dare question Their decisions. The game is completely perfect as it is and further updates are blasphemous. In fact, all posts containing any opinion that says anything other than "this game is the greatest piece of technology in the history of human innovation" should be deleted immediately. We don't want that in our community discussions. Customer inputs and suggestions have no weight whatsoever in the development of a game as amazing as this. While we're at it, let's revert the game back to patch 1.0. Those updates were a mistake.

[MTV]

It's super ♥♥♥♥♥♥ now. It's even worse than basic tears other than for blowing up rocks and finding secret rooms. Still.. I managed to make Dr.Fetus pretty good by mixing it with ipecac. You get explode on touch and a big damage upgrade. Other then that, it's a terribad item now.

[Xan]

I didn't have problems with Dr Fetus, but then again I got a lot of Damage Up items on my run.

[FrozenStar]

Its damage is now based on your damage and modifiers. If you are lucky enough, you will get even stronger version of Ferus, than the vanilla one.
If you are not lucky, well, you still can get used to it, its not that hard.

[Matirion Maeronta]

Personally, I'd say it's still quite effective if you have some items to increase the damage. Even without those, it basically made my hardmode runs go from nearly hopeless to successful. There's quite an advantage if you can blow up every rock you see and get a ton of extra consumables in hardmode.
It's main advantage isn't the damage anymore, but the alternate uses. And honestly, I'd choose dr. fetus over brimstone anytime. You just need to learn how to use it to its full advantage.

[Punchy]

Originally posted by Matt ♠ #BOIR:

All I'm seeing is..."waaaah Dr Fetus isn't OP like in Vanilla".

it's less that it's not OP anymore and more that the item is now just flat out bad,

[Daemonologist]

Honestly, I'd love to know what the damage formula is for the current dr fetus, once I've 100%ed the game I'll probably dive into the code a bit and find out, though chances are someone else will do that before me anyway.

I know the formula for the original is 50+3*tear damage or 100+3*tear damage if you have mr mega, this modification is generally applied after everything else - basically, the dr fetus tear modifier itself will triple your otherwise final damage and then add a further 50 (or 100 with mr mega) in the original.
This would easily one-shot anything that wasn't a boss (and with the right items could one shot most bosses too). Tear damage most certainly had a noticeable effect even in the original as such, it just had such high base damage that it was only noticeable on a few bosses, especially if you also had mr mega (epic fetus by comparison had a fixed damage of 80 - less than dr fetus+mr mega even without factoring in the basic tear damage multiplier, though epic fetus had several other advantages due to the aiming method. Brimstone by comparison caused 2+ instances (2 normally, more with brimsnapping) of 3*tear damage, making it also weaker than dr fetus in the vast majority of cases).

In rebirth, it clearly has a base damage of less than 10 without mr mega (vs 50 in the original), it may even be 0, and the multiplier seems to be less than 3*tear damage as well for that matter, making it strictly weaker than the original throughout the entire run when using the same dmg+ pickups as the original (polyphemus being by far one of the strongest in the original due to applying it's own additional multiplier). There are more dmg+ pickups in rebirth, but that's not enough reason to cripple the item to this extent. I could be wrong as I'm making estimates based on the items I'm familiar with (which may have actually changed too), but I find it hard to believe that it's even possible to hit almost 200 damage (yes, that is incredibly high, and a very rare occurence even in the original, but doable nonetheless) a bomb in rebirth, which was possible in the original with some good luck with items (polyphemus+mr mega+dr fetus+several other common dmg+ items like magic mushroom/max's head/pact/mark/etc).

In rebirth dr fetus seems to have odd damage interactions in general - most notably several people have suggested that once you pick up one of the bomb modifiers that actually works with dr fetus (I believe 3 of them don't, though I can only confirm 2 - hot bombs and butt bombs, sad bombs apparently doesn't either, though I've not been able to confirm either way on that one - at the very least it'll only release tears instead of bombs when it explodes if it does work though) the damage gets a hefty boost and makes it a far more practical item. Unfortunately, it seems quite rare for me to come across dr fetus+mr mega/bobby bomb/etc compared to the original too. Some have also suggested that it's actually resetting the damage when it obviously shouldn't be.

It's interesting that dr fetus overrides brimstone now - in the original brimstone overrid dr fetus despite dr fetus being better stat wise (dr fetus has several downsides brimstone doesn't have, but in terms of raw dps (brimsnapping abuse aside), fetus was better). Now dr fetus isn't good enough to warrant overriding brimstone but apparently does? that's just silly.

PS: Just to give an idea for those that don't get the damage values - for isaac with no items at all you deal a mere 3.5 damage per tear - or at least did in the original, I doubt they've changed that. Other characters can have different base damage with no items/etc of course.

[Daemonologist]

Originally posted by Kuu Lightwing:

Also high tear stat is useless and even unwanted if you have Dr. Fetus.

Not entirely true - in the original at least it reduced the time it takes for the bomb to explode - the active detonator is better and does make the tear stat irrelevant though. Cancer on the other hand actually improved the fire rate and let you fire more than 1 bomb at a time (cancer intentionally breaks the normal caps, so this isn't a big surprise). Whether or not it works the same in rebirth I couldn't say atm though.

[-ERROR]

Originally posted by Daemonologist:

Originally posted by Kuu Lightwing:

Also high tear stat is useless and even unwanted if you have Dr. Fetus.

Not entirely true - in the original at least it reduced the time it takes for the bomb to explode - the active detonator is better and does make the tear stat irrelevant though. Cancer on the other hand actually improved the fire rate and let you fire more than 1 bomb at a time (cancer intentionally breaks the normal caps, so this isn't a big surprise). Whether or not it works the same in rebirth I couldn't say atm though.

In rebirth some tear ups result in shooting a second bomb before first one explodes and thus the first one throws the second one back to your face.

[Daemonologist]

Originally posted by Kuu Lightwing:

In rebirth some tear ups result in shooting a second bomb before first one explodes and thus the first one throws the second one back to your face.

Oh dear, so tears now acts like cancer did in the original - I think I prefered the faster explosions, they take an awfully long time to explode after reaching their destination as is (unless it does both now, that wouldn't be so bad). The fire rate is never going to be high enough to make it a meaningful advantage anyway, certainly not enough to make up for the terrible damage if you find it at the start of a run.