My list of suggestion on how to re-balance a lot of the stuff in the game

[Laks]

I'm not going to give specific numbers, because balancing is indeed hard, and I feel like devs a lot more competent in this department than me. I'm also not going to touch anything that requires a nerf, unless my changes make it so it needs one.

Melee weapons:

Balanced blade – as it is now, balanced blade feels rather awkward to use most of the time. Decreasing amound of strikes needed to crit by 1 (2?) would help with that

Blood blade – takes relies a bit to much on bleed. Most other weapons would already kill by the point blood sword get to optimal stack Giving it some crit condition would be nice, otherwise buffing its damage slightly would be good enough

Swift sword – is very limited when it comes to boss fights. Giving it tonfa’s old crit condition (damage scales with move speed) would make it much more versatile

Flawless – just make it so its first attack is an actual thrust. This is a spear afterall

Tentacle – just deals too little damage to justify ever taking it. Even when it comes to using it as utility, there’s already grappling hook

Toothpick – fixing this weapon’s problem by not fixing it, and instead putting the fix on legendary variant is very underwhelming decision. This weapon is already very risky to use with its full effect in a game so fast paced as dead cells. Giving it breaking mechanic just makes it unviable. Just remove whole breaking thing, and legendary variant could allow you to supercharge instead

Machete and pistol – feels too awkward to use. Weapon itself is fine (except, why pistol attack counts as melee? So many cool synergies to be had), but its animations are awkward. I mean, Beheaded swinging machete with fully extended arm just feels bad. This little detail just makes me never want to pick it up, despite weapon being good.

Hard Light Sword – just takes too much work to setup. Not only it’s two handed, but also by the point you stack enough marks, most other weapons would’ve already killed an enemy

Abyssal Trident – making it so every single tick of damage counts as separate (to allow Open Wounds, Poison, Adrenaline, Frenzy synergies) would make it a lot more fun to use, as well as increasing amount of cool synergies. To not make this overpowered, weapon could use slight damage nerf

Bladed Tonfas – as this weapon is right now, it feels too awkward to use. Leap attack being forced makes you miss most enemies, so you have to aim, which just feels awkward, and makes me reluctant to ever use this weapon. Keeping its current crit condition, but bringing its old moveset would massively improve this weapons usability.

Wrecking ball – This weapon is hard to balance, because on one hand it’s too slow, but on the other being able to fulfill that massive ball of metal fantasy is amazing, and ball’s slowness helps with that. Personally, I would nerfs its attack speed overall slightly, but remove its crit condition entirely, and greatly buff its damage to supplement lack of crit condition. Ball could also use some slight range increase. On the other hand, you could keep this weapon as it is now, but remove crit condition, and make it so holding attack button makes you throw the ball. Both of the changes would help keep the whole “super slow weapon that hits really hard” fantasy, while making the weapon more viable

Dagger of Profit – just increase crit duration by a second or two

Queens rapier – turn it into dual scaling with brutality and tactics. It works with tactics mutation, but you can’t really use that, unless you get lucky

Ranged weapons:

Ice Bow – give it innate ability to penetrate one (all?) enemy. As it is right now, this is just worse version of frost blast

Ice Crossbow – same as Ice Bow. Except ice shot has to penetrate all enemies in its path. Also, make it deal increased damage against slowed enemies, because this weapons is useless against bosses, which is pretty bad for two handed weapon.

Lightning bolt – just make it dual scaling with survival again. This is a slow weapon after all. Also, survival has no consistent way to use electricity, so this would add some synergies

Magic Missiles – needs some damage buff

Gilded Yumi – make it dual scaled with survival

Shields:

Force shield – is too situational. Perhaps, one could make it so that when pressing shield button, it generates force field passively for short time, but also takes long time to recharge in other time

Thunder Shield – make it dual scaling with survival

Skills:

Emergency Door – make it into emergency wall instead, which breaks after few hits. This will provide bunch of new synergies, while still keeping its synergy with a crowbar

Magnetic grenade – either needs another rework, or needs to be changed back to how it was before recent rework. As it is now, it deals too little damage to make it viable offensive option, and its new magnetic properties are to awkward and will most of the time get you damaged

Hunter’s grenade – bring back it giving stats. HG giving stats was a very cool unique strategy. While it may be overpowered on 3BC (but let’s be honest, most things are), but it’s completely okay on 4 and 5 BC. Equipment slots are very valuable on those difficulties, so giving up one skill is a lot more dangerous than one might think. If you need to keep nerf in any way, make it into actual legendary instead, and give it unique effect where it give you one stat to your highest stat (maybe even more to your lowest)

Vampirism – is awful now. Its old iteration was while risky, also very rewarding. New version is just awful. You lose too much health, and don’t gain enough before it runs out. Sure, there are some build that are very powerful with it, but they’re so specific, that it’s not really worth it

Tonic – with how much this game pushes being undamaged, this skills doesn’t feel like it provides enough. Making it so that taking damage to blue health doesn’t count as damage (same way as face flask) would make this item way more interesting to use

Forgotten Map – I don’t remember ever using this. Either make it reusable in some way, or make it so that it can spawn on later levels, gated by expensive golden door

Mutations:

None of the flask related mutations seem worth it on higher levels (except for tainted flask), because flask are so rare. Needs to be looked into. Can’t give any suggestion

Kill Rhythm – turning this one into colorless would give ton of new synergies.

Porcupack/Acrobatipack/Armadillopack – combine those three, and turn them into colorless mutation, which uses item in backpack when dodging. Nerf damage massively to compensate. This will increase amount of synergies by A LOT

YOLO – as it is right now, there’s no reason to use this once you unlocked Disengagement. Make it so it heals you fully on use, but you need to rebuy it again every time. Could also make it so that it resurrects player when killed by curse. Until it retains “cannot be removed” part, it always will be inferior to disengagement

Dead Inside – consider decreasing healing penalty slightly, or bring back its old effect of easing malaise (maybe it should slow down malaise build up?)

Alienation/Acceptance – combine into a single mutation. Requires too much (two mutation slot is a lot) while also being very risky. It being a single mutation would improve that

Biomes:

Derelict distillery – as it is now, this is probably the hardest location in the game, but it’s only worth going there if you absolutely despise two other locations. Giving it more rewards would make its difficulty way more justified.

Biomes rewards in general need rebalancing. Either making it so all rewards are the same between biomes are the same, but reshuffling all enemies to be themed (for example: promenade contains mostly flying enemies, dilapidated arboretum contains a lot of tanky enemies, morass of the banished contains *a lot* of watery levels) (a lot of work option). Alternatively, make it so all stages have same amount of scrolls, but different biomes give different unique rewards. Some biomes should have guaranteed food shop, some better item quality. Basically, same as it is right now, but lean harder into that.

Also, please rework how incentivized biomes work. As it is now, unless you only play certain biomes specifically, you will never see incentivized biomes. Make it so biome with least amount of visits in a group (first tree, second three and so on) gets IB comparatively. For example, let’s say player visited first group of biomes (promenade, arboretum, sewers) 60, 61, 59 times respectively. Third biome with 59 visits should get IB bonus, but if player visits it two times, then first biome should bet the bonus instead. As this system works now, in this example, none of the biomes would get the bonus.

Stats:

There are a lot of dual scaling melee weapons with tactics. The issue is, there is no reason to ever use melee weapon with tactics, since there’s not mutation that complement melee tactics play style. With how risky (how quickly you die) tactics is, there’s practically no reason to ever use melee weapons with tactics. Consider either giving new melee mutations to tactics, reworking some weapons so that tactics mutations work with them, or bringing back those mutation there were moved to brutality

General:

Some of the new legendary effects are just boring. Stuff like Wave of Denial having basic star affix is boring. It sure is powerful, but it is boring

Consider adding basic modding support. All mods, even the basic ones, right now disable achievements. Mods are barely used because even basic mods that change soundtrack, or replace skins still disable achievements. And since most people are stuck on lower BC levels, they don’t want to get rid of achievements just for a mod.

Basic: (basically all of the suggestions that didn't have much thought put into them, other than "I want that")

Add more basic weapon types (halberd, scythe, mace, etc.)

Would be cool to have curse mechanic reworked

More aspects. Especially the ones that give new interesting way's to play (ex. massively increase over time damage, decrease all of other your damage)