HoH2 - the NG+ issue

[Ostrogoth]

Ho boys, I felt in love with this tiny bulked ARPG/Rogue lite. Like my first days on Diablo, PoE, Last Epoch and so on. Visualy gorgeous, many cool builds to try out, enviro are cool, there is always something that push you to launch another run, the map's layers are cool, bestiary is cool, the game is cool, you get it. But I'm not gonna lie, there is so many issues. This post isn't about just complaining, but to list and debate around all balancing and design issues, ruining the game at the moment.

Before anything else : this post is about the game at ng+1 minimum. If you are currently enjoying the game in its base difficulty, allright, but it will be normal if you dont recognize yourself in following issues. Like "You are a liar, I'm invicible with my paladin lvl 17 !". Wait until ng+2 and 50 shadow curse stack from nowhere.

1. a LOT of stats

First of all, about the stats. There is ♥♥♥♥ ton of stats, and it's pretty cool ! Lot of theorycrafting possible and builds. But in the other hands, we don't have any information about which stats do what or impact what, how damage bucket is calculated, how penetration work, paired with the fact that some stats/spell are broked, it's complicated to evaluate which stats to prio/is usefull.

2. Melee build are barely unplayable at ng+

Not gonna lie, melee build are almost unplayable in ng+. You need to expose yourself to hit a LOT more than ranged builds, therefore you will stack a lot more shadow curse, and finaly you'll tank nothing really quickly, but still in need to be at melee to do some damages. Not talking about the light caster before the last level who will just shotgun oneshot you if you do ONE mistake.

Add to this the truely lack of sustain of the warrior in his own kit, while paladin have a ok tier heal but with a certain cd. While for example Warlock has a lot better sustain mechanic than warrior or paladin.

You can't facetank at all, you will be shred in no time. With armor debuff of ng+ and the stack of shadow curse you will get, you'll be far less tanky than a ranger or a mage in few minutes.

The only build that work a little bit with paladin, imo, is the divine hammer, full spell power, and you run in circle at max ranged around enemies while divine hammer fall from the sky while you dodge everything.

3. Minion builds doesn't scale with ng+

Summoner builds become quickly unplayable in ng+, while minions have too little hp pool and tankiness to face enemies. Trying some runs with a warlock with minions spe, my little minions are being one shot from floor 3 to the end of the run.

Add to this that I need to expose myself to hit in melee to stack essence to summon minions and therefore lost my essence stack of hp, while my minions are being OS and offer me no sustain or whatever. Minion build warlock is useless.

Ranger has a little minion build, wolf are ok tier, but damage+attack speed is low, and he is 3 or 4 hit to death at high floor.

4. Floor with lighting caster is unbalanced as hell

This floor is not fun at all nor challenging, it's just stupidly unbalanced. One mistake : one shot by a light shotgun from a caster or a light totem. Every other floor have its own mechanic and danger, like the big priest that summon shadows when you kill other ennemies in the temple/crypt. But the floor with those lighting mages ruin the entire run almost everytime. It's not about a difficulty pick, because the last floor is far more easier (but not without issues) than this one, its juste stupidly unbalance. Why in hell even in just normal difficulty, with 700 armor and 250 lighting resist, I'm almost one shot by a lighting cast ?

5. Last floor, too much colors, help

The last floor enviro is pretty cool, but ennemies in it have real issues. The major one isn't about their design, its ok and challenging the fact that they are all spliting, but please change the VFX or sprite's monster visual, because atm we can't see the difference between mobs themself and their huge numbers of projectiles. Especially the purple one. They have almost the same visual between them and their purple bubble projectiles. Its a visual chaos the entire floor.

6. Auto attack/Physical scaling is bad, spell power is key

I can't understand how weapon power, physical damage, spell power, weapon damage on weapon works. But what I've understand is : Spell power/Spell damage > ALL.

In this game, in fact, everything but your auto attack is considered a spell. Pick spell power/%spell damage on all your items, pick 3 spell powers/spell crit/elemental damage drinks, and destroy everything. All spell power stats will scale every spells/passives you have.

'till now I've tried many builds, picking precise stats on item, attack speed, physical damage, crit, pure stats like strength, int, ... But in fact, when I just build tons of spell power/damage, I do a lot more damage. It's a nonsense, like why on my warrior I need to build like a pure mage to do a ♥♥♥♥ tons of damage with my axe throw, totems, leap etc ?

I don't know how the bucket calcul is, but what I've understand is that spell power/damage offer the best scaling by far. Correct me if I'm wrong.

7. Shadow face boss, cool at first time, boring all other times

Shadow face is pretty cool visualy, I love this old 3D art in a 2D enviro. The design is cool to encouter the first time, but it's really anoying and slow for nothing all other times. A boss where you accumulated power and scaling doesn't change the speed of the fight is a bad boss mechanic imo. And even more, this boss will stack you a tons of shadow curse for nothing. It's really anoying for nothing.

8. Enchant is a cool feature, just give it to us (same with blueprints trinket and drinks)

I love enchant feature in rpg/arpg/mmo, and in Hoh2 it's pretty cool and let us optimize our stuff and build. But gosh the ♥♥♥♥ tons of farm and runs needed to hope finding all enchant needed to our builds is just the worst RNG use I've ever seen. Give us all enchant, or at least dunno, let us buy every enchant at an NPC with our golds or trinkets ressources.

Same with blueprints trinkets and drinks. Its cool to find one here and there in some runs, but let us buy those at some NPC with our golds or ressources. The RNG is insane here.

9. Traps issue with tickrate of damage

Dunno if it's just myself, but I guess that there is a real issue on many traps. You take a lot of damage, even more while you are dodging, even more if you are at the cross of multiple traps like spikes one. No invulnerability frame, no dodging frame with the dash, and if you dash you seems to take multiple tick at once. It's complicated to figure out what's going weird with traps, but there is some issues for sure.

[Dusklite]

You can very well see what stat affects what in the game. Granted, you might have to do a bit of math, but a pure physical 80 damage weapon with 200 attack power will always do 160 damage versus unarmored targets for example. Points in dexterity will increase critical weapon damage by 1% and critical chance by .3% (or was it .35%, would have to check). Multipliers to damage types like physical will modify damage after calculation.
And so on.
There is no damage spread, it's all very stable.

[Unzeal]

Agree on everything here. Hopefully they rework the melee classes a bit and the shadow curse. I don`t mind the shadow curse as risk reward system but as a melee class you get way more stacks than as a ranged/caster.
Also, scroll of magic missle/meteor ect should get a buff in NG+ and upwards, as they become obsolete.

[Varyn [GER]]

On top a more general feedback:
10. Quality of Life
- Having to lift my hand and press esc on pretty much everything is annoying, let us use C/rightclick/whatever to dismiss a window.
- Compare items have to be enabled on every single item you want to compare with your current gear. Please change it to a toggle.
- No sorting options in the stash and inventory is tedious.
- No skill queuing thus no reliability on skill use is a no-go in a effect loaded game. I have to release left mouse, press the skill button, wait for an unclear time and hope something happens, and then I can use leftclick again. Why not have skills interrupt/cancel basic attacks or at least be queued for after the next basic attack? Would make the gameplay so much smoother.
- No zoom or move options for the overlay map. Whenever I want to see if I missed a spot on the map I have to use the character-sheet map, which always forgets my zoom settings.

Oh, and regarding RNG: It would be nice to see trinket and gear drops a bit more evened out. On my last run, I found almost only gear and no trinkets. As only trinkets help with the current run, it feels quite unfair.

What actually gives one the shadow curse on NG+? The game explains nothing and making a connection between a tiny number in the bottom of the screen rising and something specific happening in all that effect mess is kinda hard...

[RoniZ]

Agreed.
NG+ feels like an afterthought they slapped onto the game at the end of development.
Balance and scalings need to be adressed, and all the bugged skills/features.

[Kharnath]

i completely agree. doing a ng+ run now with ranger, and starting -200 armor and resistancr already feels unfair but then to also getting hit by shadow curse attacks is just absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. the amount of enemies that give shadow curses is also ridiculous and their attacks are homing, good luck dodging 5 elites, i couldn't.

i don't even want to play ng+ with a melee build because it just all seems unfair and not fun at all. which sucks because warlock requires melee weapons.
(which btw is also ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, why limit that class to only 1 type of weapon?)

i don't mind a challenge but hitting us with such big penalties straight after finishing the end boss is just nonsensical. at least let us keep upgrading our power or something.

either remove(or massively tone down) the armor and resistance penalty for ng+ or remove the shadow curse enemies. both is just unnecessarily unfair

[banetrapperdev]

I hear allot of "Melee is not viable" yet i don't see anyone having lvl 25-30warriors.
Even with 100curse monsters do no damage per hit to my 1200hp warrior.. But then you get 1 shot by lightning mage...
Melee doesn't have enough resistances. It has plenty of armor (Str gets 3x from base then other types)
But yeah... you can't play "melee" in NG+ you have to play melee class as mages or kite/cheese

[Drogash]

im in NG+5 with warrior melee

[Altyrian]

Just cleared NG+2 with solo Paladin. From what I'm reading, I feel like you're engaging with enemies you don't need to engage with. Even with the -400 armor from NG+2, Paladin is still tanky enough to run through crowds with ease. The best strategy I've found so far is to simply run through the level, grab your orbs and trinkets, and move on to the next. There's no real point in engaging every single enemy unless you're trying to level up. You're only going to risk accumulating a lot of curse stacks that way. Once you're at your max level for your current NG, enemy engagements become rather pointless, just run the level, get your upgrades, and then do bosses which are relatively easier due to melee sustain.

I do agree with some of the points, and this play style is a result of them. Curse build up is felt the most on melee classes, and it would be nice if the little pyres did a bit more than take like 2 stacks off of 50+.

[Raim]

They shouldn't encourage people to speedrun through the levels. If anything there should be some kind of bonus awarded for killing 90% of the enemies in a map.

[Rubyeyed]

Originally posted by Altyrian:

Just cleared NG+2 with solo Paladin. From what I'm reading, I feel like you're engaging with enemies you don't need to engage with. Even with the -400 armor from NG+2, Paladin is still tanky enough to run through crowds with ease. The best strategy I've found so far is to simply run through the level, grab your orbs and trinkets, and move on to the next. There's no real point in engaging every single enemy unless you're trying to level up. You're only going to risk accumulating a lot of curse stacks that way. Once you're at your max level for your current NG, enemy engagements become rather pointless, just run the level, get your upgrades, and then do bosses which are relatively easier due to melee sustain.

I do agree with some of the points, and this play style is a result of them. Curse build up is felt the most on melee classes, and it would be nice if the little pyres did a bit more than take like 2 stacks off of 50+.

Sounds reasonable and probably works well but at the same time it's just sad that the optimal way to play is to actually not play and skip everything not necessary.

[Martial Autist]

Originally posted by Altyrian:

Just cleared NG+2 with solo Paladin. From what I'm reading, I feel like you're engaging with enemies you don't need to engage with. Even with the -400 armor from NG+2, Paladin is still tanky enough to run through crowds with ease. The best strategy I've found so far is to simply run through the level, grab your orbs and trinkets, and move on to the next. There's no real point in engaging every single enemy unless you're trying to level up. You're only going to risk accumulating a lot of curse stacks that way. Once you're at your max level for your current NG, enemy engagements become rather pointless, just run the level, get your upgrades, and then do bosses which are relatively easier due to melee sustain.

I do agree with some of the points, and this play style is a result of them. Curse build up is felt the most on melee classes, and it would be nice if the little pyres did a bit more than take like 2 stacks off of 50+.

They should just get rid of the whole shadow curse thing imho (outside of those optional extra trinket/passive pickups), and also remove NG+ armor penalty. Then just give a reasonable buff to enemies with every NG+ cycle to keep it proportional to how the balance is during lvl1-20 in NG, maybe a little tougher with each cycle. Then give people the option to opt into a whole bunch of set penalties for greater rewards, and maybe some extra achievements for completing runs with them.

I think that would be a lot better than how it currently works.

And just a personal nitpick but as for the title bonuses from leveling each class; it would be a lot better to have them activate when a character reaches lvl20, from every class that is lvl20+. And then scale all those bonuses with the character's own level going forward. So a lvl40 paladin (for example) would have bonuses as if all classes are lvl40 as long as they are at least lvl20. That way they still incentivise testing out each class, but you don't have to play them like your main to get higher and higher bonuses out of them.

[Revalopod]

Originally posted by Altyrian:

The best strategy I've found so far is to simply run through the level, grab your orbs and trinkets, and move on to the next. There's no real point in engaging every single enemy unless you're trying to level up. You're only going to risk accumulating a lot of curse stacks that way. Once you're at your max level for your current NG, enemy engagements become rather pointless, just run the level, get your upgrades, and then do bosses which are relatively easier due to melee sustain.

If I'm not killing every single enemy in the level, I'm not having fun. If the optimal way to play is to just run through everything, that's terrible game design and will get boring extremely quickly.

[Altyrian]

Originally posted by Revalopod:

Originally posted by Altyrian:

The best strategy I've found so far is to simply run through the level, grab your orbs and trinkets, and move on to the next. There's no real point in engaging every single enemy unless you're trying to level up. You're only going to risk accumulating a lot of curse stacks that way. Once you're at your max level for your current NG, enemy engagements become rather pointless, just run the level, get your upgrades, and then do bosses which are relatively easier due to melee sustain.

If I'm not killing every single enemy in the level, I'm not having fun. If the optimal way to play is to just run through everything, that's terrible game design and will get boring extremely quickly.

It sounds like you're going to get bored very quickly regardless clearing Forest 1 every single time. There are engagements that are outright pointless, clearing the 6 wasps in some corner away from an exit in Forest 1 doesn't really do much to help you get better gear and push for a higher NG. You may have fun doing that, but I have fun going through the early levels as fast as possible to get to the ones where I actually have to think about how I'm going to clear to advance. Both of our play styles get us to the same point, yours is just vastly more time consuming in my opinion.

[HexDot]

I don't agree with a permanent shadow curse which is only reduced when you hit the barracks... Maybe a slower tick down, where it hits you in the moment of combat, but if you wait a bit, it can slowly tick down. I'd be okay with that. I'm currently afk looking through discussions about this mechanic and it hasn't gone down a point at all. There's a lot of avenues they can take with shadow curse in ng+, anything but permanent debuffs till Barracks.

Also, its easy to know what is a weapon skill and what is a spell skill. At the bottom, your weapon skills are always to the left of your health bar. Your spell skills are to the right.

Edit: Ok... they added fires before bosses and put some in before the barracks... I still don't like the mechanic tho... just sayin...

[Martial Autist]

Originally posted by Altyrian:

Originally posted by Revalopod:

If I'm not killing every single enemy in the level, I'm not having fun. If the optimal way to play is to just run through everything, that's terrible game design and will get boring extremely quickly.

It sounds like you're going to get bored very quickly regardless clearing Forest 1 every single time. There are engagements that are outright pointless, clearing the 6 wasps in some corner away from an exit in Forest 1 doesn't really do much to help you get better gear and push for a higher NG. You may have fun doing that, but I have fun going through the early levels as fast as possible to get to the ones where I actually have to think about how I'm going to clear to advance. Both of our play styles get us to the same point, yours is just vastly more time consuming in my opinion.

I think he means what you said to OP in regards to melee tank in NG+, not chasing every wasp. x'D