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.

[Ramsey Rinehaus]

Want to give some unbiased info as much as it can be.

1) Melee is extremely strong in NG+, warrior actually might be the strongest class in the game.

2) Spin to win is broken af, warrior also has access to -%dmg taken, which seems to be an outside multiplier to armor/resistance and can entirely negate the loss of these stats in higher NG+

3) there really are only 2 "builds" with respect to stats for every character. You either do a lot of weapon skill stuff (left/right click by default) and thus need to stack dex/crit, or you do spells and need to stack int. I havent found any other type of successful build for NG+2 or higher and mixed builds just end up being bad at both.

4) maxing out your base is incredibly important so you can buy the perma buffs for your characters, having a character of each type, especially warrior (hp) and pally (armor) is super helpful

5) the game has its flaws, and classes are not balanced. Not everyone has equivalent access to leech/sustain and the application of damage is wildly different for certain classes and specs. Especially with respect to AOE, as it becomes essential to have AOE further up the tower.

[Revalopod]

Originally posted by Ramsey Rinehaus:

1) Melee is extremely strong in NG+, warrior actually might be the strongest class in the game.

2) Spin to win is broken af, warrior also has access to -%dmg taken, which seems to be an outside multiplier to armor/resistance and can entirely negate the loss of these stats in higher NG+

What specialisation is the best for spin to win do you think? I'm not sure between Berserker and Tyrant, both have really good passives, and I like Tyrant a lot but its active ability is so bad. But I guess abilities (other than War Cry of course) don't matter for spin to win lel.

[Node]

I'm crushing NG+ as a warrior... on 4 now. Waaaay easier than any other class (though I hear warlock is OP....).

I find warrior in fact the easiest of all the melee classes. Why?

- Can heal for what is arguably the biggest heal in the game (though not at start, but when you start increasing max hp, gets massive...)
- Deals immense amounts of damage

But why? Scaling. The heal is % based. Warriors damage has many % modifiers. You can slice through everything like swiss cheese, especially with whirlwind from a greataxe.

Scaling.

Other classes don't really have this. Anything with finite numbers essentially starts to fail. More classes need scaling. I can just stack loads of HP and do a 30% heal on warrior, and out-do the paladin. Paladin has static numbers that scale by spellpower.

Ultimately if introducing NG+ modes, where mob hp/dmg/stats all sccale up, all classes need to have some form of scalability, but many lack this.

[Kitty]

The biggest issue for me as a rogue in ng3 is the elemental resistances and ranged attacks. It's not hard to avoid accumulating shadow curse, you can avoid the attacks and AOEs that inflict it pretty easily, they have good warnings and indicators. I can face tank melee attacks from bosses and elites, but a few regular archers will quickly shred my health, and a single mage can take it down quite a bit.

There isn't a reliable way to build enough elemental resistance to survive as a rogue, without sacrificing your armor, which you need to be able to do your melee work. I think, for the rogue at least, make an ability you can take where elemental damage is reduced by a certain % for each stack of slice and dice you have, much like the ability that gives you parry % based on those stacks. Or just change the parry % skill to also include that elemental resistance, or give some damage reduction to ranged attacks in general.

[FaTNeSS]

While the armor and resist penalties paired with curse are a creative way of increasing difficulty, in no game does it feel good to have character power nerfed. Especially, after fighting hard through whichever difficulty NG(+) you may be on. Congrats you won! Now here's your punishment is what it feels like.

I'd rather make gains not losses. To me and my friends, the current systems that diminish character power, made us not want to play any more. Please implement a different method of increasing enemy difficulty rather than nerfing heroes by stripping their hard earned armor and resists and applying stacking debuffs. If it weren't for these absurd penalties, this game would be incredible.