The auras should be buffed.

[Terratrox]

Occasionally afflicting enemies within melee range of you is a terrible upgrade if that's ALL it is. I recommend the auras also making you immune to their respective elements. So the fire aura makes you immune to lava and fire rocks (and the auras from certain fire enemies)

The poison one makes you immune to being poisoned (which trivializes those poison slugs, but eh, that's the benefit of taking it)

The damage aura could reduce damage taken, or make you immune to melee attacks. (The second one is far more interesting because it makes melee builds useful into the mid and lategame)

ETC. Similarly, the aura for grenades and shots desperately need to be buffed as well, since... well, even if the grenade or shot is slow, they're never gonna be so slow that the aura does any significant damage.

The way to fix the aura for grenades is to make the aura stick around outside of the grenade's range for a given amount of time AFTER it explodes as well (or whatever it does), basically acting like another lingering damage zone that scales with the grenades' range.

For shots, it's harder because... I mean if we gave it splash damage, that's just the splash damage upgrade. Maybe enemies that are hit by aura bullets make themselves and surrounding enemies take more damage for a given amount of time. So it's splash, but splash debuff instead. Or even if they DEAL less damage, that would also be fine (though it'd rarely be used because ideally you just aren't getting hit at all). You could even have it be they take more damage from your shots, specifically. So it acts like a vulnerability curse.

[Limdood]

aura shot is fine. one of the "combos" that's been around and performed consistently well even at high difficulties is aura shot + glue shot. Even without glue shot, aura shot is great for weapons with actual bullet travel time...cluster launcher, rocket launcher, arcane wand, orb launcher, and especially blade launcher. It's a nice bit of extra love given to those weapons to turn a drawback into a benefit.

Aura grenade is indeed unbelievably weak, and could absolutely do with a modification for a persistent aura. Something like the laser beam ability effect would work fine, and a 1-2 second enduring damage zone fits the theme and power level of other similar level perks.

The personal auras are a bit underwhelming. Lightning and Ice are generally worth taking if there aren't other good options (they're worth more than they sell for at least) since lightning can spread and clear crowds, and ice gives you good, though sporadic player-centered CC and can save you from a moderate handful of hits you'd have otherwise taken. Those buffs you suggested are absurdly out of line though. There's a legendary item, a relic even, that reduces elemental damage by 75%. granted it affects all elements, but it's legendary, it's an item type you're allowed to wear the least of, it has NO offensive value at all, and it doesn't even give full immunity (AND cannot be stacked to reach full immunity).

Granting immunity to most anything is a poor design choice. Imagine if hard target or bulletproof went to 100%?

If you really want the personal auras to be better, something like the multiplicative scaling of the proc mods plus the aoe size scaling of explosive enemies would work. So Fire aura level 1 deals 10 damage and 25 fire stacks, Fire aura 2 deals 20 damage and 50 fire stacks in a 50% larger area, then 30 damage and 75 fire stacks in a 100% larger area for level 3, and so on. This puts it closer to effects like bubble shot or thorn shot, which are useful, but struggle to have much effect with only 1 stack, but as you get more and more levels of it, the damage becomes more meaningful AND you can use it more consistently on enemies.

[Bug Guy]

Yeah I agree that allowing immunity on a purple item that you may never see doesnt sound fun. As relics? maybe. But not as purples. I think letting the aura size get bigger (either via other AOE increasing items, or stacking the perk itself) would help it. As said above, aura grenade is pretty bad, unless they allowed it to remain as long as the effects of the grenade remained. This would give a small boost to black hole (which is usually weak with grenade mods due to its long CD), ice blast, and laser beam. Though allowing the effect to linger for all of them isnt bad either

[Casurin]

The grenade aura-damage can be incredibly helpful early on as it can easily whipe 20+ enemies just by flyby. And that can be improved by glue (same as with shots) and tracking grenade (moving slower and homing).

And i personally find the general damage-auras rather helpful most of the time. They are great for hords and one-shot rounds.

They just aren't a "must always pick" - and that is exactly how it SHOULD be. Rare items should be rare and just generally good, but not to the point that you 100% always take them.

[Terratrox]

Limdood a écrit :

aura shot is fine. one of the "combos" that's been around and performed consistently well even at high difficulties is aura shot + glue shot. Even without glue shot, aura shot is great for weapons with actual bullet travel time...cluster launcher, rocket launcher, arcane wand, orb launcher, and especially blade launcher. It's a nice bit of extra love given to those weapons to turn a drawback into a benefit.

Aura grenade is indeed unbelievably weak, and could absolutely do with a modification for a persistent aura. Something like the laser beam ability effect would work fine, and a 1-2 second enduring damage zone fits the theme and power level of other similar level perks.

The personal auras are a bit underwhelming. Lightning and Ice are generally worth taking if there aren't other good options (they're worth more than they sell for at least) since lightning can spread and clear crowds, and ice gives you good, though sporadic player-centered CC and can save you from a moderate handful of hits you'd have otherwise taken. Those buffs you suggested are absurdly out of line though. There's a legendary item, a relic even, that reduces elemental damage by 75%. granted it affects all elements, but it's legendary, it's an item type you're allowed to wear the least of, it has NO offensive value at all, and it doesn't even give full immunity (AND cannot be stacked to reach full immunity).

Granting immunity to most anything is a poor design choice. Imagine if hard target or bulletproof went to 100%?

If you really want the personal auras to be better, something like the multiplicative scaling of the proc mods plus the aoe size scaling of explosive enemies would work. So Fire aura level 1 deals 10 damage and 25 fire stacks, Fire aura 2 deals 20 damage and 50 fire stacks in a 50% larger area, then 30 damage and 75 fire stacks in a 100% larger area for level 3, and so on. This puts it closer to effects like bubble shot or thorn shot, which are useful, but struggle to have much effect with only 1 stack, but as you get more and more levels of it, the damage becomes more meaningful AND you can use it more consistently on enemies.

And that legendary relic is ONE relic that gives near immunity to ALL elemental damage. One slot vs... what, 4? Of all epic items. It's an inventory space issue. It can also be fixed by having enemies not JUST deal elemental damage. Get hit directly by a fire enemy, and you get burning damage AND regular damage.

Also... are yall not absolutely DROWNING in relics? You're acting like they're rare or something. I usually have to start trading them out by the first loop because I'm pulling too many. Most of them are kinda trash.

I didn't want to increase the range of the auras because then we end up with Gasoline from RoR2, where you eventually instakill the whole map whenever it procs (and if you aren't scaling the damage... If we do that, it's completely worthless). Immunity from specific damage types SEEMS amazing, but in practice you're gonna have 1 or even 2 of them and get massacred by enemies that don't deal that type. And having to blow 4 inventory spaces to assemble the infinity stones is a decent tradeoff in and of itself.

Hell, there's ALREADY a relic and perk comparison that is similar to what I'd be proposing. "The shop carries 5 extra items" vs "The shop carries 1 extra item". Except the perk stacks on itself. So the perk is "Take 5 of these and it equals the relic, but you can take more to surpass the relic at no relative cost". In the aura case, you'd have to take 4 to surpass the relic, but they're 4 DIFFERENT inventory spaces. In addition, they're 4 epics while the other perk is rare.

Casurin a écrit :

The grenade aura-damage can be incredibly helpful early on as it can easily whipe 20+ enemies just by flyby. And that can be improved by glue (same as with shots) and tracking grenade (moving slower and homing).

And i personally find the general damage-auras rather helpful most of the time. They are great for hords and one-shot rounds.

They just aren't a "must always pick" - and that is exactly how it SHOULD be. Rare items should be rare and just generally good, but not to the point that you 100% always take them.

Blud, rn they're basically a never pick. Enemies shouldn't be getting right in your face most of the time anyway, and if the enemies are getting one tapped by the aura, they're gonna be one tapped by all your AOE that you SHOULD be pulling for your grenades and guns. Or even your melee. Same for grenade aura. If they're SO weak that they're dying to the flyby, they're so weak that your actual offense would instakill them too.

[Casurin]

Terratrox a écrit :

Blud, rn they're basically a never pick. Enemies shouldn't be getting right in your face most of the time anyway

No sure what you are aplying but the auras in fact cover a gigantic area.

Terratrox a écrit :

Same for grenade aura. If they're SO weak that they're dying to the flyby, they're so weak that your actual offense would instakill them too.

Again - no?

[Terratrox]

Casurin a écrit :

Terratrox a écrit :

Blud, rn they're basically a never pick. Enemies shouldn't be getting right in your face most of the time anyway

No sure what you are aplying but the auras in fact cover a gigantic area.

Terratrox a écrit :

Same for grenade aura. If they're SO weak that they're dying to the flyby, they're so weak that your actual offense would instakill them too.

Again - no?

They cover an area around the size of your melee with a couple range upgrades. Again, shouldn't be getting that close. Things are going wrong if they're getting that close, because that range is within leap + melee range for most enemies with melee. The auras don't do a ton of damage. Your actual offense SHOULD be outdamaging the aura. And if you're not, you've got a bit of an issue on your hands already.

[Casurin]

Terratrox a écrit :

They cover an area around the size of your melee with a couple range upgrades.

Well no - those elemental auras have a rather large range. Have you just not played the game in months or are you just deliberately making stuff up?

Terratrox a écrit :

The auras don't do a ton of damage.

no, they absolutely do tower over your normal damage, specially early on.

[Terratrox]

Casurin a écrit :

Terratrox a écrit :

They cover an area around the size of your melee with a couple range upgrades.

Well no - those elemental auras have a rather large range. Have you just not played the game in months or are you just deliberately making stuff up?

Terratrox a écrit :

The auras don't do a ton of damage.

no, they absolutely do tower over your normal damage, specially early on.

I JUST played a round with the auras. They don't have jack for range. Hammer's range is only SLIGHTLY less than the aura.

And no, they don't tower over your damage. It's 15 damage per proc, which is more than a standard shot from faster weapons, but it's insignificant with a little investment in damage. Many of the weapons can outdamage it baseline. As I said, it's NOT a lot of damage.

The Ice Blast grenade is similarly damaging, but what makes it good is that it's NOT centered on the player, and it's used for CC instead of actually killing things (though it can nuke crabs and grubs just fine)

[Bug Guy]

Increasing the radius of the aura with further grabs shouldnt be an issue. Its nothing like gasoline from RoR2 as that is an on kill proc with no cooldown so it cascades out of control really easily. If your aura happens to hit every enemy on screen, even buffed significantly, it would just be more useful. I dont think it would nuke anything.

[Terratrox]

Bug Guy a écrit :

Increasing the radius of the aura with further grabs shouldnt be an issue. Its nothing like gasoline from RoR2 as that is an on kill proc with no cooldown so it cascades out of control really easily. If your aura happens to hit every enemy on screen, even buffed significantly, it would just be more useful. I dont think it would nuke anything.

Increasing the radius wasn't what I had a problem with... Though reading back through it, it's like I was drunk when I was trying to explain myself.

Increasing the radius AND damage with multiplicative scaling would result in a gasoline situation, where every few seconds, the level would explode. Increasing the damage with a hyperbolic scale and the radius linearly would be better. But like you said, that'd be for multiple pickups.

[Casurin]

Terratrox a écrit :

I JUST played a round with the auras. They don't have jack for range. Hammer's range is only SLIGHTLY less than the aura.

You really need some glasses.

[Limdood]

well, looks like we have fundamental differences in what feels appropriate for the game...which is fine!

I do think immunity would be absolutely a TERRIBLE design choice for the auras, ans so I guess I'm just doing the forums thing and weighing in for or against a topic/idea, as people do all the time, in this case against. Immunity to any source of danger is a problem in a game like this, that wants to keep you on your toes. fire aura alone would literally grant you the ability to treat lava like water and completely ignore the most lethal aspects of fire pumpkin/skull/slug.

[Terratrox]

Limdood a écrit :

well, looks like we have fundamental differences in what feels appropriate for the game...which is fine!

I do think immunity would be absolutely a TERRIBLE design choice for the auras, ans so I guess I'm just doing the forums thing and weighing in for or against a topic/idea, as people do all the time, in this case against. Immunity to any source of danger is a problem in a game like this, that wants to keep you on your toes. fire aura alone would literally grant you the ability to treat lava like water and completely ignore the most lethal aspects of fire pumpkin/skull/slug.

Well yeah. That's the point. But that aura would also be borderline useless in ANY other situation. So it'd protect against certain matchups really, really well. But against other things, it basically doesn't do anything at all. That's why in order to be really strong, you'd need multiple or all 4. And even then it just protects you from the status effects, not the attacks themselves.

Also, immunity isn't all that strange. Risk of Rain has Tougher Times, which is a common that gives complete immunity to all forms of damage at a reasonable rate (get like 50 and you're at some 96% chance to be immune to damage). Risk of Rain 2 also has Safer Spaces, which is complete immunity on a cooldown that can be lowered to a frame.

Hell, in a way, we already HAVE immunity to status effects in the game in the form of that parry relic that restores your health when you parry damage. You can use it to waltz through AOEs and heal by dashing through the status effect damage.

[Bug Guy]

Terratrox a écrit :

Limdood a écrit :

well, looks like we have fundamental differences in what feels appropriate for the game...which is fine!

I do think immunity would be absolutely a TERRIBLE design choice for the auras, ans so I guess I'm just doing the forums thing and weighing in for or against a topic/idea, as people do all the time, in this case against. Immunity to any source of danger is a problem in a game like this, that wants to keep you on your toes. fire aura alone would literally grant you the ability to treat lava like water and completely ignore the most lethal aspects of fire pumpkin/skull/slug.

Well yeah. That's the point. But that aura would also be borderline useless in ANY other situation. So it'd protect against certain matchups really, really well. But against other things, it basically doesn't do anything at all. That's why in order to be really strong, you'd need multiple or all 4. And even then it just protects you from the status effects, not the attacks themselves.

Also, immunity isn't all that strange. Risk of Rain has Tougher Times, which is a common that gives complete immunity to all forms of damage at a reasonable rate (get like 50 and you're at some 96% chance to be immune to damage). Risk of Rain 2 also has Safer Spaces, which is complete immunity on a cooldown that can be lowered to a frame.

Hell, in a way, we already HAVE immunity to status effects in the game in the form of that parry relic that restores your health when you parry damage. You can use it to waltz through AOEs and heal by dashing through the status effect damage.

Feast or famine items arent fun though. And immunity is difference than block chance. We have block chance in this game as well. Safer spaces and tougher times are both block chance and block on cooldown (and requires multiple dozens of the item to acheive the single frame cooldown. most items are busted when you have over 50 of them). Not immunity. Immunity means you NEVER are affected by something. In the case of this argument, elemental effects. That means never being burned, frozen, poisoned, or stunned (the momentum stop that happens when hitting lightning). Reduction? that would be fine, probably pretty decent even. But as mentioned above, getting full immunity from a single Epic is too much. Side note, Ring of Parrying also isnt immunity, though it is notably much much stronger in non True runs as you can restore to full health without having your max health reduced.
TLDR immunity to elements shouldnt be granted by a single Epic pickup

[Terratrox]

TT and SS are functional immunity because the chances are so high and cooldowns are so low, and getting to that many stacks in ROR is easy because you're getting anywhere from 5 to 10 items every stage and there are methods to swap items for others. (Excluding the shop). The 'capped at 75%' for Hard Target and Bulletproof make them unreliable for being functionally immune to damage. TT and SS don't have that. If you want actual immunity, the Headset item in RoR 2 grants immunity to fall damage, and the Aspects grant immunity to their respective Elite's effects.

MOST of the items in this game are feast or famine. All the items that have a chance to proc. They either do nothing (which is the vast majority of the time), or they have some benefit, ranging from basically OK to dummy strong. It's why the minigun is so strong. Its rapid fire helps negate the negligible chances of your offensive proc items happening. The immunity wouldn't ONLY be of use against those few enemies, either. The immunity would cover breakable rocks, leading to a synergy with Crystal Fertilizer and Driller.

Ring of Parrying is functional immunity even on True Nightmare runs. Taking 1, 5, or even 10 Max HP loss for a 10% heal is an INSANE trade. Especially if it's repeatable, which it is. It's a trade of Max HP for current HP. You functionally cannot take damage from elemental effects with it active because you're vastly outhealing any damage you take.

What makes TN runs dangerous are the new enemy formations, higher scaling, and doubled cost for items in the shop. And occasionally the duplicate spawning and HOT effect, since they can ruin certain kinds of runs. The others don't add much difficulty individually. They just make a tough situation worse because they're all stacked together.

And again, it's not immunity to ALL elements with 1 epic slot. It's immunity to ONE element, per slot. So if you get the fire one, the fire enemies that specialize in throwing AOEs everywhere? Much less powerful. Other enemies, even other fire enemies aren't going to be affected. But all fire rocks are now beneficial instead of a double edged sword, too. And then there's still the lil spurt of fire that the aura does already in the situations where it's completely nonfunctional defensively. And then the special interaction with the lava in the last biome.

So it'd be immunity to all elements with FOUR epic slots, which is a huge investment. Not only does it soak a huge portion of your inventory to do, but you ALSO have to find all 4 of them with epic's relative rarity and a decent sized pool. You're likely to come across 1 a run, maybe 2. Finding the infinity stones would make you way more powerful in most circumstances, but it's also not easy to find all 4 of them and you're investing a lot to do it.

If it WASN'T immunity and was just a reduction... the perks would still be basically worthless. Because with that, we've got an epic perk that only helps against specific kinds of enemies a little bit, and does a mediocre amount of damage every X seconds. It's still a 'this is basically never useful' perk. Ideally, we don't get hit AT ALL. So reducing the occasional damage we DO take, but only from very specific types of enemies, doesn't do very much.

TLDR, Why shouldn't we get immunity to very specific forms of damage with an epic item?