So I was thinking about how to balance stress damage and hp damage minions

[Crusher Von Splattenheim]

So there's multiple problems at play here. The first being that HP damage dealing minions are just better. Enemy hits 0 health? They die. Yay!

Enemy hits 0 stress? Well... they're still alive. Hit them with a stress attack? Maybe dead. Maybe not. You still have to roll on accuracy checks to land the stress attacks too. To add insult to injury, every inspiration your enemies proc is bad for you, not every insanity effect is great for you.

The next problem is that you have enemies that completely invalidate stress damage minions. I mean you would think that if an enemy, like a golem, had high HP, high armor, and redirect it would be the perfect enemy to have a low stress bar pool and that the clever way to beat them is to stress them out. Nah, fam, they're just flat out immune to stress damage. I haven't even seen an enemy so far that just invalidates HP damage.

But the nail in the coffin for stress damage teams, because if you're running stress damage you still need an answer in case you wander into a group that fields a golem else your entire party is just dead, is that even in a mixed group it doesn't really work. If in a mixed comp I deal both HP damage and stress damage to an enemy instead of having a dead enemy on my hands (or at least a stressed out enemy) I have an enemy with both half a health bar and half a stress bar, very much still alive, very much still criting me in the face.


This all makes stress damage dealing minions a bad bet to bring along.


So my thought to help balance this mess is howabout instead of a separate HP bar and a separate stress bar... you just have one bar?

Like imagine just having one bar: You have purple on the left of the bar representing stress. You have red on the right of the bar representing health. The colors mesh in the middle. When you deal stress damage? The bar depletes from the left. When you deal HP damage? Bar depletes from the right. When the bar depletes entirely? Enemy dies. If the finishing blow was an HP damage attack? Enemy dies a bloody death. If the finishing blow was a stress attack? Enemy keels over from a heart attack.

This way at least their is harmony between stress damage and HP damage minions, they compliment each other instead of being counter-productive to one another.

It also somewhat justifies insanity effects being a mixed bag because ultimately it would just be window-dressing at that point.



I mean what is the alternative otherwise other than, essentially, having two entirely separate rosters of minions that don't ever mix? Either way stress damage minions need to be overhauled, might as well be in a way that gives the player more options, IMO.

[Pigeon]

the problem is also rather inflated do to some enemies simply getting buffs from stress. There are some stupid insanities that can potentially destroy your team if it goes on the right guys. Which RNG seems to love throwing at me. Oh well this guy has a 33% chance of not moving(some of the base enemies mind you have that as a crit chance that high and crit all the damn time) nah fam, I am never gunna skip plus I get a free +20 evasion rating for free. The zerks on stage 2 are the worst offenders of this, "Oh hey I am gunna just do a free 50% extra damage, but take 25% more damage" but it's a stress team it doesn't have a whole lot of physical damage. Double turn priests from floor one will end your runs at times!

It's a great idea to take the stress system from DD and turn it on the enemies but, I think the devs forgot that one of the reasons stress was a problem in DD for the player was because it caused a cascading effect throughout the party. Once one person was insane it started building up on other characters as well. This would lead to your entire party ether being virtually useless or dying of a heart attack.

Things that might help is ether making it baseline that stressed people stress out the rest of the group causing those cascades, and/or toning down the buffs enemies get from being stressed, or at the very least making so that the enemies die quicker from stress. When I have to completely deplete a enemies healthbar because stress is just not killing people after they have curses and 4 stress attacks a round it just starts to feel unfun.

[Frenzy85]

My two cents w.r.t. linking the two bars:
If you combine the bars, Stress/Physical will pretty much just be an aesthetic difference.
Instead, make stress damage much stronger, but insanity/heart attack chance is tied to HP.
Keeps the current HP & Stress dynamic.
So HP is safe, but slow. Stress if risky, but can potentially kill faster.

[TheSheog]

I too want to keep the HP&Stress seperated bars, but it could use some tweaking. Having an enemy party take over 12 individual instances stress damage at 0 sanity before the first one finally has a heart attack, I even killed and enemy completely with abyssal hungers by then. Another instance a 0 sanity enemy survives 7 stress attacks in a row , not counting possible extra stress damage from crits,etc. And if they gain even a single point of sanity it completely protects from another attack.
Some insanity effects can be even bad for you in certain circumstances , not to mention the shackles? Artifact being mandatory for stress party, but thats ok. Most of the time stress works fine, but it eventuelly rng screws you and of course enemies that counter stress .

As for the DD comparision, yes in DD afflictions are that bad because they keep increaseing stress for your whole party and you have to keep dealing with it for the rest of the dungeon, also you have more negative effects from them than in Iratus. Further in DD you can loose inspiration, though you can deal with stress and afflictions better than the AI here, stress build slower and you can heal afflictions when removing all stress.

I don't know maybe heartattack must keep getting more likely with every dice roll for it, maybe failed heart attack could slowly stack further debuffs or deal hp damage or olny balance the stress abilities.

[Telerion]

Actually i dont think that stress dmg is in anyway bad, it`s more the oposite of it, it is strong as hell.

Yes it is unreliable because it soesent always kill instantly, but it is way easier to reduce the sanity to 0 then going for HP. Also you have way more AOE stress attackes then physical, also to mention the stress over time attacks. The later is actually the most importent if you want to go for stress, so you dont have to attack constantly the same unit that is already down to 0. It is actually very easy to reduce more then one enemy to 0 sanity and trigger mass heart attacks. It can trigger with every single point of dmg after they are at zero sanity.

Yes, you should have some backup dd`s for the enemy constructs that are immune to stress attacks.
My personal favorite team is Bride/Shade/Mummy/Knight, all spect for sanity dmg.

The knight tanks most of the blows and can deal incredible stress dmg and in case of constructs can deal at least moderate physical dmg.

The mummy can cast stress over time (use the 4 turn upgrade), yes it isnt very strong, but once the enemys are down to 0 sanity, for the duration of the skill every turn the enemy might die of a heart attack. Also the mummy have a AOE stress attack to hit multiple enemys. Both is mostly to deliver the finishing blows instead of reducing the sanity fast, that are the other minions for. In case of constructs, move one back and use his pysical attack.

The shade dont need much explaining, use the stance to inflict stress dmg to everybody that attacks your minions. This dmg scales very well, as it inflicts more dmg the more dmg you get. Then you can regenerate mana. Personally i use the 15mana upgrade, because the shade also regenerates 15 HP making it more durable. You can cast alot of spells with the help of the shade.

The bride is also very selfe explaining. Range stress and in case of constructs pure physical dmg. The stress attack moves the bride back to the last space, so the shade can constantly be in his retaliaton stance. I prefer the upgrade that cancels the enemys stance`s. Stunning is nice, but the enemy have alot of very dangerous stances, so i prefer to have the ability to stop them. But that is only my personel preference. The best part of the bride is her ultimate. As it always crit, and a crit inflict a small amount of stress, it can trigger a heart attack, and as a heart attack also inflicts a small amount if stress in the survivors, you can actually easily trigger a mass heart attack in the enemys. Also a good dd against constructs.


Most importent with stress dmg, is NOT to attack the same enemy over and over until it dies, but switching to another target once it has reached 0 sanity and use AOE, DOT and crits to finish them off.

But that is only my oppinion on the matter. I personally find stress killings way more reliable then going for HP as you can inflict just more stress then pure dmg.

[Alcon]

I have a mixed team of Bride/Banshee/Knight/Knight.

Bride is for physical dps for enemies with stress immunity and for stance interruption.

Banshee is for constant debuff and stress dps AOE.

One Knight is for stress dps with high armour and the other is for physical dps with high armour and resistance.

For the most part, I win with stress dps as a win condition. Especially when my Bride hits a crit and the enemy have a chain reaction with stress. More than once I had a situation where 2/3 enemies died from heart attack in one go!

And don't forget about the constant insanity on every possible enemy because of the AOE stress. So many times I have been saved by a betrayal or a miss due to insanity.

So in my opinion the stress/physical dps is very well balanced.

[Lukin]

For me the only drawback with insanity party is that some minions are immune to that damage, yet nothing similar exists for physical damage. It draws out the fights so long when 3 out of 4 enemies have been gone for 10 minutes and you try to punch some golem down with your only dps skeleton and crappy spells.

[Alcon]

Originally posted by Lukin:

For me the only drawback with insanity party is that some minions are immune to that damage, yet nothing similar exists for physical damage. It draws out the fights so long when 3 out of 4 enemies have been gone for 10 minutes and you try to punch some golem down with your only dps skeleton and crappy spells.

That is why I always take 2 physical dps units with me.

[Frenzy85]

Originally posted by Telerion:

Actually i dont think that stress dmg is in anyway bad, it`s more the oposite of it, it is strong as hell.

Yes it is unreliable because it soesent always kill instantly, but it is way easier to reduce the sanity to 0 then going for HP. Also you have way more AOE stress attackes then physical, also to mention the stress over time attacks. The later is actually the most importent if you want to go for stress, so you dont have to attack constantly the same unit that is already down to 0. It is actually very easy to reduce more then one enemy to 0 sanity and trigger mass heart attacks. It can trigger with every single point of dmg after they are at zero sanity.

Yes, you should have some backup dd`s for the enemy constructs that are immune to stress attacks.
My personal favorite team is Bride/Shade/Mummy/Knight, all spect for sanity dmg.

The knight tanks most of the blows and can deal incredible stress dmg and in case of constructs can deal at least moderate physical dmg.

The mummy can cast stress over time (use the 4 turn upgrade), yes it isnt very strong, but once the enemys are down to 0 sanity, for the duration of the skill every turn the enemy might die of a heart attack. Also the mummy have a AOE stress attack to hit multiple enemys. Both is mostly to deliver the finishing blows instead of reducing the sanity fast, that are the other minions for. In case of constructs, move one back and use his pysical attack.

The shade dont need much explaining, use the stance to inflict stress dmg to everybody that attacks your minions. This dmg scales very well, as it inflicts more dmg the more dmg you get. Then you can regenerate mana. Personally i use the 15mana upgrade, because the shade also regenerates 15 HP making it more durable. You can cast alot of spells with the help of the shade.

The bride is also very selfe explaining. Range stress and in case of constructs pure physical dmg. The stress attack moves the bride back to the last space, so the shade can constantly be in his retaliaton stance. I prefer the upgrade that cancels the enemys stance`s. Stunning is nice, but the enemy have alot of very dangerous stances, so i prefer to have the ability to stop them. But that is only my personel preference. The best part of the bride is her ultimate. As it always crit, and a crit inflict a small amount of stress, it can trigger a heart attack, and as a heart attack also inflicts a small amount if stress in the survivors, you can actually easily trigger a mass heart attack in the enemys. Also a good dd against constructs.


Most importent with stress dmg, is NOT to attack the same enemy over and over until it dies, but switching to another target once it has reached 0 sanity and use AOE, DOT and crits to finish them off.

But that is only my oppinion on the matter. I personally find stress killings way more reliable then going for HP as you can inflict just more stress then pure dmg.

You're not wrong in how to play stress teams... It's just that I feel stress teams actually scale extremely poorly to harder difficulties right now.

On Hard mode, there are enemies with >50% crit (70/80, iirc, the dagger guys in Floor 1, swordsmen in Floor 2, among others) that does multihit attacks. All in all, enemy crits are extremely common... If you don't give your all to kill them asap, they'll crit and recover that small bit of sanity and make them unkillable again... So for example, if you're using the Bride crit, you'll more likely end up HP killing them before you get a heart attack kill... or more likely than that actually lose the fight.
There's also not a lot of multi-hit stress attacks that are effective for taking kills.

Compared to that, HP kills are absolute and very few enemies have HP healing methods. Overall, it's just a lot more consistent.

So, they're kinda OP in Easy where enemies have low crit and can't get Heroic.
In Normal, they fall off hard.
In Hard, they seem to be completely not viable...

[Telerion]

That depends on the team. You are right, it gets harder on higher difficulties. I disagree on the scaling, the shade inflict the same amount if stress as your minions get dmg. Thats the Knight for, to heal up. Ofcourse it doesent always work, but what does? RNG is RNG.
In the end, i have a harder time to kill the enemys, because they have alot of armor or straight up resistence.
Let`s be honest here, it is all a question of personel preference. I love the stress way, debuffing the enemys, making them weaker (yes, and sometimes stronger) is just fun for me. On the other hand, i cant build a reliable team for HP dmg (well, not counting 4 ghouls, but that is just for fun), so i dont enjoy it very much, but that doesent mean that there must be a change in that mechanic ;).

[Frenzy85]

Originally posted by Telerion:

That depends on the team. You are right, it gets harder on higher difficulties. I disagree on the scaling, the shade inflict the same amount if stress as your minions get dmg. Thats the Knight for, to heal up. Ofcourse it doesent always work, but what does? RNG is RNG.
In the end, i have a harder time to kill the enemys, because they have alot of armor or straight up resistence.
Let`s be honest here, it is all a question of personel preference. I love the stress way, debuffing the enemys, making them weaker (yes, and sometimes stronger) is just fun for me. On the other hand, i cant build a reliable team for HP dmg (well, not counting 4 ghouls, but that is just for fun), so i dont enjoy it very much, but that doesent mean that there must be a change in that mechanic ;).

It's not preference... I beat the game on easy with stress teams predominantly.
I preferred stress teams. They just no longer work... It's like trying to play Binding of Isaac while rerolling dps items and only picking up tank items. You could maybe do it if you try real hard, but it's an exercise in frustration.

The game is in EA and haven't been tested thoroughly. To say it's perfectly balanced right now and requires no change is a bit... ... ... ... you know?

Even some of the biggest successes that were in EA such as Darkest Dungeon had balance patches throughout their lifetimes.

edit:
RNG can take different forms.
RNG in DD, for example, exists, but is partially under the players' control. We can choose to play it safe or risky. Bring X amount of torches, play bright, 0 brightness, mess with certain curios. Very few such decisions exist in Iratus.

A lot of RNG just screws the player one-sidedly. For example, enemies that get stronger through insanity such as Dwarven Berserkers can self-stress. Negative Luck increases crit chance, but Positive Luck doesn't decrease crit chance, so how you build your character doesn't affect how likely you get screwed by the random crit.

Dwarven AoE Spin Attack can OHKO from full HP through armor+block. 100+ crit damage, completely unavoidable... whenever RNGesus thinks you deserve some frustration that day. And the higher the difficulty, the more often this happens. Screw-ups that are not related to your mistakes, but just happen randomly.

That's not RNG is RNG...
When playing BoI, DD, StS, you always have some control.

Another big comparison is the retreat button. In DD, you see a bad situation, you flee. Take a massive hit, but you live to fight another day. Iratus? Nah... your party gets wiped if you flee...

RNG is fun when you roll the dice.
In Iratus, it feels like the dice rolls you.

[Telerion]

well who said it is perfectly balanced?

Thats EA is for, but asking for a change in the system is, and that is my personel opinion, an insult to the dev`s. Sorry to say that.

[Frenzy85]

Originally posted by Telerion:

well who said it is perfectly balanced?

Thats EA is for, but asking for a change in the system is, and that is my personel opinion, an insult to the dev`s. Sorry to say that.

My suggestion was for the chance of heart attacks to be adjusted... If that kind of change is considered a system change, then practically any change would too much for you.

How much smaller can a change be?

edit:
Just note... I'm not the OP. My suggestion:

Originally posted by Frenzy85:

My two cents w.r.t. linking the two bars:
If you combine the bars, Stress/Physical will pretty much just be an aesthetic difference.
Instead, make stress damage much stronger, but insanity/heart attack chance is tied to HP.
Keeps the current HP & Stress dynamic.
So HP is safe, but slow. Stress if risky, but can potentially kill faster.

[Telerion]

I know that you didnt started this, i read your post, but you are the only one who still is active here ;). And please, dont get me wrong, i dont want to attack or insult you. Englich isnt my mother language, and sometimes my words got misunderstood.


The system how it is is ok, there is no need to change that. Balancing the skills out to be more reliable on higher difficulties is totaly fine and needed. Giving the debuffs for insanity more negative impact would also be nice, but still, the way it worked is fine in my oppinion.

[Akira1530]

I think the stress damage dynamics are generally well balanced, but the heart attack triggering is way too unreliable. I originally went for the keymaster with it and he resisted about 20+ potential heart attacks (are bosses immune to them or something?), forcing a restart. Also, some of the drwarves, after resisting 10+ heart attacks had to be whittled down from full hp instead. Is there info available on percent chance of heart attack and if it varies across common enemies?

The one fix I think is needed is if an enemy is at 0 sanity and they take sanity damage, they should just die. Without that it doesn't really make sense to have units that mostly deal sanity damage. And if the devs are completely against that for some reason, at least make critical sanity damage kill a minion already at 0 and have some sort of increasing likelihood of heart attack so you don't have the possibility of 5 (or 10, or 20) resisted heart attacks.

[Crusher Von Splattenheim]

Wow, this post blew up. Thanks for all the replies!


I, personally, enjoy the idea of stress bars and HP bars being independent of one another, and in a different game I think it'd work just fine, but as things stand right now? They don't work in Iratus. The primary reason why it doesn't work is that if you look at HP/stress totals of enemies, generally speaking they're about the same value on each enemy. They are just two different colored health bars ultimately and they've been implemented in such a way that your entire team is either focused on stressing one bar down or punching the other bar down.

Frenzy said that having the bars joined into one makes it an aesthetic difference. Problem is it's already just an aesthetic difference considering.

There are no physically weak enemies with high stress pools and no mentally strong enemies with low health pools. If an enemy has about 100 health? They have about 100 sanity too.


In Darkest Dungeon, stress's function was to put a constant pressure on the player and to be a looming threat. Eventually, and especially if you had some bad luck, you come to a point where you still have the chance to dip out of there if you think things are going to go really bad and you have to ask yourself if it's worth the risk to continue on.

In Iratus? What is stress's function? It's another bar that at 0 an enemy dies (maybe). It's not enough to just lift elements from DD and put it into a game, the element must be reshaped and implemented in such a way to compliment the game it's now in.
Like just simply lifting stress out of DD would've worked had instead Iratus trying to escape to the surface he was the master of a dungeon; a single party of heroes were trying to reach his inner sanctum and kill him; and your minions were relatively weak, expendable, and while HP damage is used to try and kill off a hero in a combat, heroes healed some health after combat, but not the stress you could accrue on them over multiple combats so by the time the lingering few did reach Iratus the stress would knock the remaining weathered heroes out -- that's how a lift of the raw element would work.

Combining the bars into one would improve player experience, IMO, but I agree it is but one solution. It does not have to be *the* solution.



There was an earlier sentiment that it was easy to AoE stress works really well, and curse helps deal stress damage at the start of each enemy's turns with yet another chance to kill an enemy when they have 0 sanity. That's true, and that's pretty much what you've got to do if you're going to make stress work for you.



Like the argument I'm making isn't that it is impossible to heart attack enemies currently. I'm saying that if you run into a golem you'd have been better served having brought 4 minions that deal HP damage. What encounter are you better served by bringing 4 minions to deal stress damage? None. There is not one encounter HP damage minions can't overcome. You have to employ counter-measure after counter-measure to just make stress damage work and the outcome really only amounts to the satisfaction of seeing an enemy die in a non-conventional way.