blood stone is underpowered

[PVT.Blueberry]

It should restore slight hp on hit or after each enemy is killed restore Hp.


slayer (2h gsword) would benefit from this so much

[ministrog]

iirc, blood gear has the highest dps. providing you're comfortable riding on the edge.

[OctoberSky]

Could not find this suggestion by quick search but I seem to recall several players had recommended that bloodstone would be more lethal if imbued with life leach.

[Draconis]

I'd say try out a thing that maybe would not be viable in other cases... 3x health food.

The idea is: the more HP you have, the more you can afford to use. You block stamina is based on max HP anyways, so you can even block more until you get staggered that way.

Don't know how that works with low stamina, or if that is too low to effectively fight then. Or if you can iron that out by combining Ashen Cape with Ask Set (-30% stamina cost for attacks)


Hm, maybe I'll give that a try as soon as I have enough flametal for slayer (and a second set of gear to get my stuff back in case this goes utterly wrong)

[Faceplant]

I recently made the bloodstone Nidhogg, and it does get a good boost when you're down 250+ health.

I also don't think I've been staggered yet with Ashlands gear and food in normal mode, but I imagine the harder modes are a different story. I'm pretty sure a 2* warrior staggered me when I first landed in hard mode with mistland gear and food.

As I keep saying, there are many benefits to 3 health foods, especially when combined with bonemass ability, and virtually no benefits to stamina foods if you can learn to get by with reduced maximum stamina.

Edit: I just tried making a bloodstone slayer, and I think it's just too slow. I don't see any benefit to a two-handed sword in this game.

[ministrog]

realistic damage would be jade. iolite just seems to be for dopamine-lucky-proc-fishing double zap. i suppose you could stagger easier with faster weaps. blood seems to be purely multiplayer oriented. someone take agro, blood gang go in and dump damage. least that's how i imagine it.

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by ministrog:

realistic damage would be jade. iolite just seems to be for dopamine-lucky-proc-fishing double zap. i suppose you could stagger easier with faster weaps. blood seems to be purely multiplayer oriented. someone take agro, blood gang go in and dump damage. least that's how i imagine it.

I'm not understanding your logic.

FWIW, I just did a test, killing trolls with the parry followed by the secondary attack of the sword and, at full health the damage was somewhere in the 800 range. After letting it beat me down 200ish health, the damage was well over 1100.

[ministrog]

well to keep it relevant, i remember theorising a group of vikings all using stamina food, all blood weapons. then realised there still needs to be someone to stagger boss and grab it's attention. that'd be the ideal set up for highest group damage per second or sustained damage.

[Faceplant]

You can't stagger a boss, but aside from that, blood weapons only make sense if you have high health. If you eat all stamina food and expect to not get hit, it has no benefit.

[Wagor]

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

Originally posted by ministrog:

realistic damage would be jade. iolite just seems to be for dopamine-lucky-proc-fishing double zap. i suppose you could stagger easier with faster weaps. blood seems to be purely multiplayer oriented. someone take agro, blood gang go in and dump damage. least that's how i imagine it.

I'm not understanding your logic.

FWIW, I just did a test, killing trolls with the parry followed by the secondary attack of the sword and, at full health the damage was somewhere in the 800 range. After letting it beat me down 200ish health, the damage was well over 1100.

These elements are ashlands' things so there is no point hurting yourself in order to get +50% damage against weak enemies which you can easily kill with any weapon, whereas in ashlands you will be oneshotted by a weak enemy like that crawling skeleton. The blood element has to either increase damage by 1%/1hp or act like a vampire weapon so you can get saved in a dangerous situation. Just think of that: why should i suffer trying get benefits from a weak element when i can just take lightning/primal weapon and have serious benefits constatly?

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by Wagor:

These elements are ashlands' things so there is no point hurting yourself in order to get +50% damage against weak enemies which you can easily kill with any weapon, whereas in ashlands you will be oneshotted by a weak enemy like that crawling skeleton. The blood element has to either increase damage by 1%/1hp or act like a vampire weapon so you can get saved in a dangerous situation. Just think of that: why should i suffer trying get benefits from a weak element when i can just take lightning/primal weapon and have serious benefits constatly?

The point is not to take damage on purpose to deal more damage, it's to deal more damage when you need it the most, which seems perfectly reasonable.

There are 3 choices of enhancements on purpose, so you can choose what you thinks benefits you most. From what I can tell, the lightning enhancement only does 10 damage normally, with a maximum of 75 1/5 of the time (on average)? That seems pretty weak to me, at least for the way I play.

1%/1hp would (if my math is correct), top out around 2500 damage in one hit, which seems excessive to me.

Also, I'm not going to get 1-shot by any charred, except maybe a 2* warrior if I'm only down 200 health from max.

[Wagor]

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

Originally posted by Wagor:

These elements are ashlands' things so there is no point hurting yourself in order to get +50% damage against weak enemies which you can easily kill with any weapon, whereas in ashlands you will be oneshotted by a weak enemy like that crawling skeleton. The blood element has to either increase damage by 1%/1hp or act like a vampire weapon so you can get saved in a dangerous situation. Just think of that: why should i suffer trying get benefits from a weak element when i can just take lightning/primal weapon and have serious benefits constatly?

The point is not to take damage on purpose to deal more damage, it's to deal more damage when you need it the most, which seems perfectly reasonable.

There are 3 choices of enhancements on purpose, so you can choose what you thinks benefits you most. From what I can tell, the lightning enhancement only does 10 damage normally, with a maximum of 75 1/5 of the time (on average)? That seems pretty weak to me, at least for the way I play.

1%/1hp would (if my math is correct), top out around 2500 damage in one hit, which seems excessive to me.

Also, I'm not going to get 1-shot by any charred, except maybe a 2* warrior if I'm only down 200 health from max.

Lightning always deals 75 and always spreads on other enemies, groups of enemies it kills really fast; primal weapon can stun any target for long time and what has the blood element? Nothing, it gives too little damage boost whereas you have to lose your hp and therefore you are closer to death

[glass zebra]

Lightning weapons deal 10 + 25% of 75 (so 15), which is 25 on average per hit. That is a true 75 though, since it ignores weapons skill and variance (while weapons always deal less average than the weapon's damage) and it can proc more than one on the same enemy, so I'd say counting it as "30 damage on average" is more realistic. Lightning damage also at least does 100% damage to all creatures and can do 150% and is just the superior damage type. Due to the random nature and burst it also can stagger targets you otherwise could have an issue with staggering at all (but is also super random and can't stagger as safely).

Nighögg has 141 dmg on level 2, meaning you get 0.282 damage per lost HP or 28.2 dmg at 100 lost HP. You would need to lose more than 100 HP to break even with the Iolite weapons on average.. which is pretty bad since the Iolite weapons would give you a much easier time to not lose those 100 HP in the first place. Stuff that only does something when you are low means you have a harder game when you are not low and only get to shine when you are at a high risk of death, which is not great except if you make some niche build for it.

That said all of these comparisons only apply to regular auto attacks with a x1 multiplier. The 3th combo hit finisher (or 4th with Berserkir) get twice as much and altfires up to thrice as much from blood stones. If you are a tanky character that only really uses sword altfire or similar, blood weapons can be decent, but still require you to lose some health to not just be worse than a plain flametal weapons at the same blackforge level.

"It really depends", but for anyone not wanting to not get hurt or not wanting to use mostly altfire and eat a lot of HP food and plan to lose a lot of that eaten HP, Iolite weapons just deal the most DPS, while Jade weapons have great CC that can enable futher high dps (due to being able to do multiple full combos on the enemy without the need to dodge). Iolites damage is also AOE, but quite frankly the Iolite weapons will deal the most weapons on most encounters. Even when you do not get any proc at all the +10 lightning damage already makes it stronger than the other choices for pure dps.

Blood weapons really feel like more of a weird niche for e.g. a dedicated multiplayer tank with 3 HP foods that just spams sword/club altfire in my opinion. If you are in multiplayer, you are also probably better of using blood stones for blackforge improvement + mage staff for your teammates first. The shear +10 dmg they gave to Jade and Iolite over Blood makes it seem questionable (though ofc the Jade damage is poison..), since you need to lose over 30 HP to even reach the same damage on any kind of attack if you ignore their special effects entirely and before that it is just worse in every way. They are hopefully designed as a way to get some damage out of low stamina tanks. Ash cape looks a bit similar with those tank + lower attack cost bonus.

They are useable, but you really have to make a build for them and use specifics weapon attacks mostly and get hit on purpose to not be at least 10 safe damage behind the others (at least Iolites non-poison damage). They combo somewhat nicely with blood barriers though, both due to them costing HP and giving a safety. Of course that means you either need to eat some Eitr food and sacrifice max HP and therefor damage potential or play in multiplayer with someone else shielding you.

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

1%/1hp would (if my math is correct), top out around 2500 damage in one hit, which seems excessive to me.

No idea how you get to that number, but with the 3 current highest HP food at 1HP you have + 64.8% damage and with a brutal slayer on level 2 (176 slash) you are dealing around 2500 damage on an unaware enemy with the altfire + sneak attack modifier, which is a very unrealistic scenario and probably not what you meant since you talked about parry and not backstab.

[Faceplant]

Good analysis, but I think your analysis is biased toward the way you tend to play. I've tried most playstyles in Ashlands now, from full 3-hitr mage to full 3-health tank, with variations in between, including "mobile" builds, and, for me, full tank is the most efficient for getting around.

Full mage is second best once you get all the upgrades, but it still takes more "finesse" in combat, which takes time, and it's much easier to get into serious trouble if you don't deal with more mobs as your passing through. Charred are no problem, but, unless you spend time maneuvering around everything, you're going to latch onto all sorts of the faster mobs that you have to deal with at some point.

As a tank, you can literally just tank through everything for the most part, and spam swiging/parying/jabbing anything that comes close works, and is efficient. There's no need to purposely take damage, it happens. 30HP is a scratch, and +10 damage is also really insignificant, especially if you still have 300 HP to burn through. It's when you start getting pounded by multiple mobs and are down in HP that you really want to do the extra damage.

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

1%/1hp would (if my math is correct), top out around 2500 damage in one hit, which seems excessive to me.

No idea how you get to that number, but with the 3 current highest HP food at 1HP you have + 64.8% damage and with a brutal slayer on level 2 (176 slash) you are dealing around 2500 damage on an unaware enemy with the altfire + sneak attack modifier, which is a very unrealistic scenario and probably not what you meant since you talked about parry and not backstab.

As you can see from what you quoted, the poster was recommending increasing the damage bonus from 0.2%/hp to 1%/hp, which is a 5X increase. Based on your numbers that would be +324%, which, based on the numbers I was getting with the alt attack (800ish / hit) would actually be 3392 damage (800 * 4.24) from one hit.

I agree that this weapon is a niche that most don't play, but that doesn't make it bad, since there are other choices.

I believe the assertion by the OP that it's underpowered is not correct, given that it's used in it's niche. As I pointed out, increasing the stats significantly beyond 0.2%/hp would make the weapon overpowered in that niche. It's already capable of being far more powerful than the other weapons in certain situations, but those are the situations where you need it most, which, IMO, is a very good design choice.

I think it would be reasonable for it to have vampire powers, restoring some lost HP, but I think that should be balanced by reducing the damage modifier. The primary effect of that would be lengthening combat to give you something that you're going to get back after combat anyways, so I think it would be an overall negative.

All that said, I plan to make the other two soon to compare them, which might change my mind...

[glass zebra]

It definitely is okay as a niche weapon and increasing the multiplier that far would make it way too OP (especially with sword altfire). The other 2 (or at least Iolite) are just so easier to use for pretty much any build (though I still strongly dislik that they added luck based combat to Valheim and made weapons and types less distinct) and my 2 stamina food chars just kill everything so quickly in Ashlands and do not have to wait for their attacks and rather either kill with a combo/altfire or do a parry + combo. Even with them I definitely ignore archer shoots and twitchers for the most part, since they do so little damage and miss easily.

You still need to get hit with like 3-4 arrows to lose enough HP to get over the +10 lightning damage. If it wasn't for the archers, you could really kill most stuff there before it damages you, since apart from a few examples they are really not aggressive in their attack patterns or just too sluggish to not be easily outmaneuvered or bursted down. With 3 HP you will probably get hit a lot more while you reg stamina for the next enemy though, but I'd rather just take 1 stam food to not have that happen. On normal you can get so tanky now that you can just hit through most enemy combos and ignore them though (even in 2 stam food + "light armour" you do not get staggered from most stuff there).

[ministrog]

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

You can't stagger a boss, but aside from that, blood weapons only make sense if you have high health. If you eat all stamina food and expect to not get hit, it has no benefit.

you right lol. it was 3 of something, and i think glass zebra later mention the right setup i was thinking. all HP food was what i meant and strictly for bossing in groups. also an alternative is blood fang pair with prot bubble and the fact you're ranged. seems way safer.