Game Design Item Balance, Part 1: Sagittarius

Introduction​

Item Balances is a series of threads in the Feedback Section, highlighting endgame items that absolutely require buffs. These items are hardly ever used (in the case of some, almost never used). A prime example is Sagittarius, as stated in Part 1. Sometimes someone else like @bloww , @Pokextreme , @add air spear , or @Cruuk (If he wants to do Grillface or something) will be the one posting the thread, since well they may have much stronger feelings about said item, allowing them to truly understand and articulate the weaknesses of the item much better than me.

Statement of the Problem:​

• Crippling Lore

The Lore of Sagittarius is as follows, "The hide of the centaur is extraordinarily magical in the right hands. It is told to allow the user to gain the swiftness of the horse, but also leaves them vulnerable to hard hitting attacks." This essentially means that the item is forced solely into speed and glassiness. Speed isn't too important outside of melee builds, and glassiness is bad when done wrong (and it is done wrong with Sagittarius).

• Speed Inflation

Back in the days of early Gavel, Sagittarius was the fastest pair of leggings. As a result it was used in walkspeed builds. Over time lots of leggings received buffs to their walkspeed, but Sagittarius did not. As a result, Sagittarius was only as fast as Hephaestus-Forged Greaves, which is a pair of tank-oriented pants, mind you. Not to mention, its damage is only 1% better than that of Hephaestus-Forged Greaves. Now Sagittarius has absolutely NO NICHE in the meta-game, making it quite possibly the worst endgame-oriented piece of gear.

• SP Costs

Sagittarius requires 100 skill points be put into Agility. This is a lot of skill points and it is all placed into 1 skill. This is horrible when you consider the abysmal buffs of Sagittarius. 20% ws, 16% air damage, and 7 agility is just not worth it.

• Better Creation of Glass Items Nowadays

Sagittarius was made a long time ago when the item system was very new. As a result, it was mistakenly given -element defense instead of -HP. This made it absolutely difficult to integrate into combat-oriented builds, since not many items have synergy with it and have that much earth defense. It's especially bad, when you consider how the current meta-game is centered around at least having +positive element defenses. On the other hand, if you take a look at say, Dune Storm, you'll notice that while the item has good damage, it reduces HP rather than element defense in order to balance it.

Proposal to Buff Sagittarius
​

Sagittarius

❤ Health: 2500 <---- HP Lessened to compomise for the reduced -Earth Defense
❋ Air Defense: 125
✤ Earth Defense: -125 <---- Makes it so Dondasch only barely counters the -Earth Defense, since Dondasch is likely going to be used in Sagittarius's niches. Synergy is always good for an item.

Level: 94
Agility Min: 100 <---- Keeping this because it is actually affordable in its niches and justifies a high Agility boost.

Min Max
-26% Health Regen -14%
3 Agility 11 <---- Boosting Agility because of how Sagittarius is very specialized to a specific element.
8% Walk Speed 33% <---- This item was supposed to be the fastest walkspeed leggings, right?
-520 Health -280 <---- Helps justify the reduced Earth Defense.
15 Spell Damage 65
90 Melee Damage 390 <---- This item is going to be at the forefront of the Raw Melee meta along with Pisces due to their pre-buff Raw Melee stats.
2% ❋ Air Damage 7% <---- Nerfing this damage value, because I'd rather not see Sagittarius, Dondasch, Dune Storm, Statue become the only Earth-Air build.
-26% ✤ Earth Damage -14% <---- Nerfing this damage value, because I'd rather not see Sagittarius, Dondasch, Dune Storm, Statue become the only Earth-Air build.
​

Conclusion​

Sagittarius was in need of a buff, because of speed inflation, changes in the creation of damage items, a horrible lore, and drastic sp costs.

 

O_O
+1 10 char

 

After seeing your change idea I decided to try my own spin on fixing Sagittarius, so much I decided to make an Air and Air/Earth Version

Spoiler: Sagittarius Air

❤ Health: 2700 -> 1700
to justify the element defense and fit with the lore
✤ Earth Defense: -200 -> -300
✹ Fire Defense: 0 -> 150
❉ Water Defense: 0 -> 150
✦ Thunder Defense: 0 -> 150
❋ Air Defense: 160 -> 300
by adding elemental defense to these "extraordinary magical pants" you get the desired effect of being weaker to hard hitting attacks by weakening softer hitting attacks, and justification for extreme weakness to earth.
Level: 94
Agility Min: 100
ID's
Health Regen -26%/-14% -> -52%/-28%
by increasing negative health regeneration you slow down the rate of you healing making it easier for slower attack speeds to block your healing
Agility 2/7 -> 5/20
I buffed it because it further to bolster it's survivablity due to it's pitiful health
Walk Speed 5%/20% -> 9%/39%
I feel that the true main feature of this 100 agility, legendary item is it's speed, so it should naturally be no contest
Health -260/-140
Spell Damage 15/65 -> 30/130
Melee Damage 30/130 -> 45/195
I felt the damage needed a buff due to it's own weaknesses
❋ Air Damage 4%/16%
✤ Earth Damage -19%/-10%
[0/3] Powder Slots
Lore:
The hide of the centaur is extraordinarily magical in the right hands. It is told to allow the user to gain the swiftness of the horse, but also leaves them vulnerable to hard hitting attacks.

Spoiler: Sagittarius Air/Earth

❤ Health: 2700 -> 2400
to justify the element defense and fit with the lore
✤ Earth Defense: -200 -> 150
✹ Fire Defense: 0 -> 50
❉ Water Defense: 0 -> 50
✦ Thunder Defense: 0 -> 50
❋ Air Defense: 160 -> 150
by adding elemental defense to these "extraordinary magical pants" you get the desired effect of being weaker to hard hitting attacks by weakening softer hitting attacks.
Level: 94
Strength Min: 70
Agility Min: 70
45 in each stat seemed like too much of a change from how hard it was to use before
ID's
Health Regen -26%/-14% -> -52%/-28%
by increasing negative health regeneration you slow down the rate of you healing making it easier for slower attack speeds to block your healing
Agility 2/7
Strength 0 -> 2/7
I felt that since it has strength it might as well boost strength
Walk Speed 5%/20% -> 8%/33%
It needed feel that the true main feature of this 70 agility/70 strength, legendary item is it's speed so it should be the fastest.
Health -520/-280
I felt it could use more randomness now that has more health
Melee Damage 30/130 -> 75/325
I felt the damage needed a buff due to it's own weaknesses
❋ Air Damage 4%/16%
✤ Earth Damage -19%/-10% -> 4%/16%
now that it has strength it should not reduce earth damage any more
[0/3] Powder Slots
Lore:
The hide of the centaur is extraordinarily magical in the right hands. It is told to allow the user to gain the swiftness of the horse, but also leaves them vulnerable to hard hitting attacks.

 

Nice Work!

Btw if you ever wanna make a thread about a weak item using this series title, you sure can.

 

Minor note: %health regen doesn't actually slow down the rate of healing. It only affects base health regen, which is a trivial amount, so it's pretty much useless.

 

I feel like all Raw Melee items should be buffed, the Cancer-Taurus is the only somewhat viable raw melee build, and even that is not as good as any other melee builds.

 

ik

 

Really this doesn't seem like the same item. The original was an air item that suffered in Earth properties, but now we have an air/earth item? This feels more like removing one item and adding a different one. There's also an issue with adding IDs to identifiable items, as happened with Concentration. We can only change or remove them, or we get something like Concentration, which we can all agree was a mess.

I feel this is a far better buff, as it
A- Keeps the original feel and purpose of the item
B- Doesn't add any IDs
and C- Is a buff and not a complete change.

 

Nobody uses Sagittarius as it is, so a rework doesn't harm anyone, lmao

 

except for the id thing

 

What do you mean

Sagi's are for all purposes out of the meta and the anti-meta and nobody uses it, I don't think there would be any complaining if it got a rework and all existing instances of the item were forced to be re-id'ed

 

To me it's so far removed from the original that it doesn't make sense to call it the same item. Sagittarius is an air item that sacrifices earth attributes. It's fine to rework it, but it should stay recognisable. It seems as though you've designed an entirely new item and called it a Sagittarius rework.

Oh, there'd be complaining. Whenever anything gets changed, people complain. I think you mean there'd be no justified complaining.

 

Isn't that the definition of a rework?

When items are buffed, people typically don't complain. I don't think there was any complaining way back when Master Hive items were buffed from their previous sorry state to the way they are now, for instance.


It may be an alternate option to maintain the current stats but buff the walk speed of the item to such a point where it is easily the best walk speed leggings (say, 40%). That would be more in-line to the lore of the item, and that would mostly balance it out. But I feel like an item such like the DC reskin would be a good item to add, at the very least.

 

@Hodsonius @Cosomos @add air spear @Pokextreme

After examining the argument that perhaps the Dark Channeler Earth-Air Reskin Idea was too drastic a change in personality, I have devised what I think to be slightly more fitting to what I'd expect its niches to be: Walkspeed and Raw Melee.

Sagittarius

❤ Health: 2500 <---- HP Lessened to compomise for the reduced -Earth Defense

❋ Air Defense: 125

✤ Earth Defense: -125 <---- Makes it so Dondasch only barely counters the -Earth Defense, since Dondasch is likely going to be used in Sagittarius's niches. Synergy is always good for an item.

Level: 94

Agility Min: 100 <---- Keeping this because it is actually affordable in its niches and justifies a high Agility boost.

Min Max
-26% Health Regen -14%
5 Agility 20 <---- Boosting Agility because of how Sagittarius is very specialized to a specific element.
13% Walk Speed 39% <---- This item was supposed to be the fastest walkspeed leggings, right?
-520 Health -280 <---- Helps justify the reduced Earth Defense.
15 Spell Damage 65
90 Melee Damage 390 <---- This item is going to be at the forefront of the Raw Melee meta along with Pisces due to their pre-buff Raw Melee stats.
2% ❋ Air Damage 7% <---- Nerfing this damage value, because I'd rather not see Sagittarius, Dondasch, Dune Storm, Statue become the only Earth-Air build.
-26% ✤ Earth Damage -14% <---- Nerfing this damage value, because I'd rather not see Sagittarius, Dondasch, Dune Storm, Statue become the only Earth-Air build.

For Reference (Theoretical idea for Raw Melee build):

Build 1:
Pisces (520 Raw Melee max, no other changes)
Dondasch (260 Raw Melee max, no other changes)
Sagittarius (390 Raw Melee max, it would look like an Earth-Air Re-skinned Dark Channeler)
Flashstep (250 Raw Melee, no other changes)

Jester Ring x2 (No changes, already gives 150 Raw Melee for Set Bonus)
Adventurous
Contrast (200 Raw Melee, no other changes)

Tisaun's Proof (260 Raw Melee max, no other changes)

Problems: You're adding the Raw Melee stat to Dondasch, Flashstep, Contrast, and Tisaun's Proof. Even though Raw Melee needs representation and just needs buffs as a whole, the implementation of new ids on items is buggy in and of itself.

On the other hand, Tisaun's Proof and other weapons became fairly obsolete as they relied on their +tier to function in endgame when +tier affected spells. It makes Tisaun's proof viable. Dondasch is really good, because it would allow Sagittarius to keep an identity of -earth defense, and it kind of creates the idea that purity and nature define Raw Melee, since the build is Earth-Air-Water. Contrast would also be nice, since well it fits really well with the build, has less uses than most of the other Hive options, and is very unique. Flashstep also is really good, because it would allow Sagittarius to keep its 100 Agility requirement.

________________________________

Oh also I think that Cancer Taurus probably should be just straight up removed by giving Taurus more -tier. It makes it so Selvut can more freely buff Taurus.

 

Sidenote: I'm gonna change the Sagittarius buff proposal in the thread when I get time.

 

I would nerf Cancer to a base of 3 for a max of 4, that would be more fair. I think it is Cancer's base 10 attack speed that is really the problem.

 

Yeah.

EDIT: Cancer shouldn't be the only item necessary to go from Super Slow to Super Fast.

 

idek why the title reminds me of the declaration of independence
couldn't you have chose a better name?

Also, rights of items? Wat?

gr8t thread tho

 

Ever heard of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen?

Rights of Items: Sagittarius has the right to occupy a decent niche in endgame, right?

 

@Zephylox @Jbip french title