New Item Makers + Endgame Weapon Project

Hello everyone!
I’ve got a few announcements for you all on behalf of the Item Team!

New Item Makers​

The trial has finally concluded, and we would like to announce that @Bart (MC) and @Sebiee have joined the Item Team! They joined us today and will be a huge help in getting balance patches out faster and better than ever before. Give them a warm welcome!

​

Endgame Weapon Rebalance Project​

Remember how we rebalanced all the armour at endgame? We’re doing it again, but now for the things that do damage! We also have a spreadsheet to track our progress just like last time, which you can find here. This doesn’t mean armour will fall by the wayside, especially since we have a team of six again. We’re still actively rebalancing based on feedback on the last changelog as well as our own testing, and rainbow armour still needs to get done too! (You can hopefully expect to see that relatively soon) I’d love to get the community’s thoughts on what should be changed about endgame weapons, so leave your thoughts below! We already have plans set out for the damage baseline and its relation to powders and attack speeds, and I also want to address things such as tier and attack speed spread/availability for each element combo.

A Couple Reveals!

Spoiler: A New Helmet?

Spoiler: A New Ingredient?

Everything Else?​

Besides that, we’ll hopefully start doing some balance changes that affect early and midgame as well, they aren’t any less important and it will be much easier to address them alongside endgame now that there’s more of us to spread the work between.

And don’t think we’ve forgotten about ingredients, either. We’ve still been plugging away at those throughout the duration of the trial, and you’ll see some upcoming changes involving them soon as well!

That’s all we have for you all today. Thanks!

The Item Team​

 

It happened, can you believe it? (Because I still can't)

wahoo

 

Very excited! :D

 

Congratulations Bart and Sebiee, I'll know you two will do great!

 

Congrats to Sebiee and Bartholomeow_MainCharacter!
Can't wait to add you to the list of IMs that have blocked me :)

 

yes.


Edit: copying druser like usual

stuff that people already know!!
- Powders need to stop being the abusable raw they are. The most elegant solution is making them completely % based and rebalancing the few items that depend on it. I don't see a good case for postpowder baselines compared to %, unless you're talking about the few item designs that are enhanced by the existence of raw on powders.
- Health gets to be a myth and lower rarity armors thrive, but damage is (sadly) not a myth
- Hot take: Don't be afraid to murder eledefs. Give players clear elemental weaknesses they have to pay attention to.

 

congrats bro ily

 

Yall dont even know

 

congrats, but who would do such a thing shaking and crying rn

 

BART GAMING
WE STAN BART MC

 

Congratulations to bart and sebiee, the im trial was taking so long i knew we’d be getting new ims any time soon!

 

bart poggers

 

congrats to the new ims!

shutler is pogging so hard help

 

gratz to yall!


i still believe in ArchangeL buff 1.20!!

 

Congratulations!

Re: weapons I've probably made all my thoughts clear over the course of random Discord arguments, but just to collect what I consider to be by far the three most important issues in weapon balance:
1. Some mechanism by which baselines account for powders, of course, would be really great. Personally I favor postpowder baselines gradated by level (as they seem to be working pretty well in Wynncon so far). I do think it's important that powders affect different attack speeds differently - as they do now - because this allows for much greater diversity in building, and provides much more in the way of balancing tools than the idea that has been thrown around of having powders apply before attack speeds. I can go into detail on my thoughts here if anyone cares.
2. Item tiers item tiers most weapons that are not legendary are screwed over because the tier baselines place them so far down as to be nigh-unusable.
3. Accounting for attack speed in weapon balancing (see also: the current rather poor distribution of weapons across attack speeds). Balancing offensive and defensive stats around the attack speed, considering a weapon's attack speed as an essential part of its power (especially for melee, though applies to pretty much all items), things which the item system was designed to have but which have historically not been accounted for in balancing - likely in part due to being highly contextual.

Outrage looks pretty neat - good enough that I don't think I can accurately guess "this is too strong/weak" without building. Conrupt and Tera are good points of comparison here.

 

Congrats looking forward to the manna buff

 

Congrats bart

 

Congratulations guys!

 

Congratulations!

 

Well done ims, and welcome new ones!