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Clickers and "Shooters"

130 Posts
Link to post - Posted April 8th 2018 at 10:46 AM
Azamagon
The Crusaders which I tend to call "shooters" (you know, like Veronica with her bowshot, Arachnobuddy with his web blast, Montana with his gunshot etc) do not scale whatsoever with clickers, as most of you guys may know.

This is extra sad, because shooters only really have a distinct use at the same time as when clicking gets useful: When enemies don't die instantly. And clicking is VASTLY superior in this regard.

So, how about this little suggestion to make shooters work a bit better with clicking strategies:

The power of all "shots" now deals X% of total DPS and an additional X% of click damage!

In a way, this makes the shooters into "miniature clickers", so to speak.

It's a simple addition, but it would make them both more interesting and more worthwhile to boot!

As a sidenote to this: Maybe the "shooter"-Crusader could also get a Shooter-tag?


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Now, onto the clickers themselves. I feel there is quite a big gap in regards to their usefulness (yeah i know, this hold true for most seats, but this is about the CLICKERS now).

Let's just get straight to the point:

Slisiblyp - No problems here, only clicker which I find no problems with (I'd maybe change "Spines" into a +1 crit multiplier, as in contrast to Bush Whacker who is a starter Crusader, Slis really shouldn't be relying on base click damage at all, especially not at the point when you can get this Crusader. But that's just me I guess? *shrugs*)

Bush Whacker - Relatively ok, but there is one problem here: The wand's legendary boosts ROBOTS (buff is called "Technomancy"), which I feel tramples on RoboRabbit's already lackluster robotic niche.
Not only that, but that legendary also has NOTHING to do with the original 20 Crusaders either (as there is no robot among those). So, I'd suggest to change that wand to instead buff ROYALS (call the buff "Squire" instead?), of which there is plenty among the originals (most notably Sal the Merman being a nice midgame DPSer)

RoboRabbit - The severe lack of scaling makes RoboRabbit a really weak clicker, and only sees (lackluster) use in very niche circumstances.
As there are so many issues, I'll just go straight to suggestions instead:
1) Wind-up Bunny -> Base boost is now 4% per stack (up from 1%).
2) Clicking Capacitor -> Now takes Click amulets into account for final damage. Also, now stores damage based on passive damage DEALT, meaning better synergy with shooters, splash-damage and amp-effects (even doubledipping into them!) such as Momma Kaine's stasis-legendary!
3) Robo-Teeth -> Instead increases click damage based on 5% of team DPS (so there is ALWAYS some scalability, thus not entirely relying on time).
4) White Rabbit Molars -> Instead increases click crit multi by 1x
5) Tube gear's (the crit chance gear) legendary effect -> Imo, I think there should be NO legendary effect which boosts active abilities (as something akin to this old thread here: http://forum.codenameentertainment.com/?thread_id=14016 )
So, if it got changed, I'd suggest it to instead increase Wind-up Bunny's effect (by 100% at base).

Warwick Warlock - Having even LESS scalability than RoboRabbit, I'll also go straight to the suggestions here:
1) Syphon = Instead increases click damage based on 1% of team DPS.
2) Hat gear = Now affects Syphon's effect (usual support gear numbers, +10% with common and +100% with epic etc), instead of increasing his non-scaling base click power.
3) Soul Harvest = Also slows clicked enemies by 25%
4) Focus legendary effect = Instead increases dps by 50% per leprechaun (instead of increasing damage OF leprechauns, which is currently basicly a legendary effect doing nothing of worth whatsoever)
5) Curse of Agony = Instead, each enemy clicked increases global DPS by 10%. Stacks multiplicatively and unlimitedly, but an enemy only ever counts for one stack each. Each individual stack bonus lasts for 5 seconds, but is refreshed when reclicked. The entire effect resets when changing areas.

This effect makes him THE AoE clicker (and/or also makes him a rather awesome DPS-support, if click trinkets are low). When he can click at least 6 enemies at once (considering Syphon and Curse of Weakness too), he is a better clicker than Bush Whacker!

781 Posts
Link to post - Posted April 8th 2018 at 5:31 PM
Last Edited April 9th 2018 at 12:24 PM
Animenut
A few extra notes worth mentioning...

1) While shooters and clickers begin showing their usefulness at the same time, clickers are generally more powerful because they require the player to be on the game, whereas shooters are a bit less powerful because they can do their job automatically.

2) That said, clickers have basically lost all purpose with the inclusion of legendary gear. It doesn't matter how high your crit damage, chance, and "click damage absorption" is anymore. Even a crazy-well-built Bush Whacker beside your DPSer is DWARFED by putting another crusader in his spot that has 2 or 3 DPS-buffing legendary effects. Unless your DPSer is a robot, BW simply does not buff base DPS enough for his Swordplay to gain enough damage to rival a triple-buff (even quadruple, depending on crusader abilities) to pure DPS gained from putting another crusader in to benefit from their legendary gear.

Now, onto my own suggestions...

Bush Whacker:
-Like Azamagon said, having BW's legendary buff robots doesn't make much sense. Royals would be a better idea, but I honestly think just making it a global buff with some easy-to-meet condition (stack-per-human, for example) would make more sense since clickers, by their very nature, have basically nothing to do with the DPSers of the formation, acting instead as kind of their own "force" in the formation. Limiting any clicker's legendary gear to a specific DPS "type" seems entirely counter-intuitive to what a clicker is meant to be used as - supplementary for whatever the player's normal DPS formation would be otherwise. That's what makes Swordplay so strong.

RoboRabbit:
-Clicking Capacitor is a really interesting ability with huge damage potential, but it drains too quickly. To mitigate this and promote consistent "nuke clicks", I suggest adding a condition to the ability that refunds all the expended click damage if any click one-click-kills a monster. Or, rather, since the front monster will always have less than 100% health, add a condition that makes it so if the click damage dealt to an enemy is equal to or greater than that enemy's maximum health, the damage done is refunded back into Clicking Capacitor's stored damage. This allows the player to benefit from RoboRabbit's intended purpose of heavy clicks (as opposed to BW's rapid clicks) without punishing them for wanting to kill things consistently. Few things are more annoying than reaching a boss area and expending all your stored damage on the first 8-or-so normal enemies, only to have little left in the tank for a boss. Nuke-refunding would make it so that the player is rewarded for waiting, since those few extra seconds might be the difference between *ALMOST* one-click-killing an enemy and losing that damage refund, and *ACTUALLY* one-click-killing enemies, saving that damage-unload for the boss itself.

-Also, stored click damage should benefit from amulets' click buffs. Considering the whole point of clickers is to reward the player for actually being in the game by giving them a MASSIVE damage buff, and how RR's damage is already relatively inconsistent compared to BW, it makes sense to give this bunny a good, world-ending click potential.

-Robo-Teeth I agree with Azamagon on. About 5% absorbed from the party just to make sure there's a distinct lower limit to rapid clicks reducing his damage. If you don't want to apply amulet buffs to Clicking Capacitor, at LEAST apply the buff to this effect.

-Wind-Up-Bunny (WUB) is completely useless now. Actually, legitimately useless due to the "Idle Increases" talent. Clicking buffs DPS, but immediately gets rid of the talent that, when maxed, gives 400% DPS. Replaced with, at max, 75% from WUB. Increase the damage-per-stack to 12% to make it so the ending result can cap out at 300%, which mitigates the loss from the talent.

-I agree with Azamagon that giving active abilities things like DPS buffs and such is somewhat wasted potential. I completely understand the idea behind doing it, but when it is on legendary gear, it feels like wasted space since active abilities are pretty inconsistent and act more like momentary help than a reliable buff. Spending materials to buff an effect you can only "kinda, sometimes" make use of for a few moments doesn't feel rewarding. Instead, maybe change the legendary effect to buffing the effect of WUB? Two birds with one stone.

-Azamagon and I have both mentioned the "increase Robo-Rabbit's click damage" abilities because his damage means nothing. RR's own damage makes up such an overwhelmingly-small percentage of the damage he stores that having abilities on him to buff his own damage makes no sense. Ergo, "Gnaw" should also be changed. However, since it is his first ability, it should be something simple, like another crit damage multiplier along with Azamagon's Molar suggestion.

Warwick is just...a mess. So many of his issues could be resolved by just giving him the ability to absorb DPS, but I've given RR enough attention to cover both it and Warwick, so I'll stop here.

130 Posts
Link to post - Posted April 9th 2018 at 6:08 AM
Last Edited April 9th 2018 at 6:14 AM
Azamagon
1) True, Shooters are automatic in contrast to Clickers, but as far as I have experienced things, Shooters fall off WAY faster than the Clickers (at least Slisiblyp). I see no reason why they couldn't work TOGETHER though?

2) Are you entirely sure about that? I might not have upgraded my legendaries enough, but so far I still haven't found anyone to replace Slisiblyp's immense clicking power. She has 2 general DPS/Click increasers (the Pod and Tool legendaries), maybe that's why she keeps up so well?
I mean, not only do Clickers absorb from your DPS (if having ANY DPS-absorbtion that is, poor Warwick) and then multiplies the click damage with your click-trinkets on top of all that (well, unless you are RoboRabbit or Warwick T_T), which is what I feel let's them keep up rather well even with sort of lackluster legendaries.
So, I can see at least Slisiblyp sticking around for a LONG time (even to the point of NEVER falling off in usefulness if we get a high-tier Alien DPSer, in regards to her current knife legendary which is currently rather useless).

As for your suggestions:

Bush Whacker:
I think you are entirely right here! Make their legendaries as generic as possible would work the best for them, due to their intended nature, that's for sure. Something like this:
Bush Whacker wand legendary = Per human (20%?)
Warwick hat legendary = Per magical (50%?)
Warwick focus legendary = Per leprechaun (50%?)
Slisiblyp knife legendary = Per alien (50%?)
RoboRabbit = What I suggested above (and he has Per robot already with his carrot legendary, so he fits great)

RoboRabbit:
Seems like your suggestions was cut off here, so I'll wait with my reply for now.

Eager to hear more from you! :)
Also, thanks for your reply, very much appreciated (considering how dead these forums seem to be now, when even the DEVELOPERS don't seem to post their very own updates here! Where SHOULD I post ideas for Crusaders these days? Any ideas?)

781 Posts
Link to post - Posted April 9th 2018 at 11:56 AM
Last Edited April 9th 2018 at 1:30 PM
Animenut
Oh god. Oh goood. Gooooooddddd...Ugh. RoboRabbit's section was ENORMOUS, but apparently thee forums don't like the "less than" sign I put in front of 100%, and editing it doesn't show the cut off parts. I'll have to retype all of that. Uuuuuuggggggggghhhhhh...

Anyway...

1) Shooters do lose out on their usefulness much faster than clickers...unless Agent 79 is in the formation. Then they become stupidly powerful. I did a whole forum topic on the overpowered potential of Agent 79's abilities.

2) Pretty sure. In the past, I tried substituting one of my supporters for bush Whacker to see if clicking damage + amulets + crits would amount to more than a pure DPS buff from another crusader, and my damage fell off the map. For example, Chef Casey. Her abilities only minimally help my formation, but ALL of her legendary gear buffs Chiyome's DPS. Since her gear is all level 7, three separate 6400% DPS multipliers (65 * 65 * 65 = 274,625x multiplier) ends up buffing my damage WAAAY more than BW can with about 15% of my DPS being buffed by 9,500% by amulets, crit chance DPS buffs, and his click damage increase with crit damage. With Casey in my team, my damage (right now) is about 1.50e300. With BW (level 5 and 6 hat and sword, respectively) instead of Casey, my DPS drops to about 8.09e294 and my click damage about 2.65e297. With maximum click-talent stacks, it would roughly even out, I think (losing 400% DPS for 400% more click damage), and assuming click speed of 20 clicks per second and roughly a 747.5% damage increase (1150% crit damage divided by 65% crit chance = average crit benefits), that's 2.65e297 * 20 * 8.475. Since "error numbers" can't be calculated, but we know that the "number" goes up for every multiple of 10 (e.g. e295 * 10 = e296), we'll just use e290 as a base for "1". Ergo...

e290 = 1 (2.50e290 = 2.5DPS)

e291 = 10 (2.50e291 = 25DPS)

e292 = 100 (2.50e292 = 250DPS)

Etc.

My damage with Casey, who contributed the least DPS-support of all my crusaders, was 1.50e300.

e300 = 10,000,000,000, so my damage would be 15,000,000,000

My click damage when substituting Casey for Bush Whacker was 2.65e297 without factoring in clicks per second and crit benefits.

e297 = 10,000,000

10,000,000 * 2.65 * 20 * 8.475 = 4,491,750,000.

"But Animenut! Bush Whacker's gear was a lower level than Casey's!" Good point. Let me update that. The numbers will be a bit different since I'm doing this test in real time.

With Casey: 2.25e300DPS

With Bush Whacker: 4.92e298 click damage. However, now my crit chance is much higher - 96%. So 1,150% crit damage divided by 96% crit chance is 1104% average crit benefits.

Casey: e300 = 10,000,000,000 = 22,500,000,000DPS

BW: e298 = 100,000,000 * 4.92 * 20 * 1204 = 11,847,360,000,000

So yes, with comparable gear (BW's robot buff being useless in my formation), BW would effectively deal around five times more damage, but only five times more? With a clicker? Clickers are supposed to do an enormous amount of damage, so an effective 500% damage buff from a clicker just isn't worth it.

130 Posts
Link to post - Posted April 13th 2018 at 4:16 AM
Azamagon
Alright, back to replying to you!

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Replying to your first chopped off message
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RoboRabbit
- The click refund is very interesting. Fits very well with the Crusader's theme. I'd consider this change, actually.

- Click trinkets benefitting Clicking Capacitor ought to be an OBVIOUS mechanic, but programming oversights I guess?

- Robo-Teeth, glad you see what I meant here :)

- WUB I don't find entirely useless (and would even consider it even less bad with your Nuke-refund idea).
While I HATE talents like Idle Increases (punishing active gameplay is the WORST mechanic ever!) RoboRabbit is the ONE clicker that can benefit from it, actually, due to Clicking Capacitor.

Also, WUB is a BONUS overall, as the Click-tastrophe talent covers for the loss of Idle Increases talent (the main reason I don't become crazy angry about the existance of Idle Increases) for all clickers, including RoboRabbit. So yeah, I don't agreed with WUB being useless for that reason, but I do find it underwhelming (hence my suggested buff for it)

- Yup, legendaries should do 3 things, in some way: Increase tankiness, increase DPS or increase goldfind, with these effects fitting their respective Crusaders too (for example; Thoonoose's Jerkin legendary boosts golddrops in a very niche way, COMPLETELY UNFITTING for a pure DPSer, GRR!).

Legendaries that only improve Active Abilities are not 100% useless, but they are not very useful either. Especially not since their buffs often start on the same ~100% DPS boost like the entirely passive ones!

That said, I think legendaries boosting Active Abilities has a place, hence that linked thread on how to add that, but seperated from actual Crusader legendaries and adding those "Artifact" ideas.

Also, yes, I suggested to buff WUB too for RoboRabbit instead, as you maybe saw in my first post here :)

- Yeah, selfclick damage boosters only make sense on Bush Whacker, due to him being the starter-clicker.
I missed Gnaw, because in my document of CotLI ideas I have, I was thinking of changing it (and one skill for each clicker) to be an auto-clicker skill, but I was unsure of suggesting that here. Hence, I forgot to do ANYTHING with it in this thread :D

- And yes, Warwick is an even bigger mess. I think you have commented in the past of a similar idea I had for him as I suggested here, which you liked. I guess you haven't changed your mind about that :P

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Replying to your latest post
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1) Shooters - I guess I have to get hold of Agent79's legendary gear to see if they can surpass clickers or not, in practice.

2) Interesting results. So clickers are still not 100% useless, but the benefit is more or less not worth it, you feel?

Have you tried swapping Bush Whacker out for Slisiblyp? I feel she lasts MUCH longer than BW, due to have two very noticeable and scaling legendaries (her Pod and Tool are equivalent to 2 generic legendaries).

Nontheless, it's a bit sad that even Bush Whacker, one of the only two generally viable clickers in the game is still only MARGINABLY useful.

I guess this really shows that they really do need updating!

781 Posts
Link to post - Posted April 13th 2018 at 2:51 PM
Animenut
I disagree regarding Idle Increases. There's a talent for clicking, and a talent for not clicking. Idle Increases doesn't "punish active gameplay." It's an idle game. You're not SUPPOSED to be playing it most of the time. Rather, the talent gives you a passive buff that you can benefit from without NEEDING to be in the game. Rather than thinking of it as "being punished for active gameplay", think of it as just temporarily giving up that reward for a different, more powerful method of attack (clicking). There's a big difference between "being punished" and "giving up a reward". The former is overtly negative. The latter is negating the positive for a net-neutral.

My main issue with WUB is that you're giving up 400% DPS for 75% DPS. Which by itself isn't HORRIBLE because that is "400% you CAN'T have while clicking" versus "75% you CAN have while clicking", but in a post-legendary game, 75% just isn't much. It doesn't feel like the ability packs the punch it needs to feel worth it. I get that it isn't a legendary ability, so it shouldn't be able to compete with one by itself, but maybe if it was buffed to at LEAST a 150% max, it would feel more worth it.

I'll concede to the active ability buffs because I do agree that if they had a higher base legendary effect, they'd be much more worth it. It makes no sense that a passive buff is just as strong as a temporary buff of the same level. Make the temporary active ability buffs much, much stronger to balance out how infrequently they are used.

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1) Agent's legendary abilities don't really do anything useful for her abilities directly, but they do give good damage buffs since two of her legendaries are global-DPS-per-female and global-DPS-per-human. The third doesn't help much of anything. Her usefulness as a shooter is her abilities that buff all shooters. I have her legendary gear, so I'll type out her ending stats with all abilities purchased...

-Hidden Pistol: Fires one bullet for 400% every 3 seconds.

-Ricochet Training: All projectiles (from all crusaders) have a 45% chance to bounce to another monster, dealing 50% of the previous shot's damage (400% DPS becomes 200%, then 100%, etc), can bounce to up to 5 monsters.

-Explosive Ammo: All projectiles (from all crusaders) have an explosive effect, causing 75% of a projectile's damage (scaled with Ricochet Training) to all nearby monsters. Ricochet shots can also explode.

By herself, she's a great shooter because the inherent flaw of a shooter (only targeting one monster at a time) is entirely negated. She attacks faster than any other shooter (3 seconds) so she can more easily keep up with oncoming monsters, and she also adds the ability for any given shot to hit multiple monsters, AS WELL as every shot/ricochet having it's own AoE effect. I go into much greater detail here: http://forum.codenameentertainment.com/?thread_id=14072

2) Exactly. Previously, clickers had gigantic potential. BW at the end of a run could carry me a fair ways farther - 10 or more areas with ease. Now? With barely 300% more damage? I'd be lucky to squeeze out a set of 5 areas. Without legendary effect properly helping them out, or a rework of the base mechanics of how clickers work, clickers just have no place in a post-legendary game. Even if you put the effort in to clicking directly on monsters for the "Sniper" talent buff, that still won't really make enough of a difference. You would definitely get a few more areas out of it, sure, but not enough to merit all the effort you'd be putting into aiming your clicks and how slow every area would be to complete.

I haven't really paid much attention to Slisiblyp since my interest in clickers died waaaaaay before she came into the game. I just glanced at her legendaries and it does seem like she might hold up for a bit longer than BW when well-built.Though I do have to note my concern for her lack of a crit chance buff since that is a double-whammy - less chance to crit AND less of a buff to base DPS from crit chance ("Passive Criticals" talent)
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