I've been thinking about how most attacks in the game can be cheesed with high enough DEF or HP. Armor piercing and the In Combat/Out of Combat statuses also affect this, since some pieces of gear can help with survivability if you're IC/OoC. However, what I'm about to propose is something that can't be as easily cheesed with high DEF or the combat statuses.
Sin Shots
I've noticed that all the attacks in the game, every individual shot and AoE, can only be inflicted once on a single player. After that, if you come into contact with that same specific attack again, nothing happens. Sin shots are unique in that *they can affect you multiple times in a row*. For example, if you get hit by a single shot that deals 1 damage, you'll only take that 1 damage one time. However, if you stay in the hitbox of a single Sin shot for, let's say 5 frames, you'll take 1 damage 5 times. The main idea is that Sin shots can touch you every frame, although this can be tweaked if it's too punishing.
Bleeding but Worse?
I know that this sounds very similar to the Bleeding debuff. However, there are a couple differences that I'd like to list to try and separate the two. First, Bleeding has a set length depending on what the developers choose for that specific attack. Sin shots will only affect you as long as you're in range of the hitbox. This means that Bleeding can still be a sort of choking point in intense fights that slowly drains away your HP, while Sin shots will be more of a rapid-fire attack that can be easily dodged but punishing if touched. Speaking of which, the second main difference is that Sin shots don't prevent VIT regeneration, so a high enough VIT stat may be able to nullify some of the punishment of Sin shots' rapid damage.
What's so new?
Besides being different from Bleeding, there are some other key features I'd like to list that could make this attack more interesting. Sin shots, like every other attack, can have their damage values adjusted. However, most Sin shot attacks will have low damage values to avoid almost instantly killing players. Despite this, even a low damage value can make this attack deadly. The main situation I'd like to imagine is an attack where a Sin shot armor pierces but does 1 damage every frame. This can actually be more harmful than it seems mainly because of how the In Combat/Out of Combat statuses work. These statuses can only be triggered if a player takes a high amount of damage in a single time. However, Sin shots deal small amounts of damage that build up rapidly over time. While avoiding getting In Combat sounds like a positive for players, this actually negates the effect of procs that can only be triggered when IC, meaning that instead of taking a high amount of damage and using a piece of gear that helps you when IC, taking a high build up of damage from Sin shots won't trigger the proc at all while still dealing a high amount of damage over time.
Flaws
I will admit that this new attack type doesn't come with its own flaws. A smaller one I'd like to address is the aforementioned effect on In Combat/Out of Combat. My main focus was on nullifying pieces of gear that would otherwise help you in cases where you took high amounts of damage. However, there aren't too many pieces of gear that have a positive proc when In Combat, and items like Valor may even benefit from avoiding this status. Another issue would be HP, since people could possibly bring high health boosting gear that would make it take longer for them to take a substantial amount of damage. My personal biggest gripe with my own idea here however is technology; I'm not sure how possible it would be to implement an attack that could damage you rapidly considering the software of the game.
I don’t really understand how its a cheese to have high defense and HP. You sacrifice other stats to have higher HP and DEF, which means more survivability. That’s the whole point of having high survivability stats, to have an easier time not getting clapped.
My mindset when thinking this was, high HP equipment aside, I wanted to try and target situations where people would use health effusions and multiple Paladin buffs in order to make phases much easier to tank than they normally would. Quite a few phases in the game are for or against certain playstyles, such as the rotating stingers phase in the Killer Bee Queen’s fight favoring melee classes, or the majority of ice phases in the Twilight Archmage’s fight favoring ranged classes. High-health builds from equipment are definitely part of the game since you’re allowed to choose whatever stat you invest in equipment-wise, but I don’t think that bringing tons of Paladins and health effusions should always allow you so much leeway in fights, especially in endgame ones. A shot type that can inflict a lot of damage over time while not being as affected by DEF nor reduced in damage dealt in having only one chance to do so when spawned would make incredibly high-health situations less likely while not completely nullifying health sets in theory.
I’m also going to come out and just say that I wanted to imagine an endgame boss fight with a new type of attack that hasn’t been seen before, and that balancing with health wasn’t as much of a focus as simply imagining the idea. A.K.A. I did this moreso for fun, but I am interested in how people think this would be balanced if implemented in-game.
