(also posted on reddit because I want more feedback lol)
AKA “the Nth post about balancing the Shatters but there are too many words and way too many numbers.”
The Problems
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Enemies have too much HP. They have stats comparable to Sanctuary enemies (their base HP ranging from 4k to 12k with most enemies averaging around 7k-10k; to put it into perspective, most enemies in the Lost Halls have 2k-4k HP at most, and the leaders have 7500 or 8430) except there are way, way more of them (and some respawn indefinitely).
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Bosses scale too hard. All of them and their minions (and the Tablets of the Monarchy, but eh) have insanely high base HP and even stronger scaling than regular dungeon bosses (including O3 himself), which spirals out of control pretty quickly.
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The Stone enemies have too much DEF for things that have that much HP.
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Because of all of this, the dungeon takes too long for most to feasibly want to do, especially when Exaltations are considered.
A Proposed Amendment (in several parts)
HP Scaling
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Keep all Adaptive Scaling on the enemies as it is.
- Base HP nerfs below will make up for it, while also helping smaller groups.
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Slightly reduce Adaptive Scaling strength on Derelict Monuments (1st switches)
- Just to help rushers in bigger groups take them out a little faster.
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Keep the increased Adaptive Scaling on the Tablets of the Monarchy.
- It seems to work pretty fine now?
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Remove the increased Adaptive Scaling on the bosses and their minions.
- There’s no reason why these bosses should scale harder than everything else, especially since they currently scale harder than O3 and his confidants and have similar or higher HP.
Hollow Villager HP Changes
HP nerfs designed to put them into the range of other endgame “swarm” units like Crusades and Cultists in Lost Halls (eg. ~3k HP), but a decent bit higher since Shatters is supposed to be harder.
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Huntsman/Tracker: -25% (4000 > 3000)
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Serf/Peasant: -25% (4500 > 3375)
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Trader/Importer: -30% (5000 > 3500)
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Gypsy/Oracle: -40% (6500 > 3900)
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Outlaw/Brigand: -40% (6500 > 3900)
- Obligatory “make them fire some kind of highly noticeable warning attack before instakilling everyone”. Perhaps something that does no damage but inflicts a highly noticeable debuff like Daze?
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Mason/Smith: -40% (7000 > 4200)
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Prisoner: -40% (4000 > 2400)
- Extra nerf since there’s like 10 billion of them that swarm at once in the Lockup, and you can’t sneak around them given that they’re going to swamp the payload.
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Madman: -40% (5000 > 3000)
- Same reasoning as the Prisoner.
Stone Enemy HP Changes
I like the heavy armor gimmick of the Stones in contrast to the squishier Villagers, but they shouldn’t be allowed to have heavy armor and tons of HP. These are mostly designed to bring them in line with (or even below) the Villagers to offset their DEF and Armored statuses.
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Mage: -55% (6500 > 2925)
- It’s a mage - a traditional glass cannon and a healer no less - and it has extremely high DEF even compared to its peers, who are melee. There’s no reason it should be absurdly tanky.
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Ranger: -50% (6500 > 3250)
- Less severe HP nerf than the Mage despite having the same base HP. This is because it has much less DEF and a lot less firepower.
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Paladin: -50% (8000 > 4000)
- Letting the Paladin keep some of its bulk seems fair, since it’s slow as hell and a designated tank.
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Warrior: -55% (8500 > 3825)
- Lowering its HP below the Paladin and Knight because of it’s fast speed and tendency to move around erratically. It makes sense for a Warrior to be less tanky, right?
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Knight: -55% (9000 > 4050)
- Keeping it in line with the Paladin even though it’s logically supposed to be tankier. Its hit and run strategies combined with its heavy armor and Stun can make it infuriating to kill if given the HP to get away with it.
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Gargoyle: -50% (9500 > 4750)
- A perma-paralyzing armored jet with aqueous cocaine in place of jet fuel shouldn’t be allowed to have almost 10k HP. It should still be allowed to have enough bulk to be a terrifying threat, but it should also be able to be shot down in a timely manner.
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Obelisk: No change (10000)
- They aren’t particularly important besides their buffs, they don’t attack, they have huge hitboxes, and they don’t move. Letting them keep a high HP seems fair - you can still focus them to get rid of the DEF buffs on the Stones, but it’s taking a good chunk of DPS before it goes down.
Mage HP Changes
It makes sense that the Mages should be tankier than the Villagers/Stones (and therefore tankier than the enemies in LH and the like), but each one having 10k HP is a bit much.
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Fire/Ice Mage: -50% (9000 > 4500)
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Ice Sphere: No change (14000)
- Pretty sure killing this thing is just a bonus, not the main objective. It self-destructs anyways.
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Fire/Ice Adept: -50% (10000 > 5000)
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Fire/Ice Portal: -40% (10000 > 6000)
- Slightly more HP than the Adept since they aren’t summoned as often.
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Archmage of Flame: -45% (12000 > 6600)
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Glacier Archmage: -40% (11000 > 6600)
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Ice Stalagmite: No change (5000)
- Retain their HP to keep their roles as meatshields.
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Pyro/Cryo Warlock: No change (12000)
- Warlocks don’t get any HP nerfs, because I imagined them as being “mini-bosses” of sorts - uncommon spawns that become the focus of attention in the room when they appear. They should feel much more powerful than their peers.
Shatters Noble HP Changes
Again, bringing them in line with the mages, although they’re generally bulkier since they don’t really move as much.
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Royal Herald: -40% (6500 > 3900)
- While it’s not necessarily threatening enough to warrant an HP decrease, now it should be more possible to blow it up before it sounds the alarm if it’s focused down the second it’s seen.
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Royal Magistrate: -40% (8000 > 4800)
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Royal Steward: -40% (8800 > 5280)
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Royal Chamberlain: -45% (10500 > 5775)
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Royal Jester: No change (10500)
- Like the Warlocks, these should be special uncommon enemies that demand more effort than usual to kill, hence why they retain their high health.
Royal Guard HP Changes
The Royal Guard is actually one of the more mellow groups when it comes to HP for some reason, so I figured only smaller nerfs were needed. I’ll admit I’m biased - they’re the Royal Guard, they should be by far the most threatening things in the dungeon! Spawns should still be capped, though.
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Knight: No change (6000)
- Keeping health as is because it’s kind of slow and unwieldy compared to its peers.
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Crossbowman: -5% (5500 > 5225)
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Cavalry: -20% (8000 > 6400)
- Bigger nerf than the others because it’s by far the fastest.
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Cavalry Rider: -10% (6500 > 5850)
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Thaumaturge: -5% (5000 > 4750)
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Thaumaturge Spell: -15% (2500 > 2125)
- They can now be shot down just a little bit easier.
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Gladiator: -15% (9000 > 7650)
- Slightly bigger nerf, but this is still the strongest of the group by a long shot (unless you count Thaumaturge spell spam).
Miscellaneous HP Changes (and other)
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Accursed enemies still get their infinite respawning
- Now that they have much less health, dealing with them should be less of a hassle?
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Derelict Monument: No change (5000)
- Scaling nerf should be enough. Can’t have these dying instantly.
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Eye of the King: No change (10000)
- A spawn this rare should be somewhat remarkable, HP included. If anything, I’d say make it even higher, but eh.
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Magi Conductor: No change (5000)
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Source Generator: No change (10000)
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Tablet of the Monarchy: No change (35000)
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As an objective that will invariably be focused down by the whole group, it needs its health and invulnerability.
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As for soloers, an idea is to make it debuff itself with some damage amplifying debuff (Armor Broken, Exposed, or Cursed) if it detects only one player in the dungeon, making solos just a little bit easier.
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Boss and Minion HP Changes
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Blobombs, Helpless Souls, and Eyes of the King (King Fragment variants): No change (1500)
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The Bridge Sentinel: -20% (250000 > 200000)
- Hyper-mobile boss needs a little less tankiness, but I say that Sentinel has enough opportunities to go in for damage that he doesn’t need to be nerfed to 150k, the same health as the other highly mobile endgame boss I could think of, Beisa. Thinking about it, I would have said that Beisa needs more health if I didn’t remember what happens in groups that can’t stagger him.
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Paladin Obelisk: -20% (25000 > 20000)
- Just to match the Sentinel nerfs.
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Twilight Archmage: -10% (300000 > 270000)
- I actually think his health is pretty good for an immobile boss with staggers. With the proposed nerfs to boss scaling, I think it’ll be just fine with a small nerf.
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Magi-Generator: No change (10000)
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Inferno/Blizzard: -15% (21500 > 18275)
- Their health honestly seems pretty fine as is, but considering how many times you have to kill them, may as well make killing them a little faster.
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The Forgotten King: -27.2727…% (550000 > 400000)
- Big honking health bar that puts him slightly above Dammah in terms of HP and should still give him an endgame-difficulty fight that lets him show off many of his attacks, but reduced pretty far below O3 to hopefully not drag the fight out as long, especially with the proposed scaling nerfs. Besides, his HP was 400k on testing before…
- Maybe add a damage window after patience finishes. It was on the first iterations of the testing fight, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be allowed if O3 also gets staggered after Celestial.
Let me know how y’all feel about these, because I’m kind of eager to see how accurate my judgements and reasonings are to how people feel about the enemy HP right now. I’m really hoping something at least kind of like this goes through, because it really pains me to see a dungeon with so much effort and fantastic design put into it get overlooked just because of balancing.
Edit: slightly adjusted Archmage and Bird HP suggestions
Edit 2: suggested stagger after patience