Mob-specific damage and Abigail

[ptar124]

For those who are not familiar, certain mobs will deal extra damage to other mobs. Most of said enemies are bosses, which will usually deal 2-3 times the damage it does to players. This works as intended most of the time, as a way to discourage players from cheesing a boss fight entirely with an army of pigmen and spiders (Moose/Goose dying to frog rain doesn't feel like it should be a thing, but I won't get into that here). The problem here is that Abigail and Bernie(?) also takes said increased damage, which is fine for bosses (you wouldn't want to use her on a boss anyway), but excruciating for one mob in particular; Rooks. Let me elaborate:

Most Bosses, including Seasonal Bosses (not too problematic):

Most bosses do 2 times the damage to mobs. For example,

Deerclops will do 75 damage to you, and 150 damage to Abigail

Bearger will do 100 damage to you, and 200 to Abigail

Since vanilla, (and by extension DST's beta) this puts her in 3 to 4-shot territory for bosses (not counting Abigail's passive regen), which while I don't necessarily like much, is reasonable. Given that you can now recall her anyway, you can always just call her back before fighting a boss; this isn't a big deal, just a minor inconvenience and I'm fine putting up with it.

Treeguards (worth mentioning, but also not really a problem)

Evergreen Treeguards are one of the few exceptions where a mob deals 3 times their base damage to other mobs.

At the highest tier, a Treeguard does a little more than 60 damage to you, and a little less than 190 damage to Abigail, which puts them somewhere between Deerclops and Bearger in terms of their damage to mobs, minus the lack of AoE.

I think I understand where this is coming from, since they can't deal with swarms the same way other bosses can. Again, Abigail doesn't really contribute much to boss fights anyway, and you can just call her back, so not a big deal, just an inconvenience. I would love for her to stay alive a bit longer to contribute what DPS she can to end the fight a few seconds quicker, though.

Rooks (the biggest, most indefensible problem)

I said that Treeguards are a rare exception that deals 3 times its base damage. But have anybody heard of 4 times? Me neither. I've heard, however of 4.44 times, or 444%, which belongs to none other than the rook.

At its base, the rook deals 45 damage to you, and 200 damage to mobs, including Abigail.

The same mechanic that enables every ruins rusher/gear hunter to kill bishops and knights more quickly just made ruins exploring as Wendy about as good as ruins rushing as Wes (minus monkeys). Unlike bosses which has a need to not be cheesed, clockworks are mobs like any other, and other clockwork types also don't have an absurd damage multiplier like the rook's.

The 200 damage does sound familiar, doesn't it now? Earlier I said Bearger deals the same amount of damage to her. Now why on Earth should Abigail be fighting 900hp mini-Beargers in chess biomes on the surface, and much worse, in the ruins where Wendy runs into them every 20 seconds. (why clockworks have 3 times the health they did for solo as opposed to 2 times like most other monsters is also not something I want to complain about here)

This isn't a matter of "Abigail died and I have nothing to protect me", it's a matter of "Abigail is so fragile she can't meaningfully contribute to a trivial clockwork fight without fading out of existence".

Ideas:

Proposal 1: Treat damage against Abigail as equal to damage against players.
Proposal 2: Reduce mob-specific damage done by rooks. Let's admit it, 200 is just too much against any kind of mob, Abigail or not.

[ScottHansen]

Thank you for pointing out the rook's damage to non-players. I consider this a bug as that is more than deerclops deals out. That said, I have to figure out what the motive was for this before changing it.

[ptar124]

3 hours ago, ScottHansen said:

Thank you for pointing out the rook's damage to non-players. I consider this a bug as that is more than deerclops deals out. That said, I have to figure out what the motive was for this before changing it.

Thank you for the timely reply! If it's not too much to ask, can you reply to this thread once you find out what's going on?

[csc_unit]

11 hours ago, ptar124 said:

Proposal 1: Treat damage against Abigail as equal to damage against players.
Proposal 2: Reduce mob-specific damage done by rooks. Let's admit it, 200 is just too much against any kind of mob, Abigail or not.

Yes and Yes!

Thank you I never noticed the numbers, now I know exactly why my instinct about Abi's survival gainst those enemies was so off! This fix is really important and I don't understand why devs haven't changed that for Abi. Still, she would not be viable for these fights, but this is just unreasonable at the moment. 

[xFleury]

I really enjoy getting a Rook to ram a Bishop or Knight or even another Rook. On occasion, I've also used a Rook to plow through an army of Shadow Splumonkeys that were chasing me.

I'd rather things stay as they are, than for Rooks to simply just get nerfed.

[Terra B Welch]

Honestly I don't think that the mob damage is that big of a deal, but that's just me.

I do believe in the code though the damage to mobs is the mob's actual damage and that they get a damage multiplier to players.

Like the damage value for deerclops is actually 150 it's just that if the target is a player it adds a player damage multiplier which for deerclops(and other giants) is 0.5x, hence why deerclops does 75 to players.

I think this multiplier is 0.33x for treeguards and 0.225x for clockwork rooks.

Anywho personally I don't mind the multipliers, if anything else it just encourages preparing more.

[ScottHansen]

8 hours ago, ptar124 said:

If it's not too much to ask, can you reply to this thread once you find out what's going on?

The code in question is from single player DS, so this has always been the case. I'm reluctant to change it as @xFleury pointed out, a number of people use this to their advantage. I will still keep this in mind going forward, but for the time being it will remain as is. Sorry.

[Terra B Welch]

44 minutes ago, ScottHansen said:

The code in question is from single player DS, so this has always been the case. I'm reluctant to change it as @xFleury pointed out, a number of people use this to their advantage. I will still keep this in mind going forward, but for the time being it will remain as is. Sorry.

Honestly I'm fine with the mob damage to abigail with the exception being rooks.

I don't mind the 200 damage to other mobs, but maybe make it 45 damage specifically for abigail? Bosses doing increased damage is understandable I just think the rooks is a little awkward.

(Edit: Honestly though even the rooks aren't a big deal, I've dealt with plenty of rooks without abigail, I was merely giving an idea. I honestly don't mind the tradeoff of rooks being able to plow down other mobs in exchange for abigail being one of those mobs, honestly watching a damaged rook plow down a conga line of shadow splumonkies is super satisfying)

[ptar124]

8 hours ago, Terra M Welch said:

I don't mind the 200 damage to other mobs, but maybe make it 45 damage specifically for abigail? Bosses doing increased damage is understandable I just think the rooks is a little awkward.

This is the point I'm trying to make. It's awkward when rooks are the only normal mob that outright denies Abigail from existing.

8 hours ago, Terra M Welch said:

Honestly though even the rooks aren't a big deal, I've dealt with plenty of rooks without abigail, I was merely giving an idea. I honestly don't mind the tradeoff of rooks being able to plow down other mobs in exchange for abigail being one of those mobs

It's not an issue killing rooks without Abigail either, as I said before. It's just dumb that Abigail isn't able to contribute at all. Am I going to die to this? Absolutely not.

9 hours ago, ScottHansen said:

The code in question is from single player DS, so this has always been the case. I'm reluctant to change it as @xFleury pointed out, a number of people use this to their advantage. I will still keep this in mind going forward, but for the time being it will remain as is. Sorry.

In single player DS, rooks have 300 health. You can easily kill it before any one rook gets 2 or more charges into Abigail. I also use rook damage to my advantage to ram down bishops and knights, but Abigail being included in that sounds at least a little bit odd.