Changes to Fused Shadelings

[ADM]

A new creature will soon make its way to the Shadow Rifts... I can't say I'm really ready for it, mostly because I've long felt that the principal inhabitants of those rifts, the Fused Shadelings, were still... quite incomplete.

 

So before Klei moves to the next thing with those inky blob that sure needs more work done, I've at least played with some personal tweaks to shadelings. Some of my attempts felt wrong, other were really fun and so I just wish to share some things I've tried and learned that I think would make quite the upgrade to this rift fight :
 

• They have a little too much health. 1250 HP for instance, and the usual Planar Protection. For a mob that is capable of teleporting between hits and retreat in miasma, loose aggro, invincibility frames and all that, getting to the end of one can get lengthy, and typically we want to kill multiple.
  This will make even more sense with the rest of the tweaks but I think they work best at 800 HP.
   
• Their jump should be an attack. I long though (and most of the players I've played with this far) that they were already doing a leap attack and that it had to be dodged, but it is in fact a most innocent move that doesn't really serve them so much then, since they don't even necessary jump into an attack after performing it (and when they do, it's very slow). But after changing it into something sorta equal to a Spider Warrior leap, I found them to be a lot more capable which is what I expected for a rift creature instead of a tank that occasionally munch.
   
• Other close by shadelings should join in combat. This mob is very easy to take down. All they do is wander around the rift and if a player gets close, one or multiples will notice and attack, but we really only attack one... the others will quickly just regain their comfy patrol which we deliberately avoid while in combat with one of their friend. I say, as long as these creature can be defeated faster, that they are more dynamic in combat, going full brawl against the group is amazing.
  Nearby ones should respond when an ally is attacked (+ bonus, when they taunt).
   
• I didn't do much changes to the Dread Mites and bombs (only made the mites exit the spawn state faster) because this isn't really within my abilities, but visually I think the blast fx and audio is very wet fart-ish for something meant to be a shadow planar explosion...
  If we could get a more spooky fancy blast range indicator, with Pure-Horror shiny red borders, that'd be great !
   

And that's about it, at any rate this is how I will play with them now. I don't know how much the new icker mob will interfere with the rifts because they seem super buggy and spammy at the moment, but on their own, the Fused Shadelings should probably get revisited slightly this way and it would greatly improve the place.