Shadow Maul Critique

[RatSkinner]

Hello, I've been playing the beta for a bit now and have become especially acquainted with the "Shadow Maul", and I have a few thoughts.

First off, I think the weapons current effect is way too strong. I'm hot off the heels of a quick little ruins raid and I spent the entire venture full hp, and I was tanking and spanking super hard because this item allowed me to. I didn't really have to think other than repairing my armor and maul on occasion. My maul isn't even max level, its level 2 and I think even a level 1 maul would've allowed me to play so carelessly. This sits with me the wrong way, maybe I'm being too prudent but I don't feel like I should be allowed to play like this with such little effort, it also feels like it nullifies all other healing options, and trivializes it too. Healing has never been the most difficult mechanic in the game but I feel like there's a lot of nuance to it that the boredom of the shadow maul has made me appreciate. You have to gather the resources, spend the time cooking or crafting, and when you need to use it, based off what you're using, you need to take animations into account and how long that'll take. The shadow maul makes this feel incredibly obsolete, as long as you have repair kits and are kiting decently enough you'll be topped off.

Secondly, and this is more subjective, but I find the effect itself to be pretty uninteresting. The shadow mauls inner mechanics are really cool, leveling up off bosses, having its own hunger mechanic, oooh its super cool I love it. I think has some issues, it should try to incentivize you to kill different bosses. If its winter you can spawn a bunch of easily murder-able Deerclopses and get it to level 3 in no time. After leveling it up you get health on hit, which I've already expressed I find to be way too strong, but its just kinda boring, rehashed from the bat-bat. Maybe theres merit in bringing that mechanic back on a new weapon, but I digress. We've gotten a lot of pretty neat new weapons and armors post-rift, the gloomerang and its range-based damage scaling, the howlitzer with its need for ammunition, the brightshade staff and its bounces. Now now, I don't think every new weapon needs to redefine what it means to swing at baddies, but for what is right now the pinnacle of shadow rift weaponry, taking a CORRUPTED shadow atrium to craft, it does not amuse.

Now I'm no game designer, but if I would suggest anything, it'd probably have the healing effect only come in after killing something, if we insist on the keeping the healing of course. This may still be too strong. It'd definitely have to have a sort of... logic to it, you know, killing a butterfly shouldn't be as rewarding as killing celestial champion. Personally though, I'd like for a completely mechanic. The first that comes to mind for me personally would be a 3 hit passive. I've always thought this would be cool for a weapon, rewarding you for getting consecutive hits in. It should do extra damage and give you a temporary speed boost to help with kiting, and scale with level. Or it could bring back shadow tentacles, I always found them to be sooooo cool, makes the thulecite club really stand in spite of its unpopularity.

What do ya'll think? Have I completely missed the mark, is it actually perfectly balanced??? Who knows, but I hope something can change about it before the main-branch release, if not, I'll probably abstain from using it. At the end of the day, its me who willingly chose to wield it, and I don't have to as well.

 

[HowlVoid]

Have it drain your health instead. Once you kill something it returns the hp drained plus interest. Sort of a, this axe is so hungry it's killing me better get a sacrifice so it spares me. 

This is just a silly comment, I'm on console so I have no access to the beta but it's a funny thought I had. 

This would make it 1)still strong, 2)have a risk, 3)balance it's healing to a max of your hp since if you heal during it's leeching it's a net loss (ahem maxwell ahem), 4)still heals.

Given the reacts now I want to see klei do it as a prank. I can imagine Wanda having so much fun with it.

[Jakepeng99]

6 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

Have it drain your health instead. Once you kill something it returns the hp drained plus interest. Sort of a, this axe is so hungry it's killing me better get a sacrifice so it spares me. 

This is just a silly comment, I'm on console so I have no access to the beta but it's a funny thought I had. 

This would make it 1)still strong, 2)have a risk, 3)balance it's healing to a max of your hp since if you heal during it's leeching it's a net loss (ahem maxwell ahem), 4)still heals.

Basically if you win a boss fight, you die in the process. Honestly thats kinda funny.

[Maxil20]

11 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

Have it drain your health instead. Once you kill something it returns the hp drained plus interest. Sort of a, this axe is so hungry it's killing me better get a sacrifice so it spares me. 

Wanda is turning into Dust (somewhat literally) at the sight!

I personally am unsure how you would really balance the maul outside of an outright rework. Lifesteal in general is a very powerful perk. There’s a reason Wigfrid has one of the best survival rates by like 3 miles and it’s because lifesteal innately can let you go way further then anyone else can. 

I feel an interesting approach that was brought up would for the healing to be based on a (much slower) ramp effect that slowly increases with every attack and rapidly goes down after not attacking. It would make it a small bonus for occassional combats, but still be quite relevant during boss fights. That, or it could pull a Wigfrid where you get much lower HP from normal enemy encounters and noticeably more from bosses, and scale the amount of health you get based on how much health you have left (the higher your HP, the lower the lifesteal you get)

I myself wouldn’t mind the maul getting tweaked as long as it’s axe functionality stays the same (since it’s quite a nice QOL for chopping a bunch of trees in the way).

[Ridley]

I think the healing at the cost of sanity is a pretty cool effect. As a Bat bat enthusiast, the problem with lifesteal weapons is that food is just better. Take some serious hits? Pop a pierogi and get back in there. I don't see the nuance in healing foods when I just make 'um out of whatever is left in the fridge and eat during boss attack cooldowns. What I like about the Bat bat is that it shines as a non-spoiling healing source whose leftovers can be saved after a battle. Bundling wrap puts a damper on that but in world without bundling wrap the Bat bat has a use case. Also Wormwood gaming.

Here comes the maul with a different twist, high damage and high lifesteal. You effectively can't use healing items because are already healed from your damage dealt. This also means the little bits of damage you would wait to heal up from in one big burst are now chipping away at your sanity instead. The lifesteal is powerful, but it is maul is forcing you to give up control of your healing to wield it.

You might say, big whoop. I'll just bring sanity healing foods or never get hit. You might want to let your sanity dip for awhile during a prolonged fight though. I'm unsure how long it takes for the Maul to start starving, but I know I need lots of food for Toadstool so I doubt the Maul could last without something to eat. So I let myself go insane when fighting Toadstool so I can feed the Maul a shadow creature or two. Toadstool butters them up real nice with some mushroom blasts so they usually are only a hit or two from death. Feeding shadow creatures to my shadow weapon during combat for power and sustain is beautiful. If the Maul is too overpowered in its current state, I'd say all they have to do is make the Maul hunger more so the decisions around it get more drastic.

Now, I understand you can quickly level the Maul off Deerclops and hostile flares. As someone who accidentally keeps breaking the poor Maul, there are never enough bosses for me to quickly get this thing back into shape outside of hostile flares. However, there are only 21 unique bosses that feed the Maul. Celestial Champion and Shadow Pieces only count the final phase. Here is a breakdown of what works:

I count Misery Toadstool and Toadstool as two unique bosses since the scrapbook does, but they're tied to the same respawn rate and fighting Misery isn't a compelling option. Also Ancient Guardian forces you to kill Ancient Fuelweaver to respawn him, which is a real pain if your Maul broke after the only Ancient Guardian died. We're also making the assumption that the mutated bosses are unique enough for a "unique bosses only" Maul. This is becoming a huge hassle for a weapon that starts off weaker than the Shadow Reaper. I think the problem with summoning a ton of Deerclops to feed the Maul is a hostile flare problem and not the Maul's. I actually look forward to the Moose Gooses arriving everywhere in Spring because it is a natural way to progress the Maul. The progression of the Maul gets even slower if more than one player wants to wield one.

Funny side note, while Nightmare Werepig doesn't die and therefore doesn't feed the maul, Klaus actually does die twice.

I feel like people are going to say, "Just don't let the Maul break" or, "Just rollback if you break the Maul". IDK, I find it a tough habit to learn when I am so accustomed to Hambats. I would top off with repair kits more often but the dark tatters creatures stopped spawning for hours. My experience was the durability was a real threat and worse than a player death. It takes so long to get the Maul back up to max. (Outside of hostile flares)

As for shadow tentacles, people don't use them because they are depressing against bosses who move. I think Toadstool is the only one people advise it on but I've seen the hambat more commonly used because means less resource consumption.

 

[Waywarbler]

38 minutes ago, Ridley said:

Here is a breakdown of what works:

 

The Great Depths Worm probably shouldn't be crossed off; it got the "epic" tag recently, and it doesn't seem to be excluded from upgrading the maul like the first two phases of CC.

[Wormboi]

4 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

Have it drain your health instead. Once you kill something it returns the hp drained plus interest. Sort of a, this axe is so hungry it's killing me better get a sacrifice so it spares me. 

This is just a silly comment, I'm on console so I have no access to the beta but it's a funny thought I had. 

This would make it 1)still strong, 2)have a risk, 3)balance it's healing to a max of your hp since if you heal during it's leeching it's a net loss (ahem maxwell ahem), 4)still heals.

Given the reacts now I want to see klei do it as a prank. I can imagine Wanda having so much fun with it.

You want it to work like the kundai from TF2?

[Cruvimaster]

5 hours ago, RatSkinner said:

Hello, I've been playing the beta for a bit now and have become especially acquainted with the "Shadow Maul", and I have a few thoughts.

First off, I think the weapons current effect is way too strong. I'm hot off the heels of a quick little ruins raid and I spent the entire venture full hp, and I was tanking and spanking super hard because this item allowed me to. I didn't really have to think other than repairing my armor and maul on occasion. My maul isn't even max level, its level 2 and I think even a level 1 maul would've allowed me to play so carelessly. This sits with me the wrong way, maybe I'm being too prudent but I don't feel like I should be allowed to play like this with such little effort, it also feels like it nullifies all other healing options, and trivializes it too. Healing has never been the most difficult mechanic in the game but I feel like there's a lot of nuance to it that the boredom of the shadow maul has made me appreciate. You have to gather the resources, spend the time cooking or crafting, and when you need to use it, based off what you're using, you need to take animations into account and how long that'll take. The shadow maul makes this feel incredibly obsolete, as long as you have repair kits and are kiting decently enough you'll be topped off.

Secondly, and this is more subjective, but I find the effect itself to be pretty uninteresting. The shadow mauls inner mechanics are really cool, leveling up off bosses, having its own hunger mechanic, oooh its super cool I love it. I think has some issues, it should try to incentivize you to kill different bosses. If its winter you can spawn a bunch of easily murder-able Deerclopses and get it to level 3 in no time. After leveling it up you get health on hit, which I've already expressed I find to be way too strong, but its just kinda boring, rehashed from the bat-bat. Maybe theres merit in bringing that mechanic back on a new weapon, but I digress. We've gotten a lot of pretty neat new weapons and armors post-rift, the gloomerang and its range-based damage scaling, the howlitzer with its need for ammunition, the brightshade staff and its bounces. Now now, I don't think every new weapon needs to redefine what it means to swing at baddies, but for what is right now the pinnacle of shadow rift weaponry, taking a CORRUPTED shadow atrium to craft, it does not amuse.

Now I'm no game designer, but if I would suggest anything, it'd probably have the healing effect only come in after killing something, if we insist on the keeping the healing of course. This may still be too strong. It'd definitely have to have a sort of... logic to it, you know, killing a butterfly shouldn't be as rewarding as killing celestial champion. Personally though, I'd like for a completely mechanic. The first that comes to mind for me personally would be a 3 hit passive. I've always thought this would be cool for a weapon, rewarding you for getting consecutive hits in. It should do extra damage and give you a temporary speed boost to help with kiting, and scale with level. Or it could bring back shadow tentacles, I always found them to be sooooo cool, makes the thulecite club really stand in spite of its unpopularity.

What do ya'll think? Have I completely missed the mark, is it actually perfectly balanced??? Who knows, but I hope something can change about it before the main-branch release, if not, I'll probably abstain from using it. At the end of the day, its me who willingly chose to wield it, and I don't have to as well.

 

The weapon has already been nerfed. You will have to defeat AFW twice to gain access to this weapon. You will have to defeat 9 specific bosses to reach the maximum level. And you will need to keep feeding it all the time so as not to lose all of its progress or keep storing it in a wrap. For me it's ok.



 

[Ridley]

50 minutes ago, Waywarbler said:

The Great Depths Worm probably shouldn't be crossed off; it got the "epic" tag recently, and it doesn't seem to be excluded from upgrading the maul like the first two phases of CC.

I killed three before submitting the post and the Maul didn't upgrade. You can triple check  me with these commands.

c_supergodmode(AllPlayers[1])

c_spawn("shadow_battleaxe", 1) 

ThePlayer.components.combat.damagemultiplier=(1000)

c_spawn("worm_boss",3)

[Dingle]

2 hours ago, Ridley said:

The progression of the Maul gets even slower if more than one player wants to wield one.

Wait, the credit isn't shared if multiple people use the maul? That's awful.

Or does it even only count who gets the last hit? That would be bizarre.

[Ridley]

10 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Wait, the credit isn't shared if multiple people use the maul? That's awful.

Or does it even only count who gets the last hit? That would be bizarre.

The Dark Maul only progresses if it dealt the killing blow.

[Dingle]

2 hours ago, Ridley said:

The Dark Maul only progresses if it dealt the killing blow.

No way, that must be a bug.