About Windbreaker bow and Meowl Cowl hat

[HeatAndRun]

• Windbreaker

Overall, The Windbreaker has the best mobility among all the other bows. It's very fun to teleport all around the battlefield with this bow. But currently it has two minor flaws.

First one is that the damage bonus after teleporting lasts too short - merely 1 seconds. Seems like the short duration meant to encourage the "heavy attack spam" play style to the players, but even considering that, the buff timer ends too fast. And the damage bonus itself is not that super high to rely on such short buff. If the buff timer to be slightly longer - like 3 seconds or more - the players will be able to  choose more various strategies with this bow.

Second one is its active skill -Fan of Gnarlics- is not so strong for now. 5 kills requirement is interesting, but the sheer power of this skill itself is not that impressive. What if the Gnarlic arrows are focused piercing shots? It will be way more meaningful to use this skill every 5 kills. 

 

• Meowl Cowl

This hat is introduced in previous Bonechill Quarry update. But since then, I hardly used this hat under any situations. The sole main reason was the existence of Floracrane Garland.

This hat. While the Meowl Cowl gives you the critical damage bonus for 3 seconds only when you took damage (mostly from enemy rots), this hat gives you almost same amount of critical damage bonus in the entire run without any situational restriction. Even the weights of both hats are same, too. Back in the day the dodge speed bonus of Iriss Twine Cinch pants was nerfed because it was a superior version of Bulbin Sash pants, and it was a reasonable change. So I expect to see some major difference in the critical damage bonus of Meowl Cowl compared to the Floracrane Garland.

[jambell]

Hey @HeatAndRun! As always, excellent and helpfully presented feedback.

Re: Windbreaker, the intention of the damage boost was originally tuned to support teleporting into a group of enemies and tossing a Fan of Gnarlics. I do agree, though, that this is pretty limiting and that having a longer period of boost would give players more options.

Re: Meowl Cowl vs Floracrane Garland: the "uninterruptible" is being a bit over-valued here in the tuning, for sure. The Floracrane Garland was one of the first equipment pieces we made and there were a lot less equipment pieces to compare to when we made it. Our game has changed a lot since then, as has our equipment set and how we think about equipment!

Nowadays, one of the aims we have with designing equipment is to translate the Rot's behaviour into a Player's behaviour, and I think that the Meowl Cowl does a pretty good job of representing what "being Meowl" feels like, though it's possible that it needs to be pushed a little further.

As more equipment pieces are added to the pool as comparables, more relationships like these will become apparent, and so over time there will likely be more nudges to give pieces more individual character (as you identified re: Iriss Twine Cinch vs Bulbin Sash).

Continuing to share your opinions like you have been doing is a great way to help us make these decisions! Thanks as always, and keep 'em coming

[HeatAndRun]

@jambellI'm happy I could help! It's surely interesting to know the original intentions of each equipments. I'm looking forward to see more changes and interactions in the future, and thank you for the amazing work, as always!