Hidden Slingshot nerf (it’s a good thing)

[Mysterious box]

23 minutes ago, Lardee said:

This is just objectively untrue.

The only differences between mobs other than HP and the rare special ability are their kiting patterns. The slingshot removes the need to engage with kiting. Therefore slingshot gameplay is fundamentally different than melee.

This is why if you want to melee a pigman, you're going to have to learn how to fight a pigman. You can't fight it the exact same way you fight a treeguard, a spider warrior, a clockwork knight, a frog, deerclops etc. 

With the slingshot, you don't need to know anything about these mobs. to the slingshot user, every mob is a pigman.

And of course there's the fact that melee puts you in danger and requires you to frequently interact with the enemy while slingshot doesn't.

This isn't really accurate you still need to account for the lunge of a spider warrior and your spacing when fighting hordes especially with faster hordes is very important slowdown rounds will help simplify combat but for most people it isn't going to hand them the win that's just a oversimplification it even applies to a lot of the cast at this point if your looking below the boss level via burning abilities, panic abilities, sleep abilities, or even just using followers.

The slingshot is more so about your spatial awareness which comes more into play with content like bishops, rooks, ink blights, crystal deerclops, and nightmare werepig for example. Is the slingshot safer than melee combat sure but so is every other new combat option introduced. Melee definitely offers a much higher skill ceiling but again no matter how much it's dressed up it's just attacking then moving back to avoid said attack and repeat despite what you may believe on the matter there are a lot of people who do not find this fun or engaging this has been said for years now and is a common complaint from those looking in from the outside. Does that mean you need to like the slingshot or even consider it fun? No but you need to accept that melee combat isn't viewed as being as engaging as you seem to think it is.

[Lardee]

5 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

Those are all Hold F enemies.

Just put in the armor and hold F. They die pretty easily.

Well, if you spawned a Treeguard by accident and don't have enough armor on you, you might want to kite it, I guess. It can happen.

If you're forced to eat armor and health in order to hold F, then they aren't hold F enemies.

[Jakepeng99]

9 minutes ago, Crimson Hollow said:

How would you modify the skill tree to "encourage hybrid playstyle while still maintaining the appeal of a full ranged playstyle"?

More rounds like sticky rounds or damage over time rounds

[Lardee]

1 minute ago, Mysterious box said:

This isn't really accurate you still need to account for the lunge of a spider warrior and your spacing when fighting hordes especially with faster hordes is very important slowdown rounds will help simplify combat but for most people it isn't going to hand them the win that's just a oversimplification it even applies to a lot of the cast at this point if your looking below the boss level via burning abilities, panic abilities, sleep abilities, or even just using followers.

Once you know the spider warrior can lunge, you just be more conservate and you'll never have to engage with it again.

We're not talking about hordes because if we were then you have to compare melee combat to hordes vs slingshot in which the former has an infinitely tougher time while the later can still outrange the horde without engaging with the elements of kiting by using AoE rounds.

I don't know what most people will do, but I have no reason to believe that they won't simply outrange single-target enemies without ever engaging with anything other than HP.

1 minute ago, Mysterious box said:

The slingshot is more so about your spatial awareness which comes more into play with content like bishops, rooks, ink blights, crystal deerclops, and nightmare werepig for example. Is the slingshot safer than melee combat sure but so is every other new combat option introduced. Melee definitely offers a much higher skill ceiling but again no matter how much it's dressed up it's just attacking then moving back to avoid said attack and repeat despite what you may believe on the matter there are a lot of people who do not find this fun or engaging this has been said for years now and is a common complaint from those looking in from the outside. Does that mean you need to like the slingshot or even consider it fun? No but you need to accept that melee combat isn't viewed as being as engaging as you seem to think it is.

It's not about it being just safer. It's about it removing kiting patterns. Sure enemies that have range are fine for slingshot combat because you have to actually engage with that. But for those that don't have range? They're all just treeguards. 

It doesn't matter if some people don't find it fun. If they want to go sling shot only, they're welcome to do so. It's just wrong to say that the slingshot is the same as melee when it's fundamentally different. It's also not true that the slingshot alone is more engaging than melee because it's not. 

[AliceShiki]

12 minutes ago, Lardee said:

If you're forced to eat armor and health in order to hold F, then they aren't hold F enemies.

Of course they are, what do you mean?

Deerclops is the perfect example of a Hold F enemy. The worst thing you can do against Deerclops is kite it. You're gonna make the fight last longer, gonna need more protection against cold, gonna go insane and have to deal with nightmare creatures during the battle... Why would you do any of that instead of holding F? Holding F is optimal for Deerclops.

Other enemies aren't much different. But Deerclops in particular is absolutely Hold F. For the others it's simply a matter of armor and health being easy to obtain and it being much easier to just spend that instead of trying to figure out how to kite an enemy horde... And for some like Clockworks they simply aren't a threat that Log Armor and Spear can't handle anyways.

[Lardee]

1 minute ago, AliceShiki said:

Of course they are, what do you mean?

Deerclops is the perfect example of a Hold F enemy. The worst thing you can do against Deerclops is kite it. You're gonna make the fight last longer, gonna need more protection against cold, gonna go insane and have to deal with nightmare creatures during the battle... Why would you do any of that instead of holding F? Holding F is optimal for Deerclops.

Other enemies aren't much different. But Deerclops in particular is absolutely Hold F. For the others it's simply a matter of armor and health being easy to obtain and it being much easier to just spend that instead of trying to figure out how to kite an enemy horde... And for some like Clockworks they simply aren't a threat that Log Armor and Spear can't handle anyways.

With enough armor and healing, you can tank everything. By that logic, every enemy other than like Crab King is a hold F enemy.

I would kite Deerclops because I have a thermal stone and would kill him long before he makes me insane which is something Wilson can do with a hambat.

[AliceShiki]

9 minutes ago, Lardee said:

With enough armor and healing, you can tank everything. By that logic, every enemy other than like Crab King is a hold F enemy.

This is plain bad faith arguing. An enemy is a hold F enemy if the best way to best it is to hold F, which is the case for stuff like Deerclops, or if the cost of holding F is minimal and it's just way more convenient to hold F than to try learning different kiting patterns, like Clockwork Knight... Not to mention it's basically impossible to beat a lot of enemies by holding F. Dragonfly is the easiest example I can think of.

 

 

 

[Lardee]

2 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

This is plain bad faith arguing. An enemy is a hold F enemy if the best way to best it is to hold F, which is the case for stuff like Deerclops, or if the cost of holding F is minimal and it's just way more convenient to hold F than to try learning different kiting patterns, like Clockwork Knight... Not to mention it's basically impossible to beat a lot of enemies by holding F. Dragonfly is the easiest example I can think of.

It's not the "best" way to beat it. "Best" is subjective. If you value minimizing time, then sure it's the best. If you value armor and health, then it's not.

It's definitely possible to beat Dragonfly by holding F and having enough armor and healing.

[Guille6785]

53 minutes ago, Crimson Hollow said:

How would you modify the skill tree to "encourage hybrid playstyle while still maintaining the appeal of a full ranged playstyle"?

personally I love the idea of making the scrappy slingshot charged shot fire 3 rounds in a shotgun pattern in front of the player, thereby making it very unlikely for any of the extra 2 rounds to hit from further away but allowing the potential for higher damage throughput at close range, essentially creating a hybrid playstyle where you're still using the slingshot but avoiding enemy attacks

[Crimson Hollow]

4 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

personally I love the idea of making the scrappy slingshot charged shot fire 3 rounds in a shotgun pattern in front of the player, thereby making it very unlikely for any of the extra 2 rounds to hit from further away but allowing the potential for higher damage throughput at close range, essentially creating a hybrid playstyle where you're still using the slingshot but avoiding enemy attacks

It would be nice if it comes with another frame. The current charged shot is great imo.

[Mysterious box]

10 minutes ago, Lardee said:

Once you know the spider warrior can lunge, you just be more conservate and you'll never have to engage with it again.

This is the exact same argument that can be made for fighting them melee fighting them more conservatively just amounts to running off to the side when they're about to lunge.

 

12 minutes ago, Lardee said:

We're not talking about hordes because if we were then you have to compare melee combat to hordes vs slingshot in which the former has an infinitely tougher time while the later can still outrange the horde without engaging with the elements of kiting by using AoE rounds.

I don't know what most people will do, but I have no reason to believe that they won't simply outrange single-target enemies without ever engaging with anything other than HP.

I somewhat disagree here hordes can easily get desynced while your attacking especially if the horde is dense enough to avoid aoe rounds or you just don't have access to aoe rounds at that moment and even then the windup to fire and the lesser hitstun can cause problems for faster hordes and if your not using the mouse it can be tricky to get Walter to prioritize the enemy in front of you over the one he may be targeting in the back.

17 minutes ago, Lardee said:

I don't know what most people will do, but I have no reason to believe that they won't simply outrange single-target enemies without ever engaging with anything other than HP.

It's strange to me that this isn't considered a issue with characters like Willow or Webber for example for Willow there's a fair amount of enemies who just won't fight back while they're on fire leaving her combat to just be hold F without even the slingshot spacing to account for and for Webber the same holds true as his spiders exist as a dps check for a good deal of enemies sure there exist plenty of threats for both who don't fall into this category but the same is more or less true of the slingshot you make it sound like the average player is just gonna breeze through the entire game because they hold the slingshot.

23 minutes ago, Lardee said:

It's not about it being just safer. It's about it removing kiting patterns. Sure enemies that have range are fine for slingshot combat because you have to actually engage with that. But for those that don't have range? They're all just treeguards. 

It doesn't matter if some people don't find it fun. If they want to go sling shot only, they're welcome to do so. It's just wrong to say that the slingshot is the same as melee when it's fundamentally different. It's also not true that the slingshot alone is more engaging than melee because it's not. 

Your acting as though the enemy stops moving or even that you have to use slowdown rounds.

 

[AliceShiki]

6 hours ago, Lardee said:

It's definitely possible to beat Dragonfly by holding F and having enough armor and healing.

Good luck with that. Feel free to share your attempts in making videos showing off how that works.

[Walrusst]

I mean if you want to use freeze rounds and pummel things with a dark sword as walter with body armor + pioneer hat perk pretty much facilitates the high risk melee playstyle for him. Since with a log suit you can do a legendary 3% sanity loss tanking playstyle (Compounding the hats immense sanity loss reduction, and the armors reduction.) Like, mediocre croc pot foods counters the sanity loss with body armor. Sure, you basically just deleted one of his downsides if you wear beefy armor and abuse the sanity loss reduction of his buffed hats, but with a pile of honey (Or a blue gem) and a hambat you can kill pretty much anything out there.

You have all the butter muffins in the world if you rush lunar or ram kelp into the shore once, making it so you don't need the bandage perk. (And its not like he has a hard time with pierogi's.)

Like, he still does more damage pummeling with a hambat/dark sword/funny club that way I'm fairly certain until post rifts, and there isn't a lot of gameplay past that yet so its quite likely that in a post rifts world we will get more encounters which adequately counter ranged spam (Given howlitzers, the gloomerang, and many other post rift ranged weapons exist that make the slingshot look minor, so future post rift combat has to account for that playstyle being viable and inexpensive on wolfgang.)

There are clear exceptions, like his moonglass ammo countering bee queen so hard it reverses the matchup, but really if you want to play melee walter and you are upset a single boss is heavily biassed twoards you shooting it at a distance, you.... Might be overly fixated.

Like the beefalo feeding changes have made the level of face tanking winowna can do for her catapults go from concerning to outright degenerate (A beefalo snack is a football helmet in value.) With a pig pack you can also bring a lot of catapults. This is on a character who has unlimited, free revives and a nearly free universal teleport. (+ A cheap ability to quickly go insane for free and excellent value obtained from spamming nightmare fuel as well.)
You've got a lot more to worry about in regards to the integrity of current combat then just a modular weapon where you object to one of the three-ish playstyles it enables.

 

[Chewabacca]

I find it kind of weird to use pigs as an example of a mob that wouldn’t bother Walter by attacking in groups. You have to lure them off one by one if for some reason you want to fight them, same as any other character interacts with them if they don’t just start a civil war, same as you do for spider warriors.  If you want an example of a mob that very much needs to be kited as Walter and also has high HP, depth worms are there. I try to avoid getting into fights that I don’t have a very good reason to, which are most mobs in the game, so I can’t talk about a lot of the others, but I’d be surprised if those were the only ones. If the claim was “AOE ammo is what makes him unfun and removes the challenge of learning kiting patterns/being careful around swarms”, we would be talking about how his AOE ammo affects his playstyle, not about how the slingshot on its own supposedly turns him into a character who only ever holds F when fighting, and I’d even agree that moonglass could stand to do less damage than marble because it offers AOE. But that’s not the claim, so that’s not what we’re talking about. And hey, if you really really want Walter to have to do melee sometimes for some reason: try fighting with just the slingshot on a boat, where lower sanity can be more problematic than on land and so Walter has an even stronger reason to dodge attacks, and see how well that goes against anything that makes it onboard.

When I’m playing as a character who doesn’t have an increased penalty from getting hit and doesn’t have a ranged weapon, I don’t generally try too hard to learn the kiting patterns of all these different kinds of mobs. I just tank a lot more. Playing Walter means that I actually have a reason to care about dodging smaller attacks. In exchange, a lot of the bosses—the majority of who are completely optional and who most players don’t fight too often—become much simpler.

[Lardee]

14 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

This is the exact same argument that can be made for fighting them melee fighting them more conservatively just amounts to running off to the side when they're about to lunge.

Running off to the side when they're about to lunge is interacting with the lunge. You need to know the range, when it triggers, the speed of the lunge etc so that you can deal with it when it happens.

Simply staying far away so the lunge never triggers is not interacting with the lunge. 

 

14 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

I somewhat disagree here hordes can easily get desynced while your attacking especially if the horde is dense enough to avoid aoe rounds or you just don't have access to aoe rounds at that moment and even then the windup to fire and the lesser hitstun can cause problems for faster hordes and if your not using the mouse it can be tricky to get Walter to prioritize the enemy in front of you over the one he may be targeting in the back.

Sure, but it's not relevant.

Dealing with hordes potentially requires more interaction for Walter ranged combat.

Dealing with hordes requires far more interaction with melee combat. 

 

14 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

It's strange to me that this isn't considered a issue with characters like Willow or Webber for example for Willow there's a fair amount of enemies who just won't fight back while they're on fire leaving her combat to just be hold F without even the slingshot spacing to account for and for Webber the same holds true as his spiders exist as a dps check for a good deal of enemies sure there exist plenty of threats for both who don't fall into this category but the same is more or less true of the slingshot you make it sound like the average player is just gonna breeze through the entire game because they hold the slingshot.

Never said it wasn't an issue for Willow or Webber.  Would appreciate it if you would stop deliberately strawmanning my positions like with the bolded.

14 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Your acting as though the enemy stops moving or even that you have to use slowdown rounds.

"You're acting as though..." is what you say when you're about to strawman an argument. If you have an issue with the arguments, address the argument. 

4 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

I find it kind of weird to use pigs as an example of a mob that wouldn’t bother Walter by attacking in groups. You have to lure them off one by one if for some reason you want to fight them, same as any other character interacts with them if they don’t just start a civil war, same as you do for spider warriors.  If you want an example of a mob that very much needs to be kited as Walter and also has high HP, depth worms are there. I try to avoid getting into fights that I don’t have a very good reason to, which are most mobs in the game, so I can’t talk about a lot of the others, but I’d be surprised if those were the only ones. If the claim was “AOE ammo is what makes him unfun and removes the challenge of learning kiting patterns/being careful around swarms”, we would be talking about how his AOE ammo affects his playstyle, not about how the slingshot on its own supposedly turns him into a character who only ever holds F when fighting, and I’d even agree that moonglass could stand to do less damage than marble because it offers AOE. But that’s not the claim, so that’s not what we’re talking about. And hey, if you really really want Walter to have to do melee sometimes for some reason: try fighting with just the slingshot on a boat, where lower sanity can be more problematic than on land and so Walter has an even stronger reason to dodge attacks, and see how well that goes against anything that makes it onboard.

When I’m playing as a character who doesn’t have an increased penalty from getting hit and doesn’t have a ranged weapon, I don’t generally try too hard to learn the kiting patterns of all these different kinds of mobs. I just tank a lot more. Playing Walter means that I actually have a reason to care about dodging smaller attacks. In exchange, a lot of the bosses—the majority of who are completely optional and who most players don’t fight too often—become much simpler.

Who exactly is this addressed to?

 

8 hours ago, AliceShiki said:

Good luck with that. Feel free to share your attempts in making videos showing off how that works.

It's truly baffling that people think it's impossible to tank Dragonfly with a bunch of perogi, football helmets and marble armor. 

 

[AliceShiki]

8 minutes ago, Lardee said:

It's truly baffling that people think it's impossible to tank Dragonfly with a bunch of perogi, football helmets and marble armor. 

You mean, Pierogi, Football Helmets, Marble armor... And most importantly, Walls and Pan Flute.

Yeah, duh, of course you can tank the boss when you ignore the Larvae Phase and Enraged Phase. Who'd have guessed?

Like, wow, talk about bad faith arguing. You knew I wasn't talking about the cheese method.

[Lardee]

Just now, AliceShiki said:

You mean, Pierogi, Football Helmets, Marble armor... And most importantly, Walls and Pan Flute.

Yeah, duh, of course you can tank the boss when you ignore the Larvae Phase and Enraged Phase. Who'd have guessed?

Like, wow, talk about bad faith arguing. You knew I wasn't talking about the cheese method.

No, I didn't know you were excluding the most widely used dragonfly setup, especially when your Deerclops example allowed you to use things like a campfire to stop you from getting frozen.

and even if you ignored walls and panflute, to my knowledge you could still probably tank Dragonfly as long as you don't stand in the fire from exploding lavae.

 

[AliceShiki]

1 hour ago, Lardee said:

No, I didn't know you were excluding the most widely used dragonfly setup, especially when your Deerclops example allowed you to use things like a campfire to stop you from getting frozen.

Yanno what? Fair. Though I'd say it's a big stretch to equate protection against freezing with completely nullifying both Larvae and Enraged phases. The cold is part of what you have to deal with when facing Deerclops, while Walls/Pan Flute completely skip fight mechanics.

But yeah, fair point. I'll give you that.

1 hour ago, Lardee said:

and even if you ignored walls and panflute, to my knowledge you could still probably tank Dragonfly as long as you don't stand in the fire from exploding lavae.

Heat aura from Enraged form and the stomps will absolutely kill anyone if the character is just holding F. The damage of the stomps in particular is insane... Well, maybe Willow and/or Wigfrid with the song of protection against Fire could handle it... And even those two are big maybes.

Wolfgang though? No way he can do it.

[Cheggf]

On 2/8/2025 at 4:56 PM, Radicaljoe said:

Has no one ever played DST and used a spear? ALL combat is press F then walk back. Its just for melee you walk forward again to repeat.

The "Walter fighting is just 2 buttons" argument is always weird to me because it's just melee pattern at a distance, his situation isn't special, you just see the pattern clearer.

Unbelievably disingenuous. You can not seriously be saying that just pressing f and walking away while never actually being in danger of being hit and never needing to actually engage with the enemy, learn anything about it, pay any attention, or do anything except press f while the enemy isnt right next to you is even remotely similar to approaching the enemy, walking in range of their attack, walking out of range of their attack, attacking them until it's time to dodge again, then walking out of range of their attack. Even at its most simple in a 1v1 against a trivial enemy melee is 1,000x more engaging than ranged. 

[Jakepeng99]

23 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

This isn't really accurate you still need to account for the lunge of a spider warrior and your spacing when fighting hordes especially with faster hordes is very important slowdown rounds will help simplify combat but for most people it isn't going to hand them the win that's just a oversimplification it even applies to a lot of the cast at this point if your looking below the boss level via burning abilities, panic abilities, sleep abilities, or even just using followers.

The slingshot is more so about your spatial awareness which comes more into play with content like bishops, rooks, ink blights, crystal deerclops, and nightmare werepig for example. Is the slingshot safer than melee combat sure but so is every other new combat option introduced. Melee definitely offers a much higher skill ceiling but again no matter how much it's dressed up it's just attacking then moving back to avoid said attack and repeat despite what you may believe on the matter there are a lot of people who do not find this fun or engaging this has been said for years now and is a common complaint from those looking in from the outside. Does that mean you need to like the slingshot or even consider it fun? No but you need to accept that melee combat isn't viewed as being as engaging as you seem to think it is.

I kinda agree. I found using slongsot against spider hordes challenging, in big groups they can and will weave around your aoe shots preventing stunlocks.

[Radicaljoe]

13 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Unbelievably disingenuous. You can not seriously be saying that just pressing f and walking away while never actually being in danger of being hit and never needing to actually engage with the enemy, learn anything about it, pay any attention, or do anything except press f while the enemy isnt right next to you is even remotely similar to approaching the enemy, walking in range of their attack, walking out of range of their attack, attacking them until it's time to dodge again, then walking out of range of their attack. Even at its most simple in a 1v1 against a trivial enemy melee is 1,000x more engaging than ranged. 

I mean, I press the exact same buttons, with different delay. I never said it was more or less engaging, but it is in fact the exact same process timed differently.

[Arcwell]

6 hours ago, AliceShiki said:

Wolfgang though? No way he can do it.

Not with that attitude.

Spoiler

Not trying to argue anything with this btw, just found it amusing.
And if anyone here tries to make an argument using this as an example, why.

[Crimson Hollow]

38 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Unbelievably disingenuous. You can not seriously be saying that just pressing f and walking away while never actually being in danger of being hit and never needing to actually engage with the enemy, learn anything about it, pay any attention, or do anything except press f while the enemy isnt right next to you is even remotely similar to approaching the enemy, walking in range of their attack, walking out of range of their attack, attacking them until it's time to dodge again, then walking out of range of their attack. Even at its most simple in a 1v1 against a trivial enemy melee is 1,000x more engaging than ranged. 

Let’s take the Armored Bearger as an example: even when using the slingshot, you’re still at risk of getting smacked by its butt slam if you get greedy and try to fire another shot. In this way, the ranged playstyle shares similarities with melee combat, as you still need to attack while maintaining distance. While it’s not as risky as melee, the core pattern remains the same—it’s just less intense. And now with the hit stun protection implemented, the intensity of ranged combat has also sustained an increase, since the player needs to position themselves even better rather than just "hold f", which isnt the case to start with.

[Cheggf]

7 hours ago, Crimson Hollow said:

Let’s take the Armored Bearger as an example: even when using the slingshot, you’re still at risk of getting smacked by its butt slam if you get greedy and try to fire another shot. In this way, the ranged playstyle shares similarities with melee combat, as you still need to attack while maintaining distance. While it’s not as risky as melee, the core pattern remains the same—it’s just less intense. And now with the hit stun protection implemented, the intensity of ranged combat has also sustained an increase, since the player needs to position themselves even better rather than just "hold f", which isnt the case to start with.

And on the other 99% of enemies who don't possess attacks like that?

[Walrusst]

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

And on the other 99% of enemies who don't possess attacks like that?

Ok but post rifts cheaply fueled ranged weapons aren't even that rare. They've been adding them every other patch for all characters.
Its essentially that its too late to be complaining about it with walter. We needed to resist the proliferation long ago prior to it becoming so prevalent in our post game (Which will in the future, be part of the progression where we need to spend time in.)

Enemies need to start knowing how to deal with this sort of play or we might see a cowardly wolfgang/bard wigfrid with a howlitzer on a beefalo kiting for whatever post-rifts bosses they add in the future if ranged attack handling isn't improved.
Like. When walter had the only non-darts/non-boomerang ranged weapon with teeth, him being weak made sense, but there are magazine fed weapons with barely short of 70 damage and absurdly high attack speed now.

If we are really that worried about walter, where was the gloomerang/howlitzer/brightshade staff removal crew?
After all, now that those are here, the problems been sitting in our lap for some time now. Its not relevant to the speedrun lifestyle yet, but with more content it will be looming on the horizon. We will need enemies to be able to handle walter, to be able to handle everyone else in the future.