Yeah, exploiter drones aren't great

[Baark0]

I've been testing out the new affinity lately, and I can say with certainty that, yeah, the exploiter drones aren't great. Like people have mentioned, the drones eventually break after a certain period of time. How long? Who knows, but from my testing I think it might be dependent on how many individual enemies they've scanned. The first time I made drones, they lasted 2-3 days where I fought klaus. The 2nd time was when I fought shadow pieces and bee queen, and despite these fights not even being a day apart, they broke before bee queen reached the last quarter of her hp. I assume the rook teleporting and all the grumble bees getting hit by spin-cycle had something to do with it.

Thats another thing, the drones are completely useless vs multiple targets with the spin-cycle circuit. Vs bee queen I could get my pick/axe damage up to 46, but the second she spawned grumble bees I lost all bonus damage. The range on the drones is also pathetic, I had to stay very close to klaus or they'd lose the scan and have to start from scratch.

On top of that, you're only allowed 2 of them with a normal shadow atrium, meaning your damage bonus is even less than it was before the rework, at least until you open up the shadow rifts.

While these are all capable of being changed, the main thing I'm not sure about is having the buffs be drones in the first place. On one had, it fits with the skill tree and a drone army is a pretty cool concept. On the other hand, shadows merging with a robot is a really cool concept that kinda feels likes it being abandoned.

Imo the shadow tentacle could've been kept, with reworks going to the atrium vine thing, the mimicreep items, and the auto grabber. None of those 3 things really made any sense, plus they were honestly really underwhelming for an affinity skill.

[doritosdamafia]

yea the original shadow side was good, just needed 5 or 10 plana damage to the possessed atrium and maybe a change in the vfx to satisfy the people that wanted a more robotic thematic

Edited Monday at 01:59 AM by doritosdamafia

[ZeRoboButler]

I think that some simple fixes could be done pretty quickly.

For the collection drones, they could either move faster or they could put the item they pick directly into Wx's inventory similar to how the lazy forager places items directly into the inventory. (also they could not get interrupted by trying to give items to a "busy" player, for some reason if you are picking things up at just the right moment it interrupts the hand off)

The drones could just give a flat damage increase of planar or the drones themselves could outright do damage, while also locking onto the target and orbiting around it to make it clear what is being focused on.  

of course, the original was flat out better in functionality but we are drone focused more so with this design. perhaps a bit of more darker colors, some reds and blacks to be in theme with the insanity filter kind of logic.

[OrangeNibble]

5 minutes ago, ZeRoboButler said:

I think that some simple fixes could be done pretty quickly.

For the collection drones, they could either move faster or they could put the item they pick directly into Wx's inventory similar to how the lazy forager places items directly into the inventory. (also they could not get interrupted by trying to give items to a "busy" player, for some reason if you are picking things up at just the right moment it interrupts the hand off)

The drones could just give a flat damage increase of planar or the drones themselves could outright do damage, while also locking onto the target and orbiting around it to make it clear what is being focused on.  

of course, the original was flat out better in functionality but we are drone focused more so with this design. perhaps a bit of more darker colors, some reds and blacks to be in theme with the insanity filter kind of logic.

I think better would be just reverting to the old affinity and patching it up. The new affinity is such a big regression from the old. Way better to revert the change, and focus on improving the old affinity, imo. The old affinity was like 90+% of the way to an excellent design. The new affinity feels miles away from being good.

Edited Monday at 06:11 AM by OrangeNibble