Huntress' Laser Cyclone is ridiculously overpowered in comparison to Laser Glaive

[violet mortar]

I cannot make an accurate raw numbers comparison as Laser Glaive's exact damage numbers are unclear, thanks to damage variation. But Laser Cyclone at base hits for 50% base damage 4 times a second for 200% DPS. And obviously, as evidenced by the Blades of the Wind Providence Trial, Cyclone is intended to mulch single targets. No use comparing it to Glaive there.
Assuming the absolute most generous high ball for Glaive (30% total damage per bounce), Glaive would have ([300 + 390 + 507+ 659.1]/3) = 618.7% group DPS. Cyclone would have to be hitting 3 enemies to be slightly worse than Glaive, but 4 to surpass it.
With the least generous low ball (30% base damage per bounce), Glaive would have ([300 + 330 + 360 + 390]/3) 460% group DPS, bringing Cyclone down to outdone at 2 but surpassing at 3. Not a huge difference either way honestly.

The issue is in Cyclone's sheer versatility. Glaive is stronger against small groups of strong enemies, as weaker enemies get overkilled, and with extremely dense hordes, it doesn't do enough. Cyclone is good against very large groups of small enemies due to no pierce limit, and it's also potent single target damage. Your typical Stage 3 boss teleporter will easily let Cyclone hit 4 or more enemies at once. Cyclone also scales ABSURDLY well. Cyclone only gets stronger with more enemies, while Glaive gets pierce capped. Attack speed directly increases Cyclone's tick rate. You can throw additional Cyclones per Backup Mag you have, skyrocketing its damage output. On top of this, Cyclone is very low risk and low effort for massive dividends. It's slow moving, and it slows down further when Huntress is near it. It tends to "near miss" Huntress often enough to the point where it's very rare to actually catch it and go on cooldown.

Something needs to be done. Make Cyclone faster, speed up over time, deal less damage, superbuff Glaive's damage, whatever. But this is an EXTREMELY disproportionate power difference between skills.

Cyclone nerfs would have to come with adjustments to its trial, of course.

[quaint plaza]

I don't find it that overpowered, to be honest. Especially considering you can't just throw it out like the glaive. Cyclone requires you to move in a specific way to actually make use of it.

[violet mortar]

You don't need to "just throw it out" because it'll pretty much always be active, and usually doing more than Glaive.

[jaunty talon]

I think buffing glaive can be the appropriate response because nerfing it would just be sad

[quaint plaza]

I'm not sure what you mean. Using the cyclone efficiently requires you jump around and avoid catching it, which has happened a few times. That's what I meant by "you can't just throw it out", since it'll be back pretty quickly.

[violet mortar]

In my experience, it's just moving around normally while getting a bunch of free damage. The Cyclone slows down when it's near you, and you're Huntress. You're already running and jumping around everything all the time.

[faint trellis]

For experienced players it can be easy to maneuver and get a thousands of damage worth of a single use but from all ive seen this is not the case for the average user and that was partly the goal, a skill that by experience you can take to the maximum, not to say it may not need changes but i wanted to share that perspective
Even I would consider myself experienced and i tend to bump into it a lot hah

[violet mortar]

So it's supposed to be low skill/low reward vs high skill/high reward. I don't think it does it as well as something like RoR 2 Eviscerate vs Slicing Winds. There, SW is 100% better, but only if you learn to play around the much lower survivability that you're missing from skipping out on Eviscerate. I can't really think of a practical advantage Laser Glaive has over Laser Cyclone, and given the decent amount of "Cyclone is CRAAAAAZY holy shit" I see in the server (Even Sai attests to it!), I don't think Cyclone is particularly hard to use. In that case, adjusting its use difficulty would be preferred.

[upbeat mesa]

cyclone should move faster with time

the problem with cyclone is that you can stack backup mag (x2 with shattered mirror) laser cyclones on top of eachother

really easy to avoid, deals absurd damage not to mention that each tick from the cyclone can proc hyper threader (funny gatling gun, unprecedented item proccing ability)

laser cyclone moving faster over time would be one way to resolve this, it gets increasingly difficult to keep laser cyclone in play and desynced laser cyclone speeds would make it hard to keep all of them in play at once

[naive quartz]

Yea much like others I don't think cyclone needs a nerf, but if the contrast between the two skills is that great then maybe buffing glave would be a better way

[rustic shoal]

I'd say you can catch cyclone by accident a lot simply because it doesn't get outlined and hides behind enemies. Once you get a half decent horde to kill, it becomes pretty much impossible to tell where the hell the cyclone is, so you end up just randomly jumping and hope you didn't catch it. Please, make it have visual priority over enemies, or get outlined the same way the character does with the settings enabled. Also please make so it makes a sound when you catch the cyclone

Other than that, i find the ability genius in how it changes your playstyle. Like, actually changes.

[lone steppe]

I was able to go through an entire stage without picking cyclone back up with relative ease

[lone steppe]

This is true though - as soon as there were a buncha Toxic Beasts, I couldn't keep it up for very long
Granted, I had 4 stacks and several powerful proc items so it shredded rather quickly regardless, but enemies covering it up makes is easy to lose, and this would be a nice change

[pastel wigeon]

I know cyclone is better, but I kinda hate using it so I just use glaive lol

Honestly glaive could use a minor buff

[abstract mango]

yeah, personally I don't mind Cyclone being broken. the way I play Huntress, Glaive is the more appealing option in terms of fun anyway, I can just throw it out there and keep moving rather than needing to constantly keep this projectile in mind; so long as it's considered overall more fun and rewarding for Cyclone to be broken compared to just really good, then I say just keep Cyclone as is and maybe buff Glaive if need be

[violet mortar]

...buffing Glaive to the level of Cyclone would have to make it a one button win (Focused Strike reference) (Laser Cyclone reference).

[forest rapids]

I absolutely agree that said concept of more effort and more reward is great, but from what ive seen, the below-average player absolutely can get a lot out of cyclone, i think its certainly the overall more dominant skill

i dont want cyclone simply nerfed though, because i dont see how it could be nerfed without making it so much less satisfying. If anything it deserves the buff of having it be more reliable with the autoaim, because the autoaim constantly makes one throw it directly inside of them and instantly waste it

I also think it makes no sense to want it nerfed in the first place
there are 10x more overpowered skills and characters than cyclone

[violet mortar]

Those can get nerfed too, whataboutism doesn't make sense

A feedback that's just long list of everything I feel should be nerfed and buffed would be incoherent

[forest rapids]

the issue is that you we have such a massive huge pile of "things that would deserve a nerf more than cyclone" that cyclone would never be nerfed within years of reasonably-sized updates if you just kept going down the list

unless they made like dedicated huge balance patches

point being its just really not offensive idk

[violet mortar]

"Focused Strike" and "Debris Shield" isn't a very large list

[forest rapids]

yeah but instead its a list that at starts with "ok lets start with these entire whole characters", which implies its quite lengthy

[tropic topaz]

i mean yeah far more damage because you can keep it there forever

however you have to keep microing your movement which in a game like this is difficult especially in the middle of pandemonium

while the glaive is, here take this good damage and it bounces on some enemies too

i dont think its too troublesome, i use mostly laser glaive because i cant be bothered to micro my movement

and you guys have to remember that this is a pve game, theres no need to make these unnesesary nerfs if the other ability still has use,actaully we should buff glaive insted of nerfing cyclone in this ocasion

its healthier

[rustic shoal]

tbh, i think there's an entre fucking PAPYRUS of bugs and overlooks that have to be nerfed waaaaaaaaaaaaay before they touch any balancing shit. Balancing is way more arbitrary and way less damaging to player's experience with the product as oppossed to a straight fucking softlock or a million bugged interactions there's in the game right now. That's why i wish you guys were putting more focus on discussing that for now.

[tropic topaz]

thats a bit of an exageration but i agree, lets focus on clearing the remaining dirt before going for smudges

[rustic shoal]

I really think it's not. Major visual overlooks prevent from actually playing some characters properly, like major abilities not actually having ANY sound or visual cue that would help you understand the situation in a critical moment without guessing (cyclone, speed drone, sniper's charge, aerobatics etc etc), a lot of bugged interactions like aerobatics straight up putting you inside walls softlocking your runs often, backup mags STILL bugging secondaries. Bugged item interaction/no timer for timed active items, UI clutter, all the crashes, ingame time freeze, netcode is attroshious dogshit and kicks everyone from a lobby for a slightest fucking lag produced by 1000 enemies spawning at once, bricking EVERY long run in 100% of times, switch players are just cucked permanently
this list does go for quite long

[tropic topaz]

what secondary is still bugged?

also what you mean by bugged item interaction/no timer for timed active items?

ui cluttler? theres barely any ui as is

[rustic shoal]

from the top of my mind artificier alt secondary is still bugged

[rustic shoal]

time stop is one example

[rustic shoal]

han-d speed buff gets overcluittered by mini hp bar

just the shit that i personally encountered. i'm sure there muuuuuuuch more to it

[tropic topaz]

shotting two while pulse spears, ithink that hasnt been changed because if you think about itf they did them there would be no way to have multiple spears out, so idk which is a good trade off here

[tropic topaz]

oh you mean theres no timer to know how many seconds you have left? that a QoL at most

[tropic topaz]

ok thats an actual bug worth looking into

the crashes will happen regardless of ohow good your playtest team and programming team is, theres no way to take into account tens of thousands of possible pc setups

harsh words for the netcoe but i agree they could have implemented better

and lagging your pc from how much shit is going on is a given of the franchise, thought it was partially ffixed in unity because it handles entities better, gamemaker doesnt have that luxury so its partially an engine issue that could be remediated at best

[lilac ferry]

i definitely think that this is a good point

though i will at least chime in and agree that cyclone is a bit overtuned

its one of my favorite skills and the manuevering required should def pay off in higher dps but like

[tropic topaz]

speed drones have a sound cue when they are going and coming back idk what you mean by that, but sniper coul dhave a better one, idk what type of sound cue you would use for aerobathics thought

[lilac ferry]

the raw output it has is a bit over the top

[tropic topaz]

i dont think its harmful to the game, and its not like its default has no use after you unlock it so i dont think its worth tuning now

[rustic shoal]

Speed buff needs a visual/audio cue for when it's about to run out. You can argue it's a qol but it's legit make han-d somewhat unplayable as you have to track every drom and start counting to 10 before it runs out. It's dumb af. I love han-d a lot

[tropic topaz]

oh

bro you have to mention your shit better honestly, it never sounds like you mean

[rustic shoal]

I'm sorry lol i was at work packing shit, typed in a rush

[tropic topaz]

yep good QoL thing, thought i wouldt say its urgent

the most urgent things you mentioned there are the acrobatic errors, thought if you are clipped inside the wall you can always just fall off or walk off the scream to put you in terrain its still not good

[rustic shoal]

I've seen multiple bug reports about aerobatics softlocking runs because of clipping

[tropic topaz]

never had a ingame time freeze but that would b eurgent, especially if its permanent and you have to restart the run

whats happening to switch players thought?

[violet mortar]

"Erm... balance tweaks don't take priority over gamebreaking bugs 🤓" Yeah no shit. Does that have to be appended to every suggestion not "Please fix this bug" now?

The feedback was "Cyclone is way better than Glaive" not "Give me control of the dev team to implement this NOW." What is this, Twitter?

[tropic topaz]

bro i dont even think a nerf is in order, if anythikngnthey should buff glaive cuase that damages the game less, but its a trade off, people have to learn this, if something is harder to control/use/setup them of course its gotta do more damage than an alternative that doest

not everything needs to be on the same level

[violet mortar]

1It's not that much harder to use and it's way too high a payoff is my point, so either the use difficulty or damage output should be changed

[tropic topaz]

i disagree i think its a pain to use and many people agree so glaive does seen use, thats what matters

its not like they are using cyclone against you, its a pve game and theres not even the artifact of vengence here, so theres zero point fixing what isn broken

[forest rapids]

doesnt apply to cyclone at all but i still think balance is important in pve when it comes to players affecting other players

I have to refrain from playing sniper in multiplayer because it often ruins a lot for everyone else

[tropic topaz]

balance is important only if the alternative is not showing use

[tropic topaz]

also what you mean by that? i would understand robomando but how does sniper ruins the fun?

[forest rapids]

because he deals 9043593543543 damage and is too likely to singlehandedly invalidate everyone's attacks in a boring manner

[tropic topaz]

it does a ton of damage but thats the point an d to use effectively you have to time your imputs and position yourself

also i never heard anyone complaining, dont get sniper cause its too much damage

also its not like sniper can be everywere, if there was a map that would be a straight line were sniper could spam his m2 to kingdom come maybe you would have a point

to know if something needs balance or not you just have to ask yourself, are the alternatives to this not seeing any use, if yes, why, is it just flat out better? are the others unfun? do they not scale well? etc, if no, and people are having fun regardless, again why fix what isnt broken

[forest rapids]

you really dont have to put in this effort

It will constantly deal a ton of dmg and theres just one ridiculously op char ahead of all the others

[violet mortar]

Funny you say Sniper is low effort bajillion damage but then insist Laser Cyclone is middling

[forest rapids]

because laser cyclone doesnt almot one shot the stage 1 boss
and because you need significantly more than 1 cyclone to match what sniper does with m1 spam

laser cyclone is super strong within its context but it really doesnt make huntress particulary overpowered

outside of like worms (a ton of people delete worms)

sniper really has no particular requirement to his damage
he shoots all enemies in the same was as someone like commando does while keeping relatively highly mobile with a super strong dash

unless you are completely uncapable of landing the perfect reload
which is at most 1/10 the effort of landing good cyclones

[tropic topaz]

its a sniper its point is to do the most damage in a single attack, and yes it does take some effort to time everything, andput yourself in a position were you wont mess up your shot, and even with that in mind that hasnt stopped many peeople of loving other characters very much, so stop stomping on others people cake becasue you dont like the flavor

[forest rapids]

except he fires high damage attacks extremely fast

[violet mortar]

Steady Aim halves its damage every time it pierces an enemy
Laser Cyclone does not

[forest rapids]

yeah but steady aim deals 2000% + perfect reload + free crit damage

and its not over time

and most important enemies are single targets

[tropic topaz]

i belive you rtlaking m2, and sure if oyu can perfect time every input, probably, but is that the case for the majority of the players?

[forest rapids]

oh did i forget to mention that 2000% on sniper is far more than 2000% as anyone else?

[forest rapids]

im talking about both m1 and m2

if someone cant shoot enemies for high damage as sniper your entire argument is utterly irrelevant and stupid

[tropic topaz]

why tf you talking about m2 you have to charge it

[pine leaf]

they should've given steady aim 3.0 proc co just to mirror supercharge

[forest rapids]

because m2 comes up fast with a relatively short charge for its damage, even then thats not just the only problem, the m1 by itself is huge and combines with m1
are you ignoring the fact he gives any enemy full crit too?

[tropic topaz]

what do you mean by that, i literally said that it takes effort to times thing correcly and not waste your shot???

[forest rapids]

it often takes less effort than shooting an enemy with commando m1

just saying

[forest rapids]

forgot to elaborate

[tropic topaz]

ok you're just saying thrash now

[forest rapids]

if it takes too much effort for them to shoot it with sniper then all youre arguing about laser cyclone is automatically 0iq

because then cyclone takes.. more effort?
it needs to be done for a sustained duration, it gets entirely wasted for a long cooldown

[tropic topaz]

what do you mean? i said laser cyc,lone takes more effort to keep it running than glaive what does that have to do with anything?

[forest rapids]

your reading comprehension is failing to exist but yes i will go back

[pine leaf]

does cyclone really need that much effort i feel like you can just let it trail behind and it'd do something

[forest rapids]

it doesnt

like i said before, its pretty reasonably fine to do and i have yet to see someone who struggles getting high value of it

[forest rapids]

you said that sniper's damage is fine because it takes extra effort (it really doesnt)

[tropic topaz]

yes

[forest rapids]

but by your own logic, huntress' cyclone is also completely fine because it takes extra effort

[tropic topaz]

yes

i literally said that its damage is fine because it takes extra effort

[pine leaf]

cyclone is fine but glaive is garbage

[tropic topaz]

ive been sayin this the entire fucking time

[pine leaf]

just buff glaive lol

[gilded fulcrum]

Yeah it's fine, it just seems op because glaive is underpowered

[forest rapids]

which means his only reasoning why cyclone's balance sucks makes no sense, judging by the only argument against "theres more op things than cyclone"

[tropic topaz]

I NEVER SAID CYCLONE SUCKED!

unless i made a typo somewere

[forest rapids]

oh god read

his not yours

also i should have clarified balance, sucked as in too op

[tropic topaz]

i never said balancing sucks i said its not needed to fix what isn broken

[forest rapids]

yeah

but you started justifying sniper's dmg when it was being compared to cyclonme

lol

[forest rapids]

see this

sniper genuinely is low effort bajillion damage because you just point left or right and shoot
and then you can """"""""""""""""stand still"""""""""""""""" for a few seconds and get a massive extra damage attack

among tons of other comparable skills and characters. point being :

theres just so much stronger stuff than cyclone in this game, so why people would see cyclone as offensive is just beyond me

[lilac ferry]

cyclone genuinely does absurd damage and proc rate on a char who is super mobile and can attack during it

with smart movement it has >80% uptime too

[analog fractal]

you're right

[abstract mango]

yeah i dunno why you got eyerolled lol

[lilac ferry]

probably because some of the other absurd skills require some more setup than cyclone and you have to keep the fact its on a super mobile flexible char in mind lol

[forest rapids]

super mobile flexible character
this describes plenty chars with OP skills
requires setup
they really dont

unless you would like to explain me how loader's grapple + iframe spam and sniper's backflip are immobile and unflexible

[lilac ferry]

iframes are strong but this discussion is about damage output and high procs not survivability lmao

and yes, most of the extremely powerful characters are the high-mobility ones. that doesnt change the fact that cyclone holds some of the fastest boss kills ive seen on even just average runs which makes it an almost no-brainer over the default secondary

while im not out here arguing that even steady aim, the skill with arguably the most 'set-up', is even that hard to pull off, i definitely feel most skills require a little more from the player than laser cyclone. im personally in favor of it speeding up after enough time

[neat tinsel]

I think giving the cyclone time limit before it just b-lines to you would work well

maybe like 30 seconds or so

[short glacier]

Cyclone is bugged anyway and deals 100% instead of 50% like it says
So part of its absurd dps come from it being 2x stronger than it’s supposed to be already
Fix that and let it recharge while out to make it less immediately powerful but scale a bit better by allowing you to snowball a bunch of them out with good movement

[violet mortar]

Wait, for real?

WAIT OH SHIT YOU'RE RIGHT THAT'S 12 DAMAGE PER HIT AT 12 BASE DAMAGE

I feel silly for not realizing it... it'd probably be fine at 50%

Or maybe not for the versatility reasons I listed? Shit this kinda tears apart my inital assumptions

My bad for thinking Hopoo Games descriptions would be accurate 😅

[violet mortar]

So it's 400% DPS at base. It only needs to be hitting two enemies to beat out Glaive even at its highest ball.

Laser Cyclone hitting 5 enemies is 2000% group DPS, and there's no pierce cap or falloff so it only gets more absurd with more enemies
Sniper could only fucking wish

[rustic shoal]

holy shit. that's good to know lmao.

[lilac ferry]

this is what I've been saying chat, cyclone is crazy busted rn and due up for a fixing on its damage yea

[forest rapids]

its not a cyclone problem its an entire game problem

Theres 9959092832 descriptions that barely represent reality

its hard to know whether the damage is uniintended or if its the tooltip that is wrong

[forest rapids]

i think that change does have issues

you would be making it terrible with no backup mag and extra stupidly busted strong with backup mag, as opposed to now which at least has one of its ends as reasonable

[neat tinsel]

1. Give the cyclone a maximum uptime. For the sake of argument (cause I don't know how long would be balanced) lets say 30 second uptime. Once this is up, it books it back to you. No dodging it this time.
2. Have the cooldown of inactive cyclones not pause while one is in flight.

The main issue in my eyes at least is how long it stays active

Functionally indefinite does not make a balanced skill.

[tribal thistle]

Suggestion: Buff the Glaive to make it comparable to Cyclone!

[short glacier]

do both

[stable spire]

"Laser Glaive's exact damage numbers are unclear, thanks to damage variation."

Damage variation does not exist

The numbers show variation but there isnt actually any

If your damage stat is 12 and you do 150% damage with an attack, that attack will always do 18 damage

Laser Glaive does 300% dmg + 30% per bounce

So at level 1 it does 36 + 3.6 per bounce. Every levelup will add 9 more damage to the base value and another 0.9 to the bounce increase

so at level 5 she does 72 +7.2 per bounce

note that damage numbers round up if theyd be a decimal, i believe

[stable spire]

btw if you dont believe me, heres colossus taking 10 damage from an attack that allegedly did 11 damage

go try it; bandit will always do 10 damage with blast to a boss because it does 80% of his damage stat and his damage stat is 12

(blast lies about the damage it does it isnt 150%)

[violet mortar]

That's exactly the issue

[violet mortar]

Is there evidence of this?

[stable spire]

Huntess's damage stat is 12 + 3 per level.

Logbook says so.

[stable spire]

could just throw it at a boss lol

[lilac ferry]

i think the best option is tuning down cyclone and slightly buffing glaive as its night and day

[lilac ferry]

really not sure why you're campaigning SO hard against even a small nerf to one of the most overtuned abilities in the game

[forest rapids]

because its really really not one of the most overtuned

i just think its stupid because theres actual stuff that can straight up harm fun by being too overpowered
i dont see how cyclone fits into that description at all, some of the suggested nerfs here would be like a direct reduction to the entertainment

with that said, that line wasnt saying cyclone shouldnt be nerfed, i was just saying that, as a matter of fact, tooltips in this game are extremely fucked up

[short glacier]

so if anything they should fix the tooltip

[lilac ferry]

after a lil more playing around with it, i think while cyclone could definitely use a liiittle reduction (or just buff glaive tbh) its probably not horribly in need of a nerf

the only skills that genuinely need a nerf are scrap cube and alt pylon

[abstract mango]

yeah like Bandit's Blast actually being 85% damage instead of 150% damage for uhhh reasons

what's the full list of descriptions where Hopoo forgot to do math :P

[stable spire]

oh you're shitting me

[pastel wigeon]

Lmao it should probably be fixed

[quartz wadi]

do not nerf this because i would be sad

[gilded fulcrum]

its not that cyclones bugged its just the descriptions are inaccurate

many abilities in all the games have faulty descriptions

[gilded fulcrum]

and imo if something in ror "needs a nerf" the alternatives just need to be viable as well

[lilac ferry]

after gunning for huntress' alt primary unlock (worst challenge in the game /hj) i can confirm that cyclone absolutely shreds bosses though

like, far faster than is reasonable, even without sufficient dps items

it ends up being almost the only way i kill anything tankier than a spider lol

[gilded fulcrum]

yeah and if you cant kill strong enemies without cyclone, cyclone isnt the thing that needs change

[stable spire]

thats still an error....

[gilded fulcrum]

im saying it's not the actual ability that needs fixing it's the description

and glaive ofc

[lilac ferry]

Cyclone is the fastest consistent kill I've gotten on elite bosses. if you're implying glaive or the rest of the kit needs to be tuned up to that level, idk what to say lol

[cerulean yarrow]

You can put laser cyclone down to 20% instead of 100% and it'd still be stronger than the default m2

At that point I don't know if the comparison to default is even worth making

By the way yes it does 100% instead of the listed 50%

It also says it does 50% a second
So if it did 20% it'd still be lying on that front

Or 50% "damage over time" or something
Whatever that means

[cerulean yarrow]

By the way

Yesterday I did a run of pure laser cyclone
Not even blinking