feedback/bugs/suggestions dump

[aka-Syntax]

I love RiskyMod a lot for the many different tweaks it makes while still feeling like it keeps in line with vanilla stuff. This is mostly just for me to drop a couple bits of feedback/improvements to the already massive list of changes

bugs

• While I have a Bandolier, sometimes my abilities have halved cooldown when I cast them.
  Not sure if halved CDs on ability casts when you pick up a bandolier with no cooldowns is an intentional behaviour, or if I just didn't pay enough attention and this doesn't even happen. Regardless, would be neat if you could look into this (and sorry if nothing turns up lol.)

• Symbiotic Scorpion
  The config shows an option to enable/disable changes to it, but the doc shows nothing. I noticed that the scorp only applies -1 armor now - is this the intended change? it should be added to the doc if so, might be something you missed. (not really a bug)

i think thats basically it, idk if i can edit this post after i post but ill add onto this list regardless if anything else comes up

ok suggestions time

items

• Oddly Shaped Opal Rework:
  Increase armor by 30 (+30) while out of danger. This bonus decays over 2s (+15% per stack) when you get it.
  IMO this change does 3 things: It makes stacking opal not complete ass, makes the armor buff useful for more than one attack, and separates the item's identity from Safer Spaces. Personally I'm a big fan of defensive items, and Opal could be a really cool and desirable addition to the pool.

• Needletick
  This item never sits right with me. I want to think of something but I still have nothing at the moment. |

• Red Whip
  30% bonus movement speed feels like way too much. Just picking one up can basically let you breeze past stages. I think nerfing the movement speed bonus from 30% to 20% to make the total buff equal to vanilla Whip would make it feel less of a win-condition.

• Rose Buckler
  Not sure if this wasn't mentioned in the doc, but Rose Buckler seems to provide 20 armor while sprinting instead of the 10 specified. Regardless, I think +20 while sprinting is a pretty good number for the item to be at.

Survivors

engineer
I really want his default playstyle of "holding your ground" to be fun and viable, but everyone (including me) seems to prefer spider mines and harpoons over the stock abilities, even with the changes made.

• Pressure mines rework:
  Damage and blast radius increase as the mine arms instead of a binary "armed or unarmed" system.
• Max arming time decreased (no clue how long it actually is lol)

I understand not making pressure mines detonate when not fully armed, but IMO removes a lot of the calculation and risk from Pressure Mines. This change aims to let you "cash in" on a non-fully armed mine for part of the damage, still maintaining the level of strategy that default Engi should have.

I want to see spider mines changed in some way as well, but have no good ideas yet. It's probably fine without change, as boring as it is

• Bubble Shield
  The little device thingy that you throw out now Stuns and pushes enemies away when it impacts terrain
• Cooldown 25s > 18s, uptime 15s > 10s
• Now always allows allied projectiles to pass and always blocks enemy projectiles

Bubble Shield is supposed to act as a safezone for yourself and your turrets, but the reality is that it's really bad at doing its job. Beetle Guards and Parents often breach the zone, and explosions from Elder Lem fireballs and overloading bombs don't get blocked at all. The knockback should create space for your (presumably stationary) turrets, and with the Pressure Mines tweak will hopefully reinforce the defense aspect of his default kit. The cooldown was too long for what little it did, leaving it only useful for teleporter events (like enforcer's tear gas). Having to leave the shield because of an enemy and getting fucked by your dome is also Very Fun and Cool TM

Huntress
My idea of a huntress change would be to make her auto-aim an optional passive and make her M1/M2 work differently depending on the option, but I'm pretty sure that would be waaay too drastic of a change to make for the scope of this mod. Otherwise I greatly appreciate the buff to her primaries and glaive, nothing much else to be said here.

REX
Oh boy. This might get personal.

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I hold the highly unpopular opinion that REX's design is completely fucked sideways. You have robot skills that basically have no good reason for existing, plant skills that remove all risk of the playstyle by having built-in healing, and a debuff that is literally only applied by 2 moves (despite it being advertised as the character's passive). What I have proposed here is basically on the same level as an acrid/bandit rework.

The intent will be to shift majority of the healing from plant skills to robot to hammer in the "risk" part of REX's intended playstyle.

DIRECTIVE: Inject

• Syringes now all heal 16% of damage dealt on hit, instead of only the last syringe healing
• Projectile speed increased

Aim better, heal more. The last syringe still inflicts Weaken since I didn't want to make them all apply it. The healing should also be weaker than before, but not too weak as you shouldn’t be forced to run Disperse for the lifesteal.

• Seed Barrage damage 450% > 500% - 300% based on the amount of health sacrificed

The intent is to weaken the move as your HP lowers to adjust for the reduced health cost. This should also hopefully provide an incentive to keep your HP up, even if you aren't at risk of danger. Might need some number tweaks to not feel bad, or could be completely unnecessary at all.

DIRECTIVE: Drill rework:

• Renamed to DIRECTIVE: Develop
• Same "select zone to mark" GUI when casted
• Sprouts 4 seedlings in the marked zone
• Each seedling detonates for 180% damage and applies Weaken in a small radius when contacted, or grants the Regenerative buff to allies
• Hold up to 2 stacks, cooldown: 6s

REX desperately needs more ways to apply Weaken (see: point about weaken being applied by only 2 moves). Having Weaken also gives Robot M2 an actual reason to be taken over Plant M2 beyond "hurr hurr flower + backup mags"

Bramble Volley Rework:

• Renamed to Noxious Bloom
• Boost at a 45 degree angle in your movement direction (like wax quail, i guess). Boost directly upwards higher if standing still.
• Stunning. Leave behind a plant that explodes after 1 second or when stepped on, dealing (???) damage.

I've always hated that bramble volley is literally the exact same ability as its alternate. This adds a (hopefully) fun alternate mobility option to REX while maintaining the same general idea of keeping enemies away from you.

Tangling Growth rework:

• The flower as a projectile still behaves the same, sprouting on landing after 1s.
• Upon sprouting, the flower pulses once every second, each pulse rooting nearby enemies and pulling them towards the center, dealing 100% damage. After 5 pulses, the flower detonates for 750% (?) damage. The pulse rate scales with attack speed.

Very much not a fan of how Growth is basically a fire and forget skill. The ability is very lackluster and encourages firing it into a crowd for immense sustainability and free crowd control. Here I've tried to change it to

• DIRECTIVE: Harvest no longer has that stupid endlag period where you cant shoot anything lol lmao
  Otherwise, love the changes to it. I'm always tempted to run it sometimes for funsies and it's very effective at keeping you alive, and synergizes with Weaken very well (though having it overheal you at times kinda sucks)

Void Fiend

• Why the removal of Corruption from crits? Just curious
• The option to change trespass scaling with movespeed doesn't show up in mod options for me - not sure if this is a problem on my end or not.

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That's all I have at the moment, and I'll continue to update this with replies over time. RiskyMod is an excellent mod overall, and I don't want to come off as pushy or over-assertive with this giant list of information.

[Moffein]

Thanks for the feedback!

• Bandolier
  Probably coming from some other mod. The only thing RiskyMod changes are the pickup radius and the On Bandolier Applied code to make it fully restore primary skills.

• Scorpion
  Forgot to add it to the doc, will update. Its armor shred has been reduced from -2 to -1 so that it's a bit less of a direct upgrade to Shattering Justice (though it still is way better in most cases).

• Opal
  I think it's fine as-is, though it definitely does have an identity overlap with Safer Spaces.

• Needletick
  Yeah, I think it's in a really awkward spot as well. No clue what to do about it.

As for Survivor changes, the mod is currently in maintenance mode since I don't play RoR2 as much these days, so I want to avoid doing anything too drastic.

[Littleevo]

id like to dump my suggestions here for these items as well

scorpion: can have a diminishing returns mechanic similar to the reworked infusion. first couple of hits reduce armor by 1, then over time u need more and more hits to keep reducing the armor by the same amount.

needletick: can be reworked into a damage buffing item. the collapse debuff does no damage on its own, but while its active it increases the damage the enemy receives per stack.

opal: could be changed slightly from vanilla so that it prevents knockback (that's not self inflicted) for the one hit. great for survivors like engi and captain which can have a really bad day with fall damage.

red whip: the bonus movement speed reduced, but another mechanic is added which reduces the time needed to stop attacking to be considered out of combat, which can synergize with other items.

[aka-Syntax]

Engineer

• of all the skills that got touched up bubble shield feels oddly left out - it definitely has its uses early-game for blocking big attacks from tele bosses but i feel like dangerous melee enemies like elder lems, imps, etc just ignore this skill, and with such a long cooldown this makes it pretty inconsistent from experience. in addition, aoes from things like hermit crabs, overloading elites, etc will deal their full damage through bubble shield.
  -- also having to give up harpoons for shield fuggen suuuuuuucks
• first thought would be have bubble shield give allies within it a decent armor buff as a fallback for melee/aoe attacks
• another thing i'd like to see (but not sure if properly feasible) would be some kind of targeting trajectory for bubble shield? like an enforcer tear gas or captain probes situation where i can hold the button down and see where my bubble shield will land - largely for qol

[Moffein]

I've been considering moving Bubble Shield to use the same system that SnapfreezeDefense (part of RiskyMod) and SS2U Cyborg use for blocking ranged attacks, where it deletes projectiles and negates hitscan from the enemy team while allowing friendly attacks through so that it's more consistent at actually doing its job.
Might end up trying that out if I get the time to do so.

Another idea I've had that could potentially go alongside this is making the default Engi mines also apply heavy knockback like Railgunner's Concussion Mines, so that they synergize with the shield.

As for targeting trajectory, I'd say the skill is short-range enough that it's not really necessary outside of maybe a few niche pixel spots.

[aka-Syntax]

im totally on board with the defense matrix idea for bubble shield

something like the shockwave mines from returns would be really sick: having a new variant of pressure mines that trigger multiple times and inflict heavy knockback (though i imagine this is more a job for skillsreturns lol)

yeah fair enough lol

[Moffein]

Bubble Shield defense matrix is live if you wanna give it a try.