Some collected feedback and ideas

I've been using the mod for a while now in my in-progress modpack, which additionally makes a lot of other changes and additions. The goal is to improve and add on to the base game while keeping in with the game's style and theming. As a result, some of this feedback will be made with that in mind, and I'll try to note that where possible.

Increased monster spawnrates feels good, vastly improving the typical early game of waiting around for things to happen. This is a very common modding change, but it feels good here.

Drones are still a point of balance I'm not sure about. I've been experimenting with the classic "teleport gunner turrets to the teleporter on start" thing, but in this modpack they are actually quite powerful, and if you manage to stack up about 5 or more of them (which seems easy to do), they can end up shredding bosses later in a run and are very difficult to kill. However, without being moved to the teleporter, they also are useless the majority of the time, so I'm not sure what the right move is here.

Item feedback. I like pretty much all of the item changes. I also run Mystic's Items, Classic Items, and an experimenting with Tinker's Toolbox. All three mods are heavily tweaked and configured to stay in line with RiskyMod's overall balance philosophy, with many disabled.

Razorwire
- This item still feels about as powerful as it did before, I'm not sure if it's overtuned or something but it tends to still just delete enemies that get close. This might be due to the fact that I tend to play melee survivors, but I'm not sure.
Harvester's Scythe
- This item no longer needs its passive 5% crit, as it doesn't need crits to activate, which was the only reason it had it to begin with. The new effect is still plenty powerful, I think.
Berzerker's Pauldron
- This has been mentioned before, but this item is ridiculous. With the mod's changes to enemy density, this buff may as well have permanent uptime, especially later in the run. If we'd like to keep its multikill theming, I think a tweak I'd make is something like this:
  - Gain a stacking buff that grants +5% attack and (2.5%? 5%?) move speed on kill for 3s. Max (9? 10?) stacks.
Lepton Daisy
- I actually don't know if this needs a nerf, but it's really strong right now. 5% HP/s is really good. I think pulling in the radius a meter or two might be alright, but I've still died on higher modded difficulties with this, so I don't know if it's necessary.
Hunter's Harpoon
- Has ridiculous uptime currently. There's an item in Mystic's Items that also extends the duration of buffs, so I had to disable this change. However, the vanilla duration also feels bad, so maybe split the difference at 2s base uptime.

Some survivor feedback. I haven't tested out everyone, and this section is going to include a lot more of my Ideas for some reworks and/or extra skills.

Commando

Frag grenade cooking feels good, and has good telegraphing.
I still think Tac Dive should have a small window of invincibility, but reducing cooldowns is alright.
I'd like to add a "passive" to Commando, but I've been struggling to come up with anything interesting that keeps his simple base gameplay in tact.

Huntress

I've actually been using HIFU's Huntress Tweaks mod, largely for more granular control, although it does buff many of her abilities a bit more than RiskyMod does baseline.
The most important change I've made is giving her the "passive" ability to sprint in all directions, which feels great to play with and really drives home her design niche of a very mobile survivor who can constantly pump out damage, but has to be aware of her positioning.
Flurry drives me insane too. Survivors shouldn't be specifically gated behind items by design. There are a few ideas out there for it, but in my testing the ideas fall flat for one reason or another.
One way to improve Arrow Rain's pick rate other than buffing it to not be useless in the first place is to add an additional single-target ability as an alternate secondary.
- I imagined a kind of reverse Laser Glaive, a piercing knife that deals massive damage to one target, and progressively lower damage the more enemies it hits.
- This would give Huntress an alternative method of dealing with higher HP enemies, instead of basically requiring her to run Ballista.

Engineer

Quick note: you have an autofire mod for Engi's primary, but it doesn't seem to be rolled into this mod. Could probably be rolled in, like Captain's.
Engineer really needs some love to keep him feeling a bit more dynamic in fights. Unfortunately, I think the main way to accomplish this would be with some new and altered abilities.
New Primary: Fire a beam in front of you that deals progressively more damage (up to a cap) the longer it's held on one target.
- This primary could easily reuse the laser turret assets and should be fairly easy to implement.
- This gives the ability a slightly different niche to the grenades, swapping some AoE power for a single target beam.
- Keeping this primary on the weak side is crucial, as Engineer's primary is meant to be one of his main weaknesses.
Bubble Shield
- Cooldown reduced to 20 seconds, down from 25.
- Duration reduced to 10 seconds, down from 15.
- Now prevents enemies from entering the bubble.
  - I'm fairly certain nobody takes this ability, despite its current power. Giving it a much heftier impact for defense could turn this into a fantastic late-game support tool that gives survivors some much needed breathing room to recover. Currently it becomes more and more worthless as a run goes on, where enemies will just run inside the barrier and pelt you to death without a care.
Thermal Harpoons
- This skill needs a total rework. I feel as though a simple damaging ability on Engineer robs him of his identity as a supporting survivor.
- Instead, we can reuse some code from this and turn it into a directed target painter.
- When a target is painted, your turrets (and drones?) will attempt to lock onto it.
- Any painted target will take increased damage (crits? bleeds? simple damage boost?). This keeps the ability's identity as a more offensive Utility option, without making it the obvious choice, especially if Bubble Shield is buffed.

MUL-T

MUL-T also really needs some love. To me, the fantasy of MUL-T is, of course, a multi-tool robot with the ability to adapt to any situation with whatever it's found lying around. That hasn't come to pass, and with Power Mode, it feels more like you either have to use the silly Rebar Puncher swapping strat or just use Power Mode.
This redesign, then, aims to give MUL-T more options in combat, and a stronger identity as an adaptable survivor. These are all first-pass ideas, although I've thought about them for some time.
NEW Passive: Hold two Equipment at once. Hold the Equipment button down to swap between Equipment.
- Button subject to change, was trying to consider gamepad control as well. Moving this into a Passive is an immediate buff that should help put him more in line with later survivors, as well as giving all MUL-T players access to the potentially interesting gameplay space of having two available Equipment.
NEW Secondary: Shockwave - Shocking. Sends out a short electrical pulse in an area around you, knocking enemies away and shocking them.
- This secondary should give MUL-T a nice "get off me" tool for when you're surrounded, as often Transport Mode just won't cut it, or you'd rather not lose your position.
Transport Mode
- I've struggled to figure out what to do with this one, but I think giving it some more speed should help.
NEW Utility: Hydraulic Lift - Heavy. Quickly jump into the air, crashing down shortly after for moderate damage.
- A little tool that should give MUL-T a bit more, well, utility. Can act as a bit of vertical mobility or point blank AoE.
Retool
- New effect: Activate to swap to any of your four Primaries.
  - This is a big one, but I think this would help cement MUL-T's niche as an adaptable survivor. Bring out your favorite Primary depending on the situation, rather than being restricted to two, or having to select two of the same for some cheesy strats.

That's a pretty big rework, but I have no idea where else to put it.

Artificer

I've been using a mod that swaps Ion Surge and Snapfreeze. This ends up giving Artificer an interesting vertical mobility niche, allowing her to bombard enemies from the sky with her jetpack. This could be an interesting change to try out, although I think Ion Surge needs a small damage nerf in this slot. Not sure.

Acrid

Feels a lot better to play now. I think his Regenerative ability could be buffed (remove the penalty on taking damage), though.
This was mentioned in other feedback, but Contagion (debuffs spread) is the blatantly better option. Duration doesn't even come close to the sheer utility of this. That being said, it feels fantastic, so I'd rather buff/change Virulent than remove Contagion.
There's a mod that gives Ravenous Bite a little lunge. I think this would help encourage getting in and getting out, and give him a tiny bit of extra mobility.

Paladin

Feels a lot better to play with the barrier buffs (not that the mod touches him directly).

Finally, some Elite Reworks feedback, since they feel like part of the same mod anyway.

Overloading

Indeed, the lightning bombs don't really feel like they do anything. One interesting possible effect is to have them connect lightning to allies around them, creating a sort of electrified zone if you don't deal with them.

Celestine

I had one playtester get quite confused by the Celestine ghosts, wondering if they had a Happiest Mask when they actually didn't. If possible, some way to change the color of the Celestine ghosts would help more effectively communicate that they are hostile. Some sort of link to the Celestine enemy may help as well.

I've been having a lot of fun with the mod in general, and I probably forgot some points of feedback I wanted to give. It works well with my modpack, which ideally I'd like to actually release if Thunderstore ever lets you easily share modpacks with actual config options. If you want to talk about any of my feedback on Discord, my Discord username is Polly#8281. I'm also on the modding discord. Of course, I'm happy to discuss it here as well.

Items

Razorwire will naturally need to be strong since taking damage has such a huge penalty in this game.
Harvester Scythe's passive crit is mainly just there because people have grown to remember the Scythe+Instincts passive crit combo.
Berzerker's Pauldron is in a weird spot where it's really good in singleplayer but mediocre in multiplayer. My gripe with the Vanilla version is that it doesn't feel that good to stack and that its activation condition feels too conditional, but the modded version here is too easy to get permanent uptime on in solo. Not really sure what to do with it so I'll probably be leaving it similar to how it is currently, with number changes here and there.
I believe Lepton Daisy is fine as-is, as anything that requires you to stay in a circle ends up becoming less effective as the run progresses.
For Harpoon, I don't balance around modded items so no clue about that. I've been experimenting with 2s and even 2.5s duration on the Harpoon these past few weeks since it has been a common feedback, but overall I've found that it doesn't feel impactful/worthwhile enough for a Green item unless it's 3s.

Survivors For survivor changes, aside from Captain/Artificer (who are getting substantial changes in the next update), I don't have plans for any more major reworks.

Commando

I opted to not give him I-frames because it would lead to the question of why doesn't every other dash (both for Vanilla characters and Modded characters) have I-frames. An issue with consistency pretty much.

Huntress

I definitely dislike how Flurry is entirely based around stacking a certain type of item, but I didn't make any changes to it since I wasn't sure what could even be done to make it more interesting since it's an autoaim skill at its core.
Arrow Rain absolutely needs a buff because its Vanilla version both deals less proccing AND total damage than Ballista, and is less reliable at dealing its damage due to dealing damage over multiple hits in a single spot.

Engineer

From what I've seen, bubble is generally the more popular choice due to its ability to carry stationary turrets through the earlygame as well as its ability to block a lot of stuff even when looping if placed well.
Harpoons are a callback to his RoR1 ability, and the intent is to allow him to have a more active playstyle where he actually fights things with less reliance on his turrets (though it doesn't work out this way in practice). Adding in an AI aggro effect to his missiles could be pretty cool.

MUL-T

These changes sound pretty great, since vanilla MUL-T is pretty boring to play. Would love to see someone give a shot at this.

Artificer

Next update will add a blast jump effect to her Snapfreeze, and will make Ion Surge behave in a similar way to Snapfreeze (with blast jumping). There'll be some buffs to her primary damage as well, but I've tested and found that it only puts her around the mid-highish end of the Vanilla DPS spectrum.

Acrid

Been considering removing the Regenerative damage penalty actually. Might try that out with some slightly tweaked stats.
Currently working on tweaks for Acrid's passives. Epidemic is no longer affected by them. Virulent's duration boost has been increased from +40% -> +80%, with Poison/Blight durations adjusted so that they're both 6s without Virulent and 10s with Virulent (mainly just a buff to Virulent Blight). As for Contagion, it now spreads the full Blight stack.
Link the bite lunge mod when you get the chance, I'd like to see how it plays.

EliteReworks

Late response but Overloading got some significant changes earlier this month, would like to hear your thoughts on that!
I'd definitely like to make Celestine ghosts more distinct somehow, but I don't have experience working with custom textures or anything like that unfortunately.

Moffein / RiskyMod