GearsawStudios
commented
10 months ago Forgot to mention in the suggestion itself, but the rework concepts are meant to be used even if the Symbiont has no unobstructed line of sight to the player to force them to come up.
Description of feature request
As it stands, the Withered Symbiote has 3 main attacks when it comes to basic projectile attacks. The fireball halo, which works as a decently pressuring attack that forces constant movement at the cost of terrain destruction is the main one. The arrow barrage has its shortcomings, discussed in https://github.com/nonamecrackers2/crackers-wither-storm-mod/issues/1652. However, this leaves the last projectile attack, the Wither Skull Barrage, in a weird spot. It does practically the same thing as the fireball attack, focusing its power into (unfairly) long wither effect on hard to keep consistency with the normal Wither. This attack more or less only serves as a more intense fireball attack, which is wasted potential since the entire mod is based around the Wither and its command block enhanced form.
To think what should the new version's basis be, we must look to what the Wither itself does. It's a highly destructive boss mob that can break out of any area it's kept in as long as it's not unbreakable. How does it do this without its body? Blue Wither Skulls. This attack completely neglects the existence of Blue Skulls, which could be used to invent a new anti cheese tactic for the Symbiote. It's no secret that the Symbiote's biggest weakness is going underground. I'd even argue it's the best way to kill the Symbiote in general due to its lack of counters for this playstyle (Even my tutorials recommend it.) The only attack that works against this is the besides the Wither Skulls are Evoker Fangs, which require the Symbiote to be on roughly the same Y level as the player. This renders it ineffective unless the Symbiote has fallen into a hole or the player boxes in at the same height as it. Fireballs fail due to low blast power and Slams fail due to how quickly it tires out the Symbiote to use in rapid succession. This leads right back to the Wither Skulls, which do their job decently well. However, they don't do it well enough.
For the most part, getting hit by one on Hard mode is a death sentence. However, this does little to differentiate it from the Fireball Halo, especially on lower difficulties, as it turns into a faster version of the aforementioned attack otherwise. The long duration of the attack is what makes it even worse as it easily pins the player against a wall to melt in seconds. With the main problem of the fight now clearly exposed with a thematically fitting solution to it, concepts are easy to make.
Rework the Wither Skull Barrage attack into an Anti-Burrowing attack that utilizes Blue Skulls
With this idea in mind, I will provide several potential solutions to how this rework could go about, the first one being my preferred choice.
Turn it into small bursts of wither skulls, headed by a Blue Wither Skull to pierce cover. This prevents the usage of obsidian defenses as Blue Wither Skulls can pierce any almost any breakable block while making sure that the attack remains fair to non-cheesers.
Proof of Concept 1
Massively accelerate the rate of the attack while mixing in Blue Skulls from time to time. This minimally changes the attack while fixing its main flaws, giving a chance at recovery while destroying the ground much quicker. Essentially, it should be able to pierce 10 layers of stone in one burst to optimally prevent cheesing, which may changed for balancing reasons. If duration becomes an issue, split the attack into 2 to give a breather. No proof of concept is needed due to how similar it is to the existing version.
Change it into a self destruct attack, where the Symbiont (With no cost to its health) charges up a Wither Summon explosion before firing a few Blue Wither Skulls. While vastly different to the current attack, it would work well in conjunction with current attacks and with a potential rework. I'm to tired to draw another diagram, pretty simple to imagine anyways.
Essentially, the attack needs to become a form of anti-burrow attack to differentiate itself from the Fireball Halo while solving another problem at the same time. Regardless if said ideas are implemented, it'd be nice to see a form of anti-burrowing tactics regardless.