Making HP Washing Truly Optional - a Solution

PB is impossible without washing because you'll get memed off the roster

 

Or be Liquidooze and get meme'd on to the roster

 

While I fully support an effort to make HP washing optional, I don't think this option should be available prior to bossing levels. The main issue I have with HP washing is that it's almost required for bossing. I don't see how it's a necessity for grinding though. It just seems like an unnecessary change that would make grinding too easy. For example, wolf spiders hit like trucks but they have an amazing HP:Exp ratio. It's a risk vs reward situation and if you don't feel like burning pots then go somewhere with a lower EPM.

 

Why is toad a boss considered a “must do” when warriors can’t do The Boss without having to scroll a whole set of accuracy gear and be on maple pop just to not miss. Toad is the melee/mage counterpart to the ranged The boss. Not every boss is designed for every class but when we have washing all the lines are blurred and you get entitled ranged chars demanding that toad be included in said list.

 

To be fair he was asked to list the bosses that you can't do without washing, not to evaluate if its a problem or not.

 

Washing is mandatory to make my hp bar pixels as small as possible. Why flex high hp when you can flex near zero hp?

 

Not sure why grinding has to be "hard" tbh, but "OK".

 

That's Dark Knight 5th job I think.

 

Because it's optional

 

The group of people that regularly showcase their displeasure for HP washing on forums/discord and bashing the "HP washing optional" tag are also likely the group that only does casual runs, if they even get to that stage. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are also players who have washed to high HP who agree that the current system is not the best, but chose to work around it instead of whining on the forums knowing nothing will get done.

Blood washing has been mentioned as a possible solution if you are so against HP washing and whatnot. Other than it reducing your damage and your character being "scuffed", is there really any reason why that isn't a viable solution? Is there really much difference between blood washing and picking armour vs going all in on damage and being glass cannon in another game? You can't have it both ways if you are that against the idea of HP washing. Is it really a massive difference if you dump 15 levels of AP into HP (around 12.5 wa at endgame) when you are just into casual bossing? You don't care about damage and efficiency that much since you are casual, right? Or do you secretly want both survivability and full damage despite your claims that you are casual.

I wonder how many of you guys will take up the offer if your attack glove was removed in exchange of a 1k HP glove.

 

I'd only be on board with the "just bloodwash" argument for things like surviving ht earlier, if the points could be later reverted without incurring maximum penalty. Though gaining more than base HP at an earlier level at the temporary cost of main stats? Where have I heard that before...?

Regardless, Bean is doable unwashed but 'its riskier and will likely have lower dpm'. Verga is doable unwashed but 'its riskier and will likely have lower dpm'. And range GTFO of toad until warriors get accuracy washing for The Boss. The game is "wash optional; wash optimal". An unwashed to light washed NL would still do the same dummy dpm as a leechlord at endgame, but it requires more active gameplay with occasional dodging/repositioning in real content (read: playing the game). Itll never stand up to the 80% dodge rate 30k hp NL that may or may not be paperweighting all boss content though, because that's optimal, and the standard that all characters can do this is meta.

This thread is centered around getting "enough hp to play the game", and while I agree that an unwashed range character actually has to play better to do less damage, it is far from unplayable in the strictest sense of the word. Posters are right that making more ways to gain HP will simply move the goalposts as the upper echelon can get closer to 30k/30k; it has already happened with multivote.

In fact, I'd argue that we've already lost HP as a proper dimension to balance around, further pushing all classes towards linearity. You simply cannot justify a class to me that can do the highest damage, with the longest range, for lowest cost with the longest lasting attack pots, with the most mobility, played with the least difficulty, that generates the party the most meso WITHOUT some form of drawback and hp has been the only thing holding that back. Though that's pretty far off topic..

 

Hey there it's your suggegstion thread logical fallacy reporter here.

it's turned from a reasonable suggestion thread (the only reasonable hp washing solution thread in recent memory) to another one of those flamewar threads where newer players let loose their frustrations on the mechanics of the game while having making absolutist statements/using emotive anecdotes that try to denigrate people who disagree/poison the well ("older players are just trying to gatekeep the nostalgic game" "hp washing was never a feature" "holy shit its 2021 and people do not want to xxxxx" "i have 2 friends who quit because blabla") without being able to understand what the uber experienced players are actually trying to say. Also plenty of people play the game without/in spite of washing, but those stories dont support your case so let'a ignore them.

In short not really news just regular weather phenomena on ML forums.

I agree with Pippy, and i'll support the hp washing optional tag, because many people havent done those hp washing "compulsory" bosses but have sunk 100s of hours. Maybe you wanna tell them they never TRULY played the game? Actually I wouldnt be surprised if people actually do say that, this is the server where people tell new players to go 200+ int on their first assassin character after all. You could also play warrior and bypass the washing shit. But then people will say "but then you need to wash 30k for COMFORTABLE BOSSING (my most hated phrase) so washing is still compulsory". It's this slave to dpm meta and tragically chronic FOMO that makes people feel so shaffted by washing, still doesnt make it compulsory to me.

 

I mean...why dumb down grinding even more? What's the argument for giving HP boosts to lower leveled players? For bossing it's because classes are straight-up locked out of content unless they bloodwash or wait until they reach an unreasonably high level. Pot burn is a completely separate "issue" and I don't know why it's lumped into the same discussion. You can grind literally anywhere and there are plenty of alternatives for all level ranges prior to bossing level.

 

Where I can train as a night lord?

 

No idea as I don't play NL. I'm sure you're not the first NL to grind so I have faith that you can figure it out. They're one of the best single-target DPM classes so it's expected that they're going to have some cons, such as grinding efficiency. I'm not sure we need to make balance changes to cater to NLs even more.

 

Just to play devil's advocate, unwashed shads and buccs, even with hp gears, can't tank the bean's touch damage and I'd think it'd probably be highly impractical to expect a melee char to avoid touching the body even once for the entire fight, especially with the nate dash procs.

 

You don't, you create a mage and leech the NL with 100 - 300 base int and 1b of int gears until 15x-17x, whilst using your mage to grind for the NL gear.
Then you use that decently built and washed NL as a MU mule because grinding mesos is superior to all the poverty bosses out there.
If you want to boss for exp, make sure that the time spent organising and waiting and killing the boss gives you more exp than just leeching your NL at 5-6/obv 4/petri

 

Try having a full team blood washed attempting to do Pink Bean. I promise you, it won't be killed on time in a hundred years. You would literally require over 350 blood washes to make that happen. With that in mind, HP washing is not optional. We can pretend like it is, and say "well you could attend", but that does not imply that you will be able to actually take down every boss.

 

But PB is not a casual boss like HT/Zak, and by the time you're prepared for PB you could've washed enough for it, even if you start so late. And why blood wash to tank 12k when you have that hp with all the HP gear available in ML and HB. The only attack you need to watch closely for is the bigbang and even then most strategies protect the ranged attackers from it most of the time. There have been runners who killed PB plenty of times without being able to tank that attack so I don't see why blood washing 350 AP (70 levels) of AP to survive an attack that is dodgeable.

I 100% agree with what iPippy said, the meta is for bossing to be paper-weight and brainless but that doesn't mean its the only way to boss. If you don't want to pay attention put in the effort to get there. Oh, and that effort is really reduced when compared to the days of no HP gears, no multi-vote and no vote-streak and events that give less AP-Resets than what 2020-2021 offered. There are countless of efforts shown to give players ways that reward active gameplay and to ease washing.

 

Have you ever seen a composition of just ranged attackers take down Pink Bean? 350 hp washes is 5600 hp. At level 200, 5600 hp over natural hp is overkill. It's been said before - no serious group will consider a severely bloodwashed player on their roster, but 350 hp washes isn't even a requirement, as is 300 int hp washing. If some groups take lvl 185 attackers, who's to say they wouldn't take a lvl 200 that has bloodwashed the last 15 levels of their stats?

Stop spreading misinformation and play the game enough to learn about it first.