The HP Challenges are better than you thought....

The main reason a lot of the end game community thinks that the end state reward for the hp challenge system is lackluster (at least for range classes) is because a lot of us have experience using range characters with about the same hp as a finished challenge player in boss runs, and its simply not a good experience and one that i personally would never want to repeat.

Once you reach a certain point in your progression, moving towards lower man runs becomes excessively difficult if you are held back by your hp. 6 man HT runs mostly run without hb.

In the context of pink bean, lower man runs have barely have any dk (and they are mostly hb mules brought charitably by other players who themselves don't even need hb), and the few hb slots that exist are extremely competitive and are taken up by NLs with perfect gear.

The challenge system is a great way for a new player to start a character, but it has its limitations. If they are serious about playing the game long term, a new player should be voting concurrently for a future washed character. For the challenge system to completely work in the current meta, there needs to be some change that eventually lets all the classes do content without reliance on hb to survive the game.

 

Nerf Nightlords Shadow Shifter.

No longer will Nooblords F2 Dodge everything, henceforth THEY SHALL FACE TANK.

#Fuckinhatenightlordsmorethenmultimagers

 

Night Lords are a BM's best friend. You give them SE, and they protect you from Seduce. It's a beautiful symbiotic relationship.

 

ideally challenges should be good enough, but not so good that encourages endgame players to undergo the system. buff something like this too hard and benefits eventually accrue to endgame players while new players, facing the new power creep, would eventually end up on forums asking for some other buff to "equalize" things

 

HP challenge is worse than I thought after this thread.

 

bucc gets 55 hp per level so it's a bit higher

also mages can wear nose for like 150 hp completely free, squishier classes can wear 350 hp eye (at cost of some dex, but it's worth it if required)

edit: nobody accepts even the slightest loss of damage, as if it doesn't make any difference

 

what point is too much though?

 

9 dex from nose for 150 hp should be ok at some hp ranges
10 stats from eye for 350 hp should also be ok
8-12 stats on earring for 90-100 hp might be ok as well
MoN ok for some classes but small damage nerf relative to TL pendant unchaosed (not accounting for avoidability)

btw pet equips can easily go to like 200 hp each which is like free

people really overvalue stats but damage for stat only gets penalized heavily after like gloves/shoe/hat/cape gets involved (not accounting for bfc)

 

ok hp scrolled bfc, got it, go on

 

I particularly liked the idea of challenges, mainly because later it can be completed with things like belt, medal, quest ring, etc.. the proposal was to give more HP, not QoL or maximum HP

 

that's because sweatier players have lower tolerance for pain so choose to play the game on easy mode. more casual players do the opposite

the problem is what's considered acceptable shifts up over time as meta evolves since both casuals and sweaties share the same market but casuals have to keep pace with the sweaties' efficiency gains

 

Krythan to elaborate on this, the "recommended" HP amount can vary wildly depending on how the player chooses to approach the boss.

Most "optimized" strategies rely on players having more HP than the minimum recommended amount.
Two great examples:

• It's well-known that starting Right Head in HT will on average speed up runs, especially with a Sair in the party. However, this strategy is reliant on the Bishop having at least 7k HP, since LH will be up for a significantly longer amount of time and pretty much the entire time that DPs are going out, meaning the chance of the Bishop being one shot is drastically higher than if the squad started Left Head first. The minimum recommended HP is often around 4k, but these Bishops are often relegated to LH first squads.
• Pink Bean strategies change immensely between 30-man and sub-30 squads. 30 man squads pretty much exclusively run Right Bird first during Stage 4 and 5, removing the source of mass seduce as quickly as possible at the cost of 3-4 Time Leap casts. This means that players do not have to deal with Mass Seduce at all during the run as they'll be fully Holy Shielded while RB dies, which allows "lower HP" characters at 19-24k to run. In sub-30 squads, RB is pretty much exclusively killed last and largely ignored for the sake of clear consistency and to ease the burden on Time Leaps required. This means any non-Thief character under 30k is going to run the risk of dying to mass seduce unless you can mule a Bishop, meaning that the "minimum recommended HP" shoots up from 19k to 30k for things like Archers.

A lot of strategies like this exist that either result in a faster clear speed (like in the case of HT) or a more consistent clear rate (such as in the case of PB) but require more HP than normal from the runners.

This is the reason why the "recommended" HP for a character is as high as possible. You will be able to run bosses with less, but you'll lose access to strategies that are faster, more consistent, and more profitable.

 

I think that feeling of being discouraged will hit at some point, regardless of how it's delivered. I've seen players wash to HP amounts that they feel is enough, only to become extremely frustrated and discouraged later when they can't run anyways despite being "technically enough". You see this a lot with attackers at 12-18k HP in PB becoming frustrated that squads don't have available HB slots, or with 4k HP Bishops being frustrated that they get rejected by pretty much any 6 man squad that can clear in under 90 minutes.

Living the low HP life sucks. Washing isn't fun, but it's infinitely less suffering than an eternity of never having access to things without entirely remaking a character.

I've found that taking the time to coach people through the intricacies of what different HP amounts will mean and how much suffering they can expect helps ease the blow. If you explain things well then most players are understanding that there's definitely suffering ahead but a lot of it can be mitigated with good planning (voting discipline and planned character infrastructure).

 

challenges is ok but thats why new players should vote on a separate account on the side because how else can one protect against meta changes? the purpose for challenges is to allow people to enter content, but it never had to be profitable. challenges is fine for 12 person HT or 30 person PB but when strategies change, hp becomes an extra strike to viability.

either way it doesn't matter since people will eternally complain until they're effectively 30k hp, but then others will just expand horizontally (easy to get to 30k hp + tradables) to multi attack or vertically with gear (30k hp + untradables).