Making Things Vicious (Dev Blog)

[Darvin]

120 damage! YES! Actually, that is quite a considerable nerf on the later dungeons. That should make both Dragon Isles and Demonic Library doable. I still have questions about Naga City, but I have no doubt it can be done.

Basically, vicious scenarios would have their damage unchanged and would only see a HP increase.

[The Avatar]

I don't believe that's true in the case of bosses. Their hp and damage were both doubled. So if their hp is still doubled and their damage still pumped, the Matron and the Avatar should be dealing only 120. That allows me to get in the few physical hits short I am on the Avatar and is significantly less damage you have to tank when trying to fireball the Matron to death.

[Darvin]

I will say that vicious Bleaty is kinda humorous. He has 450 damage, but that's well beyond the point of diminishing returns and it simply doesn't matter; his HP is not high enough to be a true threat. With CYDSTEPP, PISORF, first strike, and a mid-battle level-up I had him killed off at level 4 and proceeded to nab unstoppable afterwards.

[The Avatar]

Yeah. At a certain point damage is meaningless. Then spells rule the world.

Since we're talking about super challenges, I would like it if they had some equivalent of the boss hive in the beta. The thing about vicious mode is, beyond the extra challenge, it's not very interesting. The boss hive was cool. It wasn't the stats, but the fact they had the bosses abilities.

[Bloggorus]

I wish the Vicious token introduced random attributes like poison and weakening instead of just pumping stats.

Having to deal with more health just means repeating the same strat over and over. More random is harder to plan for.

[The Avatar]

The problem is that fire circumvents all. Other than that, I agree. That would be cool.