[Snake]

This effect is, on paper, quite strong. But in execution? It's extremely weak and doesn't work in any meaningful way to save an Amalgama from being defeated.  I do think this needs a small buff.

Why?

Let's look at Phenex's From The Ashes. Their resurrection does:
- Depending on the build, can resurrect with up to 200-300 HP, given the heal is based on 50% of your max FP.
- Does not leave you Badly Beaten.
- Plays nice with Die Hard. (As long as it's off-cooldown, you'll come back any day, any time. So hard dying will be the key for you to heal up a massive amount on your next defeat.)

And requires:
- 1 FP minimum. (Really?)
- A cooldown that ranges from 5 rounds to 10 rounds.

And Phenex itself:
- No healing penalty on self.
- 15% Ice and Darkness weakness. (Which can be covered by SAN, which they do use for From The Ashes and Golden Eyes.)



Now look at Amalgama's Formidable. Their resurrection does:
- Revive and heals a static 50 HP. (Die Hard and Sal Volatile both revives you for more than that.)
- Leaves you Badly Beaten for 4 rounds. (Debilitates your Momentum, preventing you from fleeing in PvE scenario.)

And requires:
- 5 Spirits (Innately makes you weak to Holy, so any players can 100% defeat you with an item belt weapon swap. Boring.)
- Requires RNG to be obtained. (If the player is unlucky, several uses of the Memories fruit. (1085 Murai each))
- Doesn't play nice with Die Hard. (Since that will also revive you with Badly Beaten, so Formidable practically only happens once per fight.)

And Amalgama itself:
- 10% Healing penalty.
- 30% Elemental Weakness on either one or two elements, fully decided by RNG. (Amalgama doesn't use SAN, so that's staying there.)



When you compare both side to side, you see how Amalgama's resurrection effect is severely underpowered when compared to even baseline reviving effects, such as Die Hard or Sal Volatile, let alone compare to Phenex which has a similar effect? I do hope this gets addressed. I can only throw in this short pitch for ideas (they're all separate, either A, or B, or C, etc.), but anything other than what we have now, Dev:

A- Formidable could resurrect you with 60 HP, but only up to X amount of times per fight, one per spirit possessing you. This revive would not leave you Badly Beaten, since it's limited. (Upon reviving through Formidable, you gain a stacking debuff that lasts 5 rounds called "Spirit Exhaustion" which caps at LV5. When its LV equals (or more) than the amount of spirits you currently have, Formidable will stop reviving. This also reduces health recovery relative to LV (30%/35%/40%/45%/50%).)

B- No changes to the heal amount or Badly Beaten, but upon being resurrected by Formidable, you gain the Dead Soul debuff for 3 rounds. (Dead Soul makes you unable to be brought under 1 HP for the duration, but chance of being injured is doubled and health recovery is reduced by 75%. Taking damage from a mutation weakness ends the status early.)

C- If no new effects are desired, nor the removal of Badly Beaten, the heal should be changed to 30% of your maximum HP.

D- Alternatively, increase the heal amount to 120 HP and have it so Amalgama's momentum does not get affected by Badly Beaten, through a Trait or Homunculus Physiology, since this is what currently makes this resurrection option so unenjoyable.

E- Formidable becomes a chance to negate damage (except mutation weakness), which increases the lower your Max HP gets. (1% chance per 2% HP lost)

My favorite obviously being B. It's not something we have in the game right now, and it'd play better with the skill description of "Your body is relentless and determined by something". You're basically dead at that point, but still walking. It'd make cool RP moments to have this Amalgama still going despite everything.

Really. Amalgama's the easiest of the Homunculi to murder and this stinky mutation will not do anything to change that. Just get a holy weapon, or exploit their massive elemental weaknesses and they're done for. Ez clap. And mind you, this is not even their weakest things (hi Attune Grudge, hi Spirit Shot), just something that I noticed was more a waste of time for the enemy than helpful for the player.

I hope this can be fixed with the proposed buffs, or something more creative and fun. I'm all game for anything at this point.

Because friends. It's either buffing Formidable, or nerfing Phenex. What do we want?

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Made small edits based on a few Discord discussions over option A and B with friends. Hopefully they'll not be as broken or exploitable, but still follow the theme required.

[Krath]

I think it'd be okay if it just healed you some more and didn't leave you Badly Beaten because that's half of why From The Ashes felt so awful before it was changed, but thematically I like option B there a lot more. Three turns of being unkillable probably sounds crazy broken at first glance, but I think it being able to get removed like any other buff or them just getting kited until they keel over is fair counterplay. Might need some more debuffs tacked on since injuries are a big nothing and I'd imagine you'll just not even bother healing 90% of the time anyway, but that's getting too much into specifics - point is I like that kind of idea, and I think any self-revive that smacks you with Badly Beaten just doesn't feel good to use.

[Snake]

Badly Beaten is a design choice to prevent chain revives, as you can see. Amalgama has no innate cooldown or limitations. But I think it was forgotten how crippling Badly Beaten is, and how it only belongs to active or global resurrection methods, such as Last Chance, Sal Volatile, Die Hard... That's why it was removed from Phenex, but the thing is. If we want Badly Beaten removed from Amalgama, we'll need to think of new ways to impose a limitation on them. That's where the idea from A came from.

"Denies death up to five times, but that's all you get in one fight.", this would be pretty much a less anime/more simplistic version of B.

"I'm defeated, but I rise and refuse to go down while I fight alongside Badly Beaten until 3 rounds tick by and I die for real", is the anime interpretation of Formidable.

"My revive actually heals a lot, so it's justified to have Badly Beaten" is option C, the lazy one.

What kills me is what I'll repeat until I die. Amalgama has -so many unnecessary limitations-, for -so little reward-, while other races just shrug and have it because why not. It also gave me an idea for a D, which just makes them ignore the momentum loss while keeping their current design choice. Works for me, but it's as I said. Anything now is better than nada.

Atm the revive doesn't do its job as being a life saver, since you'll have to consider the following: Interference (Amalgama doesn't build SAN, so they're susceptible to it), On-Hit/On-Crit effects easily do 50 damage minimum (We know Seiryuu Tessen is a good example), everything else I listed when they're compared to Phenexes.

[SpaceShibe]

I really like option B, and A as a close second(despite A being a little much, I think. The numbers might need tweaking since 5x120 is a lot of hp). Personally, Formidable feels... okay. Right now. But compared to something like Gainsight, it feels relatively underwhelming. I think most of the points I could say have already been mentioned here, too.

I'm all for Formidable getting buffed. Badly Beaten is incredibly harsh so you can only really do one move before you flop over and die, assuming the enemy doesn't smack you twice.

[EenKogNeeto]

I feel like this too heavily values a single possible mutation in a long list of them singling it out as a must-have rather than a neat feature.

[Snake]

But it's not to the point you can even call it 'neat', dude.

Only people who have tried to use this, practically, know how much it's plain bad compared to similar cases. And as I listed, Amalgama have too many natural drawbacks to have sucky things in their kit. The pros vs cons weight is imbalanced to hell and back.