[Joseph Jostar]

*not endorsed by Devourer of Souls or anyone really so 'official' in name only

So, among the plentiful new toys in the update there's the beauty that is the Salamander Sword.



It's pretty soon after release, so let's keep the knee-jerk reactions as tame as we can, but that being said let's get some discussion going about the weapon since the general opinion is that it's potentially extremely powerful without some tweaks.

I don't have much of an opinion personally, though I don't think it would hurt the sword that badly to cut its maximum power gain by as much as half. (Not saying we should, just that it would still be pretty good.)

I DO, however, think the increase in power should probably be Scaled Weapon Attack instead of Weapon Power, lest we have people completely erasing each-other's Defense with Rampaging.

So, let's discuss.

[Autumn]

You can stack this sword up mega fast, How about limiting it to Scaled Weapon attack and giving it a max stack per round sort of deal, that way it doesn't just instantly go to full power by pushing and pulling people through cinders and also by using a hellhound quickdraw w/blaze shell.

[Slydria]

The obvious issue that comes to mind with this weapon are that there are a few methods that could be used to deal multiple hits of Fire Damage in a Round.

Things like Cinders with Push and Pull abilities, off-handing a multi-round Gun with Hellhound Bullets, Blaze Shell and/or Elemental Augment, Exgalfa, Blazing Thousand Stab/Elemental Rave when Airborne or even just Fire AoEs in team settings would be able to stack the buff rapidly.

To avoid excessive stacking, I think that on top of lowering the maximum cap to say 50-60, there should be a limit of how many stacks you can get in a Round, say for example 20 (or 4 times). And of course, Rampaging should not benefit from the bonus.

[Fern]

The bonus should be Scaled Weapon Attack, instead of Weapon Power.

Just a thought, but the +scaled attack cap could be UL*2 (48).

Alternatively, WPN PWR * 2.

[Snake]

Rampaging could be changed to affect Physical Defense, like Buster Cannon did, and the problem would b-gon (and something open for discussion on another topics), although...

I'd like more ways to counterplay it (As every Snake Idea involves counterplay TM because he's a counterplay addict).

Such as...
"If you take Ice/Water damage, your Salamander LV is reduced by 6 and 12 respectively."
or/and
"In order to gain Salamander LV, the enemy must take Fire Damage AND be inflicted with Burn." (Make it so that the enemy needs to be suffering from the full effects of Burn [such as having Bonus DEF lowered], so Salamander Gloves can also be yet another item for counterplay.)
or/and
"If your enemy resists/absorbs/is immune to Fire damage, you won't gain Salamander LV stacks."

This way it's fun for both sides, since one side will be struggling to use the blade and get it to the desired LV100, while the other will desperately try to cool it back down as the fight carries on.

BALANCE RANT ALERT:

I don't quite care whatever's being chosen as I didn't have the chance to test and use it yet due to needing to like, kill and farm from their remains over 75 times in a frustratingly random shop (which is cool too, mind you, finally a single-player challenge). But I'd rather see something get nerfed with 'fun counterplay' instead of simply gibbing numbers for once. (or maybe like 3rd time? Snake Dancer counts, but this vastly outweights how many times numbers were hammered to make something useless when I didn't ever had a chance to touch them, and people only go by 'theories on how to abuse', when I never actually see it happening aside very niche situations.)

[Chaos]

about time hellhound bullets became useful

Yeah, keep Rampaging from interacting with the bonus. However, I would recommend going with a 'get only X stacks of +5 per round' deal, rather than just throttling the life out of it on pure knee-jerks. In other words, let's avoid cutting the maximum in half until we can figure out whether affecting the rate of gain will cool the weapon down or not.

Especially when this weapon hasn't even been out for a week.

[Raigen.Convict]

I'm rooting for just a 'only so many per round' instead of gutting the maximum, I mean that end game 100 should be something you work for instead of INSTANTLY GAINING IT. Chaos' suggestion makes sense as this weapon is very niche as far as gaining stacks at the speed of sound. Most builds would have one maybe three instances of fire damage per round, so as Chaos said, let's avoid knee-jerks and just go with limiting stacks per round to say 4 times maximum in a round.

[Autumn]

A fair bit of time has passed and the stacking mechanic on the sword still shows that it is more than easy to achieve ridiculous levels of SWA with the sword in a short amount of time.

The 2 best ways in my opinion to tackle the stacking frenzy would be to either:

A) Limit the fire stacking to once per action. (So you'd only be getting 5 power per action in your turn)
or
B) Limit the stacking to 10 power per round, this sounds fairly reasonable to me.

[Raigen.Convict]

Let's go with option B.

[Slydria]

Nearly four months later and I still feel pretty much the same about this weapon.

Multiple instances of Fire Damage available and Rampaging applying to it's massive Power bonus makes it way too powerful.

I still think that applying a limit of how much Power you can get in a Round (15 or 20) and making it so it's Power bonus does not extend to Rampaging should put it back in line without rendering it useless.