Change some weak items to make people actually want to get them?

Ded X_X

 

Leaching Seed is a small heal because most of the classes have a means to apply quick damage. It procs from every shot of Commando's suppressive barrage, which means having a handful a seeds will always be handy.
Harvester's Scythe becomes something of wierd item with command active, considering most people will work towards 100% crit at some point, so stacking these with that is pretty much overkill.
Plasma chain has an extra effect that isn't noticed often. The chains damage anything that passes through them between you and your tethered target. Also it procs most items, including seed and scythe.

However there are some items that could use a few tweaks, i agree. These in particular, are not any of those.

 

Seed can be stacked and classes either have peircing or attack speed.

Scythe is basically a chance for a giant heal, it also has a hidden +5% crit chance attached to it.

Plasma chain hits everyone inbetween, chain the boss and watch all the guys between you and it die, i love doing that. (especially how it absalutely rapes the worm)

 

I feel like it's worth pointing out that this game isn't balanced around having choice on what items you get. The weaker items are there because a typical run is built on a lot of small bonuses and a few large ones, which is why there are lots of items that may not be 100% what you need right then and there. Also, many items are more useful early game than late game, and some scale differently because of this. Leeching seed's 2HP per hit may not be much to a level 17 character with 800 health, but when you've only got 200 it can add up quick, especially with attacks that hit quickly or hit multiple enemies

 

true story PerfectOutlaw

 

Thing is, most items, as it stands, are balanced against each other. And this is desireable. While different characters have synergies (ATG is better on Commando than Sniper), there are still various options to take.

Headstompers being an undesireable item does no one any favors. It might as well not be in the game. If you get it randomly, it's a point of frustration. If you're on Command, you just don't get it.

 

Headstompers undesirable? What? No no no no. I'm sorry, that is incorrect. Headstompers are actually pretty powerful, capable of killing Providence or massive groups of enemies. Combine this with a fire shield and it's even better.

 

Rather than considering how powerful different items are in a one-to-one comparison, I think most of my distaste comes from how certain items stack and when they max out. For instance, there is no real general trend between rarity and stack-maxing; you don't benefit from more than 7 white Rusty Knives, but a green Will-o-the-Wisp is never undesirable. Furthermore, some items are (very smartly) designed to keep constant desirability by increasing the magnitude of the effect (Will-o-the-Wisp, Fire Shield, Headstompers, Gasoline, Ukelele, Mortar Tube) but other items will stack additive chance (AtG Missile, Rusty Knife, Lens-Maker's Glasses) which always leads to maxing out at 100%.

Though I'm not certain if there's a hard cap on Tough Times, I appreciate how the armor formula naturally gives diminishing returns, and think that additive chances should change to work the same way: for each Harvester's Scythe you have, you would increase from 1/100 to 6/105 to 11/110 to 16/115, and so on.

Code:

Scythes | Crit Rate Formula | Real Crit Chance
     00 |   01 / 01 + 100   | 0.990%
     01 |   06 / 06 + 100   | 5.660%
     02 |   11 / 11 + 100   | 9.910%
     03 |   16 / 16 + 100   | 13.79%
     04 |   21 / 21 + 100   | 17.36%
     05 |   26 / 26 + 100   | 20.63%
     10 |   51 / 51 + 100   | 33.77%
     20 |  101 / 101 + 100  | 50.25%
     40 |  201 / 201 + 100  | 66.78%
    100 |  501 / 501 + 100  | 83.36%
    200 | 1001 / 1001 + 100 | 90.92%
   2000 |10001 / 10001 + 100| 99.01%

But most importantly of all, I think a good item design in this game revolves around ensuring that any item can have at least one class that very much loves to have them, rather than necessarily balancing an item's general usefulness against every other item that exists.

 

I don't think that formula works well for crit (since you'd get very little benefit from anything below like 25 (or even 50) crit items), but I certainly agree with you that most items should scale differently (and for longer). It's a bit sad that some items just stop being an item you should ever pick (along with this information not being available anywhere in the game IIRC). Particularly annoying if you don't constantly use the wiki as a point of reference for when things stop stacking or memorize when it is. They should stack indefinitely, even if it's with diminishing returns to weaken some of the worst offenders.

 

Headstompers are actually very powerful when combined with large numbers of feathers (especially since jumping up and down on the enemy is a decent strategy anyway to avoid getting hit, especially for the Engineer or any similar class that attacks well from above.)

 

i would love to have meat nugget be like Spite when you kill a boss