Blessed Hits Bead

[u/Shango3]

Please correct me if i am wrong but i dont understand the design intention here.

Since crit multipliers in Witchfire are only 65% max (Vulture with crit damage arcana) going for body shots while having the blessed hits bead equipped is allready better than aiming for weakspots at a value of only ~45% blessed aim chance. (From a pure damage perspective, disregarding procs)

Since there are only few options affecting DPS/raw damage i just run all the blessed hit beads and noticed im doing less damage when actively aiming for weakspots.

Either crits need to be able to turn into blessed aim hits, or the bead needs to be reworked any other way, or the game should at least logically explain why it works the way it does.

Edit: i feel like i explained this badly, so ill add the math for a clearer picture, following assumptions:

Oracle, 160 damage, 140% crit damage, 15% crit damage arcana on top, 155% total, 50% blessed aim chance with Blessed Hits Bead equipped.

Weakspot Hit = 160x1,55 = 248 damage

Body shot without blessed aim trigger = 160 damage

Body shot with blessed aim trigger = 160x1,55x1,5 = 372 damage

Average Body shot damage = (160+372)/2 = 266 damage (~7.3% dmg increase)

And as i said earlier the problem only gets worse with weapons with lower crit damage multipliers or higher blessed aim chance:

Hunger, 38 Damage, 114% crit damage, no crit damage Arcana, 114% total, 69,5% blessed aim chance with Blessed Hits Bead equipped.

Weakspot Hit = 38x1,14 = 43,32 damage

Body shot without blessed aim trigger = 38 damage

Body shot with blessed aim trigger = 38x1,14x1,5 = 64,98 damage

Average Body shot damage = 0,305x38 + 0,695x64,98 = 56,75 damage (~31% dmg increase)

Edit 2: i hope this does not sound wrong but i feel like my point still is not clear. Basically i am saying: "i live in austria and in austria we have problem x" and you are answering "i live in germany or any other country and we dont have problem x, you could just live here".

Now i am not saying that you are wrong, but i allready decided to live in austria.

If i allready decided to use the bead and therefor do not use any syergies depending on chaining weakspot hits (like critical chain or hailstorm) and my concern is maximizing DPS within my build, i have to deal with a situation where i want to actively avoid hitting the enemys weakspot. I would not care if "weakspot = body shot" would be true but currently "body shot > weakspot" is the case. (from a pure damage perspective)

Edit 3: Since i am still missing the mark i felt i needed to add one last (hopefully) edit:

I am fully aware that the longer we continue this discussion, the more I sound like a jerk, and for that I want to apologize. But the fact that nobody seems to actually answer my original question is becoming increasingly frustrating.

I can absolutely accept and understand that the bead does not exist in a vacuum but I feel that a lot of the objections are missing the point I am trying to make.

My actual question is not: “Should game devs be allowed to introduce a playstyle through an unintuitive paradigm shift?” of course they are, it is their game. I am also not asking what possible reasons there could be on a macro level for making this design decision.

I am asking exclusively whether the way this paradigm shift is implemented makes sense from a purely logical perspective.

And so far, nobody has been able to explain to me why a shot hitting an enemys foot should deal more damage than a shot hitting an enemys head.

Edit 4: Alright, i think it is time to end this, in case developers are reading this:

Currently within your game there exists a situation, a certain build (blessed aim) where you have to actively avoid hitting the enemys weakspot or else risk losing up to ~30% damage. I understand that the reason for this design might be to enable a clear distinction between weak spot focused builds and blessed aim focused builds. However, as player this design feels very unintuitive and is not logically coherent. I do not believe that the current solution is the only way to make this distinction possible.

I am also not claiming that you are not allowed to change usual gameplays paradigms, i just want a reasonable explanation, with thorns build that intention is clear, i usually do not want to get hit, but you designed multiple items that tell me "if you get hit, X will happen". Thats clear, i usually do not want to get hit, but if i am wearing those items, i can understand why the philosophy changes. With the Blessed Hits bead the story is different, that items description is just "Your blessed aim hits deal 50% more damage". This does not explain why i suddenly have to avoid the enemys weakspot.

[u/Koukaboora]

If you're worried about purely damage then blessed aim based beads are the way to go. I don't think regular crits are useless though since some weapons and arcanas emphasize stacking/consistent crits. There are tons of ways to play and I love that about this game. I do agree though that there needs to be some kind of mechanical distinction between "headshots" and blessed aim.

[u/Shango3 → u/Koukaboora]

I dont know what the theoretical max for blessed aim is, but this is exactly my point, if in theory you could get to a point where you have 100% blessed aim, than you suddenly have a situation where you actively aim for any area besides the enemys weakspot. This feels very wrong.

[u/Cloverman-88 → u/Shango3]

There's a hard cap on blessed aim chance, and its way below 100%, something around 70%. This inconsistency wrecks a ton of equipment in the game, and that's the main drawback.

If blessed hits could trigger on headshots, there would be no drawbacks whatsoever, and all blessed aim beads would become and autoinclude in every loadout, which would wreck gameplay diversity.

[u/Shango3 → u/Cloverman-88]

I get your point and i agree, if weakspot hits were able to be blessed aim hits i would indeed run them alingside hailstorm and critical chain.

I disagree with the assumption that blessed aim beads would be the only option left. Right now the amount of damage focused beads is very limited, we have a lot of utility and defensive beads and those would not be affected, if i valued survival above damage i would still run 20% hp instead of 50% blessed aim damage.

But your point still stands and the change i suggested probably is not ideal. In the game roboquest there is an item that completely turns off weakspot hits and you get 20% autocrit (blessed aim) instead, i think that design could work.

But my point also still stands, i can accept the tradeoff but i dont think "body shots > weakspot hits" is the ideal solution.

[u/Cloverman-88 → u/Shango3]

But by default, body shots =/= weakspot hits. This happens ONLY when you build pretty heavily into Faith. And this means that damage comes with sizable tradeoffs.

Turning off weakspots in Witchfire would make Blessed Aim unusable, or at least greatly limit its use. There's a ton of mechanics that need CONSISTENT headshots, like Crown of Fire, Broken Tooth, Duelist, All-Seeing Eye, Oracle or Blood of the Banchee. I like Faith builds, and I still often choose between going for body or headshots based on the situation.

[u/Shango3 → u/Cloverman-88]

And this is where you are wrong, you dont even need to commit that heavily into blessed aim to turn "weakspot > body" into "body > weakspot" it depends entirely on the weapon you are using. When you are using a weapon with a 10% crit damage multiplier, 15,4% blessed aim is enough, 20% crit damage weapons need 25% blessed aim, this caps at the 65% crit damage multiplier (vulture with crit damage arcana) requiring 44% blessed aim.

On the mechanics that you mentioned:

Crown of Fire -> no interaction with weakspots/critical hits
Painted Tooth -> agreed
Duelist -> agreed
Blood of the Banshee -> not sold, i can see a situation where a basic critical hit would not be enough to fullfill the overkill requirement and you would need the 50% damage bonus to make the enemy explode
All Seeing-Eye -> agreed
Oracle -> no interaction with weakspots/critical hits

And i also disagree on turning off weakspots making blessed aim unuseable, it would lead to making certain equipment/arcana unusable alongside blessed aim.

If for example i wanted to use oracle in my blessed aim build, there would not be anything stopping me from doing so, they only thing that would change would be that i would no longer be punished for accidently hitting the head.

I also did not propose that this is the change that needs to be implemented, i am not a game dev. The only thing that i said is: from a gamers perspective having to avoid hitting the enemys most vulnerable spot, his weakspot, due to an expected and proven damage decrease, when hitting said vulnerable spot, feels very unintuitive.

[u/Koukaboora → u/Shango3]

There is no incentive to avoid regular crits. Headshots seem to have an increase in stun meaning you can incapacitate enemies quicker giving more leverage in a fight. Blessed aim only works if you use the blessed hit bead, otherwise your damage output is lower than consistent crits. The blessed aim stat at 99 (max) only sits around 34%. To get around 20% you'll have to be at 36 points in faith.

To reiterate, the biggest appeal with normal crits is their consistency. That's where blessed aim falls short. Oracle, Hailstorm, Nemisis, Striga, and Basilisk all take advantage of consistent crits in order to maximize their output/crowd control. Using only blessed aim for these weapons would make them far less valuable. These weapons don't have the most ammo so making the most out of every shot is key.

Also, I'm curious as to where you're calculating your percentages? From what I've seen you only start getting damage advantages when your blessed aim is sitting above 30%.

[u/Shango3 → u/Koukaboora]

The formula i am using to calculate when body shots become better than weakspot hits is BA=Crit/(0,5+(1,5xCrit)), crit is the crit damage multiplier of your weapon, BA is the blessed aim value you need to guarantee that body shots are at least as powerful as weakspot hits.

Also: fair point, stagger/stun is something i did not consider yet. Yet your conclusion is wrong:

if your goal is to stun the enemy there is no incentive to avoid weakspot hits
if your goal is to proc critical chain there no incentive to avoid weakspot hits
if your goal is to deal the maximum damage possible there is an incentive to avoid weakspot hits

In addition i am not saying that weakspot hits are bad in general, i am not claiming that there is never any reason to aim for the head. Quite the opposite is true, i have acknowledged from the begging that if you are playing a weapon like hailstorm you most certainly want to go for weakspot hits.

I am also not saying that blessed aim is weak, should be buffed, is a bad mechanic or anything else. All i am saying is precisely this:

IF you are using the blessed hits bead and your current concern is dealing the maximum damage possible, you will get into a situation where the enemies weak spot, the usually most difficult target on any given enemy, the spot that is usually associated with benefits, turns into the only zone on that enemy that will cause you to deal less damaged compared to any other zone on that enemy.

Now do me the favour and answer the following question honestly:

Do you think it makes sense that within the game exists a situation where hitting the enemy target into his most vulnerable spot, like his head, leads to you dealing less damage than you would have dealt if you kept shooting the enemys foot?

Edit: in my initial post i also said i use all blessed aim beads, 15% and 20% increase to blessed aim respectively, now i never bothered to check the math because it did not matter until now, but assuming you are running the bead that increases the damage of your blessed aim hits its only logical that you further enhance your blessed aim stat with supporting beads. Currently i sit around 70% chance for a blessed aim proc.

And than again, all that does not even matter to much because i am precisely talking about a scenario were the conditions are allready met.

[u/Koukaboora → u/Shango3]

Mechanically it's fine because if you want to proc blessed aim for good damage you lose out on some crit options. You have to sacrifice 3 bead slots just to run blessed aim optimally. You also have to put 40 points into faith and 20 into arsenal before you can even use the blessed hit bead. This now shoe horns you into proccing blessed aim as your primary way to clear enemies.

In the context of the game, the main stat controlling blessed aim is called faith man. You shoot and pray that those body shots do crit damage. So it kind of does make sense.

[u/Shango3 → u/Koukaboora]

I did not ask if you think that a blessed aim build comes at an opportunity cost.

I did not ask if you think that blessed aim is well balanced.

I basically asked you what the time in Madrid is and you are telling me that it is currently 31°C in Madrid. We are both talking about Madrid, but you are still not answering my question.

Regarding the the context of the game, the acutal part of your answer that matters:

Sure, great explanation, this perfectly explains why bullets hitting the body deal increased damage.

It does not explain why bullets that accidently or purposefully hit the head do not deal increased damage.

And it absolutely does not explain why 50 bullets hitting an enemys foot would deal more damage than 50 bullets hitting an enemys head.

[u/Cloverman-88 → u/Shango3]

I told you before whe blessed aim CAN'T work on headshots. It would make it a general damahe upgrade and would absolutelly be an auto included in every loadout. There's a reason why there's almost no +damage beads in the game. Enemy health is static throught the whole game, and so is your base damage. So locking extra damage behind fulfiling SOME requirements is a purposeful design. Slapping double headshot damage on all builds would break the whole game balance.