[2020] Detailed Cell feedback - Defence Tree

As we all know, only a small portion of them are considered useful and that's a problem, so I took the time to lay out some feedback on all Cells, starting with the Defence Tree.

Defence Cells

We start by getting into arguably the least impressive of the Cell Trees, so let's get down to it.

Assassin's Vigour (Grants Health after breaking a Behemoth part.)

• Unfortunately, a rather unimpressive Cell. Part breaks occur seldomly enough that the healing provided by this cell is unimpactful. Not only because you break a part once each few minutes (talking generally T5 Behemoths), but also because of the healing value itself.
• Compare this to a Shockjaw Axe, which lets you heal a flat 200 each time you charge a light attack to the 3rd level, which you can do every 5s on average, and you clearly see how this Cell pales in comparison. Other Shockjaw weapons' % lifesteal is also better than this flat healing, and that's despite being conditional due to the need of having any kind of Wounding cells, which will occur an average of 3-5 times during a Hunt.
• Aside from that, the better you get, the less you use Healing Potions, and since the exact moment a part breaks can't be easily predicted, you run a risk of the heal being either partially or entirely wasted because you might already be at 75% HP for example. Again, you're better off using Shockjaw weapons, which give you control over when you get the health back.
• Keeping all of the above in mind, I would propose to change and adjust the functionality of this cell:

	Current	New
+1	Heal 50 when you break a part.	Regenerate 50 Health over 10s when you break a Behemoth's part.
+2	Heal 100 when you break a part.	Regenerate 100 Health over 10s when you break a Behemoth's part.
+3	Heal 150 when you break a part.	Regenerate 150 Health over 10s when you break a Behemoth's part.
+4	Heal 200 when you break a part.	Regenerate 200 Health over 20s when you break a Behemoth's part and gain 10% increased Part damage for 10s*.*
+5	Heal 250 when you break a part.	Regenerate 250 Health over 20s when you break a Behemoth's part and gain 15% increased Part damage for 15s*.*
+6	Heal 300 when you break a part.	Regenerate 300 Health over 20s when you break a Behemoth's part and gain 20% increased Part damage for 20s*.*

• The above iteration remains true to the health regaining portion it now has, while adding an additional effect, making the Cell more attractive. Going by the Cell's name flavor, an Assassin as a person of great focus, with clear intention of solving the one task they've been given. Since it appears our devs want this Assassin's objective to be breaking Behemoth parts, we've improved it a bit. The focus part is resembled by switching from instantaneous health restoration to over time regeneration - you just focus on Assassinating that part champ, while your health regenerates in the back unobtrusively. Once you break a part, we then increase your focus on another part, which should now be easier to break, and the more you focus on it, the better you can utilize this buff. CONTINUAL ASSASSINATION! (derp!)
• This also makes the Cell's effect a bit more consistent, allowing you to break parts more often, especially in party.
• If you break two parts in quick succession, the regeneration effects should not stack but should be overwritten instead, as those instances will generally happen rarely, unless your entire party is sorely focused on breaking parts with Axes and Hammers etc.
• It may be that the 10%-20% Part Damage increases are a bit too high, and should be dropped by 5% on each tier (5, 10 and 15% respectively), but I feel this is still lower enough from Sharpened to keep Sharpened relevant; plus, Sharpened is in another Cell Tree entirely.
• While I'm not a fan of rewarding reckless gameplay, where you ignore taking damage because you can afford it due to various sources of healing, as you will find reading further below, I think this switch from instantaneous health replenishment to overtime regeneration helps alleviate that problem. Yes, you are guaranteed to restore this health, but only if you don't die 5s after acquiring the buff, so you still need to stay on your toes, which is a healthier approach in my mind.

Fortress (Grants a small shield after avoiding damage for a short time.)

• Fortress is a cell that could potentially be the best one in the Defence Tree but unfortunately offers too little in terms of Shield amount right now as is. The 'the best' factor comes from thee fact that it mitigates damage, which is the ultimate way of avoiding damage - preventing it completely, which is better than healing health that's been lost.
• Especially compared to the healing values offered by some of the other cells mentioned here, a maximum of a 100 Shield at +6 is just too little.
• Bosses generally hit for more than 100 damage at a time, so you can see how the current values aren't adequate to reality.
• Below is a proposal of how to make it more attractive:

	Current	New
+1	Grants a 10 health shield after not getting hit for 10s.	Acquire a 50 point Shield after not receiving damage for 20s. Gain an additional 10 Shield each 2s you go without receiving damage thereafter, up to a 100 total (30s total)
+2	Grants a 20 health shield after not getting hit for 10s.	Acquire a 75 point Shield after not getting hit for 20s. Gain an additional 10 Shield each 2s you go without receiving damage thereafter, up to a 125 total (30s total).
+3	Grants a 40 health shield after not getting hit for 10s.	Acquire a 100 point Shield after not receiving damage for 18s. Gain an additional 10 Shield for each 2s you go without receiving damage thereafter, up to 150 total (28s total).
+4	Grants a 60 health shield after not getting hit for 10s.	Acquire a 100 point Shield after not receiving damage for 18s. Gain an additional 10 Shield each 2s you go without receiving damage thereafter, up to 200 total. If you reach the full 200 Shield amount (38s without taking damage), the next time you take damage, your next Shield will activate twice as fast (9s).
+5	Grants a 80 health shield after not getting hit for 10s.	Acquire a 125 point Shield after not receiving damage for 16s. Gain an additional 10 Shield for each 2s you go without receiving damage thereafter, up to 225 total. If you reach the full 225 (36s without taking damage) Shield amount, the next time you take damage, your next Shield will activate twice as fast (8s).
+6	Grants a 100 health shield after not getting hit for 10s.	Acquire a 150 point Shield after not receiving damage for 14s. Gain an additional 10 Shield for each 2s you go without receiving damage thereafter, up to 250 total. If you reach the full 250 (34s without taking damage) Shield amount, the next time you take damage, your next Shield will activate twice as fast (7s).

• This approach is better because it offers more meaningful Shield values to start off with.
• Additionally, you are rewarded the longer you go without taking damage, by being able to stack up on higher Shield values, but also your starting Shield point is a bit higher as well.
• Starting from +4 on onwards, you also get an additional cooldown reduction on the effect itself, the next time it activates.
• To clarify how the next activation works, if you do go the full duration without taking any damage on say the +4 tier, meaning 34s in total, then you do take damage that doesn't break your shield entirely, 7s after the shield will 'refresh' back to 125 and start staking up to 225 afterwards. If the shield breaks in full, the same rule applies.
• I've also improved the text clarity for better understanding compared to what it currently is.
• I believe these numbers to be more or less balanced, but if need be, they can always be adjusted. The main point of the table above was to improve the Cell's general functionality, not to nail its balance perfectly.

Bloodless/Fireproof/Insulated/Shellshock Resist/Warmth (generally all status-preventing cells)

• I am not entirely sure why these are in the game in form of Cells, given that we have gear sets that provide the exact same thing, with overall better effectiveness. My experience with these debuffs so far has been that almost all of them can be easily ignored, with the seldom exception of Shellshock Resist, Fireproof and Insulated, to a lesser degree.
• Those effects existing in Cell forms makes more sense only when future Behemoth with these debuffs will be released, e.g. say a 'Ragetail 2000' will be released on Island 7 but its set will not provide any immunity from Bloodless debuff. In that scenario, you will obviously not wear the Ragetail set from Island 5 to combat that, as you will have too little Resistance in general. That is another way the devs can make these Cells useful down the line, but for right now, they have hardly any use.
• Bloodless and Warmth are both easily avoidable by dodging and Bloodless can also be fully negated by standing still for 5s or just not caring about it, but instead ensuring you don't reach 0 Stamina (Conditioning cells recommended for the 'don't care' approach, though). Warmth has a clear visual, indicating where it will strike, thus making it exceptionally avoidable, and even if you do get hit, teammate can easily break you off from the ice with a single attack.
• Shellshock Resist can be argued to do too much damage by default, though it is still fairly easy to dodge Deadeye's quill shots. It's AoE damage can also be a bit of an issue, due to other people running into you and the fact that player collision still hasn't been removed from the game.
• Fireproof is also easily negated by dodging, though it does deal considerable damage before you put it out by dodging if you have no resist against it. Just because fully negating the effect takes 3-4 dodge rolls, for that alone I do sometimes consider using a part or two from the Bloodfire Set (notice again how using the set is far easier and better than investing into a Fireproof Cell), just not to have to worry about it at all.
• Insulated was a complete non-factor prior to 0.4.4, however now that Shockjaw Nayzaga's Electric Balls can fly through its body (of which I still think to be a bug, since Firebrand Charrogg's Fireballs do not phase through its body, but devs still haven't confirmed it), they can be an annoyance sometimes. Still, you ignore them regardless and just pound on Nayzaga anyway. Below is a simple idea to improve this Cell:

	Current	New
+1	Reduces duration of Shocked status by 25%	Reduces duration of Shocked status by 25%
+2	Reduces duration of Shocked status by 50%	Reduces duration of Shocked status by 50%
+3	Reduces duration of Shocked status by 75%	Reduces duration of Shocked status by 75%
+4	Reduces duration of Shocked status by 75%. Reduces knockback and damage of hitting electrified shields.	Reduces duration of Shocked status by 75%. Reduces knockback and damage of hitting electrified shields.
+5	Reduces duration of Shocked status by 75%. Prevents knockback and damage of hitting electrified shields.	Reduces duration of Shocked status by 75%. Prevents knockback and damage of hitting electrified shields.
+6	Immune to Shocked status. Prevents knockback and damage of hitting electrified shields.	Immune to Shocked status. Prevents knockback and damage of hitting electrified shields and projectiles.

• The conclusion is, these debuffs are currently not punishing enough / not big of a factor enough to warrant using these Cells, and as a result those Cells might've as well not existed. If you are struggling against any of the Behemoths using those statuses, you instead equip 1-2 pieces of their gear, MAYBE infusing a single of those status-related Cells to bring into that gear to bring said statuts to +6, and that's it.
• One way to make them more desired would be to reduce the each status' effect from +2 to +1 on each gear piece that prevents a particular status, so that you could only get up to a maximum of +3/+4 by wearing the entire set. That number increase, going from +1 to +2, should also not happen when upgrading your gear to +5, if that approach is to retain any sense.

Nine Lives (Grants a chance to reduce damage, and later the ability to cheat death.)

• Probably the best all-around Defence Cell, due to having no proc limitation, at least on the damage halving effect.
• Recommended to be had on at least +3, preferrably +4, for the additional effect.
• The additional effect essentially prevents you from being flung away (knocked down? staggered?), effectively reducing your DPS downtime by about ~3s, which would otherwise happen most of the time when you got hit.
• The 400 Heal is a little generous and could probably be rebalanced. The same goes for the 'free revive' effect, which allows for more reckless play and lets you ignore Behemoth attacks more, which is a bit counter-intuitive to what you should be doing by getting better in this game.
• For that reason, I do believe this effect should instead be changed to trigger whenever an attack would put you at an X% health or below, and should not trigger on death. As it is right now, it incentivizes bad play and not caring for your health total, which is a bad thing. Below are my proposed changes to this Cell:

	Current	New
+1	+5% chance to halve incoming damage.	+5% chance to halve incoming damage.
+2	+8% chance to halve incoming damage.	+8% chance to halve incoming damage.
+3	+12% chance to halve incoming damage.	+12% chance to halve incoming damage.
+4	+12% chance to halve incoming damage. The first time you would be knocked out, stay up and heal for 400.	+12% chance to halve incoming damage. The first time your health would drop below 33%, prevent being knocked down and heal* *for 200.
+5	+16% chance to halve incoming damage. The first time you would be knocked out, stay up and heal for 400.	+16% chance to halve incoming damage. The first time your health would drop below 25%, prevent being knocked down and heal* *for 300.
+6	+20% chance to halve incoming damage. The first time you would be knocked out, stay up and heal for 400 and become empowered for 10 seconds.	+20% chance to halve incoming damage. The first time your health would drop below 20%, prevent being knocked down and heal*** for 400. Gain x% increased Attack Speed for 20 s*econds.

• Note: the % HP thresholds may be a bit off, as I'm not sure how much HP our characters have, but I've read it to be a 1000 - any confirmation would be appreciated.
• The 'becoming empowered' effect just needs to be rewritten completely, because it is vague and doesn't tell you anything. I only know it increases Attack Speed, but I don't know by how much, since the UI of the game is still far from being optimal, and never displays the effect statuses in written form on the screen. I also increased the Attack Speed duration, as for an effect that only triggers a single time during the Hunt, it should feel like it was worth going to +6 on that cell, and the current 10s just doesn't give you that feeling right now.

Sturdy (Prevents being staggered on a cooldown.)

• A decent defensive cell but with too niche of a use.
• Pretty much only Axe users would like to use this, and even then I'd argue most would not, because it simply doesn't increase your damage in any way. Due to how Axe's charge attacks work, they're an all-or-nothing swings, meaning you either will land the hit and do damage or you've just wasted ~2-3s and got nothing in return, because you've just got knocked back to the ground.
• This is an effect that feels like it should instead be a Unique effect on one of the Axe weapons instead of having a fully dedicated Cell spot to it. Give it to some other weapon types as well, and it might see some actual use in certain builds, not as one of those effects you desire to have at all costs, but akin to the cells you end up having only +1 or +2 of in in your entire build, mostly due to gear choices required for what you're going for.

Tough (Increases Max Health.)

• Somewhat of a useful Cell, but again, not something anyone would consciously choose to use in their builds, as it doesn't add to your damage or otherwise make you more effective. Perhaps later on in the game, if we ever get a defensive-oriented weapon that would have anything to do with taking damage on principle, as part of their functionality.
• Similarly to Nine Lives' secondary effect, this Cell also incentivizes bad play and not dodging Behemoth attacks.
• Does have synergy with the Rage cell, as pointed out by u/Altiverses, making you safer while staying below the 50% HP threshold required for the full effect of a +6 Rage perk.
• For what it does, it doesn't compliment Health Potions much, as then they become less effective, and since the health regeneration effects in the game are scarce, it could benefit from an additional effect:

	Current	New
+1	Increases Max Health by 50	Increases Max Health by 50
+2	Increases Max Health by 100	Increases Max Health by 100
+3	Increases Max Health by 150	Increases Max Health by 150
+4	Increases Max Health by 250	Increases Max Health by 250, and empowers Healing Potion's effect by 10%.
+5	Increases Max Health by 350	Increases Max Health by 350 and empowers Healing Potion's effect by 20%.
+6	Increases Max Health by 500	Increases Max Health by 500 and empowers Healing Potion's effect by 30%.

• This way it goes more hand in hand with Healing Potions, so that they can actually better top your health off, and by only empowering Healing Potions in particular, we make sure there's no weird shenanigans going on with % lifesteal weapons or flat health restoration effects from other sources, such as the Shockjaw weapons.

Defence Cells Tier list:

• S++: Nine Lives (minimum +2, although +4 is recommended).
• S+: Sturdy (less knockdowns means more DPS uptime, most synergy with Axes due to their Charge attacks) / Fortress (once improved, as the scaling right now and total damage mitigation is way too low to matter).
• S: Tough (additional health doesn't help much, however if you have reliable lifesteal sources, like Shockjaw weapons or a Lifedrain Tonic, it'll help you mitigate more damage overall).
• A and/or lower: pretty much everything else. An argument can be made that certain status-preventing cells are circumstancially useful (e.g. Shellshock against Deadeye, due to how absurd Shellshock's damage is by default), but those are fringe cases.

That's it for the Defence Tree. Please do understand that this are just my own ideas and don't have to coincide with what developers already have in mind for them, so take them as just that - proposals. And of course, do write your own ideas as well, so that together we can give PhxLabs a better overall outlook on what we think about the Cells.

Thanks for reading.

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