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Suggestion Nerf pearl bombs damage & range greatly or completely rework/remove

berdb

Active Member
Slicer
The current state of pearl bomb is horrible game design. It isn't overpowered and it doesn't completely win fights, yet it ruins the gameplay entirely.

INTRO & TLDR:

Pearl Bomb is in an unhealthy state for the server. The problem is that it constantly produces unreactable, instant deaths if your "unlucky". (but its not rare, see in common arguments) In large fights unlucky explosion timing (common with the large # of pearl bombs) in combination with the large explosion radius often creates situations where players have no time to reasonably react before taking 5–6 hearts. (see clips for repeated examples). This design doesn’t reward skill or awareness, this module is just complete bs where you can randomly just die if your not hiding in the sidelines. It forces players to avoid mid (and inhib) just like the crystal era. If crystals were reworked for these same reasons, Pearl Bomb deserves the same treatment.

In Cryptite's own words when nerfing crystals:
"Despite arguments to the contrary we do not agree that less than one-second of reaction time before taking upwards of 6+ hearts of damage is sufficient, fun game design, or balanced.".

It's insane how this statement applies to both prenerf crystals and current endermites. If he used this exact same line when nerfing pearl bomb no one would notice. In theory, endermites have a couple second detonation time, but when your at a large fight and theres mites everywhere, the moment you see one you can very well just explode. (See some examples in clips section)

Pearl bombs range & damage should be nerfed considerably and its health should be increased to 20. (Or just flatout rework it, its just bad game design)
(the health part is because apparently if a endermite spawns clipped inside a block it just dies and instantly explodes and hits everyone, not sure if true)

Take a look at these clips:

Clip 1:

Here a pearl bomb explodes and from an absurd range deals 7 hearts of damage. Less than a second to react. How is this good game design? Just sit in the back/side?
Cryptite: "We do not agree that less than one-second of reaction time before taking upwards of 6+ hearts of damage is sufficient, fun game design, or balanced.". (lol)


Clip 2:
Here less than a second after seen it explodes and deals 5.5 hearts of damage then another endermite with no time to react explodes and finishes kylaz off (another 5.5hearts of dmg) What was kylaz supposed to do here?
Cryptite: "We do not agree that less than one-second of reaction time before taking upwards of 6+ hearts of damage is sufficient, fun game design, or balanced.". (lol)


Clip 3:
Here there is a pearl bomb infront then one spawns behind, cornered between 2 endermites I try to run fowards and attempt to not die yet I get hit by BOTH endermites from an absurd range then pearl straight into a THIRD ENDERMITE. How is this gameplay what the server wants? No different than crystals genuinely worse even.


Clip 4:
Don't even know what to say this clip is just absurd, people can just sit at mid crystaling (usually useless for kills) but with pearl bomb randomly exploding from behind it insta kills both. Just avoid mid completely I guess? Same issue as pre nerf crystals then lol.
Cryptite: "We do not agree that less than one-second of reaction time before taking upwards of 6+ hearts of damage is sufficient, fun game design, or balanced.". (lol)

Clip 5:
dont even know what to say. just watch. its horrible

Clip 6:
the worst one yet;


Common arguments:

"I haven't died by a pearl bomb since 2022 so.."
"Just don't play in mid"
"ur gonna feel the effect of pearl bomb wqhen ur sat in mid"
This is an argument players also used to defend crystals. It was pretty easy to just avoid crystals yet they were gutted. You could completely avoid both crystals and endermites by playing in the side and backlines and never die to them yet this isn't the gameplay the server wants- It's simply bad game design.

"every endermite in death range is hearable thats a skill issue"
"the endermites glow its easy to avoid lol"
"pearl bomb is fine it just needs to be more noticeable"
"You are just unaware"
As said in my introduction:

Pearl bomb constantly produces unreactable, instant deaths if your "unlucky". (but its not rare, see in common arguments) In large fights unlucky explosion timing (common with the large # of pearl bombs) and the large explosion radius often creates situations where players have less than 1 second to react before taking 5–6 hearts. (see clips for repeated examples). This design doesn’t reward skill or awareness, this module is just complete bs where you can randomly just die if your not hiding in the sidelines. It forces players to avoid mid (and inhib) just like the crystal era. If crystals were reworked for these same reasons, Pearl Bomb deserves the same treatment.

If were looking at a simulation where your fighting mid, pearl bomb spawns beside you, you can hear/see it and sprint away. This is true, but that's just not how it plays out. You often just get nuked by pre existing endermites. https://streamable.com/b57exv no time to react into 6heart explosion, https://streamable.com/b57exv less than a second to react, or whatever the hell this is https://streamable.com/ye61xm, whatever this was too https://streamable.com/si8fu0. Making it more noticeable will not do anything either and not fix these "unlucky" situations.


"Bro pearl bomb has been nerfed 10 times"
Crystals also got nerfed multiple times before the current state, not much more to be said.

"you guys just got unlucky lol"
"look man I got hit by about 15 pearl bombs that fight and none of them were able to kill me"
You can sometimes tank multiple explosions without dying, but the issue is the extremely common “unlucky” situations where you have no time to react before exploding. This isn’t skill based, awareness doesn't help- it’s just bad design that forces players to avoid mid/inhib if they dont want to randomly die.

If you just hear:
"Oh a pearl bomb spawned behind you and infront of you? Then u tried to run away and blew up then pearled right into another one and blew up again?" (https://streamable.com/ye61xm)
"Oh you ran straight into a pearl bomb and the moment it came in your render distance it exploded you for 7 hearts, instantly dying." (https://streamable.com/4n8mii)
"Oh you fought on inhib then the moment you spotted a mite infront of you it exploded for 5.5 hearts then another behind you also exploded for another 5.5 hearts?" (https://streamable.com/b57exv)
"Oh you got expoloded by a crystal then an endermite 0.25s later?" (https://streamable.com/hwkyfd)
"Oh you just got comepleted erased off the map?" (https://streamable.com/si8fu0)

It'd just seem that they just got unlucky, yet situations like these keep happening to countless people every fight. With the absurd range and just concept of pearl bomb, "unlucky" situations like this are constantly made, its just a common occurrence. I do not agree at all that these are just rare unlucky situations, I would say its extremely common to just randomly face an unreasonable death.

"Well its clearly not helping HL win any fights"
Did crystals help anti HL win any fights? We abused it harder than anyone else yet it never helped win, it just resulted in horrible gameplay. Helian league always won but crystals did not make the game fun. The issue is not that it's a win condition, the issue is that you have to completely avoid sections of the map, constantly have to deal with randomly taking 6 hearts of dmg if playing mid/inhib. Yes, you can avoid ones that spawn beside you due to the glowing/noise but its not that simple. In large fights unlucky explosion timing in combination with the large explosion radius often creates situations where players have no time to reasonably react before taking 5–6 hearts. (WATCH THE CLIPS).
 
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19 voters
well i think ur only complaining now cus we are the ones using it
U missed the point
These mechanics kinda balance each other out and i said this many times in the past
In some month when tac rush was getting abused, you guys were immortal, but on the other hand we made golems immortal
Now bomb makes it hard for you to fight outside of tgen but when you do camp tgen, golem fixing saves you
Now with tac rush being useless, pearl bomb is the only thing that gives attackers a chance, its literally the only strong attack mod, so if it was going to get nerfed (doesnt matter if the reason for the nerf is unfun gameplay or it being OP), the defenders should get nerfed in some way too, and removing golem fixing in that case would make the most sense
Feel free to share your ideas for how else it could be balanced
 
In my original post I just suggested to just "nerf dmg/range" but after thinking about it a bit more I have 3 changes I would like to suggest.

First, adding an internal cooldown per player making that specific player unable to be hit by a pearl bomb for ~10s after being hit by one. There are many times like the clips below where people just get combod by endermites and this would help stop those unfair kinds of deaths without the huge drawbacks of something like "only 3 pearl bombs can spawn in the tile at once". Simply adding a range/dmg nerf would not fix this issue that well without nerfing the dmg completely into the ground.

Second, the endermites should be immortal until they detonate. It's stupid how they can die to lava/clipping in a block/ or just from someone critting them and explode instantly for 8 hearts.

And lastly even with those 2 nerfs I still believe a general range/dmg nerf is needed as pearl bomb would still completely shut down mid like current, the majority of deaths are not caused by a double pearl bomb or one instantly exploding due to death, so just implementing those changes won't fix the true issue. In the end how good pearl bomb becomes after the changes depends on how much the range/dmg is nerfed.
(some clips just showing 1 endermite doing insane dmg)

I also hope that pearl bomb can be changed soon as its the biggest month in loka history. Yes HL keeps losing anyways so it wouldn't change much, but waves of new players are coming in, and their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, even 4th experiences are just being exploded by endermites. These players likely will not stick around with this gameplay. If crystals were considered groundbreaking enough to be nerfed mid month (on the 20th, is when CD was implemented) then I believe this current state of pearl bomb is worse, forcing an entire team to stick defence and stall 60 minutes.
 
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Offer something in exchange man, with Tac Rush nerfed aswell, offensive modules are just in the gutter, the meta is currently sitting on Inhibs and repairing golems, mass turtling, haramball if you may, (Or Haramcraft idfk)

I agree that its kind of a stupid system, but at the same time you shouldn't make defenders that strong, pearl bombs do damage mostly at the beggining where you can coordinate everybody to pearl in, after that its mostly just pure individualities where you can argue "Skill issue".

Offer nerfs to one thing, but then maybe suggest a buff on another module for attackers that you believe might be "healthy" so your post does not seem self-interested
 
I dont think it needs a "nerf" but a rework make it spawn endermites at tgen but deal less damage current playstyle it inscentives for both attack and defence is aids
 
Offer something in exchange man, with Tac Rush nerfed aswell, offensive modules are just in the gutter, the meta is currently sitting on Inhibs and repairing golems, mass turtling, haramball if you may, (Or Haramcraft idfk)

I agree that its kind of a stupid system, but at the same time you shouldn't make defenders that strong, pearl bombs do damage mostly at the beggining where you can coordinate everybody to pearl in, after that its mostly just pure individualities where you can argue "Skill issue".

Offer nerfs to one thing, but then maybe suggest a buff on another module for attackers that you believe might be "healthy" so your post does not seem self-interested
1763515786377.png


Also its not only at the start, these last 2 fights weve sat on tgen for a full 60 minutes and just stalled timer becuase nomatter when we push we would just get nuked by pearl bomb. The deaths at the start are the main part you can call a "skill issue, becuase when warp just happens you can hide back. but afterwards if you ever try to exit the tgen no build zone you can just randomly face an unfair unavoidable death. Idk what your talking about. I dont think a single one of the 15 clips ive sent has been from right after warp
 
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Surely its enjoyable for you guys to get farmed in waves for 60 minutes the town of paragon has more deaths than our entire alliance combined this month
 
Could be a crazy take, but maybe just remove the damage entirely from the bomb and instead when they explode they just apply a debuff instead (pearl cd, slowness, weakness etc.). I also think they should still do knockback as it clears up the area for the attackers which in these big fights is important, maybe scale this up even further to balance the nerf. This would be a major nerf, but I think adding back the feature of allowing them to spawn near the tgen and inhib would work well with this idea as well.
 
to truly underline the irony of this, here is an answer to my suggestion a month ago:View attachment 13617
this was the case with pre-nerf tac rush, where these two things balanced each other out
the attackers were immortal, and so were the golems (the attackers were deadass unkillable and golems were like kinda killable if coordinated properly so it was still a bit better for the attackers)
now with tac rush being useless, and pearl bomb not working on tgen, it is unbalanced - the attackers have nothing going on for them, and the defenders can just wait out the full 60 minutes on each fight
but i suppose that u will refuse to read what i said a few messages above your illiterate yap

Honestly, I'd expect something like that from other people, but from you I expected a bit more intellectual depth, and some comprehension of the entire picture. Very disappointing
 
this was the case with pre-nerf tac rush, where these two things balanced each other out
the attackers were immortal, and so were the golems (the attackers were deadass unkillable and golems were like kinda killable if coordinated properly so it was still a bit better for the attackers)
now with tac rush being useless, and pearl bomb not working on tgen, it is unbalanced - the attackers have nothing going on for them, and the defenders can just wait out the full 60 minutes on each fight
but i suppose that u will refuse to read what i said a few messages above your illiterate yap

Honestly, I'd expect something like that from other people, but from you I expected a bit more intellectual depth, and some comprehension of the entire picture. Very disappointing
Just kill the defenders its easy if you coordinate it like we do, not our fault you guys suck (or maybe play the objective rather than half ur team sitting in traps and lava all fight 😹)
 
Could be a crazy take, but maybe just remove the damage entirely from the bomb and instead when they explode they just apply a debuff instead (pearl cd, slowness, weakness etc.). I also think they should still do knockback as it clears up the area for the attackers which in these big fights is important, maybe scale this up even further to balance the nerf. This would be a major nerf, but I think adding back the feature of allowing them to spawn near the tgen and inhib would work well with this idea as well.
i like this idea alot
 
Could be a crazy take, but maybe just remove the damage entirely from the bomb and instead when they explode they just apply a debuff instead (pearl cd, slowness, weakness etc.). I also think they should still do knockback as it clears up the area for the attackers which in these big fights is important, maybe scale this up even further to balance the nerf. This would be a major nerf, but I think adding back the feature of allowing them to spawn near the tgen and inhib would work well with this idea as well.
Makes it no where near as good and it will never be used again tho, but it is a good idea to change it from the op damage to something else
 
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