Lil-fist mutation seems to have been nerfed too much.

[Jack_Attack]

I get that lil-fist was used a little too much on bosses and needed to be nerfed, but nerfing every aspect of it now makes it useless. It's so weak, I can't ever see a reason to use it. Punching does less damage so it takes longer for it to do meaningful attack damage, and the reset upon taken damage makes it near impossible to get the hit counter high enough for meaningful attack damage. One of these changes alone is a significant set back to lil-fist users, but both! It already receives a full reset after you are no longer being targeted, why does it need another full reset to worry about. Wouldn't it have been better to attack the source of the problem and made bosses resistant to lil-fist or punching. But I digress.

First Idea: Change the new counter system;

3 approaches here. 

1. Instead of a full reset to the hit counter, why not have the count lose a set number per attack received. Every time I receive a hit, my hit counter decrease by ten.
2. Have the decrement proportional to the damage received. The harder I get hit, the more my hit counter tanks. That way a player doesn't have to constantly have to fight to keep their hit counter alive by perfectly blocking every attack around them. Instead it would be more about trying to maintain a high hit count throughout the fight.
3. Don't decrement or reset the hit counter at all during the fight, but instead have a limit on how high the hit counter can get and have it increase with each level of lil-fist. Like a max of 20, 40, 60 for each level of lil-fist.

Second Idea: Gauntlets;

Change nothing about the new lil-fist balancing and instead add something new. A problem with lil-fist is that it can't be scaled like other attack specific mutations can through the different tiers of the game. Take chopper for example: there is a tier 1, 2, and 3 axe, so as you fight stronger insects there is stronger axes to pair with chopper. Now what if chopper only applied to the tier 1 axe, making it mildly useful against weaker insects but useless against stronger opponents. Lil-fist doesn't have a specific weapon to scale through the tiers of the game with, that's kind of the point. Gauntlets could change that. They don't take away from the over-all scheme of lil-fist, it's still punching, and it gives the ability to hot-swap between punching and and another attack method. Make it a two-handed weapon, and give it boxing like animations. The different tier idea:

• Tier 1: Plant fiber wrist wrap.
  • recipe: a couple of fiber bandages, crude rope, and mite fuzz
  • model: plant fiber wrapping around the fist and wrists, similar to how boxers have their hands wrapped, with the crude rope going over the knuckles and red tuffs of mite fuzz sticking out from underneath.
    • rough photoshop of idea
    • 
• Tier 2: Insect gloves.
  • recipe: some berry leather, silk rope, and some tier 2 beetle part.
  • model: black or purple boxing gloves with silk rope around the wrists and beetle parts plating the impact area.
• Tier 3: Ox Beetle Gauntlets,
  • recipe: two ox beetle horns, lint, pupa leather.
  • model: basically if you use the horns as punching gloves

[Jack_Attack]

I might photoshop the other tier ideas if I have time.

[Jack_Attack]

Tier 2: Insect Gloves:

• was bored so made one up right away.

[DerpyLeafeon]

I agree 100%. I will be the first to admit, that yes lil fist was broken at first... But now with the counter reset, since all 4 summon bosses have;

1. Damage over time effects. (bleed, venom, poison.) which prevents you from stacking lil fist period for the duration.

2. Unblock-able attacks. Which just defeats the point of trying Lil fist since its inevitable you will get hit by a dumb roar attack and lose everything or get dots and be shut out the rest of the fights.

Its just not worth it.

The Mantis is the worst to fight since even if you do block hits you still get bleed on some attacks so your stacks are gone for awhile same with the wasp queen's poison bombs though you can just dodge those.

Maybe a mutation to lower debuff duration would help so you can restack sooner?

[Alex Fulton]

I agree. Especially with the newest update. I think once the cap is reached, one should keep all stacks regardless of getting hit until combat ends. But only if you reach tge 100 stack cap.

I also really like the gauntlet idea and do believe is should still be considered a generic form of damage and it's use would be a multiplier for the fist dmg. Like tier 1 does 1.2x dmg or somethin.

In terms of it getting nerfed. The first nerf that made stacks reset upon taking dmg was a good idea, but I don't think having a stack cap AND having the reset aspect is good. It makes little fist very impractical. I only ever used little fist for the infect broodmother as it was only super useful against her. Not to mention the grind it takes to get maxed lil fist. In my honest opinion, I wish lil hadn't been changed at all in 1.2.4. I think it had been balance pretty well after the 1.2.3 nerf and made it so one had to be decent at perrying in order to get good use from it.

One final idea is instead of nerfing the stacks (i.e. the dmg) make it so that when using lil fist you have less block strength (could also apply to the power droplet).

[Jayswagwolf212]

Amazing idea would love to see it implemented.

[rwf4288]

Why nerf lil fist in first place? The second that the stack ended it was over for me, I would think about soft resetting just to preserve it.  It was only really way to achieve enough damage to quickly end combat, I am anxiety ridden and am total trash, I get frazzled and thats it, dead, the weapon wheel thing got me too.  Bosses were total barrier, lil fist took fear away and allowed me to get it done, its nerf made it so in my achievement save when I lost power droplet, I didn't even care.  Its nerf made me have to restructure whole style of gameplay. Truffle tussle lil fist poison nova FTW plus candy weakness option? God tier...  wandering around punching wolf spiders to increase stack while they ignore me was total source of fun in game...  if no fist then give me web and goo gun, gauntlet would be cool, but since max tier weapon with poison mechanics replace with dps, kinda redundant,  would rather have access to more status effects. Happy with quickness though...  still need more firefly stuff, helmet not enough. A glow splatter gun? That slows enemy to crawl? Oh yeah, or holds them in place? Bango!

[rwf4288]

My other thought was shinobi sneeze, take pinch away and make it last longer, so you can proceed and have time to menu, find the hidden things and play game instead of being trapped in combat, allow player to decide game difficulty context, it took five minutes to convince 11 year old to try for wolf spider achievement with almost totally enclosed yoked girth spider...  I mean I'm grown man, and am terrified...