Turning pay-to-win buffs back into Unique Variants

</em>"Oh no, it's Zeddy with another suggestion! And this time he's going to nerf my Unique Variants so that they're 'balanced' and 'interesting' and that scares me."</em>

Kinda, but not quite.

<strong>It is not my intention to in any way reduce the power of Unique Variants</strong>

As an introduction, let's talk about Cold Iron Vanquisher. Cold Iron Vanquisher is generally stronger than Leviathan Blade against undead... until the wielder stacks some damage bonus exceeding +3. For every step beyond that, Levi will catch up to and surpass Cold Iron as it will have reached the damage bonus cap. Due to this, it is rightfully scoffed upon by dedicated swordsmen who are very fond of swimming around in damage bonuses like salmons merrily flopping upriver into bear maws.

What can be done to make CIV a desirable choice beyond looking stylish? I propose tha inherent bonuses on weapons be able to stack past the hard cap limit for damage bonuses. So where a Levi can only reach +6 Damage Versus Undead, Cold Iron would be able to reach +9 Damage Versus Undead. And I'm not happy to call it quits there, either! If you were to roll a +4 Versus Undead on your CIV as a Unique Variant, <em>that</em> bonus would also be able to break the cap, allowing CIV to reach +13 Versus Undead (and Levi +10).

Yowza! That's a lot of damage bonus!

<strong>The catch</strong>

Every force has an opposite. So, too, must it be with unique variants. As a general rule, for every step of damage buff a weapon gets, it gets an equal amount of damage penalty. When you roll a Slime Low on your sword, a random family is picked and a Low Damage Penalty is applied to it. It could be Low Penalty Versus Gremlins. It could be Low Penalty Versus Fiends. It could even be Low Penalty Versus Slime, completely negating your buff. If you get a Very High, four Lows are randomly distributed amongst families. You could end up with Very High Versus Slime, and Low Penalty against Fiend, Beast and Undead. You could also end up with Very High Versus Slime and Very High Penalty Versus Slime, though you would have to take some goddang screenshots of that because that sounds more rare than getting a Book of Dark Rituals.

For every step of ASI, an equal amount of general damage penalty is applied. A Very High ASI weapon would have Very High Damage Penalty applied to it. This would be a blanket damage penalty, not just for a single family.

Penalties would not have a cap, and nothing but extremely low probabilities would stop you from ending up with -12 against some family or other.

<strong>Charges are more complicated and get their own section</strong>

Keep in mind that these only apply to the charges themselves, not regular shots and combos.

<strong>Swords</strong>

Every step of CTR on Caliburs reduces knockback and interruption.

Every step of CTR on Brandishes removes one explosion.

Every step of CTR on Cutters removes a ghost blade from one of the attacks, starting with the first one.

Every step of CTR on Flourishes reduces damage on the charge by the equivalent in damage penalty.

Every step of CTR on BTB removes a spike from the charge.

Divine Avenger loses the middle astral blade at med CTR. At Very High, only the middle blade is spawned. For every step, the swing gets reduced damage equivalent in damage penalty.

Gran Faust gets reduced damage on the swing at equivalent damage penalty. In addition, curse strength is reduced by one step for each step of CTR. This includes the strength of the self-curse.

For Fang of Vog, see Gran Faust.

Every step of CTR on Troikas and Rocket hammer reduces damage on the charge by the equivalent in damage penalty.

On Winmillion, travel length is reduced on the charge projectile for every step of CTR.

<strong>Handguns</strong>
Every step of CTR on Valiance reduces knockback and interruption on the charge.

Every step of CTR on Autoguns causes two shots in the charge to misfire, causing the bullets to not be fired. These shots are picked at random.

Every step of CTR on Alchemers removes one bounce from the charge projectiles. The bounces are picked at random. At Very High CTR, four ricochet projectiles could spawn without bouncing or two projectiles bouncing once each could spawn. Other permutations are also possible.

Every step of CTR on Catalyzers reduces lifetime of orbits by two seconds. I'm aware this is a pretty minor nerf, comparatively, but you have to realise how little difference +10 CTR would make for this gun as most of the time is already spent in the actual charge attack animation with it.

Every step of CTR on Pulsars reduce damage by the equivalent in damage penalty. For Polaris, Shock strength is also reduced. For Supernova, knockback is.

For Antiguas, hitbox and travel length of the birds are reduced for every step of CTR.

Magnus charges lose half a tile of range for every step of CTR.

<strong>Bombs</strong>
All bombs except shard bombs lose radius for every step of CTR. At Very High, Nitronome and Ash of Agni end up with the radiu of Proto Bomb. Graviton Bomb ends up with the radius of Graviton Charge.

For every step of CTR on shard bombs, one shard is randomly removed and won't spawn at all. In other words, you won't be able to tell anything's different with them. :V

<strong>Oh right, armours!</strong>
See family bonuses for weapons. Basically, for every step of defence that gets added, a step of defence gets deducted from an existing amount on the armour since defences can't be negative. This means that Normal UVs would do absolutely nothing on Ancient Plate.

For each step of status resist, deduct a step from a random status. You cannot get penalties for sleep until sleep UVs get reintroduced.