I think solutions 1,2 and 4 would make bosses too easy. I think contact damage is there to inhibit the player, specifically to limit their damage output to make bosses harder. Sometimes limiting the player can be good to increase difficulty and not make bosses feel like a pushover.

We need someone to make a mod for these to test them

I feel bad whenever a charm is nerfed. I like strong charms it doesn’t have to be balanced that’s part of the fun.

The new Fury of the Fallen and the new Stalwart Shell from the previous video is a deadly combo. You'd be able to prep yourself before fights to low health and wait out the Stalwart Shell invincibilty timer for a free hit while sustaining more health if you want.

Why did you make strength so weak? If that was the ability I would never get it, even in a nail build.

Heavy Blow (3 charm notches): Increases Enemy Knockback by 75%. Reduces the hit to stagger on bosses by 30%. Reduces attack speed by 25%. Increases Damage by 35% I think a change like this would give the charm its intended effect

Holy shit bro, like goddam! I really like the concepts but some of the stats are pretty bonkers and the nerfs to the currently broken charms are too harsh to the point that it feels like this would create a new meta of incredibly broken charms instead of a balanced one. Like specially fury and mark of pride are pretty bananas to me compared to the nerfs to strength and shaman stone. Aside from that, good video, looking forward to the rest.

Again, I approve of your critical thinking, having realised exactly what is the problem with Fragile/Unbreakable charms. That being said... boy, do I have a lot of notes! Charm specific notes: - Heart: exactly what I would do. I believe the second step to rebalance health charms would be to lower the notch cost of Lifeblood Heart and Lifeblood Core? With 1 notch - 2 masks exchange rate, they would be more efficient and easier to fit into any build health charms in the game, but the masks they would provide would be one-time only. Heart in this configuration provides less masks per notch, while still staying efficient enough to viable. And the masks are healable. That should provide some balance. Now, with Joni's Blessing, the worst charm in the game, this is going to be far trickier. Greed - the true problem with this charm is that it's supposed to make the geo grind go by quicker. But Hollow Knight has no obligatory grind. Just by going through the game, finding deposits, defeating bosses and regular enemies and, most importantly, selling relics. If you just go through the game doing all of that, without dying and losing geo to shade, you never have any need for grinding. This charm is deceptive. It seems useful for newer players, but by the time they become experienced, they realise that it isn't and really never have been. It's just badly designed, it fills a niche that doesn't exist in HK gameplay. Honestly, I don't know how to fix this charm. It would probably require a complete redesign. While I think that your tweak is a nice idea, it can't solve the underlying problem with this charm. Strength - this nerf is harsh, but I can see why you would deem it necessary. Still, if I were to do this, I would instead increase the cost to 4 notches. This way, it's steep, but not absurdly costly, so the option of using it is still there, but it will often be just preferable to use other charms instead. Note how it doesn't impact speedrunners that much, since for much of the late game, they overcharm anyway. Heavy Blow - now this one is a bit crazy. Other people in the comments have already pointed out how potentially game-breaking it could get. I think that with a few more tweaks, this one has potential. It's still rather surprising how strong you decided to make it. I wanted to go the exact opposite direction: get rid of all original effects, lower the cost to one notch, add a new primary effect: damage dealt with your nail is increased by 15%. This way, Heavy Blow becomes a small, auxillary charm, like a mini version of Strength. With 15% for one notch, it is slightly less efficient than regular Strength and slightly more efficient than nerfed Strength (see notes above). And the effects stack! So this way, Heavy Blow joins Nailmaster's Glory and Steady Body as a one notch add-on charm to the nail build! Still, maybe your idea is better and I'm just too stubborn to admit it. Longnail and Mark of Pride - perfectly reasonable boost. The synergy however stirs my doubts... I feel like this kind of effect would come off as most natural with Nailmaster's Glory and Grubberfly's Elegy... Fury of the Fallen - leave this one as it is. It fits its purpose perfectly on its own and doesn't have to be made more approachable. If you want to make it more custumisable, you should focus on synergies. I consider my charm reworks with Pale Court in mind. Pale Court might only be a fan made expansion, but it's so incredibly well done that I can genuinely see TC canonising it one day and I hope that it happens. More importantly here, the charms introduced in PC are all incredibly powerful, complex and well balanced. So much so, I consider them to be great templates for charm reworks. One of those charms, Abyssal Bloom, does exactly what you reworked Fury to do, but also much more. It costs entire five (!) notches, but is so worth it, providing you with not only damage, but also speed, range and powerful synergies. I recommend taking a look!

I feel like fury of the fallen was the charm that least needed a rework, due to the description mentioning that its effects are meant to take affect due to the courage and bravery one gets while near death, and while my instincts naturally made me flare up at even the idea of nerfing quick slash and fragile/unbreakable strength, I do have a counter offer for strength, make the fragile version still do 50%, while remaining fragile, but while unbreakable it goes down to said 30%, however nerfing quick slash is reasonable, and maybe when in dream battles fragile charms could take 3 hits? Everytime time you die until the third time in a dream its effectiveness is reduced as it takes damage!

Hollow knight was my the very first time i ever picked up a controller, and i dont agree with the implication that false knight acts as a sieve for people who “shouldnt play hollow knight”. I am not ashamed to admit that most early game bosses took me 50+ attempts, but i didnt give up. I have since finished the game with 104% and am currently doing the white palace in order to obtain more endings. I think the implication that the game is too hard for some people is pure bs

For the breakable charms you should have given them a debug like strength increases your nail damage by 50% but it decreases spell damage

on my first playthrough i never removed mark of pride but every playthrough after that i never use it

I very much agree, one thing that I really hate is Grey Prince Zote, I've been trying for a while to get to Fight 10 and I've just been driven to the edge because of it, I'm able to handle every attack and not get hit but the reason that I still die is because instead of doing an attack he just with zero warning walks straight into me dealing over half my health and does it at least twice a fight Even explosive Zote and mini Zote spam plus shock wave ground spams I've managed to dodge and it feels great but dying to the reckless clutz just, walking forward feels horrible

This video in a nutshell: “I want to be able to fight the bosses without having to fight them on the ground.”

Like with Shaman Stone, I think 25% is a bit low for Strength as a 3 notch charm, and 30% would better let nail damage stand as a viable alternative to spell damage. Quick Slash, my beloved, however, deserves a more thougthful nerf. I propose keeping the speed buff at 30%, or 25% at least, so you still feel the difference, more often than not, when you manage to get a quick extra hit in; instead we cause it to decrease your nail damage by 2 at baseline, or by 3 when Strength is equipped, and decrease soul colection by 1 at baseline, or 2 when Soul Eater is equipped (both changes affect the number of hits you need to reach the 33/66/99 Soul collection thresholds) , nerfing its generalist capabilities and the cumulative effects it has with other charms. I like the idea for Mark of Pride, but I think it should only increase the regular range of the Nail Arts when combined with Nailmaster's Glory. Instead, if Glory is combined with Grubberfly's Elegy, it creates the boomerang projectile, and Mark of Pride would increase the size and range of both Elegy's base projectiles and the boomerang. I think Fury would be a bit overpowered with these changes, and encourage the bad habit of face tanking and brute forcing bosses. I like the idea, but maybe it should increase damage by 8% per mask lost. This way, the bonus received at 8 masks lost would still be only 64%, and if we take a possible synergy with the newly buffed Heart into account, it would increase the maximum possible bonus to 88% once 11 masks are lost. This way, if you find Fury at the very beginning of the game, it would start out as a small last resort bonus, giving a modest damage boost, but scale incredibly if paired with Strength and Heart during the endgame, at the cost of 8 notches.

The proposed heavy blow is waaaaay too strong. Combined with Quickslash and charms that increase your nail's range, you could almost stunlock non-boss enemies and keep bosses from moving or attacking a considerable amount of the time. I'd probably double the hit requirements to stun at least. Additionally, to solve your unbreakable/fragile charms problem, make them stronger while fragile and give Divine the ability to swap your charms between fragile and unbreakable for a small price after making them unbreakable.

The problem with the first Soul Catcher rebalance is that the 2 extra Soul falls just short of gathering 66 Soul (the threshold for 2 spells/focus) in 5 hits, meaning you often only benefit from it when you get to the 99 Soul threshold in 8 hits instead of 9. I prefer the second one, which actually puts you over the threshold of 99 Soul in 7 hits. I honestly don't mind it giving a little less soul for your buck, compared to Spell Twister, because unlike Twister, it also impacts your healing. The Soul Eater on the other hand, doesn't get its first 3 thresholds (2/4/6 hits) afected by the nerf to 7 extra Soul, so I definitely prefer the 3 notch option. Shaman Stone is definitely overpowered, but I am biased because I run the meta "number go up" combat charms, and I think 30% would be a better compromise. It would still nerf all spells, but it would also still reward you with big damage for its 3 notches, and wouldn't tank the pure damage of Shriek quite as hard. Alternatively, I wish it stopped Shriek from doing horizontal knockback because it's unpredictable and hella annoying, but that's just my peeve.

Fury is very strong in your version, it's basically strength but better, on the half of your hp you already deal damage of strength, and you know, balancing on 3-4 masks is way easier than balancing on 1 mask, so yeah, you broke it. I think it should start working if you under 50% of health and grow rapidly, or it should grow exponentially, so you have less damage increase per mask on high amount of masks, something like (1+5^-(current_hp/max_hp)) damage multiplayer should probably work better

while i do agree that repositioning is a problem it forces you to stay grounded and actually fight off the attacks because without it you could just pogo every boss and not face any consequences

loving the series i hope someone makes this real

Its so painful to watch him make completely fair and resonable changes to things like quick slash

another rework idea for strenght, IT buffs nail damage by 15% and equiping mark of pride, quick slash and nailmaster adds 11.66 each to the strenght damage boost making it so if you have a nail build you get the original 50% buff, so it is strong in nail builds and weak in other builds

I think treating all of a boss' movements as combat moves would do a lot for HK. Not just having a telegraph, but animating them as if they are still in combat even as they move. Maybe animate Hornet doing a short swing of her needle while she jumps, as if to deter you from going after her. Have Grey Prince Zote pose and do some cheesy flailing like he thinks he's doing some fancy fencing moves when he runs at you.

All thru the fury part I was thinking abt pale courts abyssal bloom lol

the only time i ever unironically used heavy blow was when I was doing Marmu on radiant difficulty because the extra knockback gave me more reaction time to her bouncing towards me

Quick slash and heavy blow might have a powerful, unintended synergy. Imo if there were to be stun mechanics, they'd need to be totally rebalanced. Imo fury of the fallen in your version would be op because of massive damage boost. The intended use of fury was a last ditch effort in a troublesome situation, not a constant damage buff. Devs didn't expect that some players would just go and fight bosses at 1 mask. Solution: notch cost is 1, but the effect is temporary and lasts only, let's say, 45 seconds max. After that fury is disabled and reactivating it requires healing a set number of masks or to full health, whatever is reached first (maybe 5 masks?)

You should make a mod pack with these changes

Ayyyyyyy, my Fury and Grubberfly synergy made it in!

Greed isn't just a 20% increase to Geo from enemies It guarentees that every geo type (1, 5 piece ect) dropped is at first doubled then its 20% rate is applied afterwards so if you get 1 50 geo piece you'll get 100 geo total or if you instead got 50 1 geo pieces youd only get 10 extra geo Also additionally, Strength vs Quick Slash, I'm glad that Quick Slash got nerfed too but due to how heavily Strength got nerfed too, and the same notch cost, since theyre on a similar level of power now too wouldn't it be even better to use Quick Slash now compared to strength in this balanced version because its nearly the same DPS buff, yet you'll get more soul with quick slash? (Both through same kill speed but, additionally attacking faster *and* getting more hits)

im wondering if you are taking time giving some thoughts about this changes. Do you hear yourself? you are talking about fragile charms being overpowered, and then you buff two of them? yeah greed is bad, but heart? there is no way that your argument is just two mask damage. i understand if not everything was affected by two mask damage, but everything literally is. i cant count how many times this charm saved me when i was a noobie when i started playing hk. Also this charm literally makes itself HARDER TO LOSE, the only singular downside of this charm is fragility (we dont count grinding for unbreakable, who does that anyway). i wont even comment what you did with heavy blow, you can figure out, whats wrong with this charm by yourself. And how did you think that giving fury of the fallen % dmg buff for every lost mask is a good idea? and all this bonus comes from the simpliest equation. losing two masks gives you from 40% to 22.2% dmg bonus (no heart included) and its already better than strength. it also gets only better. Two masks is not a big deal, you said it yourself by buffing heart.

Stalwart shell sounds outright unfair you should not be getting invulnerability if your issue was *being able to tank the boss. THAT LITERALLY MAKES THE PLAYSTYLE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE VIABLE.*

Alternate Heavy Blow rework: It boosts nail damage by 50% and soul gain per hit by 33%, but now reduces attack speed by 33%. When paired with Nailmaster's Glory, it increases the damage of all Nail Arts by 75% and increases their soul gain by 100%.

For Heavy Blow, have you considered Cyclone Slash, or does it not work with Cyclone?

For your elegy rework, if the player uses steady body, would the knockback be eliminated?

Good vid, but had to drop a dislike for the over the top clickbait title

I feel like the best way to balance heavy blow would to just… delete it. It’s useless as it is now, but your version is way too powerful, I don’t think there could be a “balanced” version of it it(while keeping its core purpose intact)

greed should have the same effect but uses one notch, because right now you need to be specifically grinding geo for it to be worth it

Unbreakable Greed (not fragile) is the worst charm in the game because you're paying 6000 geo to farm safer

Alternate suggestion for "fury of the fallen": - You can only take one hit now. - Every mask you've had gives 7% extra damage. - No effect when fighting radiant bosses (because no downside in that case). - (Optional) No effect when your shade is alive, to make the charm not so punishing to try out. Alternatively, geo doesn't get dropped with this charm equipped.

Never encountered and problems with failed champion myself so i cant give an imput to the criticism. Good vid apart from that

Can you make another of this video please

heavy blow is insanely powerful with quick slash, for normal enemies it should be 4 hits until a stun and 6 hits for a boss to stun to prevent stun locks

What bosses except hornet and broken vessel jumps/reposition like that? Cause to me, the telegraphs are the arc itself. The beginning of the jump is not telegraph yes, but right after the jump, i can prediction there location pretty easely. It prevent pogo spam and even then, its not that fun to pogo far above the air against these 2. I would understand the fun of pogoing certain bosses like soul master and such but hornet and bv? I cant seem to think of a single other boss that do this

annoyingly bad logic on quick slash

Make thrones of agony scale with fury of the fallen so lower the health stronger the thorns, additionally you can make it so it increases range of the thorns for even more utility

this feels like the bleed for 8 seconds video, just engagement bait.

I think the no contact damage solution could work if given more thought. There are good ways to universally tell the player if an attack does damage. The boss could have an aura around it whenever contact damage is on, and this aura could extend to attacks. Maybe anything that does damage could have a certain colored outline, and that color is the game's shorthand for danger.The problem this runs into is diegesis (whether an element of the game is part of its world or just an abstract signal only the player can see). Hollow Knight's boss fights are pretty diegetic, with every telegraph being some action the boss literally takes in-game. Adding something that's basically a glorified HUD element like this might hurt immersion.

Imo the jump isn't too bad but I despise cascade

This is a good series bro well done on it. Super engaging

Good video