Butler

Commentary

Butlers are mostly fine as they are - I just think, as the v50 betas progressed, some changes were made to their behavior that are a little overtuned.

Initially, butlers could only attack players that were alone, which made them extremely easy to kill with no risk. Over time, they were given the ability to attack players on contact, a "berserk" mode that caused them to openly attack players (activated by receiving damage), and then a horde mentality that caused butlers to also berserk if they saw other butlers in berserk mode.

What I personally don't agree with is the decision to make butlers berserk on player contact - for an enemy whose aesthetic is singling out players to murder them out of sight, it makes no sense that they are that willing to unmask themselves in front of everyone over something so unassuming. To this day I think it is the worst decision made regarding their design - although, it doesn't come up too often. meh

Another missed opportunity (although this might have just been overlooked) is giving butlers an increased spawn chance in the manors, using the system added in v60 for the Maneater-mineshaft synergy. Sigurd's notes even explicitly mention the manor in the Butler file - it's perfect!

Butlers were released with 3 HP, which increased to 8 towards the end of the beta phase, to encourage leaving them alive and playing around their special behavior. I think this is a good change, but it is sort of absurd seeing them survive landmine explosions or shotgun blasts - this is easily addressed by giving those a little bonus damage.

Butlers had their DPS increased in one of the v50 betas as well. This was a positive change for butler combat; you can still do it without taking damage if you're good, there is just more punishment for failure. To reward players that are trying to play around the butler's actual mechanics, though, I think pulling this back is fair.

The last change to discuss is the knife price. In comparison to nutcracker farming, butler farming pales in comparison, as it is much less valuable and also spawns additional threats to deal with. Buffing the knife's average price helps to close the gap a bit, and complements the other changes made elsewhere (like nerfing Nutcracker farming, adjusting Rend's spawns, buffing Dine...)