Common Items

Common items serve as a solid baseline to item balance, and I think most of them are in a pretty good place. That being said, there are several common items that I find to either fall off really hard or just not provide enough benefits to outweigh scrapping and printing, so these have received additional bonuses or stat buffs. There are also a few common items that punch above their weightclass and have thus been toned back a bit, but nothing major here.

Reworks

Roll of Pennies

"Gain gold on taking damage. Picking up gold grants temporary damage reduction."

• Gold gained now scales with damage taken, up to 5 gold (+5 per stack, scaling with time) at 15% health lost (vanilla is a fixed 3 gold per stack).
• Now has a new benefit: whenever you gain gold, you also gain increased armor for a limited duration. The amount of armor gained is equal to half the amount of gold gained (scaling with time), and the duration is equal to 4 seconds (+1 per stack).
• (Indirect) Gold gained from enemies decreases as difficulty increases, allowing items that grant gold to continue to be valuable even in longer runs.

Comments: Roll of Pennies has an extremely small niche in RoR2. This rework transforms Roll of Pennies from solely an early-game speedup to a synergistic defensive item, notably working very well alongside Ghor's Tome or Brittle Crown. In later game scenarios, stacking it can grant consistent damage reduction, despite late-game gold scaling having been nerfed. Inspired by kking17's FlatItemBuff.

Warbanner

"Drop a warbanner upon entering combat. Grants allies attack and movement speed."

• Activation trigger has been completely reworked. It now places a warbanner when using a combat skill after not having used one for 10 seconds.
• After placing down a warbanner, cannot place another one for 30 seconds.
• A prepared warbanner (while out of combat and not on cooldown) is indicated with a buff icon.
• The buff radius has been reduced from 16m (+8 per stack) to 12m (+4 per stack) due to the ease of spawning.
• (Indirect) A massive amount of survivor skills have been adjusted to better fit what counts as a "combat skill". Even if a skill deals damage, if it is frequently used for mobility then it likely doesn't count as a combat skill.

Comments: Aside from the obvious problem of tying item activation to levelups, Warbanner suffers immensely from not having much control over where and when you place one. With this rework, you always get one exactly where you want it: at your current location when you start attacking enemies.

Buffs

Bison Steak

• Bonus health is now equal to the health gained on levelup for your current survivor.

Comments: Taken from Risky_Lives' RiskyMod, this change makes Bison Steak useful on all survivors without changing its role of flat bonus health. This is always a buff, but how much of one depends on the survivor you are playing as - Huntress only gains 27 health, while MUL-T gains a whopping 60!

Bundle of Fireworks

• Base firework count has been reduced from 8 to 6 (per-stack count is unchanged).
• Fireworks now ignite enemies for an extra 50% total damage over time.

Comments: Haha get it, because fire? Anyways, Fireworks are solid but it can be hard to notice their impact and they've kind of gotten powercrept as survivors are just so much stronger by default nowadays. They also stack relatively poorly, and this change helps allieviate all three issues. A lingering DoT effect will make their impact more noticeable as you can clearly see which enemies have been damaged by them, and this also opens up new synergies with Ignition Tank.

Bustling Fungus

• No longer has a 1-second delay before activating.

Comments: Bungus is a great healing item held back by how punishing it is to stand still in Risk of Rain 2. I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to make it better without directly buffing Engineer turrets, and this is what I decided upon. This change will allow the user to get some quick burst healing while staggering their movement.

Monster Tooth

• Healing orb pickup radius increased from 6m to 20m.
• Healing orb velocity increased from 40 to 100.

Comments: Not quite the glory of its RoR1 days, but enemies killed within a decent range of you will be healing you directly, rather than forcing you to run around to pick up the orbs.

Power Elixir

• Now grants an enhanced one-shot protection while held, preventing being killed by otherwise lethal hits when health is >50% (will gate damage at 1 hp and then trigger immediately after).
• Now grants 0.2 seconds of hidden invulnerability when consumed to reduce cheap kills.

Comments: Power Elixir is way too inconsistent. While there are other changes that I have tried experimenting with (such as making it weaker but refreshing on each stage), I found in testing that in Risk of Rain 2's gameplay loop, you really don't need bursts of healing all too frequently. So instead, I have decided to make a few tweaks in the hopes at making it more reliable in preventing death without making it on par with a revive.

Sticky Bomb

• Damage increased from 180% to 210%.

Comments: Sticky Bomb, while fun and fairly reliable, is also pretty weak for its status as a common damage item, especially one that doesn't have its own proc coefficient. A small damage boost should help it feel more valuable.

Stun Grenade

• Deals extra damage equal to 75% (+15% per stack) of the initial hit when activating.
• Can trigger (though not stun) on bosses and other stun-immune enemies.

Comments: There were several options considered for a stun grenade buff; I went with this one because it felt good to play with and would ensure that the item can still find use on slower, heavy hitting survivors. The stacking damage bonus makes its overall damage profile scale close to linearly despite the diminishing returns on its proc chance. This change is inspired by Groove_Salad's Groove_Salad vs the Game.

Topaz Brooch

• Barrier gain on kill is increased by 1% of max health (doesn't stack).

Comments: Topaz Brooch has a horrible habit of not being worth picking up in the late game unless you have several of them, simply due to barrier decay scaling based on maximum health. This aims to fix that by making the initial stack slightly scale with your maximum health, allowing it to still be valuable even if you aren't lucky enough to find too many of them.

Warped Echo

• Base cooldown reduced from 15s to 12s, and is now reduced by 5% per subsequent stack.

Comments: This item is really undertuned, while it provides acceptable defensive synergy with items that grant armor, its long cooldown makes it unreliable and really not worth stacking compared to things like Tougher Times.

Nerfs

Chronic Expansion

• Base damage per buff stack decreased from 3.5% to 2.5%.
• Damage increase per item stack decreased from 1% to 0.5%.

Comments: Considering how easy it is to keep uptime on this item, the bonuses it provides are way too much. Even with this nerf, it can still grant 25% damage at the first stack, and becomes even more effective the more you stack it.

Gasoline

• Base explosion damage reduced from 150% to 100% (burn damage unchanged).
• Explosion range per stack reduced from 4m to 2.4m.

Comments: Gasoline is a monster of crowd control, possibly being the single strongest white item on the first stack. People seem to overlook it a lot due to Will-o'-the-Wisp existing and being is just as powerful as it is. Gasoline is receiving a base damage nerf (it will not single-handedly one-shot Lesser Wisps at equal level now) as well as reducing the range to scale identically to Will-o'-the-Wisp.

Oddly-Shaped Opal

• Armor per stack reduced from 100 to 75 (reduces first stack damage reduction from 50% to 42%).

Comments: Oddly-Shaped Opal, especially on the first stack, is incredibly powerful, and I find that it contributes a bit too much in terms of survivability rather than being just a single tool at my disposal.

Tweaks

Bolstering Lantern

• Now updates buff count more frequently.

Comments: While I originally had planned on reworking this item, I think it's actually pretty balanced in its current state. It does, however, feel really clunky when the buff count only updates every 3 seconds, so it will now provide a much smoother update as enemies move in and out of range.

Elusive Antlers

• Movement speed per buff stack decreased from 12% to 9%.
• Base cooldown between orb spawns reduced from 10s to 9s (per-stack reduction remains unchanged).
• Orbs now expire after 30 seconds.
• Buff cap per stack decreased from 3 to 2.

Comments: This item has gone back and forth between over and under-powered quite a few times. I believe that right now it's a bit overtuned in the amount of movement speed it grants, but that it should be a bit easier to keep buff uptime without stockpiling orbs for later (which is a feature that I personally dislike).