Weapon Techniques in Bloodstained ROTN are often really cool looking and some feel really good to use, but they are quickly massively outshined by the vast array of shards available to the player. A lot of them can't compete with shards in either damage or utility, and some techniques are almost bafflingly useless.

This mod won't fix that problem entirely, as upgraded shards will always continue to rain supreme in their utility and ease of use, but hopefully this will make each one feel like a valuable tool to use alongside your current shard setup for specific situations that require it.

DISCLAIMER: The balancing is made with difficulties hard and above in mind, and for a player who is not into grinding out shard upgrades, simply because that is how I play. I've never played on normal so I don't know if anything is overtuned for that difficulty, and if you stop to grind up shards I'm guessing you'll probably find them  outclassing your techniques anyway.

Versions

This mod comes in two versions:

Randomizer version
This is my recommended version. It is particularly suited for playing in the randomizer mode due to the following changes:

• All mastery requirements heavily reduced.
  Since you do not get weapons in a normal order in randomizer, it is a pain to have to use a much weaker weapon for long stretches just to master its techniques. Lowering mastery fixes this. It still requires successfully using the technique a few times to encourage trying them all out.

• Valkyrie Sword now has its unique technique enabled from the start, without requiring mastery of all other skills first.
  Mastering all skills in randomizer mode is an almost hopeless task. This makes the Valkyrie Sword more fun when you find it, and if you find it early you can use its technique to go into hidden desert even without water movement shards.NOTE: This comes with the side effect of mastery level no longer being displayed in the in-game Technique menu. However all skills can still be mastered as usual, and mastery should be quick enough for it not to be a big problem.To make mastery of all skills still be possible, the following changes were also required.
  • Backer weapon Prismatic Heart at max upgrade level can no longer be used to learn Force Blast
  • Fragarach can now be used to master Parry
    

Normal version
Contains balance changes only. Does not change Mastery.

Technique changes

Great Swords

Trucidating Gyre:

• Massively stronger last hit
  

• Rising animation hits are now counted as a guard move
• Slightly increased hitbox size on last hit
  Comments:
  This move was almost completely useless in vanilla, outside of a few niche cases. Damage output was lower than what you'd get from just doing consecutive hits during the same time frame, and it was almost completely impossible to avoid taking damage. These changes more than double the damage you can get out of it, so it will always respect the time you put into executing it. Note that the rising animation attacks are now a guard move, which means that they will not do any damage. If they hit anything at all (including projectiles) you will perform a Guard and get invulnerability until the end of the move. This makes the move require skill and timing but gives a massive payoff on hit. It is now my favorite move, and I especially enjoy killing Cyhyraeth with a perfectly timed attack against their forward charge.

Sickle Moon

• MP cost reduced 60 -> 45/s
  Comments: I found the vanilla move to have some niche usefulness when there's a long stretch before a strong foe, but the mp needed felt very restrictive. With this change a fully charged run requires 90 mp and deals around 5-6x your base damage.
  

Katanas

Crimson Storm:

• Damage modifier slightly increased (1.2x -> 1.5x)
• Goes through enemies
• Significantly larger hitbox (extends to the edge of the animation)
  Comments: Another candidate for most useless move in vanilla. These changes aims to make it useful in clearing corridors.

Crescent Stroke:

• Input changed to down -> up -> attack
• Critical hit rate slightly increased (50% -> 60%)
  Comments: It's a decent move when made easy to execute, but it's a bit underwhelming when it doesn't critical hit. This change is mostly for it feeling better to use as you get the critical hit a bit more often.

Helmsplitter:

• CON debuff time extended (20s -> 40s)
  Comments: Useful against some bosses, but the short duration on the debuff made it feel like a chore to keep active.

Eleventh Hour
No change
Sansetsuzan
No change
Jinrai
No change

Daggers

Surprise Gift:

• MP cost halved (30 -> 15)
• Damage modifier moderately decreased (1.75x -> 1.25x)
  Comments: The goal here was to make this move feel more spammable, so you can extend your range whenever needed without worrying too much about mp cost. While it is weaker, the damage per point of mp spent is significantly increased.

Assassinate:

• Damage modifier slightly increased (2x -> 2.5x)
  

• Additional critical hit chance added (40%)
  Comments: This move has some extra utility with its invulnerability, but it offered almost no extra damage over Surprise Gift. It was made stronger to keep it in step with the other changes, but also adds a decent chance for a damaging critical hit. Feels appropriate to the theme too.
  

Swords

Power slash

• Damage modifier reduced (1.5x -> 1.1x)
• Fixed damage part added (40)
  Comments: Power Slash and Force Blast are in essence very alike to each other. Neither are very good with regular swords and Force Blast outhsines this move completely with elemental swords. This change attempts to change the move's usefulness laterally instead by giving it a fixed amount of damage added on top of your base attack damage, effectively ignoring enemy defense. This means that Power Slash is very useful in the beginning and if you are under-leveled or under-equipped, but it loses usefulness as you get stronger and Force Blast takes over as go-to damage dealer instead.

Force Blast

• MP cost increased (30 -> 40)
• Base damage modifier slightly increased (1.5x -> 1.75x)
• Fire element explosion hitbox covers a bigger area
• Fire element explosion damage modifier moderately increased (1.3x -> 1.65x)
• Ice element ice spikes damage modifier significantly increased (0.2x -> 0.45x)
• Thunder element lightning strikes damage modifier significantly increased (0.2x -> 0.65x)
• Dark element explosion damage modifier significantly increased (0.25x -> 0.5x)
  Comments: This move has all of its power in elemental weapons. It is not expected to be useful with normal weapons. In general, all damage was scaled up along with mp cost to create a stronger, more costly move. Fire is mostly just scaled up, but made more useful since it will more easily hit many enemies at once with the larger hitbox. Ice is now the strongest move, since it can only hit one enemy at a time and is the least consistent. Thunder is scaled up to be effectively on par with fire. Dark is scaled up to be in between ice and fire, as it is less consistent than fire but can still be used to damage multiple enemies at the same time. I would have increased Holy and Blood damage as well, but have not found any way to do that yet.

Parry
No change

Spears

Penetrate

• Can now be performed in the air
  Comments: This opens up the use of this move for quick repositioning or staying in the air for longer to avoid danger.

Orbital Wheel

• Input changed to down -> down -> attack
• Changed to be a guard move instead of an attack move
• MP-consumption lowered (60/s -> 50/s)
  Comments: Vanilla move is too niche to be useful, and too difficult to input. This changes the move entirely into a defensive move. It will cover and completely protect you from above and both sides, but not from below. It is very useful to quickly throw out when you find yourself in a tight spot and after a successful guard you will have temporary invulnerability.
  

Whips

Critical Swing

• Main hit damage modifier slightly increased (1.25x -> 1.45x)
• Tornado hits damage modifier slightly increased (0.3x -> 0.4x)
  Comments: This move is decent as is, but feels a bit underwhelming to use. This experimentally raises damage very slightly to try and make it feel better while not drastically changing anything.
  

Boots

No changes
Comments: Boot skills have a lot of good utility, but are marred by having really inconsistent invulnerability. Unfortunately I have found no way of fixing that.

Guns

No changes
Comments: I have never used guns, so I have no idea if this technique is good or bad.

Rapiers

No changes


Installation

1. Create a folder named ~mods or similar under <game folder>\BloodstainedRotN\Content\Paks\
2. Extract downloaded .pak file into the ~mods folder.
3. Done! To uninstall, just remove the file.


Compatibility

This mod will most likely be incompatible with any other mod that changes attack properties in any way. Exceptions would be changes to base stats for shards and weapons.

The following files have been changed. Any mod that changes any of these files will be incompatible:

• PB_DT_ArtsCommandMaster
• PB_DT_BulletMaster
• PB_DT_CollisionMaster
• PB_DT_CoordinateParameter
• PB_DT_DamageMaster
• PB_DT_SpecialEffectMaster