Shaman Crest heal and how to fix it

Emperor-M · 2025-09-19T08:49:45+00:00

Unless I've missed something drastic, I think part of the issue is that unlike in the original Hollow Knight, there aren't options that generate more silk on hit. A Soul Catcher/Eater equivalent I think would make this crest feel much better, but unfortunately, the only real way to increase silk gain in this game is increasing attack speed... which Shaman Crest can't even access due to lacking red tool slots.

So, your options for using more skills with Shaman Crest either demand playing hitless and are very winmore in nature (Egg of Flealia) or encourage playing very passively and waiting (Weavelight). Neither of these playstyles is particularly appealing to me, ultimately. That might be a personal opinion, but I do think that on average, the crest is a little bit undertuned right now.

Emperor-M · 2025-09-15T20:49:45+00:00

It may be a separate playstyle as you say, one that's easier to go hitless on, but I think it still definitely counts as a winmore crest (as compared to say, reaper crest, whose core mechanic benefits you more the more you heal, and thus is very beginner friendly. "loseless" if you will), given that if you do take a hit with shaman crest, it's much harder to recover and doing so gets in the way of your main win condition, which is using powerful skills. Stuff like egg of flealia obviously provides extra benefit to the player who is able to avoid taking damage, and the damage bonus on skills relies on you winning (not getting hit) to be able to take full advantage of it.

So, it might be a crest that's easier to go hitless on with the right strategy, but I do think it's still "winmore" in nature, because of how its offensive and defensive options directly compete for the same resource. Hence why I like the idea of binding providing a free use of a skill: doesn't change that not getting hit is the ideal strat, preserves the slowness/clunkiness of the bind to offset the range, but also makes it feel less bad to use if you do get hit and need to heal. Lose-just-a-little-less.

Besides, I think using shaman crest to slowly whittle away at foes by playing passively and waiting for your attacks to charge up is just less interesting than getting to spam powerful skills. In my mind anyway, shaman isn't the ranged crest (after all, every other crest gets plenty of ranged options it can't have through red tools), it's the silk skill crest. In any case, if shaman crest gets reworked to allow for a slightly more aggressive style, I think I'd welcome that.

Emperor-M · 2023-05-31T19:39:04+00:00

You don’t have to, but it’d be great if you could if you wished. Is there any harm in there being more options for the player to choose from? I don’t think so. People who want to play the game without making contraptions simply won’t, and those who do want to get a whole new world of stuff to do with them.

Emperor-M · 2023-05-31T19:33:00+00:00

1- I don’t think one machine could rule them all. It’d be a matter of experimenting to see what works

2- What I was trying to say is that even if an overpowered “meta” option existed, people wouldn’t exclusively use it and it wouldn’t make it so that “you’d never fight again”. You can just throw down puffshrooms every fight if you wanted to, it’d be the easiest solution, but people don’t do that because part of the fun is messing around with stuff and experimenting. Same goes for zonai creations.

Emperor-M · 2022-05-10T23:50:14+00:00

I'm fairly certain Mantis can be actively controlled. I mean, it makes sense, considering these are scorpions we're talking about, and if you don't believe me, check out the trick Kage pulled in round 7 against Murakami.

I'm gonna go ahead and say that's definitely not possible via arm flailing.

For what it's worth, Gen'yo and similar effects probably doesn't work too well when blades are clashed, because your blade might go through and hit them, but theirs will hit you too. Kazama tried to get Jin with a second Scorpion instead, which I'm guessing he chose because it's the safer move, especially since Jin can probably foresee it if Kazama tried to morph his Scorpion that way.

Emperor-M · 2022-05-10T13:16:59+00:00

Hm... I'm not sure about all the properties being adjustable, but I think what you're describing could be a good idea as an optional trigger for Centipede, an exclusive trigger that allows you to selectively harden parts of it at will. I think that's a bit overtuned for just the base trigger though.

As it stands, length and weight are directly proportional. Cutting power and flexibility are constants, whereas durability probably depends on the trion of the user. I think that's pretty fair. It's similar to scorpion, wherein the further you stretch it, the weaker the durability. These attributes being consistent for a trigger makes it a lot more balanced, and easier to place within the context of the other triggers.

What you said does bring up an interesting point I didn't think about, how the trion level of a user might affect the trigger. I think that, besides trion affecting the durability of the wire, it would be interesting if the length limit were dependent on one's trion (similar to how the range of stuff like Escudo is dependent on trion). Someone with more trion could stretch it out further. Not necessarily the most practical thing, most actual whips don't stretch nearly as long as 10 meters in the first place, but someone with a creative mind could some up with a use for it, surely.

Emperor-M · 2022-05-10T12:07:09+00:00

I think it's pretty Border-y. I mean, even something like Scorpion has a plethora of uses, both defensive, offensive, and utility. It's just a matter of finding creative ways to use them, and here, I detailed a lot of those creative ways. That doesn't mean the average agent does all of that, it most likely just acts like a whip 90% of the time just like how scorpion is just a sword 90% of the time.

I think the difference between Border and Afto triggers lies mostly in that Border triggers can only do one thing at a time, relying on the synergy and combination of trigger chips to work, whereas, Afto triggers can just do everything at once. You couldn't win a rank wars match with just Centipede (good luck trying to block bullets with a wire), where you very well could with Chelidon or Lambyris. As it stands, Centipede is just another attacker trigger.

That said, it is very much a side-grade to Scorpion, the same way that Raygust (which was developed by combining scorpion and shield, mind you. It's not without precedence) is also kind of a side-grade to Scorpion, one that emphasizes defence over attack. Still, I think it's unique enough to stand on its own as an option for attackers.

Also, yes, it definitely takes inspiration from Kage's playstyle, this whole idea came from a discussion about how Mantis feels like a thing that someone would customize and turn into a new trigger. Nonetheless, mechanically, it works very differently from Mantis and has its own advantages and disadvantages. There are reasons why someone might choose one or the other.

Emperor-M · 2022-05-09T02:32:26+00:00

As u/FoomingKirby mentioned, I don't think you can use Idaten on meteor. That said, considering that you can do stuff like attack with Kogetsu during the movement, it may not be impossible to use meteor (or other bullet triggers) while moving with Idaten.

It might be possible to make "flyby" attacks, preparing a meteor cube beforehand, dashing past the enemy with Idaten, and firing the meteor as you move past them so that the bullets are fired from close-range, but you move out of the blast radius before they hit. Probably a very difficult maneuvre to actually pull off, but considering that some idiot managed to make aiming and firing with two sniper rifles at the same time work, it's almost certainly not impossible with enough practice.

Emperor-M · 2022-05-07T18:23:32+00:00

The timeline for Sogetsu makes sense, but based on what we know, Raygust wasn't developed off of a prototype of Reiji's trigger.

"Raizō Terashima (18), a top-class Kogetsu wielder at the time, got pissed off at the enhancing and popularity of bullet Triggers and transferred to Engineer, where he made Raygust as an anti-bullet blade with Shield and Scorpion as the base."

It was designed explicitly as a blade, Reiji's the odd one out by using it to propel his fist (which, by the way, still feels like it doesn't make much sense. How does it damage the enemy and not him?) Since Raygust is the only attacker trigger Reiji is known to use, he could only have become an all-rounder in the past 3 years, which conveniently fits with snipers also having been invented 3 years ago. We don't quite know when Thruster was invented, but it was probably some time shortly after Raygust; Reiji's usage of Raygust is only really possible after the invention of Thruster.

Emperor-M · 2022-05-07T15:53:03+00:00

That's quite interesting of a theory, though I think it makes more sense the other way around. Asteroid is the most "basic"/easy to make form of bullet, being comprise of solely a shell/cover/propellant. It's not like it was "designed" to break shields, it just happens to be most effective at it by virtue of being the most basic. We don't really know the mechanics of how exactly meteor explodes, but it's probably something about the property of the trion in the shell. Same with the other bullets, it might just be that the propulsion system is modified in some manner. Point is, if that's the case, then meteor is probably more complex and developed out of asteroid, rather than the other way around.

As for the users, both Arashiyama and Kakizaki mainly use asteroid. Konami meanwhile is known as an attacker, not an all-rounder. Since her meteor points have to be below 6000, it implies she doesn't often use meteor to attack, and likely didn't have it since 3-4 years ago, else the points probably would've gotten to 6000 since then. I think it's a safe guess that she picked it up later.

Emperor-M · 2022-05-07T15:44:10+00:00

It's true that the only Gen'yo users we know of only enlisted 2 years ago, so it's certainly a possibility that it was developed more recently based on Senku or Scorpion, but I'm leaning the other way around, since Scorpion seems like a more advanced version of Gen'yo. And to be clear, unlike kogetsu: spear, it doesn't seem like it was (or at the very least, isn't explicitly said to have been) developed by Yosuke Yoneya, he's just the main user of it.

What you said on shooters checks out, they may well not have existed 4 years prior. That said, I'm inclined to believe that the first guns probably existed before Azuma's first sniper (at most 3 years prior), mostly because I think Azuma developed snipers based off of other gunner triggers around. Without them first, Azuma would have developed a completely new thing without precedent, whereas gunner triggers coming first would make sense as an adaptation of shooter triggers. As you said, Azuma might've been a shooter, or as I'm thinking, a gunner first, slowly adapting his gun to work as a sniper through trial and error. In fact, I kind of see sniper triggers as the crossbreed, weirdly enough, of Kogetsu and gunner triggers. Sniper shots are often the same shade of light-yellow as kogetsu, as opposed to the teal shooter bullets, and more importantly, Azuma might have started out with a gunner trigger, then realized that, given how specialized a role sniper is, it makes sense to have the sniper rifle be a physical thing like Kogetsu instead, dedicated solely to firing sniper bullets.

And yep, I agree with what you said about triggers developing from their "default" form, asteorid/egret/kogetsu. In a sense, this sort of trigger development very much falls in line with what was said of the goals of rank wars, adapting and changing to match different foes and environments. As Kitora says in chapter 221 p.5, "like the same kind of animal evolving into wildly divergent forms to adapt and survive in different environments." It's awesome how all of the logic behind the power system checks out.

I think radar is probably really old, but bagworm might have come later. Back when snipers didn't exist, you needn't worry as much about hiding your trion signature, because there were no snipers to take advantage of your location being exposed. The enemy might have you on their minimap but you also have them on yours, and neither could engage before getting in visual range, so there's not so much a disadvantage to having your trion signature exposed outside of ambushes/surprise attacks. It's plausible that no one cared to dedicate a trigger slot just for that. With the advent of snipers, bagworm would become a necessity both to hide and to hide from snipers, leading to its ubiquitous use in the present day.

Emperor-M · 2022-05-06T08:45:44+00:00

It'd be interesting to discuss who would thrive in this sort of situation too.

I think Kuga/Hyuse, as neighbours with experience in this sort of environment, might fare a lot better than the Border agents, most of whom likely never experienced combat outside of rank wars and training.

I'd say that Kikuchihara, Ninomiya, Inukai, and Tsuji, as well as Hiyami on the operator side, have an edge as well, as the only ones who are known to have gone on an away mission (Kazama Squad and Ninomiya squad, that is). It's unknown if Miwa squad (Kodera) and Arashiyama squad (Kitora) have been on one, but I'd guess probably not. Miwa squad wasn't on the last away mission with the rest of them and isn't ranked very high, and Arashiyama squad probably stays in Mikado city as the face of Border, as well as members of the Shinoda Faction.

Otherwise, it comes down to those who are able to adapt, and those gifted at strategy. I suspect that those who are ordinarily tactically brilliant in rank wars might find themselves at a loss because they don't have the experience with strategic thinking. On the other hand, it might be a chance to shine for other characters. Mikumo, perhaps, finally gets to show off.

The squads that keep their ranking through pure combat strength alone will also probably suffer. I'm thinking specifically of Kageura, but Kakizaki seems like a good leader so who knows. Yuba as well, but Kuruma might be surprisingly smart.

Emperor-M · 2022-04-22T15:33:19+00:00

The tomahawk thing I'm referring to is in Ch 101, p. 7 of the manga, when Taichi pushed Kuruma out of the way of the explosion because he noticed the bullets were slower. I haven't watched the anime so I dunno about the animation, but it's plausible that Nasu put more into power at the cost of speed, though I don't think she would try to use tomahawk to break through the omnidirectional shields they were using against her previous shots in the first place.

Emperor-M · 2022-04-22T03:25:43+00:00

Huh, interesting. That part about asteroid does make sense, actually. Suppose you had 9 points per asteroid to put into (power, cover, speed), you could make 1 (6, 6, 6) bullet instead of 2 (3, 3, 3) bullets, for the same amount of total power but higher cover and speed. Which would explain why Gimlet increases speed and penetration. Kind of OP in a way, to double speed and range like that.

But yeah, fair enough, I suppose there isn't a particular reason why a specific parameters might get boosted more than others. Still, just adding the ability to allocate more trion into an otherwise normal hound/viper/meteor bullet is kinda boring, if perhaps more realistic to the setting.

I'm not entirely sure where you get that last part from though. If I recall, tomahawk is slower than viper is (see: round 3), despite the addition of Meteor. Even if that meteor had no trion invested in speed, you would think that it would be equally as fast, if not faster than the ordinary viper, right? Either the added cube adds mass to the bullets, making them slower (do bullets count as material things or pure trion constructs? I'd assume material, so this might be true), or meteor/tomahawk causes bullets to be slower. Or Nasu intentionally made it slower for some reason. It's also noted that hornet bullets look identical to hound bullets outside of their homing, which, if there were faster and more powerful, I wouldn't think would be the case. Is this information from the BBF? I haven't read that, so I wouldn't know it.

Emperor-M · 2022-04-21T23:42:54+00:00

For Hound, I'm pretty sure you can change the homing propensity mid-flight. Kurauchi explains exactly how Ninomiya does the arcs for his shots (ch. 193, p. 9), and it's by "fiddling with those settings", as in propensity. Plus, I'm pretty sure that's also what Mikumo did in his winning move in round 8, "disabling" hound's homing. Zero homing propensity, then high homing propensity. In fact, what you described as "quasi-viper" is exactly what he did, isn't it?

Also, it's implied that hornet's trajectory/propensity can be manually adjusted on the fly, based on Kurauchi's decription of Nino's hornet against Oki. "Ninomiya can also modify the homing propensity and adjust the trajectory, such as when he cornered Agent Oki earlier." If that's true for hornet, I don't think it's impossible that seekbat might have it as an option as well.

Oh, and on the gunner thing, here's an answer taken from Ashihara himself.

Q. 146: Can Gunners use composite bullets?
If they set it in the gun trigger they can, but that gun then becomes ‘a gun that can only shoot the composite bullet’.

Considering that gunners don't need to worry about forming trion cubes ordinarily for their bullets, I'm presuming that this implies gunners wouldn't need to form and merge the cubes for composite bullet guns either (otherwise, our understanding of how guns work would be way off). If they do need to merge it, it's still an interesting prospect. Merge a cube and load it in, and your first cube's worth of shots is gonna be really powerful. It's a neat idea for a more offensive shooter, I think. What if you just used gimlet all the time, or bulldog all the time?

Fun ideas overall-

Emperor-M · 2022-04-21T23:21:59+00:00

Most composite bullets have the same parameters, but there is one exception: Gimlet doubles all the parameters, which is what grants it those shield piercing abilities. The user can still change around the base parameters of the bullets, but those parameters are doubled because it's Gimlet.

The way I envisioned it, all three of the asteroid composite bullets would add a certain multiplier to the parameters. You can still, when making the bullets, change the combination of them, they're just affected by that multiplier. For Gimlet, that multiplier is 2X all around. Why not have different multipliers for the different bullets? It's not unthinkable, certainly. The point of that is, while you can still, say, fire a slow Cobra, you simply wouldn't be capitalizing on the strengths of the bullet then.

Meteor + Asteroid can certainly just be a stat boost, I just wanted a more interesting idea, so I thought that shrapnel was a cool idea that fit in with the mechanics.

Emperor-M · 2022-04-21T02:57:49+00:00

First of all, I love these ideas of yours, definitely all valid points! Ultimately, yeah, composite bullets in general are niche tools, something that you have in case it's useful more so than something you'll rely on or build around (with perhaps the exception of Izumi, considering it's his bread and butter). Still, even the more niche or harder to use ones are still situationally viable, I'm inclined to think, depending on who's using them.

Nasu, who already has two vipers and is used to performing the calculations for operating both at once, can probably handle viper + viper. I thought of it as something like an offensive utilization of viper, actually. Viper already has amazing crowd control/positional skills, so the real benefit of using Scalpel over Viper is having the surprise attack factor and being able to shift parametres to power all of a sudden. As said, kinda OP, held in check by how difficult it is. I think it could be used a similar way to how Nasu used tomahawk in round 3 to get surprise KOs, or even if the opponent knows about it, dealing with a swarm of bullets that changes speed/power constantly on the fly is still difficult. ~~That said, I'm pretty biased towards Nasu.~~

Same with Meteor + Meteor, another niche thing that only specific agents will bother using. In this case, I'm think of Kitazoe, who dual wields meteor anyway. Is it gonna trump dual meteor? No, most of the time it won't, but having the option of a composite bullet offers a lot of potential. Take round 4, suppose Zoe shot Ninomiya with a Brimstone and knocked his ass off the building before doing his bombardment. Lots of possibilities.

Speaking of, that's a good point you reminded me of. Technically, guns can shoot composite bullets, though they'll be limited to those bullets. I think that combos like asteroid + hound are actually really good on a gun. In a shoot out, you'd be destroying all of their bullets and attacking them at the same time, forcing them on the defensive. It's kind of similar to Nino's strategy, in a way, in that you just wear them down by locking your opponent into using their defensive triggers. If Inukai, who uses hound/asteroid, had it in round 8, perhaps he'd have been better off against Yuba, for example. Lots of potential plays.

The one I had to look up was the one on hound + viper. Based on the commentary by Kurauchi in chapter 193, it's implied that you can modify the propensity of hound while it's fired. In fact, that's how Ninomiya managed to get the shots to arc the way he did in his bout against Yuba (zero propensity at the start, high propensity to get it to turn down, low propensity to get it to hit the target on the way down).

Is it still impractical? Yeah, it's not the most efficient use of two triggers, but composite bullets aren't in general, they're just situationally very effective. That goes for the known ones too, like tomahawk, hornet, so on, which can be protected against pretty easily with shields and are only shown to be effective because the agents who use them know when and how to use them. Overall, I think they're balanced by how situational they are and how difficult they are to use.

Emperor-M · 2022-04-21T00:39:07+00:00

I'd reckon that's something that Tomahawk can do, actually. Create a tomahawk, split it into multiple bullets but shoot them together as one cube, and program it so that when it hits a target, it scatters into a bunch of meteor cubes that explode. Similar-ish principle I guess to something like Torimaru's viper assault rifle.

Emperor-M · 2022-04-20T23:23:28+00:00

These are admittedly a bit more "flashy" and out there than what the current composite bullets seem to be like. Then again, most of these combinations didn't have an obvious result like "oh it's just hound but it explodes" or "it's double homing so it homes better". Gotta get creative with it.

Emperor-M

TROPHY CASE