They need a buff, or at least the gear sporting it needs to be way more stat heavy. Currently, 1 drawback(1%) takes 16 health(1600 hp) without defence. That doesn’t sound like much, but it scales with defence/max hp(misinformation, it does not scale with defence/max hp). As a reference, armoured only gives you 7-8 shots extra. It’s why fury crystal armour,painites and varatos armour(my goat) has a drawback that costs way more then the stats they give.
Painites lose all their hp gain compared to a single fused agate 8 shots in, and the usual pvp fight takes way more spells then 8. Fury armour suffers from the same issue.
Varatos armour is interesting, but it just isn’t enough. The stats alone in the armour, without drawback, may outscale omen armour, but with drawback you are looking at -400, maybe -500 hp per fight for 40 power with the chest plate.
A simple calculation I would use to balance this, would be max base hp * (0.01 * drawback) * (how many attacks drawback is supposed to have before getting a net loss) as defence.
Say you are supposed to have 10 attacks and 1 drawback, with a max hp of 2700. Effectively, the armour is -270 defense.
iirc drawback scales based on base hp and doesn’t take armor stats into account. even so, a small amount of drawback still adds up to a noticeable loss of hp (especially in extended battles)
in my opinion vatrachos is fine, crystal fury seems meh, and painites definitely do not seem worth it for actual fights. especially if you fuse 2 painites together, it doubles the drawback while defense only increases by like around 20%… which is utterly disgusting for overall stat efficiency
perhaps drawback will become somewhat less of a detriment as more moves that have longer cooldowns are added, like annihilation and conjure elemental for mages (as less skill use = less hp loss)
Using vatrachos, probably. drawback becomes way more prominent in drawn out fights, but vatrachos basically ends fights faster with you killing the enemy much faster with the set’s high power, so if you obliterate the opponent fast enough, drawback shouldn’t be an issue (and if you don’t, you get punished by killing yourself faster)
but then there’s crystal fury armor… personally I don’t really get it because it’s a primarily defensive set but it has high drawback. I guess it encourages playing a bit more passively or something? idrk, I’d say it’s arguably worse than crystal remnant (which gives no drawback but less stats overall) but that might just be me
I’m running 205 power, 840 def and 167 atk size build with 4 drawback, some builds i kill within 2-3 hits which is perfectly reasonable here. But the hp loss is offset by the fact i have a defensive playstyle, only going on the offense when i feel the opponent is pressured enough. I mostly hit people with charged attacks, so i don’t really lose that much health due to how much time there is inbetween the attacks.