I've thought about this one for a long time.

Dooming is, by leaps and bounds, the worst status effect in the game. Some might argue sickness is more direct at killing you, others would say they'd take a dooming over an early game poison, everyone agrees that an artifact that causes dooming is an artifact not worth wearing in combat. Instead of selectively peeling off the doomed state from artifacts we really want to like, let's make dooming less. Hellish.

I feel like a lot of the elements of dooming are interesting, and a few of them are flavorful (eaten by a grue is my most hated way to die, buuuut hats off, you got me) enough for me to live with them, some of them make the effect crippling, to the point where I'm well prepared to restart a game over it.


In general, I'm asking for Dooming to be less effective player killer versus non-ranged protagonists.

Instead of increasing the rate in which enemies ignore armor exponentially, let's increase the rate in which they pierce armor by a flat amount. Maybe, 20% of all hits could just bypass armor, a 1 in 5 chance of having, say, Celestrix's enormous PV be a meaningless gain, instead of it being a Girdle of Regeneration That Also Raises My DV By A Fair Amount.

Count a players Stealth and Survival skill against Dooming when deciding on ambush. Dooming does a lot to invalidate a lot of the good a player does, and changing this will put some control back into the hands of a player. Have you tried traversing the Drakalor Chain with dooming? Have you seen where the one guaranteed altar is? Good grief.

Finally, please tone down the amount of special attacks bypassing the player's armor. I wouldn't mind this one if sickness and paralyzation weren't such violent killers.

ALTERNATIVELY.

Make every count you have of Fate Smiles counter Dooming directly, balancing your luck out to average. Fate Smiles is a very worthwhile ability to have, and Dooming is... terrifying. It wouldn't stop multiple accounts of dooming, but it would let you wear one piece of doomed equipment without being penalized.


First suggestion makes Dooming more bearable, and in turn, makes every item that grants dooming more powerful, in turn. The Crown/Medallion/Sceptre become useable (to an extent), and accidentally tapping a karmatic creature isn't the end of the world.

Suggestion number two offers a very keen player the chance to wear some dangerous items without suffering as much. It offers a few more playstyles and I think that's great.