I am starting to see one of the gear balancing problems: We benefit too much from these mundane damage / ASI etc bonuses.
We need to make some new bonuses that are actually a tiny bit interesting rather than these dull ones, even if they are weaker. They will be more fun.
The following bonuses below are proc / chance based. An example of a "proc" would be "a chance to cause an earthquake every time you deal damage". If the bonus is on your armor, it applies to all weapons. If it is on a specific weapon like through a UV, it only applies to that weapon. Just to clear up some confusion.
These can be obtained from certain gear, or through rare UVs. These will not be overpowered, because these can be totally balanced based on the chance to occur / the effectiveness of the proc. Is the proc stronger? Make its chance to occur lower. Is the proc weak? Make its chance to occur higher.
Proc chances only happen when a monster is directly hit with a gun, sword, or bomb.
___________________________________________________
To start with some examples
"Chance to Cause Earthquake: Low, Medium, High"
What earthquake does, is that there is a chance when you hit the enemy to create an earthquake under their feet that deals small normal damage to nearby enemies and itself. This earthquake looks like the first hit of the Sudaruska charge attack, except small rocks will surface like the old Khorovod charge.
"Chance to Cause Ruin: Low, Medium, High"
What this does, is that there is a small chance on hit that you will cause a minor Poison, Shock, and Stun to an enemy. If an enemy is poison or shock themed, it would simply be immune to the specific status it resists rather than the other two. Do not view this like the Storm Driver having a chance to cause Shock. This proc may only happen 1 in every 100 hits or something really low. This proc would already have a cool animation naturally, nothing special to make it look flashy necessary :)
"Chance to Execute: Low, Medium, High"
This one is a bit different. If a monster (this is ineffective against bosses) is damaged with less than 20% health with an attack but still lives, there is a small chance that they will be executed and instantly die. Wether or not this is overpowered depends on how small the chance of this occuring is. Most of the time, our attacks might not even damage a monster with low health to that 1-19 ish % threshold in the first place. I imagine seeing this one as guaranteed to be effective if it occurs, but it will not occur nearly as often as we would like. The animation could be made fairly interesting. Maybe we can finally see some blood? :3
"Chance to Cheat Death: Low, Medium"
This one is different because it isn't based on weapons hitting the enemy. This is based on enemies, or any attack hitting you. There is a small chance that, instead of an attack killing you, it will instead reduce you to near death to take another hit. This chance does in fact need to be smaller than someone might hope, because if it isn't a small chance, it would definately be overpowered. Think of it happening about once every 7 to 10 deaths (with Medium chance), or a 10 to 15 ish % chance to happen on death to instead get to endure an extra attack (with Medium chance). YES, there will totally be an animation for when this occurs :) Part of these bonuses are that they are fun / look cool.
Note: This can only stack up to medium, as weapons cannot provide Chance to Cheat Death. How you receive bonuses for procs on armor / weapons is explained more in detail in second post.
"Chance to Cause Repose: Low, Medium, High"
Whenever you hit an enemy, there is a chance that a small heart will pop out of them and land on the ground, healing one pip for any party member that runs over it (acts like a normal one-pip healing heart). Similar to like I said with Cheat Death, there will definately need to be a sweet animation for this one as well, even if it seems unecessary.
___________________________________________________
These procs could be used to balance underpowered gear. Give skelly each piece a low chance to execute. Give plate armor lines a low chance per piece to cause earthquake. Give Grey Feather a low chance per piece to cause repose. Give Azure Guardian a low chance per piece to cheat death. Etc, etc, etc, etc.
Below are coefficients / explanations for numbers and explanations on balancing.
I will use the word "proc" a lot. It just means "programmed random occurance"
***Weapons that attack many times, such as the autogun lines, or weapons that are AoE based, such as bombs or pulsars, will need to have a lower chance to cause a proc than the more single-target based weapons like flourishes. Give each of these AoE based, or ridiculously fast attacking weapons a .33 coefficient of the normal proc chance, or have it proc one third of the normal amount.
***You will receive these bonuses through either A. Armor giving it naturally, or B. a rare UV on a weapon. You can obtain a maximum of high bonus (One low bonus from weapon UV, two low bonuses from Armor).
Below are the coefficients for Low, Medium, and High bonuses. I will refer to the fast-attacking or AoE-based weapons' proc coefficients as "AoE-based weapons".
Low bonus: .75 coefficient (or this will proc 25% less times than a normal, reasonable chance). This should be underwhelming.
>Low bonus for AoE-based weapons: .25 coefficient.
Medium bonus: 1 coefficient (or this will be a normal, reasonable chance).
>Medium bonus for AoE-based weapons: .33 coefficient.
High bonus: 1.25 coefficient (or this will proc 25% more times than a normal, reasonable chance). This should be worth it, but not overpowered.
>High bonus for AoE-based weapons: .4125 coefficient.
To get an idea of how coefficients work, let us use Cheat Death as an example.
Let's say that the normal chance (or with a Medium bonus) for Cheat Death to occur when you receive a fatal attack is a 10% chance (one in ten fatal attacks will be endured). What if you only had one piece of armor that provided low bonus for chance to Cheat Death instead of a medium bonus? It would only occur on 7.5% of fatal attacks (or .75 times 10%, because the coefficient for a low bonus is .75)
Now let us use a proc that is based off of weapon attacks as an example.
Let's say that the normal chance (or with a Medium bonus) for Repose to occur is 1% (or 1 in 100 attacks will spawn a small heart). If I was to use a Blitz Needle while my gear has a net Chance to Cause Repose bonus of Medium, every Blitz Needle bullet has a .33% chance to spawn a heart (coefficient with a Medium bonus for fast attacking weapons is .33, so .33 times 1%). This means that one in 300 attacks will spawn a heart. However, my Blitz Needle strikes 15 times in one charge attack. This means that one charge attack from a Blitz Needle has a 5% chance to spawn a heart (one in 20), increasing with the number of double-hitting bullets (or bullets that strike between 2 monsters, hitting them both).
If we did NOT add the .33 coefficient to fast-attacking / AoE weapons, the Blitz Needle would instead have a 1 in 100 chance per bullet to spawn a small heart with Repose. This means that, with a 15 bullet charge attack, 1 in 7 charge attacks (or 15% of charge attacks) would spawn a small heart. This would be too powerful compared to weapons that do not strike 15 times in one charge attack. Because of this, we balance proc chances by adding the .33 coefficient for fast attacking / AoE weapons.