1. Normal scaling per level.
I see a clear problem about how monsters scale with both level and corruption in this game. I don’t have the internal details but I can suggest based on my own impression just by playing the game. if it have any sort of exponential curve, is just not enough.
Enemy scaling is quite poor as you advance into the game: As you are building your skills and defenses, I feel you clearly outpace enemies you encounter, both in the damage and defense department. This becomes apparent as you advance to the normal monolith of fate as you’re gaining levels and beating higher level monos. You get better items and bases, more skill points, more stats, better idols… monsters just don’t keep up with you and the game becomes easier and easier.
My suggestion is that enemy scaling with level should be more pronounced instead of (linear?) not sure about this but the scaling is not on par with character progression, during acts is hard to notice as monster of newer acts just have so much more damage.
For example:
Monster A has 4 fire damage per level and 60 health per level and estimating the stats is calculated as ATTR * LEVEL:
L25:
100 base fire damage.
1500 health.
L50:
200 base fire damage.
3000 health.
L100:
400 base fire damage.
6000 health.
My suggestion would be something like ATTR * LEVEL^1.1, maybe adjusting different attributes with a different exponential progression (giving health a larger growth, and defenses a smaller, or whatever):
L25:
137 base fire damage.
2069 health.
L50:
295 base fire damage.
4436 health.
L100:
633 base fire damage.
9509 health.
2. Corruption scaling.
The difficulty gap from a L90 no corruption monolith to a L100 empowered monolith with 100 corruption is huge, specially the damage from enemies, and if you didn’t experience the monolith before you will get a nasty surprise. Also the monolith damage mods also feel huge, as they are built on top of your more damage modifier from corruption.
Then usually what is halting you from going higher corruption is always enemy damage, and never that you’re not doing enough damage to clear monsters and bosses at a good pace. The gearing game becomes quickly a tank game: lets get health from every place possible, lets get endurance in shape, crit avoidance, shield block and effectiveness… any damage reduction in the passive? check. Perhaps ward? I got every defensive element? I can cheese crit or my damage in any way so I can focus even more on defenses?
Every gearing effort and most of your passive tree will be pushed towards more survivability, so hard.
My second suggestion would be about how “more damage” and “more health” of enemies is distributed currently:
Basically, we have:
Enemies deal [CORRUPTION LEVEL * 0.5]% more damage.
Enemies have [CORRUPTION LEVEL * 0.5]% more health.
I would change it to:
Enemies deal [CORRUPTION LEVEL * 0.38]% more damage.
Enemies have [CORRUPTION LEVEL * 0.7]% more health.
So with 100 corruption:
Now:
Enemies deal 50% more damage.
Enemies have 50% more health.
Suggestion:
Enemies deal 38% more damage.
Enemies have 70% more health.
With 330 corruption:
Now:
Enemies deal 165% more damage.
Enemies have 165% more health.
Suggestion:
Enemies deal 125% more damage.
Enemies have 231% more health.
Maybe the proportions are not perfect, but the idea is to create certain tension between defenses and offense, so getting just more defenses is not always always the right call. Also to make the gap between empowered and normal monos a bit more smooth in terms of enemy damage.
Thanks for reading.