Glass Cannon

Your spells deal 5x damage and have larger blast ranges, but your maximum health is capped to 50.

Type

Passive

ID

GLASS_CANNON

Player Only

No

Stacking

Stacks

Max

Yes

2

Holy Mountains

Available in HM

Pool Max ⓘ

Yes

1

Effects
All projectiles deal 5x damage, and explosions from projectiles are 5x larger. Both current and maximum health are set to 50 on picking this perk. Sets a cap on maximum health at 50, preventing the effects of Extra Max Health pickups.

Glass Cannon is a Perk which increases your damage and explosion radius by five times, at the cost of capping your maximum health to 50. Explosive spells can very easily kill you without some form of Explosion Immunity.

Picking up an Extra Max HP or Large Extra Max HP after taking this perk will have no effect and display this message:

Picked up Extra Max HealthIncreased maximum health to (value) ..but some sort of curse blocked the increase of maximum health!

Interactions

The maximum health cap can be increased by taking a Full Health Regeneration, which will set a new health cap at the new maximum health value if it exceeds the current cap.
Maximum health can be increased by an Extra Max Health if your current max health is below the cap, for example by taking Vampirism or while under the effects of the Heartache debuff inflicted by Haavoittajamestari.
Taking multiple stacks of the Heartache debuff and then collecting an Extra Max Health pickup will increase the current maximum health by 25 (more if Stronger Hearts has been taken). When the debuffs expire, the player's maximum health will be restored to its full amount plus extraMaxHealthValue×2heartacheStacks.
- Taking an additional Extra Max Health after this point will reset your maximum health to its previous cap. To avoid this, be sure to pick up a Full Health Regeneration to forcibly update the health cap.
- Ambrosia is highly recommended if attempting this deliberately, since Haavoittajamestari's projectiles deal flat damage as well as the debuff, which can easily kill after a few stacks of the debuff have been applied.
In a manner similar to picking up an Extra Max Health, picking up the Glass Cannon perk while many Heartache debuffs are active and letting them expire will leave you with a multiple of the max HP that Glass Cannon would normally set; this also requires picking up a Full Health Regeneration to update the health cap afterward.
Taking a second Glass Cannon stack will re-apply the 50 cap. If you plan to take two stacks, it's best to avoid increasing your maximum health before taking the second stack.

Stacking

All damage multiplying game effects^[1] share a limit. The order these multipliers are acquired in matters, creating a chain:

Glass Cannon only functions if it's in first or second position in the chain.
Living on the Edge functions if it's first, second or third in this chain.
Berserkium and Circle of Fervour only function in the first position for the full double damage, only adding an extra 50% damage in the second position and no additional damage in further positions. After taking any two perks of either Glass Cannon or Living on the Edge, Berserkium and Circle of Fervour have no effect.

Following these limitations, we can see the most effective ways to stack them:

Picking up 2 Glass Cannons followed by Living on the Edge will result in a 25x multiplier when at high health, and a 75x multiplier at low health.
Picking up 1 Glass Cannon and 1 Living on the Edge in either order, followed by a second Living on the Edge in the third position will result in 45x multiplier at low health (5x when not at low health).
Picking up 2 Glass Cannons will result in 25x multiplier.

On Enemies

On top of its normal effects, Glass Cannon has some additional bonuses only given to projectiles fired by enemies:

All damage types except for Heal and Holy normally found on projectiles are tripled; for a total bonus of 15x.
Explosion radius, damage, and digging are quadrupled; for a total bonus of 20x.

These effects are normally only seen in Nightmare mode, though mods that give enemies perks may allow it as well.

With two stacks, the effects are predictably applied again, for a total bonus of $5^{2} \times 3^{2} = 225$ times on-hit damage, and $5^{2} \times 4^{2} = 400$ times explosion radius/damage/digging. Thankfully this never happens, even in nightmare.

Footnotes

↑ This applies only to the effects mentioned here, which are applied through a GameEffect component to entities. Damage multipliers or additives which are applied specifically to projectiles in other ways, such as with Hungry Ghost, can be stacked on top of these effects.

Perks

Normal Perks