Uhm, Garven, no, i didn't misunderstand. NC density has an effect on the drain of the map. Repeated NC spam will make the drain rocket up, while putting no NCs at all will reduce the drain to a minimum. The HP boost NCs give is just a side effect.Garven wrote:
Zarerion misinterpreted how HP Drain and new combos work. Basically when you have a new combo, the last note of the previous combo gives an HP boost. So if you have tons of new combos in a short amount of time, it gives a huge boost to HP, not increases the rate of HP drain. This causes an imbalance of drain and actually makes the map artificially easy unless you have a large span of section that is sparse in rhythm. Using new combos to highlight some new portion of a pattern that would be harder to read otherwise is frowned upon since it's indicative of poor design rather than trying to highlight a certain part of the song (you'll want your new combos to be consistent throughout your own maps like Kiai toggles).