Debating what the BEST Planetarium Items are in Isaac 

It is affected by tears modifiers. It just doesn't use the standard tear formula, which caps at 5. I like to call it "flat tears", but it's not exactly the same as "flat damage". Flat damage truly is never affected by multipliers, but for some reason, curved horn (and ONLY curved horn) gives a flat damage increase that IS affected by multipliers. Flat tears up is like the flat damage of curved horn. If you pick up something like polyphemus or brimstone, luna will give you less tears, but it's still consistent in the sense that every run that has brimstone will get the same increase from luna, and it still goes over the new cap that brimstone gives you.

Good point! I could actually see it going above venus but not much higher

I once died because I accidentally dashed into a devil deal in dark room, killing me because I couldn't afford it. I will never take Mars again after that, unless I have a self-reroll.

I play on keyboard and I never use mars dash on accident. It’s just a difference in gameplay whether u dash on accident or not.

Yeah I was trying to make this point in the vid, some players don't have issue on keyboard, and some do, and I don't think it has anything to do with skill at the game, but rather it has to do with how you learnt to play the game. Before mars existed, it wouldn't matter whether someone was doing accidental double inputs, because there was no such thing. Suddenly mars is added, and now only the players who did double inputs when they move get punished. It's only one, rare item, added in the final dlc, so player movement habits are already muscle memory before they ever get to use the item. If the item control scheme actively works against muscle memory in a way that players can't really fix, then it's probably a bad control scheme.

I'm a really slow button masher and even I was able to easily see a massive dps increase the instant I tested it, so that says a lot.

@@turtier definitely 👍

Terra is fantastic for sure. It's sulfuric acid (which is already a very good item) on steroids.

Terra is rly good, Neptunus is just way to cracked to be overtaken

I felt the exact same way about it lol. At the very least, charge effects are useful because you can charge up in moments where you couldn't deal damage anyway. It makes all charge effects great for room clearing because you can charge up before you enter a new room, and for bosses you still get some use if there is ever any downtime (eg hush going underground, but even just something like delirium being at the opposite side of the room or he's moving too quickly to hit, you can charge and wait for a moment where you know you'll hit). So I already liked neptunus just for this, because it gave all the benefits of charge shot without preventing the ability to fire normally. Never knew that you could spam the button to get a big dps increase.

As for the rest of the list, i would probably put Pluto in insane too, above Terra even. I have no idea how hitboxes work in isaac, between the visual fake height to the chaging size by being smaller, i dont get it. But what i do know, is that everytime i take Pluto, im just invincible against enemy tears. I really havent tested super well but i feel like i have never ever been hit by tears after taking this item, so for me it was always the strongest planetarium, well, until now, where i need to check the secrets of Neptune. I also agree 100% that all planetariums should be stronger, just like my tiny rant in my comment of the angel room video about Godhead not being the actually strongest item in the whole game. Whats best about planetariums is the theme of them and how they work with it, so i wouldnt really change ones like Mercury just because they are pretty fun on their own merit. But Mars and Jupiter need to be stronger. I always found crazy that Jupiter only gives you 2 hearts, it should give you something like 4 (still empty, thats part of the fun). And even crazier, it should give you an even higher speed down with a faster recharge time to an even higher speed up. Transform Isaac into an actual rocket man. As for Mars, just making it a charge bar or somehing akin to that could be better, altough just stopping the accidental movement would be enough.

Im so glad to see that ive taught the hidden arts of neptunus to more people 😂

It gets rid of curse of no eyes!!!

Noooooooooooo, that is so unfortunate lmao. It got the correct spot i suppose

Its sooooo cracked

Id be down! I do actually wonder if this list would be better to include rarity/consistency since everyone basically already knows which pools are at the top when just considering the items themselves

@@latermanner Yeah I would say so! Like the boss pool may be ass compared to like angel, but it's a pretty good and consistent source of getting base stats into your runs

@@gumbarius That's what I was thinking too, and Angel might not be Guaranteed S tier since you can't get it Until floor 3 most of the time

Okay Pluto above Uranus is kinda crazy, and I do think Terra is just a straight up better item with a lot more utility then Neptunus. Only other thing I might change is swapping Saturnus and Mercurius.

@@mellow3995 It's important to note that Neptunus with NO TEARS UPS brings you far past the tear cap for free. Terra isnt even comparable from a power perspective, it only has an arguement because of utility with breaking rocks, doors, and secret rooms. Terra can't solo a run, while neptunus can. Basically Terra is best early game for minmaxing while neptunus is just auto win no matter what.

@@mellow3995 Uranus is good but pluto is much better into bosses, which uranus struggles with.

​@@latermanner There's 2 parts to Pluto and personally I think there's demerits for both of them. Firstly, the tears up is nice but undeniably useless at maxed tears because it doesn't break the cap, so if you have maxed tears (which is pretty common for most runs) only the second effect matters when having it. The secondary effect is also mixed for me personally because sometimes the extreme size-down can cause me issues with dodging (which is ironic I know) and I often lose my character in my peripheral when focusing on bullets. It still offers more help than it hurts but I find it's not always 100% helpful. I understand that my issues with Pluto are probably a personal problem but it's how I feel regardless. Lastly, I don't think there's anything wrong with an item being less useful against bosses, most of the game is getting to the bosses and even then, a good amount of bosses have minions so there's still some use you can get out of it.

@@latermanner Neptunus is undeniable good for sure, but Terra has far more utility and a good balance of power as well. Although I do believe I and you could beat the game with either item only. Neptunus would give more dps EASILY but Terra would give access to more consumables and special rooms EASILY. It saves bombs which can be used to supplement your weaker damage, plus the ability to leave or skip hostile/dangerous rooms makes the runs safer. This is another situation where one item excels at killing bosses whereas the other item excels with everything else. I personally value Terra more. This conversation has been really fun though, I enjoyed your video quite a lot. I am kinda tempted now to start with every planetarium item and check to see how quickly/easily I beat the run.

The button prompt for it being double tap is almost certainly because they needed a way for it to have controller support. Keyboard has plenty of alternate buttons to use, but controller doesn't. The only thing that I think might work for mars is using the ctrl button for it. The forgotten switching forms also uses that button, so it would need to be done in a way that doesn't conflict with anything, but it's the only button I can think of, unless you added double tap functionality to the active item button or something. Speaking of active items, that's definitely what mars should have been. It can't be a pocket active, kilburn has said that pocket actives should always be exclusive to tainted characters. But book of virtues already exists as an item that is a passive that acts like an active item. Could maybe do something similar with mars, it's a passive item, but it adds mars as a second active item (it doesn't take up an active slot, you can cycle between your actual active item and mars, as if you had schoolbag). Something like this would definitely work.

Making it an active would be really weird in the sense it'd be the only active from the Planetarium pool. But it'd definitely make it an item I'd often consider, it'd essentially be a faster, more contact-iterative Dark Arts then, and I consider Dark Arts very respectable.

@@luizflavioassismoura6136 It's not really that weird. There's already a similar example in the game, book of virtues is the only passive item in the library pool. I also think there's a big difference between something being an active item VS something like book of virtues which is a passive/active hybrid. Because normally active items compete with other active items, but this wouldn't be the case with mars since it's a passive/active hybrid that uses its own active item slot independent from the main one. Mars is also already quite different from the other planetarium items, and from most items in the game, as it's only 1 of 2 items that activate on double tap (divine intervention is the other, this item isn't great either, but only because it's a little underwhelming, the control scheme for it is perfectly fine, mostly because the shield is nice and... you know... doesn't send you flying across the screen).

@@turtier If they made Mars a Book of Virtues passive disguising as an active, it'd be super good, though in practice it'd involve swapping between actives like a sort of built-in Backpack. It'd still be leagues above what it is now and I'd be all for it. Heck, I'd vastly prefer it even if it was a pure active anyway, it's just too unwieldy in its current state.

Its so crazy

Could also turn it into a pocket active.

@@RematodeRanger Kilburn has said that pocket actives are meant to be exclusive to tainted characters, so that's why it's not a pocket. Although I don't see why it couldn't be similar to book of virtues, where it's a passive item that gives you an active item (you could switch between your current active item and mars the same way you swap between 2 actives with schoolbag, it would work).

I actually super agree on it being double tap shoot, thats a lot easier to not accidentally proc

This is what I was trying to say in the video too. Although I think it would be a 1.25x multiplier, not a 1.5x one (I think you need to do (10+2.5)/2 = 6.25 as average terra damage, which is 1.25x higher than 5 damage). But this depends if it actually takes 0.5x to 2x as the full range distributed uniformly, or if it instead has an equal chance to be above or below the 1x multiplier, which means the range between 0.5 and 1 are uniform, and the range between 1 and 2 are uniform, but the range from 0.5 to 2 is not. I believe d8 works this way, so I would assume terra is the same, which would mean that it's not actually a dps increase (although when I do the math assuming this, my result was that it's still a dps increase of 1.125x... idk, maybe I just need to do a dps test on this item to find out what's going on LOL)

​@@turtier Intuitively the 1.25x multiplier seems truer than dps neutral, but then LM is still definitely right that Neptunus is significantly better in terms of dps. But yeah I'm not sure I understand it correctly either.

@@mbot1901 I think it def would be better on shoot, but it still might have some issues. For one, it now wouldn't work well in combination with divine intervention, which I imagine might be a reason they didn't put both of them on shoot. It would also make mars awful on tainted eve, since her character encourages tap shooting to not accidentally create clots. Divine intervention still works since accidentally activating the shield isn't an issue, but you can't ever afford to accidentally active mars because you'll go flying (into beast lava or spikes, every time, it's hard coded into the game to only activate in that circumstance). I think double tap ctrl while moving would work but it might be weird on the forgotten since he uses ctrl to switch forms already, but if it's double tap it should still work? (because you'll switch back to your original form again right before you dash). I think that that would be the best button prompt for it, given that turning it into an active item isn't a possibility (more specifically, a passive/active hybrid, you pick it up and permanently gain a 2nd active slot that you use mars from, I think that would be best).

@@turtier That's a good point that I hadn't considered when it comes to tainted eve, double tap ctrl is a little awkward and honestly I would prefer they put less button mapping on control because it's already a crowded button as is, but I do think it's most likely the best option. I think personally I would also be satisfied if it were double tap shoot and was just a bad item for tainted eve or with antigravity, since there are already certain items that kinda work that way already in the sense that some characters just never want to pick them up, but I definitely see your point. They would never do this but I think that Ideally I would like to see the mars effect reworked into an active that's similar to a pony except with no flight and on a cooldown timer, but that's just wishful thinking. Overall the item is fundamentally kinda flawed no matter how you look at it imo

I can see this take, I do honestly feel really powerful with Luna, I do think it's worth considering that Beast and Hush it has no effect for. I can see it above Uranus but even then it's veeeeery close.

Agreed i feel like luna is kind of a run winner early game and late game the extra 2 secret rooms is just too prominent

I'd definitely put it above Uranus, which while fine is in my opinion a sorta overrated item. I just don't fully understand why I would want to maneuver over to a statue to knock it into a wall hoping that it hits something on the way... Why not just kill the enemies regularly?? If it just made enemies burst into the icicles instantly upon death, it would be way better (but I still suspect noticeably weaker than Athame). Luna may not work equally well in all scenarios, but you can arguably say the same thing about some S-tier items. Generally speaking, Luna is really nice.

You can get better at manually activating it, but you can never turn off the random dashes on controller. The control stick simply registers double inputs for no reason, fairly frequently. It's also one of those things that I assume would be different based on many factors outside of the game itself, such as the type of controller you are using and how old it is. Both me and Manner found the random curve dashes random and unpreventable to the point where we found it better to change the control scheme. Manner started to play entirely with the dpad on mars runs, and I found it better to just play on keyboard with mars. I'm obviously worse on keyboard, but not significantly worse, and I randomly activate mars on keyboard far less. Sometimes I only use it for curse rooms and forget to use it in enemy rooms, but I have had a few runs where I did use it in enemy rooms and it worked well, and I will acknowledge that I could definitely get better with the item on keyboard. I was also unsure if trash could be justified for that reason. However, even many keyboard players have consistent random activation problems. I don't think random activation on keyboard has anything to do with skill, instead I think this is based on muscle memory. Every player will press the keys a little differently when they are learning to play, and there was no indication that they were double tapping keys, nor was there any reason that double tapping keys was a bad thing. Not until mars, which only exists in the final dlc. If you played the game before repentance, then mars suddenly punishes some players for muscle memory that they have formed over years, when that muscle memory was perfectly fine before. Even if you started the game with repentance, mars is the only item in the game that activates on double tap movement, and it only exists in the rarest item pool, so new players will still form muscle memory independent of mars, which might randomly get them punished if they apparently double tap keys a lot. Again, I don't consider any of this to be skill based. An item like isaacs heart, I would actually plan on practicing with before ranking it, because theres a chance it's not F tier like everyone thinks (maybe its like, C tier or something, or maybe it is F, idk, that's why I plan to practice with it to see if its still just worse than having no items). But I'm fine doing that with isaacs heart because isaacs heart is the same for everyone. If I can get better with it, and I then say "it's actually not as bad as you think, try picking it up and getting better with it", then that's valid because every player can eventually get better with it. But with mars, it's basically the same as if cursed eye's downside was coded to be different on every save file. Maybe for some players it teleports them, for some it instantly kills them, for some they just take an extra heart, and for some players it does nothing. For the players with a minor downside, it would be a good item, but on a list, I'd probably either rank it F for the potential very bad downsides, or I just wouldn't rank it at all, with the note that it depends what effect you got. This is basically mars, depending on your control scheme and muscle memory, it will randomly activate to varying degrees, not in a way that I think practice can fix. Therefore it has to be F or unranked. It doesn't matter if a player gets better at using the dash manually, any item that says "randomly move in a random direction" as a passive effect is a bad item, or at least it's a lot worse than it would otherwise be (arguably some S tier items like rock bottom could have that effect and they would still be good... except on the lost and tainted lost... still untakeable on those characters lol).

I sometimes think this too, I'll pick it up and think "is it actually good? On paper it doesn't seem that good" and then it consistently impresses me every time I think that. The athame comparison doesn't work, because athame is an offensive item, but uranus is actually a defensive item! Tainted lost really appreciates having no death effects, especially on runs that get quite explosive and there is a real risk that you enter a room and instantly kill all the enemies, causing random death shots to potentially hit you. On runs that are low on damage, you can still use the icicles for extra power too. Uranus is also guarantee to proc, which makes it better than athame sometimes. That being said, athame is definitely better overall, but I do think that the items are very different. However it does seem that a few people think we put luna too low, so maybe it's better than uranus. I think in general the planetarium items could be a little stronger, like uranus should have a small slow down effect (similar to spider bite). Because I do agree that it's weird seeing uranus as 4th highest on the list, it seems like it's not good enough, while simultaneously still being good enough to deserve the position, it's weird.

I personally think Luna should be higher than Uranus. Uranus just kinda makes you stomp enemies, like rooms are basically free and explosive enemies cant hit you

It’s an interesting take to think of Uranus as a defensive item mainly. I guess it makes sense, it’s just that bone spurs does the same thing as Uranus, and I’ve never thought of that item as very good. But maybe I’ve just never really considered how beneficial it actually is. Anyway, Luna definitely better I’d say. Way more and better benefits. So what if it doesn’t help against all bosses, it helps against the far majority, and Uranus does rather little against any boss.

Yeah its like spamming chocolate milk but with no decrease in damage, so its crazy 😂

I really wanted this item to be usable because I see the potential lol. It probably should have been a passive/active hybrid like book of virtues. Not the part where it fuses with your current active, but it should be a passive item that permanently adds mars as a 2nd active item that you can switch to.

Everyone WANTS this item to be good, but it just got kinda screwed

They must have impersonated me, too. Manner might, but no way I'd let a tier list be this short! Jokes aside, it was actually still longer than we thought it would be LOL.

lmaooooo

I think jupiter wouldn't be as bad if not for the fact that the speed down is so noticeable especially early game

The farts are unironically my biggest reason for hating the item 😂

​@@mbot1901yeah with no speed down i actually think itd be a decent item