Whips! Lots of people love them. They have been suggested before. Even casually by me. Here's a mechanic, inspired by whips used in film entertainment. Disarm and capture.
With this new type of sword, let's just call it a Lasher, your knight will be able to "lasso" a single nonheavy, nonboss, nondrone, nonturret enemy target and lead them around like a puppy on a leash. This has important effects in many situations. The general idea is to disarm your enemy, like in the movies! But no swinging from things across the clockworks, that just silly. The usage of whips on the big screen is usually quite showy and rather unrealistic, but the emphasis is on skill, as will be the use of whip items in Spiral Knights. They are best used strategically and are not simple DPS devices.
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Attacks:
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Some swipes generate appropriate cracking noises. If your knight walks with this weapon out, it remains coiled up in the hand until your knight attacks. As you charge up, the knight spins the weapon above the head lasso style, as if preparing to aim the loop. This makes sense!
Regular : like a cutter. Slightly longer range, slightly slower attack speed, okay damage far outclassed by other blades of course. It's weak, but not entirely useless. Whip it good!
Charge: the "lasso mechanics" in addition to some relatively meaningless damage. When the lasso hits, it deals some minor impact damage, capable of breaking blocks like other charge attacks.
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Mechanics:
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- Emphasis on single. If you cast into a crowd, you'll only capture one monster out of that cluster, whichever one is struck first/closest. So you can't "aim over heads" and yank a mender out of a group, as nice as that would be. Shield bump stuff out of the way and then do that.
- The enemy you lasso cannot attack or use its abilities. It will wander around in a radius around your knight, limited by the lasso's length. This is basically a representation of total aggro loss.
- The 5* lasso has a range of 5 tiles or so. If your knight moves farther away than that, the enemy is forced to follow you. Puppy on a leash. You don't "control" the enemy beyond this - like having it attack other monsters - that would be a different sort of mechanic and tbh wouldn't make much sense unless it was also a mind control lasso. Lol. Would you suddenly attack your friends if you were tied up by the enemy? You couldn't even if you wanted to because you are tied up.
- Due to logical yet somewhat silly system of honor (we do not torture hostages and like to maintain barganing power etc.), a knight is unable to damage a captured enemy - even NPCs won't target a captured enemy. The enemy will be somewhat "safe," unless it happens to be near a friendly fire/hazard, like a trojan slam or a blast block.
- Shield bashing a captured enemy will not damage it, but it will be released. This is in place to balance out "trolling" attempts -like capturing an enemy and not letting it go ever, wasting ppls' time - but it also lends itself to other forms of "messing around." The real fix to such behavior is to not play with people who like to do this sort of thing, so they are forced to be alone with themselves and maybe look in the mirror and wonder..."am I the one with a problem? Maybe..."
- You cannot attack while you have a captured enemy. You will release the enemy if you switch weapons, dash, shield bash, attack with the lasso again, take any sort of damage, use a pickup, command a battle sprite, or suffer defeat. If the whip you are using is not super effective against the monster type, then the whip will randomly release it after 5-10 seconds (with normal always being 15 seconds). If it is super effective, then there is no timer.
- The regular attacks of this sword, while not dealing much damage, tend to "disarm" enemies. For example, there is a good chance that you will knock off a gremlin Mortafire's gear with the regular attacks, while the charge attack has a 100% chance to. It will strike through shields to deal pathetic damage, useful only for distraction/emphasizing the idea of the sword. Mecha knight shields will tend to fail as well. This disarming behavior will only trigger if the whip is super effective against the target, otherwise it just damages what you hit, but the normal whip always has a very low chance to trigger these effects in general. Much lower than just bringing the right tool for the job. Right! Damage type! I keep going on about that!
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Crafting:
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I'm thinking an entire family, starting at the 3* level and branching out. I would have it start earlier? But since it's such a mechanic-based item, I figure having it start later, after a player is somewhat used to the game, would be better. Like the vortex bombs.
3* - Lasher (normal, looks like a rope with a braided string of prismatic energy through it). Charge Range: 3 tiles
4* - Lively Lasher (normal, looks like a rope with a few braided strings of prismatic energy through it). Charge Range: 4 tiles.
5* options (all have a 5 tile charge range):
Normal: Lordly Lasso
Looks like a classic western rope/leather-hide strap or whatever floats your boat. A longer, more robust version of the preceding 4*. Excellent for cowboy cosplay with your sunset gear. The central tassel, tassel tips, and energy weave are prismatic, as are parts of the handle.
Elemental: "Prehensive Plasma"
You guessed it! A long string of energy like a lightsaber. It is, of course, prismatic. Alternative appearance: Extension Cord.
Piercing: "Thorn Thrasher"
A long, nasty, dark black (somewhat green) vine covered in sharb barbs and large thorns. It pulses with a prismatic life energy woven through its length. It sounds somewhat similar to a chromalisk tongue when the charge is released. Man, that's pretty weird. Your knight used Vine Whip. It's super effective!
Shadow: "Scraping Scourge"
A long whip composed of ghostly, slightly transparent grey shadowsteel chain links (very light, being ghostly and all) that ends in a tassle of prismatic fiendish tails. These devils made daring deals with others, then they met you. Now they follow your orders and have synced up to your color. Is that really a good thing? *creepy.* Inspired somewhat by the Thraben Valiant magic card.
Man, it sure is easy finding examples of whips. Maybe that's cause they're totally awesome and people love them. To commemorate their release, we could have silly whip song related hats like these.
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Usage:
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What I would use this for:
Cowboy cosplay. Wait, you're saying I can't ride a trojan horse? It's too "heavy" for a lasso?
Pretending I have a pet wolver and go for a walk in the Den. I mean park. Yes.
Capturing respawning healer units, such as the silkwing in rabid snarb, or menders in GA, and preventing that nonsense. While this also prevents me from attacking, it should help the squad significantly, and takes some skill to maintain. Seraphynx's third ability would probably help quite a lot, just cast it before you charge the whip.
Capturing respawing things in general. Disabling for a good while is better than defeating in many situations.
Controlling those awful Surging Bombies in the right-hand fight of the second floor of Ghosts in the Machine. Get out of that wire tangle out of range of the totem. Right now. Stop ignoring my shield bumps. Whip! Get them out! I don't FEEL like toting a vortex just for this!
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Thoughts:
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If people like this general idea, I might propose a gun that shoots a net and gradually shrinks, drawing enemies together - like a ranged vortex bomb with less damage, smaller grab radius, but more range and versatility. Now we can have a full weapon group of "things that move enemies around as their most important mechanic." Whiplasso swords, Vortex Bombs, and net guns. Weeeeee!
Alternatively, ditch the whole weapon aspect and just make these a pickup that act pretty much like the normal whip described above in all tiers, minus the regular attacks and dmg. This balances the usage of the mechanic somewhat, while not taking up a weapon slot. It's not out of this world to think that a knight can't find a bit of rope/chain/duct tape lying around the very messy clockworks and use it like this.
I suggested something shockingly like this a while ago- http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/104548
Mine was more utility based, with little to no ability to deal damage whereas yours is more well rounded. My thought was that we have tons of swords that have damage and some utility but no swords that have tons of utility and little damage.. compared to guns and bombs, which have fairly decent utility-themed options. I could see either of our suggestions making it, if the developers are into the whole whip idea.