1: Add a Curse weakness
2: Reduce all status penalties by 2/3rds
Why?
Mad Bomber offers the same strength buffs as Chaos with one less status penalty and is limited to 1/3rd the weapons. Give it Curse penalty and reduce all the status penalties on it to 1/3rd what it is now.
Since you only get 1/3rd the boost as Chaos you should only get 1/3rd the status penalty.
-1 on that
With your suggestion it would be better than it is but still statistically worse than Chaos.
Chaos would then be double the de-buff but triple the benefits
Not completely for 1/2, I just couldn't think of anything else at the time.
Basically no curse weakness, but a slightly greater weakness than 1/3.
3/5?
Seems good on paper but would you rather have the current chaos, or a chaos set with 1/2 the weaknesses (i.e. negative lows) and 1/2 the buffs?
If it was up to me Chaos would be cut down to half. Half the buffs and penalties. BUT I would also have Mad Bomber equivalent sets for Guns and Swords.
This would make Chaos the goto Mixed attacker set while weapon specialists could invest in a single glass cannon set.
I would also MAX out all the status penalties on BK (this means no more freeze resist), and remove the MSI.
Yea that sounds really boring and kind of expected for this game. Why not go the other direction and make sets that are actually interesting and fun? For instance.. if mad bomber gave more bomb related stats, like bomb damage high + msi: low + bomb ctr med. It could also have no status penalty, but make swords and guns worse.
Also my point totally still stands.
That would be a lot to tack onto an armor....... do you mean that it would reduce Damage AND CTR on guns and swords or just the CTR? I would be fine with CTR penalties on guns and swords but even bombers like to have sidearms for those fast enemies or annoying ranged enemies.
This change is pretty useless.
Who is going to be convinced to get Mad Bomber by a measly change like this? Everyone wants damage, dps, or significant defense. People with chaos or BK or other bomber sets won't change, and new players won't get it just because of a change like this.
Fehzor has the right idea. Also, I think OOO already knows that changing an armor's base stats in a negative way would enrage a ton of people who built UV sets around them. It is why they removed the stun weakness from GF set and fire weakness from DS set, but not reduced defense or status resist on anything else as far as I know recently. Your proposed change makes sense, but would only be good if they did it at the beginning of its release.
Basically, all your proposed changes are ones no one would significantly benefit from.
To clarify on the two possible balances that are far more exciting and interesting-
Option A: Better than chaos for bombers
Bomb CTR: high
Bomb DMG: high
MSI: low
Same defensive stats
Example sets, to show why this is good-
2x Mad bomber = no need to heat many bombs, MSI: med
Mad bomber + Mercurial Demo = Very doable and still defensive bomber setup.
Mad bomber + black kat/chaos = Allows many side weapons with various buffs, focus on bombs
Option B: Fundamentally different
Bomb CTR: med (Possible high)
Bomb DMG: med (Possible high)
MSI: low? (Possibly, or possibly not at all)
Sword damage: Negative high (possibly for CTR/ASI instead or as well)
Gun damage: Negative high (possibly for CTR/ASI instead or as well)
No weaknesses to status effects; higher defenses, one bar of positive status resist to something, just like other class armor has.
It's restrictive, but that's kind of the point. What side weapons you are allowed would be determined by the negative- if it is damage, then you could still bring a gun/sword to break things, for knockback, status, what have you. If it isn't damage, then you'd be restricted to some type of damage- being either normal hits or charges which would be an interesting choice. Limiting both would really make your guns and swords feel clumsy in combat, and I don't know that that would play as well as limiting just damage.
Most people don't use Mad Bomber because Chaos can do the same job and has the same amount of defense. This change would make the Mad Bomber the Tankier set of the two and would be far easier to counter it's penalties with UVs or even sprite perks and trinkets. Why should the Mad bomber set suffer the same time for statuses as the Chaos set but have only one third the bonuses?
I think bringing armors like BK and Chaos down a notch would make it so people craft more armor sets. If the usefulness of every armor was balanced out OOO would make more off of people crafting to get them and rolling UVs to better them.
Suppose BK only got a total of VH damage with lots of status penalties, if you were going to a Poison/Fiend level what set would be best to bring? In this situation the Valkyrie set would be superior since it offers the same damage but has more status resist.
I want to feel like that regardless of what set I invest in it will be as useful as every other set in the game, just in a different way.
The issue is that being a bomber-man you get told all the time: you should get a chaos and a sword or a gun, but beyond that Utterly idiotic statement, the issue is: the Chaos set giving stats considered "better" over the Mad Bomber's is pretty lame, a jack of all trades as the Chaos set shouldn't be better than a specific set like the mad bomber, the overall buff to ALL the weapons shouldn't be higher than the Bomb Buff.. but if you dare to say that Chaos should be toned down you get Crucified and torched like an Heretic Gremlin...
as the chaos SET is considered the jack of all trades for glass canons the stats should be:
+5 to all
while the Mad Bomber SET is the specific Bomb Glass canon, the stats should get to:
+6 to Bombs and nothing but bombs
adding a Gun SET(although there might be one, not entirely sure)
+6 to guns and Guns only
and a glass canon sword SET(although there might be one, not entirely sure)
+6 to sword only
Yes if the negatives effect should be added and I haven't added
and set the chaos where it should be JACK of ALL trades Master of NONE, you read it right MASTER of NONE.
that should solve the Chaos getting in the middle of a bomber Panoply.
if you want to use the chaos set because it grants you +6 damage to all the weapons, the lets take 2 of the negative stats of the Class canon specific class Sets... because is Pathetic having a specific set overruled by a All-round set... why would you do the Specific set, what are the specific thing you can seize from the mad is chaos is "better". We either Tone out the Chaos from the elites sets or buff the specific sets to a Elite+ value
@Holy
I do agree that BK/chaos is OP, but I think mad bomber would need a stronger buff to be considered tanky, if that makes sense. You bring up a lot of well thought out and pertinent points, I'll give you that.
But to be honest, this game is beyond repair, so all of these suggestions are in vain. I apologize for being the Debbie Downer of the thread, but I just think we have to play the game as is, or find a different one. Though if you guys enjoy the possibility of change, I don't blame you. I too would like to see massive change. At this point however, because OOO has such a small programming team, the odds of anything being changed are essentially 0. Oh, how I would love to be proven wrong...(no sarcasm, I legit would love it...depending on what they do of course).
Suggestions forums is for suggestions. We've had hundreds, probably thousands of threads in here that haven't been implemented, but that doesn't mean we can't harbor discussion about the ideas.
Better to say what's right or wrong with a suggestion than to say what's right or wrong in the game. If the suggestions forums listened to statements like "this will never make it into the game", then lots of great and new ideas would never have been discussed or seen the light of day.
We're a forum after all, not a government agency. We can talk about ideas all night and day and never see them appear, or mention them once and have them in the game in a few days. It's fun to talk about a game we love, so let's keep the talking up and the moping down on this subforum, eh?
I think bringing armors like BK and Chaos down a notch would make it so people craft more armor sets.
Naw. When chaos gave damage low or even damage low + ctr low and black kat didn't exist, the vast majority of people just used skolver and vog. The problem is that you have to make players really really want armors- just balancing them around stats isn't enough, especially when you can just create super-armor with unique variants.. Armors like vog and skolver let you partake in lockdown and FSC perfectly with your sword-centric build, but people still crafted mercurial set sometimes.. why? Because they wanted to gotta go fast, cuz that's neato.
You want people to use armors? Make them interesting and actually worth crafting.
I've always been of the idea that we should buff everything to be fun and different rather than nerf everything to be samey and boring. In TF2 a demoman's primary weapon can be a grenade launcher, a grenade launcher that relies on direct hits to do anything, a cannonball launcher, and a pair of boots(there's more but whatevs). Each one of those items has a use in that class, and is equally effective despite largely different playstyles.
In Spiral Knights, we only really have two playstyles - shrugging off damage, or completely avoiding damage. You go into the thick of enemies, but you either get hit or you don't, and your armor reflects that. If you get hit, you're more likely to bring vog cub to vanaduke rather than skolver because of the fire resistance, however if you can dodge hits bringing that extra damage might benefit you more.
What Fehzor is saying, and what I believe, is that by making all sets interesting in their own ways it makes every set desirable and opens up different styles of play. What if skolver gave sword damage med + sword CTR: low, but gun ASD: low?
Dread skelly could deal bonus damage vs fiends and undead (low each), but deal less damage vs constructs and jellies. Vog cub could increase movement speed while on fire, plate mails could grant players a defense up for several seconds after shielding with ancient plate getting an ASI: maximum while charging a weapon (to make troika smashes be very fast) etc. Giving something fun, something unique, something that makes the armor sets worth getting... Something that, in one scenario, could be borderline game breaking, but in most others is very balanced... That's what is fun.
We need more unique armors offering bonuses that mesh with playstyles better than black kat and chaos. Right now, end-game is black kat or chaos. Personally I prefer black kat because movement is critical to my playstyle, whereas people who use more bombs or rely on charges would prefer chaos.
Really what we need are more combat boosts or variables that armor can modify. After that, we can have a whole lot of new combat styles.
I agree that armor should lend itself to different playstyles so long as they don't end up the dominant strategy. There should always be something better for each level. In fact the only level in the game that really goes this way is Compound 42 which tears apart Chaos and BK users (maybe GITM).
I would love for their to be all sorts of little armor quirks so long as players can put them to good use.
@ Fehzor
There are a lot of problems with the game if BK and Chaos got nerfed people would go back to Skolver/Vog since we have some fairly unbalanced swords in the game. Guns have admittedly gotten much better though so you might see Seerus Mask and Shadowsun users increase as well. Bombs on the other hand need some improvement and I've been addressing that in another thread.
That's basically what you argued last time, to which my point was that if you want players to use more armor (and you do) then you have to make them worth getting. The idea is that Skolver, Vog, Shadowsun.. those are just the tip of the iceberg. Armors like armor of the fallen, dread skelly and volcanic salamander that are basically just vestigial features of what the game was like in its beta are the real issue here, and the real question is how we can make these armors worth getting, not how we can make black kat and chaos not worth getting.
And just so we're clear, I do agree that chaos and black kat are too powerful, just not offensively. In a perfect world, they'd have some combination of negative high instead of med, less raw defense and less HP boost. These things would make them much harder to turn into super armor, while still keeping them exciting and fresh from the players' perspective.
Part of the problem is defenses, or more appropriately the HP bonuses. BK and Chaos get the same amount of HP bonuses as other 5* armor, they also have comparable defenses. The only up/down to them is the Bonuses and status penalties.
Plate sets should offer the most HP bonuses, defensive sets (Owlite,Jelly, Dread skelly) should be second, other sets (Azure, Divine veil, Almirian) should be middling, Class armors should be lower but serviceable, Glass cannons should be bottom of the HP tier.
I also think some sort of penalty should be applied to Chaos and BK. Like an MSD med for Chaos, and a CTI (charge time increase) med for BK
I like these ideas but again, chaos/black kat is basically functional with the exception of its defenses which are way too functional for something that the armor isn't designed to do.
What I mean to say is that we could make your chaos but with MSD on another armor, like chroma:
New Chroma:
Damage: Med
Damage vs Slimes: low
Charge time reduction: Med
Movement speed decreased: Med
Attack speed decreased: Med
And it isn't even hard to come up with these. I think I'll go make a thread, in fact.
EDIT: Here is the thread I made- http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/111840
What about no curse weakness, but 1/2 all status penalties of the Chaos set instead of 1/3 of the penalties?
-----
Really, it's only slightly better than Chaos for pure bombers (no sword, no gun - only bombs) because it has no weakness to a rare status, but otherwise it's worse than Chaos in almost every way.
Well, I don't have any equips from either set, but from the stats shown on the wiki it seems to be this way.