I've recently done an analysis of how damage works which you can read about here: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/38367

I feel that knowing this allows me to make a bit of a conjecture as to what needs to be done to balance defensive equipment.

I define the "standard defense" of a piece of armor as the amount of Piercing resistance on Skolver, which equals Elemental on Vog, Shadow on Snarby, Piercing on Justifier, etc.

The Case for Defense

In short, nearly everyone equips a full set of typed offensive armor, i.e. the Wolver, Gunslinger, and Demo lines. And those that don't equip a full set of offensive armor tend to equip one piece of offensive armor anyway.

There are two reasons for that. The first is that Spiral Knights is a very offensive game, and people rightly place a high value on offense. The second reason is that the amount of defense you gain by equipping defensive equipment is just not very much, and that's what I want to address.

There's a large variety of armor and most of it nobody equips. It's true that weapons are similar, but weapons see more variety of equipment than armor does. I think it's a waste to have all these interesting ideas for armor available but to de-emphasize their strengths so much that nobody can make a case for equipping them.

I also believe in the idea of "trinket = Max UV". If you go to the trouble to acquire a trinket and then use one of your precious trinket slots to equip it, it should give you as much of a bonus as a Max UV does.

Trinkets

I've found that people are willing to equip Penta-Heart Pendants. I've also found that people are still willing to equip Elite Modules even when Penta-Heart Pendants are available. To me, this shows exactly how much defense people want out of their defensive trinkets in order to consider equipping them over offensive trinkets: 6 bars of HP.

In your standard T3 situation (+10 HP from armor, +12 Vitapod), a Penta-Heart Pendant boosts the number of hits your knight can take before dying by 22%, AND defends against all four types of damage.

By contrast, the defensive trinkets (Royal Jelly Band, Radiant Crystal Pin, Dread Skelly Charm) boost the number of hits your knight can take before dying by 10%, and only defend against one type of damage (and it isn't Normal).

Now, I'll give you that these trinkets are supposed to be inferior because you get them from tokens and not from your CE, but I think that's a little too inferior. If you equip two of these trinkets, you're going to be receiving 18% less damage from pure type attacks (and most attacks are split damage anyway). That's enough of a resistance that you might actually be able notice it, but it's certainly not worth two trinket slots. At the very least, their effects should be doubled.

What about status resist trinkets? Very similar. If you're so worried about a status that you go to the trouble of using your trinket slots to resist it, I think you should come out with an appreciable resistance to the status. I find that people are generally satisfied with Max status resist UVs, and so I think that the effects of these trinkets should also be doubled to bring them in line with the UVs.

UVs

When people acquire a piece of armor with, say Max Shadow resistance, what they're expecting to get is an appreciable resistance to Shadow. I think they're expecting to get something that's just as good as the standard defense, i.e. one Max Shadow on non-Shadow armor yields a 33% reduction in Shadow damage.

What they actually get is 40% as much defense as the standard defense: a 14% reduction. Much less of a bonus for something they probably paid out the nose for.

If you double the effects of the 5* damage resist trinkets, you end up with an effect that's 25% stronger than the current Max UV, and half as good as the standard defense: 18% reduction in damage. I believe this is a reasonable level for Max UVs from a balancing perspective. People will likely still be disappointed, though, and I feel that the true balancing point for Max UVs and defensive trinkets is actually 60% of a standard piece of armor.

That is, damage reduction UVs should have their power boosted by at least 25% and possibly 50%. Trinkets don't necessarily have to match, but probably should.

Armor

So how do we balance the armor? Simple: balance it in trinkets, with synergy tilt.

The abilities of Elite Modules and Penta-Hearts should be worth 1 trinket each.

Status resist trinkets and damage resist trinkets are "inferior" trinkets, and should be worth comparably less: 75% of the value of a good trinket AFTER making the adjustments suggested. Currently they're not even worth half.

There is no available trinket for Normal defense. Normal defense will be considered more important than other kinds of defense, valued similarly to other kinds of damage resist trinkets, except will not be considered an inferior trinket.

Medium damage vs a type should also be considered an inferior trinket, at 75%..

Damage/ASI bonuses that apply to all weapons should be considered slightly better than 1 trinket, perhaps 125% or 150%, but certainly not 200%. I'll say 150% for my examples.

A medium move speed bonus will have a value of 150% of 1 trinket.

Status penalties and non-Normal defense reductions on armor will be considered half as important as bonuses because they can generally be avoided by not wearing the armor in the relevant strata.

Use Skolver as a base: Skolver has regular defenses (Standard defense to Piercing, and 15% higher defense to Normal). Skolver gives a medium sword damage bonus (+1) and a good freeze resist (+0.75).

So the value of Skolver is 1.75 trinkets. This should be the goal for all armor.

Let's look at some other armor:

* Deadly Virulisk

Regular defenses, medium vs slime (+0.75) and a good Poison resist (+0.75). It carries a bonus vs slime and Piercing defenses, so that provides synergy enough to bring the medium slime bonus up to full trinket value (+0.25 tilt).

So Deadly Virulisk is balanced. It's a very niche anti-slime armor that few will pick up, but it's not inherently bad.

* Almirian Crusader

Normal defense is 5% higher than the standard (+0.1), slight bonus to Curse (+0.375), slight weakness to Fire (-0.1875). Has negative synergy for Shadow Lair FSC, but otherwise doesn't really, so no tilt.

Almirian Crusader has a value of 0.2875. Yes, the hardest armor in the game to get a hold of (bar trading) is that bad.

Suggestions: Triple the Curse resistance and give this armor a niche as the ultimate anti-Curse armor (+0.75). Increase both Normal and Shadow resists significantly to make up the difference.

* Ancient Plate

Normal defense is much higher than standard (+1 [Not really sure how high the bar actually goes]), no other type of defense (-1), good Stun resist (+0.75), ASI down (-1.5), Move speed down (-1.5), +3 HP (+0.5). High Normal and Stun resists complement each other versus Trojans and Gremlins (+0.25 tilt), excellent in lower tiers (+0.25 tilt), very high tanking synergy [if you're slow, you're slow] (+1.25 tilt).

Ancient Plate has a value of 0. Ancient Plate covers its own drawbacks well, but doesn't really provide anything in the way of a true bonus.

Suggestions: I would argue that it needs even more Normal defense to make up the difference.

* Armor of the Fallen

Normal defense is lower than standard (-0.3), good Poison resist (+0.75), good Fire resist (+0.75), ASI low (+0.75), strong Curse weakness (-0.375), medium weakness vs fiend (-0.375). Shadow resistance that isn't really usable vs Fiends gives this a strong negative synergy (-0.5 tilt).

Armor of the Fallen has a value of 0.4.

Suggestions: Medium ASI (+0.75), increased Shadow defense.

* Azure Guardian

Normal defense is 5% higher than the standard (+0.1).

Azure Guardian has a value of 0.1. With only a near-negligible Normal bonus, it has nothing going for it.

Suggestion: +2 HP (+0.33), increased Normal defense.

* Chaos Cloak

Normal defense is lower than standard (-0.3), slight weakness to all status (-2.25), low damage bonus (+0.75). Weakness to all status means you'll have a hard time finding places where the weakness doesn't apply, but by the same token you'll never find a place where all the weaknesses apply at the same time (+1.5 tilt).

Chaos Cloak has a value of -0.3. The damage bonus isn't worth THAT much; even if you seriously overvalue it, it's not doing much more than making up for its own weaknesses.

Suggestion: High damage (+1.5); yes, I'm actually suggesting high damage vs all things for all weapons on a piece of armor. That also gives it some tilt for being glass cannon. Alternately, medium damage and low ASI.

* Divine Mantle

Normal defense is removed entirely (-1.15), Elemental is higher (+0.225), Shadow is added (+1.725), good Fire, Shock, Curse resists (+2.25). Having two types of defense when neither is Normal is a notable negative synergy (-0.5 tilt), and three status resists don't really apply all at the same time (-0.75 tilt).

Divine Mantle has a value of 1.8. It's quite good and probably needs no balancing.

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I'll stop there.

To conclude, defense variability needs to be higher in general. It really does. The damage formula does not produce noticeable differences in damage from very slight defensive differences, so I don't think there's a reason to be as conservative with defense as the current armor designs indicate. More useful armor variability results in more playing variability, too, and I think there's something to be said for allowing players more options in a game where the primary method of getting better equipment is amassing a variety of gear that can be swapped out as needed.

To summarize:

• All status and damage resist trinkets need to have their power doubled.
• Damage resist UVs need to be boosted 25% and possibly 50%.
• Armor should be balanced relative to trinkets, with synergy taken into account. Most of the armor in the game needs to be rebalanced.
• Defensive differences between armor are too slight and make very little difference. They can be increased significantly without radically changing the game.