to trick us to spend lots of ce

1) put movement speed increase low there
2) players saw that and thought, "maybe i'll run noticeably faster!!!"
3) players craft and spend CE (hopefully it's bought with real money)
4) ????
5) PROFIT for OOO & players trolled

Isn't the point of the movement speed to combat the decrease in speed when charging? (Say for bombs, while charging you now walk normal speed with mercurial?)

Disclaimer: I have both Merc Demo and Merc set.

Merc set should focus on movement speed bonus, piercing and shock resistance (basically, it makes you behave like a Quicksilver less the shock charges).

Merc Demo set should focus on bomb damage (should give us Medium on each piece instead of low) and bomb fuse time reduction (not to be confused with CTR). This would make Merc Demo Set unique for bomber.

I completely agree, but for the mail instead of the helm

I would find this to be an amazing alternative to say, a wolver set... letting a swordy dash in and out a bit better, the gunner run in times of need, and the bomber being able to lay those crucial bombs for the sake of the team... and the shield bearer to dash faster to a friends aid... though we need many more shield bearer equipment.

Though it is a bit weak, i can understand the hesitance... its not very specialized, where as Merc Demo is... and you dont really want a full team of Mercs just for that...

To tell true, the boost is un-usable ATM (Mostly) but giving more MSI would make it too good to be true... I would suggest finding another way to make it a bit more usable to the general public, perhaps giving it a Negative damage to a monster family, like the fallen set, or making it truely specialized for say, a shield bearer, or something... maybe even add some other "Hidden" attribute as a boost, but i have no clue what...

Love that you are answering questions,
~Tsu

One thing that a "Movement bonus" could do that wouldn't kill the game's dynamics is to remove the walk speed penalty some weapons have.

For example, when charging an Electron Vortex (or charging a DA, or reloading a Callahan, etc.)

If you compare charging Ash vs EV, both at CTR Max (since they have identical charge times) without MSI you can walk ~9 squares when charging an Ash but only ~6 when doing EV. With Medium MSI from a full Merc set you get to 10 squares with Ash and 7 with EV. What if it was 10 and 10? Or 9 and 9?

I think trading MSI for CTR (in the case of bomber armor) is reasonable, especially since you can still get CTR Max using trinkets if wearing full Merc. That would be good move for someone who specializes in these penalized weapons.

It would take a pretty dramatic increase for one person to be zooming on ahead in a disruptive way. I think speed bonuses become combat-useful way before that point.

Low is cool, but med, for a 5*, wouldn't be overpowered.

The movement speed is a little noticeable in lockdown, specifically for recon.

When you cloak, your walk speed is reduced by a little bit. If you're using mercurial set, you run at about normal pace.

Take that and add value to it as you will.

If movespeed is too powerful in LD, nerf it for LD. Why should my gameplay be constrained by what's balanced in an optional mode that only a fraction of the SK population plays? And which is so poorly balanced that it's full of clone loadouts anyway?

Move speed is definitely powerful, but its current implementation is too weak. As many others have said, it's barely noticeable even with two pieces. There is an opportunity cost to using Mercurial; you miss out on more valuable bonuses such as attack speed and damage. I'd like to see a slight increase to the amount of move speed granted per rank, as well as a stat change to low/low/med on the Quicksilver line and med for Mercurial Demo.

I'd be more than willing to trade up survivability for more speed. Right now, the speed buff is too little to change up gameplay.

I agree that Merc vs Merc. Demo are a too similar. Maybe make Merc have less piercing and shock resist, and be able to run faster instead?

...on MSI being a powerful ability in SK. It is particularly useful when bombers are charging bombs like Vortex or gunners are reloading. Those tiny speed bonus could help avoid bomb charging being interrupted by enemies' attacks.

As I mentioned earlier, I think MSI should be restricted to Quicksilver line only. Give Mercurial Demo set something bomber specific (such as bomb fuse time reduction). I would suggest to either increase the existing MSI bonus per level, or simply increase the MSI level per piece of equipment (e.g. from Low to Med). This way, bombers would use Mercurial Demo set more. And for people who like to play Ninja, they can get Quicksilver set. I found MSI Med is good enough for bombers.

I also think giving MSI bonus earlier on in Quicksilver line is good. Perhaps MSI Low for 3* and 4* and MSI Med for 5*?

To be honest, the movement boost doesn't really make a difference (unless you are walking in say, a clockwork tunnel, and the other person will pull ahead of you) I don't own this set, but if it does negate charge movement decrease, I think it's helpful. But IMO, if the speed boost was very distinct, it would be overpowered as you said.

I conducted movement speed tests with Ancient Plate Mail and basically concluded that each rank of movement speed is around 4% (which is close enough to the test results I've seen on ASI that I tend to assume they work the same way).

It's hard to get precise numbers, I don't own a set of Mercurial, and in this game it's always possible that the math is doing something weird and complicated behind the scenes, but it looks like Yotian's suggestion of "Maybe have it start at 8% and reach 15% when 5 star?" is probably roughly equivalent to giving a "low" bonus on each piece at 3* and a "medium" bonus on each piece at 5*.

Personally, I think that sounds pretty reasonable. I think MSI is unlikely to have larger overall effect on clockwork fighting than an equal percentage of ASI. I could maybe see it having a bigger impact in Lockdown, but then again, Lockdown already has multiple class abilities that radically affect move speed; it seems unlikely to break just because one guy has 15% MSI.

And certainly there's no mass rush of players to get MSI armors so far. I can probably count on one hand the total number of knights I've ever seen wearing Mercurial, even as a costume.

SUGGESTION: If the devs are really scared about introducing that MSI, perhaps you could test it by holding a special in-game event (similar to the Halloween one, for example) where players can obtain items that give larger MSI bonuses but that will expire when the event ends in a week or two. Simply hand out MSI: medium trinkets (or something) as party favors, and watch what happens.

As for reducing the movement penalty for charging, decreasing bomb fuse time, and so forth: I would tend to assume that OOO is not going to implement a brand new ability type if they can possibly avoid it, because that would take actual work on their part. Though please tell me if I am wrong about that, Nick; if you actually want ideas for new abilities to add to the game, I could go on for pages...

Yes it is a new ability, but a long overdue ability for bombers.

Why? Because a bomb is not a sword or a gun. A bomb doesn't have normal attack (you can swing your bomb but doesn't do anything). The normal attack for bomb is charging. But to charge, you have to go through these sequences: place bomb in charge position (ASI may affect this, it's hard to notice because it's already very fast), charging the bomb (CTR affects this), place the bomb (nothing affect this because it's almost instant) and the fuse on the bomb goes off (this is currently bomb specific. It appears to be bomb charge time under CTR Max = bomb fuse time. No ability affect this so far)

So as you can see, bombs are more delicated devices that don't follow the mechanism of swords or guns. And the perfect equipment to implement this is Mercurial Demo set. After all, people did go through extra effort to finish Shadow Lair, they should deserve a better reward than a mediocre Bomb Damage Med and MSI Med.

With respect to this topic, I would suggest to Nick to consider buff the MSI on Quicksilver / Mercurial Set (MSI Low on each piece of 3* and 4* equipment, and MSI Med on each piece of 5* equipment), remove MSI and add Bomb Fuse Time Reduction on Mercurial Demo Set.

Has anyone tested how it might affect movement speed in general in some non-constant way?

So that if you're moving at a slower/faster speed, then the actual increase is different?

The easiest way I could see to test this would be take the slowest walk speed possible from using a weapon, walk speed while charging Vortex?, normal walk speed, and perhaps the dash of the new Hammer. Then compare the increase in movement speed between all three?

Would be mighty interesting if, say, the dash speed increases multiplicatively.

Since you're asking Nick, I find movement buffs (or reductions) to be laughable at the moment.
The increase is so small it doesn't bring any difference to your fighting tactics, if you were going to hit something or get hit without the bonus, with the bonus it's the same. It's only use actually is to win a race against a friend when you're bored.
Personally I don't mind this being this way since I use Ancient set more often than Quicksilver.
Or well, I used to before the gremlin split damage.

Because it doesn't get that electrifying awesomeness till 5* ;)

When I am wearing my mercurial set, I definitely notice how much easier it is getting away with taking risks. I rather enjoy risky behavior, and the increased movement speed has protected me numerous times, while doing the same things with different gear has not. Outside of combat the only real benefits involve avoiding traps or drones, moving spare pills to party buttons faster, and beating other players to the vials you want. It seems like there are a couple possibilities for giving movement speed bonuses a more general appeal.

1) Increase the low movement speed bonus value so a medium movement speed bonus would negate the speed penalty while charging any weapon. This would make the bonus more noticeable, but this would probably require quite a bit of testing to make sure this way would not be too fast.

2) If number 1 allows too much movement increase, make the bonus only apply while charging a weapon. This would maintain the bonus's usefulness without diminishing the established pace of the game, but it would remove the usefulness regarding traps and drones.

3) Assuming a low bonus is 4%, it might be more appealing to change that interval to 3% and giving the low bonus to three star and/or four star gear. Then giving medium to five star gear could be slightly more manageable. The difference between 3% and 4%, or even 6% and 8% probably wont be noticed, but I think the difference between 12% and 16% could make the difference regarding game balance.

4) Limit the duration of the movement bonus. I can't really imagine all the possibilities for this option. The first idea that came to mind would make a very fast speed bonus timer recharge while someone is shielding.

I haven't really considered how any of these would affect lockdown or how hard they would be to implement.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention the usefulness of getting to downed players faster to revive them, and keeping up with a group better if a person falls behind or backtracks as much as I do.
-espil

I notice the bonus a little bit, but it doesn't seem to benefit me at all, especially compared to things like attack speed increased or damage bonus increased.

I agree with Derpules. Personally, it would make so much sense to have MSI med on each Mercurial piece. I have switched between Ancient Plate and Mercurial a couple times in various runs. I confirm that pseudo-MSI VH is noticeable (after wearing the Mercurial set, I feel: refreshed, awake, caffeinated), and having MSI med on each Mercurial piece will not truly break the game. It would create a new path for players to explore.

This would support a different playstyle that thrives on the open range and will be limited in close quarters(because other armors are much better suited for close combat). MSI allows players to not get hit as often, but it requires space to be effective. The vast majority of the end-game combat is: close quarters, panic, chaos, bullets. Enabling players to be fast thus does not detract from end-game combat because the combat is not about open spaces and it's more about damage, attack speed, shields. Rather than excelling at quickly taking out the enemy, players can run through traps, have fun derpingly running in circles, and will be ready for the impending difficulty rise when pets come out.

By stunting the Mercurial set with only MSI low per piece, many hopeful SK players have mourned over their plans for whatever they wanted to do. Isn't SK about: Freedom? Choice? If not, I guess I was sorely mistaken. I don't want a different bonus on my Mercurial set. I had a dream of being fast and furious two years ago when I finished my wiki research in the fall of the release year, but it has been unfulfilled ever since. My experience with pseudo-MSI VH is that it is noticeable, but not drastically speedy. I'm not the only person who has dreams...

Sincerely,
Qwez

ps. AP set has MSD med total, Merc set has MSI med total, the difference between the two sets is movement speed VH, so I thus experience pseudo-MSI VH.

You couldn't be more right...

EDIT: Qwez, maybe you could record a video so we can all see what you are talking about. :P (Not that I think you're lying, but it would help put it into perspective.)