Spiral Knights - Bonus Rework

Bonus Rework

12 replies [Last post]

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 16:12

Trollingyou

In the current system of bonuses, there are some useless ones (the family bonuses) and one that is not worth it (movement speed). The way it is now, there is a hard cap on how much of a bonus you can get. This is one thing that renders family bonuses useless, because if you can reach this cap with generic bonuses you will not need anything else. My first suggestion is to remove this cap.

Now, I know many people will cry OP. Of course, just removing it would not be the best idea, there is more to this. The idea of removing is to allow for more wild combinations of bonuses instead of limiting the bonuses to a hard cap. What if someone wanted even more attack speed or charge time reduction instead of reaching the limit and having to dump into damage? Of course, there should be something to prevent the ultimate abuse of double maximum damage bonuses.

This is why I also propose to change the amount that a generic bonus gives (either weapon specific, defense related, status related, or in general) to a gradually increasing gain. Here is an example of what I mean (keep in mind this is only an example, not exact numbers):

The current system:

+1 through +6 DMG bonus = 7% gain per increase, maxing at 42%

My idea:

+1 = 2%
+2 = 5%
+3 = 9%
+4 = 14%
+5 = 20%
+6 = 27%
+7 = 35%
etc.

(For those wondering what the pattern is it adds 1 + (the current amount of upgrades) to the bonus percentage)

The only exception to this would be the family bonuses, which will still offer a flat amount. The current increase for them seems reasonable for this. Family bonuses will hard cap at +4 to prevent abuse.

The main idea behind this is to prevent the creation of OP weapons. If you want a higher bonus in something, you'll have to invest in it instead of investing just enough here, just enough there, and then dump the rest to here and I'm set to faceroll everything. Yet, it would allow a new level of something at the cost of something else.

Now with that said, I also propose a change to how the status bonuses work. Currently, if you get enough resistance, you can render certain statuses useless. This is only useful in certain areas in PVE, and renders some weapons useless in PVP. Because of this, I propose to change the way they work to simply reducing how effective said status is, instead of both that and reducing the chance it will happen to you. Instead of negating freeze, you just won't be frozen as long. Instead of negating fire, you won't take as much damage from it, etc.

TL;DR - NOPE, READ IT SON.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 17:10

Pauling

If anything, I would propose

If anything, I would propose making status immunity easier to get. Under the present system, full double max armor isn't enough to make you immune to many status effects... which makes status resistance feel like something of a waste of money.

Even in lockdown: max+medium shock resistance may protect you from a voltaic tempest mist bomb (which is, by design, a weak source of the effect)... but the Polaris and storm driver lines will still inflict shock with dismal regularity.

One exception: I thoroughly support cutting the duration of the curse status. 20 seconds of being without a primary weapon- while wearing one piece of max curse resistant armor- is insane.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 17:14

El-Odio

Interesting suggestion

I wasn't thrilled about it at first, but your suggestion is basically to lower the bonus but make it open ended. It's a nice nerf for P2P weapons, but there is a problem as far as I see: Even if it has no cap anymore, the maximum you can get is usually +8. Clothing has no UVs that increase weapon bonuses except for those that are inherent to it. Weapon bonuses are, as far as I know, restricted to the weapon they are on.

Also, Skolver doesn't make you immune to frost, as little as Mercurial makes you immune to shock. The bars are not really the maximum.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 17:23

Luguiru

Though we do a lot of damage already

The family versus weapon damage buffs are not equal in practice.

Rather than lower weapon specialist bonuses that far, we only need to lower it slightly:

+5%
+10%
+15%
+20%
+25%
+30%

Then for the family bonuses, keep it as the same values.

+7%
+14%
+21%
+28%
+35%
+42%

The bonus would still max at +6. The first question you are probably about to ask is how these bonuses would add up together. To be brief, they would not; their bonuses would be separate, but not active at the same time. Say the family bonus is +3 jelly on your Calibur and you are wearing the full 2* Wolver for +2 sword damage. The family bonus gives you +21% while the sword bonus only gives +10%. Instead of combining the two for +31%, the damage bonus would be taken from the higher value; it would pick the better damage bonus against whatever you are hitting for that particular target. Think of how enemies have their own families and certain damage inflicts more or less than neutral damage. Using that same Calibur, if you use the charge on both a jelly and, say, a Scuttlebot, it would know to use the +10% sword damage for the Scuttlebot rather than the +21% jelly because of the different target; against the jelly it would use the higher bonus, against the Scuttlebot it would use the higher bonus.

For a larger scale example, say you have +6 jelly bonus from a UV on your Leviathan, full Skolver, and the Snarbolax shield. You are against some kind of jelly. For the extra damage dealt by your bonuses, it would choose the higher bonus against that particular enemy: the sword damage bonus only gives +30%, but the jelly bonus gives +42%, so it would pick the larger bonus when damaging that jelly.

Visual division in case I/others are going blind and silly

For status resistances we could have two different kind of resistances for armor: probability and duration.

Probability would reduce the chance to receive the status by 10% per bar (five bars, 50% probability to deflect; ten bars, 100%) as more of a gamble than a constant resistance.

Duration would lower the duration of the status by 18% (not 1bar:1second), maxing out at five bars (total -90% duration of the status when received). Duration would be more reliable but not guaranteed to completely resist the status.

With status resistances divided everything with status resistances would have to be rebalanced to suit the armor to either type of defense for every resistance it has. For example:

- 5 bars freeze probability resist
- 5 bars fire probability resist
- 5 bars stun duration resist
- 5 bars fire duration resist
- 5 bars stun duration resist
- 5 bars stun probability resist
- 5 bars shock duration resist
- 5 bars shock probability resist

Basically, offense based equipment (stuff that gives damage buffs, herp derp) would have probability while defense based equipment (RJelly, DSkelly, Plate, etc.) would have duration. As UVs status resistances would have to be split and a couple new symbols to indicate the difference. Every status resistance has a little (kind of) red circle around it, right? For duration that circle would stay, but for probability it would be a triangle. Shapes. Alternatively where it says Status Resist there could be two different lists, one for Status Duration and the other for Status Probability.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 18:24

Trollingyou

Responses

@Pauling

The thing I fear with status immunity is that it renders some weapons completely useless compared to others. One example are the elemental alchemers. If the status ones could not deal their respective status then why would you ever use it over the nova driver? They way they designed it is that the status balances out their lack of damage and if they cannot inflict them then they have absolutely nothing over the nova driver. This of course is a better case scenario, as we know some weapons are useless even with their status effects.

My idea of the duration reduction though was meant to be a larger decrease than what it is now to make up for the lack "status probability" (like luguiru refered to it as). Maybe I'll make it a more clear in the OP. Also, curse duration is ridiculous, I agree with you there. Maybe it will make the GF charge far more usable.

@El-Odio

I am aware that the armor itself does not make you 100% immune to said status from anything and the bars are not the maximum. Mist bombs, which are used almost exclusively for their status spreading, are made useless by the armor alone. The armor makes you immune to weak status effects. Correct me if I'm wrong here but I believe the mist left by greavers is also in this category.

I do think the numbers I used in my example are a bit low. I thought it would be better to lower the weapon specific and generic damage bonuses because they would stack with family bonuses. I was afraid that having +6 damage bonus being equal to what it is now would allow people to do outrageous amounts of damage when stacked with a family bonus. One of the ideas behind this was to make family bonuses worth it. Right now they are mostly a waste if you can achieve max damage. The reason why I thought it best to cap the family portion to +4 was because I thought +42% damage to a weapon that has +6 damage (using the example) would make it 69% damage, which is completely over the top.

@Luguiru

I can't click your link for some reason. 0_o

The difference in damage bonus between my example and your example at +6 is only 3 percent. It was lower overall in my example due to stacking family bonuses with damage bonuses. Also, I do the the weapon specialists sets are already at a rather large advantage over the others anyway, so I do not see why this reduction would be so bad. I see what you mean in your example, but it still wouldn't make people want to get max family bonuses due to the ease of achieving max damage bonuses with the weapon specialist sets.

Your idea behind status probability and duration is interesting, though I do not think probability should ever reach 100 percent resistance. That is complete status immunity, which at that point duration does not matter at all, and then we are back to square one on how defensive armors do not provide good enough defense. Other than that it is a very interesting idea.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 18:39

Luguiru

Addressless link

Nothing to worry about, it only means you have cancer.

Kidding.

It could be 4% per weapon bonus and 8% per family instead, making family bonuses double as effective as weapon bonuses. That would balance out the existing issue where the weapon bonus works a third of the time (one of three weapon types, effective against all six families and non-family enemies) while family bonuses only work a sixth of the time (all three weapons, but only against one of six families; does not help against non-family enemies). I had the numbers fairly close to cushion the actual point of the change, nerfing weapon specialist damage buffs.

The highest status resistance UV is 2.5 bars for armor, right? Then again, 5* status resistance trinkets give 1.5 bars each; those can be duration instead of probability. If we go by only helmets and torsos and their UVs, a single item with 2.5 bars of passive resistance to, say, fire with a max UV for another 2.5 bars, then the matching helmet/torso with the same fire resistance and UV, that would be the full ten bars by 10% for 100% immunity, left? Rather than give 10% probability to deflect the status, that rate could be bumped down to 8% per bar. With all the bars you could possibly get it would only be 80%. Status resistance trinkets would be duration based, not probability.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 19:51

Little-Juances

What I would do to monster bonuses is to pair them. Bonus vs beasts and vs fiend would become one (both families are weak to piercing).

Of course, this method would look weird on some already UVed stuff.
But on the bright side, Volcanic Salamander will make a little more sense. That elemental defense will have a gremlin bonus, along with slimes.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 20:56

Havenihaveaproblem

This reduces player damage

This reduces player damage across the board and raises the emphasis on UV farming, since that monster UV bonus is suddenly highly useful. Even with the bonus reduced to 5%, the numbers still seem quite high. You will be able to achieve with a sword, for example, +10 universal damage (full Skolver, BTS, two trinkets) for +50% damage. On top of that, you can get +VH to a family, which, although it caps at four, is another 28% damage bonus. That is a total of 78% bonus damage. If your weapon is damage type aligned, that is massive damage. All in all, it will become possible to have nearly twice the damage bonus available as before, provided you can farm the appropriate UVs.

It could still work if only the numbers were smaller. The obvious solution is to lower the already lowered value of 5% even further; however, this simply puts more emphasis on farming those perfect monster specific UVs. Since I'm not a farmer, I'm not a huge fan of that. I kind of like not having to hard farm some UVs yet still be comparable in strength to my peers.

Although, I can see some players who wouldn't mind this at all! That's just my 2 cents.

I would suggest an alternative that might strike a balance between making monster-specific UVs useful, creating more UV variety, and still being viable if you adhere to the current system:

Leave the system as it is, but put the monster-specific bonuses on a separate counter that also caps at 6. Your total bonus vs. a monster type is your universal damage bonuses plus your monster specific bonuses. The constraint would be that a positive weapon alignment counts as six stacks of monster-specific bonus, capping it.

In other words, if you have a Skolver Helm, a dragon scale mail (UV Beast Med), a BTS, an elite slash module trinket and a Wild Hunting Blade (UV Beast High), you will have a total of 11 stacks of bonus damage for ~+77% damage vs Beasts.

If you have the same set up with a Final Flourish instead of the Wild Hunting Blade, though, you will still have the usual 6 stacks vs. Beasts. The armor does not count towards your beast bonus because your sword already deals piercing damage.

If you have the same set up with an Acheron, you will have 8 stacks vs. Beasts, or 56% bonus damage. The armor counts in this scenario because the Acheron does not deal bonus damage to beasts.

For comparison, a damage aligned weapon already deals 50% more damage than a neutral weapon. Add the cap of 6 stacks of bonus damage (42% bonus damage) and you deal 142% times 150% damage, which is something like 220% of normal damage. Under my system where the potential cap is 12, you could theoretically only reach 184% normal damage. So, you can shore up weaknesses with monster-specific UVs, but appropriately aligned weapons will still be the best solution.

I suppose if you feel it's too powerful, the bonus granted by damage UVs could be reduced from 7% to 6%.

This solution has the added benefit of maybe making some of the normal damage weapons more viable.

Edit after reading the other ideas

I agree with Pauling, especially on the Curse. I think the no resistance duration now is something like 42 seconds, 4 potions crossed out and like 3 weapons. It's insane.

Liguiru's idea would probably work. I would say his idea has much less consequential repercussions than mine, being that it is really dealing with only a 12% damage bonus difference, whereas mine is much larger.

I did not follow Little-Juances suggestion.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 20:47

Luguiru

A direct damage buff

For example, +X bonus to pierce damage, but it would only work if the weapon already has that damage.

Only for the three specialized damage types. No normal.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 20:53

Havenihaveaproblem

Can you flesh that idea out a little more Luguiru?

If I understood correctly, you mean that if a weapon deals piercing damage, it can receive a +piercing UV? How does this interact with the other UVs? Does it replace the monster-specific UVs or does it stack with them?

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 21:20

#10

Luguiru

Knowing Three Rings after an ancient change

It would basically show us how much a bar of damage is worth in numbers. A while ago there were numbers instead of bars.

Imagine the combination of a +1 beast UV with a +1 fiend UV. Both are weak to pierce. Instead of having two separate UVs, they would be combined into a single UV which makes you deal more pierce damage (while using a weapon which already deals pierce damage). A damage bonus against enemies weak to pierce rather than a bonus for a certain weapon against anything. The difference being that the bonus applies to a damage type rather than to an enemy, making it a completely different but more useful effect.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 21:42

#11

Trollingyou

Moar Responses

@Luguiru

Having an 80 percent max is much better. Still got a high chance of avoiding the status without being over the top. If it does inflict, you'll still face the full force of the status.

I'm not sure about having the bonuses separate from each other. If it were a 4 to 8 percent difference, people would start UV farming family bonuses, and instead of using offensive armors due to the huge damage difference, then we'd be in a reverse situation. That's why I wanted to keep it together like it is now.

Why leave normal damage out? It's already underpowered damage-wise as it is, we don't want to widen that gap. If your worried about some swords having half normal, they'd simply receive half the benefits.

@Little-Juances

Maybe it could be a damage type buff like Luguiru mentioned, since that would do the same thing. It would also be odd for a Nova Driver to have Beast/Fiend bonus; One is useless while the other is somewhat useful.

@Havenihaveaproblem

Yes, people would be able to go above the current damage bonus we have. However, you'll notice in your example that you sacrificed a whole armor set, two trinket slots, a shield slot, and one UV slot to gain that 78 percent damage to only one family type. You did not get any attack speed or charge time reduction, meaning you'll be slow, and you're limited to normal/pierce defense. The only way to alleviate this is by going for triple maxes on everything, but if the bonuses worked like they do in my idea, it would not yield as much as someone who put more into those stats. The idea was to make more possibilities instead of having everyone reach a hard cap.

Of course, the numbers can be modified to have a higher base and a lesser gain per upgrade.

Then again, your suggestion basically takes my suggestion and Luguiru's suggestion and combines the two, which is not a bad idea btw. Making normal damage weapons more viable is always a good thing in my opinion. Basically the bonuses themselves would max at six, but stack with each other provided the weapon does not have a positive alignment with the target, in which it would max at the regular cap because it'd hit harder anyway.

EDIT: I was ninja posted. On that note, I want the numbers back now.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 21:56

#12

Havenihaveaproblem

Thanks for the vote of

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Looks like we have 4 or 5 systems. Only Nick can be the judge of which system will be the one system to rule them all.

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