I have a blog. Sometimes I write things on it. Most often, I don't. Regardless, I decided to write about SK some while ago but I never published the post anywhere but on my blog (which no one reads) until now. I decided I'd post it here in an effort to make this subforum a better place with proper debate and thus, I'd like to request that anyone straying off topic is just ignored and naughty words are not used. Here's the post:

As it looks on Cradle now, Chaos is king. Very few high end players haven't gotten the full set yet. It’s definitely an overpowered set, that's something you can't really dispute. Here are its current stats:

• Average normal defence
• Average elemental defence
• Average 5* health bonuses
• Damage Bonus: Medium
• Charge Time Reduction: Medium
• Medium weakness to Poison, Fire, Freeze, Shock, and Curse

See also: http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Chaos_Cloak

All in all, wearing a piece of Chaos will grant you twelve points of abilities as you get four points for each weapon class. You can compare this to two, which you get from most class pieces as they only give say, Attack Speed Increase: Medium for Swords and such.

So, why do I find the Chaos buff to have been good for Lockdown? Let's start by analysing the metagame as it looked before the buff.

The best swords were toothpicks and Sealed Swords. Of the two Sealed Swords, Gran Faust has an edge over Divine Avenger due to the curse it sometimes inflicts on the second strike. However, Divine Avenger was less commonly resisted so it was widely used because of that. The toothpicks inflict pure damage which is great for dealing with those who don't have any defence against it.

The three viable generic striker armours were Skolver, Vog Cub, and Snarbolax. Since Vog Cub didn't give any damage bonus and Attack Speed Increase can be gotten through Unique Variants, the other two were more preferable. A full Skolver set grants immunity to minor freeze while a full Snarby set does not. A mix reaches a freeze resistance of 7 which is enough, too. It should be noted that many have super Unique Variants on their sets, allowing them to walk straight through various haze bombs and that plain sucks. It would only be fair if people fighting against haze bombs would not be able to identify it as long as the users of the haze bombs can’t identify the armour of the enemy.

Since most swordspeople carry three weapons, it usually ends up being Final Flourish, a gun of choice, and a Sealed Sword. The metagame was pretty plain and boring because it didn't really matter what you'd pick. If you were up against a Skolver, you used your Sealed Sword. If you were up against a Snarby or a mix, you used your toothpick.

Eventually, the Black Kat Cowl was released to make people buy Elevator Passes so they could grind for it. I did and I got my Black Kat Cowl that way. The Black Kat Cowl had to be justified, though. Three Rings did this by buffing Chaos so that you could get it if the Black Kat Cowl was out of your reach. Since the two are balanced, Black Kat Cowl isn't a super overpowered pay to win item because Chaos is essentially just as good.

Back to Lockdown, then. Chaos is the only piece of elemental resistant armour available. It gives you just as much extra sword damage as Skolver and Snarbolax does while also giving you some Charge Time Reduction. Few charge swords, though. The ones that have useful charges are Fang of Vog and the Brandishes. Charging Fang of Vog with Chaos in Lockdown is however suicide so in the end, Chaos is only better than Skolver and Snarbolax if you're using a Brandish and we ignore other weapon classes.

Gunslingers thus got more out of the buff as Charge Time Reduction is useful to them when using the most popular dedicated gunslinger guns: Alchemers. One could argue this was the worst part of the buff because gunslingers benefited from it so much.

One should not forget hybrids, of course. Thanks to the buff, it’s a very viable style now. In full Chaos, you could even bring a haze bomb if you are a Striker and get Charge Time Reduction: Medium if you've heated the bomb.

Lastly, there are bombers. What about them? They already had Mad Bomber. They still benefitted from the Chaos buff, but not like others did. Bombs are an awful lot about statuses and statuses are Chaos users' nightmare. Hit a Chaos user with Ash of Agni and they'll lose half of their health over time. Hit them with Voltaic Tempest and they're harmless as rainbows and kittens. Grab a Shivermist Buster and you can keep half of the enemy team completely disabled until one of your teammates goes jerkface mode and kills them for pretty damage numbers, allowing the enemies to switch to Skolver. Try full Plate gear, equip a couple of Penta-Heart Pendants and grab nearest Venom Veiler. You can tank most people that way but Chaos users are especially weak to poison and no one bothers to get UVs against it.

So, to summarise, the Chaos buff has done the following:

• More swords viable in Lockdown.
• Gunslinging much more attractive.
• Being a hybrid is much easier.
• You need pay to win UVs for less things now.
• Bombers are much more powerful vs Chaos users.