Hooray for specificity!

Also logic is good, so I'm not complaining about having fire monsters immune to fire and ice monster immune to freezes and the like, but mixing these levels up within the same gate, particularly with the new nicely balanced monster defenses, makes it exceedingly difficult for a player to solo without buying all 4 weapon slots. Also, hopefully this is premature whining, because I'm praying that the new monsters will be dropping Thunderballs, Perfect Snowballs, and Everfrost hopefully even Sun Silver, but only being able to reliably make 2 out of the 5 alchemer lines all the way up to 5* is saddening.

I do have to agree with the sentiment that it will be increasingly difficult to solo (or even with a party for that matter), unless everyone has multiple weapon slots. Plus, to get all the weapons necessary to counter everything will take awhile... but I guess you could just stick with normal damages. Hm.

Erm, how would this work on a weapon with 2 damage types, such as the Sun Shards?

When is the Beta Wipe? Sorry I just want a beta wipe...

Some preliminary comments based on a run we just did:

On status effects:

• Fire damage from players to monsters has been nerfed. I endorse this strongly; it was overpowered.
• Fire monster from monsters to players has not been nerfed. I condemn this strongly; monsters thus retain a huge advantage. I carry the volcanic plate shield (5*, max fire resistance), and yet it takes fire less than 3 seconds to tear for a fire puppy to tear my shield apart... at depth 2. (tier 1, 5* gear)
• Wow, shock is annoying. Nothing like being surrounded by monsters and shocked... only to find that your movement is stopped and your shield is turned off automatically. It's a status effect that you literally can't run OR hide from.

On weapon damage:

• My 5* dread venom striker, at depth 6ish, required something like 15-20 swings to kill a new mechazombie (while adventuring in a party of 3). This is the weapon that's supposed to deal decent damage everywhere? Moreover:
  • This is a weapon that's 5 full star levels (and 650 energy) better than what's required? Repeated game design changes have emphasized that tier 1 should be a part of every player's experience, but if my 5* weapon DOES do more damage than the tier 1 equivalent, then god help the new players (20 swings to kill one monster?). EDIT: See equinox's numbers below.
  • The above metric (20 swings) is WITH an ultra damage bonus from my crown of the fallen helm.
• Rather than giving each monster two resistances, how about 1 strength, 1 weakness, and 1 "neutral" resistance? Since we see monsters of all types in the same level, it's difficult to take advantage of special weapon abilities (sword/gun for range) AND special damage types... even with 4 weapon slots. I'm concerned that in swords and guns, this will lead to people favoring normal damage and avoiding special damage types overmuch. That would defeat the point of this clever balancing scheme, by making special damage types avoided instead of sought after.
  • The other possible solution to the above problem: subtiers now have themes, and the weapons that work before a terminal may not work after. Consider allowing us to swap weapon loadouts at a terminal as we move from one theme to the next. Weapons have been made more specific, and forcing us to use a single general loadout is silly.
• Status effects are more versatile. Great! But bombs (the best vehicle for delivering status effects) kind of suck. In particular: the 2 and 3* vaporizer bombs have miniscule radii, rendering them painful to use. The 5* radius is appropriate for its rating, but the jump from 2* to 5* radius (or even 4 to 5*) is too large... low-star bombs need good large enough blast radii to be useful in and of themselves.

On monsters:

• Fire puppies in tier 1? These are laggy and hard to dodge on a good day; given my above comment on fire, they have no place in the "new player" experience. I know that these are new levels and probably haven't been adjusted for tier yet... but it's something that needs doing.
• The new mecha-zombie monsters shoot beams out of their heads. Kind of cool looking, but they also induce absolutely astonishing amounts of lag, even on the lowest graphics setting. These monsters are new, and still need to have their attack animations reduced to match the low graphics setting.
• Gremlin healers are weirdly omnipresent, even where other gremlins fear to tread. Since gremlins now spawn amidst monsters with other resistances- and since guns have been nerfed- swords are now an attractive way to kill healers... except that healers can step back and swing their wands for an instant hit (no warning, no avoiding). This is already an advantage over other monsters, but now that some popular guns are less effective, this results in forcing players to close range, and then killing them. No other monster has the ability to so completely counter every possible form of attack... and now, this special monster seems to be omnipresent.

And lastly: in general, I really like the effort to make more weapons useful. But right now, there are 3 special damage types, and two "core" weapons (sword/gun) with their own uses. That would require 6 total weapon slots in order to take advantage of special attacks. Not only is this too many slots, but it's just too complicated a set of rules to memorize... ESPECIALLY when facing a mixed mob of enemies. (Wolvers spawn next to lumbers all the time, but they have opposite resistances. That's a lot of crazy weapon switching)

Thanks for posting these numbers, equinox. It looks like the 5* sword, fully leveled, is doing roughly the same damage as a brand new 2* equivalent in the same class. I was going to pay to upgrade my equipment, but it sounds like I'd be the same (or better off) downgrading instead.

I have to say I was pretty disheartened at fire damage being nerfed. I've been working my butt off for the past week doing nothing but leveling Fiery Vaporizers and I finally had my Mk. III at Level 6, was planning on getting an Ash Of Agni (had all of the necessary mats and CE etc), then I find "So yeah we nerfed the heck out of it." as an update .___. I have to admit it, it was overpowered, but I just hope all of my effort wasn't for nothing.

Yeah, Ash of Agni is still very powerful - definitely still worth it, just not against fire enemies of course. I mean, there are no better DPS options, really.

And I'll have to try Khorovod again... though I think my Gran Faust replaces it.

I think the major problem is that people aren't going to be willing to compromise Normal's blanket offensive capabilities for a few dimensionless damage points.

Either something more needs to be offered for using other damage types, or you're going to need to change the way it all works.

If it's advantageous for us to switch our gear for differently themed levels (which sounds fun!) could we have a way to save and easily switch to a set (or a few sets) of gear? Basically, instead of changing every weapon, helmet, armor and shield every time I enter an area with different requirements, I could just select the "Jelly Basher" or "Save me from the Devilites" outfit I'd made previously and all my gear would swap at once.

I'm going to post a link to an old suggestion thread I made about armour balancing, because I feel it wasn't really enough of a topic at the time to be properly discussed.

http://forums.spiralknights.com/node/711

Although it was originally made to address the fact player armour was really only being used for their offensive bonuses over any other potential quality.
I think some of the stuff that was discussed in it may be relevant to the current topic.

No, the only neutral damage type appears to be Normal. There is no disadvantage or advantage to these types of weapons. I suspect that's alright for the first 2 Tiers, but to really succeed in Tier 3 now you are going to want to be packing some super effective or outright powerful gear. There's a larger advantage now to purchasing weapon slots.

I've noticed that a Divine Avenger has similar DPS to a Wild Hunting Blade + Ultra Slime Bonus. I find that slightly odd as the Slime family has low resistance to elemental attacks. I need to watch the numbers to confirm this properly.

Busting out a newly crafted Faust was instant gratification against Gremlin Healers.

Why does the Divine Avenger have bonus vs Fiends if they are resistant to the elemental part of this weapon? Seems like two steps forward one step back.

Piercing damage feels a lot less useful now that the monster types that are weak against it are the most adept at dodging. This would be less of a problem if the only weapons to do piercing weren't guns. And the easiest guns to land a hit with (Antigua series) suffer due to always partially dealing a resisted damage to these monsters.

Damage tests:
Depth 22:
Equip: Full fallen set

Weapon: Khorovod:
>First swing: 270 dmg
>Second swing: 330 dmg

Weapon: Argent Peacemaker
>Shot a skelly: 60 dmg
>Charge attack on skelly: 95 per hit
>Shot a lichen: 20 dmg
>Shot a beast: 100/110 dmg

Vanaduke seems to have got quite harder without being able to kill the skellies fast with an ash of angi/guns, and how much health they have (moreso in a party of 4).
Also the peacemaker hits him for 71 instead of the old 175.

Also, Sentenza seems to do 51 damage against zombies, while Peacemaker does 71. In Tier 3, don't remember which depth.