Spiral Knights - The current state of elements/type defense

The current state of elements/type defense

3 replies [Last post]

Sun, 03/06/2011 - 19:59

kakelgis

Legacy Username

...Is ridiculous. I recently did some testing with it; My armor sets were Fallen for when without elemental resist, and Grey Feather for with. The place I actually noticed this was on Vanaduke's boss room, T3, Depth 28.

Okay so. I have done Vanaduke a few times, and on the last time I noticed that wearing my new Grey Feather set made pretty much no difference from my Fallen set.

With my Fallen set, the bullets from his even stages would deal about 10 ~ 11 bars of damage or so? Not too sure. His bullets are elemental-type; Having no elemental defense is quite obvious for taking such high damage.

However, now with Grey Feather set... I'm taking around 8 bars. This makes practically no difference, considering we'd have at most around 40 HP. Allows for taking one more hit, but what's the point? There's a lot of status resistance and special bonuses to sacrifice for this really small difference.

It feels kinda ridiculous that a difference from the maximum elemental defense possible to obtain (I believe? I have 360 elemental defense with the Grey Feather set. Without variants, of course) to no elemental defense at all only changed two points of damage.

And shadow damage, aswell - Having no defense to it currently, I take at most 12 points of damage. Doens't this feel somewhat wrong?

Shields aswell end up being kinda silly on this; My Grey Owlite shield, with great elemental defense and good normal defense, can withstand 2 or 3 shadow-element hits, but still only 3 to 4 normal or elemental ones. The difference also feels really small.

The current defense system doens't seem to be really working well; It's worth more just going for the special bonuses or status resistances of an armor rather than the actual defense. This ends up being unfair on certain sets that offer great defense but not many other stats, such as Divine, Azure or Ancient. There's no real point into getting defense sets if they're going to make such a little difference.

Sun, 03/06/2011 - 20:10

Shoebox

Well it's good to have some

Well it's good to have some numbers on here, but it's something I've been saying for a while.

I actually made some suggestions on how it could change: http://forums.spiralknights.com/node/711

Admittedly, that was quite a few balance patches ago, but still...
The basic system is there.

Sun, 03/06/2011 - 20:27

Pauling

I have to agree with this.

I have to agree with this. Elemental damage just became VASTLY more important, but the protection is lagging.

There are only two 5* shields that provide any elemental protection at all, and one of them (the dragon scale shield) lacks normal defense. That really does constrain strategic options. The larger issue is that by limiting each armor to only 2 types of defense- while mixing 4 types of damage into levels- players are forced into a very limited set of gear choices, or else they are forced to play the game of "which new supermonster is slightly less likely to kill me". Limiting damage even when you lack defense attempts to keep this from being a problem... but by doing so, it renders defense less important.

Also, a related complaint: there is currently a game mechanic whereby big hits don't kill you instantly, but rather leave you with 1 bar of health left. However, the new mecha-knight beam weapons can strip you of almost all your health, AND inflict shock (a damaging status condition) at the same time.... meaning that half a second later, the status condition kills you anyway. This seems to go against the spirit of existing game mechanics. I suggest that if an attack has already taken out your health, it should not be able to inflict a paralyzing, unblockable, and shield-disabling status condition as well.

Wed, 03/09/2011 - 19:38

Lightmikey

Legacy Username

I'll also add my two cents

I'll also add my two cents into to this: Elemental protection needs an uplift.

I'm glad to see the new elementally aligned levels and rooms and monsters. But I'm struggling to see any other useful armors other than the owlites, and even then it doesn't seem to be protecting against much. I've said this in another forum post, and I'll say it again, the armors don't seem to have much in the way of specialized defenses, and they should be corresponding STRONGLY to the themes of a level. The wolver line of armor should be providing excellent defenses in the beast levels, and probably very little in the fire levels. There's got to be a give and take for these things, or else everything ends up being generic. If it's generic, then there's no draw to make it special for gameplay.

This game has the potential to be very exciting by virtue of equipment combinations that make for more effective gameplay. I'd think it's starting down the path, but it needs lots of work.

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The current state of elements/type defense