Offensive armor will always be better for endgame. Defense doesn't matter when you can just dodge the enemy... or spam brandish charges before they can touch you.

As unbalanced as it may be, it doesn't matter. The problem goes beyond armors.
Dumb enemies and abusable weapon tactics come first.

Yes and no... sorta... well I'm being helpful!

The problem is exactly as said before: Offensive Bonuses are significantly more important than small defensive benefits. Therefore, there are some armors that are just objectively better than others. In that regard, there is a dire need for balancing.

However, once again: Offense > Defense. Thus, I feel weapon balancing should be prioritized over armor balancing. I'd rather have every weapon be viable than every armor be viable.

And by viable, I mean more than just "This weapon works alright in these very specific situations," assuming the weapon isn't something like the Wild Hunting Blade and the Cold Iron Vanquisher which are specialized against a specific enemy (And said weapons should be the best weapon against their respective targets, instead of being a "meh" alternative to other weapons).

Yeah I know how you feel...

You can always spice up your life if you meet some devoted Gunslingers, Bombers, or non-chaos hybrid players.

Oh, we're talking about PvP now? People have always rolled skolver in Lockdown, day 1. Before that, people used Vog in Super Brawl. PvP has always been about damage first and foremost, then heart trinkets.

As far as on the PvE front, Vog Cub historically was pretty popular too. Its just that the scales have tipped a bit and now instead of a good number of vog cubs and some defensive armor users, you see lots of chaos users and a few non-chaos users. Chaos has simply replaced vog and grown a bit.

I feel for you, Sirius.

As for weapons, Zeddy has a great explanation for why some weapons are weaker than others...I don't have a link to his post, though.

For the strong weapons, both their damage and some other quality gets enhanced when you upgrade. This is especially for brandishes, which get bigger and more explosions with every craft, in addition to damage. The weapons that miss out, like Shard Bombs and Caliburs, miss out because they only get damage increases, not ranger, hit count, etc. increases. (I know that shards get 2 extra shards when hitting T3, but that's not the point.)

oh boy more balance discussions

Should I feel guilty for wanting to use Shadowsun with a Volcanic Pepperbox?

Well, that doesn't really matter much-- Defensive armor could get more utility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

Nerfing chaos is enough to put things back into something resembling order. Swordies will wear sword armor, gunners will wear gun armor, and bombers will wear bomb armor, instead of everyone wearing chaos and using everything.

@Canine

"The Ancient Sets and the Lizard Sets."

What would you suggest to buff ancient? Normal and stun focused just doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the first place.

The whole point of Ancient was for surviving Vana mace swings back when they were instant, or near-instant death. The more Vana got nerfed, the less glamorous it became, until it eventually just became a set for maximizing health for the sake of novelty.

Nerfing Chaos will just put everyone back into Wolver/Gunslinger/Bomber gear, with no decent hybrid options again. Everyone constantly crying nerf instead of asking for other things to be brought up to Chaos' level, giving more viable options rather than less, really confuse me.

Zeddy nailed it. There's two options, fix chaos, bringing the game back into order, or completely redo the concept of armor to allow chaos to continue to exist as it does. Hmm... which seems like the most logical choice?

And since most people are greedy for damage and wealth, OP gear suits them best. Get a Chaos set and a Combuster, slice gremlins and beasts like butter (not to mention other monsters). Easy and fast: easy win, easy crowns, NO CHALLENGE, NO FUN (thanks Autofire, I won't fortget your post). And adding ASI/CTR/Damage bonuses to weapons that are already OP is too noob-ish (yeah, I "offended" half of the playerbase).
It's not about the gear, it's about people's nature. Most people are greedy (repeated this)-"Smash everything!"... but wait, SK is a game, you play it for fun. Be da-best in the real life, but in SK that's pointless... Giving NO chance to your enemies. Where's the challenge? The fun?
And finally o.o Chaos has to be nerfed. Nerf its defence and leave the bonuses like they're now. It could have Shadow and Piercing defence penalty, HUGE penalty, so people wearing it will be real glass cannons. I'd be funny to see how everyone continues to use it, even though dying in one hit... oh wait, now's Heart Pendants' turn.

"Having one point more of select or all status vulnerabilities might help"

I'm afraid that wouldn't do much. Someone wearing full Valkyrie will not take a drop more damage from fire than someone in full Chaos. This is because most enemies do Strong (4) status, and combined with max (4) weakness you reach a total of 8 strength status, the maximum achievable status strength.

Further adding to Chaos' status penalties would make the few sources of lesser status a bit stronger, inflict a greater penalty on hybridizing Chaos and make it harder to achieves positive status resist through UVs, which is good, it's a start, but it won't solve the problem on its own.

To really make it brittle enough, health and defence levels should be brought down to that of Cyclops Cap and Fencing Jacket. That is, none at all, perhaps even giving a single negative health point per piece.

I think the armor don't matter to much on this game because Spiral Knights is based on Zelda and Bomberman.
Both Zelda and Bomberman don't have conception of armor. You just need to know how to dodge and increase your damage.
On Zelda, you dodge the boss and hit on the right moment. And get a better sword.
On Bomberman, you dodge the enemies while explode them. And get fire and bomb tiles to increase the power.
On both, power and dodge are most important than armor that no exists.

Oh, sorry, never played Bomberman 64 Second Attack.
And hunt for tunics on Zelda? Do you mean the Zelda 64? I thought that doens't make much difference. Besides I never finished it.

I think that I just thought on the classic versions.

Chaos: Glass Cannon: Universal CTR and DMG VH boost, massive everything status weakness

Plate: Tank: High status resist and high everything defense, lots of extra hp, MSD med or higher, ASD VH, DMG reduction...med I guess.

Would that work? A true tank?

I can give some ideas for the Chaos and Ancient Plate sets.

Chaos Hood/Cloak
-same defensive stats
-Sword/Gun Damage Increase Med
-Charge Time Reduction Low
-Bomb Charge Time Increase High

Ancient Plate Helm/Armor
-same defensive stats
-immunity to knockback and flinching upon taking hits
-Sword Damage Increase High
-Attack Speed Decrease Med
-Movement Speed Decrease Low

Ancient Plate Shield
-same defensive stats
-Health Bonus +4 (after much thought, this shield is simply outclassed by the Omega Shell otherwise)

@ Kham

+ block ability I hope you mean shield HP? Because there is no ability to block incoming attack but with your Shield... and it has HP... so + block ability = shield HP? right...?

Even with that, people go with Swiftstrike buckler... ASI High... 3* shield, blocking? what is blocking?

It's still a useless stat

"Do NOT nerf OR buff an item based on PvP! Spiral Knights is a PvE game FIRST, and a PvP game SECOND"

Partially agree, partially disagree.

Spiral knights is a PvE game before a PvP one, that's true. However, balance applies to PvP before PvE simply because it's more important in PvP. Slight unbalance in PvE and noone bats an eye. Slight unbalance in PvP, and everyone loses their minds.

For 5* armor sets, I have all the Wolver sets, Chaos, and Merc. Nothing defensive - and I've never felt like I needed anything else.

@Traevelliath
PvP requiring balance is a problem with PvP and not items? Wat?

If I were to make a game that worked with all the items as they were, I'd have to change the game completely each time a new one came out as opposed to making new items that suit an already-made game.

That and you're implying that people get sklover for the piercing defense. Cause it's totally not the sword bonus >.>

Now, should you make "dramatic changes" to weapons for PvE, to the point where it would break PvP? No, definitely not going there. PvP is the most important part of the game, regardless of whether or not people like it that way, so nothing from PvP should mess up PvE. That being said, PvE has way more wiggle room for balance. In other words, it's harder to mess up. Therefore you should focus balance edits on PvE.

If weapon A is underpowered in PvP, it ought to get a buff. However if that buff would cause it to be the most broken weapon in PvE, don't go through with it. That said, if it makes it a little more popular than the average weapon in PvE, who cares right? No biggie.

They should debuff wolver set or something
Like take it's freeze resistence off

It's kinda true, but it would be considered more balenced in a way, just take of status resistences like freeze and it would be considered more balenced.

june 2011. But I stayed at 3* for a while by choice - so I got to 5* like this past winter. Still, I could have easily made more if I wanted to.

The thing is that SK is a tangled mesh of unbalanceness(is that a word?) Buffing or nerfing an armor or weapon affects all the other gear too.

We can split armor into armors with bonuses and just plain armors. Honestly, these are the only armors that people use (wolver lines, gunslinger lines, demo lines, chaos, and mercurial).

If we nerf wolver lines because there's no reason to use any other armor(as a swordsman and ignoring chaos) then should we nerf demo lines as well because there's no reason to use anything other than the demo lines if you're a bomber?

We can make tweaks here and there (fix chaos and gear that is completely inferior to something else), but SK is going to be unbalanced unless there's a total overhaul or something.

Yes, yes, I know about the nerfpocalypse. Wolvers, Zombies, Retrodes, Quiksilvers, Oilers, etc. But the fact still stands, currently there is no need for defensive armor unless changes are made or every level is made like C42.