Spiral Knights - How should class balance work?

How should class balance work?

13 replies [Last post]

Thu, 06/12/2014 - 23:10

Fehzor

As in, if everything functioned as was intended, what would this be like?

The big thing

The player doesn't typically have access to all or even many of the gameplay elements, which means that a random matchup of players would force all of the possible deviations of gear to by necessity work with themselves and others within a close range.

If I join your party, I don't know what you're using. I know what we're fighting, so I bring some weapons that seem effective. Maybe you're using shard bombs, maybe you chose magma driver, or maybe you've got a leviathan blade. For the game to work well, these variations would for the most part have to work themselves out. If I come bringing ash of agni and you've got shivermist, it has not worked out... but nevermind, because I probably have another haze bomb to spam or something else to attack with.

Towards the endgame this changes, as players can craft whatever they need to survive and should craft whatever they need... but does that mean they should have to? I would say not, under most circumstances.

We have these armor styles:
Defensive = grey feather/royal jelly/skelly/plate
Class = boosts one set of weapons; trades some defense
Glass Cannon = chaos/black kat cowl
Specialized = various bonuses; highly situational

Defensive Armor

First of all, what should the defensive sets even do? This is a mystery to me. If they simply defend as is implied, then they're bound to be on par with class armor... that is, they just make you less offensively powerful and more defensive. But how does this help your team? You can't protect everyone, and defending yourself over attacking the enemy makes your team weaker on the whole. If I can spam more shivermist busters and voltaic tempests as a bomber or kill those pesky turrets faster with my ASI, then my team is far better off. But if I'm sitting pretty with my defense armor on firing half as many shots so that I can tank a few more, then my team is going to have to pick up the slack. You can play the stats game to rig things more in your favor, but that's hardly using them as was intended, and more turning them into class armor.

So in order for the defensive armors to be viable strategic pieces of gear, they would have to do something to help the team be more defensive, rather than just the individual. Am I correct in saying this?

Class Armor

The class armor makes you into a soldier that focuses in on that one weapon type. If I craft gunner armor.. I'm gonna bring mostly guns. The same goes for bombs and swords. So when I'm using these, my team effort would likely become something related to that weapon type, limiting me when I go to use other weapon types, but for the most part not completely restricting me. Which means that if I were to craft skolver or vog rather than seerus or volcanic demo, then my usefulness is going to tank during the Vanaduke fight. If you say this thread is 100% about FSC then you're being that guy and you need to stop. If you say it to be smart with me because "no one likes Fehzor" and you want to derail my thread then I'm going to find you and beat you up.

For the class armors to be useful and "work", my weapon type would have to be viable in most situations. This kind of checks out, considering that my swords would still be somewhat useful against the slag walkers and guards, and prior to the boss. The same goes for bomber armor, and gunner armor for other situations.

Glass Cannon Armor

When I become a glass cannon, I really just become the ultimate hybrid class, with CTR and damage for all of my weapons. But I also get one shotted pretty easily and I'd better know what I'm doing. So whenever I'm using this well and doing way more than I should be able normally, I'm probably outputting more damage than my team needs me to be, which means that perhaps my team should be using me as the damage dealer?

Specialist

This really seems to me like it's just kind of there to help you optimize your loadouts. Like, if I was fighting a new danger mission, and there was elemental attacks coming from respawning turrets and beasts and slimes everywhere then arcane salamander set would come in and save the day and it'd be crazy and wonderful. Or maybe they help you to overcome certain things, like if I was stuck on the jelly king I could get a virulisk suit and be the greatest jelly king farmer ever and it'd be oh my god so wonderful. But then why go back? Like, if I had skolver and virulisk, why use skolver ever again for slimes, if my virulisk suit was better? And what role is that for my team? Person-wearing-virulisk-suit? Is that a thing? Other odds and ends like armor of the fallen are oddly specific to certain situations.

For these to work, they cannot give straight benefits for specific situations, and must still be worth crafting for a variety of situations. There is no way to balance that.

Actual Playstyles

Nick said here- http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/72304

That the play styles represented by the battle sprites are:

Head on combat
Defending against attacks and aiding team mates
Debilitate enemies + hide + deal crippling blows? = Assassin

Given that we're taking a random selection of sprites and saying "THIS SHOULD WORK!", then a group of all supportive players should be about as good as a group of all head on combat or all debilitate enemies type players, or any combination within. So for this to work, they would all have to have the same level of synergy, which is tricky.

If I have a support + offense + assassin, that's going to naturally have a sort of synergy going on there. The support can make the others work well, and the assassin can take care of all the real issues making room to be carried by the others. So 3 supports should be able to overcome things just as well, roughly?

If it wasn't this way, then the following would occur: What class should I play as?

Stagger storm = support others
Brandishes = kill everything

Stagger storm + stagger storm = Waste massive amounts of time
Brandishes + brandishes = pretty good
Stagger storm + brandishes = Best thing

Which is makes it very difficult to not choose the head on kill everything strategy. Instead, two support players with stagger storm should do fairly well. Except instead of stagger storm, think of it as stagger storm + venom veilor + voltaic tempest. This kind of happens, but it's really slow unless you have someone to just brandish them, in which case it's the best.

What do you guys think about this?

Fri, 06/13/2014 - 03:23

Parasthesia

Between the right choice of

Between the right choice of elements, i think the sprites are fairly balanced, and not only benefit the solo player but the team.

The secondary skill of two, and the 3rd shield skill of the kat can be utilized for closing distance safely and making a pick on some key turrets, and the proper choice of first skills are useful for eliminating one tanky enemy. "Kill everything, but kill certain things first"

Vortex bombs should be considered strongly. Vortex + Sword charge, Vortex + Status Bomb, Vortex + gunspam, all reasonable.
If you're lucky enough to have the tentacle groping bomb, then you have the added benefit of poison, making the team and your limited msi safer. The electron vortex has additional crowd control potential, as well as more damage due to clustered enemies taking additional shock ticks from being around other shocked things, in the case of chaining shock vortexes or in tandem with a VT.

As far as defensive armor goes, it might be feasible to mix one piece of defensive armor with another piece of glass cannon or class bonus. Between sprite perks and trinkets, you can have a good mix of defensive and offensive capabilities.

Fri, 06/13/2014 - 04:11

Midnight-Dj

:/ taking over for dray and arc

What about solo? In the case of soloing, you have all the time in the world to finish your enemies off slowly without dragging anyone behind. I am sure defensive gear would be preferred if half health revive was still around, that way, you can be one hell of a heat bandit in boss runs.

Strangely, I wear volcanic demo suit and never use bombs in group runs, the reason is that I actually fear that ppl may kick me for using blast bombs too recklessly and spamming plasma capcitor and obsidian crusher just don't cut it in a newb team with low DPS. And no one has ever complained about me for not using bomb while wearing demo suit. However, they did appreciate me acheron charging the gremlins with no CTR bonus.

Specialist gear ( I prefer the term scenario gear )
For these to work, they cannot give straight benefits for specific situations, and must still be worth crafting for a variety of situations. There is no way to balance that.

Oddly enough, I used valkyrie raiment, which is in your theory, a scenario armor, for almost all of the shadow missions except for fire, for fire undead/fiend, I generally go with a divine veil + armour of the fallen combo, where the damage penalty of the fallen is neutralized by the divine in the sametime still having good shadow defence. Scenario armors CAN give you straight benefit, the problem is that you didn't realize that SK never forced you to wear a complete set of armour. Another example of scenario/class hybrid would be the dread virulisk helm+skolver coat, giving me a VH slime bonus on acheron while still give a medium slime bonus to my other weapons.

Brandishes = kill everything
So, stuck a trolljan to the ground with glacius and then charge up a volley of blitz isn't your thing? It is viable you know.

Stagger storm = support others
I think it goes without saying that all haze bombs aren't intended for damage, except for AoA/VT.

Head on combat
Defending against attacks and aiding team mates
Debilitate enemies + hide + deal crippling blows? = Assassin

Way to generalize all pet users and throw them into a single basket, you can infact be aggressive with maskeraith and quill enemies before head straight into battle. And one can also be defensive with drakon by laying down fire storm on your way of retreat or escape danger with back fire barrier, and frenzied firestorm can also buff you whole team. Seraphynx should actually be the pet of choice if you are tanking, that way, you can use heart attack to recuperate health loss or use aura to reduce damage.

Final message: I disapprove of classes of any kind in SK's PvE (to make it clear, I do approve legitiment classes to be implemented in PvP it can eliminate the gear/UV imbalances), I believe every player in this game should have their own choice of tackling a problem, running into a fire fiend/undead level with valkyrie is fine, as long as you can kill every devilite you see, I won't care what gear you wear. Taking down lumbers while wearing jelly set for the stun resist, sure, wearing full fallen into FSC, that is okay, I will kill the trolljans.

As stupid as wearing grey owlite instead of vog set might sound, that is the player's choice, neither I or you can stop her/him from doing that, the same could be said about the classes, no one should be forced to play a certain role in SK, you can be a gun/bomb, sword/gun, bomb/sword, or the combination of all three, that is SK's greatest gift to the players, the freedom to choose what gears they use regardless of how stupid it might turn out. Beside, it never hurts to try out armors you never used before.

Fri, 06/13/2014 - 07:54

Fehzor

@Parasthesia

"As far as defensive armor goes, it might be feasible to mix one piece of defensive armor with another piece of glass cannon or class bonus. Between sprite perks and trinkets, you can have a good mix of defensive and offensive capabilities."

I realize this is more than feasible. In fact, you can basically just become godlike by playing the stats game with class and glass cannon armor. But what role are you fulfilling with this? Elitest player that carries the team? I really don't think that if everything were balanced, that would be around.

"Vortex bombs should be considered strongly."

Yes, this is a good strategy when it applies. I think the vortex bombs are definitely a thing that works most often with regards to balance, as they fit in perfectly with other's weaponry 90% of the time. If they don't, it's really on you more than anything else. I didn't talk about it because the OP was long enough and it wasn't really so broken.

@Midnight-Dj

"What about solo? In the case of soloing, you have all the time in the world to finish your enemies off slowly without dragging anyone behind. I am sure defensive gear would be preferred if half health revive was still around, that way, you can be one hell of a heat bandit in boss runs."

If defensive items are like they currently are, then using them solo is just a matter of preference-- it isn't really such a problem. A defensive buff that supports the team could be implemented in such a way as to support you as well, to further add incentive for using it. Prior to the change in the way the game works, defensive gear meant nothing because when the going got tough, the party just went into Sonic mode and all defenses meant nothing unless you ignored your party.

"I wear volcanic demo suit and never use bombs in group runs"

If that is the case then using vog would be a straight upgrade to your volcanic demo suit, which you are basically just using as defense armor. What you're doing should be somewhat viable, but not beneficial. Really this behavior says something about the balance of acheron and blast bombs with regards to party play.

"I used valkyrie raiment, which is in your theory, a scenario armor, for almost all of the shadow missions except for fire, for fire undead/fiend, I generally go with a divine veil + armour of the fallen combo"

Which means that starting out, you had to craft twice as much armor as someone that just made say... vog + snarbolax. But that now you're hypothetically always better off against fiery fiends than that person using vog+snarbolax, and that because of it you just really don't need vog armor. In reality, the class armor may just be flat out better for you than specializing.

"Another example of scenario/class hybrid would be the [deadly] virulisk helm+skolver coat, giving me a VH slime bonus on acheron while still give a medium slime bonus to my other weapons."

Yes, you can optimize your gear with "specialist" gear. Currently not many people do this because there really isn't much point to it. If you used full skolver, then your acheron would be the greatest. If you used full virulisk, then you could sword and gun and whatnot jellies well, but you'd suffer against gun puppies and any slime deemed not slimy enough to actually take damage from your bonus (are there any? I don't think so but it's a possibility). Or, like you said, you can choose a midpoint and have relatively middling stats. Since using virulisk requires crafting an extra set and the bulk of your damage would be going to your acheron regardless of whether you mix, there isn't very much of an incentive to use this.

My thought was "what if virulisk WAS better than skolver at giving you damage for slimes even on your swords?" Obviously, it would make it a valued item set, but the second it became "good enough", it would outclass skolver but only for slimes. There wouldn't be an incentive to mix it, because it would be a straight upgrade. But what role does it play? As just "optimizing" gear that isn't really necessary 99% of the time? That's lackluster. Which is why I think that- "For these to work, they cannot give straight benefits for specific situations, and must still be worth crafting for a variety of situations. "

"So, [freeze] a [trojan] to the ground with glacius and then charge up a volley of blitz isn't your thing? It is viable you know."

Yes, the brandish lines do have utility on their charge attacks. However, consider glacius vs shivermist buster. Shivermist lets me freeze as many enemies as I want, whenever I want, however I want.. when I fight that trojan, I can drop the bomb, and she just freezes herself wherever for me to get them. Glacius would require me to carefully time my shot, but would also give me a great amount of damage over not the trojan. So if we're all using glacius, then we'd be pretty well off and we could do that, but it would be limited. But if one of us brought shivermist? Best option. In a very general manner, the brandishes are meant for dealing damage over utility, though they possess both.

"Way to generalize all pet users and throw them into a single basket"

I'm not generalizing all of the battle sprite players, rather specifying the "official play styles" that OOO's identified. You could play to aid team mates using maskeraith, or tackle foes head on with seraphynx. OOO gave you options within the battle sprites do whatever you need to, really.

"I disapprove of classes of any kind in SK's PvE"

By "class" I meant "playstyle enforced by choice of gear", rather than stuck in stone definitions. I have the liberty to shape myself in any way and re-invent my class as I go along. The point of this rather, is that "The player doesn't typically have access to all or even many of the gameplay elements, which means that a random matchup of players would force all of the possible deviations of gear to by necessity work with themselves and others within a close range." So if you're using defensive + class items and you join me as a glass cannon, then there should always be some kind of innate synergy between us.

At the same time however, we want there to be many varied roles to make the game more interesting. If I come in wanting to play as the "support the team" player, then that should be a viable choice. Or maybe I want to be a support the team while dealing damage, and if I can pull it off then great. If I want to be the defensive guru, then I should be able to do that without hindering my team. So what would it be like if we could, as you are saying, we had "the freedom to choose what gears [we] use" and still have it turn out well most of the time?

Fri, 06/13/2014 - 09:38

Bopp

armor vs. play styles

I haven't read all of this in detail, but you seem to spend a lot of time talking about armor types, and then switch to weapons when discussing actual play styles. In SK, armor is unimportant and uninteresting, while weapons are important and interesting. Is the goal of this thread to figure out how armor should be redesigned, so that it strongly affects character class?

Fri, 06/13/2014 - 09:55

Fehzor

Largely, yes. I'm not certain of how the developers wanted everything to fit toghether, especially armors but with respect to weapons and playstyles too.

Fri, 06/13/2014 - 10:16

Momofuku

There is a common RPG element where useless armor exists to make powerful armor feel that much more valuable. This is very much the case when comparing something like Azure Guardian to Chaos or BKC.

In terms of knight "classes" based on armors, there's only two options: glass cannon and glass. Defensive armors are hardly "defensive" when it comes to damage reduction, and only those with particular status resists have actual merit (since natural status resistance is worth +4). This is especially pronounced when the glass cannon sets come with status weakness, making the difference in glass cannon vs glass sets a little more pronounced when it comes to status heavy themed floors (ie. Ghost in the Machine where shock immunity makes things easier than going full chaos; poison immunity in Compound 42, etc).

A simple way to rebalance or make defensive sets more pronounced in terms of effectiveness (without affecting Lockdown metagame) is to add damage reduction from family bonuses. If Royal Jelly Mail took 20% less damage from Slime family or Dread Skelly took 20% less damage from Fiend family, you can help create a viable tank class.

This damage reduction effect would feel more pronounced if all monsters received damage buffs too--that way glass cannons would feel even more fragile, and defense sets would feel more resilient with % based damage reduction.

Fri, 06/13/2014 - 12:34

Trats-Romra

@Momofuku

But how a damage reduction from family can help your party?
This is the thing that Fehzor is pointing out. Even giving more capabilities to the player help just the player and doesn't affect the entire party.
The point is armor should be rebalanced to fill a role or have a class(playstyle enforced by choice of gear). So armors can be effective on groups.

Fri, 06/13/2014 - 15:14

Skold-The-Drac

defensive armors & specialist armors

Defensive sets could give the user a straight 18% dmg reduction v. Damage type & the team a (stackable) 10% damage reduction to it.
The one wearing the defensive armor would have 28% dmg reduction alone. Should they get a full party of the same defensive set, they all get 58% off the damage type. Before the armor defends.

Plate lines receive 20% normal damage reduction and give the team a (stackable) 10% party damage reduction to their specialized damage.
Ancient plate would be unique in providing 40% dmg reduction to normal damage for user and giving stackable 10% party normal damage reduction.

Does this model work? Would it be on par to or at least challenge chaos?

Specialist sets could give the user 15% dmg reduction to all defenses covered by armor and the family dmg bonuses could be spread to the party.

Again: does that idea appeal to you?

Tue, 06/24/2014 - 15:27

Fangel

Hmm...

Spreading the bonuses to your party is an interesting topic. It would be especially interesting if bonuses spread to teams in lockdown, making defensive armored players valuable to the strikers.

Here's how I would tackle party bonuses:

For each piece of defensive armor, the player's party gains a defense buff equivalent of a low UV to the specialized defense, and the player who wears them gets an additional low on top of it. So one player wearing full grey owlite gives has an additional "Maximum!" elemental defense, and other party member have a "medium" on top of what they are wearing. Not being a damage bonus, these values stack with each other. With a full team of grey owlites, everyone would have an additional +10 to elemental defense.

As stated in a previous post, plate mails should give bonuses to normal defense, and should work in increments of "medium" rather than lows. However, ancient plate and vitasuits should give party members each an additional pip of health instead.

"Specialist" gears would give an additional damage bonus of "low" vs the selected family (Virulisk - slime, Valkyrie - fiend) when the full set is worn to the entire party. I want to say that this bonus would be on a separate "party" stack, but if three people wore virulisk and one person had chaos + max damage, a power orb + a deathmarked slime and acheron charge hit would probably be the end of slimes everywhere(good riddance).

Class gear would have no party bonuses. These items are to boost individual player's fighting capabilities so that they can be in the front lines fighting, and thus help the party by helping themselves.

I should probably creep back over to the suggestions forum huh.

Wed, 06/25/2014 - 00:28

#10

Zeddy

It's okay for defensive sets to protect just the user as long as the user has a means of drawing mass aggro that's not simply dealing the most damage.

Wed, 06/25/2014 - 07:43

#11

Drischa

Not gonna lie, the model suggested earlier was clever but made no sense. You ancient plate armour just magically makes your teammates more protected? You're basically wearing a pile of rock for goodness sake. For things like magic cloak sets it might make sense because, well, magic, but physical defence just wouldn't work.

Zeddy really mentioned what it's all about - aggro. Unless the monsters are focused on the armoured player, that armour is useless. The way spiral knights works just defeats this, as all the monsters would just be going for the player dealing the most damage i.e. the chaos clone spamming acheron charges.

I just don't see how defenseive sets in this game would ever work. unless they removed inturruption, modified player & monster health to make both take a lot more hits to kill, and gave larger defensive sets natural aggro over the offensive sets.

I used to play another top-down rpg with my college buddies, I was the tank. I could sit in the middle of a few smaller enemies and my passive regen would keep me alive forever. Against larger monsters I could take a few hits, retreat and let my health go back up, and then go back in.

That's what defensive armour needs, health regeneration, or just simply more health. Having a health pool much bigger than usual is insanely useful, it's the reason people use plate mail in lockdown, that extra half-a-penta really makes a difference.
Seraphynx health regen on shield pls

I hope you enjoyed my random ramblings about armour. Note on shields - please give some of the biggers shields debuffs but make them super defensive for all. I don't care if I have MSD/ASD/ADD low on my shield if I can place a small dome over my teammates to protect them if they lag out or about to get hit.

By the way, perhaps change the ASD on the craftable plate sets to MSD? It would make them much nicer to use while still slowing you down. Or give them CTR low, since the 'guardian' weapons a.k.a sudaruska and iron slug have quite useful charges that make up for their slightly worse regular attacks. Kind of. You get what I mean?

Wed, 06/25/2014 - 18:09

#12

Fehzor

I think I care more about it working than immediately making sense. They might have to add on some explanations to item descriptions to explain why your dread skelly suit does what it do.

Zeddy's idea works a lot better, though in Spiral Knights its more skill based and tanking hits is never seen as good. If anything, it would make sense to add in distractiony weapons to compliment this kind of supportive gameplay, and give the user of defensive sets MSI as well as defense, rather than taking it away. So like, if I had a 5* bomb that made all enemies in a huge radius focus on me, then I could dodge and maybe tank a few hits... but mostly dodge.

Another thing is pills and vitapods. Vitapods make all health values closer to one another, and pills always heal the same amount. So one possible buff would be something like "more from health buffs", to make your extra 6 pips of health fill up faster and your vitapod become more meaningful.

Thu, 06/26/2014 - 02:03

#13

Skold-The-Drac

Discussion lives!

If they set aggro as a major value in game rather than its' current setup I'd love to work with zeddy's nail on the head.

My particular solution was essentially under the assumption that aggro would have to stay as is.

I'd also concede the damage reduction idea for the health restoring solution because health truly is where the tanking would come from here.

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How should class balance work?