Spiral Knights - Shadow Lair "Rewards"

Shadow Lair "Rewards"

8 replies [Last post]

Tue, 07/01/2014 - 10:30

Vanguard-Xelon

Okay so you just ran a shadow a lair and your about to make a set of Armour, then you notice:

1. Ice queen mail is Useless - Gratz on getting a set that resists piercing and ice, you know, like Skolver? except you have stun resist, but you can still perform a perfect evade when stunned and the most common enemies for stun are still easy to move slightly to the left out of the way of there attacks so i guess you can enjoy your lack of sword bonus

2. Almirian Crusader is useless - Normal/Shadow with a weakness to fire, when I run FSC or any other location i need shadow i would take Divine or my silvermail any day

3. Heaven iron is useless - yeah its better than Almirian, it has a nice sword boost and fiend bonus. however i would rather not have that shock debuff, its the most annoying element to be afflicted with in the game and not to mention if i need shadow resistance im probably in a situation where there also dealing a status affliction, other than curse which even then i can just not use the weapon or item affected by the curse

4. Mercurial - as much as that movement speed bonus seems nice it makes little to no difference, im not much of a person for bombs myself but out of all the sets i would say this is the most usefull... for bombers... and i guess that shock resist is nice... but the only boss that does shock damage or have a shock themed level is RT... who you cant damage with bombs

5. Arcane - Slime and Beast damage YAY, because you know, that Acheron didn't demolish them all anyway and that blitz needle didn't just ruin beasts to begin with, oh and it resists elemental? the damage type that beasts and slimes don't do?

6. Snarbolax - as the only shadow resistant set for sword users, i guess i cannot fault much with this but still, its the same shadow resist problem i always have in that if im running a shadow resist set im probably in FSC where i would rather have my silvermail for universal damage boost to undead with shadow resist plus peirce for the few ash tails and also have my divine veil for a feind boost and shadow resist for universal damage boost to fiends

my point? the rewards are gimmicky at best, i admit im not taking lockdown into consideration but we can dash arcane and heaven iron off there, i suppose you could say you wear that shadow resist gear for Acheron users and bombers would where mercurial to move faster while placing bombs but that would be it
we need these rewards to have more "use" to them, give them an extra resistance to a status effect that is actually relevant to the boss levels that atleast 72% of players run constantly
also because you know, SL is the endgame and your rewarded with some pretty useless gear in the long term

Tue, 07/01/2014 - 10:40

Tech-Star

Well Said

I agree here. No idea how to fix it, so I'm going to be a lazy person and let others handle it.

(Actually, just listen to what (s)he said in the last paragraph. Makes a lot of sense, and crap.)

Tue, 07/01/2014 - 11:27

Dibsville

My run-down

• Ice Queen - Great set. It's a good trade-off to Skolver for people who are gunning or bombing. Skolver is usually considered better for obvious reasons, but Ice Queen has its uses. It's not the top priority but it's a set worth getting.

• Almirian Crusader - This set was just a bad idea from the start. The curse resistance means that it's really only good for UFSC and Graveyards, the former of which has tons of fire damage, which the set is weak to. Deadshot is outright better than this set, but hey, at least you can make this set from Cobalt, so it's not all bad.

• Heavenly Iron - This set is a pretty niche armor set. The sword bonus is interesting considering how its sister lines work, and the useful universal fiend bonus makes it a pretty decent hybrid set if you main swords with a different weapon on the side. The shock resistance absolutely kills it, and there are definitely armors that are better, but Heavenly Iron is in no way useless.

• Mercurial Demo - This is an amazing set. Shock defense is extremely useful and the Movement Speed Increase it gives is really under-valued. It can be considered a straight upgrade to Mercurial because elemental resistance is arguably more useful than piercing resistance, plus Mercurial Demo gives the Bomb Damage Bonus: Low. It's a good hybrid bomber set for Lockdown players, and in PvE it can straight up be the best bomber set in the game if you invest into the right UV's and trinkets. Sadly, it takes a lot of investment to really be useful, although the MSI boost it gives is very fun to play around with and you can do some neat tricks with it.

• Arcane Salamander - I don't understand why this set even exists. Vog Cub, Volcanic Demo, and Grey Feather are literally straight upgrades to this, and Grey Feather doesn't even give offensive bonuses. Let's not forget Seerus Mask and... well, basically any other armor with fire resistance is better than this set. Arcane Salamander is bad, like really bad. It gives bonuses to the enemies it doesn't even defend against, and its defense is second-rate only giving max fire resistance for 5% damage bonus to two piercing damage families. If you have some spare Salamander gear, then Volcanic Salamander would be a better choice than this since it's easier to get and it gives +10% damage bonus against the only piercing family that can really damage knights, but even that set is still somewhat useless in some ways since it suffers from the same cons as Arcane Salamander. There is literally no reason to make this set other than for a costume or completion purposes.

• Snarbolax - Here it is, the bread and butter of the Shadow Lair armors. This armor is usually recognized as the most useful Shadow Lair armor, and for good reason. The sword damage it gives plus its defenses can make it be considered a straight upgrade to Dread Skelly, and as most people play swordsman the shadow defense it gives makes it a great set to cover all defenses. +20% sword damage to all families is always useful. There's no special effects here, just a good, solid set. Not much else to say.

-----

I'd say only two of these sets are actually bad enough that they're not worth getting. If I had to rate the sets in order of usefulness, it'd probably go something like:
1. Snarbolax
2. Mercurial Demo
3. Ice Queen
4. Heavenly Iron
5. Almirian Crusader
6. Volcanic Salamander

Almirian Crusader ranks higher than Volcanic Salamander because let's be honest, these days the main threats are from shadow damage, and there are plenty of elemental + fire sets out there.

If you were getting all the sets you needed for actual usage purposes, you could make Snarbolax and Mercurial Demo and just be done, the rest are just the icing on the cake. But as bad as a couple of these sets are, they all look pretty sexy. Delicious pixels.

Tue, 07/01/2014 - 12:02

Fangel

Eah...

You're not putting enough value into the Snarbolax gear and the Mercurial Demo. For bombers, movement speed and CTR are highly valued. You can get the CTR from UVs or trinkets and leveling the item up enough, and this is the only "bomber" set that even has MSI. Not to mention, it's the only elemental MSI set. The Snarbolax gear is basically a dread skelly set that forfeits a little defense and status resist for universal sword damage of VH. I don't know about you, but for sword users that is a really great bonus.

Now the other gears are gimicky. Heavenly iron armor gives an offensive boost for those who play hybrid on things like a dark city. The sword bonus is nice, and the fiend bonus on top is even better. But it really only shines elsewhere when you enter a fire-themed fiend level after using Valkyrie for other levels, and even then it's not resisting, just not vulnerable. Ice Queen is actually a viable set, it's just overshadowed by its offensive Skolver cousin. Arcane only really has one to two places where it's actually helpful, and those are gremlin/construct mixed with beasts/slime fire compounds. Reaaallly specific, and other gears allow for a better setup, anyways.
Almirian Crusader is the only gear that really has no use. It's essentially a weaker status resistance to Valkyrie with its poison stripped off, and only would really be a valid item for fighting black kats. Carnavons inflict fire as well as curse, so even for those it's not great.
It is a wonderful costume armor, however.

Tue, 07/01/2014 - 21:29

Eagle-Warrior

They could solve this with looks

If they made the "useless" armors ridiculously cool looking it would be sought after gear but even more sought after costume. Boom, problem solved.

Tue, 07/01/2014 - 23:07

Avihr

Box

RIGHT! because honestly... who needs armors?

I'ts aaaaalll bout dem looks

Thu, 07/03/2014 - 03:01

Mystrian

All your spark belong to us -OOO

Thu, 07/03/2014 - 09:40

Acciaccato

"we need these rewards to

"we need these rewards to have more "use" to them, give them an extra resistance to a status effect that is actually relevant to the boss levels that atleast 72% of players run constantly
also because you know, SL is the endgame and your rewarded with some pretty useless gear in the long term"

The voice tells you to use the items you can create there for the battle ahead, not the ones behind. Chronologically speaking, and as far as story is concerned, you go to the shadow lairs after beating Lord Vanaduke, who is now dead and gone for good, canonically. These armors are probably going to be at their most useful for a future update, perhaps one involving inside the core and further depths. Don't get me wrong, the PVE balance in this game has been shot dead, and I'll be posting here about that in the near future, but I just figured I would provide some rationale.

Thu, 07/03/2014 - 17:31

Fehzor

Shadow lair armor feels like it was designed for use playing the stats game. The idea being that players will branch out and combine various armors to attain the highest most efficient stats for whatever level they are on possible. Arcane salamander is a good example of this idea, because defensively it is stronger than all similar items; vog cub and grey feather each have 'high stats' in normal and elemental respectively, but arcane salamander has high stats in both!

Elemental resistance: max! is the gain for losing slime low to beast low over volcanic salamander. Yes, it is harder to use, but isn't that what elite players who already have a large number of sets need to optimize with? If it were much stronger, it would be comparable to black kat cowl vs snarbolax cap/other kat eye/claw cowl. Black kat cowl trades a ton of defense for offense, but still gives ice resistance, effectively putting the other shadow+ice items centered around DPS out of business entirely. This is not what I want from shadow lair armors, or any other items.

That being said, of course you have a good point in the opening post. The humans playing the game don't care about technically stronger (as they have told you above, with regards to arcane salamander), they care about a huge number of factors that make some of these armors unappealing. The balance on items across the board is somewhat off, and if anything, the developers need to re-evaluate what's going on and consider things like this thread, in which I talk about how items should give more interesting and appealing bonuses.

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Shadow Lair "Rewards"