Spiral Knights - Make Tanking a viable strategy

Make Tanking a viable strategy

13 replies [Last post]

Fri, 07/11/2014 - 14:52

Holy-Nightmare

Lets face it, few people would actually choose a defensive armor set (Ironmight, volcanic plate, dread skelly) over their offensive counterparts (skolver, vog cub, snarby). Why? because in this game you are rewarded far more for being offensive than defensive. The Small defensive advantage of supposed "tank" armors allow them to tank maybe one or two hits more than their offensive counter parts.

Furthermore you can just take the "tank class" Shield and use it with an offensive armor.

I would like for the "defensive" oriented armors to actually be made a very viable choice, up to a point where people will actually ask the question "is having this attack boost worth it? or am I actually better off in something more defensive?'

Fri, 07/11/2014 - 16:37

Bamzalot

I agree to this.

Slapping Penta Heart Pendants all over my Ironmight Set just won't cut it. I definitely believe something should be done to defense to make it really give us more defense. The only problem I see to revamping defensive armors or defense itself is that with the right gear, we could become nearly invincible. That and about two years of waiting.

Fri, 07/11/2014 - 17:45

Sonosuke

+10

I think this is a great idea. I'm one of the few who choose defensive over offensive (despite going Guardian in my Ash Tail set). Just the fact that Skolvers can OHKO (or Charge-Kill) Ironmights seems quite ridiculous, especially if you see said Skolver using a Flourish-line.

Fri, 07/11/2014 - 17:48

Whimsicality

How to make being tanky truly viable, take your pick:
1) Lower the defense and resistances of offensive armors. First thing to come to mind? Skolver, for granting immunity to a Minor Status, having decent defense, and being too defensive for an offensive set.
2) Raise the defense of tanky sets.
3) Raise the status resistance of tanky sets.
4) Give Tanky sets higher health bonuses. Alternatively, nerf the health bonuses of offensive sets. Chaos, Skolver, Snarby, Shadowsun come immediately to mind.
5) Reduce or remove hitstun for anyone wearing a full tanky set, allowing for more opportunity for a counterattack after tanking that Vana Mace to the face.
6) Make the enemy AI more difficult on Elite, which will in turn result in players who make more mistakes getting punished worse if they don't build tanky.

Fri, 07/11/2014 - 18:20

Zaffy-Laffy

Make tanking armors actually tanky FTFY

I'm glad I take as many bars of damage with my Ancient Plate set as compared to my Chaos Cloak set.

Fri, 07/11/2014 - 19:08

Sonosuke

Now that I think about it...

"Tanking" as it is right now is really only the High HP variant, rather than any actual form of defense. So if we were to turn tanking into a viable strategy, we'd need the seemingly more defensive armor sets to actually be more defensive, A.K.A take less damage than normal. Sure we can still have a lot of HP, that'd work even more in the Tanks' favors.

Fri, 07/11/2014 - 20:05

Arelic

While I am all for it, there is still the idea that enemies within the last tier do pure damage of their respective types. And that is with the Ancient Plate Mail in mind. But correct me if my train of thought has derailed from the possible solution on the enemy AI's side.

Sat, 07/12/2014 - 05:02

Zaffy-Laffy

My satirical comment here is to imply that we should make tanking armors such as Ancient Plate Mail actually tanky, as in take less damage per hit. Just think about it, you may have the same amount of hp bars to someone in a Chaos Cloak, but you lose less, yet you gain more HP for healing items and other useful stuff. It's more hits you can handle, rather than have more HP that require more healing to heal it back up.

My other point being, adding more HP is utterly useless, because you'll just need more pills and hearts fallen from enemies to suck it back up, making Ancient Plate Armors utterly useless.

Sat, 07/12/2014 - 12:31

Reihyperion

In response to Sonosuke's first message...

Or don't take away anything from the Offensive armors (why would you even suggest that?) and just give better bonuses and options to defensive armors so that the balance of decisions on defensive armors doesn't entirely shift to defensive armors. Losing the health bonuses given to offensive armors is a HORRID suggestion.

Sat, 07/12/2014 - 12:32

Reihyperion

My mistake, my message was

My mistake, my message was meant for Whimsicality

Sat, 07/12/2014 - 21:48

#10

Fangel

Not quite.

Losing the health bonuses given to offensive armors is a HORRID suggestion.

Not removing all the health bonuses from the set for sure, but having the offensive sets have a -1 to -2 base health (So that a 5* set would give either +3 or +4 health at level 5 and up) would make offensive sets more glass while being the same amount of cannon.

If you are having a harder time fighting enemies, then perhaps that's when we should look into alternatives, such as defensive sets. Another recommendation would be having defensive sets give your party defense boosts, so that players are encouraged to help each other passively.

As of now, offensive armors are incredibly broken in comparison to defensive armors. Defensive armors would be just fine if offensive armors didn't do the defense job just as well, if not better.

Sun, 07/13/2014 - 10:05

#11

Sonosuke

All Sonosuks will break loose

Glass Cannons are supposed to have low health, low defense, or both to compensate for their ridiculous power. Basically, they can dish it out, but they can't take it. We need a better Glass Cannon set than what we do have and count as one.

Now let's look at what we count as one, the Chaos Set.
Ridiculous power? Universal Damage Increase + Charge Time Reduction Very High (both pieces together)
Low Health? +10 Health Bonus at Level 10 (both pieces). What's the Health Bonus from Grey Feather and Divine Sets (it's Defensive counterparts)? +10. Both of them. So that's a no for low health.
Low Defense? Yes, compared to Grey Feather (since they have the same defense types). But if you look at them from a gameplay POV, Chaos's health loss is not much different from Grey Feather. So that's about 1/2 for Defense.

So while Chaos has the power part down, it still has as much health as any other 5* armor set and takes just barely more damage than others. The only thing it has in terms of bad defense is the Status vulnerabilities, and even then they can be negated through UVs, Trinkets, and Perks.

Mon, 07/14/2014 - 06:48

#12

Whimsicality

@The dude who doesn't understand a thing about balance

Offensive sets already tank things better than tanky sets all the while providing beneficial bonuses that the tanky sets do not have. Offensive sets are too tanky.

Are you meaning to suggest that this "balance" is alright?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist with a degree in video game design to figure out that all the offensive sets in the game are too good and defensive sets aren't worth it. Spiral Knights has essentially always been about simplicity at its core. The damage type system is simple to comprehend, the bonuses and benefits you gain from armor is easy to understand. And I sincerely doubt OOO's capabilities to introduce special abilities that give defensive sets more appeal, when it is all the easier to tweak a few numbers instead to justify Offensive sets having so much power, and defensive sets giving you more leeway for mistakes.

Sun, 07/20/2014 - 02:16

#13

Blitzsonic

So people finally care about

So people finally care about defense and tank armors ?

If something like this should happen, then defense would need to be more useful(currently you only get 1 or 2 hits more from having the right defense), normal defense would need to reduce specialized defense(100 normal defense=50 specialized defense reduced) and the tank sets wouldn't need a msd and asd(or maybe give them damage boosts too ?)

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Make Tanking a viable strategy