Regarding trinkets in lockdown

In lockdown, people load up on trinkets that buff their health to ridiculous levels because they play vs strikers who wear health trinkets. Strikers aren't naturally tanks, however they load up on health trinkets effectively turning them into highly mobile tanks. For some reason, nobody's figured out that trinkets can also turn recons into high-damage assassins or high-speed status storms or turn Guardians into quick-poking turtles, thus making everyone think that striker is the only playable class at a high level and that health trinkets are the only trinkets worth making. Thus I suggest people experiment with other classes and equipment combinations before making naive suggestions.

Thanks for your consideration.

I switched from Guard to Striker when I switched to T3 because I couldn't keep up with the combined mobility, damage and tankiness of ASI'd, penta'd skolver strikers even with full vog. Is that just because I suck?

I only have one Penta Heart Pendant...
~Anyway, if you want to be a rocket tank, equip Ancient Plate Mail. It gives 7+ health and 8+ at lvl 5. Its normal defence lets you tank that extra AT Acheron combo or GF double swing.

^ I don't wanna get into the class vs class balance discussion, but the point you made about strikers swinging at nothing is a good one.

I think adding a delay between your most recent attack and being able to use the striker boost would be the fix (like 1/4 or 1/3 second). That way, you would no longer be able to use any technique that relies on using the shield for more speed (polaris switch spamming, alchemer switch-spamming, ff/gf switch-spamming, etc.) It would go something like hit - wait 1/4 or 1/3 second - then use striker boost.

This also would fix the camera-angle ambushing problem. No longer would you be able to dash up from below, hit with one flourish/gf/ff hit, and immediately dash back downwards without giving the person a chance to react. Instead, it wold be dash-hit-pause from delay, and then the fight would begin fairly.

Hey! A fix that ends weapon spamming as a striker and also fixes the camera angle issue? Why not?

@Seiran
ASI, CTR, DMG, even movement speed can all be gained from armor. Because defense is worth crap in Lockdown, armor essentially becomes trinket slots for those buffs.
Extra health can only be gained from Ancient set, and that comes with a debuff in attack and movement speed. Furthermore, Ancient's health buff is pathetic when compared to penta-heart trinkets. Unlike other buffs, health is not capped (the cap is ridiculously high), so if you have the right armor, health trinkets is almost always the most useful ones.

@Thread
OOO did not consider the damage mechanics while balancing the classes. The health difference between striker and guardian/recon is equivalent to about one extra sword swing in T3. This is not a problem...except nobody stands around trading blows with someone else. There's a lot of variability/luck involved. Strikers, by design, are statistically better at landing hits than the other classes. If everyone has more health, one extra hit is a smaller variability (ex. 6:5 is smaller ratio than 4:3). So if everyone has more health, strikers get more advantage (Statistically, they have a greater chance of landing the extra hit(s) needed to kill).
Analogy:
Let's play a game, where we each roll a six sided die to deal damage to each other. I start with 5 health and you start with 10 health. Here's the catch: my die is loaded so I roll 4,5,6 more often than 1,2,3. As it is now, the game is still pretty fair.
Now suppose I start with 15 health and you start with 20, and we play the same game. I now have a significant advantage.

What does this mean?
There's no way to balance the classes without fixing the damage mechanics (and the trinkets themselves). To make things balanced for trinket users would mean making things unbalanced for those not using trinkets. I think the reason OOO isn't touching Lockdown balance is because the whole thing is one tangled mess.

@OP
I see where you are going with this, from a non-trinket-using point of view.

'' people load up on trinkets that buff their health to ridiculous levels. I know strikers should not be tanks, however they load up on health trinkets effectively turning them into highly mobile tanks ''

To be honest, each health trinket helps a player sustain about 2 more non-heavy sword hits / 1 heavy sword hit before they die. Though they may be 'highly mobile tanks', they are actually not tanks with a lot of health. With deception and tactics, one can easily take down a double-penta striker within 20 seconds or so with a few techniques. Health isn't everything. Health trinkets just help increase the amount of damage you can take before you die, so if you are quite the Speedy Gonzales who can dodge hits and deceive others, you don't need health trinkets at all.

'' This causes most people (9/10 people) to play nothing but striker ''

No. Just no. Actually, it makes people try to create new tactics to deal with new threats. As I said, dodging is a great way to deal with strikers, even if you aren't using the class. And to be honest, the guardian class provides more defence and health than a striker; the same can be said about a recon versus a striker. The only thing both of these classes have a disadvantage in is having enough space / being speedy to manoeuvre out of danger.

'' All of the other classes can't compete thus making other classes effectively redundant. ''

Nope.

In some situations, more health is worthless. E.g Strikers (Skolvers / Chaoses) who run into a Voltaic Tempest. Though they may have much more health to survive with after being shocked, a simple technique of trapping the striker and then dealing a lot of damage in seconds will just kill them instantly. More damage :3

@Mengh
20 seconds? What, are they playing with proto weapons?

Try 2 seconds.

Since some people obviously forgot why heart trinkets were made available easily in the first place, let me remind you that you could cloak and combo, and kill any striker like that. Though OOO needs to fix their math machine, since penta.should give 5 not 6. Then true loves would be seful again.