Ok, hi everyone, I've been having lots of ideas over the time I've eben playing spiral knights.
Sorry in advance for the TL:DR. Read one idea at a time if you want.
IDEA THE FIRST: Status weapon balancing.
Ok, so we all know that blitz is way overpowered compared to Plague needle, we all know that Flamberge and Rigadoon fall in second to the other toothpick lines, and dare I mention the monstrosity that is Acheron.
Status weapons are simply weaker unless they already have rather high damage values (See: brandishes) or very good coverage (Haze bombs).
This is due to the fact that status weapons will always deal less damage, and only have a chance to deal a status. Status is not guaranteed to make up that damage loss, and it probably won't.
My suggestion is this: Status weapon will deal the same damage as non-status weapons, unless they actually inflict the status on the hit, in which case the damage is severely reduced for that hit.
So, let's say I hit something with my Furious Flamberge. In the current model, it will do around 15% less damage than a Final Flourish, and very (very very very) rarely set something on fire for a small amount of damage.
In my suggestion, the Flamberge will deal the same (or very slightly less, perhaps 5-8%) damage as the non-status Flourish. However on that very (very very very rare) rare hit that DOES set the enemy on fire, the hit will deal much less damage. I don't know how much less, I don't know what would be balanced. Perhaps 20-30%, which is less than the fire will probably do.
This would mean that your status weapon would be just as good as the non-status one until it actually dealt status.
IDEA THE SECOND: Sudaruska's charge attack.
Ah, the Sudaruska. One of my favourite weapons. Even though it's kind of bad.
I sometimes use it in FSC, then get bored of how slowly everything dies, pick up my 4* boltbrand and murder everything.
I understand that the sudaruska's charge is quite good, and it is! However vs high-health enemies such as zombies, it really doesn't cut it. Unless you can one or two-shot the enemies, it doesn't feel worth it.
I want to improve the sudaruska charge so that it can compete with other good charge weapons. So what makes brandish charges so good?
Well, you get a huge damage value on the first swing, and then a bunch of explosions, each dealing decent damage.
I'd say give Sudaruska and Triglav more explosions! Only two more, meaning that there would be three. You could even make them have the fancy rocks/ice effect, which you really need to fix for other players by the way (you know what I mean, it shows up at other player's feet even though it should eb where they're hitting).
This change would over double the charge damage if you kept the current damage values - however I feel that this wouldn't be that overpowered. I mean look at acheron's total charge damage. It's ridiculously high. That charge is safer, and faster, and quicker to charge, and - yeah.
IDEA THE THIRD: Normal stuff.
Normal defence armour, normal damage weapons. These are two things that are generally seen as inferior.
In most games I've played, normal damage is dealt by most enemies, meaning that for a 'tank' build normal defence will be a good choice, until you meet a certain enemy.
Spiral knights is the opposite - pure normal defence is usually a bad idea until you meet that one special enemy that deals lots of normal damage.
So how should defence change?
I think that normal defence should simply act as a 'blanket' resistance - reducing all damage type by a certain amount. You know how the guardian shield in lockdown's resistances look? That's how the ancient plate shield should be, to a lesser extent of course. The game seems to tell us that normal is meant to be an all-around resistance, but it's far from that. Can we change that please?
As for weapons, I've said this before. normal damage weapons should be made more pwoerful, so that they are better than specialised weapons against neutral targets. A levaithan blade should be better against neutral targets than a 5* brandish. Volcanic pepperbox should do more damage vs gremlins than a Plague needle. Etc etc. Quite simply, make give most of the normal damage weapons a slightly better damage value.
That's all for now folks, I can almost taste the disagreement from here and I've not even posted yet.
I'm sure we can find a workaround.
Sorry if there's spelling or grammar errors.
I agree with you on most of the problems, but find your solutions to be a bit tasteless.
Status Weapons
I feel like your fix would make status weapons a bit... samey, balance issues aside. Like using say, rigadoon, would do the exact same thing as final flourish, but then it would stun! Woop de doo, same boring weapon but now with random side effects.
I'd much rather see them become more dependent on their statuses, so that they are more different than their alternatives. For instance, rigadoon could deal stun on every hit, but have like half the damage as the other flourishes. Then, people would try to compare it to final flourish, and it would be much much harder to do so, making it a more of a side grade and less of an up/downgrade.
There are also a stark lack of support guns/swords. If you look at bombs, you've got the haze bombs and vortexes to offer the greatest support of all time, as well as the damage bombs... but when you look at swords and guns? Every single one of them is more aimed at directly dealing damage. Even the statusy brandishes' charges are more focused around damage than status.
Sudaruska
Sudaruska, compared to other normal damage weapons, is actually pretty good. I think that if anything all heavy swords could use a bit of a buff, and that sudaruska could make use of damage increases like brandish does (i.e. deal normal damage twice per hit so as to ramp up faster when buffed). But really, some sort of fix to normal damage that encompasses the weapon would be much preferred.
Normal Stuff
I like the way normal damage is set up on armors, generally. If you're going to get hit at a distance, specialized resistance is better. If you're going to get hit up close, normal damage is better. The one thing that's really missing is a way to capitalize on this fully and have it actually pay out. I would love to see armors designed around it, and enemy damage types built around it.
As for the weapons, they attempted what you were saying in beta, and found it to make specialized damage weapons exceptionally narrow in use. I'm all for fixing normal damage weapons though, as there is a very real problem with them-- the existence of a better alternative at all times makes them come across as underwhelming and prevents most situations that would otherwise warrant their use.
Formatting
I find that using the HTML tags found below the posting options to be particularly useful for formatting text. Especially these (remove spaces):
< strong >Text < /strong > = Text
< em >Text< /em > = Text