Chaos only has elemental/normal, does that mean it is just for status-free construct/gremlin levels? No people use it in places filled with deathly statuses only because it has offensive boosts, similarly a Universal ASI set could be used much like it.

I get your point, although the argument is not perfectly parallel, because Fallen has an offensive penalty against the nastiest monster family in the game.

With many player ditching status and type defense for offensive perks I'm starting to wonder if the community really values status defense at all any more.

One problem is that damage calculations are unbalanced; damage protection doesn't have as big an effect as it should. Another problem is the rise of MSI, which makes it easier to dodge enemy attacks. Another problem is that so many players just grind the same areas (FSC) again and again, so that they are not really tested with difficult status threats often.

All in all its a pretty good set, not a truly horrible set but it does have some downsides.

I am going to have to respectfully disagree with you on that. Fallen set's only claim to fame is having shadow + normal + fire, as well as an offensive stat + fire/poison.

Its defenses are mediocre. They're literally the same as chaos/black kat's, meaning that on ice/normal levels, there will almost never be a reason to bring armor of the fallen.

Against poisonous shadow enemies, radiant silvermail and dread skelly are largely better than it due to their curse resistance, undead bonus and extra defenses. The most prominent level with poisonous undead on it also has a good deal of slime themed monsters, making radiant silvermail a much better niche armor to pick up- especially considering the Margrel fight, which brings shadow, poison and curse to the mix. Getting cursed is unpleasant, but is truly awful with the maximum time added on.

Against fiery enemies, divine veil is the better overall choice, as it protects against fiends and shock as well as granting you your fire+shadow boost. You could argue that the normal defense makes it worthwhile when against fire+undead, but the main area for fighting fire+undead, FSC, benefits about equally from elemental and normal defense, as Vanaduke is capable of both elemental and normal damage. If anything, mask of seerus is the main competition for armor of the fallen in that particular situation- more normal+elemental than fallen has, more net bonus than fallen has, but no mediocre amount of shadow defense... that being said, it won't matter how much defense you have when you quickly charge your blitz needle and crush trojans with it, rather than tanking the hit.

Most undead levels have a chance to include fiends on them. This means that fallen set has a very good chance of coming back to bite you whenever you take it onto say, an undead clockwork tunnels level. While having damage penalty: very high against fiends isn't THAT bad on occasion, it isn't exactly fun to constantly rely on your team randomly whenever a devilite pops up, and the penalty certain isn't going to help you kill any silkwings.

Fallen is one of the two winning choices for C42. That being said, the ASI boost that it gives is largely worse than having elemental+piercing defense from dragon, and that assumes that you want to craft an entire armor set just for one mission. One piece of fallen + one piece of dragon might be the best solution to that mission, but it's hardly going to make a difference if it even comes close to doing so. If you had piercing max + elmental max per piece on your fallen set, it would probably be better. If you're rolling that highly, you probably don't need to minmax that hard for one armor set either though.

I don't know what the developers had in mind for fallen set, but in today's game, there is no outstanding purpose or use for fallen-- just a handful of questionable areas where fallen is "better".

all asi does for bombs is increase the speed you place it on the ground

Fallen with its offensive debuffs is an example of something that should have been explored when it came to thinking up muh glass cannon sets.
But now we'll never see the likes of it again in the future.
If anything, Fallen would be a neat set if it had +2 sword/gun ASI per part (but no bomb asi). Hell, crank that Fiend debuff down to -3 or add -Undead if need be.

It's also worth mentioning that it swaps the status resists of Valkyrie about, yet when Heavenly Iron was introduced they didn't complete the status trilogy. No fire resist but a random shock weakness? Thats stupid.. considering you can make it before heading into UFSC, it would have been perfect there - somewhere Fallen probably shouldn't go.

It's still worth mentioning as it is a niche which exists. Maeko bombing is of course a thing but I don't see why ASI wouldn't be beneficial to it as well. No one should go for ASI for a serious set but it's still something some few people will give a damn about. I'm pretty sure OP has enough experience with the game to know that Fallen isn't good for serious bombing so we aren't really misleading anyone.

I mean I guess that's what I meant when I said-

I don't know what the developers had in mind for fallen set, but in today's game, there is no outstanding purpose or use for fallen-- just a handful of questionable areas where fallen is "better".

ASI bombing is an upgrade in some regards from normal, but it's also possibly the smallest boost you could go for for the most effort.