We all know that weapons in the game are classified as "swords", "guns" or "bombs". But what if every status-themed weapon also had an additional classification deriving from the status it can inflict, like "fire", "freeze", or "poison" weapon? For example, the iron slug would be classified as a "gun" and as a "stun weapon", voltaic tempest as a "bomb" and as a "shock weapon", and so on. Now, this probably seems rather pointless and unnecessary, but here's the point of this thread: New weapon categories could also mean new gear abilities. What i mean is, gears that are currently not that useful or underpowered could acquire new status-themed abilities: your Deadly Virulisk suit could, for example, have a natural "poison weapon CTR:medium" on it, making it more usable and actually useful for a knight who focuses a lot on poison weapons.
I feel like this, other than giving the devs a rather simple possibility to rebalance a good part of the armors and helmets in the game, and encouraging playstyle variability, would also help hybrid knights build effective and efficient characters without being forced to use the chaos or BK set: you want to create an ice-themed knight? Just quip your Ice Queen set, with the ability "Freeze weapon damage bonus: very high", and you're good to go!
By giving armors theese kinds of abilities, some of the currently underpowered weapons could as well find an application: for example, the Furios Flamberge would become more useful in comparsion to FF/BTB in a fire-themed set. Same thing with weapons like the BAB, the Volcanic Pepperbox, the Triglav, etc.
(((Also, but probably it's not a good idea, there could even be new abilities implemented, like ones that boost status effects: for example, fire weapon status probability boost, or duration boost, or damage boost. While that may be cool, the balancing of the vaious effect would probably be very difficult or impossible, especially for pvp: i don't even want to imagine a VT that deals an even stronger shock effect in lockdown)))
What do you think about this? Which do you think are the flaws or problems of this idea? Let me know!
I've seen a similar idea to this before (the one in parenthesis at least), however that sort of system is flawed. It would have to be something different... Why? Because when we are resisting a status on our armor we are typically fighting enemies with that status, which means using a status weapon of the same type against that enemy would be more or less useless (would you rather use a final flourish with MAX damage boost from black kat against fire fiends, or a furious flamberg in volcanic salamander with damage boosts of medium and CTR of very high). You would have to find something else to suit it...
For example, dragon scale could boost piercing damage VS beasts, and fire resistance VS Gremlins. This means if a gremlin lights you on fire, you will be on fire for even less, and if you're attacking a beast with a flourish you can deal damage over the threshold of MAXIMUM! This is useful against what enemies you're up against.
In order to balance the idea, give items a visual affect change. Perhaps boosted piercing damage will make the weapon gain a special glow, projectiles would have an added particle trail, and bombs would sparkle when placed. All effects are color coded, such that piercing is yellow, elemental is green, shadow is purple, and normal is blue.