Spiral Knights - Freeze mechanic alteration

Freeze mechanic alteration

11 replies [Last post]

Mon, 09/21/2015 - 08:38

Holy-Nightmare

Lets face it, freeze is a bad status for the most part, offensively speaking that is. The only time that freeze provides any damage is during the weapon attack and when the ice thaws of it's own accord and unlike poison or stun it doesn't stay when your attack the monster. If you break the freeze you get no benefit.

I would propose that freeze against monsters deal light damage when it is broken, not to the extent that happens when the thaw timer goes off but enough that you get an extra tick of damage. If anything I would make the early thaw deal about the same damage as a single weak shock tick.

So.... what would this really change?

Glacius would stay the most defensive of the brandish family BUT you could still pull off more damage than before.
The Hail driver would become devastatingly powerful since the charge would deal and break it's own freeze dropping off a burst of chip damage ticks.
Permafroster would be pulled up from the bottom of the pulsar family.
Winter Grave would make the best immobile enemy killing magnus.
Shivermist would be bumped up to a damage support bomb.

Freeze would also make a great status for Maskeraith users since breaking frozen targets would deal 2 ticks of damage (attack plus early thaw damage).

Mon, 09/21/2015 - 16:33

Dibsville

Honest opinions I think?

"Glacius would stay the most defensive of the brandish family BUT you could still pull off more damage than before."

Yeah, this would be nice.

"The Hail driver would become devastatingly powerful since the charge would deal and break it's own freeze dropping off a burst of chip damage ticks."

I personally think Hail Driver is already overpowered to a very big extent, so making it more powerful legitimately scares me, however, Storm Driver already does this because it can re-proc itself on charge shots, so I don't see the problem with giving Hail Driver this opportunity.

"Permafroster would be pulled up from the bottom of the pulsar family"

Yeah, okay, sure. This is actually kind of needed considering how Permafroster isn't too great against the families weak to Shadow (a weapon in a new damage-type isn't good just because it was good in another damage type, OOO's >:T)

"Winter Grave would make the best immobile enemy killing magnus."

It already is. And this is just making an already extremely powerful weapon into a supreme overlord of damage.

"Shivermist would be bumped up to a damage support bomb."

Not really, but it'd be nice to have the tiny bit of extra damage.

---

What, no love for Chilling Duelist? It lives off of breaking its own ice-- think of the beginners too! Overall, +1.

Mon, 09/21/2015 - 17:03

Falminar

^ What ice for CD?

That thing has such a low chance to freeze, it basically has no freeze at all...

Mon, 09/21/2015 - 17:54

Holy-Nightmare

@ Dibs

Well the problem with the current freeze is that some weapons break their own freeze.

Hail driver is weaker than the Storm driver just due to how the shock status works. With this change you could fire a charge with the Hail and still not end up with a frozen enemy but somewhere in the middle it would which would add an extra few ticks of damage.

Permafrosters freeze is undermined by the nature of that gun family, AKA controlled spam.

When it comes to damage the Iron Slug is preferred over the Winter grave since the freeze hinders knockback. This change would make the Winter Grave the specialist when it came to taking out enemies that knockback has no effect on.

The Shivermist would be the perfect bomb to pair with the VT or the Dark Retribution since both would set off early thaws quickly while the Shiv Freezes the enemy again.

Yes I left out the CD and I also left out the Cold Snap..... Freeze would help them out as well and young knights wouldn't feel bad about breaking freeze since "It helps kill the enemies faster".

Mon, 09/21/2015 - 18:09

Hilman-Hx

What an ice idea. (+1) Also, my thoughts...

I like your idea, but where it stands, Freeze is more of a situational status. Let's say you're in a pinch and you have an ice weapon. If the foes are not ice-themed, you can hope for a Freeze to save your skin. It also makes dodging turrets easier. Anyway, to cut to the chase, I think that Freeze-inducing weapons should be less likely to thaw out opponents. This makes it easier to keep the enemy pinned down while still dealing damage. While it contradicts with what you proposed in the original post, imagine the possible comboes that one could make should both ideas make it!

Mon, 09/21/2015 - 18:38

Dibsville

Knockback?

"When it comes to damage the Iron Slug is preferred over the Winter grave since the freeze hinders knockback."

What?

No seriously, explain what you mean here, because last I checked, Winter Grave breaks its own freeze and always pushes enemies to the end of the charge, where 99% of the time they're frozen there, so you can freely charge up again. This isn't like Glacius where enemies get frozen mid-charge and take half the damage of a Combuster. Winter Grave breaks its own Freeze making it a good spacing option both up-close and far away as well as Crowd Control option while still having absolutely massive damage (and in my experience, more on average than Iron Slug and Callahan because the constant freezing ends up pulling enemies towards the center of the charge rather than clipping them like Iron Slug and Callahan sometimes do, although it's uncommon).

And don't tell me you mean regular shots, because Winter Grave has the same flinch rate as Iron Slug and Callahan, and all three don't have noticeable knockback whatsoever.

So again, what?

---

"Yes I left out the CD and I also left out the Cold Snap..... Freeze would help them out as well and young knights wouldn't feel bad about breaking freeze since "It helps kill the enemies faster"."

And Frost Gun, which new people are required to make anyway. :P

Mon, 09/21/2015 - 19:22

Holy-Nightmare

@ Dib

I have never had that trouble with my Callahan, but my Mega Tundrus doesn't always carry enemies to the end of the bullet path....

Mon, 09/21/2015 - 19:39

Dibsville

Interesting, only ever had that problem with Callahan and IS, maybe I just haven't used WG enough (only had it for like a week now as opposed to a year or so for Call and IS).

Tue, 09/22/2015 - 04:12

Vohtarak-Forum

sorry dibs

the winter grave rarely brings enemies to the end of the charge
90 to 99% of the time it will freeze the enemy in place and go past them, only damaging 1 or 2 times

Tue, 09/22/2015 - 04:59

Dibsville

Honestly went through OCH, RJP, IMF, and D23-D29 of Jade Sun gate with only Winter Grave, and never had it not break its own freeze (except against Royal Minis but really is any charge good against them?). I guess I'm just lucky. /shrug

Tue, 09/22/2015 - 11:32

#10

Vohtarak-Forum

yeah youre lucky

the winter grave almost always freezes a target and doesnt knockback it, I have no idea how you make it work like that

Tue, 09/22/2015 - 12:30

#11

Fangel

Odd

Yeah winter's grave will freeze enemies along its charge. However, I view this favorably because you can just line up another charge.

But I see winter's grave having more stopping power with its regular attack. That is where freeze shines most - on single targets with powerful single shots. If you take a moment to use a pulsar as way to knock an enemy out of a crowd then attack 'em (i.e., fire once to knock back, fire twice for status) it actually makes permafroster pretty viable. Again it can cause problems as well because of that (looking at you lichens) but it's not terribad.

Guess freeze status isn't all that bad where it stands, however it's more of what weapons it's on. Troika and magnus do it right, drivers and pulsars do it wrong. A freeze DBB-esk bomb would work great.

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Freeze mechanic alteration