Is it just me or there's a general imbalance of armor?
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I went to supply depot just to compare armor at their base stats.
At 4*, all armor have downsides that negates the upsides.
If we use cobalt as benchmark.
4* wolver line:
=armor def about same as cobalt
+ freeze def
+ DB
(cobalt + 2 positives)
4* heavy line:
+armor def higher than cobalt
-no second armor def
+stun def
-sleep deb
-ASD
(2 positives, 3 negatives)
4* mercurial line:
=armor def about same as cobalt, except flipped normal-pierce
+electric def
(cobalt + 1 positive)
(personally i'd say reduced normal def is a negative since most damage are normal, but for sake of brevity)
4* skelly line & magic cloak line:
=armor def about same as cobalt, except flipped normal-darkness / normal-elemental
+poison def / fire def
+freeze def / shock def
(cobalt + 2 positives)
4* angel line:
-armor def lower than cobalt
+poison
-fire
+curse
+fiend
(cobalt +1)
4* virulisk:
=armor def about same as cobalt
+poison
+slime
(cobalt +2)
4* salamander: I don't even know what its for
4* wyvern:
=armor def about same as cobalt
-no normal armor def
+poison
+fire
+beast
(cobalt +2)
TLDR:
-almost all armor outclass cobalt, except a few.
-heavy is underpowered
-virulisk/wyvern/salamander tradeoff for its limited functionality seems not worth it
-generally good armors are wolver, magic cloak, and mercurial (with zero downsides, which I feel kinda breaks the balance)
IMO:
-heavy need buff, maybe sword BD
-cobalt need small buff, maybe +1 health
-this might make people angry, but wolver, and magic cloak should get 1 poison/fire/stun/.. debuff
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Right now, Heavy is more of 2 positives, 2 negatives.
Jelly (not shown in that post, but would be in the Skelly+Magic section) is also not cobalt with 2 positives, but cobalt with 1 positive.
+/-Sleep resistance isn't really a positive or a negative since it can't be inflicted on the player at all (for now...).
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When it comes to gear each set has a place in the game that it reigns supreme. The problem is that a small pool of sets consistently crop up in the top sets of armor in those situations. This means that it is more economically viable to get Chaos, Shadowsun, Volcanic Demo, Skolver, BK sets than to have a set for each individual level.
If you can beat the entire game using just one set of armor what reason is there to get anything else?
#NerfChaosplzOOO
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Is it just me or there's a general imbalance of armor?
If you search the forums, you can find many threads about how armor is imbalanced: armor balance site:forums.spiralknights.com.
If you're just figuring out how armor works, you may also be interested in my detailed armor guide.
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When playing Spiral Knights, you really only need two things from your armor to prosper-
-Some degree of status resistance, so that you don't get one shot by shock or fire.
-Offensive stats so that you can be a functioning team member.
The majority of armors fail to provide these things in a meaningful way, whereas a select few armor combinations excel- black kat/chaos + seerus, for example.
There are some exceptions of course. Levels that don't have harsh enough status effects (poison, stun) or status effects that one shot even with max resistances (freeze), or levels that lack status effects make armors like chaos/black kat absurdly strong. Areas with an overwhelming amount of status effect (compound 42, ghots in the machine) demand status resilient armor above all else, though this has always felt rather cheap to me.
The solution that makes the most sense to me is to grant armor unique effects or unique sets of stats that allow them to form play styles. A good example of this would be the padded lines- 3 gun buffs and whatever resist you want. A bad example of this would be salamander. Gunner is a play style. Knight that specializes in damaging slimes is not.
Sadly, the armors of SK are mostly unbalanced, bomber gears lines do not have any pierce/shadow resist variant, Chaos and BK set is the most overpowered over all, Offense is better than defense in SK, heavy armor don't do jack all in T3 when most enemies deal special damage. Gunner gears are currently suffering from an overflow with most them not all that useful while Chaos and BK maintaining the status quo.
virulisk/wyvern/salamander tradeoff for its limited functionality seems not worth it
Scenario gears (gears with bonus against specific family) are generally inferior to performance boosting gears (gears with bonus on one type of weapon), with the exception of dragon scale set being extremely effective in C42, the rest are forgettable.
generally good armors are wolver, magic cloak, and mercurial
Wolver gears are a must for anyone thinking of playing LD striker, magic cloak gets out classed by divine veil and mercurial (both the demo and the jelly variant) are very gimmicky with the speed boost.