With the inevitable nerf of Chaos coming up, I thought I'd make a discussion to talk about good armor sets that may be underrated.
I was thinking Radiant Silvermail and the Divine Hood together. Gives good resistance to shadow, and some piercing and elemental defense, along with positive fire, shock, curse, and poison resist. The damage bonus vs undead and fiend along with shadow and fire resist make it seem great for FSC.
Any other sets you've thought of?
Haha, they will never nerf Chaos, mate :) Deal with it.
Maybe they'll boost some other gears tho'. That would be pretty cool in my opinion.
mercurial. kind of fun because of MSI. also the only armor outside of gunner ones to have shock and pierce resists. useful in the gauntlet.
deadshot. basically the perfect armor for graveyards. also works well in the almire danger mission.
kat hiss cowl. the only bomber helmet with shadow resist. only counting the cowl because the armors are stupidly overpriced.
deadly virulisk. the only sensible chroma branch. great against poison slimes with their horribly annoying spin attack. also the only piercing armor with poison resist when not counting gunner ones. as soon as I get a set of chroma with UVs I like, I will craft myself a set.
Only normal/piercing that is. Since there is also Dragon Scale and Radiant Silvermail.
I use Volcanic Plate sometimes. The attack penalty is easier to make up for, or one piece can be paired up with Vog Cub or other armors.
Special mention to Arcane Salamander for having the largest amount of total defence out of any non-plate armour.
If I was a new player starting from scratch I would probably make a sacred firefly shade set. It has good damage bonuses (the 3 and 4* ones even have decent bonuses), fire res which is like the only status you need for PvE, and it looks cool. For pure gunners it's the best until you get UVs.
You pair it with a blitz, a grim repeater and a storm driver and that covers you for everything in the game.
@zeddy
really? it even beats azure guardian?
but nonetheless, defense is kind of useless.
@Dutch-Oven
firefly shade is great... until you get shocked.
really? it even beats azure guardian?
Pretty much ANYTHING beats azure guardian, even if not directly in defense. AG sucks.
fire res which is like the only status you need for PvE, and it looks cool.
Shock would like a word with you.
By the way, how come the cite tag doesn't do anything?
If you looked at a pie chart of my time spent in SK it would be at least 3/4 fsc, so no, I don't care what shock has to say to me.
You are a sad, strange little man and you have my pity.
Doing anything else is a waste of time and at the end of the day I just want to play Lockdown, not try to get 100k prestige which does nothing or wait 10 minutes for an elevator for an arena.
Back in the day when crowns were shared I used to run FSC dragging 3 alts with me and could do 10 runs in a day if I really wanted to. Now I have everything in the game I ever wanted but still, if I had to start again FSC would STILL be the endgame for SK and I would choose my 5* gear based on that.
I already have a job, I don't need to have another one when I'm at home.
If fun is a waste of time, then waste time I shall.
Some people farm, some people merch, some people use real life money. To each his own.
Grey Feather set is definitely my favorite underrated set. Divine and Chaos get a lot of attention for the split damage and the pure power, but Grey Feather is the "vanilla" upgrade path for the Magic set. Having dual Fire and Shock resistance with no penalties is very nice, and even if it may lack in weapon boosts, I still think it's a great armor set overall. For example, it's pretty much perfect as a defensive set for Red Roarmulus Twins. And its lack of CTR/ASI/damage boosts can be made up for with trinkets, perks, and good UV luck. Plus the cowl has built in glow eyes! I'd definitely recommend getting your own Grey Feather set sometime.
Does Vog and slovers count as underrated armors? Because that's the only armor I have ( tho I do want to make me the snarblox armor)
Good thing both armors are piercing. And maybe also elemental. I need to look at the wiki.
Vog and skolver are some of the most common gear sets. Despite chaos and black kat trumping them in combat efficiency, vog and skolver still have the whole "no negative resist" thingy going for them.
I would say the entire angelic line is sort of underrated as well. VH vs fiends isn't anything too bad, and the fallen side is the only set with universal ASI. Heavenly iron is also a fair set, however it's still a specialist set at heart.
I'm pretty sure part of the reason vog is so overused is because so many people are obsessed with doing 10 vana runs in one day, and ignore everything else, then pass these habits on to new players.
That, and swords are arguably take the least learning and deal the most consistent and strong damage (bombs have charge time, guns are generally weak and have reloads)
Fencing Jacket + Cyclops hat + Swiftstrike => Cheapest, most accessible set in the game with the highest stat boost per crown/CE. Just don't get hit.
@Batabii, Guns are just as viable as swords but if you wanna run 10 FSC's a day, your hands are going to be pretty sore from using guns. You can also open up few youtube videos to watch while you charge and release with swords so it makes 10 runs in FSC less boring.
I didn't mean guns aren't viable, I mean noobs see guns and think they're too fiddly or whatever.
And you cant really play spiral knights when you're not even looking at the screen.
I mean, I run through Dreams and Nightmares, arcade, and recently apocrea while having youtube videos up on the side. Just have to choose something that's more audio than visual and you're good.
Let me tell you... its not pretty. ESPECIALLY when its by fire or shock?! holy hell you only get maybe one or two "OOPS" if youre running vana or other places where you'd WANT the benefits of the damage chaos offers but hell if it gets nerfed you'll just die when you equipped it
Please refer to the statement "you cant really play spiral knights when you're not even looking at the screen" that you made directly before my reply. Not once did I mention Firestorm Citadel being boring in my post. I mentioned how it's definitely possible to play the game with a video up to the side.
Sure grinding Firestorm Citadel is boring. It's why I don't do it. However grinding Dreams and Nightmares will get bland after a while (however the difficulty keeps me engaged for sure), thus having a video up on the side does make beating up void gremlins less of a boring issue.
@Fangel
Sorry man, but DaN isn't difficult. All it requires is adjusting to the basic AI, which a 12 year old can do. After about 10 runs or so, 15 minute DaN is expected.
Please, chaos's defense isn't THAT bad. And most good chaos users aren't getting hit left and right.
Besides, defense is really a minor concern in this game, since you're lucky if you gain one extra hit from it (example: using vog cub against shadow damage, as opposed to snarbolax)
Sorry man, but DaN isn't difficult.
Sorry man, but have you seen everyone's first run through that mission? It's a disaster.
In comparison to other bits and pieces of the game, Dreams and Nightmares is likely the single hardest piece of infinitely replayable content. Compounds are difficult but are easily cheesed. Shadow lairs and danger missions aren't replayable on a whim. That leaves pretty much the vanguard missions as a difficult game point, and while those all are difficult, Dreams and Nightmares is the harder one of many in there, outside of shadowplay's final arena (which is more a problem for the unprepared than it is difficult).
@Fangel
Lol, alright bro, you made me chuckle with that. The first run is terrible, definitely true, but thats why I put after 10 runs or so. Your learning is not limited, whereas the AI is limited. And because DaN has been out for so long, everyone at this point should be able to run it in no more than 15 mins.
In terms of relative difficulty to other missions, you are absolutely right.
The reason Dreams and Nightmares is difficult is actually pretty easy to break down.
A) Every monster type except fiends
B) Void souls constantly spawning
C) No consumables available outside of the prize wheel and mission lobby
D) No vitapod outside of mission lobby
E) Respawning enemies
Should you not be the best player, have a small loadout, have a shoddy connection, not have slots unlocked, etc... Dreams and Nightmares will be pretty stinking difficult.
However personally I've overcome most of its difficulty (heck one of my favorite things to farm is grinchlin, which is notoriously difficult), hence why I can be playing that mission with half a mind and still perform fine in it. I like being engaged with my gameplay even when not paying 100% attention to it, thus DaN is a good way to stay engaged with the game.
At opening post:
When has a nerf been announced? After checking the recent topics, there is no mentioning about this 'coming up'.
Please refer your source.
Common sense, really. GH should be able to know that "hey, literally everybody is using Chaos or Black Kat, we should fix that"
Chaos Set and Black Kat Set wont be nerfed.
People need to understand that nerfing is not a good way to balance a game 90% of the time. Boosting is the right way.
Not to mention that the already minimized playerbase would probably shrink even more if that would ever happen, seeing how popular those sets are.
I think Dread Skelly is pretty underrated. While I know that Snarbolax does it's job much better, I was playing Spiral Knights before Shadow Lairs and even Vanilla Snarbolax came out. My first set was Dread Skelly Helm and Vog Cub Coat. While yeah, the fire resistance is kind blah on Skelly, I still think it's a great set.
I'd like to see a buff towards Dread Skelly to make it more defensive than Snarbolax. Maybe have it give increased defenses, more health points, or increase your shield's health or something. But it's still pretty good.
I also find the Salamander (Volcanic and Arcane) armors and the Grey Feather armors to be very solid armors, but I rarely see anyone use them.
The armors with no offensive bonuses (dread skelly, lizard, etc) would probably need plate armor-level defense bars in order to be on par with BK/Chaos, in both of their defense types (for example, dread skelly would have plate level normal and shadow defense, perhaps a health bonus too).
That way, all of the people (like me) who used to play LD with max damage guns wouldn't reign supreme anymore. People would actually...wait for it...have to THINK!.... about what set they get. WHAT!?
To give an example as proof of concept, when BKC first came out, everyone just spammed Valiance with it. 5ish shots to kill your average LDer. I used Vog + APM, took 15 shots. There was always a low-cost counter to the OP strategy. But then someone at OOO came up with the bright idea to add elemental valiances, a BK cloak, and keep AT, and voila, we have June 2016 Lockdown, AKA the graveyard.
My old go-to loadout was divine veil + radiant silvermail. Paired it with a grey owlite shield. My logic was you'll dodge pierce attacks, shield elemental ones, and tank shadow ones.
Though if we want to appreciate underrated armors for certain, grey owlite and fallen are both great sets. Fallen's universal ASI is fun to use, and poison resist is super useful.
Mercurial set is also wonderful. MSI is super powerful, and even if it's just pierce resistance its maneuverability is super nice.
Recently I've been becoming a bigger fan of ancient plate. The reduction in speed is meh but the tanking ability skyrockets. I mean you still have to be careful, and often need UVs to counter your slowness, but it's super fun to stomp around and shrug off hits.