Ingited oilers deal elemental and fire? That's news to me. Can someone else verify? I've always thought that they deal piercing and fire.

Well they become more defensive to elemental when lit on fire so I thought they might as well do elemental damage, if that's not the case, however, Volcanic Salamander would still be good providing you some damage against them while still having defense against the gremlin scorchers which usually accompany them. Oilers are easy to dodge anyway, but the fire trail they leave is the most dangerous aspect they have which is rendered harmless with +8.5 fire resistance which is pretty easy to get on a fire set using a fire trinket of any kind or a low unique variant on a single piece.

But piercing is the main damage on a slime level.

That's actually not the case, at least not all the time. You see, slimes' attack patterns are so easy to dodge compared to say a crowd of lumbers or a lot of gun puppies, of course there are polyps too but I don't see them often outside of IQ but even in IQ elemental defense becomes more important than piercing defense except when you're facing lichens or turrets as if you're going to run IQ you'll mostly bring fire weapons which will render the ice cubes which are everywhere almost harmless as they can't attack you from a range. Also in JK T2 slime cube range attack isn't so powerful and accurate, it'll mostly miss.

And beasts are so pitifully easy...

Yes they are. BUT, have you ever done a beast-themed arena before? There are puppies and lumbers EVERYWHERE and given the tight space dodging becomes harder. Also, the last wave in the final room is always (correct me if I'm wrong) mechaknights which are very hard to dodge given the tight space again. Same goes for slime arenas as well. And the 2 arenas usually have a mix of slimes and beasts with the hardest monsters present being constructs.

So Arcane is not "slightly better", damage-wise, in this situation.

Well, you're right. I think that one slipped from me.

Of course a glass-cannon set is usually far better for every situation but when statuses are present that's not the case (at least for the laggier or less skilled players) and why bother to spent hundreds of thousands of crowns on making a good set better when you can make a new set for only a fraction of that cost? It's true that you'll lose some damage bonus but don't you think it's more fun to have a vast arsenal so you can play each set of levels with a specific set? I used to have all bomber armor sets (yes, even Kat Hiss Raiment...) but when I quit bombing I vendored all of them (with the exception of Kat Hiss and Mercurial Demo sets) then crafted just Black Kat. Yes it is true that's all I need for most of the game... But when I had a variety of armors, one for every situation, I had much more fun. Now I regret selling them. That doesn't mean that Black Kat does anything better than them though. I had an easy fire walk Volcanic Demo for C42, Mad Bomber for CTR which Black Kat doesn't provide and actually I use Kat Hiss Cowl when I'm recon-bombing as my bombs aren't level 10 yet (after I vendored every 5* bomb in the game with the exception of Dark Retribution, Celestial Vortex and Electron Vortex I started crafting new ones... I'm an idiot I know...) because that +low CTR is actually more valuable than +low MSI and the extra +med damage and saves my life pretty often. My point is, don't underestimate "weak" gear even if you can do everything they can with Chaos/Black Kat, there are some things they do better.

On a side nite though: They aren't balanced at all, they just fill a few narrow niches, which is why not everyone recommends them. And they need to get some buffs. I've already mentioned in a suggestion thread that all monster-specific armor sets should get +high instead of +med per piece with the exception of Arcane Salamander which would need +med on each piece to be balanced. There's also something that I didn't mention there, I think it would be a good idea to leave the Divine Veil as it is since it got 3 status resists instead of 2 I also think it would be a great idea to buff Radiant Silvermail to have a third status to resist, I suggest freeze as it's "radiant" which means it's glowing, emitting light or hot, so it's only normal for it to have freeze resistance. And maybe the Heavenly Iron set needs +med fiend damage per piece as well since it has shock debuff which is considered extremely harsh.

I think Volcanic Plate and Volcanic Demo got other uses than just the final room in the gauntlet. For example you can use it in fire gremlin levels or arenas, might be good at bombing in FSC if you've got CTR medium UV's or trinkets.

Also do I really have to heat my armor? I have a Black Kat Cowl with shadow + normal high and when I compared it at level 1 with a fully heated one they had about the same defense. It's currently level 5, should I heat it or nah? (forgive me for staying off-topic ;-;)

BTW, I remember carrying 3 other knights in C42 once with full Volcanic Demo and fire resistance pet perk with 2 damage trinkets. My weapons were, Dark Retribution,Big Angry Bomb, Graviton Vortex, Shivermist Buster. The damage from Dark Retribution was so great that I didn't even need poison resistance. The boss was also a piece of cake even though I was poisoned the whole time. So all that matters in C42 is actually fire immunity, everything else isn't that much of an obstacle, also the slimes and slime turrets didn't hit me that much as they were so easy to dodge and interrupt so all I needed was elemental defense cause the scorchers kept hitting me. That's my point here.

My point is that the beasts are so little threat that I wouldn't think to wear piercing armor at all.

So beasts are pitifully easy to dodge... Slimes are easy to predict but a bit hard to dodge due to their random thorn and ranged-barb attacks and wide-range melee attacks so you usually shield-bump them or shield yourself when you see them attacking. Am I right? This just gives more reason to equip these armors which protect against the more dangerous monsters accompanying them, which are gremlins and constructs. Which makes Volcanic Salamander and Arcane Salamander more viable if you use multiple weapon types instead of just swords or guns as then you're gonna be better off with Skolver or Vog Cub or one of the gunner armors. Also the fire resist is pretty handy in most situations. See what I'm getting at here? They're supposed to shine in the hands of hybrid players who play a lot of slime and beast levels. Especially the ones with fire like terminal meltdown (some people run this for shinning fire crystals and eternal orbs of alchemy as it's basically a T3 version of sewer stash), C42, jelly farms, slime or beast arenas,etc... They would work even better if you have construct UV's on your gear.

Oh, and also, I looked up the status lichens on the wiki and I found out that oilers and quicksilvers don't do any elemental damage (aside from shock damage of course). Sorry for the misunderstanding.

@Bopp & Fehzor

Thanks for the nice argument, I think I find joy in posting on the arsenal forums when I can't access the game, so this truly means a lot to me. :3

Also, what's the worst Armor set in the game in your opinion? Is it Azure Guardian or another worse set (only 5* please)? I'm just curious.

But it still have shadow defense which is way more valuable than piercing defense which can be said to be the least important defense due to beasts and slimes being very easy to predict. Fiends are among the hardest mobsters to deal with since just a few at a time from any kind of fiends can kill you pretty quickly if you don't count yesmen, silkwings or pit bosses of course.

Would you go to darkfire vanaduke in fallen set or almirian set or valkyrie set? Or would you still use azure?