A couple days ago the most awesome things that I've witnessed in this game ever happened. I was in FSC on fire, I had 3 health pips left I was of course in full black kat set and the fire had 1.5 sec left I knew I was gonna die, it was pretty obvious so I was just like might as well just bring the statue a bit closer to the pressure plate so I was standing in the stranded area which was surrounded by traps right before the final arena on D27 so I picked up the statue and walked on spikes AND TO MY SURPRISE I had taken 2 pips of damage from the spikes and my invincibility frames activated preventing me from taking fire damage last moment which would take 3+ health pips per tick and I survived it with 1 health pip. It was absolutely awesome and I don't think I've seen it happen before. Have you?
Just thought maybe someone would find this interesting...
Yep, when you're on low health you can take advantage of that to walk on spikes as you won't lose as much as you would when you're on full health. I remember today I got hit with a Gran Faust while wearing full shadow + normal defense in lockdown all 5* and it took more than 50% of my health (my set wasn't completely heated but it wasn't underheated either) later I took a hit from that same Gran Faust when I was on very low health and it only took 2.5 pips. I wonder if that would work with shock in PvE, does it activate your invincibility frames in PvE? We all know it does the opposite in PvP tho. If that's right I think we can take advantage of that as well if someone is able to time it right.
By the sounds of it, you activated the “Sonic health” mechanic, though I can’t say much about those invincibility frames.
I don’t remember much about the specifics, but it’s basically the “last stand” kind of health. Damage hits up until your last pip of health, so no matter how strong the hit that’s taken, you still survive with 1 pip; 1 ring, 1 hit, 1 more chance to keep going. I don’t know how it triggers / resets after one time, exactly... maybe it’s not triggered by statuses? Not sure...
I’m also not sure about evading the fire damage through the invincibility frames, but I wouldn’t doubt it. Last I remember, you could also evade the damage and effects of a status as long as you did a well-timed dash. Don’t know if it holds up since my inactivity.
Dashing doesn't prevent fire damage, I tried it multiple times. Maybe my timing is messed up due to my latency though so it needs more testing. It prevents shock damage though.
And I didn't know that this low health mechanic resets after taking one hit. If I recall correctly I was able to tank multiple strong hits while on low health with some little healing in between. Maybe it's just my vivid memory though.
Dashing prevents fire damage.
Regarding low health mechanic (sonic mode):
https://wiki.spiralknights.com/Damage (2nd paragraph in "Taking and Dealing Damage" section)
It's not much, but you can find it interesting.
Is this just the "last stand" mechanic, in which an attack leaves a knight with one bar of health? Some of the responses suggest so. Someone please explain.
Some games value low health much higher than high health for example if you have 3 pips of health left the game will treat them as if they were like 12 or something. I didn't know that you cam have exactly one pip remained cause sometimes I was left with 0.25 pip or a bit more.
Yes, "Sonic Mode" is the "Last Stand" mechanic. To explain, in Sonic games, if you get hit you lose rings. If you have no rings you will die. If you have 1 ring and take damage, in most circumstances you will lose that ring and still live. Let's say having 0 rings = having 1 pip of health, and having 1 ring = having 2 pips of health. In SK if you have 2 pips of health and take damage, most of the time you will live with 1 pip left, and in Sonic, if you have 1 ring and take damage, most of the time you will live with 0 rings left. In both games, having just above the bare minimum of "health" will most of the time guarantee that you can take any hit without dying. As we all know, Spiral Knights was a SEGA game, so people have assumed that this mechanic was inspired by the Sonic games.
Oh, that last line. Well, that's interesting to know.
"Dashing doesn't prevent fire damage, I tried it multiple times. Maybe my timing is messed up due to my latency though so it needs more testing. It prevents shock damage though."
Definitely a latency issue. I find this dashing status immunity easier to reproduce than following a moving particle (such as gun attacks) over spikes/status traps for immunity.
From personal experience, you CAN dash to avoid fire damage, as dashing prevents you from receiving damage from most enemy sources (excluding items such as traps, brambles and spikes). Your timing has to be good tho, such that the fire ticks when you're in the dashing animation. This is easier to pull off if you have a better connection (ie 3 or 4 bars), but if you're like me on a permanent 1 bar connection, you might need to understand how severe your latency is and adjust accordingly.
Nonetheless, very great save thanks to the Sonic mechanic! Personally I don't recommend always relying on this mechanic as it sometimes backfires. For instance, I have died in one hit when my health was at 7 pips. I guess it depends on how damaging the hit was and how much health you have left.
Actually there were some exceptions to when the Sonic Mode does proc iirc. I remember reading somewhere that if you take damage while attacking/charging a weapon that Sonic Mode will not proc. However I don't remember where I read this from, so take it with a grain of salt. It does explain why you died that one time though, so I will edit the comment if I find the source again.
Once I was doing a run with proto set and shield, at some point I was on fire and it pretty much SHOULD have killed me, but before the last tick I used Shadow Cloak for its defense and shielded in panic for the heck of it, (can't remember how many pips I had I think it was more or less 3) and it brought me down to half a pip instead. It was suprising
Oh right, the shadow cloak. My deadly shadow cloak doesn't offer ANY damage reduction (tried on spikes with full black kat set). Does the other ultimate and the standard actually reduce damage? Or is it just useless like the defense orbs.
To summarize: By walking on spikes, you took damage. And the invincibility frames from that damage prevented you from taking damage from fire. So by causing yourself a little damage, you prevented yourself from suffering even more damage.
No, I haven't seen it. It's a neat idea. Thanks for sharing.