Spiral Knights is a great game, which is why I'm still here 7 years after I originally started playing.
We've had ups, we've had downs, but overall is an enjoyable experience. Building an arsenal of weapons to use in the clockwork fields to battle out many different types of enemies. I've played with every weapon line, and there are some problems evident with balancing.
I don't think it would be far fetched to say that most who have invested a good amount of time into the game have realised this already. In this post I'm going to point to certain weapon lines and try to come up with some compromises that will make the weapons more viable than they are in the current state of the game, and look for feedback on my ideas. Some of these ideas are hybrids of ideas of folk over at The Arcade discord server, where I'm almost ever-present.
The following 3 posts are categorized into Swords, Handguns and Bombs, and furthermore are sorted by weapon name (This does not apply if a weapon is also given another change outside of its weapon line). I hope this makes it more convenient to read than one large wall of text in a single post.
The number in the square parenthesis represent the order in which they were written, with Divine Avenger being [1], making it the first idea change written. As I've opted to loosely sort by name after writing most things, and everything is non-sequitur, I hope you can forgive parts that don't quite make sense out of order.
This took around 8 hours of brainstorming and consulting others, what I want from this is feedback, what do you like, what do you not like, what should be changed? Did I miss anything?
And what I hope for the most is that Grey Havens acknowledges this and considers at least some of these changes. Perhaps some belong, perhaps others don't. Community feedback is what you were looking for after the Vault update, and that's a step in the right direction. To continue in the right direction, perhaps having an open ear to existing concerns of the playerbase and acting upon these concerns will make the players happier.
Please note that every suggestion was made with resources required to make the change in mind, which is why most are just stat changes.
I'll start with swords
We felt a similar situation to that of Cold Iron Vanquisher, and as CIV plays a similar role to Amputator, we felt giving a Defense Down! debuff to the Amputator against slime targets would be another welcome improvement.
The Calibur line is mechanically very solid, however there is some inconsistency with the charge attack, as it can hit a single enemy up to 3 times in a single charge, but the third hit is elusive against targets that arent turrets, and is still hard to get the second hit a non stationary target. They also require a damage buff on basic hits. I think 15% increase would be enough to make them do more damage than Brandishes against neutral targets.
The knockback on basic hits should be made equal to that of Cold Iron Vanquisher, so you aren't knocking back and chasing enemies with swings.
The knockback on charge attack should be reduced to make this weapon less disruptive in parties, and closer to the charge user.
This weapon is really hard to balance. Most, if not all suggestions up until this point have been stat changes. But I cannot fathom a way to improve CIV by changing stats alone. This weapon is in a really bad spot, and the others who were around to help me work something out were also stuck for a while.
We came up with two ideas, but they aren't as simple as stat changes.
The first idea was to give the Vanquisher a Defense Down! debuff on combo finisher and/or charge attacks against undead targets. This would give the weapon good utility, which is particularly enjoyable as swords don't have many utilitarian options.
The second idea was to have the range of the blade be increased, by ~33% and represented visually with a phantom extension to the blade. This would result in the charge being able to hit an additional time to what it does now.
Cutters are in a really weird spot, they are very risky to use completely without stopping mid-combo, and generally isnt worth doing. The gimmick of the cutter line is to be a fast weapon, but what point is there of having a fast weapon if one of it's drawbacks is lots of endlag? The endlag of finishing the combo should be reduced by at least half.
On top of this, the cutter should be gifted another flinching strike, currently, only the final strike of cutters flinch, and by the time you reach that flinching strike, you're very likely to be hit by the enemy you're attacking. I believe the 3rd or 4th strike should be granted the ability to flinch, saving wielders of being hit.
I believe the charge attack on cutters should be shield cancellable at any time during the charge. As it is currently, the charge on cutters are too high risk and typically low reward. Having them be shield cancellable will immediately make them usable.
Dread Venom Striker should have the chance of inflicting poison be increased to a minimum of 10% chance to inflict poison per strike. This would be a justified change as it loses it's ability to flinch on charge in exchange to inflict poison, however, similarly to the status flourishes, the trade off isn't really well balanced, and unfortunately this makes Wild Hunting Blade more consistent, and as a result, typically better, which is why I believe the chance of poison should be increased.
Truth be told this really isn't a balancing suggestion but more a reversion suggestion. I'm sure most are aware, of a "bug" surrounding Divine Avenger's charge attack, in which if you are close to a wall, the projectiles don't spawn and instead seem to act as if they hit the wall behind you.
This is actually intended design. A long time ago there was a bug involving DA and the wheel launchers in Firestorm Citadel, in which you could break the wheel launchers (this was when invincible wheel launchers did not exist) by lining yourself up horizontally with the wheel and using the charge attack. In order to combat this, DA was changed in order to prevent this bug from being abused, by making the charge fail if you are too close to a wall. When the Shadowplay mission was introduced, the invulnerable wheel launchers were introduced, however the change to DA was never reverted, leaving DA in a slightly handicapped state for not much reason. I believe this change should be reverted so Divine Avenger can be at a more usable state.
* Note, this bug also applies to Gran Faust, but is less noticable as the charge isn't commonly used.
Flourishes mechanically are very balanced, but are very quirky without the use of AT. It's quite difficult to get a complete combo off on a non-stationary target, and even when the target is stationary it is slightly troublesome. All flourishes suffer due to being mechanically the same, and require adjustment so they are not inconsistent on when they hit and when they don't.
Status flourishes should be sidegrades, but when put next to Final Flourish or Barbarous Thorn blade, they are pratically downgrades. Their chance of proccing their status is too low that you are really trading off damage for a very inconsistent return. I believe the chance of proccing on the Flamberge line should cap out at 40%, if not, more, and the chance on the Rigadoon line should cap out at 20%
Troikas in particular are very, very weak and unsafe to use. It's understandable that they're unsafe, they're slow swords so it makes sense, but the risk-reward ratio doesn't quite balance out.
Troikas need a damage buff first of all. Troikas do equal damage to Sealed Swords, and are out damaged by Warmaster Rocket Hammer, I feel this should not be the case. As it is a normal weapon, it should do more damage than elemental counterparts to neutral targets. A 25% damage increase to both Triglav and Sudaruska should suffice.
On top of that, it is somewhat underwhelming that Troikas cannot flinch on initial swing, granting them this ability would make them safer enough to balance out the-risk reward of using the weapon.
I believe the status infliction chances should be increased. Sudaruska not inflicting stun on regular attacks is fair, however I believe the charge attack should have a high chance to stun, at least 75%, preferably 90%. I believe the Freeze chance on Triglav should be at least 60%. This would make the charges more valuable to use, and be a nice way to control crowds. Additionally, the status strengths should be increased to strong, there is not much reason for them to be inflicting weaker status strength than Brandishes, when they are slow, heavy swords.
Turbillion is an interesting weapon, but unfortunately, interesting doesn't automatically translate into great. The spur line has been very quirky for some time now. Sadly these quirks weren't ironed out even after the addition of Turbillion.
The charge attack for the Turbillion has an unecessarily long wind up, this wind up time should be reduced by at least a half, perhaps 75%, as it takes about as much time to release a charge attack as Troikas, despite not being a heavy sword. Along with this, the tornado fired by the Turbillion charge should be fired at swing, rather than shortly after. The projectile should also pull enemies along with it, akin to a Brandish and travel further.
Lastly, the Turbillion has a larger projectile on the last swing of the combo, however this doesn't translate into slightly more damage, I believe having more damage on that projectile would improve the Turbillion for the better.