Heya everyone! The name’s Danny, even tho some people also know me as Leidran. I’ve got around +1600 hours in this game, and I honestly think this game’s overall gear it’s unbalanced, so I was thinking to talk about what weapons, armors and shields are, in my opinion, underpowered and my ideas of how to fix them. As talking about each kind of equipment on Spiral Knights would take forever, and would make for a way too big post, I’ll first talking about Swords, and do more posts about other categories later on (unless I lose motivation).
Before starting we will have to take in mind 3 things:

1. This is my opinion, and I might not be right in every word I say, so you might disagree on my points of view. If you do, you can always comment it in this post, but please, be always respectful when giving your opinion.

2. I’ll be referring the effectiveness of a damage as: Great damage (for when a damage is very effective against a target), Average damage (when a damage it’s neither very effective or not very effective against a target) and Horrible damage (when a damage it’s NOT very effective against a target). I will also refer as elemental, shadow and piercing damage as “special damages”.

3. I will be categorizing each buff and nerfs ideas with this structure:

Weapon/Family: [Name here]
Changes:
- [Description here]
Why:
- [Explanation here]

As it makes things easier to categorize overall.

If something it’s not clear enough, please don’t doubt to ask me anything on the reply section. I would also appreciate patience with my English capabilities due I’m not exactly super-good with this language, if there’s anything I’ve need to correct please don’t doubt it to comment it too! Now, let’s get started, there’s a lot to talk about swords.
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Weapon: All normal damage weapons.
Changes:
- Small increase of damage on normal damage weapons.
Why:
- Weapons like the Amputator, Valiance, Neutralizer, Volcanic Pepperbox or Leviathan Blade are normally just not chosen by players on the endgame due their lack of damage compared to special damage weapons (with exceptions like the Iron Slug). Of course, they will always deal average damage to any kind of monster, but that doesn’t really matter when you have 4 weapon slots to fill, making you able to have one weapon of each special damage on each slot that will almost always be more effective than their normal damage variation.
Of course, weapons like the Turbillon or the Leviathan Blade doesn’t have a special damage variation, but still have lack of damage.
Apply this normal damage buff on Iron Slug would be a bit more debatable of course, as it doesn’t exactly lack damage at all, but I would yet give the buff to it due it’s special damage variations.
I might create a post in the future talking about this normal damage buff concept on the future, explaining the consequences that this can cause due there’s quite a lot of normal damage weapons.

Weapon: The Cutter family
Changes:
- Reduce or removal of knockback of all attacks except for the final hit on both the normal combo and the charge attack.
- Give all hits from the charge attack the ability to flinch the opponent.
Why:
- When using the Cutter family, most of the time I’ve noticed how most of my attacks didn’t hit due I pushed my enemy too far away (except when I managed to push them on a corner of course), that’s why I feel a reduction or removal of the knockback it’s absolutely necessary to make this weapon viable. I do feel the knockback of the last hit of the combo and charge attack useful due the lack of crowd control this weapon has, this should make the weapon a bit less frustrating to use when dealing with multiple enemies.
- The Cutter’s charge attack it’s sadly very weak, especially considering that it takes a lot of time to perform, which makes you be very vulnerable, and it’s even worse knowing that the enemy you are attacking can actually still hit you as if you were doing nothing at all. So the flinch would at least make this charge attack a bit more useful for single-enemy combat (plus it works quite well for the Blitz Needle, as it also can flinch multiple times in one charge, so we could say that with this, Cutter would be the “Blitz” of the swords, just, more close-range based).

Weapon: Wild Hunting Blade
Changes:
- Change the Wild Hunting Blade’s damage from normal damage to piercing damage.
Why:
- I feel this damage change would make this weapon be more fitting for the role of being an anti-beast weapon, as the bonus damage against beasts it’s not exactly very useful in the endgame considering that we have armor sets like the Chaos, Black Kat or Skolver sets that gives you overall damage against all enemies.

Weapon: The Calibur family
Changes:
- Decrease the time it takes to charge the Calibur’s charge attack to a charge time similar to Cutter’s.
- Increase the range of the charge attack on the 5-star variations of the weapon with 8 explosions that creates a circle around the player and that are weaker than the slash. Reducing the knockback of the slash itself would also be necessary so the explosions connect once the target it’s hit, the explosions should be the ones dealing a big amount of knockback instead.
Why:
- The Calibur family sadly lacks a lot of damage capabilities and exchanges them with crowd control-focused attacks. I feel that the Calibur family has a similar role as the Pulsar family, so decreasing the time it takes to perform the charge attack will help fulfilling its crowd control role.
- The explosions I would add to the charge attack should help a bit more with the overall crowd control, as I feel that the current charge attack range it’s simply too short for what it’s supposed to do. And yes, I would add this characteristic to the Fang of Vog and Celestial Saber too.

Weapon: Celestial Saber
Changes:
- Remove the stun status from it’s charge attack.
Why:
- It’s supposed to be a reskin of the Leviathan Blade, and the status is cool and all, but it simply makes no sense that is has an advantage over it’s carftable version, independently how small it is.

Weapon: Turbillion
Changes:
- Make the charge attack projectile attract enemies, working as some kind of Electron Vortex, but dealing damage overtime due it’s multi-hit capabilities instead of creating an explosion at the end.
Why:
- The problem that Turbillion has (apart from the lack of damage, as most normal damage weapons), is that its charge attack is highly unreliable, the hitbox of the tornado is too small compared to weapons like Combuster, which has a similar charge attack. I feel that making the projectile bigger and with more reliable knockback would just make this weapon be a substitute or a brother of Amputator, so giving this weapon the ability to attract enemies to the tornado would give a unique role that other Swords does not possess.

Weapon: Troika Family
Changes:
- Change the normal attack speed as fast as Divine Avenger’s/Gran Faust’s one.
Why:
- Some people would argue to improve the charge attack itself over the main attack combo, and I can’t blame them, even though it can deal a massive amount of damage (for being a normal weapon of course, special damage weapons can still beat it), it’s very slow and the hitbox it’s not as wide as other swords’ charge attack.
I yet would prefer this small buff to the main attack due it’s unnecessarily slow for what it does (and it gives you even less incentive to use the Troika family when you compare it to Divine Avenger or Gran Faust, that have more damage potential due their special damage AND faster main attack).

Weapon: Sealed Sword Family
Changes:
- When using the charge attack with a wall behind the player, the projectiles should not disappear.
- The charge attack should pull the player forward instead of backwards
Why:
- I think the why to these two changes is obvious, but I’m going to explain my way to think anyways in case somebody has not used this weapon that much or simply have not experienced problems with this weapon family. The projectile thrown by Divine Avenger or Gran Faust on their charge attack normally is stopped if the charge attack was done with a wall behind the player itself. I feel that this characteristic of the weapon should be removed because it makes the weapon quite unreliable on close quarters.
And about the change on the charge attack, pulling the player forward instead of backwards, it’s simply to assure that the slash of the attack actually hits, it doesn’t make sense that a melee attack makes you go to the contrary direction of the target before performing such move in my opinion.

Weapon: Gran Faust and Fang of Vog
Changes:
- Change the self-status of this weapons for an “exhausted” status, which does nothing at all and lasts quite long (around 10-20 seconds), but once a charge attack is done again while this status is active, the self-status from the weapon will take effect (being Curse with the Gran Faust and fire for the Fang of Vog).
Why:
- If you don’t have a high defense against Curse when using Gran Faust, or against fire when using Fang of Vog, you have 0 incentive to use their charge attack, which are not super strong when they are compared to weapons like Combuster or Acheron. It would also not make the depend on RNG to be reliable when you need them to be.

Weapon: Amputator
Changes:
- Remove the damage versus slimes high and increase the overall damage of this weapon to compensate it.
Why:
- Once again, I think this one is pretty obvious too, but I’m going to comment it just in case: this bonus against slimes has no right to be there more than for it’s ascetics, as we already got Acheron, which is way more effective than the Amputator itself. Like, really, I understand what the developers was going to when creating this weapon, but in a balancing perspective this has no real meaning to exist.

Weapon: Acheron
Changes:
- Slightly reduce its overall damage.
Why:
- Even thought I love getting 3-slashed by this weapon on pvp and assert my dominance against undead and fiends with it, I feel it needs a small damage nerf.

Thanks for reading my balancing ideas for swords! Once again I will remind to people that all my statements might not be correct or totally true, so please, if you got a better idea or arguments against mines, please don’t doubt to comment it constructively. I’ll see with what other ideas I come up with on the future, in case somebody is interested.