Spiral Knights - Zeddy's ramblings about balance

Zeddy's ramblings about balance

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Fri, 05/15/2026 - 04:38

Zeddy

Sean Murray of Hello Games is oft quoted for saying that players are good at identifying problems, but less good at naming the solutions. For this reason, this post will be a two-parter that first outlines the problems, and then I'll take a shot at naming some possible solutions.

Since Cleaver, now wearing the face of Nick like some kind of moustached jellycube zombie, has stated that rebalancing will indeed come, it feels worthwhile to mention where the pain points. Most of this is speaking from old memories.

Shard Bombs
This one is my particular bugbear, so I'm starting with them. I want to love them, but they are bad. The easiest way to highlight how bad is to compare the two direct competitors Dark Briar Barrage and Deadly Splinter Bomb:

Charge time is equal
DSB covers a significantly smaller area than DBB
One hit from DSB is significantly weaker than DBB. In fact, two hits from DSB is still weaker assuming you hit Core + Shard. It's only double shard that you slightly pull ahead (and this must be against a weak target or with recon mark) and with core + 2 shard, the hit limit, that you can really win. This is against a single target whereas DBB has no trouble consistently doing its damage against all the 16 enemies that could mob you at once in an arena.
Shard bombs explode at rand fuse times, so skill is not able to compensate for this on a per-bomb basis, the best you can hope for is to increase your average. This wouldn't be a problem if that was ever worth it.
By design, shards disappear when you put it against a wall. Since the placement of shards are ever so slightly randomized, whether or not a shard will disappear cannot be predicted, only estimated.
Enemies such as Vanaduke are able to act as walls that makes shards disappear.

In short, shards are small, weak, and unreliable compared to other bombs.

Catalyzer
Catalyzer and Neutralizer used to have great potential, now they don't even have that. As you might know, these guns used to be flipped. You would spam the highest-damage single-elemental attack on your enemy, then detonate it with the basic attack. This could be used to stack a basic mob with high damage while a boss was invincible, then push the enemy over and detonate them as the boss reveals, allowing you to effectively attack the boss where you'd otherwise be forced to twiddle your thumb.

The catalyzer change completely ruined it.

The main point of the guns are now the basic attack. This is weaker than a blaster and has none of the knockback until you detonate it.
The blast radius is so small that the charges will not only struggle to hit surrounding enemies, it will often miss the enemy to which it is attached.
I need to say that a second time. Most of your attacks that hit, will miss. Stacking is a waste of time. In fact, using the basic attack at all is a waste of time. The basic attack is for breaking blocks and nothing else.
You're probably not even going to get to detonate your tags because your teammate will kill the enemy with their brandish while the tags are still on it.

Swords
Due to the way the defence formula works, mixed-damage swords have about 60% more raw base damage than single-type swords. This allows them to inflict the same damage at +0 damage bonus. With easy and regular access to +4 and even +6, mixed-damage swords pull far, far ahead of its competitors. Divine Avenger, which is faster than Triglav, inflicts more damage against neutral targets on its combo. This is unintuitive and poorly balanced. This isn't even bringing in Acheron which does the same damage.

Acheron does the same damage as the biggest, hardest-hitting swords in the game while being fast and having an easy-to-use, nearly-unpenalized charge attacks that put out big damage in a long, consistent area. All of the other swords could be removed save for maybe Combuster and very little would change for most players most of the time.

Strikers don't have any benefits except for cool factor.

Armors
The state of armors is abysmal. This is well known so I'll go over it only briefly.

There's like three good armors. Kat, Chaos, Skolver if you wanna safe it.
Mad Bomber armor gives the same bonuses as Chaos and has all of the same penalties. The only difference is Chaos also has curse penalty, which almost never matters. In addition to curse being rare, the difference between being cursed while wearing either set is almost not worth thinking about. Both will prevent you from using your weapons for an upractically long time.
There are far more armor sets than there is interesting playspace for armors. I'm pretty sure Monster Hunter Worlds has less armors than this game, yet it has, like, fifty different types of bonuses armors are capable of giving you from many types of resistances and bonuses you can build up with conditions.
The "defensive" armors have barely more effective defense compared to class-based weapon armors.
Plate armors are a joke. I'm not sure they will let you survive even one more hit compared to class armors.
Defensive Trinkets aren't even a little worth it compared to health pendants even when used against matching elements.

And some of the problems I've identified. Here's solutions which you, as a game designer, can and possibly should ignore:

Fri, 05/15/2026 - 04:40

Zeddy

Solutions

Shard Bombs
With three simple steps, shard bombs can be brought back to something resembling their former glory, in order of importance:

Increase base damage by 50%-100%. This way just the core will still be below DBB, but core + shard will bring it meaningfully ahead, and anything more than that will be a worthwhile payoff compared to all the extra work needed to make this work. If you only do this step and nothing else, I will probably be satisfied.
The mechanism of making shards disappear should be removed. It brings a lot of frustration to the user.
The hit limit should be removed entirely. I'm glad you made it work consistently and in the intended matter, but it would not be unbalanced for the bomb to give a real payoff for big targets.

With this change implemented, let's try bombing something very big. For convenience, I'll use D24 numbers at max damage.

Before: 174 + 221 + 221 = 616

This implies a base damage of 239 + 286 before defense is deducted. We'll increase this 50%

After: 294 + 364 + 364 = 1022

This compared to:

DBB Damage: 366
DR Damage: 111 * 12 = 1332 (I've forgotten exact hit count and it's quite flexible)
Acheron Charge: 489 * 5 = 2445 (Ignorign the strong hit at point blank range which would add another 725 damage)
Blitz Needle: 310 * 15 = 4650

In this perspective, does 1022 damage from a damage-focused, difficult-to-use bomb seem overpowered? I propose that the potential needs to be at least this high before it's worth considering.

If you remove the hit limit we get 294 + 364 * 8 = 3206. This seems a lot, but I ask you this: Which is easier? Hitting with a full charge of Blitz Needle, or stacking core + 8 shards on a single enemy? We all know the answer. Give the most difficult weapon the highest DPS potential.

Catalyzer

Blast radius of the tags should be doubled.
Knockback should be reduced severely.
Any attack from any teammate should detonate them. The gun should effectively be maskeraith quills.

Alternatively revert the gun to its previous state where charge attacks attached. Blast radius must still be increased so that every tag can reliably hit the enemy it's attached to. I would also like the tags to attach to invincible targets such as Roarmulus and hitting the shield on trojans.

Swords
Every sword should be split damage, this would make it easier to equalize damage between them. If possible, Troika line could be split normal/normal. It seems strange, but it could then scale in the same was vs neutral targets as sealed swords can. Flourish and friends could be normal/piercing or piercing/piercing.

I believe this is mostly all swords need.

Armors
Honestly I'm at a loss here. Gunner armors are horrible and I think the game would be better off without most of them, but people have these things. The best thing would be a complete overhaul of the game's possible space of bonuses so that plate armors have a lot of poise and can tank through attacks that flinch people with other armors, while bombers armors reduce or eliminate the movement penalty for charging a bomb, maybe remove the trinket/weapon slot systems and attach it to armors so that gunner armors givbe + 1 weapon slot that specifically has to contain a gun, that kind of thing. I will not suggest any specifics. Please just do anything at all. Make Shadow Lair armors more than cosmetic trophies. Make Azure Guardian a good general-purpose armor that's not directly outclassed by Skolver. Make plate armors not a handicap you put on to do a challenge run. Make tanking an actual role people can play without stacking a million different bonuses and sprite skills teamwide.

A few things armors could do:

Instead of + damage vs beasts, an armor could give + piercing damage
Increase the cap of damage bonuses beyond +6. When this is done, the inflated shadow lair enemy stats make more sense.
Poise. Armors should allow the wearer to pull off a slow charge attack without flinching.
Effects on getting hit: Explosions, instantly charging your weapon, thorns that attack back the enemy, chances to ignore hits, refilling your dodge.
Effects on doing hits: Double strikes, crit-chances, adding status to your weapon (maybe against certain families?)
Extended invinciframes. (Reduced invinciframes for glass cannon armors)
Increased clip capacities for guns.
Increased/Decreased range for guns, swords, bombs.
Modified movespeed during charging.
Sword that increased your attack power while you are on fire.
A damage boost that increases as you move or dodge attacks.
Increased "stock" of dashes.
Dash cooldown reduction.
Lowered shield bash consumption.
Bonuses for sprite skills. Reduced cooldown, increased radius, damage, effect, whatever.
Bonuses for a specific sprite.

There's a lot that can be done. For inspiration you can look at the armors in Remnant: From The Ashes or any number of such games.

Thanks for reading this, if you have been.

Fri, 05/15/2026 - 17:46

Jcyrano

I still don't understand how it works

Shard Bombs
I agree the state of them is dire, but instead of Just adding number which still needs what if?
instead of 2 instances of damage we do 3 Initial blast + shard flight + shard explosion. And Yes the charge time of the (outer)shards explosion is faster.

You say that on a good explosion You hit a total amount of 3 times center plus 2 shards.

174 + 221 + 221 = 616.
Initial + (2 shard explosion)
but what happen if we add the shard flight hit? on a good case let's assume it hits a total of 5 times.

174 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 = 1058.
294 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 = 1750. (conservative 50% damage increase)
348 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 = 2116. (not very conservative 100% damage increase)
Initial + (2 shard flight) + (2 shard explosion)

At any time an enemy cant be hitted between 1 to 5 times which is a huge variance in damage 174-221 to 1058
but clearly outpase the 366 of DBB, Yes DBB consistency still reigns Supreme.

This cause the Bomb to have a good Area damage since if an enemy gets hit 5 times (not always the case) but overall the Single target damage might be high since we can do that damage to several enemies at the same time (we do need to divide the damage in the area it affects otherwise We are going to start an unnecessary arms race between Brandishes, Blitzneedles and Shards).

Although we can get into the Old Shards bomb problem with the 8 hits if the target is big enough. We might not want that! (I do want that, not sorry!)

174 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 = 2384.
294 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 = 3934. (conservative 50% damage increase)
348 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 = 4768. (not very conservative 100% damage increase)
Initial + (8 shard flight) + (2 shard explosion, yes I consider the target moves You can add one instance more if the target is huge like Royal Jelly or Vanaduke).

Would it be bad if we change the knockback from the (outer)shards into knockdown? and increase the chance of (outer)shards status of the bombs with status? to increase control without going 'mist' levels of control?

174 + 221 + 221 = 616.
Initial + (2 shard explosion)

But better consistency since there is no knockback on the (outer)Shards... but a knockdown would also let us set up better the explosions. Still not reaching DBB consistency but overall a good damage without trying to get 4 digits damage!

Even if we get 8 shards in the Royal Jellies we would be doing.
174 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 + 221 = 1942.
294 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 + 364 = 3206. (conservative 50% damage increase).
348 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 + 442 = 3884. (not very conservative 100% damage increase)

Agree with the BANE of shards disappearing, its severely detrimental for the gameplay.

Catalyzer (You have the knowledge)

Swords
Instead of split every damage, What if the split damage is not symetrical?
Instead of Acheron (just an example) being 100 normal + 100 shadow (again Just an example) being 50 normal + 100 shadow (again just an example)
the double bonus math would still apply, but the out-scaling would not be that huge (again You are the one that can do the right numbers)

Armors (If you are at lost, what do You expect from Us).

"...plate armors have a lot of poise and can tank through attacks that flinch people with other armors, while bombers armors reduce or eliminate the movement penalty for charging a bomb, maybe remove the trinket/weapon slot systems and attach it to armors so that gunner armors givbe + 1 weapon slot that specifically has to contain a gun, that kind of thing..."
I'm kind in agreement with this... the You can carry up to 4 weapons (no need to rent slots?, perhaps maybe 3? so team mates are important) and the trinkets well not to be purchaseable so they are not mandatory but also not just a coin sink? (we will need some other way of coin sinking)

But I have to bring that even that some sets are usable as Jigsaw pieces to add and buff things.
The consistency of what is buffed (charge time, attack speed, damage) makes it somehow/somewhat interchangeable.
Your Suggestions are NOT bad but some of them so Niche that Would remove some of the items even more from the pool by virtue of being more conditional to a piece that has to happen while other 3 things happen. Again not bad, but we need to scale to that level of granularity slowly if We are going to go Warframe levels of Jigsaw(which I don't know if it fits this game).

Again Nice to see You here More often, hope to see You In-Game aswell!

Sat, 05/16/2026 - 01:34

Sir-Pandabear

Well, if we're going to give the shards in flight damage and have the hit limits removed, then this is just old shards with less range and a fuse. It is my belief that the ability to easily and consistently 1-shot most enemies if you managed to, say, bait a zombie to jump onto it, is what got the bomb so nerfed in the first place. With such a change I would rather just see the old shards returned, mostly for nostalgic reasons since the power would be about equivalent.

I wouldn't mind it, the immediate effect just seem like it goes against developer intent, and the damage is no longer compensating for a weapon that is difficult to use, it would just be a brandish you use with bomber armor.

In one way I think it's unlikely we'll see uneven splits again since low damage is affected more by defense than high damage, so it's tricky to balance it. On the other hand we already have the split normal/normal hunting blade with its strong swings and weak ghost swings. The bonus for using the correct element is a fixed value per depth anyway, ie on d24 whether your sword is 150/150 or 200/100 the damage will be identical VS both weak and neutral targets. The only thing that changes is less damage VS resistant. That wouldn't be such a bad thing. Current acheron is so strong you might as well attack zombies with it.

You're right pointing out that I didn't consider armor sets having two pieces, but I still defer to Remnant: From the Ashes or Monster Hunter on how armor bonuses should be handled. In Remant armors give two bonuses. One that stacks higher from equipping multiple pieces, and a second that you get for just equipping the one piece in a set. IE the Drifter armor gives a bonus to stamina regen from just having one piece equipped while also increasing damage for every second you run, or every dodge you do, and this bonus scales with more Drifter pieces.

A simple way to translate this concept to SK could be Skolver granting a +2 to swords whether you have 1 or 2 pieces equipped, but a 5%/12% temporary sword damage bonus to sword damage per sword 3rd hit that connrcts for X seconds stacking 5 times. The effect is the same, your sword is stronger, but by putting it behind a conditional your output and thus hits to kill changes back and forth over time and you're guided into an aggressive playstyle where you specifically want to finish your Combo for once in your life. Some gun armors might grant a bonus for going through the reload animation or hitting consecutive shots without missing, for instance.

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Zeddy's ramblings about balance