AGREED. I'm actually getting really sick of how rapidly the mechanic spirals out of control if you're running solos - the moment something can outcompete you for speed, you are not participating in spike management any more. There's almost no options in response to some situations - and I'm doubly aggravated by the fact that I thought creating a Dragonscale Shield (The 5⭐ one, whatever it's called) would be a great idea to improve my survivability only to find it's practically as useless as every other defensive option. And going for the armor is hardly viable, because then I'm giving up the damage bonuses and that essentially means longer time in contact with a juiced enemy, resulting in the same kind of damage taken anyway.

Even something nuanced like an animation of the spike falling from the sky with plenty of warning so you can predict where it'll land and get to it first, rather than it emerging from the ground - something like that would be nice. Whoever heard of a storm with no rain??

I've had situations emerge where I've WANTED to make an attack and ended up picking a spike off the ground instead because it *spawned on me*, getting thrashed for the crime of (as far as i can see) getting "lucky." And if you play a charge attack build it's hardly viable to pick up a spike and carry it around because you're exposed while trying to play your build. Like, if someone can explain what I'm supposed to do to react to these situations I'd love to know. (and the answer better not be "more MSI" because that's a tacit admission that there's a fare to play the event on the order of 300,000 crowns. Go pricecheck a BKC.)

There's no counterplay. It's like I have no influence over my own survivability beyond tedious kiting/cheesing strategies using crowd control tools, and even THEN, the obscenely raised speed of something like a mecha knight makes even using haze bombs kind of pointless - even IF you land a hit, it'll follow up right after you do to the usual consequence. Everything else in the game is telegraphed and learnable, but the moment spikes get into the picture that balance is completely thrown off, and even WITH ASI MAXIMUM some attacks are straight-up unreactable for the average player.

Like, the weapon balance changes were nice, but the way the spike event is playing out is revealing a lot of shortcomings elsewhere throughout the gear design AND play design when set against challenges like this. This event isn't fun because there's very little a player can actively do to improve at managing it without having way more knowledge or gear options than most of the playerbase. It was bad enough that I started experimenting with how gear progression influences survivability and I cannot tell you how frustrating I find it that my Dragonscale Shield in the first floor of Tier 3 - ostensibly stanced as THE MOST HELPFUL TOOL in this scenario, is able to take **TWO** hits from an UNSPIKED enemy, whereas the PROTO SHIELD in the first floor of tier one will take **THREE**.

What, 50'000 crowns and a hundred fire crystals isn't enough of an investment for me to *gain* survivability? Setting aside the fact that 5 star gear is technically MORE THAN YOU NEED for Stratum 5, that's a ridiculous proposal. "Invest time effort and resources for an inferior survivability." This is just one part - it feels like NO design changes have been made to the way spikes work that let a player make decisions that control the threat - the only thing you can do is react to it, and usually quite clumsily.

Yeah, this event isn't fun at all - it's not fun because it feels like random chance whether your decisions as a player are a factor or not. This is the first time in my entire time playing with the game that I've just felt like trying to meet the challenge head-on is pointless.