Spiral Knights - Gun damage vs. sword

Gun damage vs. sword

2 replies [Last post]

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 21:35

huttj509

Legacy Username

Ok, so I've been noticing a significant damage difference between my sword (dark thorn blade, or Faust, depending on foe), and my gun (magma driver), as in, the gun shots do about 1/4 the damage of the sword swings at best (even the fast thorn blade). Attempting to generalize damage neutral vs neutral on the same floor.

Is this difference:

a) ranged weapons do less damage, and how significantly?
b) the Alchemer line do less damage because the bouncing shots make up for it in groups
c) mainly the lesser damage the magma driver does in exchange for doing fire
d) ok, my sword damage bonus medium from armor doesn't help much

Trying to generalize how much less damage guns tend to do in exchange for their range, basically. None of the driver line seemed to have damage listings on the wiki.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 21:50

Adder1

Legacy Username

Guns are supposed to do less

Guns are supposed to do less damage than swords of the same general star rating because of the fact that guns generally are a lower-risk form of attack as opposed to swords. If they did the same amount of damage, then there would be little contest over which would be best to use. As such, swords are for damage output at the cost of greater risk while guns are for safer engagement at the cost of lower damage output.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 22:04

Captain-Teemo

While Adder is correct that

While Adder is correct that guns should deal less damage blow for blow than a sword, I feel that guns do too little damage for their safety. You're still close enough that you can get glomped by jump and dash attacks, as well as projectiles fired from mobs which often have a projectile as their standard form of attack.

The Alchemer's ricochet are supposed to help the guns keep up in damage, but they are so random and awkward to utilize effectively I hardly count them as a "damage source." It is nice when you get some lucky bounces, but you're not playing pool, calculating angles to always make use of these extra particles.

That said - the new pulsar line (roarmulous token gun) is able to deal a much more reliable aoe damage since it is directly centered around the first target, meaning everything around that will always take damage as opposed to the random bounces from alchemers. I feel that this more reliable aoe damage as well as the 3 shot clips (alchemers are 2 shot clips) allow you to put out enough dps to deal meaningful damage while not stepping on the sword's op-ness.

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Gun damage vs. sword