Spiral Knights - Buff normal damage weapons

Buff normal damage weapons

6 replies [Last post]

Tue, 01/17/2012 - 11:08

Nicoya-Kitty

Currently normal damage weapons are balanced such that they do equal to or slightly less damage to all enemies as their special-damage counterparts do towards neutral enemies. On the surface this seems a sound idea, but let's look at it closer...

If a knight were to carry only one special damage weapon, then they'd do effective damage against 1/3 of monsters, neutral damage against 1/3 and ineffective damage against 1/3. However, few experienced knights run with only a single special damage weapon. Running with two special damage weapons, we instead get effective damage against 2/3 of monsters, neutral damage against 1/3, and ineffective damage against none at all.

Let's compare a Levi, a reasonably popular normal damage sword, with a Combuster and Acheron: Damage numbers are first/second,third hit

Levi: 203,258
Combuster/Acheron: 292,382; 203,292; 135,185 for effective; neutral; ineffective respectively

Average damage using only one of comb/ach: 210,286
Average damage using both comb/ach: 262,352 [2/3(292,382) + 1/3(203,292)]

As we can see, the normal damage weapon is slightly outclassed in average damage by the single specialized weapon, with the tradeoff that the normal damage weapon never leaves you doing ineffective damage against any monster class. However, carrying two special damage weapons (which is generally the case for most experienced knights) leaves the normal damage weapon in the dust.

Given this, I feel that normal damage weapons should be situated somewhere between the neutral and effective damage rather than slightly below neutral damage. Since you'd still get the benefit of only using one weapon slot and not having to switch weapons in the heat of battle, I'd suggest placing it at 1/3(normal)+2/3(neutral), which would be about about 232/322 for the Levi example. For a Sudaruska/Triglav this would work out to about 265/390 based on the DA's damage.

Obviously the Levi and Suda/Trig don't have the exact same damage profile on the first(/second) vs last hit compared with the special damage counterparts, but you get the idea.

Tue, 01/17/2012 - 13:14

Nacho

Mr. Triglav is not as strong

Mr. Triglav is not as strong as it seems. :( People call me the King of non mainstream. Im not happy about how normal weapons become pretty useless while carrying two special weapons.

I made a thread some time ago about monsters that are strong against every ind of damage but normal. I didnt get much support. Apparently people is happy about how the normal damage currenly works, but thats because there are weapons like Supernova and Leviathan. What im saying is that normal weapons arent supposed to be in some way cooler than the others, they like those two weapons because they have knockback and leviathan has a 360 spin attack. If there were a shadow polaris nobody would choose supernova, they would try to get both elemental and shadow polaris.

But i think thre might be a hole in your idea. Lets say DA and GF, why would you worry about getting both when you can get a Mr. Triglav and do a close-to-strong damage to every monster.

Tue, 01/17/2012 - 14:40

Hmmnm

Levi and Suda/Trig are popular not because of its damage, but because of its amazing knockback.

But yeah, a lot normal damage weapons are pretty useless.
Examples:
Iron Slug
Cutter line (but it is useless not because of damage)
Neutralizer (but it is useless not because of damage)
Supernova (although it does do more base damage than Polaris, it's kind of overshadowed)
Fiery Pepperbox (overshadowed by blitz needle)

Out of all those weapons, I'd say Iron Slug is the only weapon that needs a SERIOUS (and I mean SERIOUS) DAMAGE BUFF.

Tue, 01/17/2012 - 16:21

Diabound

Levithan needs no buff. It's

Levithan needs no buff. It's very useful against vanaduke because at certain stages where he resists non normal. Furthermore, it's much much much much easier to get a levithan than any of the brandishes

Tue, 01/17/2012 - 17:03

Neodasus

I could see myself using

I could see myself using normal 2hits if OOO simply buffs the chance of inflicting status, allows the status to happen after knockback and has one of the following added for balance:

-Extra range
-Extra knockback

the whole purpose of normal weapons is to be equal damage to all enemies, don't buff the damage just buff the versatility

Wed, 01/18/2012 - 09:48

Alpha-Stevo

@Neodasus

Knockback is a wonderful thing, keeping enemies offa your back.

That is, until ya toss a Lumber at an ally. THEN it's not all that great.

I concur with extra range on the Troika weapons, though.

Wed, 01/18/2012 - 15:32

Antistone

I kind of suspect that normal weapons are supposed to be weak choices, because OOO wants you to buy more CE so that you can craft 2-3 special damage weapons instead of a single normal weapon, and then buy more CE so you can have an extra weapon slot to hold them. If normal damage weapons were good enough to be a sensible choice even for the rich, then no one would use anything else.

Though IF that's the strategy, I'm not sure why there are so many normal weapons. You'd think one or two of each weapon class (sword/gun/bomb) would be plenty to fill the "poor man's X" niche, and yet we've got...what, eight different lines of normal-damage swords?

And I have no explanation for the "normal damage, but strong vs. one monster class" weapons. They're worse all-around than straight normal, they're worse versus that one class than an appropriate special-damage weapon, they have the narrowest specialization, and they don't have a complete set of them for all monster types, so you can't craft one for all situations (even if you were willing to pay double what it costs for a set of special-damage weapons). It's like the worst of all possible worlds.

Search

Buff normal damage weapons