Chaos Cloak, What's it's Deal?

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Quiiliitiila's picture
Quiiliitiila

Soooo, what's up with the chaos cloak? In the wiki it looks like it weakens the wearer to all forms of attack and has worse base protection than the other 5 star cloaks at that level...

http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Chaos_Cloak

Did I read it wrong? I really like the way it looks, so I hope someone can tell me I'm mistaken and it is actually a good item...

Thanks,
Quiiliitiila

weems
Legacy Username
It's kind of strange how the

It's kind of strange how the item pool is so limited, and some items are just objectively inferior/superior to others.

There are lots of situational things but some items just seem to be plain old BAD, and this one is one of them...

It would be more interesting if one of the resistances was just MAX, like shadow or something, making it something viable to wear on certain levels/situations.

Sick
Legacy Username
Shadow of its former self

It used to have charge redux med AND damage bonus (med/low? i forget) for all weapons during Preview. It kept getting worse and now it's pretty much unusable.

But hey, if you like the look, that what the costume slot is for 8D

FossaFerox
Legacy Username
It's an offensive piece of

It's an offensive piece of armor, the most offensive in game, actually.

The other offensive pieces only boost a single weapon and usually for attack speed, not attack damage (which is far more useful).

For anyone who is using more than 1 weapon type and plans on being offensive (dishing out more damage and avoiding hits rather than trying to soak hits while doing lower, slightly more continual damage) this is the armor to use.

kakelgis
Legacy Username
Because devs don't know how

Because devs don't know how to properly balance equipment/weapons. (not even status effects/monsters/defense, honestly) This is mainly why everyone uses Vog Cub and you rarely see someone with Fallen or Valkyrie, for example.

The game simply revolves around elemental defense, and the current endgame levels revolve on fire resistance. There's not much of a point on running anything other than JK or FSC, profit-wise, unless you're hunting for specific spark tokens or materials.

Chaos is pretty much their largest screw up. It used to be somewhat viable even, without normal defense, however with medium attack bonus and charge reduction. After that they nerfed the bonuses to low, at which point it became pretty useless. And now they changed to what you see.

Balancing has always been a problem on pretty much every armor set out there. Some seem too strong? No, they're perfectly fine. The problem is that on comparison, the weaker sets are not viable because of several disadvantages they suffer against the "strong" armor, because of the faulty status resistance system and bad balancing.

The big problem with the devs is that they do not understand that the overused sets are not too powerful, but rather, underused ones are too weak. (and also, there's a general lack of equipment variety that helps in this) I like calling this the "NERF EVERYTHING" syndrome. Let me list some examples from back in CB:

Fallen used to have LOW penalty against fiend with HIGH DAMAGE BONUS. Every balancing update we'd see the penalty rise, and the damage bonus decrease. Eventually the penalty got back down to MEDIUM.
Valkyrie used to have MEDIUM DAMAGE BONUS AGAINST FIEND and MEDIUM DAMAGE BONUS, to make up for a fire weakness.
Grey Feather used to have MEDIUM CHARGE REDUCTION.
Vog Cub used to have MOVEMENT SPEED BONUS. Later changed to LOW ATTACK BONUS. Now it became MEDIUM ATTACK SPEED, however lost some defense. (?)
Dragon Scale used to have MEDIUM ATTACK SPEED. Now it's a MEDIUM DAMAGE BONUS VS BEAST. And beasts don't even freaking deal piercing.
Bombastic used to have MEDIUM BOMB CHARGE REDUCTION. Now it's a LOW BOMB DAMAGE BONUS. Low damage bonus for BOMBS? What's the point?

And the list goes on. Yeah.

Zedoshi
Legacy Username
yes

Armor costume.

Like half the game.

SirNiko
Legacy Username
The problem with the "Low"

The problem with the "Low" and "Medium" terms is that we don't know what they are relative to the original output of your equipment, or even that it 'low' means the same between two pieces of equipment with the same stat. Is it a proportional bonus, or a static increase?

Also, at some point during Preview the terms were jumbled around. What was once "High" may now be "Medium" even though the effect with regards to damage or defense is exactly the same as before.

Until we have some raw numbers to spade it's premature to dismiss this item as truly useless.

Metaknight's picture
Metaknight
god forbid you have the helm

god forbid you have the helm from the same set too. then youre a walking status ailment.

Quiiliitiila's picture
Quiiliitiila
Thanks guys, I suppose I'll

Thanks guys,
I suppose I'll be putting it in my costume slot if I can manage to get one.

-Quiiliitiila

Ageatii's picture
Ageatii
In addition to balancing gear

In addition to balancing gear vs each other, the devs have to balance them against their desired difficulty curve in the game. This is why a lot of equipment got weakened towards the end of the preview. This should ultimately be tempered by the release of more equipment (more options is always a boost to the player). More new areas would also help.

A couple armor pieces outright suck, though. But not the Chaos Cloak.

kyoushu1
Legacy Username
Why doesn't it suck? Does it

Why doesn't it suck? Does it still have the damage boost like the wiki says? Even that, I don't think, is enough to offset the lower normal/ele defense vs grey feather set and the huge set of resistance debuffs.

Dogrock's picture
Dogrock
Yes, it has that damage boost

Yes, it has that damage boost in the current game.

Cobalt
Legacy Username
Er... I don't like this armor

Er... I don't like this armor anymore... You get so much lost. For what? A freaking LOW damage boost. |:

Magnus
Legacy Username
Divine is the new

Divine is the new Chaos.

Chaos is now as useless as Silvermail.

Woop!