Spiral Knights - Replace monster damage bonuses on weapons with damage type bonuses

Replace monster damage bonuses on weapons with damage type bonuses

19 replies [Last post]

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 18:33

Exerpa

I propose to do away with monster specific damage bonuses on weapons and instead replace them with a damage type bonus.

Examples:
Cold iron would be a mostly normal damage weapon but with an 'elemental high' bonus. - No undead bonus anymore
Hunting blade would be mostly normal with 'piercing high' bonus - No Beast bonus
Deconstructor - mostly normal + element high
Salt bomb - normal+piercing+shadow high

and so on.

Currently damage bonuses, either inherent in the weapon or through variants are unbalanced compared to CTR, ASI or UV's on sheilds and armor which are in full effect all time. A monster bonus only has a 1 in 6 chance of being in effect and are of no use at all in PVP. A hardcore lockdown player has no reason to roll for a triple UV on a weapon, as only ASI and CTR would be of use to them.

Anyone who has dedicated sword, gun or bomb damage bonuses through armor and trinkets would now have a reason to desire damage bonuses on their weapons, instead of potentially wasting them on the 'Maximum!' damage cap.

Currently split damage weapons do the exact same amount of damage for each type, so the potential for weapons with non symmetrical damage would make an intresting dynamic, don't you think?

Comments?

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 18:41

Aemicus

Haha, don't troll. Imagine a

Haha, don't troll. Imagine a BTS with Elemental, Pierce and Shadow Max in LD.

Currently, Undead and Construct stand for elemental, Beast and Fiend for pierce, and Gremlin and Jelly for shadow.

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 18:47

Exerpa

The LD elites already make

The LD elites already make life hard for the rest of us, I was merely suggesting a way to get some use out otherwise unusable variants - slime low on a thorn blade is insulting but shadow low would actually have some utility.

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 19:29

Aemicus

And make lockdown even more

And make lockdown even more unbalanced, as well as the clockworks that much easier. Remember, suggest ideas that are best for the game, not ones that simply make it easier.

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 20:04

Exerpa

The clockworks are easy

The clockworks are easy enough with brandish spam these days. I was just trying suggest a way to breath life into otherwise dead-end weapons, and at the same time give weapon UV's parity with armor and sheild UV's.

/shrug

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 07:54

Hexzyle

There's quite a large flaw

There's quite a large flaw there. "Undead High" checks whenever you strike an undead creature, and adds on a percentage of the damage you would have done as bonus.

However, "Elemental High" is an added base damage. The weapon would do a minor amount bonus damage to gremlins and wolvers, a handful of bonus damage to Slimes and Fiend, and a lot more damage to undead and construct. So now you're getting bonus damage to all 6 types of monsters.

Instead of +1 damage to undead, for a total of 1 overall damage for all monsters, its now +0.25 damage to element resistant monsters, +0.5 damage to element neutral monsters, and +1 damage to elemental weak monsters, for a total of +2.5. Two and a half times the overall damage bonus? Sounds like way too much of a buff to me.

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 08:06

Juances

^ Exactly.
But also try and combine the extra damage with other bonuses like skolver set or trinkets. Things get overcomplicated.

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 11:40

Exerpa

I must have described this

I must have described this wrong, I meant for small amounts of extra damage, not a complete doubling of damage.

So instead of a cold iron being 90% of the strength of a Leviathan plus an undead bonus, it would now be 90% the strength of a Leviathan's normal damage plus 10% elemental to fill the gap.

I realized from the start that this means that a sword designed to fight the undead becomes better at fighting robots, but as it stands now, such weapons are arguably not fit for purpose. When the damage cap is reached through equipment buffs such weapons would no longer be weaker versions of their non-specialized counterparts, but equals. It would remove the weapon itself from the damage buff stack calculation thus making it easier to understand, not harder.

For every other weapon that gets one of these hypothetical bonuses via a UV, the whole point was to make the weapon a bit better in a more general way, just like ASI or CTR, rather than the 'hope for affinity' 1 in 6 method now.

UV's on helms and armor seem to be understandable and accepted, I was just wondering if weapons could get similar treatment.
Cobalt with shadow max is definitely no skelly. A cold iron with 90% normal/10% elemental would not be an elemental brandish nor would a leviathan with a 10% elemental UV be.

tl;dr
Defensive equipment gets extra general defense through UV's so why can't weapons get extra general offense?

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 13:18

Hmmnm

Should be general damage UVs

I've always found weapons with specific damage to a single type of monster a bit lacking (with the exception of RSS)... so I support.

Personally, I think that weapons should have a small chance of getting a UV general damage increase,
so that people don't have to be so reliant on Skolver and BTS for damage.

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 14:31

Juances

"Defensive equipment gets extra general defense through UV's so why can't weapons get extra general offense?"
They are 2 different things trying to compare like that wont work, but if you want to do it....

>A pierce UV on an armor will make you resistant to wolvers and slimes, it wont make you stronger against a robot or a zombie
>A pierce UV on a weapon will increase damage against everything -wolvers,fiends,gremlins,etc-

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 16:48

#10

Diabound

This might be acceptable only

This might be acceptable only if they affect innate abilities IE, UV's remain the same but things like hunting blade change. That might at least increase their usage.

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 18:16

#11

Hexzyle

If you're playing through an

If you're playing through an undead strata, you switch to your CIV. If you're not, you switch to another weapon. The majority of Graveyard levels have Arsenal stations on them anyway. It's called "planning".

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 19:53

#12

Exerpa

A normal UV on armor makes

A normal UV on armor makes you more resistant to everything.
ASI on a weapon increases damage output over time to everything, but it has a cap so i guess its not quite the same?

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 21:59

#13

Aemicus

@Exerpa I suggest you read

@Exerpa I suggest you read the wiki guide on damage types. A normal UV on armor makes you more resistant to NORMAL damage, not every type.

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 23:37

#14

Hexzyle

@Aemicus

The majority of attacks dealt to you for tier 1 and 2 are either partially or fully normal. I think that's what they're getting at.

Wed, 02/01/2012 - 00:14

#15

Aemicus

@Hexzyle I guess that might

@Hexzyle I guess that might be it. If so, I apologize. But once you get into T3, it isn't as good, which is here everyone should be aiming.

Wed, 02/01/2012 - 00:15

#16

Diabound

@Exerpa More accurately, in

@Exerpa

More accurately, in tier 1 all damage is normal. In tier 2 certain monsters attacks will now deal half of whatever type they are and half normal. In tier 3 some monsters will still use normal damage attacks but the attacks that do have a type deal full damage of that type.

Wed, 02/01/2012 - 00:31

#17

Nicoya-Kitty

@Diabound That's not entirely

@Diabound That's not entirely true. T3 simply introduces pure-typed attacks. Many attacks are in fact still split special/normal.

For example: T3 Kat bullets are pure shadow, but T3 Kat bites are shadow/normal.

Wed, 02/01/2012 - 12:24

#18

Hmmnm

Errrm...

By general defense I think he means for extra
UV Normal resist, Elemental resist, Piercing resist, Shadow resist

If Armor can have resists like these, why can't weapons have extra
UV Elemental damage, Piercing damage, Shadow damage?

If we added those new bonus damage types, damage bonuses might become a bit more useful since the bonuses would apply to more than one monster type and work in PvP.

I think its a great idea.

Wed, 02/01/2012 - 19:02

#19

Aemicus

"more useful since the

"more useful since the bonuses would apply to more than one monster type and work in PvP."

Because PVP isn't broken enough. And once again, from an earlier post of mine: "suggest ideas that are best for the game, not ones that simply make it easier."

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Replace monster damage bonuses on weapons with damage type bonuses