"Herp no vehicles, you dumb stinky derp."

This is not for your average Clockworks mission/Arcade run/public urination. This is for two systems: fighting other players or fighting normal enemies as in the Clockworks, but not necessarily in the Clockworks. There will be multiple variants of vehicles, including different minigames and use of each weapon type. Sometimes you want to use swords, other times guns, other times bombs; if engineering makes its way into the game you have even more options. I am going to briefly describe each variant in the current post which someone will most likely try to copy but horribly fail. There are no classes (Lockdown) for any of these nor equipment restriction. For all of these I endeavor to push people to apply teamwork to their gameplay without smashing their face into it until they bleed all over the new carpeting. There will be another series of links in the current post of the individual vehicle systems.

• Expidition/Face Off
• Delivery

This one works similarly to the one above, but with one major difference: you have to deliver precious cargo to the destination. The cargo is basically a statue in the sense that it may be held above your knight, during which you are unable to attack/shield/use vials, but at least you can run around with it. The cargo itself has a health system similar to the barricades in the engineering stuff meaning you have to protect it while not attacking it yourself. For the Arcade version the cargo serves as a key to a treasure room, which must be placed on a pad to verify the cargo during which several waves of enemies will attempt to kill you. How pleasant. Unlike before, there is no teleporters or giant status cloud of death; instead there are spawn pads everywhere. Enemies do not spawn normally (the kind that drops heat, crowns, etc.; the spawn pad enemies can only drop hearts) but the vehicle behaves the same as before: one person drives, while the vehicle is controlled the gates are up, but instead of the teleporter exit which occupied the stern/back there is an open side. Enemies can walk on the boat easily. The left/port and right/starboard sides still have the rails which prevent enemies from walking on the boat, but they will still want to attack you. Also, if all your team is dead the Clockworks enemies do not target the cargo. However, if they attack a knight and it happens to damage the cargo then it gets damaged. The cargo itself can only take five hits before being destroyed. The floors may be cleared without surviving cargo, but there will be no/very little rewards for your failure. The cargo, while held, is not damaged if you are hit; however, if you are hit while your knight is holding it the cargo will drop out of your hands and is vulnerable to attacks.

For the player versus player version we have two options: two boats and two cargoes or only one boat and cargo while the other team takes the place of the average Clockworks enemies. In the two boat version both teams are trying to deliver their cargo, which is actually a destructive device to destroy their base, to the opposing starting point; which is basically their base. At the beginning both teams start inside their base with a loadout station and what not as your average Clockworks floors do, with the air lock after the room, but the depository for the cargo appears once both boat party buttons are activated. Once both are active both boats are moved slightly forward to make room for the depository space which appears. This space may not be occupied by anything but the enemy cargo. No one can stand on it, no one can place their own cargo in their own depository, no one can mess with it; the best you can do is have your team surround it to block, but while grouped together your team would be vulnerable to attacks. Then again, why would your whole team be standing at the base if you are supposed to be moving your cargo to the enemy base? Also, since your whole team is there who is protecting your cargo? Unlike the Arcade version, the minigame version has a major difference: you cannot damage the cargo of your own team. Not possible. Nurp. No griefing for you. You can, however, pick up the cargo once the match starts and try to run off with it; but if you get hit your knight drops it. Also, enemy knights are not able to pick up your cargo. They can only attack it. This version of the cargo can take ten hits before being destroyed. If your cargo is destroyed your team loses.

This vehicle system leans closer to player versus player and is very very similar to a feature on TF2. Apparently I was ignoring that when I was writing this. Liquids. Then again, Lockdown and Blast Network.

August 13, 2012

After literally seconds of searching I found this and this in regard to this concept. If it takes me seconds to search something, why does it take weeks for others to not repost an old topic especially when it was stupid to begin with? Because derp.

From the two above links we have a few options:

• Bomb damage
• Fuse speed (the attack speed version for bombs)
• Bouncing (shield bumping causes the user to repel)
• Movement speed increase
• Scarlet

We may as well explore all of them before picking one.

Bomb damage

When it comes to bombs, damage buffs are easily overshadowed by charge buffs. You want to charge faster to plant faster to attack faster. Each attack deals damage or does something (status, suction, etc.) you want to replenish. Damage buffs can only go so far while charge buffs potentially allow you to plant at least twice as fast from the base charge times (most bombs have a base charge rate of five or six seconds) while each charge buff appears to decrease the time required to complete a charge by half a second. Which would you rather have: 7% more damage or half a second saved to charge the bomb above your head so you can prepare the next one? If for some reason you still want more damage because you already have +6 charge (+2 from H10 on your bomb, then +4 from your equipment) and you need something to use as a shield. Yes, most people use shields. Everyone should use shields but some people like to be silly. For your average non-premium bomber, say you decided to build Mad Bomber because you have balls. You got your H10 bomb for +2 charge and your two Mad Bomber parts for another +4 charge and +4 damage; these buffs are for bombs only, for those not paying attention. That means your charge is maxed but you still have that gap where you could use a little more damage. Why not? After all, you want to have balls of steel, right? You could just grab a trinket for one of those gauntlet things, but since you already spent a lot on that hardcore bombing set you want something to max out your bombing stats. Keep in mind, however, that without UVs involved you have the most weapon specialist buffs right now. You get +8 in total from just your helmet and torso. Sure, you have less normal defense and a bunch of status weaknesses than the average 5* armor, but those are massive buffs. You could be walking down the street one day and murder someone by bumping into them because of how buff you are. You murderer. Then the cops come and ask what happened so you tell them you were too buff for them to handle so they died instantly upon impact. They may give you strange looks, but they would be too confused to arrest you because that makes no sense.

Fuse speed

Remember that circle that expands when you set your bomb, and once it expands to match the radius the bomb detonates? That is the fuse. Normally the fuse of a bomb is a little string on the bomb itself, but since it would be silly to have a tiny string to stare at we get the expanding ring. Makes sense. For all bombers this is basically your version of attack speed, though the same could be said for charge time. Bombs have no normal attack so either would work. However, this is a major balancing factor for all bombs. It makes the bomb detonate faster once set. From my experience many bombs are meant to be used by planning ahead, often time while in the fray. You have to think while working while thinking. If you step over there, you get hit. If you step over here, you get hit. What do you do? Not step at all. You need enemies to be within your range. If they are out of the blast they are not damaged by the blast. With the old shard bombs we had some ranged ability, but since the "update" it turned into what should have a landmine feature to make it useful for tactical bombers. However, the fuse speed delays the time between plopping the bomb down and kaboom. What do you do in the meantime? Charge another bomb, hopefully keeping the enemy/ies within range of the bomb you just planted so it was not a waste of time. Does that mean this should be a modifiable feature? Probably not, considering bombs with slow fuses rely more on your kiting ability than blasting everything into tiny pieces to put in your salad. What are the weird chunks in the salad? Never ask. Ever.

Bouncing off the enemy

This specifically comes from this post but seems too abusable by other weapon users, specifically gunners. Who was this shield supposed to be for? Go away, gunners who refuse to use Valiance. Speaking of which, Valiance is a great sidearm for both gunners and bombers. A lot of people say the gun is horrible because a lot of people are sword users who gain little utility from it because they are already using melee weapons. It pushes the target back regardless of how close or far, as long as they are within the bullet range and make contact, and has some attack interruption. Over the past month I have seen a couple more gunners and bombers start using it and they seemed satisfied. Wait, this is supposed to be about bombing, not Valiance. Go away distractions. Bouncing, about it; it would allow the user to shield still, but instead of bouncing enemies away from the user with shield bumping it would cause them to bounce off the enemy. Seeing as a complete reverse bumping effect would be ridiculously overpowered I have a compensation to offer for this in attempt to make it considerable: only one enemy may be repelled, though only have the distance shield bumping would normally repel, while the user is repelled only a fourth of the shield bumping distance away from that enemy in the exact opposite direction. If you are only against less targets this would be more practical, but for huge crowds of metal eating monkeys the one you just bumped away was stopped by others in its deflection path and the crowd can easily chase you. What are monkeys doing here? I said to go away, distractions. This would still be pretty bad considering as a bomber you are supposed to specialize in taking down giant crowds of mo-enemies while having significant crowd manipulation ability. Herd the cattle. What are you doing, bouncing off things? What do you think you are? A rubber ball?

Movement speed increase

You probably guessed it by now, but this is our last option for the primary benefit for this shield. What does this buff give you? Faster running, dummy. According to Mercurial Demo a major effect for bombers is faster running, allowing us to quickly herd while manipulating positioning while outmaneuvering attacks while going to the grocery store to pick up some milk then coming back in time for your favorite show. With gunners it lets you run away faster or get yourself in a better position, but for bombers every pixel moved counts. For gunners you care more about getting away than moving into a specific position. This is important for bombers. Before anyone gets their underpants shoved up their bu-areas I am not saying we should have more than +1 movement speed buff for this shield. Put the underwear down. Actually, put it back on so you are wearing it. No one wants to see you naked. This is to prevent abuse by other weapon users, but we will get to that shortly with stats. To clarify, only +1 movement speed from this section. Move on.

That stupid shield with some health

Unless you are an extremist hipster, this shield is awful past T2. Even in T2 there are other shields which easily overshadow this silly piece of metal. Herp-de-derp, a couple bars of health. Was it worth it? Maybe if you like getting hit or playing "medic", but other than that as a bomber you are not intentionally taking damage. In fact, if you move faster you could avoid the hit entirely. Silly. I know Three Rings has a hatred/distaste for bombers as independent combatants, but that does not mean bombers deserve it. If the three weapon types/"classes" were the children of daddy Three Rings swords would be the oldest-pride-and-joy, gunners would be the hyperactive youngest, and bombers would be the awkward middle child no one cares about. You want to oppress us, dad? You ask what we want to do with our time here? We want to rock.

Alright, we know what our buff options are and what takes priority. However, what stops non-bombers from using this? Debuffs for other weapon types. This is going to be somewhat similar to that but without the extreme exchanges. We know we want at least the +1 movement speed, right? What else? How about some damage? Just +1 bomb damage, thanks. I will be paying with cash. What about gunners who still want to run faster with this and the swordsmen who just want to run faster to get to the next battle first? They get some debuffs:

Positive effects
• +1 movement
• +1 bomb damage

Negative effects
• -2 gun damage
• -2 sword damage

Does this go against shields never having negative effects? Yes, but a bombing specialist shield goes against the whole archetype system to begin with. Shut up, dad.

Now we have our effects. What about stats? What kind of defenses should this have? Obviously normal, considering bombers are almost always next to the enemy/ies which have melee attacks. Most 5* shields with normal defense have around six to ten bars of it. Considering we already get a bunch of buffs from earlier and this is not a specialist shield, stick seven bars of normal on this shield. What about specialized defenses? Sure, but not a significant amount; the main focus is to beef those punches, not eat bullets. We already have specialist shields for that. From the perspective of a bomber, for bombers, which damage type eats up our health the most? If you thought pierce you are silly. Actually, I would call it a draw between shadow and element. Shadow usually comes from obnoxious fiends while element tends to come from statuses and projectiles. We already have Owlite for element, fire, and shock defense. We already have three 5* shields with element defense. What about pierce? Five 5* shields. What about shadow? Two 5* shields. Lame. Considering bombers tend to get Owlite for defensive tactics anyway, their offensive option may as well have their plan B: shadow defense. But how much shadow defense? Back to average bar count, most 5* shields have about fifteen bars of accumulative defense in terms of damage types. We already have seven bars in normal. Does that mean to throw eight bars of shadow into the cake mix? No, this is thing has offensive buffs. Does that mean no shadow damage at all? No, we need at least ten bars on accumulative damage defense. What does the swordsmen shield have? Thirteen and a half bars? Alright, compare it to that; it would essentially have the same defense rates but with shadow instead of pierce. Technically its buffs are also less. Not so fast, Jack. We still want a status resistance. How can we have both? To start, not have the same defense; cut it down compared to the Snarbolax shield by a couple bars. Now it has seven bars of normal and four bars of shadow for a total of eleven bars in damage defense. Alright. Seems pretty solid. Give it a test kick. Anything crack? Nurp. Moving on, status resistance. For bombers, what is our primary offender? What interrupts our charge at the most inconvenient second? What inhibits your mobility and reaction ability? No, not curse. Shock. We already have MDemo with shock defense. What about shields? Owlite has shock defense. Anything else? Darkfang, Volt Breaker. Is that it? Derp this nonsense, weld some shock defense on this thing. Get that welding mask on and go nuts with the torch. You know you want to. You glorious, homicidal maniac. This thing is getting pretty crazy. Here are the stats thus far:

5*
• +1 movement speed
• +1 bomb damage
• -2 gun damage
• -2 sword damage
• seven bars normal defense
• four bars shadow defense
• five bars shock resistance

Before you try to crawl away, one last thing for this item: model concepts. Over here we have something which I have not seen in a while, a riot shield. For all you happy kiddies, a riot shield is basically a rectangular frame of bulletproof metal and/or glass used by police forces. A cop with one of these things can run you down and push you against a wall and all you can do is wiggle your soon to be cuffed hands. There are two general models for these shields, defensive and aggressive. These are not formal terms but describe how they are used fairly well. The defensive one is similar to something else we have and is basically the same size. The aggressive one can be used with a club weapon to maintain visual contact with the target while maintaining swift counterattacking mobility. You can see where and when to hit before you hit while they hit. That second one looks silly. A see-through window. Derp. What about the other one? It looks like a welding mask but in shield form. It looks interesting compared to the shields we currently have, tying in reality with fantasy. Look at this thing. Imagine using this with your favorite explosives. Put your pants back on. Now imagine it with the stats listed above. Put your pants back on again.

I might make some status for 4*- variants to expand this post later.

August 14, 2012

Here are the updated stats:

5*, "Demolitionist Deflector"
• +1 movement speed
• +1 bomb damage
• -1 gun damage
• -2 sword damage
• +2 bars/pips of health
• seven bars normal defense
• five and a half bars shadow defense
• five bars shock resistance

Since the health bonus comes from this shield being based on Scarlet line, we need a 4* to fill the gap. Usually when a shield upgrades from 3* to 4* its stats are increased by a significant amount, almost double its old 3* stats to make it T3 worthy, and almost always retains its same old features. With the 3* Scarlet it has about 2.7 bars of both normal and element defense with +2 health for your knight. Am I still rambling?

4* "Assault Absorption"
• +1 bomb damage
• -1 sword damage
• +2 bars/pips of health
• five and a half bars normal defense
• four bars shadow defense
• five bars shock resistance

What about old Scarlet? Its element defense was transferred to shock resistance and shadow added to add resistance to rioting undead and fiends. Alternatively its element defense could be switched for shadow and model changed to a buckler style riot shield to stay consistent. If the latter, its name could be changed to suit its new place: "Rave Rampart". With this change the 3* would still have the same stats but its element defense would be traded in for the same amount in shadow.

But not in the extremes in this thread.

In terms of the tradeoffs the shield is used more to approach hostiles, sometimes meaning you take the shield and charge with it. If they try to shoot you the shield would deflect it. I know it looks weird with the first picture because that is one of the old clunker designs. The newer design is more of a hybrid buckler-tower combining a more condensed frame with a decently big front face to charge into someone and pin them to a surface. Whether Shoebox knew about that in the other thread is out of my knowledge, but it works well for old technology. With the older kinds of shields they had two basic designs, buckler and tower; bucklers were lighter, less dense, and easier to use without resistance or weight getting in the way. Towers were giant walls which got in the way of the opponent and could be used to charge into people. Most of the time buckler style shields were used because of how practical and cheap they were to make while towers were usually played down a little to be more buckler-esque. Compared to your image this one would be basically the same thickness but with a different rim design and less decoration. The little silver buttons are bolts which keep the handles on the other side attached though they should be covered on the face. Silly designers.

I can see what you mean about the stats. Honestly, the sword and gun debuffs are there because the movement speed could be used by anyone without penalty otherwise. Rather than lowering the negative effects I could incorporate Scarlet by making it part of the series so it also adds max health as well as some defense changes:

5* (original)
• +1 movement speed
• +1 bomb damage
• -2 gun damage
• -2 sword damage
• seven bars normal defense
• four bars shadow defense
• five bars shock resistance

5* (updated)
• +1 movement speed
• +1 bomb damage
• -1 gun damage
• -2 sword damage
• seven bars normal defense
• five and a half bars shadow defense
• five bars shock resistance
• +2 bars/pips of health

It gets +1 for each added health bar, +1 from one of the damage reductions being removed, and +3 for defense increase on shadow. For the damage type defenses I was going for a toned down shadow variant on Plate lines. Also because Crest of Almire already has equal sharing on normal-shadow defense and D.Skelly has more shadow than normal. Get some variation in there.

I will update stuff tomorrow. I need to sleep or insanity ensues.

Complications are part of our game.

Ever wanted to jump into a giant pool of fiery death? You should see a doctor about that.

This was inspired by this thread but since they were stuck on using water I am going to use my own ideas as my own ideas. Also because I can expand on it rather than saying "hey, what if you did this" and being completely ignored. Then other people say to do it as well, but still ignored. Makes sense.

Without further adieu-stractions, here is another reason to get that fire resistant set over something else for something other than Vanaduke.

Lava. What can I say? It burns, it kills, do not try to swim in it. Unlike "Shadowfire", which I prefer to call "hotspots", lava can actually be walked through; but you would take significant damage while wading through it. You would also be set on fire in a very high probability, but that is only a minor part of the molten death you are walking in for some reason. Why would you want to be in lava? Two reasons: you were bumped into it by an attack from something or you really really want the treasure on that little island in the distance. Treasure, you say? Yes, you silly- over the molten death liquids there are a few islands with a couple red boxes, but that is not all. Sometimes you need to travel across the death sea to continue with the floor. Usually people do floors to clear them.

What do you do to not die horribly because floors are designed to be possible without taking damage? A rock. A big rock. Not just any big rock, a chunk about as big as the average knight; one by one spaces in size. These rocks appear on spawn pads in certain areas where lava needs to be crossed. In fact, every island and safe surface which enemies do not normally appear has at least one spawn pad for these rocks. I know that sounds weird. Rocks which infinitely respawn. What do the rocks do? You pick them up and place them down. Down where? In the lava, dummy. It lasts for thirty seconds once placed in lava, is picked up and put down in the same manner as the existing statues used to keep pressure pads down, but once placed in lava it becomes a surface which may be walked on without touching the lava. However, there can only be ten rocks from each spawn pad active at once. Once the eleventh rock is placed in lava from the same spawn pad the first of those ten automatically dissipates regardless of its remaining time. This is to prevent infinite layering over the lava surface. There are still rocks on spawn pads in a lot of places.

Approximately two thirds of the entire surface area for the floor would be lava. The majority of surfaces which are safe to walk on are bridges which are three spaces wide. These bridges are not exclusively for walking. In fact, the majority of enemies which appear will come on screen while you are on bridges. How do they know where you are? Spawn pads. You read right. All the enemies, excluding a potential "boss" at the end, come from spawn pads out in the lava somewhere. Where? Under the lava, covered. But most of them are near bridges. What kind of stuff comes from these spawn pads? Zombies, Oilers, Retrodes. All fire related, of course. Just what we needed. The three enemies all deal different specialized damage types intentionally. What was that? You want to only need one kind of defense and get through this easy? Shut up. These enemies do not drop any heat, crowns, materials, or equipment; they do, however, drop hearts and Vitapods. As with all spawn pad enemies Vitapods would be rare but not nonexistent. Also, those enemies do not necessarily have a lot of knockback. To add a little more anxiousness to this volcano you decided to dance a Trojan spawns every time a party button is activated. These Trojans do drop average items which the spawn pad enemies do not but are spawned in the lava. What party buttons? The party buttons everywhere. Every couple minutes worth of walking your party gets to a party button, which divides each section of the floor with a giant wall to prevent people from walking back to cleared areas. Seeing as the average floor is supposed to take around eight to ten minutes if you play casually and each section takes a couple minutes there would be five sections to navigate through; each full of bridges, infinitely respawning enemies, rocks to build temporary bridges with, and death. Fun. By the way, the floor is in a molten layer in the planet contained by movement under the planet surface molding a large cavernous bubble full of lava. Think of a big hollow rock bubble with lava sitting in it. Now imagine being in there. Nothing can go wrong.

There might be some kind of major enemy for this as a boss or last fight before the floor ends I would edit in later. Can you say giant fire Chromalisk?

The index looks pretty organized, but when I go to edit it looks messy. Especially where there are lists in lists. Silly tags.

What can be said about this armor? Based on those weird pink blocks of deadly jiggling. It sounds weird because it is weird. Unlike Wolver and Chroma lines, the defense Jelly line has is aligned with the enemy it was based on; though their defenses were probably based on the damage type dealt by the enemy they were based on, but I digress. Whatever. Anyway, those pink cube jellies have a few characteristics we should all be reminded of:

• Pierce defense
• Melee savvy
• No complex characteristics/abilities (Trojan buff)
• Does not care if damaged, will continue to attack
• Particularly vulnerable if poisoned (the big guy)

Back to the armor itself, compare it to its Shadow Lair branch; less pierce defense (by a whole bar) with useless sleep resistance while Ice Queen has freeze resistance. Considering sleep has been taken out of the game until further notice (when/if sleep is rebalanced) having resistance to a nonexistent status does not help you. It only has sleep as part of an old triangular relationship between Jelly, Magic, and Skelly lines; each had two status resistances and one weakness. This was changed for most. The idea behind the three was to have high specialized defense, a couple status resistances, some normal defense, and no offensive buffs. Why would anyone want to use this over, say, Wolver? Defense stuff. Stop laughing. The idea was to be able to attack as you please with less worry about your own health. Just keep attacking. Unfortunately the developers forgot that offensive bonuses are more important than tanking damage. Does that mean to add some damage buffs or something? N-Actually, maybe. But probably not. The idea behind this armor is to compensate for the user not evading attacks or using that big flat thing called a shield. Why should anyone care? You should, dummy, because you are reading a post about balancing an underpowered item. We know we want more defense, right? Alright. We can expand on that. Remember how my notes on Plate lines gave allies little shields? This is going to be kind of similar to that. At 5*, not any of its past variants, by wearing a Royal Jelly part (not Ice Queen) it gives all allies two and a half bars of pierce defense, only for the helmet and torso. This bonus can only be given for a total of two items, meaning if one person has the full set having anyone else equip a RJelly part does not increase that defense bonus any further. That would be silly. The defense bonus applies to yourself and all party members. Two and a half bars per RJelly part equipped. Unlike the Plate line stuff, you do not have to be doing anything for the bonus to apply; everyone gets it just because you are wearing it. Sounds great, right? Five bars of pierce defense for free? This is where the sad part comes in. Sleep defense removed and replaced with poison weakness equal to its stun resistance. Less status resistance, but plenty of pierce resistance. A real specialist. Here are the new set of effects:

RJelly (5*, H1, no UVs, both parts equipped)
• ~6.2 bars normal (unchanged)
• ~7.5 bars pierce (unchanged)
• Full stun resistance (unchanged)
• Full poison weakness
• Gives all party members 2.5 bars pierce defense per part (total of +5 bars pierce defense for having both helmet and torso equipped)

Do you still think you need some damage buffs when you could get a giant chunk of defense? I thought not. Silly. Sure, it may not have any fancy damage bonus like Wolver, but that is a lot of free defense you could be giving yourself and everyone in your party. Yes, that applies to your team in Lockdown. Underpowered suddenly becomes amazing team support. I know what you want, and I can make what you want. To an extent.

More of the same.

Unlike Jelly, Magic line is more focused against projectiles rather than being able to take hits in general. And statuses. Those darn statuses. Element defense is nice, but sometimes the real problem is being on fire or electrocuted: fire and shock. Both are common offense statuses, but this armor has resistance to both. Pretty good. Any drawbacks? Stun weakness. In regular gameplay that only happens if you get hit by something pretty hard, such as a Lumber arm or Trojan smash, but other than being crushed this is a pretty good armor against projectiles and major offense statuses; until Howlitzers and Polyps were added, but it still has superior status resistances. This armor is part of a set which includes Owlite, based on the ancient race which was apparently eliminated by Kats. Stupid zombie cats. Eating owls. Back to the topic, Grey Feather line; damage defense is alright, but what you really want to give your buddies is status resistance.

GFeather (5*, H1, no UVs, both parts equipped)
• ~6.2 bars normal defense (unchanged)
• ~7.5 bars element defense (unchanged)
• Full fire resistance (unchanged)
• Full shock resistance (unchanged)
• Full freeze weakness
• Gives all party members 1.5 bars of shock and fire resistance per part (total of 3 bars fire and shock resistance for using the helmet and torso)

Where does freeze weakness come from? Fire and shock are somewhat element related, so is freeze (see Alchemers and Brandishes), it has resistance to the two offense statuses but weakness to the defensive status. It makes it more anti-offense at the expense of more vulnerability to anti-defense. The defense version of a glass cannon, if that makes sense; which it should not. Mad Bomber and Chaos are glass cannon sets.

People are going to hate, love, cry, and hug over this. Mostly hate for me. Why all the mixed emotions? Today we have something special to address which has received more than its fair share of complaints over its damage. You probably read the subject of this post already. If not, I will remind you: Blitz Needle. That gun with ridiculously high damage. Enough babbling about doors, here are the base damage rates on Autogun lines:

• VPepper:
  • 46 (per bullet, basic)
  • 79 (per bullet, charge)
  • Slight chance of moderate fire (2/3)
  • Charge bullets are 1.717 times basic bullet damage
• Plague:
  • 46 (per bullet, basic)
  • 78 (per bullet, charge)
  • Slight chance of strong poison (2/4)
  • Charge bullets are 1.696 times basic bullet damage
• Blitz:
  • 62 (per bullet, basic)
  • 121 (per bullet, charge)
  • Charge bullets are 1.952 times basic bullet damage

Yes, I did copy-paste this from over there.

As everyone can clearly see, Blitz has higher damage rates on every single bullet which adds up for plenty of damage. In fact, Blitz is around 1.3478 times as powerful as the other two branches in its basic bullet (a single bullet) and around 1.5414 times as powerful as the other two branches in its charged bullet (again, a single bullet). That is a significant difference in a rapid fire weapon. What do the other two branches have? One has fire and pushes, the other poisons. Both are somewhat support based even though this mechanic is very offense based. Makes sense. Is this fair to the status afflicting branches? I will let you in on a little trade secret of mine: remember those status rates? Take both those numbers, multiply them together, add the smaller of the two original numbers, then multiply by 1.5; add a percentage symbol on that and subtract it from the branch its damage is based on. Take Plague for example:

[(2 * 4) + 2] * 1.5 = 15%

Or Pepperbox:

[(2 * 3) + 2] * 1.5 = 12%

Then we would factor in damage types. Also, this is only for weapons which are supposed to be balanced with the statusless line and the status afflicts on both basic and charge attacks (meaning this does not apply for bombs). Seeing as Plague is just Blitz with less damage and poison, our rebalance will be based on it; Pepperbox has pure normal damage which is a distinct advantage.

By the numbers Blitz should only have 15% more damage than Plague, right? Half right; Blitz is supposed to be raw damage similar to how branches work with Flourish lines. Because of this it can stand an extra 3% damage for 18% over Plague line:

46 (Plague, single basic bullet) * 1.18 = 54.28 ~54 (Blitz, single basic bullet)

78 (Plague, single charge bullet) * 1.18 = 92.04 ~ 92 (Blitz, single charge bullet)

What about the full damage rates when all the bullets hit the same thing? How much accumulative damage would it do with these numbers?

54.28 * 6 = 325.68 ~ 326 (all six bullets accumulative, basic)

92.04 * 15 = 1380.6 ~ 1381 (all fifteen bullets accumulative, charge)

The rates on Plague in these scenarios are 276 and 1170 respectively. These rates appear low because they are, mostly; the basic attack is fine but the charge could be modified a little. Plague and Blitz charges do not have the same damage ratio compared to their basic attacks. Plague has a rate of 1.696 while Blitz currently has a rate of 1.952. What if we factored in the different rate:

(1380.6 / 1.696) * 1.952 = 1588.992 ~ 1589 (all fifteen bullets accumulative, charge)

Right now that rate is 1815, lowered by nearly 300 in total damage. With that new number, divide that damage to every single bullet fired from the charge:

1588.992 / 15 = 105.932 ~ 106 (single charge bullet)

This is only slightly more than the numbers taken from Plague, which was 92. What are the numbers again for the new damage rates on Blitz?

• 54.28 (~54) damage per bullet on the basic attack, 325.68 (~326) accumulative
• 105.932 (~106) damage per bullet on the charge attack, 1588.992 (~1589) accumulative

Compared to the current rates:

• 62 damage per bullet on the basic attack, 372 accumulative
• 121 damage per bullet on the charge attack, 1815 accumulative

This is neutral damage and assumes that Plague is a balanced weapon. If Plague is considered overpowered by a rate Blitz would be lowered by the same rate (if Plague was X% overpowered, Blitz would be as well).

Discreet addition is discreet.

Heads up, tomorrow new engineering tool. I need to sleep on it. I also need to sleep for the sake of sleeping.

The same "two per team" rule is in effect. Yes, it would still work in Lockdown. Instead of Wolver clones there would be an influx of RJelly..clones. If that makes sense. Jelly line itself still offers no offensive bonuses in contrast to Wolver lines.

Shock is a major interrupting factor for turrets. If it were removed Polaris would simply be Supernova with element instead of normal damage, though nothing is wrong with that; except that Polaris is supposed to be interruption orientated while Supernova controls knockback. They could also tone down the knockback on Polaris to keep the two branches separate.

Either 3/2 or 4/2 on shock with its clip being lowered would be fine.

This will upset anyone who uses DAvenger for the projectiles on the charge, but please those upset by the existing back-to-a-wall-so-your-projectile-dissipates issue.

DAvenger is the commonly crafted branch of the Sealed lines, mostly for its charge attack: three sword-laser-projectiles with no self afflicting curse or excessively long charge time. The basic attack is essentially Troika but with split normal-element damage and the same damage as GFaust, meaning more than Troika; the similarity is the heavy sword mechanic. After today, DAvenger will be missing more than that old projectile glitch.

The first change is for the basic attack. GFaust had its basic attack left because it works fairly well as it is, but what about DAvenger? When comparing the heavy mechanic swords, DAvenger has too many advantages: a better basic combo than Troika in damage, far superior charge compared to GFaust, more area of effect than Troika, and split normal-element damage. Compared to the others, there is no down side to using DAvenger other than the minor damage loss when used against element resistant enemies which is compensated by the raw damage output from the charge attack. For the basic attack, why would you need Troika/GFaust if you have DAvenger? Because, my silly little hexagon, we are going to nerf its basic attack: lowering the swing radius by a fourth of a space from its current two space swing radius. Its basic swings would be between standard mechanic swords (Brandish, Calibur) and heavy (GFaust, Troika) but still be useful. If its swing radius were decreased to match Calibur/Brandish it would be a miniscule difference, but in practice that quarter space makes a difference. Damage rates stay. The only change is taking a quarter space from the basic swings. Nothing else. No damage reduction here.

The second change is for the charge attack. Remember how GFaust was changed to have a giant sweep instead of a projectile? This is going to be slightly similar in the sense that the projectile part is going to be taken away, but will be replaced by something you may find far better. Instead of horizontal sword projectiles released by the charge, the initial swing (which has unchanged damage) is followed by three falling hologram swords vertically, each dealing the damage of two hits from the current sword projectiles (131 each and per hit; 786 from the holograms accumulatively) with their destination path starting in the middle of where the projectiles currently appear (essentially a Brandish explosion instead of a bullet with a sword-esque model). Reminder: these damage rates are based on D29 with no bonuses at H1 against a neutral target. Here is a basic space to position layout of how the charge would work:

X = unoccupied
O = you
S = falling sword

X S X
S X S
X O X

The charge attack swing goes from your left to your right, and so do the falling swords; following the initial charge swing (which deals the current damage of 600) the falling swords drop starting from the left going to right to follow the swing pattern. The falling sword on your left would fall first, as it was where the swing began, damaging a radius of 1.5 spaces relative to the space landed (the space itself and half a space radius around it). If an enemy is directly in front of where you released the charge attack all four points of damage are dealt: the initial swing (600) and all three falling swords (262 * 3 = 786) for a significant accumulative damage rate (1386), but only in a relatively small area of effect. The falling swords only last a second and do not fly off to hit things from a distance. The falling swords do not push enemies anywhere, simply hit them. The falling swords are based on an attack in Wakfu which behaves somewhat similarly, but only effects the area around the user rather than the area attacked. Unlike with Wakfu, DAvenger has an initial swing to deal significant damage in real time based combat (Wakfu is turn based) meaning if you have a buddy with you they can push enemies into the falling swords as they drop for even more damage. The intent behind this change is to make DAvenger more of a "holy punishment" with the happy-yellow swords falling vertically to smite your enemies instead of weird sword-laser-projectiles-why-do-I-keep-repeating-this. Technically with this change DAvenger would have less area of effect to damage rates but in the area near your swing you would deal more damage.

Edited a few minor things because I forgot we are right handed in this game.

At 4* Avenger only has one falling sword.

For 4* Faust it would basically be the same as the 5* charge in terms of the extended swing but with swing damage scaled to its current rates (since the charge for GFaust is based on the existing value) and the curse duration would be shorter.

I added your recent thread to the index. Normally I would go through it, I have read about half of it at this moment, but I would rather play TF2 right now. Between Mann versus Machine and going through your bomb stuff, I am caught in the middle. What do you mean, title dropping?

Have you thought of making a suggestion based on lowering CE prices, but have no idea how to fix it and instead plan on screaming that everyone else is an idiot for disagreeing with your shortsighted nonsense? Today I am going to go over how tinkering with one thing interferes with others for the energy market.

What is energy?

There are two kinds of energy: mist and crystal. Mist regenerates infinitely over time, about one every 13.2 minutes to a maximum of one hundred mist held at a time. When prompted to consume energy, mist is always used first. Mist is the primary resource for everyone, premium and non-premium alike; you practically get it every day for free forever. There is no point where the game stops giving you mist. The second kind of energy is crystal. Unlike mist, crystal does not regenerate, but you can hold far more of it than mist. Crystal does not decay because it is effectively a resource while mist is a part of you. In fact, according to the game, your mist tank is in the body of your knight while crystal is something you can hold in your hands.

How do we use energy?

Energy can be used in multiple ways:

• Elevators
  Elevators are found in the Clockworks, either accessed through the Arcade or missions. Unless you use an elevator pass, which we will go over in greater detail later, elevators cost ten energy per floor except certain break floors (Basil, beginning of tiers). By going through the Clockworks you pick up crowns, heat, materials, minerals, and possibly equipment; this is the primary source of income. It costs energy to enter to prevent abuse of this income. If elevators did not cost energy to enter players would be able to generate infinite resources from the Clockworks, resulting in everything which has a price between players inflating ridiculously high. Remember how Germany tried to print money to pay off its debt after WWII? A wheelbarrow for a loaf of bread? Imagine a wheelbarrow of crowns (a few hundred thousand crowns) for a 2* Wolver torso.
• Objects which require energy to power up
  This includes energy gates found in the Clockworks to open other areas of the floor (potentially more income because of more drops) and objects which can be given energy to help you in battle for the floor. This includes danger rooms, those little turret things, gates to open up those extra areas of the floor, and powered down Mecha Knights. The two doors are usually only opened to get some extra profit before the floor is completed while the two machines are used if the team is lacking in offense.
• Crafting
  Crafting is a major factor in consuming energy. Crafting allows you to create equipment, so long as you have the recipe and required resources, then equip them for your own use. Crafting allows you to make armor (helmets and torsos), bombs, guns, swords, shields, and some accessories (health and gauntlet trinkets at the Krogmo crafting machine). Equipment is the primary indicator of your level. While venturing in the Clockworks, once a floor is complete, the heat obtained for that floor is delegated to all equipped items which may absorb heat (equipment which already has a heat level of ten and all trinkets). The higher the star rating, the higher the energy cost to craft; materials and crowns are also used to craft but energy is the most expensive of the three resources when it comes to crafting. This is because crafting is supposed to be a special occasion, not a constant routine. Getting that new upgraded item is supposed to be an accomplishment. Congratulations on working hard to get that improved item. However, once something is equipped it is bound to your knight. That means you will be unable to trade it, put it on auction, give it away; but you can sell it to NPCs for a little bit of crowns.
• Making a guild
  Until the guild update Nick promised, guilds are just a secondary friends list right now. It costs five hundred energy and a thousand crowns to make a guild. Guilds tend to be used to group people together without having them all be friends. Not everyone in the same guild like each other. Guilds allow them to communicate with an audience (other online members) whether spitting fire or sharing wine.
• Reviving
  Reviving in the Clockworks or in Krogmo minigames. Depending on the tier the base energy cost may vary, but if the revival prompt comes up and you decide to use energy to revive your next energy revive has double the price of the previous. This continues until it reaches 1,000E to revive, at which point it will stop increasing. Why not have it stop in the hundreds range? Punishment for dying all the time. If someone in your party revives you they are actually giving you some of their health (about half usually), consuming no energy; reviving this way does not increase the energy revival cost. Reviving by transferring health is only relevant to the Clockworks. For Krogmo minigames upon defeat you respawn when the timer runs out.
• Unbinding
  Unbinding through Vise is a fairly uncommon practice these days due to the price, especially since the depot costs less for normal equipment without UVs; we will be getting to this soon. Unbinding is almost exclusively done for boss token items and equipment with UVs. Vise was introduced in the Roarmulus update which also brought Punch, which we will address later. Vise himself is basically an energy sink, consuming energy in the market in exchange for allowing more equipment to sit in the market.
• Lockboxes

This is basically Three Rings trying to copy TF2 again. Lockboxes brought a new kind of item into the market: accessories. Remember what the hat update did to TF2? This is a lame imitation of that. Lockboxes are obtained through the roulette thing which can give you certain items (hearts, vials, some crowns, materials, etc.) and are opened using a key. Yes, those keys eat energy. A lot of it. A whole seven hundred and fifty. Almost the energy cost to craft a 5* item. What do you get out of the box? Accessories. What do accessories do? Make you look pretty. Nothing is actually wrong with this, but the price to get a key eats up a lot of energy for useless little dress up toys. I use some myself, but not to the point of excessively getting every single possible accessory area with something glued on; it looks silly. Then again, we are silly people.

• Depot

I hate the depot. I am not going to deny that I hate it. The depot single-handedly lowered the value of all regular equipment (Skolver, Salamander, etc.) and made those items less favorable to unbind; an energy consuming store which made anything not within its shelves suddenly worth more while everything else loses value. What about recipes? Wait for the crown breakdown. But for the depot, this was one of the most money grubbing updates Three Rings made. Any moron with some money can buy energy and get all the 5* equipment they want without working for any of it.

• Upgrades
  Trinket slots, weapon slots, improved heat rates, increasing Krogmo token rewards; temporary upgrades for your knight. The weapon and trinket slots are pretty cheap and very helpful while the other two are more short term in utility. These are technically part of the depot, but I consider them to be separate; the depot is equipment, upgrades are upgrades.

Buying energy from other players is too expensive to use crowns. I want to whine and throw a tantrum!

Want to know why those prices are so high? Think of the crown-energy market as a scale; on one side we have energy, on the other crowns. If one side is significantly greater than the other, in our case crowns, the other is raised (higher value). This is supply versus demand. The more common resource is less valuable than the less common resource, not to mention energy has more outlets than crowns; more on this later. Why is there so much crowns? Everyone uses the Clockworks (mostly) to get their income (crowns, materials); that goes for premium and non-premium players. A while ago energy prices were far lower because proportionately there was more energy being brought into the market than crowns being taken out of the Clockworks, but since then there have been far more non-premium players who need to eat up energy; the premium players feeding that hunger are a far smaller proportion, and all those non-premium players are also getting crowns, meaning the non-premium players are driving up the price while the premium players have second thoughts to use the energy for themselves. Everyone wants to be greedy, therefore the energy to crown price results from greed fighting greed.

Premium players buy energy packs, possibly bringing them into the community market. Remember all those things that use energy we went over earlier? Would you rather use those for your own benefit or sell off the energy for some money? Exactly, people would rather help themselves than the community. Does that mean we should pull a Robin Hood? Steal from the rich, give to the poor? No, that would punish premium players for being premium. If anyone premium should be punished, it would be the idiots who buy their equipment from the depot; such as preventing UVs from being applied to depot bought equipment. Premium players keep this game alive by funding the team. Non-premium players are effectively freeloaders. Does that mean we should ban non-premium players? No, we need something which "fixes the problem" by addressing the source of the issue, not punching each other in the face:

• Lower the rate crowns are introduced into the market
• Incentive for premium players to sell their energy to other players
• Incentive to buy energy packs without introducing another energy sink
• Introduce a feature which consumes crowns

The first option is to literally lower payouts from the Clockworks. Would this be taken well by the community? Of course not, nobody wants to suddenly get less money than they used to; but at the same time they want energy prices to lower so non-premium players have it easier.

The second option would be difficult to do, but solve multiple issues with a single action. The incentive would have to hold no economic value (no tradable items), have no significant effect on gameplay (no weapons, armor, shields, trinkets), but still be wanted by people; in other words, something cosmetic. A special accessory that says "I like a stable economy". Something nice, but at the same time offers no advantage in combat.

We already have enough silly cosmetic toys from energy packs. Does it lower energy prices? A little, but only temporarily; they only last for the temporary promotion. We need a long term solution, not instant gratification.

Punch is the best crown sink right now. People walk up to the psychopath and burn their crowns on the gamble, hoping for some amazing UVs. We either need something to make UV rolling more appealing (make more UVs, buff underpowered UVs, etc.) or introduce a new crown sink to burn up that blubber (excess crowns in the market). Also, if you want energy prices to lower and have a lot of crowns, roll all the UVs you can. Flush those crowns down the sink where Punch washes his grease stained hands. I am not going to demand someone with barely over 20kCr throw it away, I mean people with a few hundreds of thousands and up.

This is entirely done with the selfishness of the community in mind without creating another "pay to win" issue.