I agree with you on everything, except on the Polaris.

Am I saying it's not OP? No, I do agree it's OP, but it's not impossible to counter without exceedingly great effort. If it did more damage then it'd be up there in flourish land. Many charges from different guns will surpass it's range (which is further augmented with the explosion at the end, one reason why it's so hard to get by). Also, it only becomes really dangerous if multiple people use it as opposed to one. Nonetheless, it could use some adjustments.

To add to your list, those invincible frames are messing up almost every weapon in lockdown (yes, including flourishes). The weapons were seemingly designed to be in a situation where they don't exist. Notice how monsters and such do not have invincible frames, and weapons work fine on them. Notice how some attacks hit really fast, or hit multiple times in one attempt (Like suda charge). These things do not work in lockdown because of the invincible frames. One guy can go take on a crowd and not have to worry about taking the full force of five peoples attacks at once. Instead, 4 out 5 attacks from the crowd are completely negated because of the invincible frames kicking in when an attack hits. It's common logic that if you successfully land an attack, the target should take damage. This is not something that can be argued (when I mean land an attack, I mean you land a hit at on a vulnerable spot on a target).

Sadly, there are many people who rather keep lockdown the way it is now. Wish it was different, because it has potential to be very enjoyable.

Trolingyou beat me to it, but invinciframes render a an enormous amount of the game's arsenal useless. During the week where invinciframes were down, I saw an astounding amount of variety in Lockdown:

-Needles were popular, especially from the south of the camera. Was I annoyed? A bit. I thought it ate through my shield unfairly fast considering I had a lot of distance from the needler.
-People were murderizing using cutters.
-Fang of Vog on a frozen enemy was instakill.
-Brandish charges could multihit.
-Catalyzers still did pitiful damage for some reason. Apparently each explosive did half a pip of damage? What the hell, OOO?
-I could kill things using the FULL combo of my thorn blade.
-Old RSS could come very close to killing people when planted next to them while they were frozen.
-There was a point in ganging up on an opponent. Antigua's no longer did more harm than good.

Yes, people died unreasonably fast and shields especially so, but the simple solution here is to drastically decrease all damage in Lockdown while removing invinciframes.

@Asukalan

Any person that claim that fixing lockdown means nerfing certain weapons is insane.

If more than 90% of the Lockdown playerbase is using a X weapon over other choices, doesn't that justify the demand for its balance or at least investigate it?

However this argument is somewhat valid. Balancing weapon stats is just a part of fixing lockdown,not "THE" ultimate solution.

Nerfing certain weapons will only cause people to find another "most common weapon set that will become most popular" which in future will became new "toothpick n polaris OMGOMGzozm so OP!!111oneone" and people will demand a nerf for them.

You have been saying this for a long time. I like you to give an example of what will become the next "OP flourish".

The only acceptable change to weapons in lockdown would be issuing a preset of weapons for each class, armor, helmet, sword, gun, bomb just like we get a bomb in blast network.

One of the main attraction of Lockdown is that players have the freedom to use ANY kind of equipment combinations to help him/her win the game,whether it is a typical toothpick skolver striker loadout or the ironmight set guardian loadout. At the end of the day proficiency on the playstyle a player has selected will determine that individual a skillful player.

Sadly in this current state only two or three type of playstyle actually work. The rest are either sub-optimal or downright useless.

Oh and reference to Team Fortress thats what we need Spiral Fortress or Team Knights here.

Lets see:-

1.) Lockdown is a class-based pvp game,so is Team Fortress 2.
2.)According to the developers, SK weapons are all situational or excel in something and fails in other use (brandish;good charge, average normal swing.Same for Sudaruksa/Triglav.).TF2 arsenal is also the same in this case. Only difference is the method of acquisition.

So yeah Spiral Knights and Team Fortress 2 is identical in some cases,especially in the above mentioned one.

Fixing lockdown should be made by changing system like balancing buffs and weakness of classes or mechanics like invincibility frames.usage of weapons.

Exactly what the OP has posted. Also:-

1.) Me
2.)Trollingyou
3.)Fehzor
4.)Tsubasa-no-me (I might have mispelled...)
5.)Milkman
6.)Balderus
7.)Serell
8.)Doctorspacebar
9.)Metagenic
10.)Seiran
etc,etc
were posting about in this forum for a long time and all ignored except for the Invincibilty frame which Nick said that they will do something about it.

(One can only dream)

And keep up the good work OP.

Happy to know that there are many more who could see the true condition of this game's pvp.

Edit: Oh yeah I forgot to mention about the lack of lag compensation here in this game. This prevent people with higher latency (like me,250 ms when playing in EU West server and 350 ms on US server)to play properly .In most situation its virtually impossible to even stand in front of the likes of Thrillhaus and Canozo. It is needed if we need to make LD have an even playing field for everyone.

Yes, strikers are too overpowered because of health trinkets and their boost. A striker can win both recon and guardian in 1v1. Because when they are in low health, they can just fly away and shoot guardians, recons safely due to their boost. Guardian, recons should have a buff like dash attacks, guardians forward shield bashes, recon teleports etc.

Strikers can increase their health by 12 with their pendants, this is a large amount of health that can save you from 2 flourish swings. And classes are not balanced, they are scissors(Striker) papers papers more than rocks scissors papers. If they were balanced, you wont see this scene that entire team is striker.

"force strikers to take more risks by charging in- remove their gun speed bonus"

I hope that was a mistake, Pauling.

"Strikers can increase their health by 12 with their pendants, this is a large amount of health that can save you from 2 flourish swings. And classes are not balanced, they are scissors(Striker) papers papers more than rocks scissors papers. If they were balanced, you wont see this scene that entire team is striker."

Every class mod can equip heart trinkets.

I say, deal with it? :/

Lockdown is about capture points. Remember that. x.x
(but these class mods make it more like a battlefield)

There is no gun speed bonus for strikers

Huh. I wonder what I was thinking of?

Well, there is a guardian penalty, anyway. I should go make more breakfast.

Pauling, review yer discussion again, but to matter the most, I think it's actually balanced enough, TBH.

Guardians have guns penalty, Recons have swords penalty, Strikers have health and bombing penalties.

So, it is really very balanced, provided with the heart trinkets or selected modules.

Guardians are about shielding their allies, they are knights with shields, yeah?
Recons are about assassination from the shadows.
Strikers are mostly warriors with swift speed.

Talking about weapons, Super Brawl's best was only the Gran Faust, they can OHKO a target.

Honestly, removing invincibility frames but adding them to the guardian shield would make LD a lot better, in my opinion.
Recon..you need to buff that as well, somehow..

"Every class mod can equip heart trinkets.
I say, deal with it? :/"

Giving a Striker 12 health =/= Giving a Guardian 12 health. With the Striker's damage and ASI increase, the Guardian's 12 health boost is really more like a 7 health boost, or less. You can't just say "Oh that Striker is using +12 health, so you should too and walah, even playing field!", because that +12 health increases the Striker's survivability much more in relation to a Guardian/Recon, which is bad because Strikers are suppose to be glass cannons, not sonic tanks.

In my opinion weapon and class balance issues are not the most glaring of problems with lockdown as every metagame has standard builds and play styles that become dominant/popular. Legitimate imbalances can be tweaked by changing a few variables within the game code.

The problem I see is that for an inherently competitive game mode, the developers have incorporated what I would consider to be questionable game design choices that has made lockdown as much a contest in skill as it is a contest in wealth. The most obvious of these design choices being the energy revive system, whose usage is limited only by two factors; a player's wealth, and their desire to win at any cost. I can't think of any other multiplayer PvP game that allows a player to bypass the respawn timer, which is a fundamental game mechanic for moderating progress between opponents in any game that isn't perma-death. Even if two opposing teams were to hypothetically possess infinite wealth and thus be able to energy revive every time, eliminating the fairness side of the issue, the whole point of having the respawn timer as a game mechanic would rendered moot and it would be a mockery of it even being programmed in the first place. I would think that most developers who care as much about the quality of their game as they do about making a living would be bothered by the idea of their game being excessively pay-to-win. But then again, lockdown was never the main focus of SK so maybe OOO just never gave it too much thought.

I'm also of the opinion that while UVs are a great time-tested RPG mechanic that makes acquiring new gear all the more exciting, lockdown would be much better if there were a way to play without them. Pay-to-win reasoning aside, my primary gameplay argument for this is that UVs currently allow one to acquire the benefits of various equipment pieces, entirely on one set of gear. This results in a theoretical end-game of everyone in more or less the exact same gear with UVs that allow it to excel in every situation. UV-less lockdown would be many fold more interesting due to the specialization of roles that would be involved in team building. For example, rather than have one person in a set of skolver that has UV immunity to all the major mist bombs, dealing with status bombers would require the coordinated teamwork of 2-3 players specially equipped with mercurial, ice queen, et cetera. Along with team builds, character builds would also require more thought as one would need to decide which bonuses are most important for their role and equip their armour/trinkets accordingly. I imagine that the arsenals of avid lockdown players would expand as we would have more reason to make all the other trinkets and armour sets that aren't heart pendants and skolver. If you're reading this OOO, this means more people using more energy to craft more items (hint).

My idea for implementing competitive (ie; fair) style lockdown would be through the ability to create custom lobbies (possibly for a CE/cr fee if OOO needs convincing). I have an existing thread in the suggestions forum if anyone is interested in reading further and/or lending their support. Essentially these custom lobbies would allow participants to set their own rules for the match. OOO, I don't know if you read all the suggestions, but if you do, I think we the community would appreciate if you would let us know your thoughts, at least for the suggestions that appear to have had much thought put into them.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh

I'm super reluctant to protest about LD balance. I was active in the Smash community for a while, and aside from removing random-chancey things like items, they're usually reluctant to do something as drastic as calling ban on certain strategies or even characters in tournaments until they're at a point where they feel there's a good understanding of the metagame. I don't think we're close. Not as a community, anyway.

"I play a recon rocking a DVS and even though I find it fun I really wish I were more fromidable instead of just spookign them until they start spamming their FFs and Polaris (polari?) in which they keep killing me right out of thin air. Kind of a buzzkill. Wish they made recons a bit more "lethal joke" than jsut "joke"."

They can be a "lethal joke".
They really can be.

I've been meaning to write a recon guide on my wiki page, but I've partly been torn between spreading the good news- "hey guys, Recon is viable!!"... and wanting to keep my playstyle exclusive since it's so frickin rare and I like feeling hipster and special and cool. I play Recon almost exclusively - I sometimes screw around with Guardian and I'm absolutely the worst with Striker. They ARE assassins- if you're equipped right and play smart.

Take a look at this:
http://imgur.com/a/LjI1x#2

Just for lulz a while ago, I started up an imgur gallery of my damage records - mostly about using 'hipster weapons' [ex: played a full game doing damage with only Biohazard, or Iron Slug]. This one is my current overall record - and all of them are done as Recon.
As far as players go, I'd put myself in the upper, but not highest tiers of players - so in normal random games, I'll usually have 1-4 defends, >8k damage in a small game. I have a 12k record using TRIGLAV (omg, I remember this one thread where people claimed it was impossible to do more than 10k with a Troika line. I was pleasantly surprised, myself) but haven't really cared enough to post that one yet lol.

For me, damage comes as a result of defending points, since Recon cannot [normally] chase. So usually if I'm paired with a skilled striker, the Striker will be chasing/killing people, and I'm usually capping/fighting for points until I reach the one near their base (in which case I hold it and fight off as many people as possible until my team captures the rest of the map). Because I can't "chase", the striker will usually get more damage than me, unless they filter to my area more often. But you know what? That doesn't really matter, because in terms of gaining momentum, it doesn't matter as long as the people on the other team are dead and not capping, and our points are being defended.

-----------

Many of the skilled players gravitate towards Striker (or possibly Guardian - but I feel those are rarer now) and don't really give Recon a chance. I understand, because I do the complete opposite. Simply, people try to imitate the styles that do better than them, and for the most part, the existing players are Strikers. As such, it's really hard for other players to see the potential in the other classes.

I think it's absolutely hilarious when I'm playing and the other team slowly starts trying to use recon. Of course, their skill level with the class is usually way worse, and they end up getting killed easily by my teammates and then switch back out of frustration, but still, it's funny.

Just as a hint:
- Strikers' weakness is health, so they deal with it with trinkets while boosting what their class does best (maximize sword attack speed/damage).

'Recons have it the worst because they are only effective when they have their cloaks. The 'Derp' response to this would be "Well, don't get hit and stay hidden" Which would be a viable answer, except for the fact that Flourish-family weapons are fast and have wide'
- Recon's weakness is mobility and range, but it boosts gun attack speed and bomb charge time.
- Recon needs speed to be mobile.
- Alchemers have an amazing ability to double-ricochet on monsters, which don't have invincibility frames.
- Shock removes invincibility frames and immobilizes opponents.
- Deathmark completely removes your opponent's defense and then some.

I could keep going, but to keep it shorter,

durr, why aren't more recons learning how to gun? Hit strikers BEFORE they reach you. Block and interrupt their approaching paths using two bullets from Valiance? Taking advantage of Storm Driver's MODERATE shock [good bye immunities!], bullet speed, ricochet, and ability to temporarily remove invincibility frames? Countering opponent armor with guns that do damage that isn't covered by their armor types? Using range and mobile guns to pull people into getting deathmarked [which makes swords and normal weapons (hi Valiance) devastating for recons and their teammates]? Dealing with Polaris by using- idk, a faster gun with equal range (Valiance)? Dealing with weak Striker antigua spam using single-shots from stronger guns?

Don't go around spouting "we've reached the end-game and there is only Skolver!~!~" until everything's been explored.

Unfortunately, I have very little to say about bombers. Aside from support and being walls, I can't see their potential LOL :;;;

Bombers.. sigh.

Now they're just supporters. I am sad for this cause.

For now i can say that shielding your teammates in order to heal them is fine but when you hear the sound of dashing of rocket boosters, you instantly drop your shield so that your shield doesnt break when a striker comes and attacks.

I've been doing double alchemer rapid fire techniques with striker mod these days, and I can say I like to see how I roll for a little. Maybe.
Valiance. Woot.

LOPL ENC

I don't know about the GvG scene, since there aren't really many people in my guild active for lockdown, but P2W is hardly a problem in the more common random Lockdown.

To add to the frames discussion, here is my input which has some... just read.

During the frame bug that took place on June 7th 2012-June 12th(?). The frames were removed and apparently it was not intentional said by Nick here: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/56269

LD was much more logical and enjoyable during this bug due to the fact that the common understanding of hitting someone and them receiving damage was happening. In the present and original version of Lockdown, a mob could only deal 1 hit of damage per second no matter how many swings go through the victim. Honestly, I think that Lockdown would be better off in either way. If you do not have frames, you would get overpowered by giant groups but here is a counter to that. Who told you to fly into a group and attack them? Common sense would tell you to take them 1 by 1 but obviously people are too anxious to die sometimes. With frames the logical aspect of the game is broken and many items(as stated previously) are behaving unrealistically. Having this happening, sometimes people stop and get hit due to the fact that their hit didn't sync. Either way is fine in my opinion but if I had to choose a side, it would be down with the frames.

I like this thread, it *mostly* isn't filled with idiotic comments.

EDIT: Also just to add to Seiran and Thrillhaus's comments. New load outs, new combinations. DVS + Brandish is a good example that Craftyzen introduced to me with a whopping 27k in his grasp. I'm still trying to find new combination of weapons but it seems no one else has the motivation nor the desire to find another dominant set-up.

If immunity to haze bombs demanded exactly more than max+max resistance just like oil in C42, Skolvers would be forced to switch out a heart pendant for a freeze pendant. They would also need to stack a shock or stun pendant on top of their double max UVs in other to stay immune to these bombs.

This gives A LOT of power to haze bombs, which, yes, is one of the often used weapons in Lockdown, but it also lessens the power of a skolver-clone since they cannot simply dash into haze bombs without sacrificing a huge chunk of their health. Meanwhile, gunners never had a problem with haze bombers in the first place.

More health, even more health, freeze res, shock res, pick any two.

You're saying that you're trying to "FIX" lockdown.
and yet you're just trying to nerf strikers, and make the current strikers pay more for resistance, when we've already spent a couple thousand ce on each piece of armor. alot of us will just rage quit spiral knights if you nerf our resistances. right now the game is fair. here's my explanation on why.

Strikers: most of us play strikers because you get to always be in the fight, which is why most people play lockdown anyways.
yes, you can see the good people like thrillhaus murdering everything in his path, but that's only because you suck.
lockdown is a team game, not a 1v1 game. you have to work as a team and be coordinated to win. it's not a free for all deathmatch.

Guardians: have you ever seen Cyrilmorrigane go as a guardian? I'm a decent striker, constantly play GVG with the pros. and yet when I tried to kill Cyrilmorrigane, he killed me before I broke his shield. the key to being a guardian is hitting BEFORE they hit you, and timing, not trying to block everything with your shield, that would be ridiculously OP if you buff it.

Recons: recons are mostly haze bombers because of the bomb charge buff.
I know I know, many strikers like me have dual max shock, or maybe dual max stun.
but you rarely see a person with dual shock AND stun max.
so overlap stagger storm and VT.

for the "assasin recons" , they are deadly if you learn how to not be predictable.

I play all 3 roles decently, so I know that none of them are OP. just some have a little more weaknesses.
if you use a striker playstyle for recon and guardian, then you're stupid and will get killed quickly...

No.

Technically it is with today's community. I do love to cap and I always have a high number of them, ask anyone. But the main base of this game is to capture and defend with defend being more... popular(lack of word).