Yo, don't use rape as a synonym for being defeated in a video game, it is extremely offensive and upsetting to survivors.

Filtered words. Eury won't be happy.

1. @Round-Shinigami

Latency is an issue for you? I know several players who have moved to the asian game. Sure, they restarted, but they play with full connection, and are much happier. Economy is reportedly better, too, and you can buy OCH etc with CE. Make your way over there if you like. It's not a perfect solution, but hey, you're a guest in OOO's house, and that's the option we have.

2. @OP

Once again, you do not speak for the community, you speak for your community. I like this update, because we are meant to do t3 if we are t3. Sure, devilites are mildly difficult, but hey, this game isnt overly hard. NIce to have a challenge every now and again. May i suggest changing the title of your post to "A letter to OOO from my guild, ----- ".

You would find much less opposition this way.

Can't we all just admit that monster balance is an issue. Everyone knows fiends and greavers are much much much stronger then say a jelly cube or a gremlin. The issue seems to be that some players thinks that OOO forcing you to do missions against imba monsters in unfair and wants to see them nerfed and then the other camp thinks that it's a bunch of no skill noobs whining and wants every single monster buffed to make the game hard. I don't see how the second camp wins, OOO has made danger missions and shadow lairs for the true super skill testers if you want to show off how good you are just stick to those. A holiday mission should be a "fun" thing so packing it with fiends and greavers seems like a play from the "evil game designer" playbook. I personally would like to see the fiend family nerfed having a very fast very hard hitting range attack isn't very fun. What I say to the people who want to make monsters harder, is that is OOO made gun puppies, polyps and howlitzer bullets move twice as fast you'd be calling for a nerf and don't even deny it.

Bullet velocity isn't the problem. It's the fact that monsters are so brain-dead stupid, you can dodge attacks by simply walking one step to the side. Latency is NOT a factor in the game balance here; the game should not be designed around lag caused by bad connections. That's just idiotic.

Trojans are mindlessly easy. If you think they are hard, that doesn't mean they are hard. That means you probably run screaming every time a trojan charges you and wait until blitz gunners take care of it. Trojans have arguably the easiest attacks to avoid in the game. You get like a 3 second heads up before they attack, and if you find it hard to move out of the way within that time, it's not because trojans are hard, it's because you're very very bad.

Fiends are harder than other monster families, but that's because they didn't get hit nearly as hard from the nerfpocalypse that destroyed all the other monster families. Fiends are not "imba" and it's not unfair. Take some time to learn how to play the game and not just throw blind rage and nerf requests every time you run into an obstacle that you're too lazy to overcome by yourself. Ask any experienced player and they will tell you: All the monsters in this game are very easy, and fiends are just normal. We don't want every monster in the game buffed to make it hard, we want them to be unnerfed so the game can actually be somewhat of a challenge again.

And really, I hate the "but it's a holiday mission" excuse. Just because it's a holiday mission doesn't mean it should be so ridiculously easy that you can beat it with your eyes closed, which was the case when T1 Winterfest was still the most viable way to get Winter Wish tokens. It was extremely boring; even most of the T1 players I played with told me it felt like they were mindlessly grinding.

Fiends and greavers are not the work of "evil game designers". OOO isn't going to make turrets shoot faster because there is no reason to, and that's completely irrelevant to the Fiend family, so don't even bother going there.

TL;DR:

Fiends aren't hard because they are unbalanced, they are hard because you can't be bothered to actually learn how to fight them. You want OOO to nerf an entire monster family just because you think the holiday mission should be easy. The people in this thread requesting nerfs are completely ignoring everyone who disagrees with them, just because they think it's unfair that they have a terrible internet connection and they are bad at the game.

== IN ADDITION ==

If you were playing video games back when controllers had two buttons at the very most, you wouldn't survive for five minutes. Games were made very challenging to compensate for the simplistic gameplay. And you know what? People loved them. They became classics that are still played to this very day. People went to arcades and blew $50 on a single game that they sucked at, because it was fun, regardless if they were winning or losing. As video games evolved, controllers grew more buttons, and 3D graphics were implemented, game difficulty generally got easier, and the average gamer's demographic became broader.

Nowadays', games hold the players hand from the start of the tutorial until the end of the game. It's boring. Anything that has a decent chance of killing a player is considered "overpowered" by the gaming public and developers are petitioned endlessly until it's practically impossible to lose. Then everyone has a "balanced" game where enemies can't tell the difference between their right foot and their left, and the game designers have to resort to throwing hundreds of these incapable enemies at you, because the only power they have left is the power of numbers.

If a game is that easy, it's not a game. It's a movie where you press buttons to get to the next scene; a slideshow of you curbstomping everything that gets in your way. That's not fun. That's stupid and boring.

I Lost

The game.

Cupcakes.

That argument

Still doesn't solve my 300ms ping issue xD Too Bad For Me ;P

Still, I don't see fiends as much trouble as it is. Every monster is just as hard as they are, that's just it is. The game is complicated in a way that different tactics may need to be used just to kill a couple of devilites or fool a bunch of gremlins. Weapons are just as such that they have different attack patterns, creating more tactics for people to use. Take autoguns for an example, they are powerful in a punch, but if you decide to miss, and one wolver can simply knock out half your health.

Experiment different weapons, use different tactics and you learn some are better used than others, or better used on the specific types of monsters.

Devilites are among the most annoying monster types in this game, a single devilite is harder than an entire FSC because I can't guarantee to pass it without revs.
They are a combination of: (T3)
Ranged
High speed
Insane damage
With status they're even worse... shock fiends you know eh?

Greavers:
Insane speed, bomber's nightmare.
Insane damage
Annoying AoE status field (Shock rocks)
Status field can go through SOLID blocks and WALLS! WTH?

The only ideal weapon to deal with devilites and greavers is a flourish-line-5* If you are able to imply alchemer switching technique it's farily easy to kill greavers, but devilites? Hell no... they're insane. They come in packs of like a dozen, with normal max+shadow max SET you even die quickly. If you have 1bar your shield is useless too, they get you before you shield.

My strategy to deal with devilites as a 1bar:
Learn how to circle around, when you are stationary get your shield on or inevitable hits before seeing their attack animation.
Try not to release a full FF combo, you might get yourself fed up with office chairs.
Use auto-aim while hitting them if necessary.
Bring a callahan with you, when they ninja around and try to attack, callahan their face. It cancels their attack also leaving a chance of stun, they walk up quickly and FF that small B@!$@rd.

My strategy to deal with greavers as a 1bar:
Too lazy? Charge a FoV before they see you and bang, they're whether dead or screwed.
See them, charge your blitz and do the job.
Use the Alchemer switching technique, it works like this: Has FF as main and another weapon, maybe Polaris as the other. Start from FF: Attack - shield - switch to Polaris - switch back to FF - attack, keep on this cycle, the easiest way IMHO to kill nasty stalking pedo-greavers.

Also please ooo, fix that annoying status field going through walls and obstacles...

"as a 1bar"

The correct strategy in such a situation would be to get a better internet connection. Seriously, is EVERYONE that suggests Fiend nerfs play using a terrible connection?

I'm not talking about location, I'm talking about connection. The problems you get with your one bar connection is of no relevance to game balance.

You can still avoid devilites attacks, even with a large latency when far away by just sidestepping or circling. When close you can just spam attack combos at them. The cutter is good for this because it constantly interrupts and keeps you moving forwards so nearby devilites can't hit you.
But that's blasphemy. People can't fathom ever using underused weapons.

Modified my previous post, some info added.

@Fradow
If the game was made easier, it was only because majority of players would prefer it so. If minority wants a harder game, they can always look for a harder game, its much faster than asking Spiral Knights to be made harder instead of having more wing colors added, or core being opened.

Once again, I do not mean to sound rude, I'm just offering alternatives that, in my opinion, should satisfy majority of players.

PS:
You can't freeze a snow devilite. Try it if you don't believe me.
Polaris - shooting in the pack won't work. Devilites strategy, when they are shot at, is "make dodge move + throw projectile immediately afterwards". You'll shoot them, they'll shoot you. Their bullets are many times faster. Guess who hits who.
Charged needle is indeed a great weapon vs devilites. But usual devilites come in packs, and two is enough to drop a player's health to zero while they release a single blitz charge. It takes a while. And it needs a significant amount of knowledge about devilite AI (if you can call a bunch of scrips an "AI").
Cutter: you chop one, another throws snowballs / furniture at you. As a result, after finishing the level you'll have very low health, if you survive at all.
Spike bomb - good but range is limited.
Callahan - good but slow.
Stun bomb - since when everyone is running with a 5* stun bomb in their inventory?

Best and simplest strategy vs fiends - 5* flourish. Mostly because many knights have a piercing sword. Decent shield also helps a lot. As you learn their moves, you'll be able to move around more freely with devilites around, but they're still the most dangerous enemy in the game, in my opinion.

Its certainly possible to defeat devilites with many and numerous different weapons, personally I prefer shiver approach (shiver and then put a knife in their back, which is very effective for soloing). But winterfest devilites are among the toughest in the game, and immune to freeze. I'm not saying they're invincible. They're just tough.

Id just have liked the level to allow for more equipment. Perhaps they could have rotated the type of monster each day.

@Round-Shinigami
I'm going to question the fact that people who wants the game easier are a majority and the ones that want it harder are a minority. Especially if you compare according $ spent per person (which is what's interesting for OOO). Well, it's true that the nerfpocalypse seems to point you are right on that.

As for looking for other games ... well, long story short, I tried. GW2 was a massive disappointement. Most solo games are good, but a tad too easy, and finished in 2 weeks maximum anyway. I keep coming back to SK for a reason : the combat system is awesome : here, having a good gear is a requirement, but it's not nearly enough. You have to actually dodge, shield and worry about what you brings instead of just attacking with the cookie-cutter build (most MMOs are like that and it's depressing).

As for the weapons :
- I was answering for general devilites. Of course, for Winterfest devilites, use Stun but not freeze.
- I saw people using Polaris and I did use it too. While it's slow because of the dodging, if you fire enough bullets, they won't be able to dodge everything. You can also predict the dodging : they can only dodge right or left, and can't dodge while attacking. Polaris have a fast attack rate and 3 bullets per clip : use it to spread bullet.
- if you have enough space, no, Needle it doesn't require any sort of knowledge. Just get far enough from ANY devilites, release the charge. You outrange them from 1 to 2 boxes. Alternatively, use teamwork to have a teammate shield you from incoming projectiles (require an adapted shadow shield obviously). The fact that they are in pack is irrelevant if they are all too far away or you have a shield. Don't let them pill up in Winterfest or you deserve to die.
- cutter : well, I never tried it. I rely on Hexzyle affirmation here.
- for Stagger Storm, obviously it's only one in many weapons, it would be silly to get all those ones. But if that one works for you, use it. Also, some people have it to counter shock-immune people in LD. It's actually not that bad since the stun fix, if you have trouble with some mobs.

"Best and simplest strategy vs fiends - 5* flourish. Mostly because many knights have a piercing sword. Decent shield also helps a lot. As you learn their moves, you'll be able to move around more freely with devilites around, but they're still the most dangerous enemy in the game, in my opinion."

Well, I agree with that. Although I quite like the Needles for the outrange and absurd damage. The fact that I don't have to go near is definitely a great plus.

But, on the other hand, I don't want them to join the pack of all other harmless mobs.