Spiral Knights - Annoying bomb mechanic suggestion and balance.

Annoying bomb mechanic suggestion and balance.

4 replies [Last post]

Mon, 02/25/2013 - 21:24

Blastman-Gold

This post needs to be read carefully before responding.

Since my last suggestion didn't get much attention. That's fine. I've also come to accept that Three Rings wants to make the bombs to be more of a supportive weapon, but I have a major gripe about it since they're supposed to be support weapons, they should cause stronger status inflictions than guns and swords. I didn't want to point it out until now. But for two weapon types to not only have two attack types and higher DPS than bombs, but to also have stronger status infliction doesn't really seem fair or balanced for bomb users. I highly suggest that the guns and swords have serious tone down with the status inflictions so that there would be a "buff" for the bombs status effects so that the bombs really would take the more supportive role that's so to claim.

Once again, the swords and guns already has multiple things that outshines bombs, even to the point that it can clear out rooms of large monsters than bombs can, which is a shame. So for the two weapons to do so much damage... Should be the two very reasons (And those two reasons alone) that it should never cause stronger status inflictions than bombs.
(Personally, I'd love to see Big Angry Bomb that has a slight chance to inflict strong STUN. Makes the enemies as slow as the bomb itself is.)

It's obvious that I'm Pro-Bomb, but I'm more into balance than wanting the specific weapons to be improved.

I have a few suggestions regarding certain damage bombs since I don't know much about other weapons.

As for the Blast Bomb line (Bark Briar Barrage might not be in the line, but the properties are the same), I believe that the mechanics for it should have a slight modification, A different yet similar mechanic... A little thing called "Scaling". I mean from within the blast radius, the further away the target is from the bomb itself, the least damage and knockback, but if the target is standing directly on top of the bomb it would cause an immense damage and knockback. Not only it would it make the blast bombs more bomb-like, it would also make it so that Big Angry Bomb does cause the most knockback, in the game, but for all of the blast bombs, from within the explosion should cause most of the monsters to end up in the same distance from the bombs after the explosion. It would also reward the bombers that would take the risk of getting close or tactical enough to make their targets get directly on top of the bomb and gives a less desirable result for people that only place their bombs willy nilly, leaving their targets at the very line of the blast radius at the time it explodes.

There's been a lot of complaints about the shard bombs (Except for the salt bombs, which generally people think it's an improvement for it.) but I have an idea that would make it a lot more useful. But first thing's first...

The damage for the shards might need to be nerfed slightly. Just slightly. But before anyone gets mad and say "That will only make it worse!" there is a reason for that. There seems to be a limit to the amount of times you can hit a monster in succession for the bombs... That needs to be removed. The bombs itself will still have its knockback, but the shards that split from the initial explosion should not have any knockback. After those explodes it would release even smaller and much weaker fragments of those shards. This would be the only time I would suggest that for this idea that the status inflictions for a bomb to be weakened, unless the tiny fragments has no chance of inflicting any status.

Let's take the information on the Deadly Shard Bomb on Stratum 4 from the wiki for example...

Originally the Bomb Blast does 35 damage and the shards does 45-47.

Now... For the idea, it's only a guess, so a more fair suggestion in damage is welcome...

Bomb Blast doing 30 damage, shards doing 38-40 damage, even smaller shards from the previous shards doing 6-7.

It's that low since the tiny fragments from the 5* shards would be in 6 tiny fragments from one of the 8 shards. and such a thing wouldn't be very well if knockback remained the way it is and in fact, causes MORE problems with the party. And I'm aware that it might cause some concerns in Lockdown, but since the bomb was already a laughing stock, the bomb may as well be more focused on PVE.

Also, there needs to be a change so that the shards would no longer be the only weapon in the entire game that would be virtually useless against the Roarmulus Twins, but I'm just making a suggestion to make a few slight changes in the mechanics.

...

I honestly don't care if the last two suggestion is ignored, but the main point is that if Three Rings wants the bombs to be more of a supportive weapon, then not only should they make sure that the bombs themselves actually DO play the supportive role, but to make it so that the guns and swords cause minor to moderate status infliction instead of moderate to strong. The two weapons ALREADY has enough going for them without the unnecessarily strong infliction, so that needs to be brought down while the haze bomb's inflictions are made to do moderate status and for certain bombs (I.E Big Angry) to cause strong status.

If Three Rings want to make the bombs supportive weapons, I request that it's shown that they really intended on making it as such.

And I'm not asking to remove the status infliction from the guns or swords, but it needs to be weakened since both the weapons has two attack methods and has higher DPS so there is absolutely no reason for to also cause stronger status infliction than a weapon that takes so long to do anything in comparison.

Tue, 02/26/2013 - 03:04

Krakob

I mostly support this but eh, I disagree with your haze bomb ideas. I mean, haze bombs have huge areas and are intended to cause statuses all over a place. Try planting an AoA in an arena with the final wave being Mecha Knights, and then try to do as widespread status infliction with a Brandish. Try to do the same area denial with an Alchemer as with a Haze bomb in Lockdown. DON'T try to use a Haze bomb as a damage bomb. I guess AoA might work as one, and that's a good reason to not buff it, imo. One should also note that Haze bombs inflict statuses faster and more securely than other weapons since they constantly hit with the status.

Tue, 02/26/2013 - 05:37

Zeddy

The status thing

Noone would be happier than me if haze bombs did weak instead of minor status, but it's not entirely necessary (outside of Lockdown).

The idea of swords vs bomb is that swords are stronger, but bombs cover a larger area. This allows bombs to potentially have more effect, provided the crowd is large and spread enough. You can get around swords' area issue by utilising a vortex. However, that's a bomb. It's a bomb with very long charge time, very low movement speed and damage.

Ash of Agni:
-Does okay damage in an area.
-Covers a large area
-Persists to such a degree that the large area can constantly be covered and then some.
-Is pretty much guaranteed to inflict provided the target is not immune
-Slow charge.

Combuster:
-Does a lot of damage in an area not particularly larger than Agni's blast.
-Covers only the damage area.
-Only there for a split second.
-About a 50/50 chance of infliction. Non-fire enemies cannot be immune to it.
-Fast charge.
-Also has a regular attack that cannot inflict status.

That last point there is basically the dealbreaker. The damage should be nerfed so that it's weaker than Leviathan. I'm thinking at least bring it down to Cold Iron Vanquisher on non-undead, but maybe a bit below that, too. See, the problem was never Brandishes being too strong compared to bombs, but even compared to other swords.

As a bomber, I disagree on having any swords or guns having a minor status. They should be stronger because the area they cover is lower and amount of targets they hit are fewer. Guns aren't actually particularly stronger than bombs, certainly not on crowds.

-One exception: Polaris unexpanded shots could do with inflicting minor or even not at all. I might even agree to the expanded shots doing minor, but they're doing okay at weak right now.
-Alchemers might be a bit overpowered, but that's largely due to a bug that should be fixed rather than any on-paper balancing.
-Blitz is kind of ridiculously strong but it's not a status-dealer so it's not relevant right here. (I'm thinking 15% damage reduction on the charge alone should be plenty.)
-Callahan, Biohazard and Plague Needle are not in need of nerfs of any variety.
-Daring Rigadoon and Furious Flamberge are not in need of nerfs of any variety.
-Triglav and Sudaruska are not in need of nerfs of any variety.

Did I forget any swords and guns you think should be doing minor status? BAB doing strong stun would be pretty cool, though.

The variable damage thing
I'm skeptical. Distributing enemies so that they form a perfect ring is something shard bombs alone have going, and I'd hate to see blast bombs take that away from them. Could you provide some damage numbers you think would work out? Amount of knockback?

The shard bomb thing
I'd like for shard bombs to have their hit limit removed too. There are a number of things I don't like about it distributing 48 extra shards per bomb, however. Let's just say people complain enough about the lag the current ones bring. Could you imagine an entire Lockdown team using those things at once?

It doesn't even sound like it'd make it stronger, apart from the removed hit limit. Shards are mostly fine as they are, but they need:
-A bit more radius on the shards to make double-hits a common phenomenon.
-Removed hit-limit to make triple-hits actually possible and have a bomb actually capable of killing bosses.
-Have disappearing shards either not disappear or just instantly explode instead of disappearing.

Tue, 02/26/2013 - 07:08

Blastman-Gold

Well, there were some weapons

Well, there were some weapons that I wouldn't have minded at all not being touched at all when it comes to status, such as the Dread Venom Striker. For obvious reasons... The weapons that you have listed, I agree don't need to be changed. While I haven't used those weapons myself, I've teamed up with people who do use them, some of them rather effectively at that. And while guns aren't really that much better than bombs in terms of damage, but it still has the advantage of doing constant distant damage in most cases. The autoguns are obviously not those cases.

Now that I think about it, that many tiny fragments would be rather much... Maybe a smaller amount of it? But my intention for the idea isn't to make it "stronger" but more effective with dealing constant damage for the mechanic it has if there's some slight alterations. But we both can completely agree that the limit needs to be removed. But the amount of knockback caused by the shards can cause more problems than it can help.

I do see you're skeptical about the the scaling mechanic because it could take away the one quirk that the shard bombs have at the start of it, I was thinking for a scaling mechanic for the Blast Bombs (If you want to include Dark Briar Barrage too) should behave a bit more like bombs. I can't give an exact estimate on what the varying damage and knockback, but I can give the general idea on what it should do...

Let's take the info on the Nitronome on Stratum 6 from the wiki as an example.

As us bombers know without any trinkets or armor that increases damage, the Nitronome on Stratum 6 does 217-230 damage and cause a bit of a strong knockback. If I can put that into a simple label for that specific damage and knockback, let's say the damage and knockback would be a "3" on the scale of "1" to "5" depending on the distance with the "3" being right between the very edge of the blast radius and the bomb itself. The very edge of the blast radius would be a "1" and would have a much weaker damage and knockback while the exact opposite would be the case for monsters that stands directly on top of the bomb. (If you can jump the example of the Nitronome to Big Angry Bomb in this condition, that would make the bomb do almost as much damage as one hit from the Sudaruska's charged strike, which also supports the means of what I believe BaB's purpose for the heavy knockback along with inflicting strong stun.) would obviously be the "5" and would do not as much damage as one hit from the Leviathan's charged strike, but still some good damage with inclusion of a stronger knockback than "3" or "4" (Of course it would have to do less than 355 - 368. Heck it would even be okay if it did 300-322 on the "5" for the scale.). With that in result of the blast would make the large amount of enemies (Most of the soft bodied ones of course) positioned slightly further away from the Nitronome's blast radius.

I can guess that doesn't exactly help the case and even might push you away from the idea of the mechanic for the Blast Bomb, but if there's a better idea for the mechanic, I'd like to have a read at that.

Tue, 02/26/2013 - 10:39

Zeddy

The blast bomb thing keeps sounding like a shard bomb nerf. I'm going to use my damage chart for this.

Nitro currently does 214 damage without bonuses.
Deadly Shards do 69 base, 95 shards.

Nitro very clearly outdamages Shards here, but D. Shards can still rack up more damage per bomb by hitting an enemy with the core + 2 shards, leaving it at a total of 259. That's more than Irontech! (239) In theory, you are supposed to be able to hit an enemy with core + 3 shards, meaning a single deadly shard without boosts can hit an enemy for almost as much as max damage Big Angry Bomb. (354 vs 357) However, the current mechanics are buggy and will never, ever allow for this, so we're stuck at 259.

Again, with 300 damage at the center, you're completely stealing the light from shard bombs. Being able to deal more damage if the enemy is a correct distance is kind of its thing. And so easily, too! There's nothing to getting an enemy in the center of a bomb. Just look at old RSS. It dealt more damage if you had the enemy on the center and people did that all the time.

I like the thought process behind having shards basically be non-status Ash of Agni. Now, while I have a million different ideas for reworks to shard bombs, I can always come up with more of them.

Quick one: 35% less damage, 50% less charge time. That should make a nice, big minefield.

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Annoying bomb mechanic suggestion and balance.