The goal of any piece of equipment, is to gain money for OOO and provide an amount of happiness for players. That is, to be crafted. However, all armors, weapons, shields, even trinkets, are substitutes for one another in some way. I can craft a sudaruska, or I can craft a triglav. Or, I can craft a gun to do the job for me. Balance comes from the fact that after I craft a skolver set there is still incentive for me to craft a vog set. If a piece of equipment is crafted without destroying that player's wants for another piece of armor, then it is successful in it's design as well as in it's balance.

Skolver and Vog

Skolver and Vog are for many players, their first 5* armor pieces. For many other players, they are also the only 5* armor pieces to be crafted, aside from the occasional piece crafted purely for costume. The reason for this, is because of their differing resistances and roles. Vog resists fire and elemental, which is good for firestorm citadel, while skolver resists piercing, ice and normal, which is good for the royal jelly and lockdown. All other runs can be dealt with well enough to where they don't require extra armor- especially after UVs are rolled onto said skolver and vog.

However- Full Skolver + 2 ASI trinkets = Full Vog + 2 damage trinkets.

So why not just do that?

Because lockdown prefers skolver, while the clockworks prefers vog for the obvious reasons of Firestorm Citadel and toothpics, as well as the seperation between attack speed and damage. One of these applies to lockdown, the other not so much. There is no damage vs players bonus, so getting there is much more difficult without the use of trinkets, which are now taken up by heart trinkets.

When you buy vog gear, you buy the ability to compete in FSC.

When you buy skolver gear, you buy the ability to compete in lockdown.

Danger missions, and other 'advanced content' that comes out challenges this. When compound 42 came out, dragon scale sets were found to resist everything perfectly, and make killing poisonous flaming slimes a cakewalk. Shadow lairs often gives players incentive to craft more specialized armor, like divine set for uFSC/uICMF...

When you buy dragon scale mail, you buy the ability to crush C42 with your pinky finger.

But at the end of the day, if you buy armor of the fallen because you like it better for whatever reason, then you're not likely to be in the market for vog.

This is because they serve exactly the same purpose in the game to varying degrees- fighting in firestorm citadel. But what you are likely to get is something like skolver or deadly virulisk or even mercurial armor, because that way you'll be able to fight against piercing things.

And each piece of armor you craft reduces your want for other pieces of armor.

Lets say I make all three of the wolver line items.

I now have:

Piercing+normal+ice
Elemental+normal+fire
Shadow+normal+ice/poison

From that set, I can play most of the levels in the game. I can mix and match to fit a theme in a level- if fighting firey slimes I can mix vog and skolver. At this point, there is little to no incentive for me to craft armor.

But lets say that I do want to mix it up and try playing as a different class- I might make a gunner set. And I'll probably choose nameless.

This gets me:

Elemental+normal+ice.... but with handgun ASI instead of a sword buff.

I already have these covered by skolver+vog, but now I have it covered in such a way that it lets me use handguns more effectively... What I'm not likely to craft, is deadly virulisk helmet. Because that doesn't offer much in the way of changing how I play, challenging me, and in general is just unnecessary. I can just use my existing skolver set to kill those slimes. Its perfectly good for that, and it will help me take care of anything else I encounter, provided I have a sword for it.

Therefor, deadly virulisk and skolver are imbalanced. Getting one leaves little to no incentive to get the other.

People craft glacius AND combuster

For the same reason that people craft a gunner set and a swordy set. Because they offer unique playstyles. Combuster lets you light things on fire, and glacius lets you freeze things. Then, you can mix and match them and have a ball.

This is where we can get the most out of the game. Look at items that are similar to one another that players craft and ask why-

Having 2 alchemers, even without the switch shooting tactic, allows for unique types of crowd control.
Having voltaic tempest, stagger storm and any combination of haze bomb allows for awesome effects.
Having acheron and voltedge allows you to counter gremlins AND undead.

But also look at where weapons fail-

Having triglav and sudaruska offers 2 of the same weapon. Players then choose one based on their wants and go with it.
Having nitronome and irontech destroyer offers very little difference. People often ask which is best, then craft nitronome- which still wins out because of its faster movement while charging.
Having a blitz needle makes crafting a plague needle a dull option.

If a weapon is different enough and a decent enough option to support knights, it will see some use. If a weapon isn't different enough, it will be outclassed by a similar weapon. If a weapon isn't decent enough, it will be outclassed by all other options.

The same holds true for armor- chaos makes being a hybrid entirely viable, as does black kat hat. These items are sought after for actual use. Mercurial armor offers a tiny benefit, and as such does not see much use. It isn't different enough from skolver, and is therefore perceived as worse. Plate armor cannot support knights, and is thus outclassed by everything.

The problem with playing rock paper scissors

Is that it artificially creates a reason to craft and attain items. If there was only one damage type, people wouldn't craft acheron. Nor would they craft both argent peacemaker and sentenza. Having multiple damage types, status effects, etc. creates the "different" needed for an item to succeed. The difference between skolver and snarbolax armor illustrates this well- snarbolax armor is unnecessary except for its shadow defense.

Right now, most of the armors do the same thing. Or, close enough to the same thing that only a handful of them are different enough to consider crafting. Lockdown tries to rectify this by adding in striker and recon classes, which serve to add some sort of flavor to the otherwise bland assortment of armors and helmets. PvE tries to define classes very loosely, so that all of the players remain about the same regardless of which armor they take. Swordies can use guns and bombs, gunners can use swords and bombs etc. But each class is limited slightly in how well it can use other equipment.

The other major issues are unique variants. Which are, while a nice and nifty feature, a deciding factor in armor balance. Snarbolax gear has the equivalent of a high UV worth of both poison and freeze, as well as less shadow defense than dread skelly. With UVs, snarbolax can easily beat out dread skelly in some regard, but dread skelly will never beat out snarbolax's attack boost. Likewise, vog can receive a shock UV, but grey feather cannot receive a sword attack speed UV. This removes much incentive to defend purely against something and be "vanilla", which is boring in its own right.

At the end of the day, you end up with a large drawer full of nearly identical rocks, papers and scissors. You then reach in and pick up the sharpest pair of scissors, the hardest rock, and the best looking piece of paper. Because you aren't about to use a broken pair of scissors.

And how could we better diversify the game?

Having such dull options for armor is a noble effort to create a classless game, but also steps on itself a great deal, as I have outlined above. What would be better, is if there were new and balanced styles of play associated with each new armor set. Deadly virulisk could go invisible for a time, and that wouldn't break the game so much. Perhaps require the player to stand still to be invisible, or something of that sort. Statuses could be seen as playstyles as well- heavenly iron could light fiends on fire, while something like surgebreaker could shock everything that you strike. Dread skelly could give the player a poisonous miasma that follows them around and poisons nearby enemies. The options are limited only by the amount of time it takes to come up with and code them.

The same goes for weapons like triglav and sudaruska. These are the same weapon, except for one small change.. why not emphasize the ice of triglav and make it freeze 100% of the time, at the cost of half or more of it's damage? Weapons like rigadoon and flamberg could follow suit. Monster bonuses towards specific enemies could also provide a more intimate buff towards that monster as well as less of a buff towards everything else. Cold iron vanquisher could freeze undead. Wild hunting blade could 100% stagger beasts on normal hits. Other normal weapons that mirror specialized damage could be made to deal more overall to everything not specialized in, as with neutralizer and biohazard.

It isn't about making the stats align correctly, its about diversifying gear and making such playstyles reasonable.

----------------
Rewritten from: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/79871