Spiral Knights - Etharaes' Thread of Simple Balance Ideas and Suggestions

Etharaes' Thread of Simple Balance Ideas and Suggestions

5 replies [Last post]

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 21:48

Etharaes

I'm Etharaes. This is going to be my thread where I put random suggestions that pop into my head because I like to have everything together and I am horrible at writing introductions.

Weaponry Balancing Ideas
I have always gravitated to the weaker and underused weapons, before even knowing that they are underused/underpowered. These are my ideas to buff UP weapons (and possibly nerf OP weapons).

Status Flourishes
In Spiral Knights we have 4 choices of piercing swords, a.k.a the flourishes. 2 do pure damage (Final Flourish and Barbarous Thorn Blade), 2 trade in some damage for status chance (Fearless Rigadoon and Furious Flamberge). The thing is though, the status infliction rate is so low, and the statuses themselves hardly worth the drop in damage. My suggestion:

Rigadoon and Flamberge have their damage changed so it is 75% of the pure damage flourishes.
Status infliction rate is buffed to 40% on each.
Power of status is either medium for both.

Cautery Sword
Cautery sword. Such an unloved weapon. A sword designed to kill slimes, whioch is outclassed outright by it's bretheren. I just use it in RJP for it's pink explosions. This should change.

Cautery sword has it's line extended all the way to 5*.
Base damage equal to 80% of the nightblade line.
Damage type changed to half normal, half shadow.
Chance of strong poison is added on the charge.
Damage bonus vs slime is added (medium for 3*,high for 4*, very high for 5*).
Possibly chance of weak fire (4*) or moderate fire (5*) on the charge in conjunction poison, explosions look like toxoil oil (this part of the change was Magnicth's idea.)

Heavy Deconstructor
Heavy Deconstructor is possibly the most unloved weapon in all of spiral knights. It has no graphical change between 3* and 4*, and gets a half a tile of radius increase between 3* and 4*. This one should get a simple fix.

5* version added.
Damage type changed to half normal, half elemental.
Medium damage bonus vs construct at all levels.
Base damage identical to nitronome line.

Curse and Posion Alchemers
Umbra gets lonely. Give it status alchemer type variants inflicting shadow damage and poison/curse respectively. No real reason for this idea and isn't really 'balance', but oh well.

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 23:44

Hearthstone

Sorry if this offends you... or your suggestion...

Firstly, why did you use underused/underpowered weapons?

secondly... Cautery Blade is okay the way it is... well, to me, and it was just made that way. Plus, every game has to have its crappiest weapons and gears.

Thirdly, Curse and Poison Alchemers? Why not use Gran Faust and Dread Venom Striker? Higher rates... Alchemers, mostly, the ones inflicting statuses, HAVE statuses, to complement the lack of damage. The ones not, (Umbra and... Prismatech's 5*...), inflicting statuses offer really high damage to those correct adversaries.

Fourth, what type of fix should Heavy Deconstructor getting? In your opinion...

Sat, 05/25/2013 - 00:56

Hexzyle

Everything you've brought up

Everything you've brought up here has already been brought up before, countless times, with far better solutions. I don't usually read balance threads, but I can recall superior ideas for the ideas you've posted:

Status Flourishes:
Change the charge attack for Flamberge and Rigadoon to deal 40% less damage per hit, swing 60% faster, and attack 5 times, instead of 3. This would increase proc rate.

Cautery Swords:
Haven't read any suggestions on balancing this, simply because I'm not interested (there are so many and I'm tired of them) but most of the good ones involved breaking it off from the brandish line and giving it a new charge attack.

Heavy Deconstructor
Shift the two deconstructors up a star so they're inline with the Irontech Bombs

Curse Alchemer
Nope.
There are way too many alchemers already.

Poison Alchemer
Once again, too many alchemers. Anyway, there's already a poison gun, the Plague Needle.
You want a poison inflicting gun that you can move and fire with? Biohazard. Discounting suggested ideas for the Cautery Sword, gunners already have 2 poison weapons, bombers and swordsmen only have 1.

Sat, 05/25/2013 - 01:28

Perume

And the winmillion needs a 5*

And the winmillion needs a 5* version.

Sat, 05/25/2013 - 02:11

Thunder-The-Bright

ok.

flourishes: to me it's ok.
cautery: no, too many brandishes, and that would possibly make it OP. one status at a time.
deconstructor: erm, nope. less damage and it's ok.
alchemer: 1 too many alchemers 2 check the tables again. damage of umbra and nova drivers are the same. they should stay so.

Sat, 05/25/2013 - 05:06

Zeddy

Flourishes: I would rework Flourishes entirely. Give every Flourish 10-hit stabbing combos (perhaps via ghost blades?) similar to cutter to emphasize status infliction over damage. Regular Final Flourish would also receive this combo while BTB keeps the old Flourish combo. BTB's strong,piercing-damage swing attack can be explained through being covered in barbs.

Cautery Sword: Basically turn into a 3* mini-FoV, offshot from Calibur. Only causes fire on the charge attack, which doesn't self-inflict. The fire, however, is only moderate. Slime damage turned into very high. Purpose of sword is to kick Jelly King's butt and nothing else, no need for upgrades.

Deconstructors: What Hexzyle said. Also, do not increase radius. Instead, reduce fuse time drastically.

Curse and Poison Alchemers: Naw, we have two poison guns already, like Hexzyle said. I'm not opposed to a curse gun, but I am opposed to a curse alchemer. A lot of people claim curse is imbalanced, but honestly it's a pretty weak status. The only reason people automatically think of it as overpowered is because it tends to last for a full minute. Have the gun-curse last for 5-10 seconds like normal statuses do and be inflicted by some kind of single-target gun similar to Magnus and it could be interesting.

Besides, you can inflict curse with Faust without self-cursing just fine: Just use the second swing instead of the charge attack.

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Etharaes' Thread of Simple Balance Ideas and Suggestions