Spiral Knights - The north star, a guide to using Polaris and its predecessors the CORRECT way

The north star, a guide to using Polaris and its predecessors the CORRECT way

9 replies [Last post]

Tue, 10/08/2013 - 19:52

Blazzberry

Before you being scroll down and type some half minded troll comment, please hear me out. This isn't a guide telling you to use the weapon the way I say it word for word but mostly to a point where you're not being a burden to your party pinning 3-4 enemies in a corner with a knight. It's about time some people actually create guides for the more advanced weapons that require proper use instead of complaining about the people using them nonstop.

As a semi-average gunslinger, I feel this needs to happen because about 90% of the people using the weapon don't know how to. And there is literally no guide as far as I've seen that's a legit advice giving guide.

I'll be talking about everything related to the Polaris weapon line only.

Where it starts, the 3* kilowatt Pulsar and 4* Gigawatt pulsar

Ok so when you first begin your road down the path hated, you notice this gun can keep anything and everything away from you by using 2-3 of its full clips. Since newbies don't like getting hurt and see this, it automatically becomes a "must-have" for any situation. Even the uncalled for ones. It gives moderate shock and knockback but only half the time if an enemy is shocked. Even if you upgrade nothing really changes except damage.

The laggy north star, 5* Polaris.

After finally getting this to 5*, you basically shoot anything and everything that moves. But that's not exactly the best way of handling things.
Some examples of using it without bothering others.

The Correct way

Ex 1.) Play by yourself. Every vet out there knows this by now. If you're not a vet, you're reading this. The gun makes the game brain dead easy mode for anything weak against it, just as long as the room isn't cramped wherever you're firing due to bullets getting powerful as they travel.

Ex 2.) Shooting it in a direction a knight isn't. Seriously, you can ruin someone's day by getting 2-3 Mech knights swarmed in a corner by rapidly firing this weapon in someone's general direction.

Ex 3.) Using the gun for utility crowd control, not damage. Anyone and everyone using this gun for damage better either have a bunch of enemies in a corner all the time without a trapping others or riding solo. Please be courteous when firing. Not everyone is running with PC specs as smooth as yours for you to be firing off 3 clips nonstop. Seriously, knock it off. :l

What I mean by utility is using it for when it's needed, like knock back/giving breathing room for your party. Not when someone is charging a blitz for a trojan beatdown and you PUSH it out of the way or when someone's shivering. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

Ex 4.) Turret's worst knightmare. If there's one thing this gun's good at, it's this. The shots can cancel turret attacks if used constantly and will shut them down.

I gave four points already on how to use it in a friendly way, now lets look at the juicy part that many, many people fall under.

The Annoying Mindless Way

Ex 1.) Using the weapon when something is frozen or constantly frozen. Alright so I'm assuming most of you know how freeze works. If you don't well here's a link to explain how freeze works. -> http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Freeze Now after reading that, you may notice something. You guessed it, shock ticks break freeze. Meaning that you are essentially making someone worthless by unfreezing an enemy. Potentially ruining a possibly good setup. Lets say someone is shiv-locking Vanaduke and you decide to be the hero nobody wants and then everyone's dead because you wanted to help. Just don't. Please. The only time it's ok is when someone isn't being frozen.

Ex 2.) Blinding people who are swordies.(Or anyone in general) This is truly is a bane of swordies existence. Because anyone with a sword has to confront an enemy, this can make their job very difficult. The expanded shots make mostly everything very uneasy to see causing unnecessary damage to be taken more often.

Ex 3.) Shooting and literally pushing enemies doing charge attacks into other players. I'm not even going to explain this one.

Ex 4.) Shooting the clips and knocking one single enemy out of someone's way. Now that's just rude.

So after reading these points we can come to the conclusion (Or you can call this the Tl;DR)

The weapon is a utility for parties BUT that doesn't mean it can't be can be used as a damage gun since when solo'ing you're not bothering anyone.
Be thoughtful of others unless you're just a troll who has nothing better to do.
Shot's can make people lag. Just because it doesn't effect you doesn't mean it won't affect others.
Show some love to the supernova. Seriously, it's just as good!

Edit: I'm covering the gun on PvE, not PVP

Whoo, my first guide done. Now one of you lovelies do one on how to properly use Shivermist buster. *cough*pro bombers*cough*
Feel free to leave criticism below, I can take it. Rip this guide apart if you want. Please be constructive, not deconstructive.

Credits go to people who have done work on the wiki, pulsar pages, gunslinger guide. Thank you. I don't know who the group is but they're awesome.

Tue, 10/08/2013 - 21:56

Culture

Hmm

Well said.

Tue, 10/08/2013 - 23:09

Awoogawooga

A personal pet peeve of mine

A personal pet peeve of mine is when Polaris users use the gun without paying attention to where they are or what others are doing.

For instance, in Depth 24 of FSC, in the 3rd Room/after the 6 statues, you come into a room with spikes, totems and slags (oh my!). Most other gun users, be they Blitzers or APers, would opt to snipe at the slowly approaching Slags as they leave the Totem circles (thus, cannot reanimate). I have no earthly idea why seemingly experienced Polaris users choose to use that gun here though. Not only do they knock the Slags out of range of the other gunners, but they're knocking the Slags right into the Totems.

The thing is, I see that happen quite often, even with players I know to be more experienced and are otherwise quite good. Do Polaris users know something I don't or does that room just make Polaris gunners stupid for some reason?

The last room in Depth 26 also makes me dread Polarispamers. That's the room with wave after wave of slags spawning. The 2 usual ways to deal with this is either to have a shooting gallery where everyone snipes at the slow moving Slags, or to cross a chasm of spikes to takes things up close and personal. Polaris is a terrible gun to use in this room except for a couple situations. If you're doing the shooting gallery thing and the Slags are a little too close, Polaris is good for pushing 'em back. But don't use it as part of the shooting gallery as it'll knock the Slags out of everyone's range.

Or it can be used to pin Slags to the wall for swordies to polish them off. But I wouldn't recommend a Polaris user crossing the chasm and spamming it, as then they'll be liable to trap fellow knights.

Otherwise, I don't have too much of a problem with Polaris users to be honest. I'm not a swordie so I'm not distracted by the graphics. I find a Polaris user no more distracting than most Swordies in general. Polaris is one gun that will ruin whatever I'm setting up, but virtually every Sword has the potential to do so if wielded by an inattentive player. Same with Blast Bombs.

But those 2 rooms in FSC stand out for me 'cause of course, I farm FSC, and people will more often than not, pull out the polaris for those rooms. Even if they don't for any other part of FSC.

Wed, 10/09/2013 - 08:03

Blazzberry

Good 'ol burnin fsc

I tried my best to avoid mentioning fsc because not everyone loves that place as much as the next knight, but I suppose I should for a bit.

When someone knocks a enemy into totems I usually stare at my monitor also and just think to myself "well maybe it was an accident". However if it keeps happening with the same person, they usually fall into the category of "not caring" or are just flat out trying to get kicked. If everyone does it...well...that solo button is always there. Derp.

The knock back of the gun is also used waaaay too much on single enemies knocking them out of anyone's range as you said before. This could also kill off that knight in your party who is on their last breath and someone knocks an exploding blast cube when said knight is trying to get away. Yes it sounds funny but it's not when you're the one receiving it.

I know that this guide might not be well, but I do hope to spread some of the good tactics it can do so we can kill off this much uneeded bad blood. For example, I might not have been around for the introduction of FSC, but when that one person brought a blitz needle to it for the first time they probably told everyone about it and that's how it is today. People want that blitz in parties, its not needed because vana can still die with or without blitz, it's just much faster.

I guess what I'm saying is, that maybe we could see some good polaris users in the future and maybe even more weapons than the same vanilla arsenal.

Wed, 10/09/2013 - 08:37

Awoogawooga

Okay, so some suggestions. If

Okay, so some suggestions.

If you're a Polaris user and you find yourself in a party of mostly Swordies, take it upon yourself to destroy all the turrets. Don't bother too much with random enemies, the turrets should be your first priority.

Cornering enemies against a wall is also good practice. Don't aim toward the middle of the room, but try to push enemies against the sides or even the corner. Once you got 'em there, keep them there if possible.

Another tip is, if you have a Blitzer in your party in a map that is not all Constructs and Slimes, and you see that Blitzer charging up an attack against say, a Trojan, do let the Blitzer make the first attempt. This is especially true if the Trojan's frozen.

Okay, so that last tip seems kind of specific, but I've seen it happen quite a lot where the Polaris gunner will "steal" a Blitzer or Swordie's charged attack. This is all the more annoying if their intended target was frozen/stunned/shocked, as the Polaris user not only just freed the enemy, but pushed 'em out of position. The thing is, Polaris is not as effective a killer as a charged Blitzer/Swordie.

Perhaps the Polaris user is wondering why the Blitzer/Swordie doesn't just attack the frozen/stunned/shocked enemy? Well, the reason is simple, they want to One Hit Knock Out (OHKO) their victim. Just because a Polaris user doesn't usually bother with the charged attack, doesn't mean others aren't.

Like a lot of other weapons, it's about situational awareness. The occasional derping is fine, and if you get kicked off for just one infraction, then the team leader's a butt. But if you keep repeating the same annoying habits, well... that's why Polaris has such a bad rep. In truth, it's no more annoying than many other weapons. It's just very obviously annoying.

Well, I ended on a bit of a down note, but at least I gave some positives as well. Like many weapons, if a Polaris user uses the gun right, then it's a fantastic gun in a team. I find Polaris to be a good situational weapon, rather than a main weapon.

Thu, 10/10/2013 - 08:16

Exerpa

Pepperbox is not the only short range gun

The pulsar shot has 2 distinct states and while the big fat bubble can cause problems, the small short range shot can still be used safely if you put the effort in.

Notice that elemental weak monsters can be split into 2 categories, aggressive or punching bag. Most constructs are easy enough to circle around to shoot in the back and the same goes for the common zombie, in this case Polaris is a 'good enough' alternative to an alchemer/Argent if you left your sword at home today.

Polaris as a taser aka what to do if you have CTR:
For aggressive monsters such as mecha knights then you might have to rely on the charge up close to evade the shield. Probably not the most efficient weapon but it works.
If you are liable to be swarmed with kats, the charge attack used up close after they converge on you has a good chance of slowing them down with shock.
If someone is dropping vortexes, you can release the charge while burying your face in a herd of zombies/robots for a chance of hitting multiple targets at once - kinda risky, would be a lot safer and more effective if the charge originated in front of players rather than inside them (hoping for a physics tweak on gun buff day)

It's like carving with a chainsaw - sounds crazy, but completely possible

Thu, 10/10/2013 - 18:19

Arkate

@Exerpa

Except you're not outlining the fine details. You leave that to the argents and blitzes. You're using it to shear off big chunks; the things that you HAVE to use the chainsaw for.

Fri, 10/11/2013 - 01:15

Geosmin

I'm not comfortable using any knock-heavy weapon in a party other than my Troika, Pepperbox or Blaster, because I'm still a derp at keeping track of team mates, but I like the Pulsegun in solo play occasionally. Sometimes I just feel like wailing on monsters with it, but after taking both forks to 4-star the Elemental one feels like a joke weapon to me. Hehe, now I've got a craving to go use my golden grenade gun.

Supernova is much better for the Pulsegun's biggest strength due to lacking the knocking-blocking Shocking, any brandish is better than Polaris for easy-to-use heavy Elemental DPS, and Storm Driver is better for Shock and long-range poking, to say nothing of Alchemer charges' high single-hit damage and neat ability to reach around barriers or Alchemers being among the best short-range weapons to complement slow heavy-hitters like Troikas and Autoguns.

Fri, 10/11/2013 - 19:11

Popoixd

I'm a polaris user and I like

I'm a polaris user and I like a lot your guide

''Blinding people who are swordies.''
Well for me those days Sowrd=Brandish. Brandish do more screen effect and blind me more than my poor little gigawat pulsar.

''Shooting and literally pushing enemies doing charge attacks into other players.''
Well brandish do that to.

I like your guide and I still need training whit my Gigawat pulsar. I just tough it's funy that your guide do it for brandish to.
Vana whit a 3 brandisher party...... l....a....g...geting.....bling.....dind't..even..got..the..time..to..shoot...

Tue, 10/15/2013 - 09:56

Doctorspacebar

It's a Concrete Jungle out there

You're getting bling? YOU'RE GETTING FREE BLING FROM SLAGS? You lucky little...

Heh, just kidding, I know you mean "blind".

I like this guide; while I don't often use Polaris, I can apply some of it to my Nitronome.

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The north star, a guide to using Polaris and its predecessors the CORRECT way