Spiral Knights - A Few Ideas to Help Balance Out Lockdown

A Few Ideas to Help Balance Out Lockdown

12 replies [Last post]

Wed, 01/08/2014 - 13:07

Dreathuxy

Ok, as we know it right now, LD is EXTREMELY unbalanced. From game breaking mechanics to invincibility frames, LD is just a mess. So I have come up with a few ideas to help balance it.

STRIKER:

Right now, striker is probably the most OP class there is. This is all due to the insane amount of damage and speed that you get for a small price. Here is what i propose:

For all tiers, whenever you go striker, make the base health 3 pips. Yup. I said it. 3 pips. This will make the striker a glass cannon, causing them not to get into the heat of battle like before. Right now, strikers can be more tanky than a guardian. Thats not right. With 3 pips of base health, they'll be fragile enough to die easily but powerful enough to get a couple of kills while doing it. Even with dual pentas the strikers health will only be 15, the base health for non-trinket-ed 5* people.

GUARDIAN:

Guardians are meant to be tanks - slow moving things with a crap ton of power. Right now, the strikers damage bonuses easily out-damage the guardians. Give guardians back the sword damage bonus and give a bomb bonus with it. Guardian bombers need more love! Upgrade the shield too. A tank means it can take a lot of hits. 3 hits is not a lot of hits. Increase the guardian shield's health so guardians can actually be a force to be reckoned with.

RECON:

Recon is more of a support class, a more meat-shieldy spy from tf2 if you ask me. Being able to get in and out of things without being detected is a true blessing. But footprints are not, because having a striker track you down by following your footprints isn't fun. Remove the footprints. Also, recons have to get out of situations fast or else they risk being killed. Give recon a special ability for teleportation across short distances.

ALL:

Weapon usage - Having the ability to render someone's attack completely useless is just plain sick OOO, especially with flourishes. Let the guy attack. Remove the cancellation of attacking and charging in LD.

Charging bombs: This goes along with the one right above this one. If enemies ever find an opening against bombers, they are free to hack and slash at the poor thing while he can't do a thing because getting hit cancels out his charge. So the bomber's only hopes are: Hoping that you have a sword with you, or dashing out and try to charge. Please remove those things (I think zeddy calls them "invcinitinks")

______

Yeah, so those are what OOO needs to do if LD is going to be balanced.

EDIT: This is coming from a poor person who doesn't have heart trinkets :(

Wed, 01/08/2014 - 14:48

Dibsville

"For all tiers, whenever you go striker, make the base health 3 pips."

No. Cool fact: base Striker health in Tier 2 is 2 pips.

"With 3 pips of base health, they'll be fragile enough to die easily but powerful enough to get a couple of kills while doing it."

Strikers go down very easily. You have to do this thing called aiming. It helps if you turn off Auto-Target as that messes with your aim quite a bit.

"Right now, strikers can be more tanky than a guardian."

You've obviously never seen a good guardian.

"Give guardians back the sword damage bonus"

Yeah, no. Guardians do plenty with the fact that they can survive for so long.

"A tank means it can take a lot of hits. 3 hits is not a lot of hits. Increase the guardian shield's health so guardians can actually be a force to be reckoned with."

Again, obviously never seen a good guardian. You have to get used to it. Not every Striker started out perfect either, they got to be OP enough to take down guardians through practice and lots of UV abuse in the case of Tier 3.

"But footprints are not, because having a striker track you down by following your footprints isn't fun. Remove the footprints."

"Give recon a special ability for teleportation across short distances."

No, definitely not. Not everyone uses Recon for support.

"Remove the cancellation of attacking and charging in LD."

And make so many weapons that much more useless? No, -1.

"I think zeddy calls them "invcinitinks""

Invincitinks are little purple ticks that make PvE enemies invincible. The closest thing to them is invincibility frames, which are completely different.

Wed, 01/08/2014 - 14:57

Thunder-The-Bright

gods ain't gonna help you, son.

because weveryone with penta hearts goes with striker doesn't mean that there aren't penta hearted guardians, keep that in mind.
as for the balancing, I believe that giving everyone the same bonuses (or nothing to everyone, is the same) and keeping the uniqueness in the class and not in the buffs is the way to go. ASI/dmg/CTR met to everyone, and balance out the classes abilities (that is, removing recon footprints and giving some more health to guardian shield).

Wed, 01/08/2014 - 15:52

Sandwich-Potato

Well.

I was going to leap in here with some witty retorts and feedback, but Dibs beat me.

No to guardian, no to recon except for footprints, striker suggestion is eh.

And definitely no to both of the overall application ones.

Wed, 01/08/2014 - 17:11

Mushy-Bucket

---

I agree with what Dibs said except for the footprints.
Recons' footprints are relatively hard to see on most maps, and require you to really look (unless you screwed up your monitor brightness or something) to trace them. Recons shouldn't be 100% invisible anyway. They already have the invisible charge ability. In other words, if you are a player who really watches their surroundings, you are rewarded by getting a mediocre method of tracking invisible players, because when you move, it's hard to see the prints again.

Wed, 01/08/2014 - 17:16

Dibsville

"Recons shouldn't be 100% invisible anyway. They already have the invisible charge ability. In other words, if you are a player who really watches their surroundings, you are rewarded by getting a mediocre method of tracking invisible players, because when you move, it's hard to see the prints again."

I actually agree with this, however people with less lag have a distinct advantage in finding recons as, to be honest, they're significantly easier to see with little to no lag (yes, even in the darkest places).

Removing footprints would remove a bit of that advantage. Obviously people with less lag would still have their huge advantages elsewhere, but... baby steps.

Wed, 01/08/2014 - 18:30

Pipipipipi

The 4th wall shall be shattered!!!

make the base health 3 pips

/uses a bomb with CTR max

/kills all strikers without almost ever getting hit

slow moving things with a crap ton of power

erm, tanks don't have a lot of power, they only have a lot of HP and defense

Increase the guardian shield's health

have you ever played tier 1 or 2 lockdown with a guardian on the other side? From what I hear, it takes forever to get through their shields

Remove the footprints

sure

a special ability for teleportation across short distances

Having the ability to render someone's attack completely useless is just plain sick

(attempts a really bad Luguiru impression) is there a doctor in the house?

Remove the cancellation of attacking and charging in LD

nu again

Please remove those things

/continues to kill all strikers easily with a bomb

Wed, 01/08/2014 - 19:03

Dibsville

"Increase the guardian shield's health

have you ever played tier 1 or 2 lockdown with a guardian on the other side? From what I hear, it takes forever to get through their shields"

As a Tier 2 player, I can concur.

Even with hammer spam, it can take upwards of 10 seconds, which is an insanely large amount of time for a fast-paced game like Lockdown, even moreso when you die in 4 hits to a gaurdian.

Wed, 01/08/2014 - 19:15

Sandwich-Potato

It's hilarious in tier 3 as a guardian waiting for people to GF combo and whacking them once with a level 1 DTB. You get like two thirds of the enemy chasing you while your team has an opportunity to quickly seize some points. A good guardian can effectively neutralize (har har Neutralizer gun) half the enemy team; if anything needs to be worked on, it's Striker Clone ability to use Detect Obvious Bait.

/e spams Big Angry Bomb over one control point with CTR Max, effectively locking it down.

Wed, 01/08/2014 - 20:02

Offense-Armor

._.

They already have the invisible charge ability

Recons can't charge while invisible.

"have you ever played tier 1 or 2 lockdown with a guardian on the other side? From what I hear, it takes forever to get through their shields"

One SS combo breaks a guard shield in T2.

even moreso when you die in 4 hits to a gaurdian

It takes a guard 5 hits with a hammer to kill a striker..... and that's if the guard is wearing dusker.

Yeah, no. Guardians do plenty with the fact that they can survive for so long.

Guards have 3 more pips of health than strikers in T2.

@Sandwich-Potato
You can neutralize half the enemy team... but any random striker can kill half of the enemy team.

I'm fine with guard in T3 because no one lives long in T3 anyway. I want some more balance in T2.

Thu, 01/09/2014 - 01:28

#10

Fangel

Most of those balances aren't quite balanced

They are in good faith, but not all needed.
I think the recon warp could be built upon. I'd love to see a unique shield bash mechanic with all classes. This would kill half the shield and can be used if you have >= 50% shield. Striker would dash forward two times as fast for .2 seconds (think: backfire barrier with a delay before and after activation) in whatever direction they're facing. Recon would turn invisible and zip forwards, and get 1 second of movement speed increase, essentially teleporting a shield bash distance forwards, and killing half their cloak. The cloak would auto-activate after the bash so that your cover is not blown. Guardian would get a standard shield bash, but without the stun. The knockback itself would be helpful enough, and should be present for the full duration, but this would kill half of the guardian's main tool - their shield.

I'd love any of you to build upon this idea, and keep the bashes rather niche so that players won't overuse them.

Thu, 01/09/2014 - 05:38

#11

Raptorsevens

The only thing I really want

The only thing I really want in lockdown is for random teams to not be fully random anymore.

1: Remember any player's last 10 games.
2: For each player in a game, count his wins (0 to 10).
3: Use the win counts for each player to divide them into more balanced teams.

Thu, 01/09/2014 - 05:46

#12

Sandwich-Potato

You can neutralize half the enemy team... but any random striker can kill half of the enemy team.

Any good random guardian can kill the entire enemy team. I did it once, luring six strikers into a mist bomb lock. Hilarious.

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A Few Ideas to Help Balance Out Lockdown