Spiral Knights - Battle Sprites Tatics

Battle Sprites Tatics

6 replies [Last post]

Tue, 04/15/2014 - 23:04

Gn-Bladious

Hello new knights, this is Gn-Bladious and welcome to Battle Sprite Methods Tactics to help you. If you don't know what are the Battle Sprites, you have clicked on the right forum. If you don't know what they are they are act as familiars to aid you when you're fighting in the clockworks. Each one performs a pacific role if you want to go offence, defense, or support. The three major sprites are the Drakon, Seraphynx and Maskeraith. If you want to know what they are and what role they play then look at that specific article.

== Drakon ==
Battle role: Offence
Uses the fire statics attack to give additional damage. It's attacks are Firebolt, Flame Barrier and Fire storm.
Firebolt tactics: Increase Impact for 100-130 damage and Extra Crispy for the target to receive the fire status.
Flame Barrier tactics: Increase Heavy Smoke to make the duration of the barriers and High Heat to increase the offence.
Fire Storm Tactics: Increase Extra Cripsy and Five Alarm to increase the size, duration and power.

== Seraphynx ==
Battle Role: Defense
This cute flying kitty is not you expect it to be, it's focus on increasing defense to all party members. It's skills are Ray of Light,Heart Attack, and Angelic Aura
RoL (Ray of Light): increase Magnify that increases the reach and power of the ray of light and Enduring Light to increases duration of the ray of light.
Heart Attack: Upgrade Extra Hearty to increases the chance of hearts dropping and duration of the enchantment and Wide Embrace to increases the area of effect.
Angelic Aura: Increase Protection to Increases the defensive powers of the angelic aura and Cover for increasing the size and duration of the angelic aura.

== Maskeraith ==
Work in progress

Thu, 04/17/2014 - 22:13

Forbush-Girl

Specific questions for the 'experts'

I have a Saraphynx, I've worked hard to get it to level 5 so far so it can be useful in doing the Toy Soldier mission.

All you get to start with is Ray of Light. All the other skills don't mean much when you start.

My question is "What is it good for?"

Here is my experience so far:
Ray of light is a line. Magnify extends it somewhat, but it is still a line and one which is far shorter than your gun range or the distance a skeleton leaps or a Kat jumps at you. I say that because both of those enemies are relatively stationary and would be great targets for using my Sprite, but I need to get too close before activating the sprite, close enough that I myself am in danger or I trigger the jump and they end up moving out of the Ray just as it fires. I've tried putting the mouse arrow over the target and hitting the 1 and it still only fires x away from where I am ... in the direction of the mouse arrow.

Ray of light (and I assume the first skill for both Drakon and Maskareth as well) fires in a line. Enemies do not walk in a straight line much. They usually jump around, which makes the attack fairly useless.

So far, the only practical targets for the Battle Sprite tend to be stationary ones. Things like Gun Puppies, Battle Pods, Slow moving Lumbers, perhaps a Trojan if you time it right (why would you be that close to where he charges to?). Most everything else moves in a non-linear manner.

The only exception would be Freezing the enemy and then pointing the Battle Sprite at it ... oh, wait, that doesn't work, because the Battle Sprite attack breaks the ice as if you had shot it one more time ... and the enemy moves away anyway.

Harness Tactics

So, I see that I can invest my hard earned crowns on Harnesses so my Saraphynx can act like a Drakon or Maskareth, 8k a pop.
Battle Sprites have been around for about 9 months now. It seems they take forever to upgrade given the limited number of minerals obtained per mission. So, I don't know how many Vanguards actually have high-end sprites or have purchased one of each harness type vs just getting a different sprite type or two. I play for free, so earning the 2100e would take me (6kx21)/1000 = 126 hours of running Tier 1 instances to obtain.

Fully upgraded, each type of harness will require 168,000 crowns (168 hours or 42 days @ 4h/day). There are 4 of them for the Saraphynx, adding another sprite would make it 5.

So the question is:
Do you tend to purchase all 4 types of harnesses and upgrade them all?
Is it better just to focus on the Iron one since all enemies are susceptable to normal damage and let the weapon choice inflict the unique damage?

If I were to buy another one it would probably be the Chrystal one, since elemental damage seems worthwhile (and I prefer gremlin/construct missions). Does that make sense or is it more personal taste? I know many of you live by RJS and a few other 'instances' for grinding. At this point the don't matter because the best I can do as a Squire is pretend I'm going to kill a Snarbolax (do the levels before the one he is in, or assume I will die).

Or should I just ignore the other harnesses and save my crowns for something else? Like Dim Fire crystals so I can get that Lvl 1 gun to 10?

Awaiting your words of wisdom ...

Thu, 04/17/2014 - 21:22

Colray

well

Maskeraith fires in a slightly wider range, but doesn't do damage. It poisons.

Thu, 04/17/2014 - 22:15

Dibsville

"Maskeraith fires in a slightly wider range, but doesn't do damage."

Not necessarily true. Maskeraith's quills alone don't do damage, however they act as catalyzers; when a quilled enemy is hit, a quill explodes and the enemy takes extra damage.

Due to the fact that the quills damage is so high, and the fact that Maskeraith fires off so many quills at one time, Maskeraith's quills total damage is far beyond Drakon's firebolt when it comes to raw damage output, you just have to hit the enemy for it to be possible.

Fri, 04/18/2014 - 00:16

The-Vindicar

@Forbush-Girl

I can only tell you about my experience with Seraphynx, but I hope it's still useful.

1. Ray of Light.
Frankly, its damage is not great. Especially since it actually stops hurting an enemy if it stays in the ray for too long. But it's RoL secondary properties that make it useful.

First, during damage phase it's capable of rapidly inflicting flinching, paralyzing the enemy hit.
Second, it has some knockback - enough ot keep an enemy at bay both during damaging phase and after it.
Third, which I find somewhat useful too - enemies seem to be aware of the RoL, and they hesitate to walk into it, so you can use RoL as a temporary barrier to guard you flank. Or just fire it down the corridor to slow down enemy advance.

So RoL is more about crowd control than raw damage.

Additional uses are stationary enemies - leave the RoL firing at Darkfang Mender's bubble or Battlepod's breakable shield to help break them open.

Ultimates for RoL are bonus damage against undead and fiends and ability to lower target's defense. In my opinion the second variant is absolutely superior, as it makes RoL more useful as anti-boss ability.

2. Heart Attack
The reason I chose Sera as my battlesprite. You can never have too much hearts laying around! And it among those abilities that help your entire party.
There is not much to say about it, though.

The best way to use it is amidst the horde of weakened enemies, so you can quickly finish them of before the enchantment runs out. It may work nicely when paired with bombs.
Increased chance and duration is to be upgraded first, with cooldown second and area of effect third.

Ultimate forms are enemies affected exploding on death or enemies dropping defense boost orbs along with hearts. Since most of the time mobs are not THAT close next to each other, and if they are there are already multiple choices on hitting them simultaniously, I recommend to go with the second Ultimate - just so you will have to heal less. I'm unsure if this options reduces the chance of receiving the heart though!

3. Angelic Aura
Extremely useful ability, should you find yourself between a rock and a hard place. Upgraded, allows you to walk on spikes unharmed. Protects your teammates if they are close. Sadly, it's not only timed, but also has HP limit - the bubble can only take that much punishment before collapsing.

As for upgrades, I recommend upgrading duration first, cooldown later, and intensity the last.

Ultimates allow you to increase shield regen or reduce charge time for any player within the aura. And if former is only somewhat useful, the latter turns the ability into bomber's wet dream - being invincible and able to spam your bombs practically at double speed. With that trick and a right equipment you can easily outdamage Gremlin Menders, reducing their meat/steel shield army to a couple of broken survivors.

Harnesses
I don't recommend bothering with anything but Iron Harnesses on Seraphynx since it's a support type sprite. Damage type harnesses are better suited for Drakon, who can deal damage with all abilities. I just stick to Iron, so I will always have an emergency source of Normal damage should I enounter an ene,y of the wrong type. Reduced cooldown is nice, but it's usefullness depends on how often you use abilities and how much crowns you have - if you can spare a small fortune for a couple seconds faster recharge, then do it. If you have something more pressing, like crafting gear - than default harness is okay.

Fri, 04/18/2014 - 10:37

Autofire

You are experiencing a PICNIC ERROR!

@Forbush-Girl

There is actually a lot of tactics to the Ray of Light! I don't have a Seraphynx now, but when it was on the testing server, I got to try one.

Once you get buff Ray of Light, it becomes a good wall. If you fire it down the width of a hallway, enemies will be caught in the beam when they try to pass, working like a roadblock. This isn't very useful early on, because Seraphynx's laser is weak, enemies are slow to give a chase, and the Ray of Light doesn't span most hallways. However, give it time; it'll get better soon.

Also, when you get Heart Attack, that thing's effect is negligible until you max Extra Hearty.

@OP

You're post isn't the most useful...won't most people already know what you can buff?

Here's a Firebolt tip: You can fire it at a turret while you run up to it. The Firebolt (If Drakon has the right harness) well make the turret flinch, giving you an easier time cutting it up. Unlike guns, this won't slow you down, and the delay means that the flinch happens when you are even closer to the turret.

Fri, 04/18/2014 - 10:52

Holy-Nightmare

True to my name I am but a dream....

The ray of light can be an offensive dream in the right circumstances.

Combine the ray of light (or better yet the disintegration ray) with any vortex bomb and you get a lovely spread of damage.
Line it up right and you can put two turrets out of commission (or flinch them to cut the support they can give to enemies).

The disintegration ray combos well with the maskeraith and the drakon can punch a decent hole in any enemy that had received a poison and defense drop.

Search

Battle Sprites Tatics