Having played Spiral Knights for a good 3 years, I very much appreciate the different weapon classes. All weapons within a class all follow a set of rules; Swords allow for close-range attacks and combos, Guns allow for multiple ranged attacks, Bombs requiring charges to be used, but affect a large area around them. These rules are fairly lenient, and allow for a lot of variety within each weapon class.

However, I feel that since this game has been around for quite a while now, I don't think it would be out of the question for a new weapon type to be introduced. My proposal; staffs, or staves.

Upon use, a staff will create a "damage zone" about 4 blocks in front of the user. Enemies caught within the zone will take consistent damage for as long as they are in it, however, they will not flinch in most cases. It should take about 0.75 seconds for the damage zone to dissipate, although this would obviously vary between weapons. The catch is, the user will be unable to move or shield until the damage zone they are creating dissipates, so staves would be best used on unsuspecting or cornered foes. The damage zones would vary in size from weapon to weapon, but should never be the size of a 5* bomb's radius. The shapes which a damage zone can be should not be limited to circles, they could be a wide variety of shapes, or even just a line. Staves would have a fairly lengthy charge time, and their charge attacks would generally tend to be stronger, larger, and flashier versions of their basic attacks.

Staves could potentially have many unique animations, for example, a fire staff could cause fire to rain from above and damage enemies in its radius, a piercing staff could make needles rise from below, and the basic Cobalt staff could create a blue aura with Aegis's logo in it. Just a few ideas.

I would very much love to see a new weapon type introduced in Spiral Knights, and this was just my idea of a new weapon type that doesn't quite work like the others. Anybody else have thoughts on a new weapon type?