We all know how all the weapons touched by Invincitinks are useless. Sure both shards and Tortofist have some utility, but invincitinks also have that nasty effect of cancelling the damage from other weapons.
So the question is, if you were a developer in OOO, and you were given the job to nerf the shard bombs and Tortofists in some way. What would you have done?
Instead of invincitinks, have monsters obtain a variable defense that increases over damage, but decreases over time.
This means that perfect execution of high-powered weaponry won't be completely useless (with invincitinks) or completely overpowered (without) but will have diminishing returns when attacking a single target.
That's an alternative. Probably would be better just to remove them altogether and actually nerf the damage of overpowered weapons.
Best alternative to invincitinks would be nothing. An action game shouldn't punish skill, it makes absolutely no sense at all.
OOO's excuse for Invincitinks seem to be that the bomb has a lot of single target damage while still maintaining a wide AoE and a lot of utility.
In my opinion, they should've just taken out the flinch rate and decreased the damage. Though really I don't think it needs any kind of nerf in the first place. The same applies to the Tortofists. Invincitinks are counter-productive, just reduce the DPS.
Just remove invicitinks. This thing doesn't have any sense and makes weapons bad without any point.
You and I both know that OOO would never remove Invincitinks. For reasons beyond our understanding.
Allow me to clarify the usual misunderstanding regarding the shard bombs
"OOO's excuse for Invincitinks seem to be that the bomb has a lot of single target damage while still maintaining a wide AoE and a lot of utility."
The reason they're bad on shard bombs is because the effect carries over between bombs if and only if you hit in rapid succession. So if I start to deal good DPS (because the bombs would have pretty decent DPS without the invincitinks) then I will stop dealing it and be back to dealing little to none. If you take a look a the following threads then you'll see exactly what Oooh's excuse for invincitinks on shards is.
My argument for why shards shouldn't have invincitinks- http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/105267
Zeddy's bug report thread- http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/82883
Zeddy's video of how it happens- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL-1tH-cyp0
I contacted a GM, and they told me to put out a bug report, and that if it was a bug they would fix it. They clearly either do not care about the shard bomb issue, or intend for bombers to be at a disadvantage in every possible way.
Regarding the tortofists
The invincitinks actually help the tortofists. Instead of having to hit with more of the crystals for longer, you only have to hit with them for a short amount of time to get the full DPS. It still rewards skill, but without sharply veering off towards infinite damage.
The other aspect of this is that their damage is fine as is.
Damage numbers - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VllrhND1Mi1PtmPeE4ZRKABVo3scEdlX...
VS Enemies that are weak, T3 training hall-
Blitz: 229 damage x 15 shots fired = 3435 total damage per charge
Tortofist: 229 damage x shots landed + 170 x enemies hit on crystals = total damage done per charge
So if we're fighting 7 slags and I fire my elemental tortofist and hit each of the slags an average of 2 times as the crystals fall and then trap/bump around 5 of them an average of 3 times before the shards wear off, then I've just outdamaged blitz needle by quite a bit.
229 x 14 = 3206 damage from impact
170 x 15 = 2550 damage from acting as a wall
Total = 5756 damage
And that's not even the best of it- lets say we're fighting 20 enemies and I fire my tortofist to get all of them an average of 1.5 times, getting 15 of them to bump 3 times average...
229 x 20 x 1.5 = 6870
170 x 15 x 3 = 7650
Total = 14520
So why on earth do the tortofists need changing in some way?
I would have mailed them each a bag of feces. This would have been a more effective means of telling them what we the developers thought of them,
Wow, I never knew OOO thought that highly of bombers, I would have just send them bags filled with nothing, that is a much better representation.
As for ways of fixing shard, how about reduce the shards after the explosion from six to five and remove invincitink after that?
As for torto fist, give it the same treatment as the catalyzer, turn them into Niche weapon, give it a melee normal attack and a artillery attack, only this time the player can guide where the bombs land after it is launched, sorta like predator drone in CoD multiplayer with less damage of course.
I would have just written each bomber a letter telling them how much the developers hated them and wanted them to burn forever, as that would have saved time and effort that could have gone into making actual content instead of dysfunctional bombs. Instead of giving the bombers UV tickets as "compensation", I would have mailed them each a bag of feces. This would have been a more effective means of telling them what we the developers thought of them, and would directly avoided the "beating around the bush" aspect of removing a functional DPS bomb.j
Alternatively, if I intended for the bombs to be useful in some way, I would have observed that the invincitinks were both unnecessary and buggy, and left them off.
For tortofists, I would have just made the weapon deal a much smaller amount of damage on each hit by the crystals, and allow them to hit as often as players made them. Overall, the weapon would have been weaker (takes more hits to get in the damage) but players wouldn't complain because they wouldn't know any better and stupidly want this anyway.