Sprites... what's good and what needs to be improved (Seraphynx)
lun, 09/16/2019 - 23:35
First off the base sprite forms are in general useful... some are FAR more useful than others...
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The Seraphynx can use it's Beam on chokepoints and turrets, the Heart Attack can improve HP drop rates, the Shield can protect you and allies from damage. For beating the main story the Seraphynx is underwhelming until you gain access to the 2nd skill, then it becomes super useful throughout the game... keeping allies alive and helping you survive dangerous areas...
What to improve?
Heart attack drop rate should vary based on the number of enemies affected.... the fewer the enemies the higher the drop rate...
Shield should change color just like a Knight shield to show when it's close to breaking/ending...
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Both Beam ultimates are useful but the Disintegration ray is far superior.... perhaps replace the Dazzling Ray's Fiend/Undead boost with a Stun status...
This would make the choice between damage or speed control... both powerful options in their own right...
The Violent heart attack is a good improvement over the base while the Iron heart attack is rarely useful.... due in part to how Defense orbs aren't that useful since most attacks in this game (especially in higher levels) ends up taking a very large percentage of your HP... Rather than boosting your armor's defense it should give you a universal status resist...
Both of the Seraphynx shields ultimates are actually useful... the only thing I'd improve is how quickly you can activate them in addition to the color change showing how close the shield is to breaking...
mar, 09/17/2019 - 06:15
#2
agree
I largely agree. In particular, a warning for the end of the shield would be welcome. I don't think that the heart drop rate should decrease as the number of enemies increases.
Sometimes I wonder about the design of these bonuses such as Dazzling Ray's fiend/undead bonus and Valkyrian Aura's CTR bonus. On one hand, they are redundant with Chaos armor. On the other hand, maybe that's the point. These things make Chaos less necessary. Maybe they are supposed to reassure knights that other armors are viable.
mar, 09/17/2019 - 12:14
#3
...
@Promos-Are-Content
The Violent Heart Attack is a straight DPS upgrade, even if it's small it does make it useful for chaining more kills with Heart Attack to improve the HP drops overall... the Iron Heart Attack gives Defense Orbs which aren't that useful... altering Defense Orbs would improve Iron Heart Attack indirectly
High CTR is useful, not everyone uses it like me... however a "further beyond" level of CTR would also make it useful for those who do play with high/max CTR
@Bopp
There would of course be a minimum for how low Heart attack's drop rate would get when using it on large crowds... in general I'd suggest around maybe 10% less than the current amount when it afflicts more than 10 enemies.... for every enemy below that it increases by a percentage where on the other end of the scale afflicting just one enemy almost assures an HP drop
Valk Aura seems like a offense shield but with the current lack of warning when it breaks, the high CTR meta, and the windup for using charge attacks it's risky to use offensively when with just a little patience and good positioning you can get the same results... perhaps an additional stat buff like ASI and Damage would help it out while also buffing the Angelic to give Status resist after shield break, and MSI while active
dim, 09/22/2019 - 13:31
#4
Yeah this nails pretty much
Yeah this nails pretty much anything.
But "Both Beam ultimates are useful" is false, Dazzling it's just outright a bad choice no matter what, same goes for Iron Heart Attack, giving Iron Heart Attack a massive buff is needed, like the mentioned Status Resis buff, but I would like it so that enemies that have heart attack status would just drop speed buffs instead, since that would make Seraphynx viable to speedruns, although Drakon fits already that role, we definitely need more diversity, and Iron Heart Attack giving Speed Boosts chances increase does not sound too OP considering Backfire exists.
jeu, 10/17/2019 - 12:42
#5
cat thing
Nice post. There are three major flaws with the cat pet: the crappy ray, iron heart attack, and the ultimate as a whole
The crappy ray ulti needs more to make it feel unique. Perhaps a full defense removal against undead and fiend? Something to pack more of a punch.
Defense ups are non-factors. Iron heart attack is choosing to not upgrade the ability at all, only to clutter the ground with green orb things.
Do you know those weird, blue hearts that are found in LD and training halls? They heal hp and also cure statuses. Iron heart attack should be replaced with something like "cleansing heart attack" where afflicted enemies have a chance of their hearts dropped becoming blue, status curing ones. Adds much needed counterplay to the fact that statuses can be unfair in how they affect the player.
The ultimate is just insanely buggy. Allies can damage it, if you're frozen allies can hurt you, it takes damage even if your shield is blocking the damage, iron heart attack explosions hurt it, and more. Fixing those in conjunction with giving it a remaining health indicator would be an amazing change.
ven, 10/18/2019 - 02:37
#6
My thoughts as someone who bought a reset star
First off, I'd like to point put that as it is, noobs who don't make research beforehand are extremely punished by the 2ke fee to fix their sprite after they choose the bad options. Which would mostly be solved if we made all options viable, which is what they should be. I was one such noob, and I dearly miss those 2k. And I kinda regret not just making a black kat instead.
The damaging heart attack is, imo, 100% useless and does no damage that will make any difference except breaking freeze on other enemies, ie, its a negative. Should be replaced by something, and while I'd think a speed boost would be a bit op since everyone gets it, I could agree with it if it had lower duration or so. Or do something else like a stun blast emanating from it, or a def break aoe blast with an aoe that matters to fit thw original theme. Atm it's just useless. The damage does NOT help.
Iron heart attack does something, while not large, it gives a close to sustained defence buff.
Fiend ray is atm completely useless, but that's agreed on at least.
And the ultimate, yeah it acting more like a large shield would be nice, they could just take the visuals from LD directly even. xD
But @Fishysh the thing with freeze is definitely a bug (have not confirmed it with any official source but I am sure it has something to do with freeze damage on ice break on enemies or something since its not something that appears with any other damage source, nor does freeze normally hurt) and that's the only time you can take damage with it up, except normal shield-bypassing damage sources, ie, things that aren't blocked by a normal shield. Like Grimalkins. I agree that both upgrades feel kinda redundant though. Usually you don't really use it after you used up your normal shield but because you know you need it now to not take damage. And usually that ctr can mess up two charge attacks, one at the start and one at the end, which can cost you as much time as you gain because it acts a bit buggy when ct changes during a charge. I regret picking it again, not worth it unless you normally play with about low ctr. :(
Certainly not the worst thing you've written. I'm glad to hear from you again.
Heart attack drop rate should vary based on the number of enemies affected.
They could do it that way but they chose not to. I'd imagine that they want it to scale like that for a reason- so that you're given incentive to mark and assassinate as many enemies as you can within a short timeframe. This creates high risk and high reward, which is innately thrilling and much of waht Spiral Knights is going for.
replace the Dazzling Ray's Fiend/Undead boost with a Stun status
This would be a nice change.
The Violent heart attack is a good improvement over the base while the Iron heart attack is rarely useful
I don't find either to be particularly impressive but perhaps that's a good thing given how strong heart attacking is. If they were to improve it I wouldn't complain though.
Both of the Seraphynx shields ultimates are actually useful
They are but the valk aura's CTR bonus just sets the weapon to CTR Max, which is basically needed to play anyway at this point... so perhaps it could.. go higher than max? Maybe stack with your existing CTR? Just a thought.
color change showing how close the shield is to breaking
YES. They need this hardcore. I can't tell when my seraph shield is going to break or not!