Spiral Knights - Leveling the Lockdown playing field <Discussing the ability to have 4 trinkets in Lockdown>

Leveling the Lockdown playing field <Discussing the ability to have 4 trinkets in Lockdown>

47 replies [Last post]

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 15:49

Bulby

I hear a LOT of people complain about the lack of diversity in lockdown and how most of the good players always seem to be high UV’d skolver clones. And why not? Skolver has all of the essentials a player needs: excellent pierce defense, shivermist immunity, and sword damage increase very high! Couple that with some UV’s like ASI very high and shock or stun immunity and you have a one-man wrecking crew that out-guns everyone without equal UV’s and glides over mist bombs like they’re nothing but fog.

So, what I’d like to purpose today may essentially eliminate the absolute need for skolver and possibly UV’s for the most part – which is to allow players up to FOUR trinket slots instead of two.

Now, this may sound a bit crazy, but I’m going to address all the pros and cons I can determine and please feel free to throw in a couple of your own. Now, let’s get started…

Pros:

What would four trinkets allow you to do? Basically, this gives you the ability to go toe-to-toe with a skolver in pretty much anything you want. Let’s say you want to wear mercurial mail because it yields shock immunity and has really solid pierce defense. What are its weaknesses however? Well, you receive no damage bonus. If you are allowed two more trinkets however, you can overcome the damage bonus and now essentially have a shock immuned skolver. Pretty cool yes? This would also work for Royal jelly, Ice Queen, and well, pretty much anything. All by granting two more slots.

Now I know that this feature would also be available to skolvers and some would argue that they would STILL be OP because they could be granted a double immunity because they’re already immuned to ice, but let’s not forget that armors like the jelly line also have increased pierce defense and can thus tank more hits. Also, from what I’ve seen, double immunities don’t really make that much difference in most situations.

In addition, if you’re one of the Highly UV’d players, this doesn’t take your precious UV’s away. What it does do is split the group. On one side you have players that have the UV’d weapons but no extra defense; and on the other you have players with extra defense but no beefed up weapons. If you have both the UV’d weapons and gear, you are now free to sell half of your inventory and use the money to buy something else, or you can have a single, complete package that requires no loadout changing on your part (I would personally find this to be rather dull after a while though).

Cons:

From where I stand this would give the bombers a heck of a time trying to keep up (especially since the recent RSS nerf). That being said however, bombers really don’t have much of a chance to begin with since all a good gunner or swordsman needs to do is stop you from dropping your bombs only once to kill you and I’ve also grown rather tired of the run-of-the-mill bombers who think they need only a voltaic tempest or stagger storm to ward off an invasion force. I’d much rather see bombers swapping their bombs to cover multiple statuses instead of one like I used to do (at least this way you’d feel less like you were just simply spamming).

In contrast to this though, strike bombers would now be a more feasible combat option, since would be able to negate the striker charge time increase and still maintain double penta health. And if you had two of these guys on your team, you could realistically cover a point from most oncoming attackers.

For the developers:

At a glance, this could possibly result in lost revenue for OOO. But bare in mind that the price to keep step with highly UV’d players is having to continually purchase trinket slot upgrades (four of them!). That means that players will have continue to pay CE to keep up they’re strength which is good. This could also possibly mean that the clockworks would be even easier to conquer too; in which case I would suggest that players only be allowed to use two trinkets while navigating the clockworks.

I also don’t think it would be wise to allow players to utilize more than two of each type of trinket as well (i.e. four pentas, slash modules, etc.).

Conclusion:

So what do you all think? Have I missed anything? I feel this would be quite a reasonable solution and would make everyone happy. Please leave some comments.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 16:01

Linkr

Great!

I really like this idea. It would level the playing field soooo much, I'm tired of seeing skolver over and over again :/

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 16:22

Trollingyou

Oh gosh no.

Imagine this setup:

Full skolver
VH ASI UV Flourish
4 Pentas

Please..... no.... just no......

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 17:01

Pauling

Choices, schmoices.

It would level the playing field for trinket slot buyers, and thoroughly screw over everyone else. A striker with 150% the health of a guardian would be horrifying.

It may sound fun for the hardcore lockdown players, but every match has a fair leavening of inexperienced new folk. Drive them away, and matches would take far longer to start. Furthermore, choosing a class and armor *should* require trade offs... but with four trinket slots, success could be purchased on the open market.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 17:29

El-Odio

Goodness, what did you smoke?

First, Trollingyou nailed it.
Second, more trinket slots favors P2P a lot and makes casual Lockdown even more unplayable.
Third, Skolver would become even more OP, as you wouldn't even need any UVs on your flourish. Which might still be less favorable than four Penta-Heart Pendants, because immortality slightly outwights other things.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 18:16

Chalez

so bad so bad so bad for too

so bad
so bad
so bad
for too many reasons to go over... heres just a few
as if it wasn't already hard enough for f2p to compete with p2p, this makes it even harder
a striker with full skolver now can get 4 trinkets
trinkets aren't supposed to provide a gigantic boost to paying players so they can walk over everything. it's just supposed to be a small boost to increase the level of variation between knights.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 18:53

Bulby

Did we miss the part where I said only TWO of each type trinket? As in, you can only have TWO pentas max.

Anyway, this was just a suggestion. Thanks for the feedback guys.

^_^

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 18:58

Trollingyou

2 pentas, 2 Tertras

Only at the cost of 2 bars of health. Problem?

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 19:06

Stingz

Make that MAX: 2, OF ANY HP

Make that MAX: 2, OF ANY HP TRINKET, then it's fair

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 19:08

Bulby

I would arrange it so that you could only use two heart trinkets. Tetras would be in the same line with the pentas, therefore you would only be able to use either a penta and a tetra, or two tetras, or two pentas, etc. In this way you can't get too much health. This is just my idea to put other armors in line with the skolver. Keep in mind that the skolver can't get anymore sword damage bonus than it already has so it would be pointless to put anything but ASI trinkets on it.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 19:18

#10

Trollingyou

Shock/Stun resist trinkets

They exist you know.

Maybe I should explain it to you. Your idea would work if the clone loadout would not benefit from this. basically, your idea is doing this:

on a scale of 1-10

Skolver-clone effectiveness is 8
Other stuff is 4 (some are lower, but that's another discussion)

8 > 4

Your suggestion adds 2 to both sides

Skolver clone is now 10
Other stuff is now 6

10 > 6

You see? Your helping both sides of the equation. This does not balance things, it only adds advantages to both sides which still leaves the same gap. If you want to bring other setups in line with skolver-clone, you either have to take away some of skolver-clone's advantages or give advantages to other setups without giving any to skolver-clone.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 21:03

#11

Bulby

Please add a little more

Please add a little more detail. I'm having a hard time understanding your logic.

From where I stand.

Mercurial Mail can have:

Damage Max - Via Trinkets
ASI Max - Via UV's
Pierce defense - inherent and slightly stronger than skolver
Shock immunity - inherent
1 Additional Status resist - Via UV's

Skolver can have:

Damage Max - inherent
ASI max - Via UV's or Trinkets
Pierce Defense
Freeze immunity - inherent
2 Additional Status resists - Via UV's or Trinkets

_________________________________________________________

I'm sorry, maybe I'm a bit thick headed, but ASI and damage max plus any status immunity and pierce defense are really all I need to make something effective. This would put a Mercurial suit on par with a skolver. All that's really needed to get started is an ASI max weapon and damage trinkets. Additional statuses can be added via UV's. Skolver just has the ability to reasonably attain 3 immunities, whereas it would be difficult (but not impossible) to have more than 2 for Mercurial.

From purely a conventional standpoint (swords and guns without mist bombs) Mercurial would actually have the advantage since you can't push damage and ASI beyond max and Mercurial naturally has more pierce defense than skolver. This puts Skolver in the status immunity class and jelly gear in the head-on fighting class.

Can you find fault in this logic?

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 21:10

#12

Havenihaveaproblem

@Bulby

I think his point is:

Mercurial Mail can have:

Damage Max - Via 2 Trinkets
ASI Max - Via UV's
Pierce defense - inherent and slightly stronger than skolver
Shock immunity - inherent
1 Additional Status resist - Via UV's
+2 Trinkets

Skolver can have:

Damage Max - inherent
ASI max - Via UV's or Trinkets
Pierce Defense
Freeze immunity - inherent
2 Additional Status resists - Via UV's
+4 Trinkets

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 21:19

#13

Bulby

@Haven

Exactly. If you want status immunity armor, go skolver. If you want a stronger head-up armor go jelly.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 21:50

#14

Havenihaveaproblem

I see. Well, I am not going

I see. Well, I am not going to refute your logic that they *can* benefit equally, but I will mention something else to consider. Maybe it will interest you.

Just how much is this piercing difference worth? You can look at the Wiki and compare the bars from the pictures, or check here if you like math to calculate it out, but a five star trinket is about equal to the difference in piercing between your mercurial and a Skolver.

A five star trinket barely makes a difference in damage taken. One source states that it reduces damage taken by 0.33 bars of damage. The other source has confirmed it to be somewhere under 0.5 bars difference.

Consider how many hits it takes to kill you, then multiply that by 1 bar. Something less than that is how much health you saved going mercurial. At the most, it will be one hit difference. It might not even make a difference at all. It's sad, but armor kind of sucks.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 21:53

#15

Trollingyou

@Bulby

Damage Max - Via Trinkets
ASI Max - Via UV's
Pierce defense - inherent and slightly stronger than skolver
Shock immunity - inherent
1 Additional Status resist - Via UV's

Skolver can have:

Damage Max - inherent
ASI max - Via UV's or Trinkets
Pierce Defense
Freeze immunity - inherent
2 Additional Status resists - Via UV's or Trinkets

Lemme use this as an example, suggesting both players made friends with punch and can get all the crazy UVs they want. What I'm saying is this will happen:

Damage Max - Via Trinkets (2 trinkets used here)
ASI Max - Via UV's
Pierce defense - inherent and slightly stronger than skolver
Shock immunity - inherent
2 Additional Status resist - Via UV's (let's assume the guy got some trinkets for more status resist and used two here)

Skolver can have:

Damage Max - inherent
ASI max - Via UV's
Pierce Defense
Freeze immunity - inherent
2 Additional Status resists - Via UV's or Trinkets (2 used here)
12 aditional health (2 pentas used here)

Do you see the difference now? Both made friends with punch and got their UV's. Both have 4 trinket slots. One has 12 extra health. Also, people should not go to an offensive-oriented armor for a defensive purpose....

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 23:22

#16

Fehzor

4 trinkets would be far more balanced if health/weapon trinkets were nerfed tremendously, and if players started with 2 of them. Lets say that we remove some trinkets, and we have the following changed for the final versions:
-Pentas now give +3 health per trinket
-Weapon bonus trinkets now give a bonus of 'low'

This would allow for F2Pers and "everyone else" to compete with the "pros" who use trinket slots a little bit. It would make OOO more money, because people would have to invest in energy to craft more trinkets, and would still offer trinket slot expansions.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 23:19

#17

Zeddy

So let me get this straight.

You want to make Skolver-strikers more powerful by granting them the ability to:
-Have even more health. Meanwhile, other armours have to be coupled with damage trinkets to go toe-to-toe with Skolvers, so they can't benefit from this.
-Have max CTR, granting them the ability to spam haze bombs.
-Have max damage with BOTH guns and swords

Yes, you could maybe migitate some of this by putting in arbitrary limits.

The solution is most certainly not to increase the amount of trinkets. It's to force strikers into using non-health trinkets by, say, increasing the resistance necessary to be immune against haze bombs.

Mon, 08/27/2012 - 23:27

#18

Bulby

@Trolling

Ok, uhm I'm still not grasping this and I'm not sure if it's because you're sincere or you're "trolling" me. lol

Mercurial DOES in fact have the capacity to be immuned to 4 statuses using UV's plus it has one naturally. That covers ALL the status bombs and we haven't even tapped into the trinkets yet. So, we have four trinket slots: 2 used for the pentas and 2 used for the damage bonus. If the sword of the Merc has ASI VH then all the bases are covered and the Merc has a higher natural pierce defense than skolver.

Skolver has the capacity to have four status resists as well but it actually evens out in the end. Let's say you put stun, shock, and poison resist UV's on your skolver. You already have freeze resist and damage max. If you have ASI VH and pentas what's the one thing you lack that you can use your last two trinket slots for? Pierce defense! Which the Mercurial has naturally and which tips the scale back to even.

Have I missed something here? Also, I see no problem with using ANY armor for ANY purpose. As it stands most people go with skolver for ALL their swording needs. This will add diversity. And even if it turns out that skolver is still more powerful, it would be a heck of a lot less overpowering to the other gears.

@Haven

I'm afraid that your sources were a bit lengthy for my attention span. Could you possibly give me a more clean-cut version? To be honest I'm not exactly sure just how much more pierce defense mercurial will yield. It is my experience though, with Pierce high on both of my skolver pieces, that I die in 3 Gran Faust swings and 5 Flourish swings. I believe that Merc can withstand the same amount, at least that's my experience. Now, if my previous formula finds that 5* pierce trinkets will yield a 6-hit final flourish death to a skovler and a 5-hit death to an un-altered mercurial, does it really matter all that much? The difference is so small that I seriously doubt you will notice it in battle. I NEVER count swings when facing a skolver with double pierce max. I just attack it until it's dead.

Also, a small minor note here. Poison is probably the weakest of the status bombs (not saying it's weak, just not as useful in my opinion), if you were to trade out poison immunity for pierce resist max on your mercurial, you would be seemingly immuned to flourish hits. Being able to take perhaps 7-8 hits before going down.

Thanks for the feedback guys. It's comforting to know you're thinking and aren't just throwing up stupid retorts. ^_^

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 00:28

#19

Zeddy

@Bulby

If you were to trade out poison immunity for pierce resist max on your mercurial, you would be seemingly immuned to flourish hits.

Defense has almost nothing to say in Lockdown. Here's a guy who did damage tests. I'll quote him:

"For example, if I am wearing full skolver and I attack another full skolver (no UV's) with barbarous thorn blade it would do about 7 bars. If I attack a guy with no pierce resist, it would do about 7 and a half bars."

Keep in mind that defense presents diminishing returns. Max UVed piercing mercurial would maybe bring the damage down to 6 bars.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 01:30

#20

Havenihaveaproblem

I did summarize them in the

I did summarize them in the third paragraph. Basically, each piece of your mercurial has more piercing than a Skolver equal to a 5* trinket. Each 5* trinket reduces damage by less than half a bar according to experimental data. If you take five FF hits with a full skolver, then by going full Mercurial, it's like adding proably around 4 bars of health to your life. Depending on your health bar, this might allow you to take six FF hits. It might only allow you to withstand 5 as before and accomplish nothing.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 06:59

#21

Trollingyou

Lemme try to explain again....

Skolver does not have to use 2 trinket slots to attain max damage. Mercurial does. Let me line it out again:

Mercurial gets:

Damage max (2 trinkets used here)
ASI max (UVs)
4 total status resists (armor and UVs)
12 extra health (2 trinkets used here)

Skolver gets:

Damage max (inherent)
ASI max (UVs)
4 total status resists (armor and UVs)
12 extra health (2 trinkets used here)
STILL HAS 2 TRINKETS TO USE FOR WHATEVER. (CTR Brandish spam, anyone?)

Mercurial did gain some advantage, but skolver gained advantage as well. Your giving advantages to both sides, which does not even out things. Now, your idea would work if skolver-clone were left out....

Mercurial gets:

Damage max (2 trinkets used here)
ASI max (UVs)
4 total status resists (armor and UVs)
12 extra health (2 trinkets used here)

Skolver gets:

Damage max (inherent)
ASI max (UVs)
4 total status resists (armor and UVs)
12 extra health (2 trinkets used here, and no more available cause skolver-clone was left out)

This would even out the competition. However, it doesn't seem fair to leave out one setup and give everyone else 2 extra trinket slots. That's why I don't think it is a good idea.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 07:03

#22

Bulby

@Haven

I apologize, I missed that part of your post. I also forgot fire resist as a possible option as well. o.e

So basically you're saying that mercurial has the pierce defense of skolver with 5* pierce trinkets? If so, then I believe I have made my case. No matter how many hits pierce defense actually withstands, the scale is still even.

Also, I don't like how people are dumping on pierce defense. I know it doesn't make you a juggernaut, but being able to take an extra hit when fighting a skolver and two extra hits when fighting anything else really does help. I'm just saying that (in my opinion) pierce defense loses a good bit of utility after one extra hit. In other words, I don't notice much of a difference when fighting a player with double pierce max, but I do notice a difference when fighting someone with nothing.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 07:11

#23

Bulby

@Trolling

Ah, ok I see what you're saying. Even so though, A mercurial can attain CTR max through a UV. It'd just cost a bit more. And to be honest, I usually don't suffer too much from people spamming charges. Starbucks is great at this technique (which can one shot me if done right) but I can still fake him out by spamming gunfire and take him down before he can get another charge off. I don't know, what do you think of this?

Thanks again for clearing that up for me.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 07:28

#24

Trollingyou

If mercurial can get CTR UV...

Then skolver can too.

Basically, skolver just has too many advantages over mercurial. Even if he decided to get pierce defense trinkets, he'd still have more defense overall because skolver inherently has more normal defense than mercurial. The armors themselves are not balanced. mercurial's extra pierce defense and MED movement speed is not enough to make up for skolver's extra normal defense and VH DMG bonus.

Also, the difference in defense is really negligible. When I use shadowsun in recon (with no pentas) it takes a toothpick 3 hits to kill me. When I use mercural in recon (again, no pentas) it takes 4 hits to kill me. In other words, going from no pierce defense to super high pierce defense only allows me to survive one extra hit. Such a big difference, ins't it?

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 07:59

#25

Pauling

I'd suggest starting a

I'd suggest starting a separate bug report on the damage issue. Because honestly, that's ridiculous.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 08:05

#26

Trollingyou

I'll definitely start another thread about the damage

Though I do not think this is a bug. You notice in PVE defense doesn't do that much either.

Unless someone beats me to it, the thread won't come till later, cause I got work to do.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 08:53

#27

Bulby

@Trolling

Ok, well then indeed the jelly line needs a defense buff, although I personally don't think this is the case. My belief is that the numbers lie (take a look at the Leviathan vs. CIV debate). Mercurial, by itself, has more defense than skolver and takes one more hits to kill. If our theoretical skolver were to get a CTR UV and put on pierce defense trinkets, he would still only have as much defense as the Mercurial and the scale is still balanced.

The thing that keeps this all in check is that you can't push anything beyond a max UV. What this would allow the skolver striker to do though is have CTR max on bombs, but again the mercurial has all the bases covered for statuses and can just walk through mist bombs. Any other bomb the mercurial would face would be child's play to get through.

This still keeps things balanced the way I see it. The only other option, if lockdown is to be changed, is to remove UV's from the equation, but I'd really hate to see that happen since so many people have spent millions in crowns and CE to aquire them. What my proposal does is weaken their UV's a bit and make the necessity to have both armor and weapon UV's unnecessary.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 09:02

#28

Havenihaveaproblem

While the PVP damage might

While the PVP damage might indeed be bugged, because I am seeing some weird things in another thread atm, PvE damage really does not show as much of a damage change as one would traditionally expect for having a full loadout against it.

In my links above, you can read that armor scales linearly rather than exponentially or some other formula. Linear scaling is strong against something that deals low damage, but a same amount of defense quickly has much less of an impact against something with much higher damage. Linear scaling would be very difficult to balance between two damage sources that differ greatly between each other.

I don't know if OOO managed to balance it well or not because they have an as yet hidden formula to adjust your armor according to depth. I do know that the studies showed that small changes in armor, such as from trinkets, makes a negligible difference in PvE.

@ Bulby

While you might notice a difference between someone with double pierce or no pierce, noticing a difference between someone with Skolver and Mercurial is highly unlikely.

Also, my point was not that the scale isn't even. My point was that the Skolver would have very little incentive to use his extra 2 trinket slots towards "catching up" to the Mercurial piercing defense because piercing defense in such small quantities has little value. Instead, he could use his extra 2 trinket slots for something more useful, such as heart pendants, damage/CTR/ASI bonuses, or status resists. In terms of pure potential, the Skolver has better options.

By going for damage/CTR/ASI bonuses, having four trinkets would make it that much easier for a Skolver to reach full offensive potential. Not everyone has a full sword loadout with ASI and CTR UVs already. That takes quite a bit of work in and of itself to obtain. So, in terms of short-term potential, the Skolver also has the advantage.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 09:07

#29

Darkshaodw

Great. Now It takes 5 minutes

Great. Now It takes 5 minutes to kill a skolver. Don't make us f2p more worse than we already are vs the skolver

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 09:21

#30

Bulby

@Haven

Your argument is valid, in the short term skolver has the advantage. My point though again is that Mercurial has less of a need for defensive power than skolver. So if less people need weapon UV's (i.e. skolvers with ASI trinkets instead) Will not the price of said UV's be cheaper and thus easier for alternate armored people to obtain? My proposal splits the group into people that have armor UV's and Weapon UV's. Also, Skolver has damage Max so it can't go any higher and I've already shown that a CTR bonus still takes too long in the heat of a battle with a striker to be of any use. So the only thing having an ASI UV would do is free up your trinket slots to give you a status immunity or boosted pierce defense; which again, the mercurial has naturally. If I was this skolver with ASI max I would NOT waste my last two trinket slots on anything but boosted defense.

Once again, this is a theoretical situation. If this change was ever made, I'd probably still stick with skolver, but that's because I've dumped most of my money into armor UV's rather than weapon UV's and this would allow me to have an ASI max now. If I had gone the other route, and had gotten weapon bonuses, I'd be overjoyed that I would now have SO many armor options to choose from and that none of them would require UV's to be able to dominate.

Have I missed anything here?

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 09:27

#31

Bulby

Oops, I failed to address one last thing.

My proposal is to limit the amount of a certain type of trinket to only TWO. In other words, you would only be allowed TWO heart trinkets period. Not FOUR only TWO. If you already have two pentas, YOU CANNOT have more heart trinkets in this theoretical situation.

If you're going to keep hammering me with this idea that a player can have four of a certain type of trinket, please read my previous posts.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 09:28

#32

Darkshaodw

Whoops. Sorry bulby, must

Whoops. Sorry bulby, must have missed that statement. Now it will only take 3 minutes to kill someone!

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 09:36

#33

Bulby

@Dark

I've seen guys in proto take down fully leveled up skolvers in under ten seconds. If it takes over half of a single match to kill a skolver, then I'm sorry, but the problem lies with your own skill level. What you've said is a gross exaggeration of the way things actually are.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 09:42

#34

Addisond

I've been meaning to do tests on this, but I feel that, after playing lockdown in both vog and skolver, damage is subtractive. Unless damage is subtractive, and the reduction works out so that ice queen armor+trinkets+UV makes you almost immune, skolver will still have the advantage, though in the case of richer players, players will be more able to screw around with other possibilities. Speaking of IQ armor, it'd probably be a better choice than mercurial, the speed bonus is pretty negligible for strikers because it just adds a small percentage of the base speed (I think), and IQ gives you stun AND freeze, alongside an excellent piercing defense.

As for dark, it is not impossible to kill a skolver with decent gear. You don't have to be P2P to have good stuff.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 09:49

#35

Aureate

Processing Thoughts of You Always

Well... this would make the gap between P2P and F2P Lockdown players even wider than it already is.
I do not personally purchase trinket slots because I don't play frequently enough for it to be worthwhile.
With this implemented, Skolver clones will be able to max out health, damage and attack speed with relative ease, all whilst retaining the ability to get extra status resistances on their armour as they choose.
Paying for trinkets should provide an edge, yes. However, that edge shouldn't be so massive that it is possible for a P2P Striker to take twice as many hits as a non-P2P player, survive, and still get the maximum offensive bonuses available.
So yeah, I'll pass on this, thanks.

- 1

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 09:59

#36

Little-Juances

The idea would work if the

The idea would work if the extra defense of Mercurial/Jelly did make a difference. But no, saying it lets you resist even 1 extra hit is too much.

Skolver and its natural damage bonus still has the advantage. UVs make said differences even smaller.

We need a huge armor rebalance.

Also limit trinkets, skolver with 4 penta hearths vs Jelly with 2 modules and 2 pentas.... doesnt look good.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 10:10

#37

Bulby

Well, like I said, this is just a suggestion. But for many endgame players like myself, Lockdown is the REAL endgame. You spend hundreds of hours grinding FSC and you know what I'm talking about. Lockdown is the only thing that keeps us around. It's all we play and the only reason we do runs is to get better gear for Lockdown. If you are a run-of-the-mill F2P'er that wants to try his hand at Lockdown and wind up going against someone like Thrillhaus and get your head kicked in, then well, you deserved it. You haven't put in the time, effort, and yes money (be it real or in-game) required to be at the top of the heap. And Addisond is right, I know F2P'ers that have max UV's and such. They just spent more time getting them and are probably better in skill than alot of P2P'ers.

And once again, there are in fact UVless players out there such as Nitef, Blueberrymuffin, and Nethrom (who doesn't even use trinkets D:) that excel to the level of pro on pure skill alone. So it can, in fact, be done cheaply.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 10:14

#38

Bulby

@Little-J

True, if jelly armor defense is truly not what I previously described then there should indeed be more of a defense boost to them and other armors with the same problem.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 17:15

#39

Zeddy

Here's just one more reason

Here's just one more reason why four trinkets would, ultimatly, benefit Skolver amours the most.

You're arguing that the skolver would use his two trinkets to "catch up" to Mercurial when there's really no point in doing so. Instead, he could do this:

A level 5 trinket equals a max UV. 1.5 defence.

One piece of skolver armour has ~5.2 piercing defence. Add them together and you get ~10.4. What he could do is get two max UVs against shadow and use the two trinket slots where he couldn't equip pentas for two Dread Skelly Charms.

4*1.5 = 9. That's very close to 10.4. The user will probably survive an extra Gran Faust hit and an extra Final Flourish hit. Skolver gets to wear two armours at the same time!

That guy in Mercurial? Sure, he could have that too, but then he'd have to choose between +4 damage bonus or +10 health. Meanwhile, Skolvers get to have all of that.

And assuming triple-UVs, he could still have immunity to shock, freeze and stun.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 18:52

#40

Bulby

@Zeddy

If the skolver goes for shadow defense, he gives up the pierce defense of the mercurial. Once again, If mercurial doesn't equal skolver with pierce max, we have far greater problem than this thread covers. In addition, 2 status resists is PLENTY. Even if skolver did in fact gain the biggest advantage, the difference is miniscule. Having immunity to all three of the movement hindering mist bombs is comical and is close to impossible for most players. It would be highly unlikely that you would ever run into someone with this many status resists that still had max combat power.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 23:08

#41

Pauling

I still maintain that this

I still maintain that this would widen the disparity between free and paid players; that's a point that your proposal notably fails to address. Those free players provide the warm bodies needed to keep lockdown matches running at all hours of the day, and thus any change that would drive away that community would also negatively impact established paying players.

The broader problem is that full skolver users get a very useful and unique bonus. Armor should require trade offs, rather than creating a situation where all things would be equal on the high end. (which seems to be what your proposal is aimed at, as you refer to "catching up")

I would instead propose buffing most armors (which frankly provide too little protection as is), but leaving skolver untouched. Thus, people who wanted a sword bonus would pay for it by taking significantly higher damage relative to everyone else. It would also have the advantage of leaving existing items totally untouched- this sort of "relative nerf" would let them sidestep complaints from people who paid for the old (and unchanged) armor. UVs will always be an issue, but short of removing them, the only fix is to limit the number of buyable advantages.

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 23:57

#42

Derpules

What if we take UVs out of the equation?

Seriously, this whole "assume you can get whatever UVs you like" thing really distorts the effect this would have on most players, especially those in random games. Many players have no UVs, or can afford Meds at best.

Let's look at what happens when we take out weapon UVs (i.e. allowing that they can still get whatever armour UVs they want). The comparison is very different:

1) Skolver
Immunity: full (via UVs)
Damage as Striker: Max (natural)
ASI as Striker: Max (two trinks)
Health bonus: 2 pentas
Pierce def: base

2) IQ/Merc
Immunity: full (via UVs)
Damage as Striker: Max (two trinks)
ASI as Striker: Max (two trinks)
Health bonus: none
Pierce def: somewhat higher than Skolver

2 pentas far outstrip the effect of slightly increased pierce def. The disparity becomes clear.

Wed, 08/29/2012 - 11:42

#43

Addisond

Most people wouldn't take ASI over health. Basically what IQ vs Skolver comes down to is immunity to stun and higher defense in exchange for ASI, provided there aren't any UVs involved. If there ARE UVs involved, they are identical except one gets more piercing defense (plus an extra type of defense UV) in exchange for two trinkies.

Wed, 08/29/2012 - 11:59

#44

Derpules

"Most people wouldn't take ASI over health"

You're right, but in that case it just means (in the hypothetical situation that I put forward above) that the Skolver and IQ/Merc end up with the same amount of HP, but the Skolver has two points more ASI. Still a disparity.

Wed, 08/29/2012 - 12:45

#45

Autofire

Sorry, I know one issue you haven't addressed.

This would make the clockworks OP, and just make things even for P2W. You need 4 trinket slots to keep up. In the clockworks you could get over 40 base HP, I think. Couple this with vita-pods and you've got yourself tanking things with 60 and up HP. That's going to ruin it for sure.

This game isn't just LD. It's better to keep the clockworks balanced than a PVP game. Get both balanced: great! But clockworks takes priority as they are the main point of the game.

Wed, 08/29/2012 - 14:18

#46

Zeddy

@Bulby

If the skolver goes for shadow defense, he gives up the pierce defense of the mercurial.

Which isn't a big deal, since defences give diminishing returns right after the point of where Skolver armours have their defence.

Actually, actually, screw the whole defence thing. Look at this.

Sword Damage Max Striker, Full Snarb, Barbarous Thorn Blade

vs Full Nameless:

1st Swing: 7 1/2 bars consistently.
3rd Stab: 9 to 9 1/2 bars.

vs Full Justifier:

1st Swing: 7 to 7 1/2 bars.
3rd Stab 8 1/2 to 9 bars.

1 bar is 40 HP, so the damage diffrence from no piercing defence whatsoever to 10,4 bars of piercing defence is reducing the damage from ~300 to ~290. The guy in full mercurial has a total of somewhere around 14 bars of defence. I'm feeling generous so let's assume this pushes the damage down to ~280.

Before even thinking about ridiculous suggestions like adding two extra trinket slots, defence should be buffed so those 4 extra defence bars are worth a damn. At that point, the mercurial suit might start to look attractive completely on its own merits.

Wed, 08/29/2012 - 15:50

#47

Thrillhaus

Plugging my thread.

IMO the best way to require players to decide between trinket boosts is to have an option to disable UVs.

Without being able to have max ASI on weapons and still retain max damage from armour, one would need to decide wisely between health, status immunity, and weapon bonuses.

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Leveling the Lockdown playing field <Discussing the ability to have 4 trinkets in Lockdown>