Spiral Knights - Azure Guardian armor change

Azure Guardian armor change

15 Antworten [Letzter Beitrag]

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 09:24

Charlie-Day

-=SHORT VERSION=-

Please turn the azure guardian set from
This

Into this or this.

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Jorin in the Hall of Heroes, the knight who specializes in the standard issue Spiral Knights gear, states that his weapons and armor are good for about any situation in the clockworks. I agree with him on the weapons part. I disagree on the armor and helmet though. Cobalt -> Azure Guardian armor has a very obvious piercing specialization. Skolver armor, Mercurial mail, justifier jacket and Jelly mail are almost straight up superior versions, they have similar stats but also status protection and other bonuses. Besides elemental Azure Guardian also doesn't protect against shadow, but that's a special case I'll discuss further down.

So I propose that the cobalt line gets 50% reduction in piercing defense, but gets the same amount of Elemental defense on both pieces. The armor doesn't lose defense, it just spreads them out over a larger area. The piercing and normal defenses could also both give 1/3rd to elemental defense, but I'd leave those details to the devs.

This means that a starting knight who might make this armor in the missions gets a "jack of all trades..." armor set that can last him for a good long time but is also "...a master of none". It is a stepping stone like "normal damage" weapons, it will never be as good as having three separate armor sets with a specialized defense, so they're motivated to craft more armor sets over time with status resists and stronger one-type defense. I've seen dozens of knights stop their cobalt line in favor for the wolver line, since Skolver is straight up superior. With this change, these knights might make two full sets of armor in the long run instead of just one, OOO is missing out on energy being spent this way.

But what about shadow? The defense would be too thinly spread over all four damage types. Besides that, the Cobalt armor can already be made into Almiran crusader armor, which has shadow defense. This is fitting, in my opinion. Shadow creatures are designed as some of the fastest and hardest enemies to deal with; devilites, greavers, and (defeated) howlitzers are insanely fast. Three out of four danger missions and Firestorm Citadel feature shadow. Shadow defense is a reward from some of the harder dungeons (shadow lairs; almirian crusader, snarbolax) in the game or a good secondary craft project on the side (Skelly armor, Deadshot coat, etc) for when a knight wants to go do the harder content in the game.

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 09:37

Luguiru

Go with the first one, the other makes it to specialized based.

Maybe add half a bar to the element and pierce, too, considering Cobalt line is supposed to be a fairly generic defense rather than another pierce armor; or give it this instead of the extra half bars. Teamplay encouragement and what not.

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 11:42

Little-Juances

Wouldnt it be better to just increase normal defense, rather than spreading.

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 16:25

Charlie-Day

I don't see why, since the purpose of all-round jack of trades armor is to do "okay-ish" everywhere. Normal gives almost no protection against robots and jellies, which are T2 boss levels. Besides, high normal already gets filled by ancient plate.

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 14:38

Jrhuman

No. But maybe.

The reason the Azure Guardian Armor is how it is - is because the game encourages you to mix and match other armor sets to provide an extra boost of replay value. The first result is something you can already do when combining the Divine cloak with a Skolver helm. IN ADDITION to the shadow defense you also obtain, you get status resistances to almost everything. No matter how you look at it, mixing and matching would make these pieces of armor OP. It just seems way too exploitable to have even divisions between normal, piercing, and elemental.

I will however agree that there is no redeeming qualities to the azure set, because of Skolver. Instead of dividing the normal and piercing defenses, add health boosts. Yeah its not the greatest quality in an armor set, but it certainly helps for any situation in general. Increasing normal defense would be a plausible action as well, but to ensure balance, piercing would have to be dropped though to ensure balance.

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 16:43

Charlie-Day

@Jrhuman
The way it is now, is that each armor piece generally gets two bars worth of defense. Let's say a bar is 50 points, so 100 points per armor piece. This is always divided 50/50: either normal/pierce, normal/elemental, etc. In the unique case of ancient plate it's 100 points of normal resist per piece.

The thing I did here was instead of going the normal 50/50 route I made it 50/25/25. In total the armor piece still has 100 points, it's not stronger. I could get the same practical stats as the suggested new azure guardian armor set by mixing a Vog and Skolver piece. So what is overpowered about this? Overpowered by definition is if I'd give it more power, like suggest making it a 75/75 point per piece, or 50/50/50/50 points per piece.

Suggesting more normal defense sounds like a good suggestion since that compensates for having no special bonuses, but it's kind of plate's speciality. In fact you're basically suggesting making it into ancient plate which also gives more hp than other armor. It also doesn't solve the problem of new players wearing Cobalt in Ironclaw munitions factory, a level that was added long after the Cobalt line was designed. It's due for an update, since the missions heavily suggest it as your go-to first armor choice it should protect a little against a lot of things. And that's the point, isn't it, making a knight's good first armor?

@Luguiru
I really like the suggestions from that thread, thanks for pointing it out. The reason why I went with a more simple solution is because it's extremely easy to implement. Making a party buff system might mean coding new features, which is more time consuming than switching a few armor values around. It's much more feasible and has a higher chance of being implemented.
You're absolutely right that the bars could use some tweaking, I cobbled the images together as a graphical summary. How many bars would be balanced is up to the devs, who can see the numbers instead of having to guess by bars like we have to...

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 16:40

Addisond

Giving it extra normal defense only really aids you in lower tiers.

@Jrhuman
I disagree. Mixing and matching is great, but it's helpful to players to be able to buy a single armor set and not worry about what you're fighting. Though the armors that already give two specialized damage types already have other perks, the cobalt line would still be near the defense you get from mixing and matching.

As for what I'd like to see this laid out as, it'd make the most sense to have about a half of every other armor's defense, in all categories. This makes it so that it works worse than a specialized armor in all situations. I don't agree with the arguments you pose against shadow defense. The almirian one just doesn't make sense. Yes, you can get almirian from the same line. Why does that matter? "Too thinly spread"... wat. The point of this armor is that it spreads defenses thinly to give you universal protection. And as for the "shadow is endgame defense" thing, why not give them endgame defense?

Also, it should have status defense (to ALL statuses), starting at +1 at 2* and increasing to +2 at 4*, though I'm starting to think that that'd be too much. What if the status resistance increase at 4*-5* were interlaced between the helm and armor?
i.e. helm gets +2 Freeze, +1 Fire, +2 Poison, +1 Shock, +2 Stun, +1 Curse,
armor gets ... +1 Freeze, +2 Fire, +1 Poison, +2 Shock, +1 Stun, +2 Curse.

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 16:43

Charlie-Day

@Addisond

I'm glad you understand what I'm trying to suggest!
In a perfect world I would have suggested exactly what you just posted, but I'm trying to think like a developer. They want the cobalt to miss status resists since it forces us to get fire resistance or burn in FSC, get shock resist or spasm in Ironclaw munitions or Ghost in the Machine. It's part of our energy spending and part of their income. Yes, cobalt/azure could use a buff, but I'd be happy with a balance change to make it function like intended; starter armor.

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 16:41

Addisond

I'd rather it if they actually made it viable later on, but a regular buff would be nice too.

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 16:49

Misty-Wellington

I don't mean to be rude, but...

... you do know the Azure set is mostly just to show off, right? After the Missions update you can no longer buy the recipes off the AH or off Kozma - you have to earn the recipes for the set by doing missions or buying the recipes from the HoH if you lose ones gained from said quest rewards. As Jrhuman says it's to encourage you to mix and match much better equipment.

Changing its stats to be more rounded is kinda useless when you'd have much better specialist equipment for all types of monsters by the time you finish all the missions. I'd rather that than have everyone run around in Azure because it's got a bit of everything, defensively.

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 17:06

#10

Charlie-Day

@Zenihd-Rol

Azure is definitely not meant for show. If you check the mission "Becoming a champion" you can see the intention: suggesting a starting load-out of normal damage weapons and a first armor set + shield. Besides that, the entire mission system takes the role of a tutorial. It gives a tour of all bosses, enemy types, etc. Azure being for show is solely in the player's mind because it's not practical and is outclassed by other pierce armor despite looking nice. If you want a "show off" item, we have prestige icons, the vanguard title during inspect and even the Vanguard crest for that.

Yes, a set of each type would be the end goal. I don't know about you, but most players I help do the last few shadow missions first did all missions up to the last HoH and got stuck, having to grind before they got their first 5* set. You having several sets at that point says more about how quick you are at getting armor sets, but it's more likely above average than average. More casual knights can take a long time of playing before building their arsenal. During this time why shouldn't they have armor that can be used almost anywhere?

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 17:00

#11

Canine-Vladmir

simple reply. +1

Mo, 10/08/2012 - 17:01

#12

Addisond

@Zenihd-Rol

How does a lack of recipe availability make it purely a show-off armor?

Why would you have a variety once you finish the missions? They're faster than equipment progression, so you'd be able to finish them with purely non-specialized gear.

Di, 10/09/2012 - 13:12

#13

Aureate

Processing Thoughts of You Always

Recommending the first option for stats; the second gives too much defence overall.
Also, potentially adding a status resistance. The fact that Wolver gets one but the 'defensive' cousin doesn't... it's just ridiculous.

Di, 10/09/2012 - 14:23

#14

Grittle

I choose the 1st option, and

I choose the 1st option, and add stun resist to it

Di, 10/09/2012 - 23:01

#15

Derpules

Great suggestion, albeit one that's been made many times before. Such a change would truly fit the concept behind the set, in addition to giving players some reason to use it. (I would love the second option, with the even defence spread, but the first is fine too.)

Still think, like Grittle and Aureate, that it should get a status resist as well, though. Stun would work well, as it's of middling usefulness and seems generic enough for a "standard" armour set.

I'm not worried about an outbreak of AG clones resulting from this change. First, offensive bonus armours will still be better; new T3s will likely still get those as a second set, and existing T3s aren't going to switch. Second, if any armour should be more common than the others, it's AG: story-wise, it's the standard line for Spiral Knights, so it makes sense that there should be quite a lot of players using it. (Though as I said, that isn't likely to happen even with the change.)

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Azure Guardian armor change