Hi everyone!

I'm kinda new in the forum but I've played Spiral Knights for over a year now, and I'm a Tier 3 Knight. I can solo every stage or mission in the game using nothing else than big swords and a snarbolax set.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about myself, but about two kinds of mobs that I've noticed are completely the opposite of each other. I'm not talking about their appearence but about their stats as game enemies, which also makes them completely different to every other kind of monster you can find. One of those enemies has high stats so high that it is to be "feared" by most of the Knights, and the other kind of enemy has stats so low that it never gives any problems to even beginner Knights. Those two kinds of monsters are the Devilites and the Wolvers.

Before I continue I would like to make it clear that this is not a complaint post. I'm actually reporting the facts I see when I play this game and I'm also going to give some suggestions on how to change it in a way that could appeal everyone. Rather than saying "This is wrong" in an immature way, be a mature person and express your disagreement/agreement by giving a reason for your choice and without complaining at others just because they have a different opinion than yours.

In general we all know that every game monster in general has weak and strong points that can allow the Knight to make a strategy to fight and defeat every one of those monsters. For example, the Mecha Knights have a very powerful elemental attack, but have limited attack range and attack speed, while the Jellies have ranged and close quarter attacks dealing massive piercing damage, but those require time to prepare. The Kats shoot shadow bullets and bite, but require a relatively long pause between every attack, etc, etc.

The Devilites and the Wolvers, however, are very different from every other kind of monster you can find in the game, because they only have high and low stats. The Devilites have very high attack speed for a ranged attack and deal massive damage with a very fast moving projectile, while the Wolvers have a very low attack speed with a very limited range attack dealing little damage on hit.

Since the videogames have been created, the game developers have given (or tried to give) balance to mobs in the game in order to provide challenge in the right way so the player doesn't get bored or frustrated from the game. They create fantastic and powerful monsters but also give them weak points that the players can use to their advantage to defeat them. However, in this game those two types of enemies have the problem of being either too difficult or too easy for players to attack and do not strike a good balance like other monsters I face in the game.

Most of the time I play with friends or random players, and most of them seem bothered by the frustration abyss seeing a Devilites office on the elevator screen, and bored as hell when they see a Wolver den. The behaviour and feelings of the Knights toward those two kind of monsters is what made me think about something that could be done to make the Devilites less frustrating and the wolvers more interesting for everyone, or at least most of the Knights.

As I said before, in the videogames in there tends to be some kind of "balance" for the monsters, mostly related to:

-Attack range
-Attack power
-Attack speed
-Movement speed
-Damage resistance

This means that for example, if a monster deals a very high damage and has a very high damage resistance, on the other side has a very low attack and movement speed (see the "lumber").
For Devilites and Wolvers instead it works like this:

Devilites:

-Attack range: very high (ranged attack)
-Attack power: very high (5 bars damage with a shadow resistance set like the snarbolax and they can break a "Crest of Almire" in 3 hits without becoming Overtimers)
-Attack speed: very high (as soon as they prepare the attack they shoot almost istantly)
-Damage resistance: medium-high (3 Barbarous Torn Blade swings with "Fiend maximum" bonus damage in the mission "Heart of Ice")

Wolvers:

-Attack range: very low (close range attack)
-Attack power: medium (3 bars damage with a "normal" set like the azure guardian, they take 4 hits to break a "normal" shield like the Aegis)
-Attack speed: very low (the time between an attack preparation and the effective attack is way too long and being a close range attack doesen't help)
-Damage resistance: medium (3 Barbarous Torn Blade swings with "Very high" sword bonus damage in the deepest clockwork stratum)

Looking at these charts (which are approssimative but you all should agree about how those represent, more or less, the two kind of monsters) you may notice that indeed, based on statistics, the Devilites have no weak points, and the Wolvers have far way too many compared to any other type of mobs in the game.

So i wrote all this stuff to explain what i consider the problem of those two kind of monsters in the game, but i'm not going to just write it down and nothing else, indeed i may have an idea to rebalance the two just a little bit to don't disappoint anyone and still have some kind of challenge battling both of them:
The idea i have is about "lowering" the attack speed of the Devilites and "increase" it for the Wolvers.
The reason i picked the attack speed is on the nature of the kind of attack of the two monsters:
Since the Wolvers have a very limited range, to make sure they can hit a target it has to be made sure it stays within range for as long as it is required to prepare the attack, but since those mobs don't move when they do so they have a very limited time to "get" the Knights before they walk out of range, so that's why i'm proposing to increase the attack speed for them, to increase the probability of hitting a player before this detects the enemy and moves out of range.
On the other side, is the attack speed that makes the devilites so problematic (to the point that you don't even have the time to shield if you spot a devilite attacking you from a short distance), if you have ever found yourself in a crowd of those mobs you may notice the quantity of bullets on the screen and the relatively short time between each one of those, this because of the attack speed, and by reducing it the quantity of bullets on screen may be reduced as well, giving a more fair chance for the knights to fight back (after all this game is not a "Bullet Hell" kind) or at least find an empty moment to approach the enemyes without being spammed to death.

So in the end my suggestion is like this: More attack speed for the Wolvers, and lesser attack speed for the Devilites

Thank you for reading my post, feel free to express your opinion, just remember to be constructive and give a reason to your agreement/disagreement with it and don't be offensive to the players that have a different one than yours.