Spiral Knights - A general discussion about defense in Lockdown (aka OOO your game is broken and you should feel broken)

A general discussion about defense in Lockdown (aka OOO your game is broken and you should feel broken)

25 replies [Last post]

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 08:52

Zeddy

It is no secret that Lockdown is terribly balanced. I mean, the game in general has balance issues but they're nothing compared to Lockdown. I could merrily dance through most places in the clockworks using Ancient Place, Triglav, Iron Slug and Deadly Shard Bomb. Some would say I would be a hindrance to the team that way but not nearly as many as the amount of people who'd say it if I were to take it with me to Lockdown.

Let's examine why. Firstly, clockwork enemies are controlled by an AI designed to be beaten, and as such they have predictable patterns one can exploit with pretty much any weapon you could think of bringing. There are exceptions to this, such as Roarmulus being immune to shard bombs, greavers being hard to hit with shard bombs, mortafires being especially hard to hit with shard bombs and large enemies blocking sh- wow these things are really gimped huh?

I will state to noone's surprise that out of all the things you could possibly bring into Lockdown, Deadly Shard Bomb is by far the most useless out of all of them. I would bring Proto Bomb into T3 Lockdown before considering Deadly Shard.

-As I mentioned earlier, enemies in the clockworks have predictable patterns and it's not hard to lure them into shards if you put your back into it.
-Shard bomb's strength lies in the delayed fuse allowing for advanced tactics and multihitting. Both of these are extreme weaknesses in Lockdown. The delayed fuse allows for a player with the ability to know where bombs are to easily avoid them. The mulithitting is entirely mitigated from invinciframes.
-And then, there's the fact that it deals normal damage.

"Normal damage? Why is that bad?", asked absolutely no one. Nevertheless, I will answer it.

Today I performed an experiment in Lockdown. We did several, but I will only account the relevant one. My friend was wearing full Skolver, no UVs on the armour of any kind. I put on my robe and wizard h- I mean full mercurial and two elite boom modules for max damage and I bombed him. First I used Deadly Shard Bomb. It did 3 and 1/2 bars of damage on him. Next I followed up with Deadly Splinter Bomb. 4 and 1/2 damage. I previously tried Deadly Crystal Bomb on someone else not wearing any kind of elemental protection, it did about 5 and 1/2 damage.

Would you like a chart? Here's a chart.

Deadly Splinter Bomb
vs Skolver: 4 1/2 damage
vs Shadowsun or Snarbolax: 5 1/2 damage
vs Bombtastic: 5 1/2 damage

Deadly Shard Bomb
vs Skolver: 3 1/2 damage
vs Shadowsun or Snarbolax: 3 1/2 damage
vs Bombtastic: 3 1/2 damage

That's a chart. Now I don't mean to jump to any conclusions here but disregarding that Deadly Splinter Bomb is kind of a poor move to bring into LD in the first place, it does seem to have a tendency to make Deadly Shard Bomb completely obsolete?

This isn't a topic ranting about shard bombs
I chose shard bombs because I happen to have them and it's convenient to have one weapon with the exact same base damage in every damage type available for the purpose of science. The purpose of this experiment was to show that defenses in Lockdown are fundamentally broken.

The purpose of normal damage weapons is to never be weak against any target. In the clockworks, this works as intended. Specialised weapons do low damage against 2 families, neutral damage against 2 families and high damage against the remaining two. Normal damage does neutral damage against all enemies and even has some special cases where it prevails, such as oilers and Vanaduke's mask. In Lockdown, this is no longer true. Normal weapons do low damage against every enemy while specialised weapons deals a bit more damage than normal damage ones against enemies that are supposed to have the maximum amount of defence against them.

I'm aware normal shards would outperform splinter bomb against things like royal jelly, mercurial, dragon scale or radiant silvermail. Very few people actually use those, and it doesn't justify bringing a normal weapon over a specialty weapon in the slightest.

Discuss. Rage. Nod in silent agreement. Whatever.

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 08:58

Xenonguard

/me Nods in silent agreement

I think that while the invincible frames are useful in the Clockworks, so spikes aren't an insta-kill, Lockdown wouldn't really need them as such. I mean, it's almost as if OOO doesn't want us to use shard bombs!

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 09:05

Fehzor

Maybe OOO thinks it is balanced?

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 09:06

Bopp

at least it's the correct order, if not proportionate

The four armors you've mentioned --- Skolver, Snarbolax, Shadowsun, and Bombastic Demo --- all have a bit more normal protection than piercing, elemental, or shadow protection. So it is at least consistent that the amount of damage you're seeing goes in this order:
* normal bomb against all of these armors (3.5 bars)
* piercing bomb against Skolver (4.5 bars)
* piercing bomb against the other armors (5.5 bars)
On the other hand, it is kind of odd that the difference between Skolver's normal and piercing protections seems to be about as big as the difference between Skolver's piercing protection and no piercing protection. Some of this could be the imprecision of measuring damage by bars. But the numbers do seem disproportionate. Do I understand your post correctly?

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 09:14

Zeddy

@Bopp

You understand my post correctly. It could be that, just like attack bonus increases exponentially, so too could defenses. However, it was a while since I measured the crystal bomb things and I could misremember it.

While it makes perfect sense, just from adding up the numbers, that splinter bomb does more damage than normal shards against skolvers, I don't think its very balanced.

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 15:28

Klipik-Forum

that's all?

I was expecting something about how it's way too easy to capture points and way too hard to defend more than one at a time. Oh well.

~OOO Y U NO FIX PVP

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 17:12

Windsickle

I agree that Lockdown, among

I agree that Lockdown, among other things, is imbalanced. Things I'd like to point out:

The creatures of the Clockworks are not Knights. The way defense works for them is entirely different in that Knights' armor is picked to serve optimally for specific circumstances. Now take a Knight clad in a full set of Ancient Plate armor. If attacked by a Knight wielding a calibur, the calibur will obviously be "weak" in comparison to a calibur attack on a Mecha Knight, a Gremlin, or any other creature of the Clockworks. Thus, the statement "the purpose of normal damage weapons is to never be weak against any target" does not apply to Knights as far as can be seen. Rather, Normal damage is more or less just like another "special" damage type like Piercing or Shadow. What now sets Normal damage apart is the fact that nearly every piece of Knight armor possesses sizable amounts of inherent Normal defense.
The Recon Shield's cloak is (theoretically) capable of nullifying all armor defenses and could, in combination with whatever Normal damage weapon, be a viable tactic for whatever reason you happen to have for using a Normal damage weapon. With enough skilled Recons, a Lockdown team could (theoretically) keep the opposing team Death Marked at all times of combat negating the need for specific damage type weapons.

-Windsickle

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 17:49

Bacon-Strip

Exactly. There is no "super-effective" in Lockdown. Every damage type is unique, and armor helps defend against a certain type.

All the armors you listed have more normal than the other respective defenses. Therefore, it will do less damage.

Hint: Try not to use normal type weapons that have a similar specific damage type counterpart.

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 18:17

Zeddy

@Windsickle and Bacon-Strip

This is not new information to me, but none of that makes it balanced. Plate armours are pretty much the only case where normal weapons being the absolute weakest is justifiable. How hard can it be to, say, make normal defence half as effective in Lockdown?

We already know OOO are perfectly capable of having damage be different in Lockdown and outside of it. Just look at Catalyzer charges doing sod all damage for absolutely no reason.

Also, the recon mark does something distinctly different from simply nullifying defences, otherwise there wouldn't be a difference from hitting someone in snarbolax armour with a flourish and hitting them with a flourish while they're deathmarked, but there is.

"Hint: Try not to use normal type weapons that have a similar specific damage type counterpart."

That's just avoiding the problem. I would rather not ignore 40% of our weaponry being obsolete.

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 18:30

Icegill

Boom!

Before you read, these are just examples and do not relate to you or anything else.

Just an FYI; Everything you have ranted on about in your thread can be solved with damage bonus. A valiance with damage bonus ultra can do 5-7 bars (No normal UV's). Please do not say that UV's will grant people damage bonus because it doesn't (some people believe this is true).

As for the normal defenses on almost every piece of armor, I think it is fine the way it is. LD gives you loadouts for a reason. If you're going up against a skolver team, you use GF, Hammer or some elemental alchs. If you're facing a team full of snarbs, you bring FF, Hammer or elemental alchs. Point is you need to specify your loadouts to be effective against a single (or for more flexible people, multiple) opponent(s). If you don't have the money or time to do this, then don't complain. No matter what weapon you use, you can still capture points or heal your team being a guardian.

Shard bombs are a disgrace, I agree with you on this. Not just the ones you pointed out, I mean all of them. The only way I can see this being useful is if you have an offensive guardian with 2 bomber recons charging up shard bombs around the guardian to protect him while he plants a shock bomb and/or kills enemies. Even this is a useless strategy because of frames.

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 19:14

#10

Zeddy

"If you're going up against a skolver team, you use GF, Hammer or some elemental alchs."

Or you could just use Final Flourish because that would still outdamage Leviathan or Sudaruska. You don't need specialised loadouts, you just need any weapon with specialised damage.

"Everything you have ranted on about in your thread can be solved with damage bonus. A valiance with damage bonus ultra can do 5-7 bars (No normal UV's)."

And how much more damage would that be if you used alchemers or even Polaris instead?

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 02:13

#11

Sexios

I believe,

Lockdown is perfectly balanced, its fine nothing wrong with it. Also will people stop making some of these threads, just cuz some people are bad and you yourself are bad (no offense, i suck myself) dun mean LD is not balanced D:

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 04:08

#12

Icegill

@Zeddy

Polaris would be 6-7 bars along with shock and the knock back + area coverage. Alchemers will do about 6-8 bars but they have the inconvenience of having two bullets + short range. Valiance is still better because Polaris can be dodged, people complain because they can't evade a slow moving bullet. Alchemers barely reach you, play smart.

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 04:37

#13

Zeddy

@Icegill

Alchemer range is identical to Valiance, don't make things up. Additionally, everyone using alchemers seriously have two alchemers anyway giving them infinite clip and double statuses. If you did the same with Valiance the payoff wouldn't be close to worth it in comparison.

@Sebastianseb

Why do people have to assume I suck at something when I bring up game issues? I happen to own plenty of special damage weapons, guys, this isn't a problem with me. This is a problem with the game.
-Callahan is objectively a better choice than Iron Slug in every situation in Lockdown even disregarding Calla's chance to stun because it does more damage even against skolvers:
-Sun Shards are objectively a better choice than Deadly Shards in every situation even disregarding the chance to stun because it'd do at least the same damage against skolvers.
-Polaris is objectively a better choice than Supernova in every situation even disregarding the chance to shock because it'd do more damage even against a mercurial demo.
-Biohazard is objectively a better choice than Neutralizer in every situation even disregarding the chance to poison because it'd do more damage even against a snarby.

I could go on about every normal damage weapon with a specialised counterpart. How can you look at an arsenal consisting of 40% obsolete armament and claim it's perfectly balanced?

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 09:36

#14

Krakob

Another thing to note about Icegill's post.

Unexpanded Polaris shotrs are equal in status Alchemers in terms of damage while expanded Polaris bullets are equal to Nova Driver in terms of damage.

We do know this, quoting Zeddy:
We already know OOO are perfectly capable of having damage be different in Lockdown and outside of it. Just look at Catalyzer charges doing sod all damage for absolutely no reason.
But I'm guessing the damage numbers are the same anyway.

@Sebseb
You've obviously never seen Zeddy in LD. He's the most respectable hipster LD player there is!

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 19:06

#15

Icegill

Boom!

@Zeddy; If you really knew what you were talking about, you would know that the bullet of an alch ricochets off your target but doesn't damage it. This is what I meant by short range. Wrong choice of wording, I guess.

@Krakob; This is true but no one uses the polaris that way.

I have my own ideas of lockdown that work very well for me, I believe everyone can have a comfortable set of weapons and do better than someone else with the exact same weapons. Either way, Lockdown is fun for me, not a science or a competition.

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 19:22

#16

Spold

I see a lot of people with Skolver Sets along with Gran Fausts, and I die from one hit by the Gran Faust. I play as a bomber a lot so there's not much I can do about it.

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 19:36

#17

Zeddy

@Icegill

I get shot directly by alchemers all the time and take a frogload of damage from it. What are you talking about?

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 20:09

#18

Bacon-Strip

I still don't understand this

I still don't understand this thread. Lockdown defenses aren't "fundamentally broken". You're just too obstinate to realize that almost every armor, save silvermail, dragon, and divine, has normal defense, therefore, the armor defends against NORMAL damage.

Open up another "normal damage sucks" thread. That's the real problem here.

P.S. Max damage "pure" alchemers shot at people with no defense against the respective damage type does 5.5 pips. 4 for no damage bonus. All of Icegill's damage numbers are incorrect.

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 21:28

#19

Venomousbiohazard

Ahem.

Zeddy here is not only discussing lockdown's imbalance, or the general sh*11yness of normal damage. What he is calmly stating is that most weapons in Spiral Knights are obsolete. For example, the other two counterparts of the final flourish line. Sure, they do fire/stun but it is very rare to see one of these debuffs inflicted upon the opponent. What about the Iron slug and the shard bombs? I don't want to go into a full out rant, but the shard bomb line has been reduced to a pathetic group of glitchy cluster****s. Even the old shard line was unbalanced. Iodized shard bombs did do shock, but they were pathetic. Almost every line in the game has a crappy counterpart that has to be avoided.

Good is on the left. Horrible, unbalanced, and overall just pure crap is on the right.

Leviathan- : Cold Iron Vanquisher

Brandish- : Cautery sword

Dread Venom Striker- : Wild Hunting blade

Final Flourish- : Fearless Rigadoon/Furious Flamberge

Plague Needle/Blitz Needle- : Volcanic Pepperbox

Biohazard- : Neutralizer

Callahan : Iron Slug

Polaris : Supernova

Nitronome : Big Angry Bomb, Irontech Destroyer, Heavy Deconstructor

N/A : Deadly Dark Matter Bomb, Shocking Salt Bomb, Deadly Crystal Bomb, Deadly Shard Bomb, Deadly Splinter Bomb, Scintillating Sun Shards

18 unbalanced weapons right there. And these are just the WEAPONS, mind you. There are many more unbalanced pieces of armor and shields.

The fact of the matter is, rebalancing of weapons and PVP NEEDS to become a top priority to the developers. Hell, we know they have ignored it for too long.

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 21:28

#20

Fehzor

Don't hate on my pepperbox! And iron slug > callahan! And Supernova > Polaris! And and and and and NITRO == BABSFSDFJL:SDFJX:

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 21:35

#21

Venomousbiohazard

Oh I know

Those weapons are awesome looking, but lets face it, the damage numbers are lacking in comparison to other weapons that outshine it in every way.

Thu, 02/14/2013 - 06:21

#22

Zeddy

@Bacon-Strip

I still don't understand your post. You claim that Lockdown defences aren't fundamentally broken only to mention the exact part of defences that are broken in relation to Lockdown. Then you go ahead and call me obstinate for thinking that it's broken for over 30% of the game's arsenal, which intention is to never be weak against anything, being the weakest thing you could choose against over 90% of the game's armours.

Thu, 02/14/2013 - 08:14

#23

Aumir

Hey

Remember that patch that broke invincibility frames and how people got to experiment with all the Arsenal there, and was quite fun? Even I was almost going to enter PvP! But looks like OOO didn't like that...

Looks like Cutters, Spur, Autoguns, Antiguas, notShards, Dark Retribution (wait, that is p2w) and others will keep being unusable there.

Perfectly balanced.

Thu, 02/14/2013 - 08:38

#24

Xenonguard

@Venomousbiohazard

Don't you ever... EVER!!!! Say that Big Angry Bomb and Irontech Destroyers are worse than the Nitronome!!!

However I will say that the Heavy Deconstructor is in large need of a 5* version.

Thu, 02/14/2013 - 08:42

#25

Fleet-Miss-Gun

@Unstable

I would say that heavy deconstructor is useless for having normal instead of elemental.

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A general discussion about defense in Lockdown (aka OOO your game is broken and you should feel broken)