Two ways to think about Punch & UVs

If I understand correctly, there are a couple of ideas hiding in here.

One idea is that getting a weapon to 5 stars takes a lot of resources, and putting another 20,000 crowns into it isn't really that much. So do one Punch, and get a UV that is either slightly helpful or really helpful, and appreciate it for what it is. This view is healthful. Sure.

The other idea is to Punch items early --- at 2 stars, say --- and then decide their upgrade path based on the UV that you get. For example, if you get undead+4 on a 2-star Brandish, then upgrade it to an elemental option rather than a shadow option.

Back in the days of mist energy, a lot of players (myself included) would have multiple accounts, using all of that mist to mass-craft 2-star items, hoping to get good UVs, and upgrading to 3 stars accordingly. In fact, there were complaints that gunners and bombers were disadvantaged, because a lot of their weapon lines (e.g. alchemers) locked you into a particular damage type already at 2 stars. So yes, a lot of players agreed with you.

The problem is that damage bonuses are now so easy to get (Black Kat, Chaos, Barbarous Thorn Shield, etc.) that the monster-specific damage UVs on weapons are close to worthless. And player research suggests that damage UVs on armor and shields do almost nothing. So CTR, ASI, and status UVs are dramatically more valuable than damage UVs. So my advice to players is always:

* If you can buy a great UV from another player (e.g. CTR+4 on a 3-star Dark Briar Barrage or shock+4 on a 2-star Magic Cloak), then buy it and upgrade from there. Congratulations.

* Otherwise, use every one of your craftings to try to get great UVs. For example, if you have a 2-star Brandish with undead+4, don't keep that UV. Throw it out, just for the slim chance of getting CTR or ASI. If you make it to 5 stars without getting any great UVs (which is usually the case), then Punch from there. Or start again at 2 stars with a UV bought from another player.

You are right that there are a few special situations in which weapon damage UVs can be viewed as pretty good --- namely, when you use that weapon only on that one family. For example, fiend+4 on Dark Briar Barrage is good, if you use DBB only on piercing-vulnerable enemies, and you ignore beasts because they're too easy anyway.

The way I see it is that this advice is mostly for players who have reached the point in their progression where they start thinking about doing some of the harder missions. It is true that for most of the game they will be just fine with a Chaos armor set, but I can imagine that when that player sets out to do Compound 42 for the first time, they will be poisoned and set on fire constantly and die a lot. Then it can be useful to have a more resistant armor set. Say they use mostly Guns and have a Shadowsun set, they'll have good gun damage and resist the poison quite well. And then they might have a Gran Faust with Gremlin High they can use to clear some space.

Do you have a link to the player research regarding Armor damage UVs? I certainly notice a difference when using proper defensive armor with matching defense UVs.

The easiest source is the following wiki page. For example, a piece of Skolver has 125 piercing protection, and a piercing+4 UV is 26 points of piercing protection. So it's not nothing. But if a monster is hitting you for 320 points of damage, then 26 is not much. I'd be surprised if you often found yourself surviving one more hit than without the UV.
https://wiki.spiralknights.com/Defense

That page was constructed after a big research project that occupied numerous forum threads. Here are some of the most important threads, led by Zeddy, Hexzyle, and Skepticraven.
https://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/77398
https://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/79503
https://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/97633

Here's ancient research on the same problem by Antistone and Kalaina-Elderfall. They find that a max UV might decrease the damage by half of a pip (20 points), which is consistent with the more recent findings (26 points). Again, when monsters are doing 8 pips of damage, half a pip is not much.
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/User:Antistone
https://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/38367

By the way, Glacies did similar studies on shields, finding that damage UVs were pointless. But of course shields are not armor.
https://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/90509

Thanks for going through the trouble finding those threads. I already read some of those in the past. That research is indeed useful, but to me it doesn't seem that they prove (or tried to prove) that defense UVs on armor are useless. In my experience, it is not that I find myself surviving an additional hit and then die, rather it is that I find myself able to preserve my hp for much longer.

Consider the following points:

* A Skolver set with 2x piercing max will have 177 piercing defense (on depth 25), correct? A Black Kat set or Chaos set would have no piercing defense. If you then get hit by 360 points of piercing damage wearing those, you'd take the full 9 bars of damage. But the 2xMax piercing Skolver set would take much less than that, around 4.5 bars of damage. A standard no UV skolver set would take about 6 bars of damage.

* Knights have a very large health pool in PvE. It's true that if you have 27 pips of health and you take 3x360 damage, you are dead (let's ignore sonic mode). But a Knight has much more health than that: Hearts that restore 1-3 pips drop frequently, Pills will restore 12 pips. There's also the Emergency revive giving you up to 30 extra pips once every level, should you need them. Taking 4.5 bars of damage as opposed to 6 bars of damage (2xPierce Max UV Skolver vs Standard Skolver) when you have 30 pips only let's you survive 2 additional hits. But if you consider 30 pips + 30 pips from the ER + 3 health pills (36 pips) + 8 big hearts (24 pips) you actually have about 120 pips of health before you need to use a spark of life. So over the course of that depth, a standard skolver will run out of health after about 20 hits of 360 piercing damage, while the Max/Max Skolver will still be alive after 26 hits. A knight wearing chaos armor or black kat would be on their last bit of hp after 13 hits. Ofcourse this is just theory, and it is likely that in a real level you will also sometimes take an elemental or shadow hit even if the level is primarily piercing themed, which will not work to Skolvers advantage.

* The higher the damage numbers get, the less impressive a flat reduction of 26 or 52 points looks. So if a monster hits you not for 320 or 360, but for 480 base damage (I don't know if this actually happens often), then the value of that additional 26 or 52 may diminish a bit. However, poison is one way to help reduce monster damage to keep it closer to the normal range. Also, the biggest hits are usually easier to avoid and it is often a stray bullet with relatively low damage that ends up hitting you.

To conclude: In my opinion, damage UVs when they match your armors inherent defense and are +3 or +4 are useful (for example Shadow max on Black Kat is a matching UV). Their value depends on the size of the hit you actually take. They will have more effect against multiple small hits as opposed to 1 large hit (since they are a flat reduction). In my experience the largest monster hits are usually easier to dodge and smaller hits are more likely to be what hits the player, which is in the UV's favor. Their value also increases with a higher total health pool including healing sources. Using Poison weapons can scale down large hits, further improving the value of defense UVs.

Non-matching Max defense UVs might be useful (e.g. Elemental Max on Black Kat) but this depends entirely on how large monster hits usually are. Though it is certainly better to have 2x Elemental Max on your Black Kat set, than 1x Piercing Max and 1x Elemental Max.

You're welcome for going through the trouble. :)

To set the arithmetic straight: A Skolver set (helmet and suit) with two +4 piercing UVs will block (125 + 26) * 2 = 302 piercing damage. A Skolver set without the UVs will block 125 * 2 = 250 piercing damage. Then there is the normal, elemental, and shadow damage to consider.

I have trouble understanding some of the rest of your post. I live in a world where I die after four hits from monsters. And if the first hit contain status such as shock or freeze, then it dooms me to the second, third, and fourth hits, and I die. So in effect the first hit kills me. So I protect against the statuses.

If I were to protect against the damage, then the first hit would doom me to the second, third, fourth, and fifth (if I'm lucky) hits, and then I would die. The problem isn't lasting slightly longer. The problem is avoiding the death spiral in the first place.

If you have a very different experience, then I'd like to hear it.

The 125 piercing defense on Skolver is for the set, right? 62.5 piercing defense per piece, its normal defense sits at 71 per piece or 142 for the set. 1 max UV is 26 points, so 2 max UVs will add 52 points. 125+52 points is how I got to the 177.

The first time I used Chaos Set, I was solo on a freeze level and I ended up getting locked in a freeze chain. The first hit that froze me essentially killed me as well. Though this inevitable death spiral is mostly dangerous when playing solo. A party can make up for it.
Shock is bad but the dash can usually get you out of harms way and with a strong shield you can tank 1 or 2 attacks before the shock wears off. Again having a party makes it a lot easier because they will grab some of the aggro, especially after you dash.
That said I do also protect against statuses first and the armors that I use primarily (Skolver, Snarbolax, Black Kat) all have inherent freeze resist and I have shock resistance UVs on them.
But nonetheless, I am a lot more tanky on shadow and piercing levels than on elemental levels (although on elemental levels I equip grey owlite, heater or dragon scale shield to make up for it). Especially on piercing levels I always feel like a tank when I have my Skolver with 2x +4 equipped. Sometimes I want to use guns on piercing levels (like my Mega Tundrus against Giant Lichen Colonies) so I equip Black Kat, and then I also take 8 bars of damage from the average monster attack.

So I also value status UVs higher than defense UVs, even for party play where teammates will help prevent 1 status effect from ending in a death spiral. That said, +3 or +4 defense UVs are still far from useless in my opinion.

Oops, yes, 125 is for both pieces of Skolver. And if both have piercing+4 then that adds 52, for 177 total. You were right. Sorry for the confusion.

We agree that status UVs are generally preferable over damage UVs.

Regarding damage UVs, we disagree only slightly, in the words that we use to talk about damage+4 (or damage+3) UVs. I use more-negative words than you do. Maybe it's because I usually play solo these days, so statuses are highly dangerous (as you explained well), so I can't imagine trying to get damage UVs. Cheers.

I took the latter approach, for sure. Sometimes that ended up with a fiend medium graviton vortex, but sometimes it'd end up with a gremlin medium heavy Devon I could use with mercurial demo or half volcanic demo.

It's fun to approach UVs as being unique variants rather than overpriced minor bonuses.

That's a nice way to think of it. Your UV makes your item special, strengthening your sense of ownership and attachment. You don't have to dwell on the fact that your neighbor's UV is numerically better.