Talk:Swordmaster Guide/archive

Hybrid Sets

Katmint writes: "There are very few, if any, situations where this would be preferred over a full Skolver or Vog set as the individual defenses and status resists, while better than none, are nothing compared to those of the full sets."

It's possible I'm missing something, but this sounds like shoddy reasoning; assuming that you encounter a mixture of piercing and elemental damage, why would mixed defenses be worse than full defense against only one? I would tend to think the opposite: mixed defenses will make your worst-case scenario less bad, which will usually improve your odds of survival (unless you already die in the average case).

Could this statement either be justified or edited, please? --Antistone 18:39, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

That's referring to if you chose *only* the hybrid set. Sure the two, but halved defenses might come in handy sometimes, but the full sets will be much more useful overall. The section is more about what armor set to choose first and offers their pros and cons like it says in the intro. ~Katmint 20:01, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

So you are merely trying to say that using ONLY a hybrid set is worse than having ALL POSSIBLE COMBINATIONS and switching to whatever is best at any given moment? That's a very trivial and obvious point, and extremely confusing in a section that, as you say, is giving advice about which set to get FIRST. That paragraph should be talking about the pros and cons of having a mixed set compared to owning ONLY Skolver or owning ONLY Vog Cub. --Antistone 20:10, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

But that's what the section is talking about already. The only part that talks about having all the sets is the intro. This isn't just my opinion, I'm also taking things from advice threads and the like, which universally say that it's always better to specialize, not generalize.. ~Katmint 20:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not understanding you at all. You ARE saying that a mixed set is worse than a SINGLE specialized set? You have not presented any reasoning that appears to support that conclusion in any way. Popularity is not proof, and it certainly is not explanation, though if you had provided links to any of your sources I could check whether any of them present clear reasoning. --Antistone 20:29, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Sources are hard to find with forum's search feature but one of them is http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/11576#comment-65862. Honestly, I am terrible at arguing and I will never make any sense to you, I tried to write the article so where nobody would argue with it on the talk page, but that sure went over well. If you think you can write a better version of that section, nobody's stopping you. ~Katmint 20:44, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I have rewritten this section and tried to make the best cases I could for both the pros and cons. I'm only at 3-star armor myself and it is legitimately possible there are subtleties I'm missing, but unless someone comes along that is able to articulate them, I'd argue this is the most helpful option. --Antistone 22:23, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

That will work, I guess, although if you haven't been to tier 3 yet that would explain some things. Elemental defense is really important in tier 3 and piercing is made even more irrelevant since the only thing remotely threatening that does piercing, Alpha Wolvers, actually get easier in tier 3 because their warping makes them very predictable. That's why I was biased against the mixed set, as its only purpose seemed to be to add some piercing defense, which isn't really that useful. That's also my point about Skolver being a pure offensive set for those confident they can dodge well. ~Katmint 22:54, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

If your concern is that elemental defense is just plain better than piercing, that should cause you to rank mixed as worse than Vog Cub but better than pure Skolver, shouldn't it? And if that's a major reason for your rankings, shouldn't that be mentioned somewhere in the descriptions? --Antistone 23:25, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

It is, which is why I called Vog Cub the "more defensive" armor, while Skolver is more of an offensive armor. I don't want to state anything directly or the article might seem too biased, if I was writing it with straight opinion I would just say "Vog Cub is the best of the sets, Skolver can also be useful but if you are going to sacrifice some elemental defense you may as well get both pieces for more damage." That's pretty much my view of it. This is also all based off tier 3 unless stated otherwise, like mixed Vog + Skolver can be useful in the Jelly Palace as the lumbers and gun puppies deal elemental, but pure Skolver is still better for damaging the JK faster. In any case, like I said I'm terrible at debating, so if you still don't understand I really have no idea how to explain it any better. ~Katmint 00:30, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Saying Vog Cub is the defensive set does not convey that elemental is more important. Vog Cub would be the defensive set even if elemental and piercing were equal, because it lets you shield sooner after attacking. If elemental damage is significantly more common than piercing, you should say exactly that.

"If you are going to sacrifice some elemental defense you may as well get both pieces for more damage"...there's no obvious reason why that would be true. If there's a non-obvious reason, you should explain it. If that's just your personal gut feeling with nothing to back it up, then it probably shouldn't go in the article, or at least you should explain that it's just your personal gut.

Furthermore, if elemental defense is significantly more important than DPS--and especially if you feel an all-or-nothing approach is warranted--doesn't that argue that you shouldn't get either Skolver OR Vog Cub, and should instead go straight for Grey Feather, which seems (based on a quick scan of the armor table) to have the highest available elemental defense?

I'm not saying that I have a better understanding of the options, but it seems to me like you're assuming the reader has a great deal more background knowldge than is appropriate given the nature of the page, and furthermore that you haven't thought your recommendations through in much detail, instead simply parroting common choices. That doesn't seem very helpful to me.

I don't expect you to debate me and tell me why some theory I spin is wrong. I do expect someone writing a guide to have an internally-consistent basis for making a recommendation, and to explain that basis clearly enough that I can understand it. To write a guide, you don't need to be good at debate, but you DO need to be good at explaining things. That's kind of the point. --Antistone 00:55, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Funnily, I actually use the Grey Feather set myself. Although I wouldn't say it's more important than DPS, they're probably equal. I'm not really "parroting" a common choice, just mixing my own opinions and what I've gathered as the general public's. As you pointed out, I'm not very good at explaining things either, I've always had problems with people having no idea what I'm talking about. But nobody else was touching the guide, so I just gave it a shot. Also, I already explained everything that you are asking to be explained in my previous responses. Like I said, I really can't explain it any better than I did, there's nothing I can do if you still don't understand. ~Katmint 04:05, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I've played a fair bit of tier 3 now, and I don't see this overwhelming preponderance of elemental damage you've implied. Slime and beast levels are filled with piercing damage, and fiend and undead levels are filled with shadow damage, just like you'd expect. Elemental is basically only dealt by constructs, and while they are the most common monster class, they're still only one class out of six. I'll grant that Mecha Knights get a better upgrade at tier 3 than most monster lines, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the "elemental is far more important" meme is mostly a holdover from when more monster types dealt it and we didn't have piercing/shadow turrets. --Antistone 19:31, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Late reply, but yeah, Elemental isn't nearly as important as it used to be. IIRC that debate was shortly before the shadow/piercing turrets were added and the damage types have been rebalanced a lot since then. My reasoning back then was mainly "Turrets are omnipresent and always do Elemental" so yeah. ~Katmint 01:12, 10 March 2012 (UTC)