For my knight, I want to have at least one piece of my attire to be high in normal and piercing protection (or at least high in one and higher than medium in the other.) I was thinking of staying with the cobalt armor series because the 4-star armor is very high in normal and piercing protection. However, I'm curious as to how good the cobalt armor series sums up to others at each level.
Cobalt Armor Series
spiral-knights
Related Solutions
There are two sides to this, depending on whether you plan your path or not:
Because the Clockworks is constantly moving, even when you're progressing through a level, you have the option of deliberately waiting to step onto the elevator in order to reach desired levels. Each of the levels has a (usually) pretty obviously descriptive name reflecting the types of monsters you will encounter, and since gear with fewer resistances is stronger against each source, you can "stack" your resistance to a select few and plan out your path for maximum resistance. They hide the option to show the gate map under the upper-left menu with no way to hotkey it, but it will show you where the elevator is currently pointing.
For the more casual player who expects to face damage from a variety of sources, pieces with multiple resistances will help negate more damage on average than a specific piece. Because they have more individual resistances, there is a greater probability of entering a level they can resist some of the damage from, rather than limiting all of your potential resistance to a single source and missing it.
The bottom line is that very few sections of the game actually depend on your gear's type enough that it makes a significant difference. As long as you have enough stars on your gear and a fair amount of experience with the enemies' tactics, you can just pay attention to your "threat meter" to the lower-right of the minimap.
If you're referring to the armor itself, alas, there is currently no way to change your starting proto armor. However...
If you're referring to the accessories, you cannot change those either. You may remove them, but they would be destroyed in the process.
Best Answer
All the armor is approximately equal, within each star tier. The primary change between different armor sets is the ratio between the two kinds of protections it offers.
Compare the Azure Guardian Armor:
To a Skolver Coat:
The Azure Guardian Armor has more normal defense, but lacks the Skolver Coat's freeze resist and bonus damage (not shown).
Since players can't get exact numbers in terms of damage or defense and must rely on bars instead, it is hard to say how much better Azure Guardian armor is when fighting normal damage enemies.
(I'm showcasing the differences with the 5* versions, but the relationship holds true for the other 3 star-ranks also)
The major thing you'll miss out on with the Cobalt line is status resistance. Status resist, especially fire resist, is considered extremely valuable in the SK endgame.