In Discussion Class/Skill [Feedback Request] Skill Changes and Balancing

Staff implements new Skill: Guardian's Enrage for 1H heroes. Has Sb5 and SB10 skill book and requires lv30 Guardian to use

 

Was thinking of Chain lightning hitting 3 lines? Would that be unfair? Coz kinda wana see some mage bossing action

 

It really is something to see the way devs and players talk about classes as holistic entities fulfilling the potential angles of their inherent identities rather than the homogenized, 4th-job-only damage buff discussions I saw when I started here. Brings sparkles to my stubborn no-useless-skills eyes

 

Not bumping these threads, but I think they should still be considered:

On shifter consuming MP: beyond the populism of a small pool of forum votes, this change goes a long way towards the dominance and ease of both classes bossing, and into a more overall healthy alignment of actual gameplay and attention. The conceit being either a) you pray you get a lucky roll to survive, or b) you would survive with or without shifter, making the passive consume mp (amt tbd) has the same exact perks, only you must manage potion inventory slightly more seriously, and re-threatens characters who have been hit by 1/1, or mp drain (or potion/pet lock), where half (or rates tbd, or class distinct rates) shifter effect still works. Meta is fully dominated by shad supremacy and "tankiness", and I, a full shadower Stan, still see this as a healthy move that bridges both a perceived nerf, with a healthier player-side gameplay measure
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/should-shadow-shifter-consume-mp.203599/#post-1206230

I would also still consider buffing HW10 in someway. Maybe not strictly for current content, though lots of potential aspects could, like a small chance to totally ignore seduce (still RNG), but at least for future content's sake, as it's not seen as much of a reward as it could atm

 

I will leave some ideas for fighter/crusader only since is the class I play the most

My suggestion is to rework final attack, panic/coma and rage Most of the guides kinda agree theses skills should be avoided at all costs for fighters/crusaders making only combo attack the only useful for job three. These skills can be used mainly for leveling/farming since hero is pretty ok

• Final attack: I know right now can be activate/deactivate but it would be more useful if it adds powerstrike/slashblast 2 rows of damage for 1 hit (i mean you only hit once, but the monster is hit twice) for 60% at max. I think for brandish can be lowered to 30% or 15%. Also if second attack activates it can regenerate a 2nd orb (have a synergy with panic and coma)
• Panic and coma: Right now it uses all the orbs to make some big damage but for fighters/crusaders they want to keep the all the orbs. So maybe instead of using all orbs, they can use 2 with a % chance of being free of orbs. So can be used for farming
• Rage: Lets be honest everyone prefers potions since they last longer. So they can be a passive for the fighter itself increasing weapon attack or Str or even crit like the NL

 

based on what I have been seen for quite awhile
heroes are currently considered as bottom tier in the current game climate
with the buffs to drk quite a few patches ago concluding the age old question of hero > drk or drk> hero to a community wide acceptance of drk > hero, based on both damage and utility

with that as a rationale, I do think its no stretch to balance classes with both those factors in mind
if we go a little further back, there was a time shadower was considered trash until the DPS buffs
if we compare the shadower of the past with heroes, one may argue that hero was better for multi targets, shadower had smokescreen as a party buff which gave utility, and the single targets were comparable,, fair exchange
but with the shadower buff, it can be definitive that shadower > heroes in all aspects, including mobbing with boomerang steps buff from 500->600%

if we ask the question today on whether shadower > NL? one can say you trade utility for damage in the case of NL being a specialist in being a pure attacker
and if we go a little further with NL> sair or sair>NL, it can be argued that sair has a DPS and higher potential (SE+SI) but is harder to play, so its a fair exchange
and that NL has kind of bad DPS when there is no SE, so it makes NL dependent a party with SE for their potential to be brought out

so back to heroes, if we were to look at the package that they bring
utility: rage - weak buff, same buff power to a warrior elixir , which is HIGHLY ACCESSIBLE, overrides potions - pretty trash for utility
damage : stronger for multitargets, with a rather weak single target, or maybe even the weakest single targeting in the current state, closest counterparts are DRK and shadower, where both will outclass heroes in all damage aspects
party reliance : SE + SI can bring out the max potential, but the effective damage increase is +9.5%/19% for SI with STS/claymore and +8.1% from SE compared to NLs getting +53% from SE alone
and from the threads we can also see that DRK and shadower will get more if they got the same level of party buffing
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/effectiveness-of-speed-infusion.105994/
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/how-good-is-se.92891/

so this means that heroes have bad utility, poor mobbing + single target by classes with better utility, and has a high party reliance without much result to show for

so what I propose to be done to balance the game
1. revert shadowers back to the shadow realm, so that they are a utility + somewhat single target + a bit of multi target class, but this would be pretty bad, as that would mean shadowers are back to bottom tier trash (a bad choice)
2. revert DRK so that we can have more discussion wars on drk>heroes or heroes> drk, where the both classes will be seen as weak attackers as per the past (another bad choice)
3. buff heroes while looking as the aspects of utility, damage and party reliance

Hero buff aspects
the buffs can be adding everything at once, which might be too broken, or just one aspect to bring out more from the class, but these are the ideas I have in mind

utility
the idea for a stackable rage would be great, as seen before with many having the same idea on the forums, but it has always been shot down on bounds of client limitations
other avenues would be to seek out more damage aspects like attack speed, and we know it is stackable with booster since SI exists. But since rage is a 2nd job skill it could be turned down to +1 stage instead of +2 like SI, making rage an alternative buff
or rage could add %WA similar to echo instead of a straight WA buff, which bypasses the client limitation of stacking WA buffs, but whether echo will get overridden would be another problem
or rage could multiply damage similar to berserk, but I'm not sure what is the stackability with berserk, and if it has issues with combo attack's multipliers

armor crash is another thing that can be explored to bring more utility to the table
should heroes get total crash to match paladins? originally for this sever, both paladins and heroes had armor crash, and total crash is this server's custom content for buffing paladins

comparing paladins and heroes for damage,
paladins are better for single target and mobbing large groups
heroes are better for 2-3 targets
fair exchange in damage capability

but with total crash, paladins are clearly the better choice for utility, so in my opinion, heroes getting total crash would be fair to balance out the utility and damage aspects

alternatively, armor crash can be a buff that makes the whole party ignore all weapon and magic defenses similar to how sacrifice works for DKs

damage
the good ol' damage multiplier buffs can be applied to buff heroes out of bottom tier, much like the treatment that was given to shadowers (damage multiplier buffs) and paladins (several bosses have added elemental weaknesses to make paladins stronger)
if DRK is being put as a side by side comparison, then both classes should get buffed to match the performance of their peers (shadowers), but as it stands, heroes are closer to a selfish attacker class, similar to NL and sair, where they do not bring or any utility to the party except destroying the targets faster - which in that aspect, heroes actually require the boost to be balanced

party reliance
when talking about party reliance, it can be seen as the hero relying on the party, or the party relying on the hero

heroes relying on the party is cut and dry, with SE + SI being the best combo to bring out the full potential of heroes' damage, while smokescreen, holy shield and total crash are improvements to the QOL and smoothness of runs - same story for many other classes

relying on the hero - purely an attacker at this point
rage can be argued as an early game buff, but if early game buffs are to be seen as fair, why is total crash allowed at 3rd job? seems a little too powerful there, and its a custom content that was made specifically to balance paladins from the server meta perspective only a couple of years back, and was not an original server balance that was there since day 1

so if rage is not to be buffed to match the performance that total crash brought to paladins (or white knights since its a 3rd job skill), then the future of buffing heroes would be to give them total crash so that they are closer to paladins in the overall performance and party aspects, or making heroes closer to the pure selfish attackers like NL and sair

additional statements (added on edit 13 jun 23)
if anything were to said about heroes, they are supposed to be balanced to be stronger than DRKs to begin with, because of role overlap and DRK having hyper body to give them a unique support role, while heroes are more or less the pure attacker version

at the current state of the game balance, sure buffing DRKs to be stronger was good to make them not as bad as compared to the other classes, but this made heroes absolutely out of place

because as an attacker, DRKs and heroes are the premier 2-3 target attacker class, but with DRKs edging out on damage in the current balance, heroes have no specific purpose nor the attacker capability to make up for the loss
- there no unique party buffs that are useful in their kit - compared to HB, HS, SE, SI, CR, smokescreen
- damage is outclassed and role overlap with DRK as an attacker
- argument about survivability was the cost for poorer damage would mean that paladins should get their performance lowered too as an attacker
- paladins have equal survivability, more utility in crash, more attacker coverage in single target and large group mobbing

 

My posts so far: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8
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Master comment here

Spoiler: Old comment

Mages:

[-] Infinity - Grants Self Magic Cancel Penetration during the duration of the buff (FMAs don't don't apply)

Why?: I think this spell is a bit lacking. I wanted to give Mages their own "self-Total Crash" to give them a high moment when this buff is active and nudge AMs to be slightly more viable in non-Paladin scenarios.

[-] lv103/156 Elemental Staffs - Could equipping them give you more Spell Attack Speed (FMAs/Summons don't don't apply)?

Why?: Just a what-if suggestion of possibly making Elemental Staffs give more Spell Attack speed since they're so difficult to use while keeping up high TMA. I think maybe a +1 Spell speed boost could be tested

--------------------------------

Warriors:

[-] (Adv) Combo Attack:

• Now gives full damage increase without orb, no longer relies on orb stacks
• Duration increased to 10mins from 3mins
• Now only gives one orb per attack from two

Why?: Combo Attack feels awkward in that it shouldn't have such a short duration and you shouldn't be "recharging" it up to get full damage output. Give us the full damage output and make the orbs be for using Panic / Coma

[-] Panic:

• Change from Single Target basic attack to a weaker Lv1 Rush
• Range is 160%; Does not increase with level
• Scales from hitting only 1 mobs to up to 5 mobs at max Rank

Why?: Wanted to make Panic be more useful in 3rd job and is later "upgraded" to Rush in 4th job. In its current state, I can't find where it's actually useful other than using Brandish+Rush

[-] Coma:

• Change small AoE size to a scaling large AoE size akin to Explosion
• Hits 4 lines x 50% instead of 1 line x 200% (to make it scale more with SE)
• Requires 2 orbs from only one

Why?: I feel like Coma should be an AoE skill that Heroes use in both 3rd + 4th job. However, due to its very small range, you can't justify ever using it versus mowing down clumps of mobs with Brandish over time or using Rush as an AoE. My suggestion is to hopefully make it more relevant in 3rd job grinding and make it useful in 4th job with 4+ mob/boss body part scenarios.

[-] Armor Crash - Now also removes Magic Defense up

Why?: Just to help Mages when they're paired with a Hero

----------------------------------

Archers:

[-] Focus - Change from Active -> Passive. No longer gives accuracy, will now only give Avoidability

Why?: This skill feels out of place as an active skill. By making it a passive, it'll give Archers slightly more avoid and be a net buff when using stoppers or Apple+High Avoid potion

[-] Give Marksman a "Flame Sword"-esque (4) Speed Crossbow; Do not punish MM for having it...

Why?: I'd want to see Marksman get their own "Flame Sword" equivalent of a Crossbow that'll allow them to hit at max speed and not be overly reliant on Speed Infusion. Of course, the max attack on the bow won't beat out Dragon Crossbow akin to how Flame Sword doesn't beat out the Dragon 1H sword in attack. Please, don't punish MMs for having this option like what was done with the Raven xbow and then Staff buffed Crimson Arclancer to be potential endgame bow for BMs and requiring way less stats to wield it.

[-] If unable to increase critical strike chance, then give Blind/Hamstring passive that allows SE to hit through Weapon Cancel at a small % (i.e. 5~10% BM | 15~20% MM)

Why?: Other people have mentioned increasing the Crit for Archers and I agree. If Staff ultimately decides not to do this, then I think giving archers a passive via Hamstring/Blind that allows them to hit through Weapon Cancel will make them be slightly more competitive with Corsairs/NLs.

 

I'm like 90% sure this is already a thing - crash already lets genesis deal damage to magic cancelled HT heads

 

Thanks, I removed it now

 

I think it's been mentioned a few times already how MM has some real bad problems that stem from their slow attack speed, like over-reliance on SI, and pinning issues. But I don't really agree with the suggestion to buff the Raven's Eye to Fast (4) as a way of fixing it. That's too hard to get right.

If you make it too strong you now make all 3 other endgame crossbows useless, and you make a lot of people very upset (myself included) that their perfect Shiner that they worked so hard on is now worthless. If you try to balance it with the other endgame crossbows, you instead force us to choose between having a reliance on SI but higher potential damage, or having no SI reliance but losing damage potential. I for one would not be excited about accepting any further nerf to our already unimpressive damage.

So I want to throw out another (admittedly half-baked) alternative. What if we just bump up the attack speed by 1 or 2 on ALL crossbows? Raise them by 1 if you think we should reduce our reliance on SI partially, or 2 if you think we shouldn't need SI at all. Personally, I don't think we should need SI at all. We're a support class, don't make us rely so strongly on another support class, it doesn't really make sense. Especially when our sister class (BM) has no such reliance AND has much better DPS. Pick one: we do mediocre damage, or we require SI. Not both.

If you apply this approach, I don't think you even really need to adjust the w.att on any of the crossbows either, since we were reaching that speed before when we had SI, so it's not like it will throw our damage out of whack. Hopefully a simpler solution for your consideration?

 

I assume you're replying to me. Best not to get too upset because these are just suggestions, not a "guaranteed to be passed by Staff/Devs". Staff is free to pick, weigh on, and pass/discard/improvise any suggestion they see.

I didn't suggest buffing Raven's Eye in the post I made, just adding a (4) speed xbow into the game. If they do ever touch Raven's Eye, then reducing the STR on it would be a good compromise given that Staff went and gave BMs the best potential bow in the game that outdoes DSB (though Auf helm trivializes the differences). That said, it's been requested before of buffing Raven Eye to (4) speed here.

If Pink Bean comes out then a lot of you guys will be upset anyways with Timeless/Reverse weapons

Flame Sword has ~12atk less than a Dragon Carabella and ~7atk less than a Sparta. A Flame Sword equivalent Crossbow would probably have the same differences. If you already had a perf max atk Neschere/DSC and you already ran around with SI mule/Bucc mains, then it will barely affect you.

You don't need to convince me. If you want changes for your (and other) class(es) then make the suggestion towards Staff. No need to be motivated by my suggestions.

 

Oh, sorry if my post came off the wrong way! I'm not upset and my intention was not to target you or your post directly or anything! I understand nothing here is guaranteed, it's all just brainstorming that may or may not go anywhere (but it's fun to think about!). I just saw this particular idea come up a few times and thought I'd weigh in. It wasn't just your post, it's more so the one that's listed directly in the OP that makes me think a Fast (4) crossbow (whether it's the Raven's Eye or a new one) was already in stronger consideration:
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ravens-eye-xbow-adjustment.201415/

I guess I was interpreting the intention behind this particular idea to be a way to solve our attack speed problems (SI reliance, poor pinning) for good, since that's the thing on the top of my mind. Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part though. I guess if the real intent behind considering this idea is to just give us more xbow options which don't fully replace the current ones and not everyone will end up using, that's fine we can do that too. But in that case, consider my idea separately from all of that

 

Just an idea i saw on another server, i thought it was interesting.

Hero having a party buff that gave entire party reduced knock back. This can be required to have full combo to use and depletes the combo, with a short duration time and cooldown between use.

 

I think that's fine. However, I think boosting the duration and making it immune to dispel would be nice (for Dojo primarily).

It was mainly to help Archmages in weapon cancel bosses but if it's too wild/OP, then can disregard it. More of a "what if" throwaway suggestion.

My thoughts were focused on endgame Archmages (and the spell speed boost is to affect non-FMA/Bishop attacks), as they'd want to gear up in a specific way that'd give them high INT + LUK rather only high INT. Not sure if people would be naked using EleStaffs vs an EleWand. Can disregard too since this was also a "what if" throwaway suggestion.

 

I do not believe that warrior elixir is that hard for any warrior to make a special trip to NLC to buy
after all, it lasts pretty long, its pretty cheap and the journey is super simple and short - 1 min transport from kerning city with a 5 min cycle compared to travel to places like orbis from victoria island 10min transport with 15 min cycle
furthermore, the game and the knowledgebase is around for a long time, so information is easy to come by, and search for
if warrior elixirs are like ciders, then i would agree that it would suck to get more every once in awhile, but the stack of 100 warrior elixirs lasts for 15 hours of gameplay compared to 1 cider that lasts for 5 minutes - this hassle is more than worth it (6 minutes total transport for 15 hours per stack vs ~ 5 min travel to showa by foot for 5 min per stack)
getting 4 stacks for a new player is more than enough to cover an average player's playtime per week (60 hours per week is quite a lot tbh) and new players have relatively empty use inventories, so really 6 minutes investment for 60 hours of playtime is kinda more than worth it

enrage to multiply heroes damage instead of the WA buff to make heroes more of a pure attacker
again this is more to compensate for the lack of utility of heroes to make them closer to a pure attacker role like NLs and corsair

as per my previous post, making DRK outdps heroes makes heroes out of place - the attacker roles overlap for both classes, with ABSOLUTELY NO UTILITY for heroes to make up for the unique utility of HB
as if more focus is required to justify, then why are NLs and shadowers allowed to have so much more performance for more or less the same focus as heroes?
and again, paladins - same survivability as heroes, same focus levels, but more utility and the coverage for bossing is better (most are single targets), not too bad for cwkpq and LHC is not fully rekt
zakum and HT - sure heroes can multitarget, but the weapon cancels make the slight loss between paladins and heroes will be very much overshadowed by the gains from crash

so really, outclassed in bossing content coverage by warrior counterparts, so I really do not see how the advocacy helped the balance for DRK if the goal was to outdps heroes
both heroes and DRK are weak classes, but the idea that DRKs should outdps heroes just bricks heroes instead of promoting game balance
because right now if anybody had to choose between heroes and DRK for any content, its just a no brainer DRK>Heroes for attacker and utility
previously, it was heroes for damage (slight advantage) vs QOL from HB and similar performance, so it was a choose either or kind of case

also, what about the balance between paladins and DRKs? should DRKs damage increase further to justify the gameplay of paladins being the same level of focus as heroes? crash>HB utility for the bossing scene in the current day and age, so should that be enough to justify buffing DRKs even further?

if the balance focus is to use APM as a gauge to increase hero DPS
make panic the go to single target attack for heroes, with the orbs not burning when panic is cast much like how ACB works, and increased damage so that panic spam performance is similar to blast
this way DRK is multi targets specialist with crusher and 4-6 target advantage with fury with some capability in single target with crusher (medium mob and large mob specialist)
heroes smacking single target with panic and multi with brandish (single target and medium mob specialist)
paladin with blast for single target and ACB for 4-6 targets advantage (single target or large mob specialist)

the attacker specialization is covered for each of the warrior classes and there are no full overlaps and outclassing like what we have right now
single target : heroes = pala > drk
multi target: heroes = drk > pala
large mobs: drk = pala > heroes

 

there's some content that heroes are preferred, heroes generally do better at zak hands than drk. drks also tend to have a much harder time and higher death rate when compared to hero in the harder content like vl, neo tokyo and showa bosses.

expenses spent on hp potions is also cheaper for hero than drk

this idea is flawed because even if there's 6 mobs (let's be real, it's not reasonable when the only proposed situation drk excel in is when there are 6+ mobs and even then, they don't because fury is bad) no drk is gonna spam fury unless they are using polearm, and even then, it's still higher dps to just crusher on spear. Your idea would push drk to the bottom of warriors, and since hb is already kinda useless, drk = useless

 

Doesn’t drk have power crash which removes def and watt up?

Their crash is literally better armor crash.

Pure Attacking Role

NLs and Sairs are pure single target attacking roles

Heroes and Drks are pure multi target attacking roles

Don’t buff their single target, that isn’t their role. There’s plenty of content now in 2023 where AoE attackers thrive in (Rose, LHC, VL, Scarga, CWK). In fact the best content in the game currently is Rose Garden, so if we’re going to bring up meta and tiers of end game content, RG blasts all single client content at the moment, so in a weird way:
(My RG Ranking)
Shads>Drks>Paladins>Heroes>Bucc>Mage>NL>Sair>BM>MM

Heroes do need a little more utility I think though. I’m against rage stackable, enrage stack, brandish single target dps increases; rage would make them a mule and they don’t need just flat dmg because they’ll never out dps NLs single target wise and it would be nice for them to have a slight difference niche than Drk.

Drks are more rewarding because theyre harder to pilot. There’s still bosses out there you need to manual pot at sound cue or you’ll die or not be able to zerk. Why shouldn’t the higher skill req class have a slight damage edge, its not like drks outdps heroes by like 20% right?


Potential ideas I guess:

• Give Armor crash a def debuff and a def down component that has a stronger effect than threaten but shorter range
• Roar larger range and stun %, a mob control skill?

That’s all I got for heroes

Give Marksmen double snipe, think of one snipe but twice /s

I am currently the only MM I know on the +87 journey. I already out dps snipe on apple and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those MMs on dps thread do as well at #1 and #2. It would be cool to raise their dps ceiling rather than raise their floor.

Best way I see to do this is what I already said before. Increase avoid formulas for all bowmen. It’ll buff both MM and BM. Buff BM too!

Higher avoid increases our dpm significantly I’m pretty certain. If possible just tweak bowmen class formula with dex scaling to avoid. Don’t give thieves more avoid.