Background: Marksman have two abilities in the fourth job that Bowmasters do not (not counting Frostprey or the useless Blind). They are Snipe and Piercing Arrow. Piercing Arrow [henceforth referred to as PA], at level one, looks pretty good on paper. It hits up to four monsters and deals consecutively more damage, up to 340%. The skill books are cheap and plentiful, and at level 30 it hits six monsters and deals an impressive 900% damage to the last. However, though never mentioned in the skill description, PA is an ability that is charged (you hold down the button, a gauge above your head fills, and you can release it at any point during the charge). It takes PA three seconds to be fully charged, and only when it is fully charged does it do its listed damage. The Problems: When PA is not fully charged, it does a disappointing amount of damage. PA cannot be charged while on a rope or in the air. While charging PA, you cannot use potions. The charging duration is not affected by Crossbow Booster nor Speed Infusion (Buccaneer skill). When released too close to a monster, PA does not come out. If PA is charged on the ground and released in the air, it does nothing. Impact: The fact that PA must be charged to do any sort of damage and that you are vulnerable while doing so combine to make PA nearly useless when training in environments with monsters that two hit you. Arrow Eruption and even Iron Arrow deal significantly higher damage per second than PA (especially considering the former two work with Crossbow Booster and Speed Infusion) while allowing you to not risk death via being unable to heal while charging your ability. For comparison, Bowmasters' Concentrate skill (one of the two abilities Bowmasters have that Marksman do not, the other being hurricane) gives 11 weapon attack for two minutes at level one, albeit with a six minute cooldown. That is just such an obviously more beneficial ability than even a level 15 Piercing Arrow as it is now. Possible Remediation: Reduce the time it takes for PA to be fully charged. If PA took two seconds to fully charge, it would be much more viable and you would not risk death as much. This would be an easy change to make, I would think, but I don't know if it's the ideal solution. Cut out the charge time completely, halve the damage. I think this is a perfect fix. At level one, it would do 160% damage to four enemies, which is comparable to maxed Iron Arrow. At level 15 it would hit five monsters and deal 300% to the fifth, and at level 30 it would hit six enemies and deal up to 450% to the sixth, which I feel would be an appropriately powerful ability. Allow potions to be used while charging PA, cut the minimum range entirely, allow charging of the ability on ladders, and allow it to be released in the air. This seems pretty labor intensive to implement, but if these changes were made I think I would be much more okay with the long charge timer and low damage when not charged. Thank you for reading this, I really hope that some aspect of this disappointing ability is changed, whether it's something I've suggested or something else entirely. If anyone has any other suggestions on what to change about the skill or if there are any proponents of this skill I'd be interested in hearing their feedback.
I think one of biggest buffs piercing arrows received was the fact that you can charge your shot while freely moving around, ropes and etc in the gms server xD, My main was proudly a sniper!
Then paladins/buccs/shadowers should get some buffs, right? Unless the admin wants to start taking class balance into their own hands, I doubt this would be approved. That was one of the problems with older maple, class balance was pretty crappy.
Technical PA shout have a long charge time since cross bows are mechanical and take time to load. But role play aside, be patient my friend. New source shall redeem us all
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/open-beta-launch.36647/ You can find all the balance changes in this thread. As to the question, why having to wait until the new source releases; It's because it will be way easier to make correct changes, also some skills are being updated to their v83-version, meaning it's not currently possible in the v62 build (I think; not 100% sure on this). But in the new source (Custom-build) it should be possible and during the beta these skills can be tested out to make sure nothing OP gets released in the live game.
