Hmm true I guess. Not to mention the Hero/Drk could clear 2 or more arms before you even kill 1 cause their attacks can hit multiple arms. Although if you do solo/duo it won't really matter how fast each arm die but how fast you clear everything. And I thought Charge Blow is a decent skill, I heard paladins maxed it as their first skill. Does it have the same range like slash blast or something?
It's exactly the same range as Slashblast from the feel of it. (if not maybe a bit wider). It's promoted as a good skill because of two reasons. It only requires 10 levels to max, and secondly, it strengthens our Charge Blow attack we receive from 3rd job and ignores the cancel effect the skill has. It's great when training. Bossing... not so much. On the note with solo or duo... You have a point there, but it's hard to get to that level range when no one will add you due to my earlier points.
You don't know anything about this game. In this version, any hp washing char can tank. As Maylins said, pallies share defensive skills/passives with heroes. What you just wrote makes no sense.
We mostly use charged blow at HT. We only use blast on heads and arms when no other body parts are left, so increasing its vertical range is not needed. And also, just like zak arms, we miss right arm from time to time since arm is moving back and forth and because charged blow range is too short. I also agree with Maylins. At zak during arms, we can barely hit 3 arms at once with charged blow. We most of the time hit 2 at once, too many times only 1 and rarely up to 3. Thank you for your time
I'm actually okay with the change in Blast. However, I fully support an increase in vertical/horizontal range for Slash Blast 2.0 (ACB)
I'm personally not a fan of how the Blast change turned out because it has messed up my perfect Bigfoot pin with ST . I used to be able to hold down blast and it would be pinned perfectly although not every hit landed. Now it just unpins itself using the same method.
Still no word of reverting their blast back to how it used to be? I can't see how a a single target vertical hit is a buff rather just a change in skill that doesn't help it overall. Maybe if we get some more ceiling bosses.
The Blast buff was intended for Pallys to have an easier time attacking HT parts, but an ACB range buff would've done a better job.
I feel wary when writing this feedback, because despite playing my Paladin a lot, I am pretty casual and nowhere a top player engaged in the HT meta. I can speak for the overall QoL for this class, and I hope I can make sense. So, in my experience: I don't think Blast itself got worse and I don't think the change needs to be reverted. The "problem" is that this Blast change was simply put in place in order to actually help Paladins reach things, thus - as Tim said - we're more into the QoL territory; it doesn't address the dramatic damage gap Paladins have with other Warriors in multi-target situations, which is where I see the discussion is heading to. But strictly speaking about Blast, the kind of scenario Browertime described actually didn't differ much from how you would expect old Blast to perform against Zakum arms. I have played my Paladin during the old source, even before the horizontal range increase that came with the New Source: Blast range, especially with 1-handed weapons (pretty critical issue, considering how Crushed Skull is the endgame weapon choice for many Paladins), was simply nonexistent. With these two range buffs (both horizontal and vertical), I feel the issue has been addressed to some extent. Sadly I cannot confirm if Blast has now a better targeting against HT body parts, but I believe its vertical range increase actually helped to consistently reach every Zakum arm, which was not even something you could take for granted in the past. Speaking about other bosses I have tried: I am a 2hBW user (lol), and kill Bigfoots with a Morningstar. Overall I can keep it pinned as much as I was able to do it before: having most but not every single hit landing, and having the dude unpinning himself maybe once, max twice if I'm not careful. Lilynouch farming is better because now you can land your Blast hit even when it's jumping. I would also like to add a little note about Blast and Zakum arms: a better positioning on platforms can actually help, at least for this particular boss/map layout. As Zerato observed, Blast now actually searches for and hits upper targets first. Forward positioning on platforms -> hits higher. Backward positioning -> hits lower. If I want - for example - to have the Healing arm consistently going down for first, I have to position myself a bit backwards, in the middle of the 2nd bottom right platform. To conclude this: people even argued that Paladins didn't need any kind of buff. From my perspective, I simply enjoy playing my Paladin and I have my own ideas about giving legacy versions of Maplestory an overall balancing (I find MapleRoyals interesting for how it ended up to develop its own meta around glitches and game design inconsistencies). But considering that MapleRoyals staff decided to opt at least for a QoL changes route, I think that at least a small buff was simply needed as a form of compensation after the Threaten "technical" flop. Sorry about this long post, and thank you for reading!
Wait seriously? Okaaay after hearing this, I won't take him seriously anymore. (not that I did in the first place, but now I won't feel bad about it.)
After hearing everyone's say on this... and getting a chance to test the changes as a whole on more bosses (Horntail being a main one) (Zakum being a regular), I felt the need to give another look at the changes made to paladins. Charges being Buffed: (all 3 now adding 130% additional dmg to our melee attacks) Pros: Strengthening the White Knight Charges was a great choice. Ice Charge's freezing capability definitely outweighs our damage differential with our Rival Brother warriors. Now every charge feels relevant when we do face off against appropriate monsters. Cons: With Ice charge's buff matching Fire and Lightning, these two, though stronger they are, lost some of their luster. Fire balances out since Fire weak enemies are quite common (-cough Big foot), but lightning's not so lucky. Hey what can you do, right? Blast Vertical Range Increase: (This one I kinda still look at sideways) Pros: Tim does drive a good point here when it comes to the quality of life factor of the game. We shouldn't be focusing on competing with one another and I admit I was blindsided by this, so I apologies on that end. Blast does reach parts of Horntail a lot better now and I must say this is pretty good. It makes us more efficient attackers being able to use our strongest attack as the bossing option throughout the run. Cons: (Oh god here we go) My cons I mentioned before hold very strong and other paladins here only made it stronger. Paladins normally only use Blast when attacking the Heads of Horntail anyway. Charged Blow makes better for striking Limbs because as a mobbing attack, naturally you would want to hit more parts for minimum damage than striking a singular target for the maximum. The damage per second factor just outdoes it in this case. Blast still suffers from it's true adversary. Damage consistency. With our charges powered up, only thing holding us back now is hitting as high as 107,542 Dmg (112,699 dmg for BW) with fire charge on Krex, but as low as 49,808 (or 41,992 for BW case) with each swing. You may think these numbers are exaggerated, but any seasoned paladin will tell you... they are NOT. I still say at the very least, a weapon mastery buff on BLast would still be a great choice to add to it. The fact it cannot hit everything would be a good trade-off as well. The expansion on Charged Blow's hit-box would have been far more effective. It would utilize the attack's ability to strike up to 6 enemies at once increasing a paladin's contribution toward a raid's damage output. Charged Blow (like Blast) Only hits one line of damage dealing 350% of our base (plus Applied charge). Crusher and Brandish still outdo this, but I'm not talking about focused on making the skill stronger. Simply more viable. It's strong enough. Just needs better reach capability. This would make up for any power issues paladins have entirely. Heck, I'd accept Blast's inconsistent damage if we could have this. Trading Our Magic Crash to Heroes For Armor Crash: Pros: It breaks Weapon Cancel. Does anything else need to be said? This alone almost makes every other Con I mentioned worth dealing with. People actually want Paladins in Parties. People may complain about the 4 minute cooldown, but I see a blessing in Disguise. This cooldown makes Buccaneers more viable in parties now. Plus any complaints with the cooldown can easily be solved by having another Paladin (and or outside Mule and/or Buyer) (YES this made it so BUYERs can help with boss runs) I see nothing but gold here. Not to mention this gave Paladins a newer theme which makes sense to realistic paladins. They weren't just Walls of armor. They were defense BREAKERS. They were their own worse enemies along with any other opposing armored foe. We have Armor crash and we have Heavens Hammer. Both either break or Ignore Weapon Cancel entirely and with Heaven's hammer's 20 second cooldown... Gosh does anything else need to be said? Yes One more thing. BRILLIANT WORK Maple Royals Team. You gave what's suppose to be the tank of the game another purpose. Cons: Only someone who is greedy would bring up a con about the cooldown. For me. No Cons here. (Maybe if I did something to tell the Hero's side of the story then maybe). Possible ideas for additional improvements: Actually thanks to Armor crash, I'm actually running out of ideas there (which is good), but a few things do come to mind. Guardian: An increase of this to 25-30% would make us come off more defensive. I still love the idea of being an invulnerable tank, but the fact that washing is a thing defeats that purpose completely. This could fix that. Heaven's Hammer: The cooldown of 20 seconds is a blessing, but the effect it does to bosses is lack luster. It only deals 900% of our damage to a boss. This wouldn't be a problem if the animation wasn't so slow, plus the sudden pause we have once it's complete. The fact it ignores Weapon Cancel however does balance that out, so it's not a huge worry. Buffs on Charges as a White Knight: I haven't tested this yet, but I plan to, but doesn't this buff give Crusaders a disadvantage for training compared to White Knight? Sure they can train anywhere depending on their level, but the whole purpose of buffing the charges was to help a Paladin compete against the Hero's advance Combo Buff. Crusaders only have Combo. Perhaps our charges should be 120% straight accross then at 4th job, Advance Charge adds +10% to their effectiveness. How does that sound? Well that's my newly rekindled thoughts are about the changes Paladins received. This was actually a lot of fun to do and I may play other classes JUST to give insight on them as well. (Buccaneer already set, will make a Marksman soon, Shadower in the making now; Mages (not Bishop) are debatable. Thanks for your time everypony! Happy Mapling.
Quick correction: Heaven's Hammer doesn't do 900% damage; It takes all enemies affected and reduces their HP to 1 if they are below 200k HP, and does max damage (199,999) to anything above 200k HP. The skill description was never true to what it said in the original servers. :O
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/warrior-ideas-or-paladin-ideas.107112/#post-607974 I suggested possible buffs that had nothing to do with weapon attack and I feel some of those would still be very good buffs to make Paladin's their own thing.
As some one who has played Paladin up to 159 (I think? It's been awhile since I popped in) without leeching. I think I have a decent understanding with the class. And everything said here is pretty much what I've been thinking this entire time, especially that inconsistent damage with Blast and Charge Blows lackluster range, the range is worse if you are playing 1handed. Heavens Hammer I do hope that the pause can toned down after the skill is used, seriously its like 4 or 5 seconds of pausing. If nothing else at the very least the Charge Blow range should be buffed. I'll deal with doing low damage compare to Heroes and Dark Knights but when I have to be french kissing a monster to hit them with it, then thats a bit of a issue.
Yes, about that pause you mentioned after casting heaven's hammer, it's actually faster if you have a faster weapon atking speed in hands and becomes like a 1.5 sec pause with SI+booster. I actually never thought of the idea of toning it down, it would increase dps for sure!
