Class/Skill Suggestions and Feedback on proposed job changes

Hi guys! I don't really post much here, so I've been saving up my ideas for the last year mostly out of laziness. Seems like a good time to share my thoughts. I'm trying to keep the post length down (it'll still be long) so I'm doing mostly point form.

Also because I'm not very active on forums I don't read feedback often, so apologies if any of these have already been suggested!

Afterwards I'll give my two cents about the individual class skill changes under discussion in the September GM blog here (I just didn't want to bloat that one too much with this post).


Quality of Life (QoL):

• A "recharge all" button in shop
  
• Make some vendors in Vic, and the Lushan town vendor sell Reindeer Milk and Melting Cheese
• Ability to reorder characters on main screen
• Improved item ignore based on string: e.g., type "Monst" and all Monster Cards will be excluded. Note that this is "buyer beware", if you exclude an item that you didn't intend, that's on you, and you can manually loot them
  
• Level 200 do not consume XP in a party
• HP quest: balance to reduce # of drops needed from Gold Monk (15), Dark Cornian (15), Petrifighter (20), Stygie (30). I'll explain at more length below this post

Transportation:

• Add an option to Dolphin to teleport to Ocean I.C.
  
• Make Manji's teleport quest to Ariant a repeatable quest similar to Warp Cards
  • Note that this would remain only a one-way teleport
• Add a portal from Ludi to Leafre
  
  • I know this is greedy but it would be a MASSIVE convenience, and would also drive more killing of Ludi/Ellin bosses and just hanging out in both places

Cosmetic:

• Give guns animations so Sairs can use NX weapons properly
• Sell Battleship NX covers
  
• Allow eye colour change for Mad Mage NX
  
• Allow option to change secondary colour on hair styles with horns or shading hair colours
• "Transmog": add an NPC that allows you to spend 2k NX to make a cosmetic equip cover of the same type (e.g. overall --> overall, bow --> bow)
  
  • So basically if you wanted to look like you're using a pumpkin spear, or dress up like Fangblade, you can do it while still equipping proper gear.

Maps:

• Add a Free Market to Kerning
• Zipangu: Kamuna is annoying. This is the map you teleport back to after any Neo Tokyo boss. But where you spawn, you are stuck on a root, and you cannot walk right from the root to the platform without jumping. However there is a gap on the right, so if you mount before jumping you will jump past the portal and fall to the bottom.
  • Either extend platform all the way to right, so you can't accidentally jump off to the right, OR
  • Remove bump on root so you can walk right to portal

Class changes:

Corsair:

• Ability to set battleship to cooldown without having to manually sit in the fire
  
  • e.g. a Beginner skill like Legendary Spirit that simply puts your ship in cooldown mode and resets its HP
• Ship HP resets when character dies (currently if you die with ship HP at 1%, when you respawn your ship is still flashing at 1% HP)
  
• Buff battleship cannon by ~3%
  • I know, every class wants damage buffs, and I'm actually super against most of them (as you'll read in my notes on the class changes). The only reason I suggest this is: at single target fights, Sair and NL are direct competitors. As most people know, a Sair with any skill will white an "equivalently geared" NL in single target. But the thing is, that NL is holding down one button, avoiding most attacks, half asleep at the keyboard watching Netflix. While the sair is performing 100+ actions a minute dodging attacks, casting summons and repositioning, all with the help of almost 0 avoid. All of this just to slightly edge out someone who is nearly asleep. That's hardly fair. Given the amount of work and skill involved, the difference in damage should be a bit more notable. Nothing crazy; I say 3% so that it's notable, but still less than the difference for Echo, for example.

Dark Knight of Darkness:

• Beholder healing that could be toggled on/off e.g. a buff you can cast
  
• Beholder healing does not engage when standing taking no action (e.g. when you would passively heal HP).
  
  • Explanation: This skill is worse than useless as it wrecks Zerk range. Beholder healing won't heal Drks above 50%, however, it will heal you right up to 50%, and then your passive heals will tick you to 51% and Beholder healing gets right back to work. Moreover it can trigger at the same time as your auto HP potion, putting you out of zerk range. Making it toggleable means you can use it while questing or for low damage fights, but for high damage bosses you can disable it. Currently putting even a single point in it is a mistake that you have to correct with SP resets.

Shadower:

• Getting hit by an attack while in Dark Sight cancels Dark Sight

Search for the Elixir of Life – I mentioned this above but wanted to give more detail. This daily HP quest is very imbalanced. While a bit of RNG I think is intended here, three quests in particular are vastly more time consuming than others. My suggestion rather than mess with drop rates, is to reduce the number of etc items required in these cases; the numbers should bring them into line with other HP quests.

1. Giant gold monk/Himes/Temple Block Monster - This is by far the longest quest to complete. Giant gold monks have triple the HP of any mob for HP quest and the spawn is very low. Himes is also slow due to low drop rate, and the Temple Block Monster drop rate and spawn rate is so low it can take almost as much time as any other mob hunt alone if you have bad RNG. Despite the fast travel time, this quest takes 4+ times as long as any other daily HP quest.

Suggestion: Reduce etc drop required from Giant gold monk from 30 to 15.

1. Petrifighter/Duku/Stygie: This is the farthest travel time for any HP quest. And like the above, all 3 etc items are slow to hunt. Stygie is fast but requires 50 items; Duku is slow because of low spawn, low drop rate and high HP; but Petrifighter puts it over the top due to high HP, high # of items required, and low drop rate. This quest takes 3 times as long as any other HP quest.

Suggestion: Reduce etc drop required from Petrifighter 30 to 20; reduce Stygie required drops from 50 to 30.

1. Dark Cornian/Blue Wyvern/Green Mushroom– The Dark Cornian Tail is very slow to hunt due to the low drop rate and high items required. Wyvern etc drop is fast, but Proto Spores take a good amount of time to get 30. Travel time is average. The Dark Cornian tail alone takes ~1.5x as long to hunt than an entire average HP quest even before hunting the other etc.

Suggestion: Reduce etc drop required from Dark Cornian from 30 to 15.



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Proposed class changes: I'll give a quick one liner in replies, then say what I think the priority of the change should be with a "my vote" out of 10. Decided to post these as replies so that the post wasn't 200 pages long lol

 

My notes on proposed class changes:

Sair:

• Burst Fire: Separate it from Double Shot and make it an active skill

No thoughts, if it's not 4th job who cares tbh. My vote: 0/10

• Adjust the Avoid Formula from DEX * 0.125 + LUK * 0.5 to DEX * 0.25 + LUK * 0.5 (other classes, but Bucc use it too)

GMs: If you only make one change this should be it. My level 130 bloodwashed SI mule has more avoid than my level 200 Sair with 999 Dex (I don't think Bucc uses this formula just due to that fact). The lack of avoid on Sairs is so punishing, borderline cruel, for a class that already has to do so much work. Please make this happen! My vote: 10/10

• Battleship:
  • HP rework regarding 1/1 attacks

Not 100% sure what this means but would be nice for HT/Zak. No real idea what exactly would be done though. My vote: ?/10

• HP Rework from (4,000*Skill level)+ (2,000* [Character level -120]) to (8,000*Skill level) + (1,500*[Character level-120])

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Sure, makes it easier for newer Sairs particularly around 140 trying to get bossing. Basically level has a 25% lower effect on ship HP but at level 200 HP is 200K either way. My vote: 4/10

• Disable skill delay after mounting onto battleship after using homing beacon or octopus

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This would be hella useful and help out high skill sairs who are performing many actions, without affecting overall class balance. My vote: 9/10

• Enable casting Echo on the battleship

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It was always bizarre to me that you couldn't. This is a slam dunk small change with no class balance impacts. My vote: 8/10

• Aerial Strike:
  • Reduce its animation time by 50%

Yes, the animation time is insane on this. My vote: 8/10

• Enable casting it while on the battleship

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See, I think needing to dismount for this one is fair, and besides, for any bossing situation you would want to dismount before casting so you wouldn't take ship damage anyways. My vote 0/10

• Enable casting it while moving and jumping

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This makes sense to me. My vote: 5/10

• Hypnotize: Increase the number of tameable monsters with Hypnotize from 1 to 5.

5 might be a bit high here, but 1 is too low. It's a fringe skill that's only useful in a very small number of circumstances, but might be OP at Shao. My vote: 3/10

• Recoil Shot: Decrease its cooldown by 33%.

I was going to ask for this, and maybe more. Why does it have a CD at all? Hermit flash jump has no CD and is way better and easier to use. Having to face away (and factor in keyboard delay) means there is a built in CD anyways. Please do this or more! My vote: 10/10

• Wrath of Octopi: increase range vertically and horizontally

I agree, the range is too small, this is a skill that's only really used for farming or when ship is on CD, it wouldn't affect class balance in any way. My vote: 8/10

• Elemental Boost: increase the damage over time effect by 2-5 seconds

As long as the DoT can't affect bosses, it doesn't really matter far as I know. The strongest DoT in Royals does substantially less than a single white swing attack, so this is not really relevant. If you want to buff EB, extend Freeze time by 1s at max level imo. My vote: 2/10

• Gaviota:
  • Make it a summon like Phoenix/Frostprey/Bahamut/Ifrit/Elquines
  • Give it a buff icon that you can cancel

This is weird to me, as it's only supposed to do 1 hit anyways. If it continues to only do 1 hit: sure I guess. However if it hangs around and continues to DPS for the entire summon length, that is a significant buff. I like buffs! But this would need to be thought through. I'm one of the rare Sairs who casts Gaviota every 5s even when bossing FYI. Really depends how this is implemented imo. My vote: ?/10

• Rapid Fire: make it castable midair and while using wings

This would make so much sense, it's always been strange to me that you can't cast it while jumping. My vote: 9/10

• Other: Reduce or remove corsairs melee range

This would be massive! Huge QoL upgrade when off ship and wouldn't affect class balance. My vote: 10/10

• Other: Rework some of the Master Level requirements of the 3rd job Outlaw skills to 4th job skills. Using ice/fire splitters in the 4th job is still relevant from elemental boost. One really should be able to max Ice splitter, but you can't due to the requirements for Aerial Strike, Homing Beacon, and Wrath of Octopi.

This would be a low key buff, very helpful to be able to max Ice splitter and Gaviota. It's odd, most other classes have 0 or 1 skill that have requirements, Sair has 3 core skills that lock up half your 3rd job SP (most other classes these are gravy and you max pointless skills). Even in 4th job there aren't really spare SP. My vote: 9/10

• Other: Make pets follow char speed, not ship speed (when pet quest is done)

This is just funny to me lol. Sure why not! My vote: 6/10



Dark Knight

• Crimson Arcglaives:
  • buff its speed to fast and increase its attack

Polearm is basically irrelevant except when questing. Sure, this would be nice but we already have Purple Surfboard. My vote: 3/10

• give it a spear variant

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In conjunction with the first point, (i.e. fast speed end game spear) this would utterly shift Drk end game weaponry and class balances. Economy would be a small seismic shift as end game Skis drop in price. Drk no longer benefit from SI. Me personally, I'm against this change as I think Drk are in a good place balance wise. My vote: 0/10

• Polearm Crusher:
  • increase range horizontally in the direction your character faces and vertically below your character

That would be cool and improve the use cases for pole arm use when questing/farming. My vote: 9/10

• buff its attack

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I loved being a pole arm Spearman (I know, sounds ridiculous) back in GMS. It would be nice if PA is relevant again. But this server is based on bossing, and so unless you can make single target somewhat comparable to spear, this is mostly an irrelevant change. I like it, I think it's fun, but it will only affect 3rd job and questing/farming. My vote: 6/10

• Spear Crusher:
  • increase range horizontally in the direction your character faces and vertically below your character
  • buff its attack

Sure same as above

• Achilles: Buff the damage reduction from 20% to 25%

This would be handy. My vote: 9/10

• Berserk:
  • Buff its damage

Personally I'm against sweeping DPS changes between classes. Drk is very well balanced: strong with SE/SI, OP at multi-target boss fights, below average at single target fights. In my opinion, GMs have done a fantastic job balancing classes in Royals, so if you mess with one class you have to mess with all of them or you throw off the balance. I wouldn't make this change or any direct damage changes (except maybe a tiny buff to Sair cannon as mentioned above). My vote: -1/10

• Let it activate below 60% HP instead of 50% HP

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This would be very good, especially with an Achilles buff. Drks are locked out of end game NT content because it directly nerfs only Drk mechanics with high touch damage (and dispels in case you're not 30k clean, which many Drks are not since why would you when you have HB?). This would add some balance, while still keeping the unique mechanics of Drk. I could understand if GMs didn't want to buff both Achilles and Zerk, but if they did only one I think this one is better. My vote: 10/10

• Add brackets for 40-100% Hp with less hp and more damage (scaling)

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I think this is kind of weird. Basically it would mean you could "half zerk" for high touch damage bosses like Toad/Auf/DunasB, putting your HP slider higher so that sometimes your auto HP would activate higher or lower in your zerk range. To me, you probably wouldn't do all 3 of these changes (Achilles/Zerk to 60%/scaling), so I would rank this as the third option. My vote: 5/10

• Cap Cleric‘s Heal effect at 50% of Dark Knight's HP

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This would be awesome!! My vote: 10/10

• Power Stance: buff from 90% to 95%

Every warrior knows Stance is skem anyways. It'll just make me madder at HT when I'm climbing ladders interminably while half-afk NLs never get hit. But of course I'll take it, my vote: 9/10

• Sacrifice: Make it a 100% slash skill

LOL sacrifice. My vote: whatever/10

• Aura of the Beholder: Give it a self-res with a 1-2h cooldown on max level

So, basically old code? This feels kind of OP. Would it be TL able as well? This would be nice but it's kind of weird. My vote: 5/10.

• Dragon's Blood: stack with Atk potions

This would be a strong buff as it gives every Drk in the game +12 WA even with apple. I like buffs....but again I don't think GMs should start touching DPS of classes as it might break the delicate balance they have so skilfully forged. My vote: 0/10.

• Combine Hex of the Beholder all into one buff

How would this work? It might be overwritten by any buff then. Cleric bless = erase attack buff? Apple = lose avoid buff? I think it's odd. You could make it just stackable but that would be crazy OP. Personally I like the purple alien buffs all the way across the screen so you can't even see them all over the boss health. My vote: 0/10



Bowmaster

• Arrows: Implement a new rechargeable set of arrows (craftable)

This would be cool! And also fix a bizarre class difference (Archers only ranged class that can't recharge). My vote: 9/10

• Dragons Breath:
  • enable it in LHC
  • allow it to work close range
  • allow it to work mid-air
  • increase its vertical range

Honestly this should all go through. It's such a useful skill with so many bizarre handicaps (you are on a platform 2 pixels below the mob? ha, dragon's whiff more like!). LHC I could understand not doing, but every other rush/snatch ability works there, so why should BM be the only ones who can't. My vote: 10/10

• Power Knockback:
  • enable it in LHC

Huh. Never tried this in LHC. My vote: whatever/10

• Concentrate:
  • give it a temporary stance rate
  • give it an increased crit rate
  • let it stack with atk potions

This is a cool idea to revitalize a very worthless "ultimate" skill. If you're giving increased crit or stacking with attack pots, I'd say nerf the WA buff on it though so you don't go too crazy on buffs. Stance is a neat idea. I think if you do more than 1 of these you risk unbalancing classes. My vote: 8/10 but be careful

• Phoenix:
  • increase its damage
  • give it fire damage over time
  • let it be summonable simultaneously with Silver Hawk
  • Give it a buff icon that you can cancel

This is a lot. It should definitely be cancelable, I think GMs should do this for all summons. I think you can't do all 3 of these without it becoming a significant buff, I would pick one of the three. My vote: 4/10

• Focus: increase its avoidability

Sure. My vote: 4/10

• Puppet: Give it a buff icon that you can cancel

All summons should be cancelable imo, my vote: 10/10



Shadower

• Dark Sight:
  • Let pressing Dark Sight again cancel it
  • Let any attack cancel it
  • Allow Heroes Will to be used while in dark sight

This just makes sense, BUT if you remove Dark Sight requirement for Assassinate per below this is much less relevant. My vote 7/10

• Assassinate:
  • Add iFrames to its 4th hit
  • Remove dark sight as a requirement
  • Fix damage bug: 3rd person point of view shows critical hits with sharp eyes, while 1st person does not.

Removing Dark Sight requirement would be massive, and prevent deaths from getting stuck in dark sight because the macro lags out. Fixing the damage display would be good. iFrames are a nice-to-have, shads already have so much avoid. My vote: 10/10

• Assaulter: Reduce its animation time by 50%, and increase the draw distance

The animation time of Assaulter is brutal, like you "assault" them and you just stand about for a few seconds. My vote: 9/10

• Venomous Stab:
  • enable it in LHC
  • make it toggleable

This would make sense, my vote: 6/10

• Taunt: change it to do only 1 damage

This would make sense, my vote 8/10

• Other: Dark Sight -> Boomerang Step -> Assassinate. Requires low ping and is claimed to be much higher DPS than Dark Sight -> Assassinate -> Boomerang Step. Can that be eliminated?

This would be nice, if technical limitations don't prevent it. My vote: 6/10

 

Yes, that way 200s don't have to suicide to prevent EXP loss for party members. Level 200 do not need EXP so they don't benefit in any way.

 

Nope! I see your point though, mage ults do get in the way of the intention here. If implemented, I would suggest excluding Mage from this, simply because the opportunity for abuse is too high.

It would still leave the path for level 200s to sell leech e.g. an LHC party of several level 200 non-mages, but I don't feel that's quite at the same level of game-breaking.

 

Could also just make 200s unable to leech on BOSS targets only instead of excluding an entire class.

 

My intention was the opposite, actually: allow leeching for bossing and not mob leeching. The reason for this is that mages are well documented to be OP at leeching, and especially now that they are viable at LHC, you could sell 5 mage level 200 leech and level characters from 190-200 in a few hours. That would clearly be broken and too easy to abuse.

 

While i agree dark sight resulting into death makes the class challenging to play, i disagree with removing it completely and making shadower’s dps significantly stronger than its competitors such as drk/heros or even buccs.

Remove dark sight as its requirement and lower the Damage of assassinate accordingly to meet the same damage output as of now would be a fair change.

 

personally never had any issues with beholder healing, the passive regeneration healing past 50% is hardly a good example because how often do you actually not get hit / not move / not attack for few seconds during a boss fight or anything really besides chatting and afking. As for the autopot triggering at the same time as beholder's heal, speaking solely from my own experience playing drk, it happens really rarely and it's not a big deal because one can simply just dragon roar or sacrifice to get back to zerk range. if you are somehow autopotting past zerk range more often than not, then i would only assume that your auto pot settings are set wrong or you are using the wrong hp pot for your auto pot settings.

 

Yeah, the more we talk it through, the more it has many many fatal flaws. I mean, I figured there was probably a good reason it wasn't done yet, but I still do think some method of improving upon this would be good such that people could still play their 200s meaningfully.

Yeah this is a fair point, same with the FM in Kerning idea as well, it would kind of not be the same. That said--what about a boat from Ludi to Leafre direct? e.g. the NPC gives an option not unlike the ticket vendor in Orbis....

I certainly didn't think it would be easy! But would be a very nice update for our class, I think. I agree that the battleship skin would have to be treated carefully--for example, it would need to be the same size as the current battleship (unlike for example the custom mounts which are much larger than the hog/silvermane/draco).

As for the animations, it's just weird to me, there are animations for each custom NX weapon which is part of what makes them so cool. Each class, each weapon type often has its own animation. And for gun there's just....none. Not even a copy of the bow, which would be the closest. Most sairs already don't use an NX weapon since they have the battleship, but, it would be nice to have the option to include cool animations like other classes.

 

Fair--I haven't used beholder healing much, because as soon as I put points into it to try it, I immediately hate it and use SP resets to take it out. It's happened a few times lol. Maybe I'll give it another try. I don't like using Dragon Roar in bosses, if the timing is bad it can tick at the same time as a large hit from HT for example and kill you.

 

You're right, I wasn't considering the increase in DPS from the animation timing reduction, that would have to be considered, and rebalanced downwards accordingly. Just to mention, in case you didn't realize, the damage issue they're talking about fixing is a display issue only. (I think your comment doesn't relate to this, just thought I'd call it out)

 

the cosmetic nx Transmog thing doesn't sound thaaat bad, however making it NX and not RP would mean it's a lo$$

 

I strongly doubt anyone would pay RP money for an item you can just equip regularly.

 

Tbh they should make the daily HP quest potions/elixirs tradable, it’ll push people more to do the quests, and the ones who actually wanna do it see a profitable incentive, as well as have more accessibility to gain more HP a lot quicker

 

Even party looting the quest items for the daily hp quest is disabled right now. Why would you want the elixers to be tradeable?

That would potentially mean that any class at any level can wash their character to 30k hp.

I don't see how it would push people to do the quest, except maybe as a new business model.

Also, it could potentially pose major consequences for the valuation of apr's and therefore the nx:meso ratio. Seems like something that could derail the economy of the game.

 

Any class can get 30k hp lol it’s a patience thing, and the economy would be fine, the gains are marginal and people are lazy.