In Discussion Bossing [Feedback Request] Von Leon

Currently the server has many aspects that can be improved, wich is normal, nothing is perfect, but theres an interest to change as many of these aspects as possible. A few of those are:

1-Heros and MMs being Meme jobs
2-Meta is Nl-centred
3-Lack of teamplay(everything was soloable)
4-Its a holding 1 key game, no skills or even attention needed
5- Your performance was determined by your funds, not your abilities.

Originally VL(VL 1.0) came and really promoted a change on these subjects.

It wasnt just a matter of DPS like many ppl tought. The lack of experience, the many ppl being banished, and the hard to see pillar played a factor in the challenge. But the key factor the allowed us to clear b4 the changes was the pt configuration. It wasnt perfect, but theres a few things that I LOVED of how was originally.

Few ppl complain about not being able to kill gargos due hardskin. The key on the 1st succesfull run as Doo mentioned earlier was, focusing on having a clearing team rather than Just Dps. Hardskin didnt allow warriors to just KB the mobs properly, and their movement along with VL teleport made rushing the mobs to a side useless.

-If hardskin its a counter Warriors, why were they relevant when Nls can Hit them more often?.- Nls are poor mobbers, just by taking their non crit dmg, they will take ages to clear the perma hardskin mobs by themselfs.
-Buccs(and shads too btw) Deal more dmg than warriors when theres more than 5 targets.- Why there was a need of warrs , when replace them with just buccs sounds better?.- Due the relationship of bucc skills with crits,Heros-Pallys and MMs end up being the stars in cleaning mobs up, while buccs were a support in that matter, mobs were almost always withed by Warrs.

Ngl, i dont really like the mechanic of perma Hardskin(thats why i proposed other changes and not a "just revert") but the result was delightful:

-Debating with a friend wich Job was the real S tier in that 1st clear, if Bucc or Hero (I still think bucc is superior overall, but heros were REALLY IMPORTANT.)
- Almost all of us agreed that, it if was possible we would bring JUST MMs over Bms(not longer the ugly Bm brother) Not to count that, there was room for MMs as atackers and not only as SE providers that deal some dmg.
-Agreed that if we wanted to suceed we COULDNT BRING TOO MANY NLs, and limited the number of nls to 6 AT MOST.(Comon, tell me its not sweet to hear that there was a boss where many nls were actually detrimental).- On this in that 1st clear, 3-4 ppl who haved really TOP tier Nls, were asked to change to their Heros, to make the run possible.(DPS<ROLES)

Summ up, 1st VL made:

1.- Heros/MMs top tier
2.- Nls B+-A-tier at most
3.-Need at least 12 ppl to clear it(most likely 20+ ppls).- This remains
4.- You really need to pay atention.- This remains
5.- Funds were important, but fulfilling your role and coordination was even more important..- This remains

Its gonna be a challenge but what some of us are asking is to re-create these circunstances.

I fail to see how 20m HP is too much as @Donn1e and @Jooon mentioned... By removing hardskin they will be wiped in a breeze, might be overestimating how much HP it is(auf clone is a perfect example, how much does it take 2 ppl to kill it, 30 secs? By JUST 2 ppl) I was pretty confident that the word "Over" b4 the 20M Hp was because they realize 20m Hp is in fact even a bit too little, since even having warriors, bucc will still be there and Nls will most likely still spaming avenger. Maybe the confusion comes from the current runs, where theres barely any warrior and the 4-6 buccs along with the Avenger Nls take over 20 secs to kill the mobs. If anyone else here have runned with at least 2 heros(post nerf OFC) will know that Mobs are wiped in 10-15 secs. In other words, remeber were speaking of having Stronger multitargets+no hardskin. With those caracteristics even having 3 times as much HP, gargos will be most likely killed faster than they are now.

This something interesting that need to be tested. Maybe long term my asumptions are wrong.

The idea of Mobs having a at least barely decent amount of HP(20m) along with a mechanic that can potentially be a on overkill (as stun) is to create the NEED of warriors. Not the desire for ones to just "Mitigate an inconvenience"

Side Note.- Theres a big difference between a job needed over one that is "nice to have".For example. It has been proven that, in a 4-5 atackers Ht, its better to have 1 Hero/Drk/Shad rather than Just Nls, but theres actually no problem if you have all Nls, just a (Very, VERY) small time difference. On the other hand you cant do CWKPQ for example, with at least 1 strong multitarget job and a Ranged job,(yes it actually can be done , but the difference is so huge that most ppl will just dont even try it).

Also, is understandable to make an argument of a dps chart. From an Nl perspective is actually very accurate, since their job is just to do dmg, while getting MISS by everything, except on Vl where they add dodge the golems to their gameplay. Sadly it shouldnt be as simple as look at the charts for other jobs. The reasoning behind having 5-6 mobs that stun with some HP is to need someone to kill them ASAP. You dont want to see them stay there for too long. A bucc can outdamage a hero/Drk(lets be honest, lets just say heros, Drk sucks) if theres more than 3-4? Yes. But they will kill them ALL AT ONCE taking longer. While warrs will kill 3 of them WAY faster than a bucc can. If theres 6 mobs, and i kill 3 in no time, im reducing the chance of ranged atackers getting stunned by half in that time. You preffer having 6 mobs stunning you for 40 secs till bucc kill them all? Or preffer to have 6 for 25 secs and then just 3 for another 25 secs(not even this is accurate bcs the 2nd group of 3 mobs will last no more than 10 secs, buccs will still be there). Its not only about dmg, is about convenience. Making mobs actually deadly if theres not enough warriors. Having 5- or 6 mobs will make Bucc multitarget dmg VERY usefull, but dangerous to ONLY rely on them to clear the mobs. You get me?


Sadly the only way I see to promote Warrior in end game bosses is by either give them several targets to hit for quite a long time OR, if its gonna be for a short period of time, making those several targets so deadly that any second that they stay in the map counts.

If balacing this boss ends up being TOO problematic, ive found another solution:

- Most ppl seemed to love VL as it was originally isnt it?(Look the comments, there are in this same thread) the only problem is that, it was too much for 18 ppl to be handled and it needed "30 ppl who are min maxed" to take it down so, why dont we just revert EVERYTHING.- Gargos, hardskin, banish(even a buff since i guess GMs dont watch all the runs now) and just cut the VL HP by a decent amount. This way it will still be the challenge we all Loved, it will promote variety again but, can be done with the amount of ppl it was designed for .(OFC revamping the drop table, that is the only thing that looks like we all agree is bad)

 

Hard disagree, the only reason why the 1st version of VL seemed harder than it was or imo is giving the illusion that melee classes were top tier then, is mainly because players were limited by experience at that time. I'm pretty confident that if the first iteration of VL continued, we would end up having similar "optimized" pt composition like the one squads are running with now (NL + SE + BUCC +BS / the rest fillers).

 

Cant discard it, we just didnt got enough time to figure it out wich one was the best config to suceed, so we will never know. I wouldnt be a 100% confident tho, in a boss that has many things going on, theres always a little detail that can trow theories to the trash. For example, idr if it happened in 1st body, but on 2nd body, most of the time we werent able to clear the 1st wave when another was arriving already(something that changed entirely post nerf, and most ppl werent able to see) and bcs of how comon was to be banished, there was moments were there was over 15 mobs at the time iirc. making avenger not really an option to help clearing the mobs . Not to count golems LOL. If you took just the exact amount of MMs needed(lets say 4-5 TOPs) And replace all the warrs with Buccs, they will probably will have to mainly focus in clearing, idk if they were better at that, and even then snatch+ds might be better to deal dmg to that amount of mobs, but its also a combo that last longer than brandish, something that couldve increase the amount of deaths. You can stop the combo, but then theyre not really better than heros clearing. Shure more buccs its =more TLs, but its just a matter of the wrong ones dying that can screw the run.

Anyway, I love theory crafting, and I really have fun debating and thinking in this stuff, but i see no much point in discussing how couldve be. I mentioned how was that run config because sadly it was the only one proven effective, but its true i cant guarantee it was the best config for shure, as no other config can labeled as "This couldve the best one" either sadly. I dont think that staff is considering a full revert anyway, so lets just hope any decition they make with the current VL will help to balance the things again.

 

I feel like the current focus and energy spent on discussing and balancing gargoyles would be better off spent on the other skills of von leon such as the castle golems summons. Imo, they are the more important skill and should have a greater significance in determining a party's composition as summoning castle golems is a b2 50% hp onwards skill. When a skill gets casted during b2 50%, it should be held in higher regard and it should signal the beginning of a dangerous phase, but what we have now, is a phase where no one really cares, there's nothing to it at all. I mean, 2 skill slots are being dedicated for this summon + consume mechanic... Obviously gargoyles are currently underwhelming as well, but i don't think balancing a b1 skill right now is the best way to do it since there's still alot of tweaking to do for other skills, like, you wouldn't want to limit the difficulty of a b2/b3 skill because of a overtuned b1 skill. You'd want your b1 skills to be the icing to the cake (b2/b3 skills), not the other way around, if that makes sense. Basically what i'm saying is you'd want your b1 skill to work around b2/b3 skills, and not balancing b2/b3 to work around a b1 skill.

I've suggested this before but ill try to elaborate more about changing castle golems to be an actual threat and party composition check.

So this is my suggestion for castle golems :

Body 2 50% (Summons 3 small castle golem)

• Buffed small castle golem hp to 50m per golem
• Small castle golems are immobile and cannot be repositioned (Knockback, rush, monster magnet, snatch, etc etc will not work)
• One small castle golem will heal von leon for 10% of its HP if they are not cleared by then, so total 30% if all 3 aren't cleared.
• Skill cooldown of summoning castle golem should be greatly increased since it's such a punishing skill.
• Time between summon and consume is 1 minute
• Golems are weak to holy

How does this make warriors great?
The design of this skill creates an immediate threat of needing the summons to be killed off asap before consume happens, and the way to do that is by including warriors to the squad. Hosts would need to carefully balance their squads, if they allocate too much slots for aoe clear, then their single target DPS is penalized and it becomes an issue of whether they are able to kill von leon in the 1 hour span given. This creates more depth in terms of recruiting and balancing squads. Also, there's layers of depths to this, such as squad leaders taking into account how strong their recruited melees are, whether they would risk takin lesser melees for a chance at faster clear speed, whether they are able to recuperate the loss of single target dps by having more aoe clear, etc etc.


A hero (weakest warrior class imo) will already outdps NLs when there are 2 targets, and since there are 3 summons, this skill would be designed to be melee oriented. Also in some instances, ranged parties wouldn't even be able to hit the golems due to the hitbox of von leon.

10.8k NL + se + apple | TT | 1 mob -> 18,068,924 dpm
10.8k NL + se + apple | Avenger | 6 mob -> 29,703,336 dpm
13k Shad + apple | bstep + bot | 4 mob -> 44,290,570 dpm
12.6k bucc + apple | snatch + strike | 6 mobs -> 46,415,726 dpm
15k DK + si + apple | crusher | 3 mobs -> 42,454,442 dpm

Studies conducted by Rielle on similar fundings characters.

Wouldn't squads just run with shadowers instead of warriors?
Sure they would, but that's the same as going to a krex or HT run and insisting on having a NL instead of a sair or vice versa. The difference in dps between warriors and shad in terms of 2-3 targets multiattacking isn't big, and it's really not an issue.

Why immobile small castle golems?
So players dont get screwed over by some rng unable to pull/push mobs thing since the punishment for not clearing is quite heavy, and i've seen the golems escape a few times, like i wasn't able to rush them back or monster magnet them back. Would suck to get screwed over by wonky stuff.



Body 3 50% (Summons 3 small castle golem & 1 giant golem)

• Buffed small castle golem hp to 50m per golem
• Small castle golems are immobile and cannot be repositioned (Knockback, rush, monster magnet, snatch, etc etc will not work)
• One small castle golem will heal von leon for 10% of its HP if they are not cleared before consume skill, so total 30% if all 3 aren't cleared.
• Skill cooldown of summoning castle golem should be greatly increased since it's such a punishing skill.
• Giant golem has permanent / long duration hardskin
• Giant golem are slow moving, are prone to rush / monster magnet / snatch
• Giant golem will periodically cast stun / skill lock / knockback at targets around it (melee range)
• Giant golem will heal von leon for 10% of its HP if it's not cleared before consume skill.
• Giant golem should have low knockback values (40k)
• Giant golem HP is 30m
• Time between summon and consume is 1 min
• Golems are weak to holy

What does the giant golem mean?
This means that clearing the small golems would be harder during B3 phase in contrast to the B2 phase as the giant golem would constantly distrupt melee targets. It is also hard for melee to deal with the giant golem as it has hardskin, so utilities such as monster magnet, rush, snatch has to be used to split the giant golem from the small golems and then letting NLs deal with the giant golem. Note that this would create an urgent situation where players have to coordinate to split them and kill them or else they are gonna get punished by consume.

What if players go to jail during the summoning phase
This skill is casted after a b2 50% and b3 50% respectively, so squads should be able to time it. For e.g, timing damaging past 50% only after jailed members returns from jail, would give ample time to trigger skill cast and clearing it.

Isn't 10% heal per golem too punishing?
It should be punishing, so that it will give a heavy emphasis to the importance of having a solid melee line up.

How would this change promote class diversity?
Squads would have different strategy to deal with this phase, some squads might even utilize the bishops in their squad for additional DPS (yay for OP bishops). Also, the ideal hp i've given for the golems are not random, i've calculated that a full 10 endgame or gelted NL squads with 3 buccs would be able to clear the mobs before consume happens only with minimal mistakes. So squads can risk to go full-on NL for a faster overall run but they would have a way smaller margin for error if they choose to do that. We would have very different squad set ups for example :
Squad A might have a party of 5 NL 5 warrior 3 bucc 3 BS 2 SE;
Squad B might have a party of 10 NL 3 bucc 3 BS 2 SE;
Squad C might have a party of 8 NL 2 shads 2 SE 3 buccs 3 BS (note that during that phase, shad can party up with the 3 BS to smoke + gen)

Also, one thing to add on, if this change were to be implemented, coincidentally, it would most likely be increasing the difficulty of the current gargoyles since NL slots would have to be sacrificed for melee slots.

 

Warrior Crashes

Another way of increasing the significance of warriors is to utilize the three types of crashes. For example, if mobs aren't cleared then it will power/defense up the Von Leon itself or simply add the necessity of having crashes on Von Leon such as weapon cancel, increase the defense/power on the mobs to make warrior essential in the expedition for effective clear.

Rewards

I have mentioned this in the Q & A session last time in the game but I will ask again here. What are the boundaries of rewards and what's considered game breaking? I feel the players aren’t giving many suggestions in rewards because we do not know what is appropriate to suggest and players have nothing to base it off. I would suggest pure mesos and a chance of ws/cs/other gacha items set in the reward system whatever that might be.


These are just some suggestions and comments on top of my head and I hope these can be taken into consideration. Thanks!

 

I want to feedback about Drops (True reasons stop ppl go VL)

Tradeables:
1st :
VL drops should be back too owl and Pet item ignore list (no more secret anyway)
2nd:
Hero will 10 :
Price drops from 1.5b to 700m right now

reasons are
CD Remains at 360s (even lv 10)
Lv 6 removes : Slow
Lv 7 removes : Zombify
Lv 8 removes : Bleeding & Poison
Lv 9 removes : Crazy Skull
Lv 10 removes : stun

I think if lower CD, more ppl will buy this.
Maybe -60sec each LV after LV 5 (6minutes>>>1 minute)

3rd VL Boots:


This shoes REQ LV too high ... 180....
I think need nerf too LV 135 or even under
We just Raffle shoes*under 4wa atm (imagine sell this and split 18+ppl)

4th Manuals :

Arrow from 2.7b>2.7b>2.4b>1b (F archers)
Bullet from 1st *crafted sold 6b >>>keep drop rn are 700m
Star from 4b>3b (only items that keep value , but still lose than ht drop mw split)


These manuals need so much hard work to craft *500tetems (I value 800k each so is 400m+ 750m mesos +250 energy burn (totem : burn is like 1:4, kinda ez ) +others)
So better change to can Recharge Everywhere (Or would rather craft 1 set for range ...)
that 1~2wa not much in boost boss speed time



Untradeable:
5x belts
6x parchments
5x medallions

so if ppl loot untradeable
we count belt+medallions =one set
so 11ppl loot untradeable

if we go on 21man
21-11= 10ppl to split those drops (seems more good)

What can we add?
1. totem (each kill VL = 50 totems from a NPC, I value totem=800k , 40m then)

2. New weapons (I don't think this is good idea , gonna ruin current market, and we have PB in the future)
3. energy burn (each kill= 100 , Don't need stick Golem farm )

IDK ....What else
I don't think VL will be profitable boss when we need so many attackers
unless make it easier
can clear by 6~12man

 

IF so, I think many ppl will buy it !
Don't need bring SED mule anymore !
Don't need make a lv 129~143 sed mule !
Less mule always good

 

That would be pretty strong, maybe also make will 10 cost 0 mp (due to HT arms MP draining like mad, 1 is still an unpayable cost a times during seduce). I still don't think I'd get will 10 on my level 200 pally as I just don't have spare SP to spend, since BW pally is insanely pressured on SP. I do plan on getting will 10 on bs even in current form for completionism, but this sounds like a change that makes it actually useful.

Another option (not sure how viable this is) is to make the cooldown depend on what condition was cleared - nobody's going to put their will on a 6 (or even 3) minute cd to clear a stun that'll get applied again 30 seconds later, but a 1 min cooldown to clear a stun? That seems a lot better. And then you might see it being used more in VL to clear stuns from bird (extra important if you also increase stun duration, so rewards from VL will directly help you in running VL) or crazy skull on ranged attackers.

 

I’m looking at a change of scaling von leon parties sized down to 12man for minmaxed parties, and casual parties at 18man.

4 gargoyles at 15mil HP without hardskin.
Which is perfectly possible for 4-5 melees to burst them down under 20s.

But in return, a annoying stun mechanic like Bodyguard A, where you require active holy shield and communication with the bishops, not clearing them will create some serious chaos especially with the improved moving speed.

Additional factors that now these mobs will actually be a big threat.

• Bishop will need to calculate when its time to holy shield.
  
• All attackers will need to stop attacking and allow warriors/bucc to rush.

Golems to heal significantly more.
I’m looking at 10% per golem.

Frankly speaking. If its 3mins, will players buy it at 1bil?

Unless the eye laser change makes Will10 required to survive.. that would be a completely different story all together.

Throw in MW30
Pink bean isn’t coming anytime soon. We can worry about that at another time!

edit : after thinking through, actually will10 isn’t that bad!

 

I hope this sorta puts a different perspective in balancing out VL, in terms of profit.

I've come to accept that VL is a boss for no profit, but rather a boss that drops a Best-in-Slot belt that has the potential to give you over 500+ range. That alone is enough to make me want to run. However, the main drawback that ultimately led to me being completely uninterested in running this boss is the sheer amount of people needed to clear it, and having to dispute over the lackluster amount of belt/medallion/parchment drops.

I think the two main reasons people are continuing to run VL is for belt upgrades, and just to hang out with their friends and build a stronger community. In my eyes, I don't think it's entirely needed to try to tunnel-focus on making this boss profitable; giving people a better incentive to possibly upgrade their belts is strong enough. Making this clearable with 6-12 man and possibly dropping a larger amount of belts/medallions/parchments (number is very much debatable) would definitely make me wanna use up my 2 runs every single week. A counter-argument to this change is possibly people wanting to run with bigger groups as a social get-together kind of thing, which is understandable, so I'm curious what others have to say.

If the main focus is trying to make VL profitable to incentivize people to keep running it, there really isn't that many options to consider while also trying to preserve the potential drops on pink bean and the server's v83 restrictions. Bullet/quiver/stars will keep going down from here and that's inevitable. So I think focusing on the untradables for this boss and having pink bean be more of a profit-based boss is the right way to go about it, but these are just my personal thoughts.

For me personally, that is enough incentive to make me want to pay 1b+ (maybe even 2b depending on market price and demand) for this book. I solo HT and use my 2nd NL as sed mule so it's very RNG. Not having to worry about sed killing me and screwing up my run with this will10 buff is very appealing to my eyes, and for many others that are against muling meta in HT specifically.

 

Echoing lee’s point, I agree 100% with everything he said because throwing in a boss that requires 18-30 people will never be profitable. Other end game content like auf haven and horntail is usually duo/trio/quad by many squads so it is inevitable people would want more. I have noticed there is slower activity of von leon runs and I speculate it is so because of the underwhelming drops in conjunction to the amount of people that is needed to clear the boss. For example, my regular runs I only got to loot one belt out of three runs and the profit is pretty much non existent - to the point I can just farm for a hour to net the samething.

Another thing is split distribution and gathering party members which is really hard due to the lack of activity of this server and the general interest. @Doo took so long calculating splits for the tradeable goods he sold, but after running through the numbers it’s just a overall headache with 18-30 people.

I would personally like to see a potentially 12 man squad recommended over the supposedly 18+.

 

On top it is only accessible to heavily HP-washed casual players (either at least dog-shit gear or better or server owners), dc-risk and weekly cd, mandatory discord included.

 

You never needed to be hp washed to do VL? Ranged classes outranged VL's attacks. It was doable with less than 8k hp. Now it might have changed with the new patch, but please stop spreading misinformation.

 

From talking with many ranged players, this is not true. I'm not sure how the new patch changes things, but his slash attack (that inflicts slow) is generally the attack that forces ranged to wash. While theoretically you might be able to stay on the very edge just outside its range, with golems that's just not feasible, and it's too fast to dodge. I've taken some very good ranged attackers, put them without hb, and watched as their death count tripled (or more), in addition to them doing less damage because they need to spend more time positioning.

That being said, with the buffs for warriors, hopefully DKs will be more common in VL so HB is more accessible for those ranged attackers who washed to 12k for HT.

 

MW 30 from VL : PLS !!



Castle Rose garden Quest line

 

Still not worth doing VL , especially when it’s only the same 2-3 groups of people killing it (regardless of the amount of grinding needed to even upgrade the belt) let alone with the tanking economy and the amount of people needed to kill it, better off getting the dojo belt

 

We had so much clearing the new VL!!

Spoiler: New VL FIRST CLEAR