While I understand that some form of muling will always exist in the game, I do feel that every job should be playable in at least one pinnacle boss fight, including mages. However, I’d like to focus on just Bishops for now, as we all know that making F/P and I/L suitable for bossing is a whole other topic on its own and it’s already being discussed as far as I know. I’ve been playing my NL for about 2 years or so until I came back from a break and I was looking for a different kind of playstyle altogether and I figured that a Bishop would offer me that. Especially because whenever I would do Horntail runs on my NL back then, there was almost always a Bishop main on our runs and muling them wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. Although I’m not sure what happened in the past year that made people switch strategy, I’m certainly a bit disappointed about it. This wouldn’t be a huge problem for me if there was actually some other content for Bishops to participate in. After you hit the 1300 TMA mark it’s pretty much Skeles from there on out and you’ll have to get very lucky getting invited to any pinnacle boss fights as a main, unless your friends or guildies bring you. Of course I’m not egotistical and understand that people just want you to bring mules and I’m certainly able to do that. But the problem there lays with the EXP distribution. Why take a Bishop main if you can kick your own Bishop mule and gain extra EXP? Because of that, it wouldn’t matter which mule I'd bring in addition to my Bishop. I’m not an expert in game balancing so there might be a better way to solve this, however, for now I’d like to propose the idea of Horntail applying a debuff to players that can only be dispelled by Bishops, requiring the Bishop players to be actively involved in the fight, similar as to how the Crash skill has previously been modified to solve the problem of CR mules rendering the Paladin’s supportive role obsolete. Again, this is just an idea, so if there's a better way to potentially do it, I'm all ears. I think that Horntail would be the best option to apply this change to because the other 2 pinnacle boss fights, Auf Haven and Von Leon, do not offer as much EXP, at least not enough to be an alternative to training at Skeles. Horntail also offers additional tasks for the Bishop, such as dealing with the mobs, dispelling the heads and back in the days, taking care of the seduced target. I feel like this particular boss fight was originally designed with an active Bishop player in mind.
the biggest culprit is that everyone has a washed bishop so mass dispel and dark wyvern dispels are close to meaningless
That’s why I’d like to see a game mechanic being added to force Bishops to actively participate in the fight again. Other jobs are also being used as mules in HT runs but at least they have the option to serve a damage dealing role as well. I know what people are saying, “but mages can sell leech and have a full map attack” sure, but that’s no reason to exclude them from every single boss fight in the game, right? When there’s only one truly viable map left to grind, Skeles, as opposed to damage dealing jobs, who have a multitude of bosses to choose from. People could just still bring their Bishop mules to other bosses, just not Horntail anymore. Seems like a fair trade-off to me. Only for Zakum people invite a main Bishop sometimes, presumably because these are relatively new players who don’t have a Bishop mule for their own yet. But what kind of Bishop is going to run Zakum at let’s say level 190? Aside from Zakum, there is not a single boss fight where Bishops will not or cannot be muled. In my opinion, HT is the perfect fit to give Bishops a meaningful boss fight to run, whilst also providing variety in day to day grinding.
VonLeon is basically the boss created for this. It is extremely difficult to mule in VL so the bishops are almost always active players. In my opinion, rather than slapping on niche mechanics that’ll most likely end in end-game players adjusting to these mechanics while muling or adding just annoying time increment mechanics, it’s better to leave horntail alone and create new content with these said ideas in mind. VL is meaningful content but admittedly it is definitely not daily content. I’ve run with bishops that played active HT but were also very funded and would apple/cheese throughout the run, while geneing at least 4 body parts, they probably match dps of warriors/se, shoutouts Joon. My biggest qualm if I’m recruiting an active BS through a random smega is: do I think the BS is contributing as much as an attacker or even expending as much costs as an attacker (3-4 apples per HT). If it was normalized to range check bishops (I think like 1400tma with MW+ is a pretty strong BS), have them be at a very safe hp threshold, have 120 jump without haste (you can dp heads from middle body if they duck with max haste i think), and apple equal to attackers, I think it is worth it. I’d imagine 1400 TMA w MW is around a 5b weapon and mage gear worth around a 40-43 attack set of cgs. A 7k hp bishop I assume costs around a 14k-16k HP NL. People would probably look at you censored if you only recruited a bishop with those standards. So, I don’t think HT will ever be truly a welcoming place for bishop mains. I believe more people in end game would rather not run HT and cancel the run than recruit a main bs for those reasons I stated above. VL is pretty good though and because BS can solo grind and sell leech without an HS mule, it is extremely difficult to balance party grinding spots (LHC).
My issue with Von Leon is that compared to HT, it can never be as engaging and rewarding for a Bishop. Like you said, Von Leon can’t be done daily and there isn’t a whole lot a Bishop has to actually do in there besides dodging and reviving your group, whereas HT has much more to offer. Personally, I don’t understand why it is a big deal for some people that a Bishop would leech or take a split after a HT run. When I ran HT on my NL I never had any issues with it. That’s simply how the game was, the Bishop helps the party out, they reap the rewards like anyone else. The matching of expenses to justify getting a spot is petty to me. In my opinion, if there’s any boss in this game where a Bishop could shine, it’s in HT. It would only require an additional mechanic. Despite it being a job particularly designed as a support class for boss runs with their Holy Shield, Heal, Resurrection, Dispel and Holy Symbol skills, it hardly gets any opportunity to do bosses and it’s disappointing.
I completely agree with the first point. To my knowledge, bishops just play DDR dodging the rocks and res in VL. Point 2: I think it's a lot of people's bad experiences running with smega recruit bishops who just kind of gene whole run and refuse to DP heads. I think the role of BS in HT is actually pretty big especially if you don't have a sed mule. Unlike Attackers that kinda just twack things, Attack BS has to be a lot more aware by geneing in the middle/sides while being aware of def on heads and DPing when it dips down, etc. I think it's way too much work to party juggle BS to avoid leech and especially if they're main partying bishop, they deserve the EXP lol. To be quite honest there aren't many bosses that suit main party bishop, some are extremely toxic towards bishops, looking at you Krex. The best bosses are ones with easily multi hit spots, so only really Zak and HT. BGA however REQUIRES several bishops for the safest run experience. But that's an awful boss for bishops. Not only are the 3 bosses separate so you'll only ever hit one at a time, The Boss himself is holy immune as well. I agree it would be nice to see Bishops have more active participation in bossing content but it also really raise people's dislike towards the balance of the class if they'd be S tier in leeching, farming, and bossing.
