In Discussion Class/Skill [Feedback Request] Skill Changes and Balancing

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Not sure if this was mentioned before:

Thiefs:

[-] Shadower - Boomerang Step can now be performed in midair

Why?: Wanted to bring this QoL that a lot of other servers have made. While I know Shadowers are strong, I feel like this is a good qol for Shads in: 1) allowing thieves to be able to perform (most) of their attacks in mid-air and 2) increasing the feel of a Shadower

 

give stance/avoid to corsair's boat!!! plzzzz!

 

Think BM|MM needs them more

 

then delete bowman!!!

 

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Warriors:

[-] Increase Cheese / Reindeer Milk amount per slot to 200 or 300

Why?: QoL to help Drk mains with inventory space. When I'm playing my Hero/Paladin, I'm comfortable using 8~10 slots with Power Elixirs/Elixirs and have space for scrolls, attack potions, and etc. Meanwhile my guildie/buddy Drks can struggle with juggling inventory, up to 20~30 slots for 2000~3000 cheese/milk to do regular bossing. It wouldn't be too much to bump up the amount per slots for Drks. I don't think this suggestion would go out of hand for other classes as they don't use nearly as much milk/cheese as Drks do.

 

Warriors:
- Can monster magnet pull mobs closer to us? Especially in auf she feels so far away even after magnet's done all it can do.

 

I wish berserk double dk def mdef and avoid. That seems match "berserk" to me

 

There's just too many issues with sair for me to try playing it more than just occasionally before I end up getting too frustrated. It's not even about "git gud" the game has changed but the class has not and is really lacking in tools to keep up. This is entirely my opinion since I don't have access to the player statistics but the sair population seems to have dropped from least popular class to pretty much not played at all class.

Make bullseye follow TPing bosses or at the very least make the octopus projectiles also hit the same target if theyre in range. I end up not using octopus because it just ends up aggroing random mobs and I lose more DPS setting it up and getting knocked around compared to just simply not using it. Boat needs to have no speed/jump nerf, LHC / RG feels very frustrating for corsair. Class wants to separate itself from NL by having good mobbing skills but you just end up not wanting to use them because of how getting tossed around feels bad with your low avoid. Freezing helps if theyre all lined up and in range but helps not at all if there's a mob behind you. There's no mob rush-like control skill for the class understandably so. Updates keep powercreeping the damage dealt by bosses and mobs, and the new bosses / maps require more mobility (which is great, more engaging gameplay). Ship HP and mobility is still the same and there's only so much dismounting you can do before you're critically losing out on dps. Back when bucc gameplay got shifted to perma super transform I heavily disagreed with it, but now that I think about it, it was a good change if you looked at it from a "future-proofing" perspective. Imagine buccs today not having the extra mobility and the ability to always use snatch for mob control or demo to dodge stuff?

I know the skill is called AIRstrike, but the skill has a really bad hitbox below you so it's useless half the time in platform heavy maps. There's also issues with how long it takes to cast / the cd, but people have already made some good in-depth suggestions to fix those issues.

 

Lol we are still a proud few

I don't think this is possible for this to be implemented, but regardless not much of an issue IMO. Just throw another egg, not the worst QOL issue.

Trust me, this is NOT FUN. This entirely removes the skill-reward aspect of Corsair. I saw this done on a newer server and I tried it. It's so dull. Pro tip, use Wings then Mount, then Torpedo or Cannon Fire while flying through the air in the ship. I call it "the Flying Dutchman" This negates the Slow speed of the ship while attacking. RG room 2/3 is fun for Corsair if done right.

Corsair is strong as is, I would like to see a few QOL changes though.

Like @HikariNoPuri mentions

, Octopi can be very useful if used in combination with ship dismount macro. But is still underpowered, and hard to keep them up. I would like to see Octo changed to 80s duration, 20s cooldown, 600 attack rate. instead of 40s/10s/500. This would make Octopi more manageable to maintain throughout boss runs, and a bit more rewarding in damage.

Recoil Shot CD reduced from 3s to 2s. This allows to "recoil shot dodge" the next attack between frames. Sometimes I'm stuck in a loop of stuns or attacks without being able to recoil shot due to its CD. This would also help with Corsair's overall mobility.

Flamethrower and Ice Splitter attack speed is so SLOW. We have to macro them together in order to boost their DPS, and that's still poopoo. Also, Elemental Boost 30 is one of the MOST DIFFICULT SBs to acquire, which is just a meme, not many Corsairs max this skill. I would like to see their attack speed reduced and the delay in between attacks reduced so I can choose either Flame/Ice depending on the scenario instead of spamming a janky macro for crap DPS.

Get rid of the long-ass delay from casting Airstrike. Allow it to hit 8 mobs instead of 6.

I got whited by a Shad with similar equips during HT Head A (single target), and I was in 8x smokescreens. Yea no SE, but even with perfect Corsair conditions+SI, Thief DPS is too high without any sacrifices other than the cost of equips. Nerf Shad/NL dps. Revert all other shad/NL nerfs. make alchemist 150% again, Shifter, luk avoid, all of it. Those were useless nerfs. The issue was always the raw % damage of TT and assassinate.

Keep Corsair the high-skill high-reward class. But fix the weird janky issues to make it more fun to play.

 

I do agree that lowering recoil shot's CD would be nice. People have a bunch of suggestions with what can be changed (obviously implementing them all will result with NL-lite so dont want too many changes done).

You have to absolutely demolish TT's skill % for it to do anything significant since almost half of NL's damage comes from SE and SE is additive. Thieves have really strong scaling to compensate for their high secondary (even tertiary for shad) stats but all the stat power creeping has kind of made it a bit of a joke to hit the 140-150 dex requirements (+75 str if shad). It's only going to get worse with more stat bloat. 1 WA, 1 LUK is worth more for a thief than 1 WA 1 stat is for another class except for maybe DrK (5 WA multiplier is very good )

edit: Also want to add that I'm not necessarily against power creep, it's a must to keep players engaged in a progression based game. Adjustments need to be made and I feel like also straight up nerfing thieves is going to feel really bad for the people that have heavily invested in their character. I'd rather see what happens by adjusting the other classes first.

 

The other big server disclosed their statistics on class playrate and the least picked classes were Marksman, Corsair, and Paladin. I'd imagine that for Royals its somewhat similar in class play rate but Paladin pulling ahead of the other two and Marksman seeing more play than Corsair.

Corsair is just not fun to play pre-4th and 4th job. The only people who play Corsairs at the moment are the veteran hardcore players with lots of money to buy good gear & hp wash from the get go and hardcore challenger type players who take pride mastering cumbersome mechanics/controls to achieve high damage. There's a variety of issues that causes the class to be unwanted:

• No party skill/lacking in utility
• Baffling weak 1st~3rd job
• Unfun movement/bad controls via Dash & Wings+Recoil
• Awkward skill paths
• Slow Ship speed
• Juggling a multitude of skills
• Unfun management of Ship HP (which can be affected by your HP pool too; discouraging high hp wash)
• Mount/Unmount gameplay to achieve efficiency (vs other classes) is vexing

It also doesn't help that the few Corsair mains spread the message "Corsair is balanced by a weak pre-4th" while they more than likely bought leech to skip the pre-4th gameplay. It just turns players off from the class.

Also, why play Corsair torturing yourself with its mechanics to marginally outdps a Nightlord when you can just play Nightlord and have a good pre-4th, fun movement (& not have crippled movement in kit), barely get hit, good 4th job just by having SE in party (which isn't difficult to get), and simple?

I did however make some suggestions to make Sair better, though this is from my viewpoint of playing 1st job ~ early 4th job.

 

• Bahamut:
  • Let it be summonable simultaneously with Dragon
    
  • Give it a buff icon that you can cancel

This change with the Bahamut I find really well thought of and I happily vouch for it. It makes the 3rd job skill have a purpose during 4th job, and it makes Bishops have a reason to use Summoning Rocks, which is in turn a great item sink. It also benefits the health of the economy a little bit. I'm really loving this idea.

While in modern Maplestory they make Angel Ray do multiple lines of damage (14 to be exact), which I find too absurd; perhaps a cool change would be to make Angel Ray do 2 lines of damage at level 30. Either that or buffing its damage would be fair.

 

buff markman's crossbow booster to higher increase plz TT

 

One last fun suggestion for an enrage replacement, already tons of similar attack buff suggestions:

Regen Crash: when active, has a chance to slow/lower/stop monster/boss recovery. Costs 10 orbs, duration TBD (to be determined) but I think 40s at max is good, keeps it active/not mule abuseable (as does the orb cost) and needs accuracy to land

Doesn't sound like a direct buff, but it would be an indirect buff over time to lower/slow/stop bosses from healing during certain phases. New niche and utility. However it will warrant maxing, but so will any new reworking of enrage if it is considered, and I'm not sure how heros allocate sp

Could call it anything, heal crash, life crash, etc. Would refresh the skill book econ for enrage as well.

Also for assassinate, I know shads dom right now, but if the fourth hit could be buffed so it's better than just using bstep for single targets, that would be great. It does come at the risk of dashing and no iframes, but I'd use it

 

For sair,

I don’t think the ship mechanics (ie: avoid/jump/speed) needs to change. To manage that the sair player needs to improve his/her skill of ship management/dps management

And I agree with what @GunzGaming said earlier about octopi, recoil shot, icespliter + flamethrower, air strike

for QOL improvements,
1. I suggest there’s an option to “destroy” our ships and let the CD timer starts to run.
Hence there is no need to relog to refresh the ship. Relogging means losing buffs like echo.
And sairs can have a full health ship to begin hitting the main boss.

for Bosses like HT/Auf, usually parties will take a toilet break before the main boss.

In my experience,
Usually I don’t dismount remount at HT 2nd prehead, I would just time properly and let it destroy my ship just when the prehead dies. But when the prehead does not destroy my ship, I will have to destroy my ship with the damage from the dropping rocks.

For Auf,
In the map after the Core Blazers, where party members have to kill the spawning mobs, there are 2 ways sair can contribute.
1. Mounting ship + torpedo, it’s good for killing the mobs, but the sair will have a halfed-health ship to begin killing the main Auf.
2. To have a full healthy ship for Auf, the sair will use flamethrower+ice/air strike/octopi at the mobs, the damage is subpar, and need to be carried by the other party members.

Having the option to destroy the ship means that the sair can use ship+torpedo in the map, and destroy the ship after, let the CD timer run during the toilet break before the main boss, and have a fresh healthy ship at the main boss.

having the option to “destroy” the ship and let the cd timer run is a nice QOL improvement.

edit: Echo can be casted when mounted on ship will be nice too

 

Hero
Enrage: +100-110 attack for 2min, 10min CD
Concept is similar to Alchemist, but a stronger, 4th job version, to reflect one of the most commonly used strong attack potions. Not directly increasing hero's dmg, but can push them towards other classes of higher DPS ranking. In cases where everyone is appling, there isn't change (but cuts down on finance, like alchemist). In cases where stopper or lesser attack potions are favored (which may occur even during apple/gelt runs where it's no longer favorable to use another apple related to boss HP), hero will be 40+attack stronger for 2 stoppers worth of duration.

 

Summons: Ifrit/Elquines/Bahamut/Frostprey/Phoenix
Is it possible to move these into the background so they don't cover the character (more importantly, things like crazy skull)? Then bishops might start using it in VL. You can get a taste of how annoying it is against Ephenia.

 

I do think the buffing the speed of the boat will be beneficial. If you (and others) still disagree then I think a toggle for ship speed for future Corsair mains would be good. 140% is way better than 80% speed.

 

I would prefer a much reduced knockback while on ship instead of a % speed increase. If they even were to implement any change in regard to ship stats that is.

I get off ship for any movements i need to do quickly not only because ship is slow but because it saves the ships HP as well. This would just invite ppl to move while on ship and tank hits, instead of move+recoilshot+tank a hit. I dont want lazy corsair, i like it being the sweaty class that is rewarding for the hustle

 

I'm having a hard time understanding your viewpoint on how faster ship speed would equate to Lazy Corsairs. If you get knockbacked and then you have to Demount > Walk up > Remount to resposition instead of just walking forward with the ship, you are fighting against the game design rather than it making the class more hardcore. I'm only suggesting increasing Ship speed to lessen the burden of the class as I'm of the opinion that all current and future mains will benefit (even if it's just a toggle). Recoil shot tricks with the ship will still be retained. Pro Sairs will also still dominate against newbier Sairs by virtue of mastering avoiding ship damage and keeping top DPS.