Make Attacker Mages Great Again!

Lets make attack mages great (again?)

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[Cough] well... Memes and clickbaity title aside, lets talk about the goals and reasons of this thread, and for what I'm trying to do here in the first place.
[to get this out of the way fast, this is not a joke thread, I want to actually disgusss if it's possible to some degree]
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My goals in making this thread and some notes:​

• I don't want to see mages becoming a mainstream attacker, heck, I don't even want to see them as a 2nd rate attacker, If we were to be able to impliment some of the changes I or the others on this thread will suggest, I hope that it would at least open the door for a niche 3rd rate attacker mage that does at least acceptable damage to not be thrown out as a complete joke.
• The goals of this thread is not to mitigate the damage that the mages will take from the upcoming mage nerf, as all the changes I'd suggest would mostly relate to 1v1 damage and more options for mages in boss runs or changes to mages in general that shouldn't impact leechers all that much for good or bad. This is suppose to be a door to a very niche build, think "paladins and buccs as attackers" levels of niche.
• I only have experience with I/L mages so far, so I cannot write proper changes for F/P , I would love to hear from all FP players that got an FP to a high enough lvl to experiment with 1v1 damage to tell me how does Paralyze work, and what could be changed to make it a viable 1v1 skill
• This thread would go through many edits, as I only woke up with some ideas on how to do it, but I realized I don't know all the ins and outs of all the weirder mage skills to give them the right sort of change
• A point I will explain further on the Ice/Fire demon part would be the posibility of making the AM + Pally an interesting duo for bossing, two niche attackers finding love together, how romantic :3

So, without further ado, lets get to the changes:

Change 1: changes to the general mage abilities

Useless skills... Every class has at least one that is utterly useless, we all learned to avoid those skills with a foot long stick if we value our SP. When I started making this thread in my mind, it actually started off as just a place for me to dump all my ideas on how to make most of the useless skills in the game useable, yet still remain in around the same tier of skill point allocation unless you are going for an unorthodox build (But I saw someone started a thread similar to that so I think I will just go post my other suggestions there instead). MMORPGS should have a variety of skills that all have at least some sort of purpose for someone. Having utterly useless skills imo is just bad design, as it creates a fake sense of choice in putting SPs, and noobs that make a mistake and misvalue the power of a skill will just regret it later. But today we are talking about mages so lets focus on all the general mage spells that are pretty much a waste of SP, and what can we do to change them to be at the very least a thing to consider putting points into. This is actually about 90% of the changes I plan to do with skills so this idiology will be visable throughout all the other skill changes as well.

Mana reflection

Honestly the spell that started my entire train of thought about useless spells.
The skill stats as of right now:
lvl 1: lasts 10 secs, returns 55% of magic dealt back to the opponent with 31% success chance
lvl 15: lasts 150 secs, returns 125% of magic dealt back to the opponent with 45% success chance
lvl 30: lasts 300 secs, returns 200% of magic dealt back to the opponent with 60% success chance

To any non mage users that are confused for why is this skill so bad, let us first clear a big misconception for newer players, this is not negating the damage that was dealt to you or even decreases it. power guard, the warrior skill, is worded pretty similarly so its natural to mistaken it to be a able to block incoming magical damage and return it to its attacker.

"So, what's the big deal if it isn't stopping damage?", I'll tell you what, it's the fact that the damage that it returns is outright pathetic no matter the context.
Lets say i was crazy enough or high enough lvl to put 30 points into this skill, and use it on HT for example:
When you get hit, you get 1.5 seconds of immunity, lets go to the outmost extreme and say HT doesn't give me a second to breathe and time all his hits 1.5 seconds apart, lets ignore 1/1 attacks as im not even sure if those get reflected, but most magic attacks of HT do about 8.5k magic damage. Now, lets calculate how much dps does this crazy setup gives me: 8500 dmg * 200% reflect * 60% chance / 1.5secs = 6800 added dps for casting this ability.
But, this is an ideal world, on the real world I'd say it's closer to getting hit every 3 seconds, and damage varries, but for 30 points, it's a pretty pathetic increase.
You need to remember that mages do not scale in damage as well as normal attackers when you try to compare int vs main stat of a decently equiped attacker. So if they can't scale with stats, some damage boosts from late game skills is not unreasonable.

Suggestions for change:

1. complete overhaul of the skill, make it a defensive skill that can block some magic damage and return it. The only issue with this change is it's an indirect buff to bishops as it would make bossing with them late game a little less risky [dispel would still kick their asses though]
   Skill change:
   lvl 1: lasts 10 secs, reflects 5% of magical damage back to the enemy
   lvl x: lasts 10*x secs, reflects (5+0.5x)% of magical damage back to the enemy
   lvl 30: lasts 300 secs, reflects 20% of magical damage back to the enemy
2. lets double down on its role as a weird dps increase, and just buff the damage that it returns and its consistancy
   lvl 1: lasts 10 secs, returns 110% of magic dealt back to the opponent with 41% success chance
   lvl x: lasts 10*x secs, returns (100+10*x)% of magic dealt back to the opponent with (40+2*x)% success chance
   lvl 30: lasts 300 secs, returns 400% of magic dealt back to the opponent with 100% success chance
   By making the return damage consistant and increase the base damage, putting points into this skill would actually do something in a boss run. You won't be able to control which part of the body of HT gets hit, but at least you are dealing damage to something, so it at least progresses the battle in general. The spell's strength will get weaker the more parts of HT you killed so it won't keep dealing good damage the entire run, also dispel would make it less consistant in the middle of the fight, BUT AT LEAST IT HAS A USE NOW.

Infinity
So, a fancy looking skill, but in reality it barely does anything. If you use it on lvl 30 without missing a single second after cooldown, it will theoretically save you 6.67% of your mana potions, giving a long enough time of use. Yes, that's it. Infinity has another "use", it can save you from a leathal underflow of mana (not having enough mana to cover up damage with MG), but there are two problems with that idea. First, we are in a server that gives mp autopots for everybody, that means you are usually topped off when fighting a boss if you set it up correctly, so you will never reach "underflow" from a single hit. Second, for a spell that can be used to save you from such a situation, it's duration and CD do not reflect that at all, 10 minutes CD with 40 seconds of infinite mana. This is not helping anyone.
How do we fix it? We make it less unwieldy, 10mins CD is outragious for a pathetic effect that lasts between 10 to 40 seconds.
Or we can take a more "unnostalgic" approach, changing how it works completely so that it would actually make sense in our server.
For the unnostalgic approach I won't really bother suggesting one as the GMs are afraid of that very concept, and instead, just suggest to lower the CD of this spell to 3 mins, this will make it that you will be able to waste 20% less magic potions in a boss fight.
But tbh, without complete skill overhaul, this skill will forever be useless, as it's a waste of time for both bosses and leechers to stop and cast it just to save a bit of cash and inventory real estate >.>

So yea, this one is more of a rant than a suggestion for change, i don't expect infinty to ever be changed.

Big bang [under construction]

I'm currently trying to collect data on this skill, and try to figure out if it can ever be useful. (more info on that in the "Help me" part)

Small change that I can already mention is allowing Big Bang to be released mid-air.
If anyone ever tired to use big bang against an enemy, he'd eventually notice that if you hold down the skill, and release it while being knocked back the casting will stop. Now, we all know that mages don't have stance, that means we get knocked around in boss fights all the time, that would cancel the spell and make you waste time for nothing. If they will change the spell to be castable while mid-air, it would fixed said problem. I'm not asking for the skill to be able to start the casting midair, but for the moment of release to not care if you are airborne or not.

Change 2: I/L changes

The forfront candidate for being an attacker mage, considering it's main attack spell Chain lightning, even if no changes will be done to the class specific mage spells, I/Ls at least have the "potential" to do a maybe ok damage (requires extreme funding though)
So when tackling IL, the biggest change should be made to Ice demon.
So lets first talk about what I'd consider the flagship change of my skill list.
Btw, other than CL and ID, we can't touch anything, as all the other skills have some actual competitive use for mages, and I'm pretty sure any suggestion to those would brand this entire thread as a direct buff to AMs, which I don't want to see happen.

Ice demon

Plain and simple, you probably guessed it from the notes at the start. Yes, I want Ice demon to affect bosses.
Ok, so what are the implications of being able to weaken bosses to a certain element? Yup, you guessed right, an indirect buff to paladin.
So, is this entire 8 pages long thread a sneaky attempt at giving paladins a buff? No, but when you see an opportunity to make two niches support each other you can't help but considering it.
Finally, instead of the old and boring combos of SE+NL=damage, and SI+warriors=damage, that incentivises making mules, we will have a duo team where the mage provides the elemental debuff. And because the effect only lasts for 15 seconds at best, mages becoming demon mules wouldn't be a thing.
Heck, if you are so afraid of mage mules casting demon every 15 seconds, I suggest going for a max of 10 seconds debuff.
Now, before you lift your pitchforks "OMG NOW PALADINS ARE OP OP", i'll remind you that to do it, they will have to invite an actual attack mage that takes exp and splits away from you. And we know that mages won't have a huge damage increase even if all my suggestions will get aproved to some degree, so they balance each other to become an actually formidable tag team. Paladins won't become broken, and mages will find a niche other than grinding their lives away at petries.
Something to note though, attacking with Ice demon every 10/15 seconds will hurt the dps of the mage, so the damage deserves a bit of a facelift.
Also, a 50% damage increase to ifrit will honestly do nothing lol, that guy attacks every 3 seconds to do something like 75% of CL's damage (and only when guild pq comes out lol). So it doesn't really matter here.

So, how will the new skill look like?: [any part of the spell that isn't mentioned will remain the same]
lvl x: base attack (50+4*x), all enemies hit are weak to fire for (5 secs 1-10, 10 secs 11-20, 15 secs 21-30 // 5 secs 1-15, 10 secs 16-30)
lvl 30: base attack 170, all enemies hit are weak to fire for 15/10 seconds (depending on your stance on 15 seconds making mages into mules)

Chain Lightning

Oh Chain lightning, you magnificant beast... This skill will clearly be the best tool for a 3v1, 2v1 and 1v1 scenerios in bossing in the IL's arsenal.
So touching it should be done with extra care. When it comes to damage, I honestly hope that the others could cover for it so we won't have to actually give it more base attack, but if push comes to shove, giving it 10 or 20 more base magic attack at max in hope of making it work is acceptable.
The only change that I really actually want to see with CL is the way the lightning chains. This might be too much to ask to change that as it's a far more fundemental problem, but it's worth bringing it up.
Currently i do not have a picture to demonstrate the problem, so bare with my halfassed explanation:
From what I can see, chain lightning hits mobs on the center of their hitbox, or at least a point that was determined to be the center. On smaller mobs, it doesn't really matter, the lightning jumps as intended. But when it comes to bosses like HT, it behaves a little weirdly.
You can chain a lightning from legs to tail if you do it right, and you can chain from hands to the wing (but not to the opposite hand again). But when it comes to the heads, CL cannot chain even though they are far closer than any of the examples above, why? Because head B has it's center box in a weird place, so you cannot chain from either heads to the center without them doing a breath attack.
Is it segnificant? No, it only weakens the dps when doing heads, I doubt ice demon could reach head B effectively as well, and on this part of the boss fight you will be more focused on using MG anyways because dispel becomes common, all in all its not segnificant.
But, I need to test how it works on zak, maybe its more segnificant there (more on that on the "Help me" segment).

Change 3: F/P changes [Under construction]

As things stand, I simply don't have enough info about FP to actually decide how to tackle their changes effectively.
Especially Paralyze, and about deciding if fire demon should just be buffed and become the new 1v1 spell for FP attack mages.
I want to hear feedback from all FP mages that are interested in doing things more interesting than leeching all day.
Once i get enough insight on how FP works, and from what angle can it be changed, I will rewrite this part and add my suggested changes.

Change 4: Magic attack potions
We cant talk about attackers without talking about attack potions, so lets talk about the magic attack potions that mages have at their disposal atm, and the changes I would personally like to see in order to make our options more varied.

Currently, mages have either Apple, pie or swiss cheese for high magic dps.

• Apple is a very expensive att potion, around 18m for 10 minutes of high attack. But due to how attackers scale with att in comparison to how mages scale with ma means that mages get less bang for their buck, so using an apple would feel like a total waste.
  
• Pie provides 120 magic attack for 10 minutes, which is slightly better than apple, but pie is currently only available from events, and is untradeable, so until we can do cwkpq and farm them, they aren't very available.
• Ssiws cheese gives a wooping 220 magic attack for 2 minutes! But it's currently only available from events.

Also, mages notably are lacking a "middleground" potion, they either have stuff that are too close to 20 magic attack to be considered a helpful boost, or high end magic boost that is very expensive.

So, what can we do to change that?

1. Add magic attack to heartstoppers, this one is very straightforward, by giving magic attack to stoppers, we can avoid making magic attack potions be cheaper than normal attackers potions, which would make bossing with mages an actual investment (except NLs because Nexon do not know how to balance a game in the slightest).
   As to how much magic it would give, I would give it the same treatment as all the other potions after it, and give it sightly more ma than the att counterpart. As I said att gives a far bigger boost in damage to normal attackers than mages, so giving them slightly more magic attack would balance it out
   So suggestion, up to change: heartstoppers will give 60 att and 80 ma for 1 min
   
2. Boosting the magic Energizer gives by a bit, lets face it, the starting point of ma boost for a mage is 20ma no matter what, its like 12 att for attackers with warrior potions, this is the floor. So when you look at Energizer, which gives 25 att and 30 ma for 30 mins, you see that 30 is simply not enough, I'd argue for a 35 ma instead of 30 as a fair boost to make this potion worthwhile for mages as well (for the same reasons as point 1)
3. Onyx apple is a highly valued att potion, therefore, we should at least increase the magic it gives a bit to make it a reasonable investment for mage attackers. 120ma is my initial suggestion, but it's up for debate.
4. Pie will now need an increase as well, as it's suppose to be equal to gelt in strength. Because it's untradeable and only farmable on cwkpq I do not fear a gap that would cause it to become more affordable than apple and make apple obselete. So i suggest boosting it to 140ma
   
   
5. So we came to this, Sswis This one is imo the biggest problem in balancing the potions out, as we cannot tie it to an att potion's price, and it's tradeable, so its price would be bound to drop if it was gained through any traditional mean.
   There are many aspects to talk about so lets break it up:
   
   Firstly, lets talk about how to get it, Getting it from a popular boss or gacha would make stockpiles of the stuff, and if attack mages won't become a thing (at least 5% of active mages attempting it), we'd have a huge problem on the loose, cheap and broken potions readily available for leechers and mage attackers. That's a big NONO.
   So, we need to start small, first, this potion should be able to rarely drop at Ellinia gachapon, this gachapon will be popular for mage attackers that want a good wand 8, ma scrolls and puac (I would have been happy if this gacha would have been slightly better but this is too off-topic to mention here). But once there's actual interest from mages to start becoming attackers [after all the other changes are in play] I would suggest even adding it as a rare drop from HT or from less popular bosses like the boss and toad so that there will be supply to meet the demand. Because it will be a volatile new market, I doubt we could balance ahead and know if it could work or not, so lets leave that for another time.
   
   Now for the big elephant in the room, the magic damage it gives, I honestly don't think it should be that high if we want it to become a mainstay for high-end mage attackers. Considering that we plan for them to drop rarely, i think we should do a trade of ma to time. Nerfing it to 165 ma but having it last 5 minutes for example would make each potion be worth more, but the magic won't become so game breaking that AM attackers would be completely defined by it. For this balance change, I'll say it straight, I don't know what would be the right balance, as it relies heavily on its availability and the price it will eventually land on, which are both so hypothetical that it would be embarrassing to even attempt claiming it's fair
6. Yellow cider in my opinion is already pretty balanced for how it is gained, no reason to nerf or buff it.

That concludes the breakdown of all the changes or at least the direction of changes I would love to see
For the ones who just want to skip this wall of text, but tend to stop to read things with images and shiny colors, ill give you a summary:
[Note: these are all suggestions that mostly rely on the worth of the boost using the prices of the potions atm, and not on well calculated damage output]

• 0 ma --> 80 ma
  
• 30 ma --> 35 ma
  
• 100 ma --> 120 ma
  
• 120 ma --> 140 ma
  
• Up to debate, throwaway suggestion: 220 ma --> 165 ma , 2 mins ---> 5 mins [also some drop changes]

[due to further thought put into this idea, some have brought it into my attention that this will lead to leechers getting access to leech areas too early, im starting to feel like the attack potion front is a bit too hard to balance out without affecting low lvl leechers, unless its a very expensive att potion or hard to get like apple and pie, maybe a more extreme buff to the magic attack of apple and pie would help, but other than that, im kinda ditching this part of the idea if no one comes up with something less distructive]

In conclusion
So, why did i waste hours of my day to write this post that most people will say "TLR"? Idk, honestly with how feedback is handled I won't be surprised if nothing will be gained from sparking this conversation, or even worse, everything I did will get taken out of context and make an undesireable outcome.
I had enough of seeing classes being pushed aside by the GMs with balance changes that keep every single class in their immovable box because of their fear of accidentally destroying the half-assed balanced that exists today. Pallies and buccs are either a joke or a mule, NLs will forever be the kings of damage, BM's role is to be an SE mule, and MM's rule is to shut up and go snipe nest gholems in the corner. Bish is the ultimate mage that can do anything so that there will be enough bishes for boss runs, and mages should live their lives in slavery to the leeching cycle or silently grind their lives away. I SAY NAY!
You can talk all you want about nostalgia, but this server is already a beast of its own, and not admiting that is downright stupid. Just accept that this server is its own game, and balance around that idea instead.


P.S: I need your help!

This thread is not finished yet, and that's because either I don't have enough data, or because I have no idea wtf to do with FP mages.
You can help me with those two in the following ways

• Post suggestions for FP changes, I would love to hear about a single FP player that tried to boss, and I'd love to get more information or a demonstration from an FP player about their skills and how could they be improved to be on par with IL in bossing.
• Help me gather data on Zak and HT by allowing me to waste your time at the start of the run and take screenshots of attacks to determin what they can hit from each position, to know if there's a way to make Big bang, Ice/fire demon and CL to work more consistantly.
• If you are a lvl 200 mage that has a maxed big bang, or you know where the stats for that attack was posted I would love to know!

 

I'm all for having attacker mages. There needs to be some caution considering changes that will boost a mages' ulti (i.e. adding matk to stoppers), since this will undo the changes being made to nerf AMs and stop leeching at its source LOL.

 

In addition we can have some bosses with ridiculously high weapon defense.

 

Not sure if I'm into that, I want mages to be a niche choice for bossing that would weave into the normal meta of the game. Making a boss that is strong against anything but mages is downright silly

 

Btw I suggest you people to actually read a bit of the thread before posting, as this is not a simple suggestion of "Urr durr lets make mages op so that they can be attackers as well". I just want mages to not feel completely dumb for attempting to enter the bossing world, and hopefully with the suggestion for Ice and Fire demons Pallys will be able to become less of a meme

 

We already have bosses that cater to ranged (Showa bosses) and Warrior's(Toad, at least in the original game). I would like Meditate or those items to give more magic attack, but with this supposed nerf it doesn't seem like they want Mage's any stronger.

 

Who in their right mind would use stoppers for selling leech? You'd be wasting 60 stoppers per hour, that's 24m off your paycheck, might as well go sell ulu 2 lol. And we don't see many people use yellow cider for selling leech either, even though it's so cheap and lasts 5 minutes. 35 is usually more than enough to give some mages that extra kick. But no one does that because it makes leeching cumbersome. Changes to attack potions will not make leeching any better for mages

 

... mages just aren't great at bossing in general. Even with buff and changes and whatnot, their dps would still pale in comparison to any other class that is non-mage. Such is the old school maple meta pre-bigbang. What you're looking for is far ahead of our version of maple where classes get revamped and mages actually do decent dps in bossing category.

I mean, let's be honest. I know you're playing a hero right now. Just ask yourself; are you willing to take in a mage into your zakum party as an attacker over other alternatives such as Buccaneers or Marksmen?

 

Id be interested in the idea of reworking I/Ls only to be more aimed towards bossing, and leaving f/ps as they are (or vice versa), as I don't see a huge reason to have two versions of the same class where the biggest difference is the color of the skills. I doubt such a change would ever happen here though, and if it did, they would almost have to allow i/ls to change to f/p if they wanted to and perhaps vice versa.
I didn't read all of the post, but one thing I agree on here is attack potions. It's a bit stupid how most attack potions only give the same amount or slightly more magic attack than weapon attack, when m.atk is worth so much less. If we consider the average w.atk to be 5 main stats, one magic attack would be worth only 1/5th as much as one weapon attack, considering one magic attack is about the same as one int, but this is far from reflected in the values of attack potions. Like of course mages gonna be subpar at bossing when a huge part of an attackers damage is from attack potions, and the best m.atk pot doesn't even match up to a stopper in terms of % damage increase, not to mention its so hard to get lf>500 matk apples

I'm not an expert but I do know a few things; All mage ults can hit every part of ht at once from the bottom middle and neither ice/fire demon nor chain lightning can hit more than one head at once (feelsbadman). I don't really know about fire/ice demon and CL at zak arms because I never had a reason to try as ult is just better.
I do have a lv 200 with max big bang, but if you need the stats for it its in my damage calculator.

 

There will be demand for lower levelled mage leechers and that's enabled with the creation of new alternatives to swiss cheese. The premise of the class changes was to reduce the number of AMs 1-hitting everything too easily. Like I said earlier, there are options as you've suggested, to buff their bossing capability without strengthening their ultis.

 

@Shiyui

 

@PurePoisonXD

 

My main focus on this change is actually making the attacker mage work only with pally at its side. An attacker mage won’t do anything on his own other than fast hands at zak, but when it comes with the ice demon package, the pally would be able to do up to 50% more damage. This opens a door to an actual attacker to do useful damage in bosses, while also opening the door for mages that want to boss.
Making a class rely on another is not a new thing (NL SE for example), but now the reliance is with a skill that requires a playing character and not a bloodwashed mule because of the short effect of ice / fire demon.

 

Lol i should have changed the order of the post, because the potions are really a side point from my main goal of fixing some dumb kinks in how mage spells work in a way that opens a door to bossing. If all the skills will be changed but no potion will get stat changes, i would still feel like i won. On the contrary, if Ice/fire demon wont be changed, nothing else on this post will matter

 

Where is our hero

 

Should just add Evan

 

He is like

 

According to the GMs thats unnostalgic, and honestly a lot of work to bring in all the evan related quests and skills. This server prefers to stay with the basic five classes and i respect that.

 

I like all of these ideas!
More potential for niche builds, and encouraging jolly cooperation? Yes please~

I was always kind of disappointed to never actually see Ice/Fire demon in use. Whenever I did, it also looked pathetically short ranged, though that might just be when it's not used on enemies? I don't know. If it is as short ranged as I think, maybe a buff in range would be good, too?