Actually do something about cancels

I'm sure most of you are aware of weapon and magic cancels, which is arguably the worst game mechanic in this version or Maplestory. In old source we were able to remove these cancels in Horntail via jumping against the wall in specific places, which, while technically a bug, provided a reasonable way to remove these pesky cancels. As many know, this is no longer possible in Horntail, meaning parties now have to just not play the game for 40 seconds every time a head decides to cast weapon cancel. Naturally people have asked for something to be done about this, and as a result we were presented with a "solution" this patch, namely that white knights/paladins are able to remove any nearby weapon cancels on a 4 minute cooldown. The problem with this solution is that it makes no sense and mostly doesn't even solve the problem.

When we think of cancels, we all mostly think about Zakum, Krexel and Horntail. I'm sure a lot of you bossers out there have realized by now that the best and easiest way to kill Horntail is by bringing only ranged characters. Since ranged characters are not dependent on hitting multiple targets to maximize their dps, they can leave wings and arms up, only hitting those targets as an alternative to heads when they are weapon locked, therefore always having a target to hit regardless of cancels. Bringing any multi target characters to Horntail will result in wings being killed and arms being lowered before all the heads are killed, meaning the party has nowhere to go during cancels, and once again has to just not play the game for 40 seconds every time a head decides to cast weapon cancel. Now you might say "just bring a paladin! XD". So i ask, why would anyone ever bring a dedicated paladin to Horntail, when it would be faster to just bring any other non garbage class and just wait out the cancels, or even just bring a full ranged party so cancels aren't a problem at all? Not to mention that you can just spend 3 days making a bloodwashed lv80 white knight and bring that as a mule and get literally all the advantages a paladin has to offer, while not wasting a party slot on a class with significantly suboptimal damage. Heck, you can even use this mule as a sed mule as well! Even funnier is if we look at Horntail during main body, cancels are literally only a problem if you bring a hero or dark knight (or any of the >5 serious arch mage players), but the skill to remove them was given to paladins, the one warrior class that, unlike heroes or dark knights, doesn't heavily suffer from weapon cancels. Wheres the logic in that? If you want to make paladins not garbage then make them actually do useful damage on more than just krex, don't give them the exclusive ability to remove cancels. Congratulations, you have created yet another mule for us players to make. That's nostalgic for sure.

Now Horntail isn't everything. There are other bosses in the game, so let's look at some of them. Zakum is a boss notorious for its weapon cancels, and like Horntail, forces you to not play the game for 40 seconds every time it decides to cast weapon lock. In some cases one can utilize this time to clear all the other mobs in the map, but in most situations there will be a character present in a run like a warrior *not including paladins* or mage that can easily deal with those, or there will only be a few to clear, meaning there's once again nothing to do during weapon cancels besides just not playing the game. Again one might say "but just bring a paladin!", but i already explained above why no one is gonna actually bring a dedicated paladin players just to remove a cancel every 4 min.

One big difference between Zakum, Krexel. Pianus, Papulatus and Horntail, is that the former four are often killed in smaller parties or just straight up soloed. According to this, paladin mains make out about 3% of the servers population, so hey what about the rest of us? Are the remaining 97% of players just expected to either bring a paladin mule, or just not play the game for a substantial amount of time each boss run? The current "solution" is basically forcing us to decide between making a white knight mule, or just live with cancels, something i think we all can agree we would rather like to play without.

I do have a few solutions in mind id like to propose, that i think would be a lot better than what we currently got.

All 5 of the bosses i have mentioned above have some sort of mobs they spawn. I don't know if this is possible, but i think it would make a lot of sense if there was some correlation between mobs spawning and cancels. For example if a horntail head uses def up when it spawns red wyverns, magic cancel when it spawns blue wyverns and weapon cancel when it spawns dark wyverns, and killing the wave of wyverns lifts the respective cancel. That way cancels would actually serve a purpose, there would be a way around them through gameplay, and it would promote classes that aren't pure 1v1 dps as it would be more essential to deal with wyverns. It could even be tweaked to make the wyverns have more hp, or have the locked head constantly heal during the cancel to add another layer of challenge. I think its an interesting idea that would add another element to bossfights that isn't just afk for 40 seconds every 2 min.

Another solution is to just completely remove cancels, or if we absolutely want to keep the locks like they are (spending half the bossfight not playing the game) shorten them down/make them occur less often. I think it would be much better than currently if a boss locks at specific hp %s like maybe 75, 50 and 25, rather than just locking regularly every 2 min or so like they currently do, leading players to spend so much time each boss run doing nothing.

I really hope something can actually be done about cancels, as most people would rather play without them, and many people including myself think the current "solution" is just pointless and doesn't solve anything.

 

Maybe the buff could be seen as just for us; it doesn't necessarily have to serve you.

I'm happy with it. Buff success~

 

It doesn't help paladins at all though... you still won't be taken to any serious boss run group, like Martin said it just promotes yet another mule to be used. The idea I had for a long time was just simply removing head B from cancelling, that way ranged always have something to attack incase A/C cancel, while still allowing melee to hit arms/wings.

It's not a perfect solution but would definitely alleviate some of the problems we currently have where ranged have no choice but to hit wings/arms.

 

I personally can't complain about it, though. I was never really wanting Paladins to be the next big deal in bossing, but appreciated any additions that made us less "useless". The buff did give us a little something to offer to the table of bossing, but seemingly not enough for people to actively seek us out and change the class hierarchy. I'm pretty satisfied with that result.
Weapon cancelling does seem like bad game design, that which came with MapleStory. I wouldn't have much of a problem ridding of it entirely, but as of right now I am pretty content with being the niche class that can overturn that annoyance if I happen to be around for that boss run.

 

Or they could just shorten the cancel duration. I find I could live with krexel cancel duration

 

I really love this because it gets very boring holding down a key. Yea, it's "nostalgia" but this idea makes this very daunting task a fun challenge to switch up the snooze-fest. I don't ever see this being implemented but all these are great options. Removing it altogether would be the best though.

 

Just remove cancel altogether and give zak/ht a bit more hp to counter it.

 

They could always remove auto pet hp/mp. It won't get rid of mules at high level bosses, but it'll sure make it a lot harder to drag them along. I think their buff is a pretty good one and no matter what happens in the bossing world now Paladin's will still be better and more wanted.

 

+1.

Countering Weapon Cancel with Armor Crash is a great feature, however also allowing Weapon Cancel to be averted with other unique-to-royals mechanics would make boss runs much more enjoyable, IMO. Removing Weapon Cancel completely seems not to be a sound solution since that would render Paladins' new skill useless.

 

For what it's worth this (the topic in general of the cancels) is already being discussed.

 

+1 to more active boss battle elements

 

From what my friends said,they have experienced weapon cancels which are definitely more frequent than before,and mass seduction which is casted in a row with no gap between each,so at the end everyone couldn't have time to recover HP during those seduction and died.From my observation,there wasn't any blue words system announcement that shows Horntail has been defeated,could image how difficult it is after patch
And with those frequent weapon cancels,I do feel you are actually telling us we have to take a Paladin or take it as a mule by ourselves.I was really looking forward to seeing how you will buff Paladins(I don't have Paladin though).You did well on this side,but those changes on bosses really make lots of boss runners disinterested in running bosses.Besides the weapon cancels Martin mentioned above,I would really expect that the mechanism of mass seduction will be changed to as before or another better way