Hi everyone, what's up? Well, I'd like to share you something that has been bothering me recently... Bishops are vital entities in Horntail for their Holy Symbol, Dispel, and Holy Shield. I wanted to hone in on the last skill, Holy Shield. It is capable of preventing most debuffs in the game for a short period of time, including stuns. The most dangerous / annoying part of running HT is the inevitability to be dispelled at multiple points during the run (especially stressful for mages and most HTP buyers are indeed mages). I wanted to propose that we give Holy Shield the ability to prevent dispels from affecting the party. What are the consequences of such a change? The benefits of this change are immediately obvious. It significantly reduces run times due to the need for party rebuffs after a DP. It significantly reduces mental stress for characters that rely on Magic Guard, Meso Guard, or other defensive buffs to survive. It makes things easier on the party. The effects of this change are immense in lower bosses like Pap or Pianus that can DP every few seconds. Any time that Holy Shield is off CD while fighting those bosses is a great time to use it. This leads me to stress that Holy Shield 30 has only 33% uptime (40s uptime / 120s CD) at a perfect cast rate. This means that in a Horntail run, bishop needs to actually time the skill cast before DP is imminent to make it useful. The skill cannot be used every time off CD just to prevent other debuffs that drop DPS like Blind/Seal. There needs to be a conscious decision to sometimes forgo that protection in favor of protection against DPs. So it is not just an easy cop out, it needs to be used strategically. Skills like Holy Symbol are cast based on timing (the death of body parts) and it's a zero CD skill, so why not Holy Shield as well? Give me your thoughts, thanks.
Voted No, imo Dispel its one of horntail signature moveset that threatens the party’s survival. Ensuring it’s difficulty level. If using today’s metagame including this Holy Shield protecting one against Dispel. Spending some APRs for your 5k HP bishop Then bloodwashing your MP pool to ~30k paired together with magic guard can easily be used as an main seduce target. Basically since you are unable to be 1/1-ed, receiving 20% incoming damage excluding invincible. Timing and casting your Holy Shield before seduce. Which gives you up to 40s of undispellable free time. Allowing an low cost active bishop actually an insane sed. Do not forget there is will (HolyShield timing Messed up), and infinity to be maximised as well. With a stopwatch. That party literally will not have a drop in DPS, and left arm will too become an joke during seduce/mass seduce. That will really significantly affect the current Horntail Gameplay. Ontop of such, other contents like Auf which dispel spams are one of the godliest mechanics she possesses can no longer be an Giant treat, by bringing 3 bishops mule, chain holy shield which probably will never die since Magic Guard up time will also be on 100%. To sum it up, currently at what it is, where its buffed to be able to protect the players against Stun, is at an very comfortable spot.
As much as this would be a major QoL update for bishops and increase their utility I’m not in favor of this change. Dispel is a part of several bosses’ mechanics and a major skill check for the party. Bosses are supposed to be challenging, and as said by Jooon having the ability to nullify something that can make or break a party’s success reduces the difficulty significantly. I say this as a player relatively new to the server but who has played Maple for many years. I’ve died at HT due to dispel and yes it is annoying however learning the mechanics and surviving is part of progression.
