I know HT and other content come in priority, but I'm just setting up this thread now to pick y'all brains and know what y'all think about this proposition (Who doesn't like discussion?). Anyway lets start! ========================================================================================================= Hello everyone! You guys might have seen the thread I made not too long ago about buffing's AMs 1v1 capabilities. As it can be seen on the poll, majority of people were against it, but from reading the comments, I think that the disagreement was due to a misunderstanding because I didn't made it clear what buffs I wanted AMs to have, so I'm making this new thread, explaining clearing what I think AMs should get and why. If you guys still disagree with me after reading everything that will be explained down below and can come up with a logical argument against, I will shut up and probably never talk about this topic ever again. ======================================================================================================== 1. Making Paralyze and Chain Lighting do two lines of damage instead of one. (Basically doubling the current damage of those skills). Open to discuss other buffs possible if you think this one is too extreme, but if you read what I write down below, you'll see that it isn't. 1st argument against: AMs are great mobbers and shitty 1v1ers while NLs are great 1v1ers and shitty mobber. They're both the two extremes of their spectrum which makes complete sense. Debunking: Completely agree with that statement, but there's something wrong about it. While NLs are shitty mobbers, in terms of grinding (For those that decide to play the old school way), their mobbing skill still beats training with Triple Throw as far as I know. You'll never see a NL training with Triple Throw only at ToT; they'll either be using Avenger or any other mobbing skill they possess. Avenger > TT in mobbing and TT>Avenger in DPS. This can't be said about AMs. (For the sake of simplifying things, I will refer to AMs as F/Ps from now on mostly since that's the class that I know well, but everything that will be said also applies to I/Ls). While AMs have a really great mobbing skill, their 1v1 skill is barely better than their Ultimate in terms of DPS. To give you guys concrete numbers, Paralyze has a basic attack of 210 and its speed is 720ms while Meteor has a basic attack of 620 and speed of 3060ms. If you do the math, Paralyze is 2.95 times weaker than Meteor and 4.25 times faster than Meteor. As it can clearly be seen in the numbers, in theory, Paralyze has better DPS then Meteor, but in practice its not that easy. Meteor has a wider range, meaning it has more chances of hitting and even if you get knock back while casting Meteor, damage will still be done. If you're spamming Paralyze, first of all, the range is shorter so you have more chances to get pushed into the boss (Therefore dying), and even if you don't, getting constantly knocked back and having to re-position yourself is time consuming, making the theoretically DPS boost using Paralyze instead of Meteor not really true. 2nd argument against: Imagining working on a weaker attacker class then realizing that AMs not only have better mobbing then you but is also equal or better than you at bossing, wouldn't that suck? Debunking: For this argument, I'll compare F/Ps against Paladins, the current weakness attacker class. First of all, even if Paralyze hit as bunch has Blast (Which is not the case and not what I'm trying to make it be), with a ST or Maple Pyrope Sword, Blast is still faster than Paralyze, and with SI, it gets even faster while Paralyze's speed isn't affected. Now we got speed out of the way, lets talk about the damage. Currently the damage cap is at 199k and there is no damage range cap, so technically a Paladin could be hitting 199k with Blast, while atm, even with maxed out magic (1999), Paralyze can only hit up to 70k. By doubling the lines, that makes it 140k, which is still less then what Blast is. That's a 50k less damage every hit + the fact that Paralyze is slower than Blast. The only case I'd see a AM maybe out-damaging a Paladin would be with SE. Having 70kx2 + crit could make it over 199k, but that's also only damage wise; if you count the fact that Paladins are tankier (AMs heavily rely on Magic Guard, if it gets dispelled we're pretty much fucked), have stance (And surely other skills that make them better at bossing), imo, that probable tiny more damage won't make them better than Paladins at bossing. Also, probably wrong here, but I think the chances of a Paladin hitting 199k with Blast is higher than a AM reaching 1999 magic. I wouldn't object to a small nerf if Paralyze's lines were double, but like I explained, I do not see the need for it. I just did the calculations and even under the most ideal conditions, with Paralyze x 2, a F/P's max DPM in theory would be 12.4m while a Paladin's would be 19m, so in no way the suggested buff would place AMs above any other W.ATK users in terms of 1v1 DPS. 3nd argument against: It would ruin the nostalgic feeling since AMs were made to be good mobbers. Debunking: Having this buff in Paralyze/Chain Lightning would not ruin the "nostalgic" feeling of the class at all since it won't be changing its play-style. Its not as if by getting a extra line on those skills that people will stop Ulti-spamming, selling leech and train with those skills instead. 4th argument against: I do think this could be a good idea but since the impact is so minimal and AMs barely use those skills, I feel that its useless. Debunking: If it's so minimal and AMs barely use those skills, then why not? As it is said in the argument itself, AMs barely use those skills, so that goes against the third argument, saying that it will ruin the nostalgic feeling. How can it be ruined if almost no one remembers using those skills? Not buffing it because its useless is like saying not helping out a homeless man because that dollar would barely change anything; it may not be much, but its still something that will greatly be appreciated. 5th argument against: Omg wtf, making AMs good at bossing??? AMs were meant to be grinders and not bossers!! I do not want to see any AMs bossing because they don't belong there!!!! Debunking: I never stated that I wanted AMs to be good at bossing, but simply have a noticeable better DPS with their 1v1 skill compared to their full map nuke skill. If you have read everything I wrote above, you wouldn't have used this 5th argument. Also, if you don't want to see any AMs in boss runs, then I do not want to see any NLs in Skeles, Petris and ToT maps, thank you very much. ====================================================================================================== 2. Adding Elemental Reset. For those that don't know what it is, maxed out it basically makes make elemental attacks elemental-less (Neutral). For example, atm, even with 1999 magic, a F/P will never be able to 1 hit Obv 4. Even if he doesn't try to boss with his AM, there's no logical reason to get higher magic than 1200 (1 hit petris); this would create a new end-game goal. Also, for some maps out there, mobs are either immune/strong against ice/fire/lighting/poison/holy, which makes it very annoying. 1st argument against: ???? ========================================================================================================= I'll edit this thread to add new arguments and and why they don't make sense if needed. For now, hope you enjoyed reading everything and have a great day/night. PS: I would really appreciate if a GM could check out my bug report and tell me if those are indeed bugs or not. (https://royals.ms/forum/threads/broken-skills.107787/) I never played a Pre-BB AM before so I'm not sure if all of them are bugs or not, I'd just like a confirmation to know if the ones reported as bugs aren't bugs, and if fixing the current bugs will happen.
I am a little bit suspicious about the 2nd debunk though. I don't know much about paladin, but I think if the damage of paralyze is doubled, it might be as good as DrK's spear crusher and hero's brandish. Since I have only played Bishop and NL, a lot of the numbers below are just guesses. Please correct me if they are wrong. Paralyze has a cast time of 720 ms. I assume you are LV16X and well-funded, but do not have end-game gears yet. I saw in one of your posts that your paralyze dealt maximum of 50K damage, so I assume normally your paralyze deal 30-40K damage. If you are at end-game status, paralyze may do 50-60K damage. Doubling that (as you suggested) would be 60-80K damage middle-game and 100K-120K damage end-game every 720 ms. Brandish has a cast time of 690 ms using stonetooth sword. From my Zaking experience, a hero at your level and funding will do 30-40K damage per line with their brandish (so 60K-80K in total). I have also seen end-game well-funded Herod doing 60-70K per line (so 120-140K in total). With SE they can do 90K lines, but paralyze also benefits from SE, so we don't need to account for SE in this comparison. As you can see, if these numbers are accurate, paralyze buffed to 200% damage is comparable to brandish. Spear crusher has a cast time of 930 ms with sky ski. From my experience, DrKs at your level and funding will do 25-35K lines in spear crusher, which is 75-105K damage total. Discounted by the longer casting time, you can see spear crusher is also comparable to your buffed version of paralyze. I haven't bossed with end-game DrKs, so I will not say anything about it. Of course, these numbers could be wildly off, and I welcome any feedback. However, if they are moderately accurate, then buffing paralyze's damage to 200% would make F/P comparable to DrK and heroes in terms of bossing, which is unfair as stated in your 2nd argument against the change. Overall, I am not against buffing paralyze and chain lightening by a small amount, such as 10% to 20%. But buffing their damage by 100%, as suggested in this post, may be too much. I am also not against adding elemental reset. I am tired of all my Bishop's skills doing 1 damage to Bigfoot because it's holy immune.
That was on Lyka, the (only) weak to poison boss out there. If we want to talk about elemental bonuses, the only boss I know atm weak to something is Krexel (fire), and Paladins got fire charge. Normally my Paralyze does ~27k to ~33k, and if I were better funded maybe a 5k more? Gear doesn't affect AMs that much since the magic formula here is 1 INT=1MATK. Nope, as I explained it, Paralyze can only do up to ~70k damage with maxed out magic. Atm, no one is there yet, and the closest person is still a good ~200 magic away from that (In levels that would be like getting to lvl 240 if that were possible). But you're basing off that 50k damage, like I said, on something weak to poison. So its faster than Paralyze. Thing is, with the damage mentioned, that's a end-game well-funded Hero only (Pretty sure there's quite a few out there) not a Hero who has reached damage cap/max damage range, while the numbers given for Paralyze is for someone that has maxed out magic and no one has it. Mhmm, didn't know about Spear Crusher being slower than Paralyze. For that point I'd have to give it to you, but you're saying atm a level 16x Drk can do up to 35k per line while my current Paralyze can only do up to 35k total (A bit lower tbh, but lets use 35k). Doubling that will still put it behind. Also, like I already said, any class out there using a attack range has the potential (Not saying it will happen), but the potential to hit the damage cap while with Paralyze atm, its a 70k cap no matter what, and 140k if you double that. Personally when I first thought of buffing Para/CL, I never considered adding lines to it but only increasing the current basic attack to X amount. But after seeing another PS doing this, I thought it was pretty good idea, especially for those of us that were used to seeing several lines on Paralyze (#Nostalgia) to get an extra line. But like I said, I'm open to any discussion about how to improve Para/CL to make it noticeably better than their full map nuke in 1v1 situation. I thank you for explaining your disagreement and hope that others will do too (Already seeing a quite a few voting without any arguments. Learn to readdddd people please. ) Oh and: Awesome mate.
Thanks for the explanation. I didn't know the 50K damage you did to Lyka had elemental bonus. That changes things. If your paralyze only does 27-33K right now, and 5K more at end-game, then I don't mind adding another line to it. I will change my vote.
Oh nope, that 5k more was if I was funded at my current level. The current person with the highest magic in Royals (Level 200 with ~1700 magic I think), would still do ~50k damage if she were a F/P. In this case the top "F/P" would still do a 100k with lines doubled, which some could argue that its not far behind a end-game, well-funded Hero enough, but there's barely any improvement room left due to the magic formula in Royals. Also, I haven't done much research, but from checking out videos on YouTube I can confirm that at least one Hero can do 100k per Brandish line, so even if he were the top Hero, that's 200k vs 100k (With Para being doubled) + Brandish being slightly faster + Heroes being tankier.
Just gonna briefly mention, since you've brought up how warriors are much tankier than mages; I own both a hero and a bishop, my hero being washed to 30k hp and my bishop being washed to 8k hp 30k mp. Even if you count in achilles, my hero is still more squishy than my bishop, because 8k hp 30k mp in conjunction with magic guard is practically the same as 38k hp, meaning mages can not only be considered the tankiest class, but is also the 2nd cheapest class to wash (i spent ~6b on washing bish vs ~4b for hero). I wouldn't say its a fair comparison to say warriors have an advantage in tankiness when mages literally have that same advantage, it's just that no one here actually wash their mages. I'm basically saying you cant expect to be as good as other classes without putting in the same effort As for your main point; as a fellow mage player i honestly really don't care about either paralyze or chain lightning. If I'm ever bossing on one of my arch mages again it would be at Horntail hitting all targets with meteor/blizzard which would be way better damage regardless. Not saying using paralyze is wrong or anything, just sharing my opinion. Realistically, paralyze/CL getting double lines is never gonna happen as we have never changed any skills away from standard v62/83. Only thing that realistically would ever be considered would be a slight buff to paralyze/cl to match v83/86s increase in blizzards/meteors damage
Just right there. Washed. Even though its the trend to wash all your characters in Royals, that is not how the game was made to be played and class balance shouldn't include that. If that were the case, you could say every class is equally tanky because they can all HP wash. The famous/infamous Magic Guard. With it, a AM can tank a lot of hits indeed. As soon as it gets dispelled though... 1 hit from pretty much anything and bye bye. Even in several patches after Big Bang, AMs became known as class-canons; high DPS but very squishy, because of that very Magic Guard. Without it we're pretty much dead meat. Of course, if you bring HP washing into this again, you could say a AM could tank a hit, but imo, that shouldn't one of the elements used in arguments like this since that is not how the class/game was designed. HT is not currently in the game, but even if there is HT, very few people manage to get into a HT run. As someone who is part of the elite in Royal, HT would be a common thing in your group, but for the average player out there it isn't. So what other bosses left has multiple targets? Only one I can think of is Zakum's arms, and that is just a minor portion of Zakum's HP. Every other other boss out there, Papulatus, Anego, Big Foot, Headless Horseman, Pianus, Lyka, Dodo, Lilynouch, etc.. is a single target boss where our single hit skill should be better in theory but in practice isn't always the case. That isn't logical, but its indeed the only reasonable reason I can think of why my suggestion wouldn't happen. But as a server wants to improve, it will evolve and change over time, all I can is hope. At the end of the day, your house, your rules / your server, your rules and I totally get it. I did some digging for threads from previous years and I was surprised seeing that with the skills update, Meteor/Blizzard was buffed while Paralyze/Chain Lightning wasn't. This clearly shows a bias towards people who play other classes and only make AMs to farm/sell leech. Someone who truly mains a AM wouldn't mind working a tiny bit harder to 1 hit their end-game training map while someone who wants to make money off them would want to 1 hit the good maps asap then move on to another class. If a buff to v86 could happen for all AM skills; just having that 210 -> 240 Paralyze and 200%->1000% Mana Reflection would give a small DPS boost already, as an example. Or for all underrated classes, since from what I heard Paladins have it a lot better in v86.
Mages are tankier or equivalent in tankiness without washing when compared to unwashed characters of literally any other class as well, being able to tank up to 11.5k or so without any washing at all (judging from my own bishop). So, in situations where comparative funding is considered, mages are at least as tanky as any other class in the game, if not moreso. In addition, every element mage gets percent damage reduction of associated elemental damage should they choose to max that skill, which matches Warrior Achilles and Dragon Knight's Partial Resistance. Spoiler: Unwashed Bishop HP - Level 189 I'm aware that Dispel is a function, and it occurs in only two bossing situations, I believe, being Papulatus only at short ranges, and Horntail after certain HP thresholds. Papulatus' dispel is entirely avoidable and Horntail gives Archmages a lot of targets to hit for DPS increase as it is. By asking to buff the 1v1 damage of Archmages, you are quite literally asking for v83 Maplestory to have Archmages play differently than how the class/game was designed as well. The difference is that HP washing was a legitimate part of v83 Maplestory and was possible even in the original game, thus arguably part of game design, and this sort of buff was not considered until a complete and total gameplay overhaul. There have been a grand total of about four serious bossing Archmages in my memory of this server - Wolfix/Ulfur, KiciaF3, Magcargo and nkfgqwcseaji - and I have personally had experience with them all at Horntail, and also heard of them being accepted to Horntail runs hosted by other members. I have also personally HT'd with a few other mages who were not serious about playing the characters, but did want to experience fighting Horntail from that class. If you are serious about playing your character, no matter what it is, people will take you. Your claim that nobody takes them is unfounded in our community and goes against real evidence of runs. If you take a look at Horntail Runs I hosted personally two years ago, you'll notice that more Archmages were taken to my runs than Shadowers, Buccaneers or Paladins. For the record, Zakum's arms total 218.1mil HP - this is equal to just under half (45.2%) of all of Zakum's total HP. Your claim that it's a minor portion of Zakum's HP is just wrong. This is showing a clear bias towards the strengths of the class - Archmages are good at mobbing. I don't think it's fair to say that it's biased against the character and holding it back nearly as much as the general class design is. Someone who truly mains an AM, having played all three to above level 180, just said that they don't really care about Chain Lightning and Paralyze at all. It's really uncool to discredit his opinion because it disagrees with you. For what it's worth, I think that Chain Lightning and Paralyze should be increased in base damage to the point where it's clear cut better than Blizzard/Meteor on one target and nothing more than that. Making the attacks hit twice instead of once can create unintended pinning mechanics that Archmages were not intended to achieve, and overbuffing the skills will devalue other characters that are currently and should always be stronger than Archmages 1v1 by virtue of not having access to the phenomenal grinding ability that Archmages have.
Plenty of groups will accept Arch Mages for boss runs, hell, even @danman keeps saying that he wishes he could find an awesome AM who would use skills other than their ultimate for boss runs. Just so you know, back in gMS, Bishop and any mobbing class (NL, Hero etc.) was pretty much THE thing to do at skeles, so by saying that they have no right to be in said map or any other map where AM/Bishops train is kind of silly. I wouldn't really be against buffing AM but they also don't really need it, at the end of the day if a group won't let you join a boss run because you're an AM, find another group or start your own!
Aye. Didn't double check my facts when saying that and I guess I was wrong. My bad. ---- ---- Ok, I get it, two of the major bosses have multiple targets and Horntail is the biggest/most important one out there, but they're not the only ones either. I know a lot of you guys think all the others are useless, but they're still part of this game and fun to some (At least me). ---- But... ---- My bad then. I guess I just have a bad experience running into people who only make AMs for their farming abilities so I jumped the gun. If you feel offended Martin, I apologize. Its just that over the years Paralyze and Chain Lightning (Especially CL) has been the main skill every AM would use and I was slightly offended that people kept dissing it. ---- First part I could maybe agree with it, but the second part is just false and I've explained why in my original post. If I got my facts wrong, feel free to point them out. ---- That was a semi joke towards the people that were saying AMs should never boss. Also, back in GMS every class was grinding too (Unlike here people usually either leech/boss only) and bossing on a AM wasn't being ridiculed. If you're not one that would use that 5th argument, just ignored that debunk. ---- This isn't just about getting into a boss run because I'd just go with friends/guilmates, but what can I contribute to it. With the strength of my current 1v1 skill, very little.
I felt the need to call out the incorrect facts as well as the disrespectful comment towards one of my best friends here, now that you’ve acknowledged them and apologized to him, which I’m happy for, I don’t have much more to say except these two points; 1) Bossing classes do indeed grind mobs, in combination with Mages, generally at Temple of Time but also occasionally at Petrifighters and Dragon Nest Left Behind. Is it efficient? No, but they still can. Night Lord grinding is actually the fastest when using Triple Throw at Temple of Time, and likely everywhere else as well. Source; level 200 Night Lord player, about 20 hours of testing grinding strategies. Perhaps not the most extensive research, but I’m confident in my results. On the same token, Archmages grind and mob stronger, both in bossing scenarios as well as farming, and lack the 1v1 capabilities in both as well. Your logic implies that we should also buff Arrow Rain/Explosion, Avenger, Battleship Torpedo and Air Strike as well, not enough to be stronger than mage grinding, but enough to be closer. 2) I want to make sure you fully understand what I mean when I say overbuffed, since you cut off my quote after that word. Mages should still be last in 1v1 DPS after any considered buff. It would be hugely unfair for Archmages to be stronger 1v1 than classes like Paladins or Buccaneers - Buccaneers because they’re already grossly underpowered with their only saving grace being a unique and powerful party buff, and Paladins because making elemental mages stronger than Paladins innately devalues the entire class’ design of being able to optimize damage against elemental weaknesses that no other worthwhile attacker can otherwise take advantage of. I think that Archmages were classes designed in this version of Maplestory to be the most powerful mobbing character and that is their identity. Playing the character in unintended ways shouldn’t be better than class balance dictates. I don’t think it should be as terrible as it currently is, but it should not be better than any other class in the game that does not have a 15hit fullscreen ultimate.
I think it's reading too much in to it to say "class X was designed for purpose Y" because it's Nexon we're talking about. These are the same developers who created Final Attack (lol), created countless other useless skills, and probably unintentionally created HP washing. I completely agree that if Arch Mages were as good as Paladins/Shadowers/Buccs, it would be incredibly unfair. But, that's not what OP is suggesting. In my opinion, it's pretty lame that the only "value" an Arch Mage brings is funding an attacker. But, that's more of an issue of lack of end game content than class balance. So, I don't think it's possible to solve this issue without adding custom content.
Alright, I'll take your word on that and say that I was wrong about that point. What I'm saying is that any class's mobbing skill shouldn't be better than their bossing skill in terms of DPS. Same vice-versa. No bossing skill should be better in terms of grinding then their mobbing skill. I compared them to Paladins, who are the weakest non-magic class atm. Apart from with SE, just the class as itself alone, Paladins will still be stronger than AMs. If you think that case makes makes AMs OP, I'm totally down for a lesser buff. Even if we kept the 2x damage to Para/CL without doubling its lines (210 -> 420 and 180 -> 360), that would never let AMs surpass Paladins but still give them a significant damage boost. Worse case scenario, if we'd only get that 30 attack+ on Paralyze and 800%+ on Mana Reflection, that would be a nice small DPS boost already and wouldn't go against what the staff has in mind with keeping this a v86 or sub server when it comes to class skills. Like I said, the idea of x2 Para/CL came to my mind since I saw another PS doing it and it seemed to work fine there + with some research, I'd figure it wouldn't throw off the balance of classes in Royals either.
I'm about 70% sure that Buccaneer over long periods of time are weaker than Paladins are using Holy element against neutral enemies, but that's pending testing. So long as the math works out that no class is behind Archmages in 1v1 DPS unless they're hindering themselves in some way, like non-zerking DrK who are worse than Archmages are even currently, fun fact, I don't see the problem with an uptuning in Chain Lightning and Paralyze. I think the 1v1 power of the classes should be on those skills, not Mana Reflection, but that's a difference of opinion so I'll digress.
