We all know the most efficient class for grinding and making mesos is the Bishop. The most common way to build your bishop is taking the LUKless route. This means you are giving up on most items that require LUK and use very specific items, and the endgame weapons being Elemental wands. That has made me wonder, should bishops, who are already known for being slightly overpowered compared to other types of magicians, use elemental wands, which don't require any LUK, and are supposed to be used by ELEMENTAL MAGES. Isn't that the entire the point of the weapon? Cover for the imbalance between the 3 types of magicians and boost certain elements? In this version in GMS Elemental wands were rarely used by Bishops because of the -25% holy damage penalty, which doesn't work in MapleRoyals. This penalty had been created to prevent Bishops from using these unique wands, for the mere fact they're just TOO GOOD on bishops. In my opinion, this penalty should be added to this server as well to make better balance between the 3 magicians. Now I know this suggestion raises another problem, since a lot of bishops have already spent a lot of resources to get their elemental wands. To counter this issue, I suggest compensating any bishop who scrolled an elemental wand/staff by giving them a complete AP reset for free, and the option to transfer the scrolled stats on to a regular level 70/110 wand/staff depending on which Elemental Wand/Staff they have scrolled.
Elemental Wands weren't nerfed for Bishops until they had other viable staves/wands. I don't remember any Bishop in v83+ (when they were nerfed) using a Diamond Wand or Blue Marine. (or their Dragon counterparts). Also I think the balance has been pretty balanced with the release of Temple of Time and Ulu City, which sees a preference to Arch Mages, as they hit more than Bishops. Bishops were only more OP, when the end-game mob was holy-weak. Many people have already started to create HS mules, which arguably makes Bishops useless.
Due to the new Ulu maps, it is arguable that archmages are faster grinders than bishops or at the very least at the same level. Therefore, bishops are not really that overpowered and definitely do not need to be nerfed.
We are looking into nerfing some of the Ulu maps, although nothing is final. OT: You have my full support on this, Wolf. It's not just the fact that an overpowered weapon combined with an arguably overpowered class results in something... well, too strong for my liking. It's not just the fact that they are too strong in my opinion, but also the fact that the weapons do not function the way they were intended to. Pretty much every Bishop used Doomsday Staves when Ele Wands/Staves were not an option. Doomsday Staves are in the game files.
Ima have to call BullShit on @Joong and @wolf posts. (No offense) Bishops aint op, thats clearly BULL SHIT. How? Here are the reasons~ 1. Both archmages already have extra 20% dmg from 3rd job passive amplifier skill. 2. Elemental staffs give them both like an extra 10% dmg 3. Bishop don't have any amplifier skill at any job, no dmg buffs. 4. Bishops dont have any dmg benefits from element wands beside the extra MA. 5. BISHOPS ARENT THE ONLY MAGES THAT GO LUKLESS AND USE ELEWANDS (most of the archmages are using elewands as well) 6. No matter where bishops go, Archmages always outdmg bishops by alot. 7. Bishops require way more funding 8. The only reason why you consider bishops op, is because they have HS. Well HS only makes up the dmg difference they lack against archmages. How many bishops do you see, that can 1hit ko skele? A FEW How many archmages do you see that can 1hit ko skele? A LOT, (IDK about you, but most of the time i see archmages farming at skele, wether they are i/l or f/p they 1hit skeles. Edit: Its bullshit if you say bishops can make more mesos than archmages. All archmages can just make a HS mule, and level it up to 81 and sell leech anywere. The leecher and atker still get the same exp as (a bishop selling leech to a leecher). a level 81 priest wont be able to leech the exp from squids and up, so therefore archmages can still profit more than bishops if they just make a hs mule
Archmages also have a booster skill 8( Every Mage used Doomsday Staves before Elemental weapons came out. When Elewands came out, they were bugged for about 20 patches until they were fixed (hence why it's bugged in v62), and by the time Nexon fixed it, Bishops already had alternative weapons. In your scenario, Arch Mages will benefit from the high magic attack of a level 130/163 weapons with amplified damage, while you are telling Bishops to go back to a level 102 weapon without any amplified damage??
I think that if we were going to introduce the elemental penalty on Elemental Wands/Staves, it should have been done straight after the wipe. Now is far too late, and giving Bishops/Priests/Clerics a free AP reset and a high level luk weapon just doesn't cut it. (It would need to be Priests and Clerics, too, if they already have, like I do, scrolled, semi-scrolled and clean Elemental Wands/Staves in their inventory, waiting to be used.) Remember, Maple Warrior boosts your base stats, and when you take that into account, having a high amount of base luk is a big minus. Also, there will no doubt be those who have spent a lot of money scrolling low level mage overalls which they are able to wear thanks to the free luk from their zhelm and Deputy Star. In the later versions of pre-BB Maple, Maple Pyrope weapons were, if memory serves, widely available, and in GMS, there were the Visitor weapons, which came in a variety of levels and had no luk requirement. I recall there being relatively few Luk Bishops in EMS (I quit GMS at version 0.4x) and those that did go this route mainly used Timeless/Reverse weapons. (Which dropped plentifully from Premium Mini-Dungeons along with Miracle Scrolls and level 30 Mastery Books - seriously, Maple Royals feels more like "real" old-school Maple pre-BB EMS did!) As far as I can tell, there are more Bishops on this server than there are members of any other individual job class, and that's a lot of people to mess around with and potentially lose for a move that doesn't actually improve anything for other job classes. If anyone is concerned that their Arch Mage is underpowered, I'd far rather we boosted Arch Mages (and perhaps other classes such as Paladins, who don't fare that well in v0.62) than nerfed Bishops. This would be a lot less work and would, I think, cause a lot less ill-feeling. Or we could leave things just as they are.
Didn't EW's/ES's get negatively affect bishops in the Big Bang patch, anyway? (which would be v86 not v62) When they were first released (EW/ES) they didn't nerf bishops. Edit: Ulu City/ToT is also a better place for arch mages to train so I feel like that more or less balances it out since they aren't holy-weak monsters.
There are WAY more issues that the GMs can go into other than debuffing Bishops and I'm not saying that because I'm a Bishop myself (Although being one does make me a little bit upset that Arch Mages don't get as many perks as Bishops do).
Personally I think booster, and weapon amplifier more than makes up for discrepancies. Late game arch mages with the same amount of magic can hit well over 100k with their ultimates. This allows them to effectively one hit just about any mob, where as late game bishops can barely hit this amount, and only at skeles. One hitting dukus for example is possible for an arch mage with around 1350 magic, the amount that a bishop would need to one hit skeles. And the experience even without HS from dukus would be a bit better than skeles even with hs. And in a duo, an arch mage at dukus with hs would far outlevel a bishop duo at skeles. And this is just one example. Arch mages are not limited to any single mob where as bishops are reliant on skeles.
