In Discussion Class/Skill [Feedback Request] Skill Changes and Balancing

Hello procrastinya

Since I have said that I will talk about this topic soon, I am obliqued.

Regarding DPS of Meteor, Blizzard, from my rough estimation, assuming it does 1/3 of avg ST DPS of attackers on 1 target ( on apple and on cheese and on elementally weak ), so on 9 targets it does 3 times of avg ST DPS of attackers which is equivalent to sth like DK that can hit 3 targets.

But classes like pally, bucc can do better than DK in golems, so on 9 targets, skills like Meteor/Blizzard loses to pally/bucc DPS wise, that why I said " on 10-11-targets ( VL Golems ) classes like pally bucc shad mm could potentially out DPS archmages.

Moreover, in practice, skills like Meteor, Blizzard, and also Genesis are hard to be used in VL especially in B3

Regarding Fire/Ice Demon, in order to make this skill to be sth like best 6 targets in the game and making mages attractive enough for VL runs AOE-wise, we might need its DPS ( on ST ) to be as much as 90%-95% of Hero, MM ( on elementally weak )

For skills like Paralyze, CL, which are single target skills, which are supposed to be stronger than Fire/Ice Demon on ST, should be stronger than Fire/Ice Demon on ST but just a little bit otherwise it will reach Hero's, MM's ST

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It might become like this in VL :

We might assign Mini Golems weak against Fire, Holy and Gargos weak against Ice, Holy
So FP will be doing well at Golems and IL will be doing well at Gargos ( Using Fire/Ice Demon )
IL will be doing well with Golems too, and likewise FP will be doing well at Gargos too because Elemental penalty gets reduced to 20-15% from my proposal.

On VL itself, FP will be using Paralyze, IL will be using CL. But when it comes to Golems Gargos FP will be using Fire Demon and IL will be using Ice Demon. Moreover, FP, IL could use Meteor, Blizzard against Golems to aggro them. You can see that archmages would be using many skills interchangeably, which is different from many classes and gonna be their interesting unique identity.

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On gear scaling curve, I don't worry much about that since I think it's not too hard problem to be solved,
Regarding "95% on 2b or 50b ?", not sure yet, probably on 2b so on 50b they will be weaker, giving attackers respect as carries in late game.

Regarding source-code technical issue, I don't think It's too hard to be fixed, I don't even worry about it.

With this comment and that earlier relative comment, It might be sufficient alr on this topic ( for now ).

 

If it's confirmed that mages have a gentler scaling curve than WA classes, then I can personally accept 90% at 2B (but not 90% at 50B) — though beyond the numbers, there's still the issue of all players' acceptance, which may require keeping it as low as 70%–80% (or even lower) initially, then evaluating whether to adjust upward to 90%–95% (at 2B) based on the gear market, boss party composition, and player feedback.

As for VL — The output of Meteor Shower/Blizzard is already higher than a Genesis on the same TMA on gargo/golem , so I don't think gargo/golem have to be adjusted. However, Mage is as a class featured in AoE, perhaps buffing ice/fire Demon to outperform Meteor Shower/Blizzard in Gargo events (roughly 4–6 mob situations) would be enough — while still keeping it weaker than CL/Paralyze.

Given that CL is an AoE, making it so that CL is used in single-target while Demon is used at 6 mobs makes balancing Ice Demon quite difficult — Fire Demon is much more easy. Also, since Paralyze is single-target, it should be slightly stronger than CL.

There's also the Wand 5/6 swap and Wand 7/8 swap playstyle during HT/VL to consider, so all adjustments should be made relative to the corresponding elemental wand.

((Does anyone else know what BigBang feels like to use?))
If the combination of CL/Paralyze and Big Bang reaches 90% against an elemental weak target (at 2B), then against a non-elemental weak target, since Big Bang is non-elemental (?), the output wouldn't drop all the way to 60% — it would land somewhere between 60% and 90% depending on how strong Big Bang is. Similar to Strafe + Snipe (MM).

 

Just to speak on Big Bang the skill feels somewhat okay for I/L because its our only non elemental skill past 1st job so it has some niche use cases. I kind of just use it when I want to mess around farming cards though.

The charging mechanic makes the skill kind of useless for I/L for F/P I imagine its a little better though.
The hitbox is also kinda bad but if we intend for it to be for bossing summon killing purposes its perfectly fine as is. I'd say the range is probably roughly around Explosions size?

If we want it to be an actual skill in rotation, quicker charge/removing charge altogether would be a nice little buff.

I only have 1 point in it though because as it is right now its just not very worth using compared to CL/Blizzard so take this with a grain of salt.

 

I would suggest adding a CD/ removing charge requirement/ increasing the damage which is similar to MM's Snipe or Pally's Heaven's Hammer (HH), allowing one powerful melee attack every 5–20 seconds.