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

The bucc nerf was addressing the fact that they were quite overpowered for what they were: a class that excelled at basically everything with high damage, high survivability, easy to wash and extremely powerful/essential utility. It was a deserved nerf however an incomplete one that left an extremely bad aftertaste in terms of how satisfying the class feels to play. I think multiclienting is a separate issue that needs to be addressed and limited. It's not a healthy feature for the game and it only caters to the turbo sweats that are obsessed with optimisation and prioritise it over fun gameplay. As I mentioned, it's already a fundamental part of Royals so it's something that cannot simply be removed as that would be similar to rug-pulling as an example, but it definitely needs to be neutered by a certain degree.

 

right it's been suggested for over 7 years now. I say letting lvl 200 chars break cap is good, but this terrible hero buff will only make the cap break crowd louder

 

It really isn't terrible. Allowing more classes to become viable in the endgame is insanely beneficial for the game, especially considering how stagnant Royals has been for years. This update was a small but significant step in the right direction and if it continues to improve by adding more classes onto this list, it is healthy progression for the game. I just hope to God the devs measure the impact and success of these updates by actual, meaningful metrics like average, active player count (as in ACTUAL players, not the number of clients open), rather than paying attention to whether buck tooth Timmy who has spent 20,000 hrs into this game (crude joke, not referring to anyone specifically) is whinging on the forums about how he's seeing slightly smaller numbers when playing his favourite class.

 

ah I may not have expressed it well enough. I am not saying NLs shouldn't get the buff I just wanted to know how he came up with a 20% increase for avenger. Not referring to NLs in particular but for all changes. Just out of curiosity on how they calculate thats all.

 

QOL Wishlist changes for phase 2:

Echo of Hero (Extended Range)
Shadow Stars (Undispellable)

 

F/P's design philosophy is terrible

1. Paralyze: This skill is so unbelievably awful I genuinely don't understand what was going through Wizet/Nexon's mind when they made it.
IDK if it me being spoiled by Post BB mages but what logical reason is there for this skill to be single target?
If you use it for Bosses the stun it has just doesn't work and if you actually wanted to meaningfully crowd control mobs you'd just use Elquines + Fire Demon. The only positive I have is that at least it seems to work on all non bosses regardless of Poison immunity and lasts 15 seconds? Its also the slowest Mage ST skill too and it requires a booster

2. Meteor: Why is this the same damage as Blizzard? Fire has always been stronger than Ice, this is the tradeoff for having the worse secondary element.
Please revert this skill to do 20 skill damage more than Blizzard.

3. Elemental Staves: (For all mages but still) These have such a high luk requirement for literally 0 return, I get they follow the same luk formula as all the other weapons but you need to Gach for these (or Toad). I think a good fix would be to just -23 from the luk requirement for both the 103 and 163 variants. This way there is still some challenge to equip these weapons if you want to be lukless and still have the best damage output(Can also just leave them be if the goal is that we need to Auf an A/M to benefit but LOL)
This affects F/Ps because for some ungodly reason Explosion is tied to weapon speed, the weapons you have to use from 70-200 have slow attack speed...

4. Booster: The worst booster in the game by far, this skill is so slow and clunky its actually comical.
If you macro this with Meditate and even so much as sneeze during the macro, Meditate just wont get casted. There have been times where I've had to pause for a few seconds when fighting bosses because this macro decides it just does not want to work.
Not as big of a deal though cause ropes improve cast time but in cases where you don't have one its genuinely painful. (Cant even put it so that Meditate casts before Booster cause meditate has the same problem)

5. Poison: I wont even explain anything, look up how many monsters are resistant/immune to this element then look at the monsters that are weak to it.
Now compare it to Holy/Ice/Lightning/Fire. Try not to laugh. Your main Single target skill's element btw.

The only thing this class has going for it over I/L is Bearwolves and a fast 80-120.

 

1. Yeah this one is on Nexon, making the skill that doesn't care about damage in 2nd-3rd job into your main single target attack is... poor choice. But I assumed they thought fire demon would deal with the elemental stuff aside from bosses.

2. In the past and even in GMS, fire was stronger than blizzard (especially blizzard can freeze), Royals had meteor at 620 and blizzard at 600, and then reverted both to 570 said because "it didn't work out quite well". - Im assuming this is because of the role of an AM back then (and now) being a farmer and leecher, hence if FP can 1hitko Petrifighter and skele easier, who even need I/L?.

3. Meh, quite small issue when everyone is just poison training and teleport can be used when casting explosion.

4. This and shadow partner having super slow cast time, not sure why. I just hop on ropes to cast it faster but no harm in reducing it's cast time.

FP is more popular than IL at this time due to farming - much easier ulti quest, faster 3rd job, popular farming location being ice strong mobs (icy valley)

 

Bucc did indeed have those strong points in the past — but as with almost all of my suggestions, I believe that rather than directly nerfing certain multi-client playstyles (e.g. drop rate reductions, nerfs), it's better to use mechanics or content to naturally steer players toward fewer-client play (1-hit-kill, Sair-like skill sets, more VL drops) — or to approach it through cooperative design: if every class has something truly unique to offer, parties naturally move toward complementary synergy where 1+1>2, rather than simply treating each class as a DPS meter.
On the topic of nerfs — rather than nerfing the 2 strongest classes out of 12, I'd lean toward buffing the other 10. Nerfing is of course also valid; it's just not my personal preference.

• That said, nerfing Smoke — reducing intra-class cooperation rather than inter-class cooperation — is a good change.
• My suggestion for Bucc is to make the rotation more complex, so that balance doesn't have to come at the cost of DPS — similar to Sair.
  
• The approach of "this class is too strong, lower its DPS a bit; that class is too weak, raise its DPS a bit" has no end. Let's get back to the essence of a cooperative game as soon as possible — reinforce each class's unique identity and push out new content.

 

I've been playing I/L in as serious a manner as I can and here are my thoughts on bossing archmage. It is becoming increasingly obvious that anyone who says that arch mages would be overpowered if they had good, or even okay DPS has never seriously attempted to boss with one.

1. the most obvious problem. DISPEL. many bosses have dispel, and you are especially vulnerable to dispels that are not applied as part of a damaging attack because there are no iframes that give you a window to react to. this is a minor annoyance for most classes, but it's instant death for you. so already, you're getting vibe-checked in the same manner as a DK during your boss run, with the same punishment for failing.

2. this is less common, but dmg reflect kills you instantly because it penetrates magic guard. even a lesser DR like lilynouch can deal 2.2k directly to your HP bar. if there are plans to add magic reflect to bosses in the future, just keep in mind that the punishment is far, far worse than physical reflect. there's no mainstream boss that casts zombify and most bishops don't cast heal during boss fights anyway, but that kills you too.

3. you have the worst avoidability in the game. if corsairs were suffering from weak DEX>avoid scaling, then where does that leave archmages who have NO SCALING? at least you have teleport to reposition without interrupting your attacks, but if you have to stand on a tiny-ass platform to attack then this doesn't work. I actually like the dynamic of teleporting while attacking, it's just frustrating when the map design cucks you.

4. you can only attack with one element. aren't you supposed to have two elements? no, it turns out that ice demon takes 30 SP to deal the same single-target damage with the same cast speed as COLD BEAM. you cannot viably attack with single-target ice. don't get me wrong, chain lightning is a good skill (at least during early 4th job). when it's hitting weakness, I/L is completely fine. but lightning weakness is at best 1/3 of most boss fights, and there are also lightning resistances for some reason. I'm pretty sure F/P has it worse, but still. maybe the master of lightning, who have lightning in their NAME, should deal more lightning damage than the class that uses all elements (that the developers were somewhat serious about, lol poison). and maybe super-effective ice should deal more DPS than neutral lightning, just sayin'

5. at least there's no SP dilemma like the one newly added for DK. both I/L and F/P can max a theoretical buffed magic armor by dropping points from thunder spear and poison breath, respectively. however, if elecomp is also buffed, FP will have major SP problems, and I/L will run into issues as well because you can't use SP resets to move SP from thunderbolt to magic armor even though that should be possible when assigning SP after levelup.

tl;dr mages suffer from more sources of instant death than any other class, they have no avoid, and they have one attacking element with no viable non-elemental options. even if you gave them better DPS, even if it were to the point that they were no longer at the bottom of the DPS chart, they would still have major problems

as for proposed buffs, I would add a damage multiplier to infinity. i don't have an immediate complaint about chain lightning DPS under ideal conditions, it's mainly the lack of versatility bringing it down. ice demon needs to be buffed to the point that I/L would be seriously considered as a duo partner for shao, who is weak to ice. i would also consider a stance effect on mana reflection, against magic attacks only of course

 

I only play bowmaster and haven't even reached 4th job yet, and while I feel the buff to quivers is a nice upgrade, I still am very scared about being nothing but an SE mule late game because we just do less damage than everyone else. Being able to solo boss early stuff is nice, and am looking forward to that, but I am kinda not excited to just join parties for my SE and always feel like I'm lacking in damage, especially since we have poor mobbing and don't even do well at single target damage, which is the whole point of the class to begin with... It just feels discouraging and I hope to see more BM/MM buffs in phase 2.

And while I don't play MM it'd be fun to see more people play them, they deserve love too. All archers need some help to stay relevant, it feels kinda degrading to exist only for SE.