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

MMs will not agree with that, but I know your "SE" means BM here.
So let's talk about BM.
1. BM is more interesting than Drk in RG, I use Hurricane, Inferno, Arrow Rain, Dragon's Breath, Arrow Bomb(before nerf), and even Strafe. When I play Drk, I only use Crusher and Rush.
2. Archers can jump+move+shoot (same way as mage telecasting)
3. The reason BM only uses Hurricane during boss runs is that our multi target skills only outperform Hurricane when they hit more than 5 targets. If they could deal more damage than Hurricane when hitting 4 targets, it would greatly increase gameplay variety.

Archers are not just a "support class". we are also attackers.
You can also replace "SE" in your statement with anything else, such as:
I don't want to see a support class (Rage) becoming a super dominant damage dealer, as I said, it's a game of tradeoffs, and Rages suppose to be weaker, because they amplify everyone else in the party.
I don't want to see a support class (CR) becoming a super dominant damage dealer, as I said, it's a game of tradeoffs, and CRs suppose to be weaker, because they amplify everyone else in the party.
I don't want to see a support class (Smoke) becoming a super dominant damage dealer, as I said, it's a game of tradeoffs, and Smokers suppose to be weaker, because they protect everyone else in the party.
I don't want to see a support class (SI) becoming a super dominant damage dealer, as I said, it's a game of tradeoffs, and SIs suppose to be weaker, because they amplify everyone else in the party.
I don't want to see a support class (HB) becoming a super dominant damage dealer, as I said, it's a game of tradeoffs, and HBs suppose to be weaker, because they amplify everyone else's HP in the party. (Drks: WTF...)

The reason so many people think Archers are just "support class" is becuase our damage is weak af, and SE is the only thing we have left.
In my opinion:
As a single target class, BM should only be weaker than NL and Sair.
As a multi target class, MM should deal roughly the same damage as Warriors and other multi target classes.

 

Yes, there are more supportive classes with weaker damage by design, that offer party buffs, and stronger classes that don't offer those. For example, the bucc is supporting with extra fire rate, by design they were weaker, the corsair and NL are damage, they have the highest damage output in the game for single target of course, there are mobbers like the Heroes and the DK that have the multi target damage, and then you have the mages who don't boss, they are designed for map farming. You can argue with this design of the game, but it is what it is. What happens when a support class becomes "too strong" (obviously it's all a function of how rich you are in game) you see less damage players, you see less NLs you see less corsairs. As I said, each character has content that fits it more by design, making everything fit perfectly for everything would drop the different playstyles. For example, if next update DKs now on par with NLs in damage output. Why would anyone make NL? You have a multi-target warrior that can perform as well as NL, or making corsair having the same dmg as BM. We have the range class, one doesn't need to mount and dismount to maximize single target damage, the other one, has hurricane and and AOE skills (inferno, arrow bomb...). You do not want the game to collapse to 1 class, that's why in the past we called it "NL Story" because everyone played NL because it was just the best for everything.
Yes, I don't want to see a support class (any of what you mentioned except for smoke, smoke is a skill of the shadower who has high damage, arguably highest dps in the game if you throw some money) becoming too strong because it will make another bucc era in the game.
Smokescreen isn't a requirement to kill things faster, it just saves you potions, just like I wouldn't consider NL a support because it has haste.
It would sound weird but if you want to see variety, different party compositions for different type of contents, of course, there will be meta, but the meta won't be the same everywhere, you have to keep classes with their unique strength, and unique weaknesses. It's the weakness <=> strength that makes the game interesting and varied.

And I'll just once more go again to the buccs. They have SI, they have TL. Essentially having a buccaneer was the complete package, A tier damage, infinite echo, SI. Do you really want to see it again on archers?

 

I kinda agree with BM, but one thing to point out with MM (which is an important distinction that a lot of ppl overlook) is that our multi-target is not the same as the other multi-target classes - it's a bit more nuanced. Most melees can use their multi target reliably in all kinds of places that we can't: HT, Zak, Scarga, CWK, etc. This helps them make up for the fact that their single target is weaker because they can multiply their DPS in a lot of places that would otherwise be single target for everyone else (or in the case of Shad, they just get to be relatively good at both which is why it's the best class in the game right now).

Piercing Arrow is very unique. It requires slow moving targets with high HP that don't stun/seal to be in a very straight line with enough room in front of you and you won't be knocked off a platform while charging it, and is only worth using when there's 4-6 of them (and more is better). That means it's only really useful in:
RG
VL
LHC
solo mob farming like ToT or something

So while it's a very strong move when it hits its peak potential, it doesn't do that often, especially hitting all 6 targets. Even in RG/LHC, you're usually hitting only 4 targets.

Adding some form of stance to archers like what is mentioned in Phase 2 notes could potentially open up a couple new scenarios for MM to use this move in new places. But depends how it's done. Like a very weak stance wouldn't be enough, but if for example Focus gave a really decent stance temporarily (with a CD to balance it), it could enable 4p in HT or Zak for a limited time, which is kinda interesting to think about (and has the bonus side effect of letting us apply Blind to more parts).

 

If "DPS class" only includes NL and Sair, then we're pretty much on the same page, just different definitions of the term. Sorry about the misunderstanding.
But I don't think Smoke and Haste are comparable. Not getting hit means less damage loss. In HT, having Smoke can increase Archer damage by around 20%, and even increase Warrior damage by about 3%.

 

Yes, S Tier damage = Sair / NL
The rest are utility classes that synergize together, and with NL/Sair. You don't want a utility class to have S tier damage, you don't want the BM to have power creep (buff quivers, soul arrow, concentrate stacking....) that will make him both utility and DPS. In my opinion it was a big mistake getting the buccs from C Tier to A Tier damage, with all the utility it brings to the table.

 

Archers dont need stance, they need avoid, avoid is in fact better than stance. High avoid is stance, blind is a party stance, focus is stance. Incorporating stance, or pushing skills into a ranged class is just creeping toward the big bang ubiquity of all classes melting down and having different colored versions of the same skills. Archers dont need stance.

Have marksmanship or bow expert boost avoid, or boost the avoid levels in your focus, while greatly increasing mp cost to focus, as well as magic rocks cost. Or ave your bird levels passively boost avoid, or increase your focus avoid stats (while also increasing mp and costing a rock) Birds are a later or often less commonly prioritized skill, so this offers a good choice for the player and playstyle.
But the archers dont need push or stance at all, and if we're having that convo, push should be very conditional like my last post abt it here, or more avoid should also be conditionally tied into existing skills, and if tied back to focus, increasing the costs, and perhaps even a cooldown to focus

 

I thought Bubble had already been changed to 90% rather than 10% — am I misremembering?
I think limiting macros is a good idea, but since I've suggested expanding Barrage's hitbox, it should probably be subject to the same restrictions as Demo.

Not sure why Snatch's damage and mob count needed to be halved — was this based on testing that showed the damage was too high?

Snatch is a key skill for Bucc's fluidity in many multi-target situations, so making it always available is the simpler solution. Snatch (600%) can also function as a two-thirds output version of Dragon Strike (900%), and could potentially be macroed with Shockwave (900% but longer animation). I'd like to ask directly:

(1) Is it feasible to simply swap Snatch and Dragon Strike's Super Transformation requirements? This would also further widen the DPS gap between ST and non-ST states.
(2) After widening that ST vs. non-ST output gap, would it be worth slightly buffing ST-state skill damage? I think even with that, Bucc's total damage would still be lower than before.
(3) Should Shockwave serve as the lower-tier substitute for Dragon Strike in non-ST state (3rd Transformation)? Though I feel that after switching between ST and Bubble states, having to also get used to 3rd Transformation would significantly raise Bucc's overall difficulty.

Also, since I haven't seen a response about the hitbox issue, I'd also like to ask Tim directly for his thoughts on the hitbox of non-ST state primary damage skills — such as expanding Barrage/Blast so they can always reach HT's arms.
Since Tim has already indicated plans to modify Charge (Bubble), I won't offer further suggestions on that front — though I do hope the details can be shared earlier so more people can discuss them.

Also, archers are already consistently below Hero/DRK in the Krex DPS test (https://royals.ms/forum/threads/krex-class-dps-comparison.224575/).

Considering that many situations also involve Stance (for example, BM's Hurricane is severely affected by knockback), archer DPS in many types of content would be even lower — something that was already raised fairly early in this thread.

For this reason, I believe archers need further buffs — at minimum, they should not lose to Hero/DK in a pure single-target scenario:
● SE
On the topic of archer identity — since I don't want archers to become a purely damage-focused class, would it be worth making their most defining trait, SE, stackable up to 2? Only the two most recently applied SEs would be active (1 SE: 40%/15%; 2 SE: 50%/20%). Alternatively, simply buffing SE — though this may cause some side effects:

1. NL becomes too strong, but nerfing NL to keep its DPS the same could make NL too weak in RG.
2. DK could receive a side benefit at the same time.

● Dragon Breath
Please take the boss-pushing ability away from NL and give it back to archers — or at minimum, let both NL and archers push bosses. However, as a mob-pushing skill, it should have a slight delay, and function more like Rush/Screw Blow.

● BM/MM individual skills

1. BM: Stackable Concentrate
2. MM: Expand Piercing Arrow's hitbox — perhaps also adding a "can be fired at close range" property
3. Snipe + Strafe as MM's primary damage skills — possible buffs could include either "raising the damage cap to 250k–300k" or "changing Snipe to 7s CD / 2 lines"

 

1 Why are we trying to gain ST exclusive moves while not under ST?
2 Don't fuck this up brother the frame data on dragonstrike is too good to pass up. I dont wanna be spamming Snatch-Shockwave. The class should be smooth not even more clunky. Shockwave the way it is rn sucks donkey dihh compared to blast. You'd only use it if you don't have ST or Bubble up or transform cancel it.

 

( I mentioned in earlier comment that maybe we could give Hero 50-80% Achilles ? and higher Guardian rate ? With that, Hero will be the tankiest class in the game and probably be better at sed than Shad. Warrior is supposed to be tankiest class and probably better at sed than Shad, isn't it ? )

For DK, let HB be able to increase 30k hp to 48k hp.
I like the number 48k, that's because with 48k hp one can tank Core Blaze, one can tank Auf's touch dmg 3 times, Hero with 80% Achilles can actually tanks VL Rocks !
That will make gameplay more interesting imo, bc instead of just-a-matter-of-1-hit-dead-or-not of gameplay, now ppl can actually tank supposedly-1-hit dmg in some scenarios, some classes (Hero) can actually tank VL Rocks, that's a variety.

 

This is not technically possible. HP is stored as a signed 16 bit int, making the max possible value that can be held a bit over 31k, and changing that would be incredible difficult to the point of being impossible.

This is awful. These attacks hit hard because they're specifically not supposed to be tanked. In fact, HT tail and CB touch were significantly increased recently, likely to stop heavily washed shads from being able to tank them. Allowing heros to tank VL rocks like you're suggesting removes all challenge from the fight and makes it just another boring hold down attack boss fight for them. This would also encourage players to wash further so they can hit those high HP w/HB breakpoints and we should not be encouraging more washing than is already necessary with changes.

Hard hard hard disagree on your proposal, I would quit the game if that's the direction staff decided to take with it.

 

One thing I respect about Royals is that it doesn't change skills so much that it would cause confusion among players who knew how old school worked. Most of the buffs are going along with the original ideas that the OSMS devs had, with intuitive adjustments so that the ideas actually work. Like snipe having a low enough CD to be part of an actual rotation, assassinate losing the charge mechanic that was never going to work in the first place, total crash being converted into a party buff out of necessity to prevent people from creating multiple CR mules, things of that nature. There is (currently) no skill change that changes the very nature of the skill itself, and that takes admirable restraint.

There is still some confusion among new players like "wtf why are ilbis 160k to recharge" and "why don't i get exp from poisoning death teddies" and i think both of those examples are not good or healthy, but the server mostly does a good job of delivering a historically accurate old school experience.

I mention this because the current design philosophy probably means that we can't get away with changes like "swap dragon strike and snatch" or "make snipe/blast deal 2 lines" or "make soul arrow consume 200 arrows and work like shadow stars" or "make super transformation permanent and require a magic rock to cast".

the list of immediate changes I think we can make without much pushback:

-allow sniper's blizzard to crit
-make dragon's breath and ninja storm the same in terms of what they can push
-buff spell power of ice demon, fire demon, and angel ray by a lot
-make spell booster cast faster
-remove magic reflect from balrog and make it physical only
-revert the "bugfix" that made concentrate stackable with other sources of w.att

 

Ans 1:

• Perhaps that's not what you meant, but from just these few lines of response, I get the impression you think "which skills belong in ST state should be decided by the original game" — I don't see it that way. I think adjustments can and should be made based on our own vision of what ST is supposed to represent.
• My view is that ST is a state where you can use more powerful skills, so Snatch at 600% is actually more fitting for non-ST state than Dragon Strike at 900%.
• Snatch is a unique grab skill directly tied to Bucc's rotation fluidity — especially after 7 years of full-time ST, Snatch has practically become a non-ST skill in feel anyway. Or if there's another skill that can replace Snatch's role, I think having other skills "replace Snatch in non-ST state" is a good idea too. On the pure DPS side, the GM's direction seems to be that ST state should be very powerful while non-ST state is ordinary. I'm following that logic in my suggestions, with the goal of solving the fluidity problem and the over-nerfed total output problem given that ST now has a cooldown.

Ans 2:

• In my proposed change package, "swapping Snatch and Dragon" and "Shockwave as the lower-tier substitute" are meant to be implemented together — not separately.
• On the frame data point, I completely agree with you.— so what about changing Shockwave's animation speed to 2x while reducing its damage from 900% to 400%? (I've played on servers where Shockwave's frame data was set very low, so it should be doable.)

Somewhat off-topic as a response, but just as a side note — 3rd job Blast's DPS in a 3–4 mob situation is actually fairly comparable to Dragon + Snatch combined. The only reason Dragon completely replaced Blast is because Blast's hitbox is too small.

 

I'm actually also very curious — what exactly is the so-called "original ideas/design philosophy" in concrete terms?

OSMS has many good designs, but also many poor designs, and among those there are certainly plenty of elements that half the playerbase loves and the other half doesn't.

For example:

• Full-time ST — was that an original design oversight, or was it always intended to be played that way?
• Reverting the damage cap back to the original 100k, or increasing it to 250k — which one "doesn't fit"?
• Does the 90s Smoke leading to a 4 Shad/2 Bucc meta also "fit" the original design?
• Does having CR/PR/AR as Pally/DK/Hero's respective boss skills each targeting a specific role also "fit"?
• Soul Arrow originally provided arrow WA in the original version, later changed so it doesn't — is that a change that fits the design philosophy?
• Many people were once strongly against adding anything new to OSMS (including LHC, VL, and RG) — is that rigidity what "original ideas" actually means?

Of course, within the server, what matters most is the GM's own design philosophy. All players can do is voice their own "original ideas" to the GM and try to have some small influence.

My own "original ideas" are: "every class has something unique and irreplaceable" and "the game mechanically encourages players to cooperate across different classes to tackle various challenges."

Back to the skill discussion:
(1) On 2-line Snipe — the "original" Snipe had a 5s cooldown, changed to 4s in 2019. My suggestion is 7s with increased damage. I don't think this contradicts the design philosophy in any meaningful way. From a damage perspective, a 2-line 200k cap is effectively equivalent to a 1-line 400k cap, so whether it's "revert to 5s and raise the cap to 1line 300k" or "revert to 7s and raise to 2-line 200k" or "keep 4s and raise it to 1line 250k," it's fundamentally just one of many ways to address MM's unreasonably low single-target DPS — I don't see any conflict with "original ideas."
(2) On swapping Dragon Strike and Snatch — I've always been curious: why would this swap violate the design philosophy? Is it intuition or a gut feeling? Is it the visual effects (Dragon does feel more like an ST-state skill, doesn't it)? Or is it simply "the original version designed it this way, therefore it's correct"?
(That said, if there were a non-ST skill to replace Snatch, the swap wouldn't be necessary — but right now there's no substitute for Snatch, which severely impacts Bucc's rotation fluidity.)
(Of course another factor of fluidity is Demo's high iFrame, but that's not the topic being discussed here.)

 

Hello, Sylafia

Hero is only able to tank VL Rocks when HB is up, hero can still get DP and when DK is in jail or dead there's no HB to buff.
In Auf, ppl would get DP a lot, making it hard to maintain HB.
We could set VL-Rocks after-effect when one gets hit by rocks and doesn't die, like a duration of stun, so one will lose dps by a lot if keeps getting hit by rocks.
We could introduce new boss's mechanisms to be able to kill hero, like super poison, super burning, boss being able to hit many times in 1.5 secs. --- Maybe Black Mage can 1-shot hero ?
Maybe, we might add Enrage's penalty, like, during Enrage, hero gets 2 times more dmg or Achilles gets 2 times weaker, so will die to VL Rocks during Enrage's duration.