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

100% agree why play hero when shads and drks exist

 

1. Should Priest‘s Dispel and Hermit's Shadow Meso no longer be able to remove Weapon Defense Up to make removing it warrior exclusive?
Strongly dislike about taking this away from bishops since they already have so little to do at bosses.
Having to dispel the wdef up buff gives at least some active play for a bishop instead of just holding down gene for marginal dps or just waiting to hs the party before something dies.
2. Should Priest‘s Dispel instead be able to remove Confusion („Crazy Skull“) and Zombify?
These debuffs are so niche that trading removing def up for them is a joke.

3. Should Bishop‘s Holy Shield instead be able to protect against Slow, Zombify and Confusion („Crazy Skull“)?
Pretty sure it already works on slow.
I think this only makes sense if either dispel also works on these or holy shield also dispels the debuffs it protects against on cast so you can cast it retroactively.

4. Do you have any other ideas to make Dragon Knight's Power Crash and Crusader's Armor Crash unique, but both useful?
I'd rather see these classes being good on other merits rather than just having some exclusive dispel that forces you to bring one to your boss runs.
I don't think making the crashes so good that they are "mandatory" on bosses would make the classes any more fun to play than now.
I'm also worried that this change would introduce just another mule class to the game. Or to combat this the skill would be """""""""""unmuleable""""""""""" like pala cr which a) doesn't work b) makes the skill annoying to use even when you are maining the class.
I assume you want to make warriors more wanted at bosses but after playing them all to a high level imo they are just so shit you would be better off buffing their core aspects.
Take their AoE for example: Why is warrior endgame AoE still 1st job range? For example why can't I hit Horntail head A and B at the same time in hero or dk? These low AoE skills require a lot of precision compared to ranged classes from the player just to do worse dps than the meta classes.

Spoiler: Boss buff review

Weapon cancel
Time wasting and boring buff. Using cr on pala is annoying and I don't like that it is basically mandatory on any boss that has this buff.
Magic cancel/magic def up
Irrevelant as long as you don't allow mages to have dps
Damage Reflect
Boring mechanic, either you burn through pots or stand there waiting for it to end. Neither is interesting.
Weapon/Magic attack up
meh
Weapon def up
Gives something to do for bishop/warriors but meh
Hard Skin
Seems like a hard buff to balance.
The actual crit classes don't lose that much dps due to their crits being so powerful compared to normal hits.
And then non-crit classes take a ~85% dps hit.

 

Would this be accepted or is it still in debating?

 

Marksman

• Raven's Eye: buff it Yes, I would love something on par with the Crimson Arclancer to grind
• Wide array of feedback - from the Improved MM Feedback Thread
• Power Knockback:
  • enable it in LHC Yes
  Dragons Breath:
  • enable it in LHC Absolutely. I am constantly struggling to maximize my efficiency with Piercing Arrow because Buccaneers/Warriors don't always keep mob groups together. It would be great if Marksman could fix the grouping themselves
  • allow it to work in mid-air ...why?
  • allow it to work at a close range No, we have PKB and passive knockback on our crossbows
  • increase its vertical range I can't see any benefit of this other than for use on flying mobs. Maybe QOL?
• Frostprey:
  • buff its damage I feel that the damage is fine as it is. It's about on par with non-critical stafe lines.
    
  • Let it be summonable simultaneously with Golden Eagle No. Too much clutter
    
  • Give it a buff icon that you can cancel Yes. There are times when I have accidently summoned Frostprey where I wish I could cancel it instead of waiting on the 200 sec's
• Strafe: Increase number of arrows shot from 4 to 5 on Strafe lv30 Absolutely effing not. End game Markmemes on gelts don't even need to use Snipe. All this would do is make Snipe even less necessary in our rotation
  
• Snipe: Reduce end lag I believe this was already discussed and wasn't able to be fixed due to the ingame timing. It doesn't bother me anyway. Just need to remember 6 strafes between Snipe without SI, and 8 strafes with
  
• Piercing Arrow: Reduce its charge-up time by 25% I'm for this. Or at least have Booster or SI affect charge up time (if possible)
  
• Focus: increase its avoidability No need
  
• Blizzard: Buff its damage No, but criticals would be appreciated for 3rd job mobbing. I've never been in a situation where I have spammed Blizzard over Piercing Arrow so why the damage buff?
  
• Blind: reduce mobs accuracy further Yes please. Blind definitely should be more impactful than it currently is. As it stands, BM's will of course be chosen long before an MM is considered for bossing. If Blind was buffed, I believe it would raise our 'attractiveness' at a boss run. Also when we get blinded it's basically a 99% blindness debuff. I'm not advocating for the same to be applied to Blind but at least make the difference truly noticable.
• Puppet: Give it a buff icon that you can cancel Why? No point to this at all

Points I would like to add to this. I have made a comment earlier in this post about my thoughts but I feel like I should post this more in-depth comment.

• Critical rate buff to 1st Job skills for Archers. As it currently stands, Critical Shot is a 20 SP Master Level with 40% critical rate at 200% damage. I propose that it should be increased to 30 levels sacrificing 10 points from Focus or 10 points from Double Shot increasing critical rate to 50% at 200% damage. This would match its 'near twin' skill Critical Throw, the 2nd Job skill for Assassins. 50% critical rate at 200% damage. I don't think it's a huge ask for the class that provides critical rate to the whole party to have a higher chance or the same as Night Lords. Having 4 non critical strafes hurts, 48k non critical vs 140k 4x critical.
• Change Snipe to a % attack. Marksman are memes because they are the strongest lvl 12x and the weakest lvl 200 no matter how much mesos you farm up and spend on attack gear and that comes down to Snipe being a hard ceiling. As I mentioned earlier in this comment, when endgame Markmemes are on Gelt, we don't even need to use Snipe because we are well exceeding 50k lines for strafe. I borrowed some attack gear far stronger than my own for a Krex run, used a Naricain and hit 63k Strafe lines, 250k strafes if all 4 were critical. And of course, Snipe is fixed at 190k-200k making it absolutely useless. I believe this number should be between 2200% and 2400% damage, keep the cooldown. With that, a Marksman with 5k range would hit a 110k or 120k Snipe. At 10k range, 220k or 240k respectively. We already far exceed the damage cap, Zancks mentioned its around 487k for Piercing Arrow in the shoutbox during a discussion, why can't we have this?

For your consideration

 

thread tl;dr so sorry if this has been suggested

If damage cap can be removed/altered, that should definitely be done, as it primarily impacts one class and punishes people who really dedicate themselves to playing Paladin. Even just changing it to 250k would make a big difference. (Not sure how this would impact Hammer and Snipe?)

Alternative suggestion: if, for whatever reason, you don't want to alter the damage cap, I would propose adding a new skill to Paladins, akin to Bow Expert from a BM, except instead of adding mastery and weapon attack, it adds mastery and REDUCES weapon attack, with the net affect being no change in overall dps. (I know this would depend on the exact gearing of the character to make it precisely no change in DPS, but we can estimate something extremely close to neutral)
This would prevent Paladins from losing damage to damage cap by reducing their maximum damage while improving their minimum damage. Paladins already have more than enough skills to put skill points in, so keeping this at like a 5 or 10 point max would probably be good.
As a skill it becomes totally optional, and for people who aren't at risk of actually losing any damage to the damage cap, they don't need to worry about it at all.
Maybe it could also be a self-buff spell, since I seriously doubt anyone is hitting damage cap without Apples/Gelts anyways, and thus wouldn't need it all the time.

 

This would push BW pally even more out of the meta sadly, unless something like guardian was reduced to 20 points (while keeping the full 25% chance when maxed). I literally at level 200 have MW0 and rush28. Reducing guardian would also allow me to actually care about will10.

 

Some great thoughts here, all for improving the crit rate of archers and in virtually complete agreement with everything else. Especially agree with not touching cooldowns given the pristine timing interactions of MM skills with SI atm. Personally think upping the crit with critical shot or tying it to the 4th job mastery skill are good options.

Only point of disagreement is the snipe scaling. Hitting cap with relatively low investment at lv120 is in my opinion part of the class appeal, and the suggestion would be an effective nerf to many players. Only a half dozen MM in server have upper 10K range (sure, considering apple, etc. this changes). But my point is 199K at lv120 is iconic. It could be adjusted to 199K + a % multiplier but personally against any changes that reduce dmg output of the skill when unbuffed (except NL skills pls nerf TT ), which is most of the time outside of a boss run. MM does poor dps already no need to nerf the class. Nice strafe lines btw.

 

For the sake of improving the position of Heroes in the Meta.

Armor Crash removes Weapon Defense Up.
As stated before, after casting Armor Crash it removes the buff for -4.20 seconds before a Boss casts it again.
If you math it out you might find party compositions where it's beneficial for Heroes to give up attacking in order to boost the damage of other party members.

This is not fun and engaging gameplay. You make a Hero to attack, not to be a 2nd-hand dispel spamming bishop without HS.


Instead of removing the W.Def Up Buff, changing the skill for it to reduce W.Def (and/or M.Def)

Examples with completely random numbers

-Reduce Defense of nearby monsters by 25% for 300 seconds
-Reduce Defense of nearby monster by 500 for 300 seconds
-A Hero Hitting a monster with an attack has a 25% chance to "1 of above" or remove a Buff from its target.
-For 300 seconds a Hero has a 25% chance to ignore all Def from its targets (similar buff already exists on monster cards efffects from Bone Fish or a Shark iirc, this also ignored Weap Cancel of Pianus)
-For 300 seconds, After taking Damage from an attack a Hero has a 25% chance to reduce the attackers Defense equal to 150% of its own W.Def (Yay for defense buff and shield meta)

All above non-stacking. No need to further nerf slower weapons, yay for variety. And obviously, if Def<1, Def=1.

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About Damage Caps.
Is there any reason for it to exsist at this point in time? As far as I am aware it only affects MM, Pally and Mages.
While the place of Pally and Mage are fairly fine. Neither of them deserve to be held back by this.

The only reasons I can think of are either

Technical, MMO's need to be optimized for performance to handle massive amounts of data.
In this case. I would very much like to see effort to overcome this.

It serves as a flag for Glitch-Abuse. A BM hitting Damage cap is for sure fairly suspicious.
In this case. In no circumstance should the player experience ever be comprimised for detecting potential rule/glitch abusers. Please fix.

MM are by far the most disproportionately affected by this damage cap. I don't think anyone think MM deserves this.
Pally are fine, allthough I think its completely fair for them as well to be able to exceed the damage cap. A game centred around progression should reward optimalization.
Mages are not really affected by this cap in most serious scenario's beside LHC. Regardless, I don't see a reason why they should be held back even more as a meme-attacker for boss runs.

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About DK's

I posted, no begged, to NOT make Dragon's Blood w.atk stack with other w.atk buffs. Please don't do this.
We do not need damage inflation. This will in return nerf Pole Arm, therefor pre 4rth job non-leech leveling (and fun), therefor nerfing new players.
If anything, we need to be able to participate in content. I believe that changing defenses can be key to a solution. I have quite some ideas. When I can be bothered enough, I might one day make a feedback post about.
Also recent Feedback of buffing Pole Arm from Post is what I very much support, at least in the general sense of thay Pole Arms are just fucked by design of 3rth job.


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About IL Mage

A buff to Chain Lightning would be great, I think its the most fun skill to use. Making it strong enough to be a decent damage dealer against a single Target would be a nice improvement. Also I'd like to see a revision of it's targeting mechanics since it feels very unreliable to say the least. Increasing its first targetting vertical range would be a massive improvement. A slight increase in range of the chains would be welcomed as well.

While at the part of fantasising of what I think would be cool and very interesting is giving Lightning an status effect as well.
The signature Lightning effects of other games often use things such as Stun. In PoE Lightning has secondary effect of Shock wich increases damage dealt to the target relative to the % damage done based on Max HP of the Target. In Combination with PoE lightning skills often having very large damage ranges it's very fun and engaging to strategize when debating crit chance, crit damage or more reliable spell damage.

At the moment IL Mage is falling behind in the meta and power creep.
Compared to FP Mage, IL mage has the issues

-Significantly more expensive Ele Wand 7.

-End-Game content of LHC Bearwolves being week to Fire.

-FP Mages have Poison Mist as additional tool to work and strategize with (Also why are basically all bosses imume to poision? I am pretty sure a concensus of damage and balance can be found)

-Ice's signature effect, Freezing mobs actually being a downside in many scenario's. This is more appearent pre-4rth job when you are not 1-hitting 99% of all mobs in the game, or low fund/level 4rth job and 2-hitting mobs.
In f.e. WoW and PoE there are potential stacking modifiers when attacking Frozen enemies.
Iirc, Scatter increases either Crit Damage or Crit Chance in WoW and Scatter deal AoE damage whenever you kill a Frozen Target.
I would find something like this to be interesting and if such a thing would be considered I think it's more than fair to enhance the effects of "burning"



-Making Meditate Stack with other M.Atk Buffs. It seems a popular "fix" to many skill atm, Allthough not as detrimental as making DK's Dragon Blood stack with W.Atk. I don't think its an improvement to anything. If anything, it's another way to inflate damage and power creep. It would not change how the game is played in any way.

If anything has to be done with similar buffs. Make buffs use the highest value in case of 2 buffs granting an increase in the same stat. In no circumstance would anyone prefer the M.Atk of Meditate over that of an Apple. Or +1 Speed from a Monster Card over Haste or Speed Pills.

 

Honestly the best way to buff IL is probably give Road to Oblivion better drops for them to farm, or add a new zone of ice weak enemies as a top tier farming zone if you invest enough to 1hit.

 

I understand that adjusting Snipe to benefit high lvl MM and essentially cripple low lvl MM is pretty extreme but I feel like it's necessary. Snipe worked before insane CGS, before 140att pots. I feel that it's necessary to change it with the times. Maybe if the cooldown remained the same from lvl 1-30 and the % went up with the SP, let's say it started at 1400% and went up to 2400%. That way the DPM would be pretty much unaffected for low level MM.
I'm open to more ideas on how to keep the Strafe/Snipe rotation

 

make snipe deal damage like a regular skill (let's say 500%) and add 200k on top of that. still 1 line

 

That would work. I'd like to know what's possible from the Dev's or Game Balancers

 

I appreciate this but arguably FP has it way worse, the trail for them stops at Regrets2/3/4, Old Fox Flagship (massive potion burn and shaky spawn, needs Fire Demon, and I/L is better here) and LHC (less wanted post-nerf?).

Actually the big issue in bosses is less of damage (it sucks but there's no hope of them getting a boost here with the most vocal members of the community (including former GMs it seems)'s near-unanimous hatred of them) but rather the fact that they just contribute very little if at all. There are attacker classes with actual good support skills while arch mages only get useless meditation (can even use the NX flock of witches instead ) , bugged Slow that doesn't work properly and on bosses; and useless Seal. Mana reflection is a joke, at most you do 59998 reflecting a 1/1 with a 30k mage. They have some very situational uses like chain lightning pinning NMM effortlessly but nobody will recruit an AM just for that. Poison is also the worst attacking type in the entire game.

Also Spell Booster needs to be talked about more often, there's no reason for it to take a year to cast. This is like the bare minimum...

 

I hope you're joking....

 

Raven's eye: I personally really dislike that they are making this xbow faster than all others in its end game options, it optimizes it too much. I like craftables, but it's a very heavy handed bandaid weapon to that insults the class itself

PKB/DB: Only let range/mage push skills work at a *percent* on LHC mobs. Giving ranged/mage classes 100% push on these extremely tanky mobs is a bit op and not necessary. I think giving PKB/DB, ninja storm, big bang a % to push instead of 100% is healthier for the balance of classes (with big bang being like 85% at full charge, since you do have to charge it)
As for point-blank/closer range, air shots? They really aren't necessary imo. I have advocated for slightly closer DB range, but that was before MM got a bunch of other nice buffs.

• However, DB/NS/BB should be more costly as well. For ranged chars these are extremely valuable skills, especially if they have a chance to push LHC mobs, and they should all cost more arrows/stars and MP respectively to cast

Frostprey/eagles: Giving birds their own crit rate based on your critical/se makes them much more valuable over time and helps with the wonky element aspects without upending that whole system.

Very much yes to cancelling both 4th and third job summons, as well as puppet. Puppet icon showing up is a good visual cue if it's off screen or lost in clutter. The option to cancel it w/o summoning another is niche but nice, and may as well if all summons are getting this same treatment
I personally think only BM should get the double summon (as well as fire DOT, and bird crit), gives them a little oomf that they are apparently lacking without any rewiring of damage or %

Strafe 5 arrow: Also vehemently against this, it is so lazy and unnecessary, it's like those companies that kept adding more and more razorblades to men's razors. My personal suggestion that I will always reiterate:

"[MM strafe] - strafe goes down to *3* lines with max marksmanship, slight att % increase to balance the four line average, and possibly strafe has a chance ignore w.def randomly, between 1-X (tbd)
-each arrow can KB a mob, like hurricane already does, instead of combining all arrows as one attack. Gives MM more control. excellent, simple qol, especially for bf hunting

3 line strafe suggestion gives MM:

• better knock-back, because of:
• higher average DOT, as opposed to 4, or more lines.
• this would also allow strafe to be cast slightly faster over time due to slightly less cast animation.
• ^ which overall means a better damage buff over time.
• saves arrows
• can see your damage output better in bosses, not many three line attacks
• and is very in line with MM being more efficient sharpshooters, needing less to do more, as opposed to the "more arrows more lines" suggestions, which isn't very snipery, that's more ranger/bm style

So probably lvl 21 or higher marksmanship (mms) makes this change, since a new skill would need to retroactively improve another. Strafe getting a golden/red/whatever 4th job palette update would be nice as well...



Snipe: dovetailing right from 3 line strafe into snipe, and to answer your q and give my input

I have suggested this forever and I still firmly believe it is a truly valid, fitting rotational, attentive mechanic and playstyle for MM: casting 21 or higher snipe (a bonus from Snipe, or MMS), gives an auto-target effect on boss flagged mobs, or mobs with 200k HP or higher, hit by snipe (since only they would survive anyway). The effect would have a smaller window than the (infinite) one that outlaws have, probably 10 or 15 seconds, TBD. (This is also just an auto-target effect, not like sair's huge damage buff+auto-target skill)
This auto-target effect from Snipe focuses all strafe volleys to the desired target or body part, not summons or wrong body part. With a slightly faster/improved 3 line strafe, and focused target from Snipe/MMS, this keeps snipe in rotation, gives MM increased DPM, keeps snipe relevant forever, and still benefits early MM the same, which I think is very important. It may sound like an out-there suggestion but it's just really not, it's very simple, and preserves and improves already present in-game mechanics and styles. This is also why I think BM should get the double bird summon, bird crit, fire DOT, bc all that improves their fast wildfire all over style, and MM still get their very deliberate, situational/tactical style with snipe/pierce.
Don't love the snipe % idea when auto-target fixes all issues from early to endgame issues. Even in the event where strafe overpowers snipe (with range or SI), and you don't need to cast auto-target, congrats, you're a really strong MM, enjoy it--they don't then also need an even stronger snipe, this is the power scaling issue. Snipe would still be useful if your strafe was OP in cluttered boss fights bc of focused auto-target strafes (or possibly improved/faster 3 line strafes ), or during weapon cancels. I don't think snipe needs to be radically redesigned to improve the class overall

 

Disagree with the “hero buff” they need a buff where they become significantly better attackers, not end up as another mule.

 

buff heroes by changing brandish
reduced max 2 targets but increase the multipliers by 10~15% ish?
the rationale is that each warrior's main attack has a differing number of targets specialization
blast is strong single target
brandish hits 2 targets instead but is slightly weaker
spear crusher 3 targets but is weaker than brandish

makes warriors more conditional without being a straight lets buff damage by 30% and then have another complaint later on saying OP, nerf plz

 

This is a fantastic buff to the skill, but I have a little input.

1. I think if you have HW6+, being able to use it from darksight is fair. If a shad wants to min/max, pass HW10. It's important to keep this book very useful and expensive, this is a great perk.

2. On that, I really think HW6+ should passively alert you if damage reflect is cast. I have a couple reasons why I want HW to do this:

• This keeps individuals attentive, with or without the alert, it stays on you. By the time someone notices a cast through the clutter, types it out as a warning, and you read it, you're in the danger zone. And that's good, it's a big risky counter attack that affects everyone quickly. It's an equalizing mechanic, love or hate it, which is why it would make HW10 very valuable for min/maxing, and HW10 needs to stay valuable
• The other status cures are fine. The biggest perk of HW10 now is just the CD reduction, bc as it stands, it's a bit backwards to be able to cure the most dangerous status first, then the lower tier ones. It should be reversed in the rework, but the CD reduction is what's good. Having one emergency all cure in your pocket at all times is nice, but I think just seduce, DR alert, willing through DS, CD reduction (and a 10% chance to ignore send) is what should make HW10 truly valuable.

The extra status all-cures are great, but the levels should do what all cures can't, this is what gives the skill it's value and utility. Also, some of the statuses are good to keep, like confusion, zombify, because these can still be curbed by party/player behavior, whereas seduce cannot, you're at the mercy of a free healer in most cases.

Not saying any of this just to critique HW10, but that again, for the effort to get to and for a team to take VL down, this book needs to be valuable, and plugging in more utility and QOL is important to the upper end of the reward economy of this boss, and you can still do that in all kinds of ways currently and in the future

• Will through DS at higher levels
• DR warning
• 10% chance to resist/ignore seduce
• 10% or less chance to miss/ignore a 1/1
• 10% or less chance to ignore other statuses (this small chance gives a very refreshing RNG to higher level gameplay. Missing a round of sed to help keep attacking is a great perk
• Cures a petrify status (this would be a good future one, bc you'd essentially be dead (press ok to revive in town) or wait until your will CD is over, an equalizer situation like cancel, DR, and if a boss can heal well, this could be a dangerous combo. The point is, HW10 stays very useful for all current and future content, because
• HW10 needs to stay very valuable and desirable as a skill and reward
• Other dangerous attack warnings?

The DR warning could:

• On your screen only, automatically shake the screen and send you a red exclamation mark over your char, on top of all other gfx, and a text splash in the middle of the screen saying something like watch out! Dangerous attack incoming!

Its just important that this skill book and skill is desirable for some high end bossing min/maxing and RNG for a little edge, QOL optimizing, without giving away all challenges, to keep the book a valuable reward in the market. A lot of folks are worried the rewards aren't worth the effort in VL, this book itself should serve as reward and optimization for VL as well in some fashion, to help with it's demand.

 

This would make DrK CWKPQ bot optimal attacker, but would buff Hero at Scarga. Hero would be better in some HT situations and worse in others. It might be okay, although I would still stress that increasing brandish hitbox would be huge for QoL. At least it would change things up. This would make LHC much more annoying however.

 

Could we increase the duration of archer’s puppet from 1min to maybe 2minutes?

Cons:

Pros:
1) more archers would join boss runs like cwk since it would make the boss 2x less annoying to resummon puppet.

2) easier pap runs for archers without directly buffing the class’ dps which would affect the balancing of the game

3) higher QOL for archers is the way to go if we want the archer population to increase without opening the floodgates of “buff my class since archers got buffed” from other classes.

POV: Recently came on daily to trade fames for fun and I see a lot of smegas recruiting main bm for cwk or se for ht. Note that these aren’t a “one-off” smega. They repeat for a while because they couldn’t find any.

So if we look at cwk, why is it that archers have to clear the most difficult room and for the top floor bosses, the tankiest and most annoying boss to kill? Usually NL/Sairs kill mage boss while archers kill pirate boss.
(The mobs in archer room don’t even drop crimson hearts while the warrior room does)

There’s really little to no incentive for people to make archers because firstly their cost of washing is higher. Secondly they get lesser rewards from funding an archer. Thirdly, they have to put in more effort than the rest of the party when bossing (repositioning/resummoning of puppet/cwk room)

Yes hamstring is op but when do archers even use hamstring apart from auf? Zak,HT,Cwk bosses don’t even move that much if at all

Since GMs are skeptical about buffing bm’s dps perhaps giving a better qol update for archers would be more in line? Ps: I am a fm hoe but I feel very weak when I do some bosses like Ephenia despite having the gears I currently own. Needless to say archers who are even more casual than I am would feel the brunt of it.


If this suggestion would prove more detrimental than beneficial please let me know so I can be more informed on bossing.