I see where you are coming from, but I would still won't support increasing the duration of Holy Symbol. Here are some of my reasoning. As mentioned by others, Holy Symbol is already an overpowered skill, it should have a drawback to counter it, hence a short buff duration. With this ability, priests/bishop are able to get a free leech/boss services by just giving attackers HS, is not much to asked of them to ensure their members are buffed every 2 minutes. A significant number of us already feel that Bishops are overpowered compared to Arch Mages. So increasing its duration might be pushing it too far. Secondly, you cite in your justification, that it is troublesome for leech sellers needing to HS every 2 minutes. As a leech seller myself, leeching isn't supposed to be an easy and convenient activity; and the current duration is fair. Is the seller's responsibility to ensure you get buffed, if you are unhappy with the seller's performance because of their forgetfulness, you can ask them to leech you longer or report them in the blacklist. This tedious and repetitive nature is part of the reason why leeching is one of the more lucrative ways of earning income in the game. For me, it also helps that I use the HS duration as the countdown timer for when monster drops are going to disappear from the ground. Lastly, if they are grinding in places like Temple of Time, is already likely the HSer won't be a mule, due the to monotonous quest requirements so they be actively teleporting around the map, using Genesis and buffing their members. Besides, those maps have hidden teleports that makes it easy to manoeuvre around. If is other training maps that do not have such a feature like Ludibrium dungeon, I would still rather implement hidden teleports than increasing the duration. On the same point, I believe the Nexon's original intention was to encourage group gameplay than having the concept of HS mule, which is reasoning why multi-client was never allowed in the official server, HS will stop working if the player is not taking damage and has a small casting radius. You can put a poll up, to see what the wider community thinks, whether the duration should be increased or remain the same.
I don't disagree with the longer buff time, I disagree with making leech easier. Leech has arguably killed most of the pqs in the game, along with grind parties, and I don't see a reason to make it stronger in any way. I agree with the idea of adding a poll, it is quite hard to see the opinions only from replied to the thread.
It's so tedious to rebuff SI, SE and HB to party members in boss runs. Can we make them longer as well for the convenience's sake? It'll be beneficial to every bucc, archer and drk players. The same logic can be applied to every single buff in this game. If you want to debate on a buff, rather try to find a need, not a want, for there is no end if one tries to seek for convenience and less trouble.
I don't understand why a lot of you think HS is so overpowered o. O All it does is speed up leveling by a bit which makes it a convenience skill in itself initially. I don't see anything to do with power here. And what exactly is so challenging about pressing a button every 2minutes? Is pressing the button every 2 compared to 3 or say 4mins suppose to be more rewarding and enjoyable?
I will put a poll up later. I can see the results will be about 50/50 but I'd still like to see votes and opinions anyways
The more time you spend casting a buff the less time you have to cast damage skills,thus overally decreasing your DPS output.
Perhaps convenience was the wrong choice of word but look at it like this: All of the other skills for priest last 200s+ but in reality all those skills have to be rebuffed every time you rebuff holy symbol. It is more like all of a priests skills last 120s because of holy symbols small timer. Putting the timer at 180s makes it work with the other skills rather then against them eliminating the need to rebuff everything every 120s. And please for the love of god; if you do not like the idea of holy symbol lasting longer that is fine but do not say it is over powered without a just explanation because making holy symbol more coherent with its sister skills does not increase the power of your character in any manner. Thank you
No your right, people have stated their opinions and it slipt my mind. I would just like people to differentiate what makes something overpowered as I think people calling HS overpowered is misleading. The arguments above however primarily are centered around recasting HS cuts down on one's DPs, as well as getting free leech. Now Dps primarily matters with bossing in which case bishops don't do any Dps to in the first place. I do understand party members having to regroup in hunting party's thus decreasing Dps to mobs but I mean.. Is it really a game changer if people have to regroup one minute less often when training on mobs together? o. O As well priest have an extremely hard time killing anything in the first place. They need HS to work in party's otherwise no one would want them and increasing the timer by a minute doesn't do anything more then that. Lastly Shane's reasoning was insightful but as I stated I think a cast of 180s makes it coherent with its other skills so you get to take advantage of the 200 or so seconds of your other skills. There are many other powerful skills including maple warrior that last much longer.. Why should they have longer timers? I do appreciate everyone's thoughts though.
Based on the likes in the comment it’s worrying I even have to explain why increasing HS duration from 120s to 180s isn’t an increase in leveling time by 33%.. There is no cd and the uptime is 100%. It only decreases the amount of times you need to recast. In an hour, you have to recast it 30 times and with the change you have to recast it 20 times instead. Convenient yes, but how is that overpowered? On the other hand, with this change it would make party play slightly more appealing as 2mins feels quite short and HS is inconsistent with other buff durations such as booster. I really hate this idea that everything has to be left as it is because of what the prebigbang Developers decided. Stop treating their decisions like the Ten Commandments. This change only helps improve our QOL and will not disrupt any power balance whatsoever. It make our buff management more consistent if most of these pre 4th job buffs are at similar durations.
Holy symbol itself is increase of 20-50% in leveling speed depending on how many members are in the party, making it the most overpowered skill in the game, not that increasing the duration of the skill makes it more effective. Now why would you take the strongest skill in the game and make it better by making it easier to make sure it's up in horntail without the bishop leeching?
i'm glad we can come to an agreement (in bold) then because that's not what you said in your previous post: Also I don't disagree that it is essential but what is overpowered depends on what we are basing it on. Leveling speed, of course HS is a god-sent, but clearing bosses? A NL would much rate SE as being more important. What i'm getting at is that there are many "overpowered" skills in this game, but not all have short duration like HS. Important skills such as SE SI have 5mins, MW20 has 20mins, booster 200sec while HS has...120sec? It is not consistent, and my guess is that the Devs wanted to make priest have a more active role where the priest can run around and HS since it's such an important skill by limiting its duration. However what about in royals? Priest no longer play this active role, and are used as mules for the most part when they are not leeching. This limitation don't make much sense to me. Imagine if HS always existed as a buff lasting 200sec, it wouldn't even be out of place, and I doubt people would start thread to nerf it to 120sec. Also, in the event you wanted to grind with your friends, having everyone gather and recast it less often is also a bonus. Overall, I support this change because: 1) More consistency in buff management 2) Less of a hassle in party play 3) Isn't even a controversial change if it only decreases amount of rebuffs That said, it is obvious this isn't so well-liked and I think it is rather unlikely this would be put in place.
