Paladin Class Feedback

can also raise damage cap to 300k

 

I don't think that's possible (per Kevin or Matt one of the times it was discussed), but don't quote me on that.

I also think if it was possible, there'd be no reason to keep the cap in place at all (and it would already be gone), when we could just have manually capped certain skills like snipe/hammer to stay at 200k

 

How about splitting blast into 2 lines?

 

all the suggestions keep pointing to increase DPS, but i think buffing power crash to the point where every weap cancel can be removed will make them essential to boss runs. Same concept is applied to SE- only 1 is required but its a core part of bossing, as are NL/sair in conjunction with SE (1v1 dps), bs(duh) & drk/hero (aoe dps). Id even suggest nerfing pally dmg to make them comparably weaker to the point where the dps ratio between drk/hero to pally 1v1 is same as NL with SE to BM with SE to reinforce the utility identity.

 

I prefer to avoid any major changes to the skills (adding damage lines, raising damage cap etc) which require more work from kevin. I hope that we can have a faster, more simple, efficient and effective balances instead of ambitious-sounding solutions which require alot of time to rework.

this will allow people to abuse paladin mules instead of promoting people to main the class, which is not what we want.

 

I thought a damage cap raise would be the easiest one to implement. With our Blast stuck at 199k Paladin's aren't even guaranteed to beat many classes on end game elementally weak 1v1. If not damage cap for Blast then maybe more mastery?

 

Good idea but from this point forward, i will let the devs answer these.

 

upvote for this user's feedback for more exposure.
he mains a pally and has been playing it very frequently.

 

I just have to say, of course ACB will be worse if the way you're grinding is only using it on 2-3 mobs. That's some Hero technique stuff.
You gotta build your mobs up. The way I do it is rush, ACB once during rush cooldown, and repeat until I have a satisfactory cluster of mobs. Usually against the wall. Then again I've never been strong enough to kill those mobs with 2 ACB hits.

Sorry. I like all of your suggestions, I just needed to critique that. :0

 

Your first 1-2 rushes on a platform usually gathers 1-4 mobs at a time which makes crusher and brandish compete well against acb. The guy in the video can also 2 hit them so he would waste more time trying to gather 5 monsters infront of him than just killing 1-3 during rushes cool down.

 

Edit: (forget my Rush for distance boost argument. Unless you got low speed and/or high level rush)
I know it's less of a difference if your damage is that high, but it's efficient to alternate less often between movement phase and killing phase. There'll be less little stops in total.

Why stop to kill 2-3 enemies in two skill uses then follow the next 2-3 when you can put them together and kill them all in 2 skill uses? You were going to move to go to the next mobs anyway.

(Double edit: here is what I mean.



The order of methods in time are 25 seconds, 35 seconds, and the HH one is 21 seconds. I know it'll be an exaggerated difference because of my noob damage, but the idea is there.)

 

Rush becomes significanlty more important when you're 1) too weak to kill things quickly, and/or 2) you're slow, and I think as a whole, pallies are in a less ideal "grinding" position than heroes and DrK are- and I would argue it's mostly because of how superior brandish/whateverDrKskill is in more mob situations.

I have a pretty decent pally, which at the end of the day among all my other crazy characters is my main, and I can't 2 hit chief oblivion guardians (although, Ive never grinded with apples... but I don't think any sort of baseline should be made between classes using buffs like that.)

 

Personally, I hit the speed cap with my weapon and can land 2 ACB's before Rush recovers. My Rush is also level 30 so even with my current mobs dead I can still Rush immediately to the next mob as long as I can barely see the enemy at the end of the screen. Using 1 ACB per Rush does not feel faster for me either since you can either waste time Rushing too much with 1 ACB or waste time attacking too much with 2 ACB's.

 

That sounds like Pole Arm grinding to me. I like it!

 

Well if you can use 2 ACB's before rush cool down finishes, then of course use 2. The point of it is to just do anything to fill the gap of time productively. It just becomes a little slower if you decide to kill the 2-3 mobs you have together after rush has come back, and there's still more mobs ahead.

I'll stop here, it's a bit off topic. I have an example video edited into my other post.


Back on topic: what if ACB's base range was equal to its enemy chain range? Damn that'd be OP. 0.0
That actually gives me an idea. Is it possible to increase the chain hit range of a skill? Like, if the first current range ACB hits, the range in which it'll connect to other mobs surrounding it is increased. I think this could be a cool way of balancing it. Keep the noob ass first hit range, but make the chain range OP... If that's possible.

 

I can definitely say for sure the most frustrating thing about playing Paladin is hitting things. Not the amount of damage I do or elemental weaknesses, while annoying, isnt too bad in some cases, but hits actually connecting mainly with ACB.
There are many times ACB will just wiff, usually if the monster is only on a slightly different elevation or sometimes is too far away despite the weapon looking like its connecting but doesn't.
This also makes it kind of worthless in boss fights that have mobs or multiple things to attack, for example zakum mobs or the arms (speaking of the mobs the element charges are also worthless against them seeing as most are either resistant or immune to elements).
It doesn't make a big help if I'm using a 2handed weapon either, it feels like it has a fixed range, which I know it doesn't have fixed range but it feels terrible is all I'm saying.

But aside from ACB, I think the mastery should be boosted for BW (and axes too cause why not) users to alleviate the swing and stab damage ratio, but not a large amount. This doesnt really fix 2handed bw nonsensical formula but its something (which is 104%swing/74%stab i think. )

 

I don't know how hard it would be or if it's possible, but ACB could have a tiny range buff and encircle the character. This would allow Paladin's to hit 4-6 parts at Zakum/HT and control mobs better by hitting monsters behind and above us. ACB's animation looks circular too.

 

Okay, best fellas!
Warning for a long post.

I am currently playing a 14x Paladin in Royals and I used to play a 16x Paladin in gMS Bera during 2005-2009 so I’ve seen these kinds of discussions before. To me, the best way to objectively assess the need for change is to look at the damage factors and the other factors that supposedly impede our class. I have made an attempt to do this below, and for DPS calculations I have included a comparison with heroes since I believe they are our best comparable (similar gameplay, similar weapon choices, same weapon multipliers). Feel free to point out any logical errors I might have made in the spoilers below. Here goes.

Spoiler: Background/Assessment of the current situation

These are the damage per hit multipliers of Paladins and heroes respectively:



With a speed 5 weapon and booster (-> attacking speed 3), ACB has a 660ms animation whereas blast and brandish both have 690ms. (source: https://ayumilovemaple.wordpress.com/category/maplestory-formula/) This translates into a DPS table as seen below:



1v1 DPS comparison (Blast vs. Brandish):
Paladins do 23.3% higher dps than heroes on Holy weak
Paladins do 14.5% higher dps than heroes on fire/ice/lightning weak
Heroes do 21.7% higher dps than paladins on holy neutral
Heroes do 31% higher damage than paladins on fire/ice/lightning neutral

As expected, paladins do well on elementally weak monsters but lag behind on elementally neutral. Heroes' advantage on elementally neutral monsters is larger than paladins' advantage on elementally weak.

1vMany DPS comparison (ACB vs. Brandish)
Brandish always beats ACB vs. 2 or 3 mobs.
vs. 4 mobs, ACB only beats brandish on holy weak mobs.
vs. 5 mobs, ACB with any elemental advantage beats brandish.
vs. 6 mobs, ACB beats brandish even using holy charge when elementally neutral.

Paladins seem to stand their ground fairly well when mobbing at elementally weak areas, and especially if they can consistently gather mobs of 4 monsters or more.

1vMany DPS comparison (ACB+HH vs. Brandish)
So what about heaven’s hammer? Since it is a fixed-damage skill and not based on a damage range multiplier, we have to leave the safe confines of empiricism if we want to assess it. I think a fictitious scenario with some assumptions can help us gain an order of magnitude understanding of its impact on paladin’s mob DPS:

Scenario:
6K average damage range (something like 4.5-7.5K total range)
Training at Obv 5 (Ice weak mobs with 141K HP)
HH hits on average 10 mobs (reasonable from my experience)
HH animation time is 3300 ms (only figure I’ve seen, seems about right )
HH is used on average every 30 seconds
The time spent HHing would otherwise be spent spamming ACB into a 5 monster large mob
When not using HH, half of the time is spent mobbing/walking and half of the time is spent spamming ACB into a 4 monster large mob.

In this scenario, HH raises the dps output by 10.4%. This is not insignificant, but it is also not a game changer. Furthermore, the damage range in this hypothetical example was fairly low, and the relative advantage of using HH decreases as the damage range increases.

Damage cap problem
One common complaint about paladin boss DPS is that the 200k damage cap limits end-game DPS for funded players on high attack pots. So how big of a problem is this?

Let’s look at the paladin with the highest damage range (according to this thread: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/mapleroyals-official-damage-range-thread.6659/).
Sylosis has a damage range of 6098~11079 with MW20. Using an Onyx Apple, his range would increase to 9162~16648 and on demon elixir to 10388~18874.

In contrast, the minimum damage range needed to hit 200k blasts can be seen below.



From this, it is clear that Sylosis would never hit the damage cap without attack pots and SE.

With onyx apple and SE vs. Holy weak monster with 0 wdef, his DPS output would decrease by 2.5%
With Naricain Demon Elixir and SE vs. Holy weak monster with 0 wdef, his DPS output would decrease by 6%.

Thus, the damage cap problem is real and does affect the DPS of very well funded Paladins. However, until you can hit the damage cap without SE (16400+ range for holy weak), this problem is limited to only occur on the 15% of hits where you actually crit, and will therefore not cause more than a 2-3% DPS drop. The real problems when killing holy weak bosses start when you have an 18k+ range and hit the damage cap often even without SE. This has become a more probable scenario with the recent introductions of MoN and Naricain Demon Elixirs.

At the same time, the vast majority of the game’s paladins will never encounter this issue, and even the ridiculously funded paladins are unlikely to suffer from this except when killing holy weak bosses.

ACB Hitbox
The ACB hitbox problem is harder to quantify and I have yet to find any actual numbers of the pixel size (x * y) hitbox for either ACB or brandish. Suffice it to say that it does cause gameplay issues both when grinding and when bossing (HT, Zakum’s arms etc). I don't know how large part of the fight Heroes typically are able to hit 2 or more parts of that dragon.

To conclude

It is clear from most people’s feedback that the issues with paladin are not mainly affecting grinding speed or killing elementally weak bosses. The problems people are pointing to are instead:

1. The hitbox of ACB being annoying as hell when grinding and causing large DPS drops compared to heroes when attacking multiple target bosses.
2. The two most important end game bosses (arguably Zakum and HT) being elementally neutral, which causes Paladins to only do 812% damage per blast compared to Heroes’ 988% brandish, which may hit up to three boss parts. This means that a hero hitting only one part of HT does 22% more damage than a paladin, and a hero hitting two parts does 143% more damage.
3. The single damage line of Blast hitting damage cap and reducing overall DPS against elementally weak bosses. I have shown that for an extremely well funded paladin, this may cause a drop of 2.5% in DPS when using apples and 6% DPS when using Naricain Demon Elixirs, both assuming they have SE active. In my opinion, this is nowhere near as big of an issues as the two above points, but if the staff wants to attract well funded people to play paladins, they should consider addressing it.

Spoiler: Vision for the future Paladin

I do not believe that this class needs a big revamp or completely new concepts like skill stacking to become relevant in this server. Aside from ACB’s limited hitbox, paladins can grind well and they do well against elementally weak bosses. Rather, my vision for this class would involve sorting out the hitbox issues and making them relevant as attackers (not only crash mules) at HT, Zakum and other end game bosses.

My suggestions for realizing this vision involves three parts:

1. Increase the ACB hitbox so that it equals that of Brandish
2. Introduce elemental weaknesses (preferably fire, ice or lightning for balance) to end-game bosses like Zakum, HT, toad and Wulin. This means that Paladins would do 14.4% more damage than Heros on 1v1, but this may be offset by the fact that Heroes are able to hit two or three parts of some of the bosses. A hero hitting 2 or 3 boss parts with Brandish would still outdamage a Paladin hitting 2 or 3 parts with ACB (1432% DPS per monster compared to the Paladin’s 1034% DPS per monster). If you feel as though this is not enough to offset the Paladin’s higher 1v1 damage, you could consider making one or two parts of those bosses elementally neutral.
3. Raise damage cap or split the blast damage into two lines if you feel that the damage cap problem is big enough to warrant this. I do believe that splitting the damage into two lines would however also mean that the monster’s weapon defense would be counted twice, which would lower Paladin’s DPS on monsters like the Castellan Toad. Not sure how big of a problem this is, as I have yet to calculate the impact of wdef.

In my opinion, those changes would both make paladin grinding more enjoyable and make paladins a wanted class for bossing. Simultaneously, they would not make paladins overpowered compared to their more heroic cousins, and they would not have adverse effects on other classes.

Spoiler: Calculations (LOL have fun)

1v1 DPS comparison (Blast vs. Brandish):

Paladin
Holy weak: 150% (ele weak) * 140% charge multiplier) * 580% (blast multiplier) = 1218% damage per blast
Holy Neutral: 140% * 580% = 812% damage per blast
Fire/ice/lightning weak: 150% * 130% * 580% = 1131% damage per blast
Fire/ice/lightning neutral: 130% * 580% = 754% damage per blast

Hero
190% (ACA 10 orbs) * 260% (Brandish multiplier) * 2 hits per brandish = 988% per brandish

1vMany DPS comparison (ACB vs. Brandish)

Paladin
Holy weak: 350% (ACB) * 1.4* 1.5= 735% damage per ACB and monster (max 6)
Holy neutral: 350% * 1.4 = 490% damage per ACB and monster (max 6)
Fire/ice/lightning weak: 150% * 130% * 350% = 682.5% damage per acb and monster (max 6)
Fire/ice/lightning neutral: 130% * 350% = 455% damage per acb and monster

Hero
988% brandish (as above) * number of mobs (max 3)

1vMany DPS comparison (ACB+HH vs. Brandish)
Damage per HH = 141K * 10 = 1.41M
1.41M damage / 6K damage range = 23500% per HH (But can’t kill monsters)
ACB damage in the same time (assuming 5 mobs an) = 5170%*3.3=17061%
So HH does 6439% more damage than continuously using ACB.

This amounts to 215% extra damage per second (every second, including time spent walking/mobbing). If half the time of a paladin’s training session is spent walking/mobbing and the other half is spent ACBing into a 4 monster mob, the average ACTUAL DPS output of the paladin is 4136% / 2 = 2068%. HH thus raises the dps output by 10.4%.

Damage cap problem

Sylosis has a damage range of 6098~11079 with MW20. Using an Onyx Apple, his range would increase to 9162~16648 and on demon elixir to 10388~18874. (Calculations made in excel according to damage formula and his shown stats).

With onyx apple and SE vs. Holy weak monster with 0 wdef:

Sylosis’s Critical hit blast damage is between 156,333 and 283,881. He will therefore hit the damage cap on 66% of his critical hits. When he does hit the damage cap, the average hit would have been 241940 without the cap.

So the average damage Sylosis loses per blast due to the damage cap is:
15% crit chance * 66% chance to actually hit cap * 41941 damage “missed out” = 4152.

His average blast damage is 166614, so this corresponds to a 2.5% drop in DPS.

With Naricain Demon Elixir and SE vs. Holy weak monster with 0 wdef:

Sylosis’s Critical hit blast damage is between 177,136 and 321,829. He will therefore hit the damage cap on 84% of his critical hits. When he does hit the damage cap, the average hit would have been 260914 without the cap, and loses out on 60914 damage on those hits

Now, however, Sylosis might also hit the damage cap on regular hits. His blast damage on regular hits is 126,525~229885 and he will hit the cap on 28.9% of his regular hits. Of those hits the average damage would have been 214,942. He thus loses 14942 damage on those hits

So the average damage Sylosis loses per blast due to the damage cap is:
15% crit chance * 84% chance to actually hit cap * 60914 damage “missed out” +
85% non-crit chance * 28.9% chance to actually hit cap * 14942 damage = 11345

His average blast damage is 188898, so this corresponds to a 6% drop in DPS.

TL;dr: Increase ACB hitbox to that of brandish, make end game bosses elementally weak and (optionally, to help the top 1% of paladins) find a fix for the damage cap, and all will be good. Trust me, I've done the math.

 

Another thing we need to analyze while looking into paladin changes is the whole sword vs. blunt weapon situation.

Spoiler: Current situation

Background
There are three main ways in which one weapon may be different than another; 1) attack multiplier, 2) base weapon attack and 3) attacking speed. As long as the total weapon attack of a character is accounted for (and not only that of the weapon), all those three are direct multipliers of that character's DPS. This means that we can assess the difference in DPS between two weapons with the following formula:

Total difference in DPS output = Difference in attack multiplier * Difference in total weapon attack * Difference in attacking speed

Understanding attack multipliers
Blunt weapons do more damage when swinging than when stabbing. For any given non-fixed stab/swing attack, the chance to swing is 60% while the chance to stab is 40% (this is also known as the 3:2 slash/stab ratio). The average damage multipliers are thus:

1h Sword : 4.0
2h Sword: 4.6
1h BW: 3.92 (3.2 (stab multiplier) *0.4 + 4.4 (swing multiplier) *0.6)
2h BW: 4.24 (3.4 (stab multiplier) *0.4 + 4.8 (swing multiplier) *0.6)

Running the calculations
Assuming
56 attack cape+gloves+shoes
30 attack shield (when using 1h)

I have tried a bunch of different configurations and got the highest sword DPS when using Stonetooth sword, and the highest BW DPS when using Crushed Skull. I therefore chose to compare the DPS of Stonetooth to that of crushed skull (both being the best end game weapons).

Stonetooth has 13% higher dps than crushed skull when not using any attack pots:


This is further increased to 20% when using apples:

I understand that the dex requirement of an ST might mean that the player has to sacrifice some strength. However, I would argue that this will not impact DPS with more than 5% (50 extra AP into dex at lvl 200).

The difference between Dragon Carabella and Crushed skull is smaller, only 5 and 7% DPS output respectively.


With SI, the Crushed Skull is marginally better than the Carabella but still much worse than the ST (both with and without apples)

Spoiler: The future of blunt weapons

I understand that BWs have a bit of a "cool factor" and that this makes people choose them over swords today, even despite their lower DPS. Some people might also just want cheaper weapons, and I respect that. However, I think that if those same people would have reconsidered this if they knew that STs have a 20% DPS advantage over crushed skulls when using apples, and a 15% advantage without. In fact, I know of players that have paid 100k+NX to make the switch from BWs to Swords later in game due to this very reason. To me, this indicates that the difference in DPS is larger than it should be and that the server would benefit from trying to balance the weapons better.

It is also clear that the main problem does not lie in the 1h BW vs 1h Sword equation; 1h BWs even beat 1h Swords in DPS with SI. The problem is rather that the Stonetooth Sword is better than all other 1h/2h swords, and there is no BW that can respond to this since all 2h BWs have slow speed and an 8% lower average multiplier attack multiplier (4.24 compared to 4.6).

Possible ways forward:

1. Raising the BW stab multipliers to the point where they are slightly better, on average, than sword multipliers. For instance, if the 1h BW stab multiplier was changed to 3.6 and the swing multiplier was kept at 4.4, the average multiplier would be 4.08, which is 2% better than the 1h sword multiplier rather than today's 2% worse. BWs would still be "worse" than STs (always) and Carabellas (except for when on SI), but the difference would not be as big as it is today.
2. Introduce a feasible end-game 2h BW with normal or fast speed. Hell, even if you change the speed of Dragon Flame (lvl 110 2h BW) to Fast(5), an ST would still do 5% higher DPS due to the damage multiplier. I really like what you did by adding the Redner as a choice for 2h BW, but unfortunately, its base attack is so low that it is bound to do 10-15% lower damage than an ST. If you want to solve the BW vs. Sword problems purely by adding a new Fast(5) 2h BW into the game, its base attack would need to be at least the same as STs to not make it obsolete. Its DPS output would still be lower due to the lower attack multiplier.
   
3. Some combination of the above, such as adding a normal speed endgame 2h BW AND raising the attack multipliers.

TL;dr: BWs do significantly less DPS than swords due to lower attack multipliers and slower attacking speed. This is further amplified by the lack of a 2h BW equivalent to the Stonetooth Sword. The possible solutions I propose involve raising the BW stab multipliers and/or introducing a new end-game 2h BW with faster attacking speed.

 

Flamesword has a higher DPS than ST without SI and without apple.
I made this chart before flamesword came out, but pyrope sword is almost as good. This chart shows the DPS of different weapons using skills with a 3:2 swing stab ratio, like power strike, slash blast, and blast. All weapons are assumed to be perfect and all 1H weapons are assumed to be paired with perfect maple shields.