Back in Update 68 (jesus, have I been playing that long already?) this innocuous little line was mentioned: The consequence of which was mages get drained to 1/1 even with Magic Guard. I find this incredibly incongruous with the lore. Mages are supposed to be magical, yet someone arbitrarily decided that "yes, mages should also be subject to 1/1" making this change. Before you say things like: "Mages shouldn't be able to tank" I respectfully disagree. Let mages be magical. Mages aren't triple throw mules or DPS NPCs, so the least the game can do for balance in bossing is let them be able to survive things that are typically mortal for other classes instead of just being a class that people only bring in expeditions as mules. If mages don't have Magic Guard up (for example because of dispel, or just being dumb like me), then 1/1 should of course be mortal just like if you didn't have Meso Guard up. If the goal was to break or at least discourage the mulestory meta and encourage more active mages, then making already soft mages even more squishy is not it. You have to attack the problem directly. For example, boss mechanic changes - one off the cuff example is to increase defense up for HT, thereby encouraging active bishops for dispel, as well as hero/DrK for armor crash. "This is a bug fix" go look at Shadowers with Meso Guard only losing 50% HP, which was "fixed" to be 1/1 in Update 73.3 and then reverted with this reasoning in the November 2021 GM Blog: I believe that when Shadower 1/1 "fix" was reverted, mages should've had their "fix" reverted as well, but no one meaningfully advocated for the class. LF>1/1 "bug fix" revert
That “1/1” for Shad’s was never a glitch, 1/1 since 3rd job zakum days up until v90s before big bang meso guard has always left Shad’s with half of their hp (I was a former Shad player in true gms). So I don’t know where you are getting this glitch from. You can even check older YouTube videos of Shad players facing bosses like zak/czak pre bb. unfortunately mages got the short end of the stick, that didn’t change for them until after big bang where skills like invincible for bishops and infinity played a role similar to how meso guard work, but not as good. if you want to argue that mages can have their survivability revised based off hardly dealing any dps as is vs its other class counterparts, I’d argue that would be 100% fair seeing how mages here aren’t strong at all even for support purposes but slightly ease up on the difficulty of survival.
I tried to read through old threads but couldn't find any strong justification for why game balancers/developers wanted to implement this "fix" in the first place. Maybe I just missed it, if anyone knows what the original reasoning was to affect shads and mages with 1/1. Does this make me a pro game balancer now? Spoiler: gayme balanth
It’s not balanced if you wanna be real, I played here at the start when it was “NL” story and Shad’s blow them out the water not needing se or the alchemist for pot advantage. Sure NLs are strong with SE, but a class this strong not needing a single buff and has mobbing / survival/ the best avoid skill in the game isn’t balanced lol.
