Shadower Class feedback

Assassinate only hits 4 times - the 4th hit is the rush attack. I use bstep > ds > assassinate and while holding down the macro, the 4th rush/crit hit automatically gets skipped. Now, if what you're saying is that with that macro set you have does indeed land the 4th rush/crit hit, then it still is a big problem as holding down the macro will just end up with you moving forward farther and farther eventually standing on top of the mob/boss, and having to readjust yourself. This doesn't allow any room for spamming the macro and isn't very much useful for bossing. With my macro bstep > ds > assassinate it keeps you in place while you spam, however you are missing out on the 4th hit that crits and is a huge damage loss. You can see where the issue is here with the combinations

 

My bad, what i meant was ds> 3hits assasinate> bstep. No matter the rotation, buffing both these skills should make your concern of a low dps class non existent. Think of that 4th hit as a bonus when used as a standalone skill.

 

Yup! indeed it would be a huge difference with damage buffs + base damage increase + charge time reduction for assassinate. So back to the original question: will this actually happen? XD

 

yes

 

I would also throw in a suggestion for buffing pickpocket so that people would actually use it mid fight to blow up any mesos that have dropped for extra damage, this way we aren't spending our own mesos to actually use ME.

 

From what i have seen so far, buffing damage numbers of 4th job core skills is still the simplest solution without actually changing the mechanics of this class. I like the idea of of pickpocket dropping more mesos to make the skill more relevant.

 

I think a lot of people are exaggerating with the buffs they want , dont work too hard on this , you dont need to change any mechanics or nerf ME , all you need to do is BUFF the core shadower skills that are Assasssinate and B step.
Buffing their % damage at max level by a high amount / small amount (how you see fit) will be for the best since changing core base mechanics that this class uses will only make more problems in the future.
Adjust the % damage and wait to see feedback and then you can just adjust more if its necessary. My core point in regard of this matter as a main shadower player , and i will make this point with Buccaneer as a pretty bad dps class as well is that i think that a slow attacking class should do more damage than a fast attacking class or at least the same (depends on your gear) , take Hero attack and compare it to shadower or Buccaneer , Hero attacks really fast and deals a lot of damage , so both Shadower and Buccaneer should get more % damage on their core skills to compensate with their lack of attack speed. Since hero has both attack and speed you can see why its so strong compared to other classes.
If you try to give a shadower that hits slower than a hero the ability to do almost the same damage or the same depending on gear, you can reach a middle ground that people can be happy with.
Focus on % damage for now and wait for more feedback that is my opinion and i think its for the best.

 

I think flat increasing of % on assassinate and bstep is not the best way to buff shadower. This class is all about evasion and attacking fast from the shadows so this aspect should be buffed. I suggest to increase animation speed of assassinate for something like 50% on par with decreasing its delay. I've seen this change on one private server before so i think it could be implicated on ours.

 

I believe both a base range damage and skill damage increase/cast time decrease is in order.

 

make meso explosion scale with your range- its incredibly horrendous game design that a naked shad with a razer can do almost same dps as 200b funded shad. buff bstep damage.

 

that honestly just ruins the whole design of ME. what's the point of even wasting mesos to explode if it scales with your range. there's already a big sacrifice by using more mesos for more damage. leave ME alone and fix base damage + bstep/assassinate damage/cast time. pick pocket buff would be another great addition to actually be useful during bossing mid fight to explode what's already on the ground. imo this is honestly all that needs to be done to fix this class and make them useful during bossing.

 

I agree your opinion, just leave ME alone for now, as long as buff the 4th job skill damage, no one gonna waste meso on ME anymore.
Besides, create a new formula of ME which scale with attack range and meso both could be a problem.

Assassinate might be the worst single target melee skill of 4th job, long cast time , no critical for first 3 hit, 4th hit is a dash, and 12 sec charge time( if you get abnormal state while charging the skill, all the effort are wasted), so imo shorten the charge time is necessary, and about buffing damage, make first 3 hit has about 30% chance to be critical hit could be an option.

And plz buff the pick pocket, make it scale with attack range, it could be a great buff for both mobbing and bossing, thanks!

 

Dark Sight:
Enable us to use potions during dark sight. At some situation we get stunned after casting dark sight and we cannot use potions to recover our hp. Although we have high avoidability, it could still be fatal if we're really unlucky. In addition, we use dark sight to accumulate the assassinate damage when bosses like krexel cast weapon cancel. But if a shadower use weapon attack elixirs last 1 minute like heartstopper, the buff is often gone before the max accumulative damage reached or weapon cancel ends. Enable us to use elixir could solve this problem.

Assassinate:

1. Increase the showing up and the first hit speed. like this.
2. Change the forth hit mechanism. Make it work like rush of warriors so we can still cast the last hit when we're at the edge of screen or on the cliff.
3. Let the last hit be worthwhile to cast by increasing the critical damage, so people won't always skip the last hit. Like from 250% to 600%, and make Sharp Eyes fully supports it.

More stable damage range:
Instead of increasing the skills attack percentage, I think increasing dagger mastery is a better way to buff shadowers. As you can see both our main skills have heavy delay. With more stable damage, we can grind more efficiently. We can buff Venomous Stab with additional Dagger Mastery like BM's Bow Expert. The poison doesn't work on bosses so giving it another function can let it be more helpful.

The following are my personal wishes:

• bosses can be stunned like 0.5 seconds. Buccaneer can benefit from this.
• Assassinate attacks up to 2 target, at least the last strike does. Sometimes we accumulate the max damage but the monster block us so we can't hit the right target. If the monster dies within the first 3 hits, the last strike hits no one too. Attacking multiple targets can avoid this situation.

 

Making Pickpocket drop more mesos won't do much for meso explosion, unless it was made to drop a whole lot more money. I think ME is fine the way it is – a costly way to level really fast in early third job, and a costly way to kill some bosses. I don't think ME fits very well into normal fourth job grinding at all.

Pickpocket, Shield Mastery and Chakra form the triad of pointless late third job skills. I know they can't all be winners, but couldn't we maybe swap either PP or SM for something inoffensive yet marginally useful like Alchemy? Or make Chakra into some sort of buff?

Without changing a lot of stuff, a big improvement could be made if Taunt or Ninja Ambush were replaced by higher dagger mastery as was already mentioned here. It would be extra cool if this dagger mastery skill also passively increased the range and damage of band of thieves and assaulter; assaulter is our signature movement skill and a little more range could be nice to have, while band of thieves is by lack of anything better my “use between BS delays skill” yet is hopelessly outclassed in terms of damage, hitting for a quarter of what boomerang step does.

Venom is almost pointless as a skill, but a nice buff couldn't hurt. If it could afflict bosses that would be nice too but I don't expect it.

As for assassinate, the dark sight mechanic is so clunky I'd remove it entirely and simply put it on a large delay or cooldown.

I would not remove the delay on Boomerang Step; the delay forcing us to use other skills is the one thing stopping us from becoming a boring one-skill class. We just need better skills to use in tandem.

Comedy option: replace ninja ambush for one of the arch mage summons.

 

Any idea on when these changes will be implemented @Luna?

 

Hard for me to say, we are still in the midst of testing a lot of things, plus multiple investigations keep popping up and is taking up most of our time too. But i assure you that we have every intention to make changes.

 

I personally think letting monsters drop shield attack scrolls is a good solution for bandit class. I'm not sure, but there were some monsters that did drop shield attack scrolls at pre-bigbang, but wasn't here in mapleroyals. Anyways, getting good gear for bandits is very expensive because shield attack scrolls are expensive, making them really bad especially since they don't output that much damage anyways even with gear. Non-popular classes can benefit from having low demands and thus low market value for their gear, and having shield attack scrolls exclusive for gapachon really hurts bandit classes in that aspect.

 

some1 already said this, but ill repeat it anyways.
-Remove the requirement of going into darksight before the actual attack animation of Assassinate. and obviously increase the damage of assassinate.
-Boomerang step should hit 6 mobs.
-Decrease smokescreen's cooldown from 10 mins to 5 mins
-Assualter's range should be longer/more distance. enough for it to go thru BF/HH/Pap without having to take touch damage.
-Make chakra a passive skill with a chance to heal the user(maybe 20% of the time) to activate when under half health and only if the user is attacking.
-Make shield mastery increase the weapon defense/ magic defense/ weapon attack of a shield that the user is holding by a percentage.

 

Chunin drops 30% weap att for shield

 

And I'm pretty sure I got the 10% from Genin or Ashigaru