Update # 65.1 feedback

So regarding the latest changes, the MP cost reduction for archmage is quite nice and kinda counters the expensive pot prices.
The Petri spawn is quite good though, it seems as good as it was previously (or even a bit better).

Regarding Duku, I've tried the 2nd map and it seems not quite as good as Petri in terms of exp from my testings (though the 1st map seems better)

Unfortunately mages still have issues, in particular F/P mages suffer from a lack of maps/options.
ROR didn't get buffed at all and it's still inferior to Petris and Skeles since it's hard to sell leech there, so your only real options seem to be skele, petri and duku.
Neo tokyo also got too high hp and a lot of fire/ice resistances. In addition I wonder why Dukus aren't weak to fire? They are trees after all, and krexel is basically a big duku yet he is weak to fire and they aren't.
Another option is to buff Newties, they used to be popular back in GMS but here they aren't as good as petri/skele. Buffing them will give you another option to grind/leech at and will reduce the overcrowding in petris and skeles. They also drop some nice items like Concertos (which are kinda rare), Nisrocks and Hurricane 20.

Also giving bosses some poison weakness would be good so that F/P mages could try some bosses when they are bored.

Now about MMs, while it's nice that they got a buff at least if you don't plan to buff them further after it would be actually really disappointing.
5 atk is pretty much almost nothing, for example if a MM got like 130 atk xbow, 40 atk gear and stoppers he will have a total of 240 atk before the buff (130+40+60+10 from marksman's boost).
The difference between 240 and 245 is only around 2% or so, and with higher atk gear/apples the difference will be even smaller. It also only affects Strafe and not Snipe so in reality it's maybe only like 1.5% more dps.
MM would still be the weakest attacker class so it won't really change anything, it would probably make your strafe hit like 1k more every hit at best

I'd suggest just increasing the damage cap to 300k, it will help both MMs and BW paladins who can often hit cap damage due to BWs having very high max range and lose a lot of damage from it

 

That calculation seems inaccurate, it shows sword Paladin to be weaker than Hero even at 140 (when you can't hit 199k) which is clearly wrong (assuming you maxed blast) since brandish deals 520% damage and ACA has a x1.9 multiplier while Blast hits 580% and fire/lightning/ice weak got a x1.95 multiplier (130%x1.5). It also shows MMs to be stronger than Shads at lvl 200 yet in the krex video Shad finished like 2 minutes faster than MM which is a big difference.
So in reality at 140-150 a bucc with maxed barrage and demo and a paladin with maxed blast will both white a MM probably (if they got decent gear), especially in stuff like Zak where the MM will get knocked and stunned a lot while the bucc got iframes and stance and the paladin got stance.

 

... but you can't max SE, snipe and MM boost at level 140

not to mention 140 is the peak of MM increments due to snipe having less and less of a DPS boost as strafe damage increases with level.
at 180+ (let alone 200) when your gear + xbow + potion approaches 300+ att the 5att boost becomes relatively insignificant (<2% increase in total wa). Based on the unofficial DPS practical test https://royals.ms/forum/threads/pirate-king-krexels-2nd-eye-dps-tests-bucc-and-sair.145069/ I don't think overall this changes the situation of MMs having worse DPS than classes that aren't even known for single target DPS.

Anyway, those are just my two cents. Whilst I agree there are significant implications with suggestions such as increasing damage cap (including the fact that this doesn't change the diminishing returns phenomenon MMs see while having a potential to overpower them at lower levels), I don't really think this 5att buff we saw in 65.1 is likely to change the overall picture by much. At all.

 

I think a good way to buff MM would be to remove that 5 atk and instead give Marksman's Boost a critical chance boost instead (around 10-15% at max lvl)
This is kinda logical since you'd except a class called Marksman to actually deal critical hits and it's strange how NLs have a higher chance to crit here.
A 10% crit chance buff will boost Strafe's average damage by around 9% which is far better than the insignificant 1.5-2% boost of 5 more atk

With this change a MM with SI will be able to outdamage the majority of BMs (except for very high range ones with apple) but will still be quite a bit weaker without SI so it's quite balanced

 

Not saying MM don’t need a buff. But if we keep buffing classes to not be the worst dps class, where do we draw the line?

To be frank, Marksman has SE. If hero, shad, drk (maybe), bucc (during NL story) hits bottom tier DPS, nobody will pick them up (I played during HT NLstory of 2018, you were trolling if you picked up a Shad/Bucc into smega R>runs). If anything an SE class being at the bottom will still usually still get into parties.

If I were to seriously think of buffs, I want Marksmen buffs to make the class more rewarding to play and invest in. I want it to be rewarding to fund a marksman, rather them scaling off horribly with levels/gear.

Instead of just throwing on just flat damage % buffs on strafe what if strafe also had slight dex scalings like Triple Throw so they would scale better into the late game.

An increase in damage cap would help our newer/lesser funded MMs as well. But Marksmen already are one of the top DPS in 150- 4th job.

Edit:
Emphasis on slight dex scaling. You must keep strafe weak enough that you must snipe for optimal DPS. Otherwise ppl will just tape their forehead to spacebar like every other ranged class.

 

Great post, all right on points. Another big problem is that snipe is fixed damage so eventually it becomes obsolete, basically any MM that goes beyond level 170.
Instead of just employing little big bang style fixes like throwing more attack at everything, I really like the idea of using snipe gives your strafe a bonus for like 5 seconds after, that way you need to keep rotating it when you can to get the benefits, which could be anything like:

-bullseye effect
-avoid boost
-X% ignore w.def
-very small strafe damage increase
-increased crit chance or damage
-final attack procs with strafe
-can inflict blind on bosses (if you have it up)
-some combination of these

Again these only last for 5 seconds, so you greatly benefit from rotating strafe/snipe

Also it's an insulting boost after losing snipe's original weapon cancel effect. I invested a lot of time to level my char, really sucks to have an original feature, not bug, removed, especially when other classes can hit through WC still

 

What's the worst that could possibly happen if MM DPS = BM DPS?

 

This is kind of what I'd like to see. Make the choice of Bowman mostly a flavor choice.