[Forum] [Announcement] Regarding Kanna's Haku's Blessing

[SaptaZapta]

http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/d...us-blessing/p1

After much discussion and communication, the decision was made that we will be making the change to Haku's Blessing's magic damage buff formula. Currently, Haku's Blessing provides a significant increase to only magic attack based on the attack power of her fans. Rather than encouraging party play, Maplers felt that Haku's Blessing discouraged Kanna from partying with physical based jobs.

This feedback can be seen here:
http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/d...is-unresonable
http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/d...nd-party-buffs

It was made clear to us that this buff was too powerful and making it a party buff for other mage classes to abuse was for the lack of better words, broken.

When the original intention of the change to Haku's Blessing was first introduced to the community, the feedback was overall negative. It was communicated to us by our community, that what made Kanna a competitive class, was the fact that the class made already powerful mages even stronger with Haku's Blessing.

This feedback can be seen here:
http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/d...#Comment_55865
http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/d...o-kanna#latest
https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/...ricycle_rider/

However, the decision to adjust Haku's Blessing formula was made after much review of the community feedback and discussions from our game teams. Ultimately, we will continue to review the state of Kanna after this change is made. Haku's Blessing's formula will be changed from multiplicative into a flat magic attack buff based on the magic attack modifier on Kanna's fans for every member in the party on 10/18/2017.

We will be sure to monitor all points pertaining to Kanna's performance in-game in conjunction with the community's feedback for additional discussions regarding the class' balance in the future.

For those who have not kept up with the game

Kanna was introduced in early 2013. She is a mage, and her primary weapon is a Fan. Instead of a special secondary weapon, she can equip a second Fan on Haku (her fox/human companion who has his own tab in the equip window, like Mir for Evan). Haku's Blessing is a skill that grants Kanna a %m.att buff of about half the m.att of Haku's Fan. So if you put a 100-m.att fan on Haku, you get 50% m.att buff. If you put a 300-m.att fan on Haku (pretty easy with 70% spell-traced, 10-star Fafnir fan) you get 150% m.att. And if you give Haku a 600 m.att fan (15-star primed Arcane Umbra fan) you get a fantastic 300% m.att buff.
This might seem absurdly OP, but Kanna's skills have very low % damage, and the end result was pretty balanced. Kanna was mostly taken to boss fights for her two Bind skills as well as other minor support skills, not as an OP damage-dealer.

In late 2015, Haku's Blessing became a party buff. This meant that any mage partied with a Kanna now had their damage doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled. Boss parties consisting of a Kanna and some mages became the norm, especially in Reboot where everyone is considerably weaker at endgame than in normal servers (due to lack of scrolling and bonus potential).

In 2017, a few months ago, we heard that Taiwan MS had changed their Haku's Blessing to be a flat m.att buff instead of % (so a 300 m.att fan on Haku would now give 150 m.att instead of 150% m.att), still as a party buff. To compensate, they gave Kanna a 30% final damage to another skill, and a 5% final damage buff per party member affected by Haku's Blessing. Taiwan MS also informed their users that all other services that have Kanna will shortly implement the same change.
People here immediately objected. Many discussions and threads appeared (some of which Arwoo linked to in the forum notice quoted above).
- The vast majority of players said that Haku's Blessing should simply return to being a self-buff. Kanna needs it because of her low skill damage, and 30-60% final damage does not make up for a lost 150% m.att. Other mages are balanced without it and even a 150 m.att flat buff is probably OP for them and unfair to physical classes.
- A minority suggested that Haku's Blessing (in its % form) be made to apply to physical damage as well, and then it would be fair to all.
- A tiny minority said that the nerf was justified because Kanna is a support class, and should not expect to be a strong soloer.

Nexon seemed to listen, and our Tune Up update (like its GMS-Tespia version) did not include the Haku's Blessing nerf, though it did include the 30-60% final damage buff. Kannas were happy and nobody else seemed to mind.

And now, as you can read, Nexon has decided to nerf Haku's Blessing after all.

[PirateIzzy]

Jeez Nexon, I know you like pineappleing over the players, but this is worthy of charges.

[SaptaZapta]

Jeez Nexon, I know you like pineappleing over the players, but this is worthy of charges.

This appeared on the official Discord:


And later on the official stream, in response to multiple "nexin y u do dis" questions in the chat, all he could say was "it was supposed to happen in Tune Up, and it's happening now." No attempt whatsoever to explain why they thought it was a good idea. He did promise, as in the last line of the forum post, that they will continue to collect in-game information to assess what this change really does to Kanna.

I don't know whether to take the CM's behavior as a good sign (Nexon finally letting a CM express his own opinion in public, instead of being a mouthpiece tasked with defending the most questionable decisions), a bad sign (Nexon no longer even tries to pretend to have good reasons for what they do), or neither (Arwoo didn't get permission to say what he said, and may be on his way out).

[tecul1]

i'm expecting the latter 2 for obvious reasons

[fodjgngf]

All they had to do was make it apply to physical damage classes in the same manner and everyone would've been happy.

[SwordStaker]

All they had to do was make it apply to physical damage classes in the same manner and everyone would've been happy.

Or they could just make it a solo buff again. It was turned to a party buff in JMS, and in my opinion, the class was made in JMS, and since Haku's blessing has not been changed there, so then why change it? This just pineapples over Kanna players.

[byakugan]

Or they could just make it a solo buff again. It was turned to a party buff in JMS, and in my opinion, the class was made in JMS, and since Haku's blessing has not been changed there, so then why change it? This just pineapples over Kanna players.

JMS is in not the best state right now as far as i know. I doubt they are keeping track on how the new additions to the game are affecting old content and classes when the servers are barely alive. The problem is that, since Kanna is not in KMS, they do not take her into considerationg when balancing their jobs, so in he end when new content is released over servers with Kanna, this causes an unbalance. The buff should have been changed into a seft buff again. but I I guess Nexon recognizing Kanna as a support now and considers she shouldnt be that strong.