2009-01-17, 07:08 PM
Well, going off the recent kMST patches, I thought it would be nice to discuss what kinds of changes to skills we'd like to see in order to make maple a more interesting and less imbalanced game. In my opinion, 3rd job was extremely well-designed without taking 4th job characters into consideration, though I think chief bandits could use a bit of a break. To me, 4th job was quite a mess and seemed very rushed, even more so for Cygnus classes, though this thread is more for 4th job classes because most of us haven't experienced Cygnus classes first-hand yet.
Also, this thread is for changes to 4th job skills BEFORE 4th job was released, meaning that if you say that ultimates should be removed, this doesn't mean that it happens now, 1-year into 4th job, which would be guaranteed to cause chaos in the game.
Here's a list of what I'd like to see changed:
Hero: Make combo an actual combo. Right now, all combo basically does is increase damage and have pink circles fly around your character, which kinda defeats the purpose of the word "combo." 3rd job was decent in that there was actually a point in releasing orbs. Endless brandishing seems extremely dull to me. I'd like to see heroes get skills that actually chain together and have finishers actually worth using. Which means attacks with cooldowns and making the damage increase not rely on how many orbs you currently have.
Paladins: Replace sanctuary with 20-point max holy symbol. I don't think that only one class in the game getting the essential party skill really makes sense, and paladins do need some sort of a training boost, considering that they only barely match up to heroes on elementally WEAK mobs, which they should really excel against. Giving them holy symbol alleviates both problems, and the kMST update allowing threaten to work on bosses helps them become more useful at bosses. I also think that sanctuary is kind of a stupid skill gameplay-wise, though aesthetically, it's very funny to see with a macro saying "OBJECTION!" xD
Dark Knight: Change berserk so that it's only active when you're blinking from taking damage. This fits the name of the skill better, and I think that keeping hp under a certain threshold is a very bad idea in a game like maplestory when you get an invincibility period after taking damage. Also increase berserk damage to something like 300% to compensate for this, and replace beholder's healing with a single-target skill that always swings and is balanced to allow polearm-users to train at almost the same rate as spear-users (this skill for single-target, fury for mobs) and also let them deal a little bit better damage than spear-users at bosses.
Archmages: Remove ultimates and power up fire demon/ice demon/paralyze/chain lightning/big bang to allow archmages to train at a similar pace to other classes. In the ultimates' place, a new skill should be added that removes weapon/magic cancel but with quite a long cooldown. This lets them become more useful at bosses in a unique way.
Bishops: Remove genesis and replace it with a forward piercing mob skill that allows them to train at a very slightly slower rate than others, to compensate for holy symbol, like what I'm proposing for paladins. Also, replace infinity with the flame wizard skill that converts the archmage's own elemental spells to neutral.
Bowmasters: Make hamstring work on bosses.
Marksmen: Change snipe's cooldown back to 10 seconds, make blind work on bosses, and make pierce's damage consistent through each monster in a mob. I personally think that 5 seconds is a bit too small of a cooldown for snipe and that blind working on bosses is better a better way to balance out marksmen with bowmasters at bosses.
Night lords: Make ninja storm faster.
Shadowers: Make the actual attack of assassinate faster, and make it have a percent chance to instantly kill a non-boss monster based on level difference, assassinate level, and dark sight charge. Those are essentially what assassinations really are in the real life, nobody takes that long assassinating someone from the shadows, especially to have it not actually kill almost all the time >_>
Also, this thread is for changes to 4th job skills BEFORE 4th job was released, meaning that if you say that ultimates should be removed, this doesn't mean that it happens now, 1-year into 4th job, which would be guaranteed to cause chaos in the game.
Here's a list of what I'd like to see changed:
Hero: Make combo an actual combo. Right now, all combo basically does is increase damage and have pink circles fly around your character, which kinda defeats the purpose of the word "combo." 3rd job was decent in that there was actually a point in releasing orbs. Endless brandishing seems extremely dull to me. I'd like to see heroes get skills that actually chain together and have finishers actually worth using. Which means attacks with cooldowns and making the damage increase not rely on how many orbs you currently have.
Paladins: Replace sanctuary with 20-point max holy symbol. I don't think that only one class in the game getting the essential party skill really makes sense, and paladins do need some sort of a training boost, considering that they only barely match up to heroes on elementally WEAK mobs, which they should really excel against. Giving them holy symbol alleviates both problems, and the kMST update allowing threaten to work on bosses helps them become more useful at bosses. I also think that sanctuary is kind of a stupid skill gameplay-wise, though aesthetically, it's very funny to see with a macro saying "OBJECTION!" xD
Dark Knight: Change berserk so that it's only active when you're blinking from taking damage. This fits the name of the skill better, and I think that keeping hp under a certain threshold is a very bad idea in a game like maplestory when you get an invincibility period after taking damage. Also increase berserk damage to something like 300% to compensate for this, and replace beholder's healing with a single-target skill that always swings and is balanced to allow polearm-users to train at almost the same rate as spear-users (this skill for single-target, fury for mobs) and also let them deal a little bit better damage than spear-users at bosses.
Archmages: Remove ultimates and power up fire demon/ice demon/paralyze/chain lightning/big bang to allow archmages to train at a similar pace to other classes. In the ultimates' place, a new skill should be added that removes weapon/magic cancel but with quite a long cooldown. This lets them become more useful at bosses in a unique way.
Bishops: Remove genesis and replace it with a forward piercing mob skill that allows them to train at a very slightly slower rate than others, to compensate for holy symbol, like what I'm proposing for paladins. Also, replace infinity with the flame wizard skill that converts the archmage's own elemental spells to neutral.
Bowmasters: Make hamstring work on bosses.
Marksmen: Change snipe's cooldown back to 10 seconds, make blind work on bosses, and make pierce's damage consistent through each monster in a mob. I personally think that 5 seconds is a bit too small of a cooldown for snipe and that blind working on bosses is better a better way to balance out marksmen with bowmasters at bosses.
Night lords: Make ninja storm faster.
Shadowers: Make the actual attack of assassinate faster, and make it have a percent chance to instantly kill a non-boss monster based on level difference, assassinate level, and dark sight charge. Those are essentially what assassinations really are in the real life, nobody takes that long assassinating someone from the shadows, especially to have it not actually kill almost all the time >_>