2010-06-25, 06:49 AM
I find it blasphemous that Maple Story uses my tree of Kabbalah for graphics, my pomegranate is serious business.
Back to the real topic... I think that the MAIN problem with the original magicians is that they were just NOT designed to work without ultimates. Nexon designed Evans and Battle Mages to be VERY competent without their ultimates; these are just awesome bonuses that are added into their gameplay. The original magicians are the other way around, they revolve completely around their ultimates, because the game was broken as hell back then, and they were created with no other skills that can really sustain them as a job. That's why Nexon is going nuts with magicians now, giving buffs, taking away, and so on. I find it weird that they haven't designed new skills for them, instead of buffing Big Bang (which is very welcome, but fixes nothing) and giving us a hitting Teleport.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutVA9cELIg
While Big Bang does seem to provide decent training for Bishops, the playstyle is just horribly planned. First, we're spamming a 3rd job skill half of the time. Second, we're spamming a 4th job common-branch skill the other half of the time (Big Bang). Big Bang doesn't work with Teleport Mastery (our only "new" skill), and you have to wait a lot sometimes to fire it, since knockback cancels it if you fire it while getting hit. Granted, the training speed is not bad, but there is no fun or uniqueness in this kind of gameplay. It's seriously more cool to train spamming Somersault Kick, a first job skill, than training a Bishop at 4th job... I just see absolutely no appeal. All other jobs get cool skills, new animations, awesome buffs... the only thing we really got now is Big Bang. Angel Ray remains broken as for now.
Anyway, my point is... I really think that these 3 magician jobs need a SERIOUS revamp, or no one is gonna bother playing them. Save for Bishops at bosses, just for their utility.
Back to the real topic... I think that the MAIN problem with the original magicians is that they were just NOT designed to work without ultimates. Nexon designed Evans and Battle Mages to be VERY competent without their ultimates; these are just awesome bonuses that are added into their gameplay. The original magicians are the other way around, they revolve completely around their ultimates, because the game was broken as hell back then, and they were created with no other skills that can really sustain them as a job. That's why Nexon is going nuts with magicians now, giving buffs, taking away, and so on. I find it weird that they haven't designed new skills for them, instead of buffing Big Bang (which is very welcome, but fixes nothing) and giving us a hitting Teleport.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutVA9cELIg
While Big Bang does seem to provide decent training for Bishops, the playstyle is just horribly planned. First, we're spamming a 3rd job skill half of the time. Second, we're spamming a 4th job common-branch skill the other half of the time (Big Bang). Big Bang doesn't work with Teleport Mastery (our only "new" skill), and you have to wait a lot sometimes to fire it, since knockback cancels it if you fire it while getting hit. Granted, the training speed is not bad, but there is no fun or uniqueness in this kind of gameplay. It's seriously more cool to train spamming Somersault Kick, a first job skill, than training a Bishop at 4th job... I just see absolutely no appeal. All other jobs get cool skills, new animations, awesome buffs... the only thing we really got now is Big Bang. Angel Ray remains broken as for now.
Anyway, my point is... I really think that these 3 magician jobs need a SERIOUS revamp, or no one is gonna bother playing them. Save for Bishops at bosses, just for their utility.