[Poll] Balance changes: Meeting Expectations or Falling Short?

I understand your point of view, and I respect the mature expression for a change, dealing with constant cynicism of people is really getting tiring.
However, I still don't think it's quite the right spot for Night Lords, especially when considering the amount of funds required to maintain the class, and their lack of independence.

I knew what I wanted out of this class when I made it back in the years. However, this isn't the class that I signed up for anymore.
Which is why I am personally very discouraged to continue with it any further. Especially when I'm getting a backlash from the community whenever I try to defend my class.

 

who here doesnt have a nl?

 

What is the right spot then? You can’t have NLs be the best at everything; there needs to be a trade off or weakness. Either you hurt their damage, their play cost, or their survivability but you can’t have them have incredible viability in all three.

 

mages can have a bit of buffs... as a treat?

 

No clue who has what, but frankly, this is merely about how the class was designed back then VS how it is right now in ML.
I know what I wanted out of the class when I made it, but it isn't the same class anymore.

Night Lords pay with their inability to do anything else other than bossing. Not only that bossing is the only thing they are able to do, they are not even able to do that without depending on others, the class is essentially the weakest class in the game without SE.
Furthermore, the equipment of the class is very expensive in comparison to most classes.

I, personally, genuinely believe that this is a very reasonable tradeoff.
Even then, Night Lords are still not #1 in DPS, so frankly, I really can't see how they were "the best at everything".

I'm trying to avoid making direct comparisons to Corsairs because it makes it look like I'm complaining about their state (although I'm not), but I'll take them as an example again.
While Night Lords are indeed more tanky than Corsairs, Corsairs also have their own advantages over Night Lords. First and foremost their independence. It is indeed true that they can benefit from SI and SE, but it's not as drastic as SE for NLs.
Additionally, they are able to mob while Night Lords can't even begin to think of that.

Long story short, I still see no justifiable reason to remove the Alchemy from Night Lords.

As for what I think is the right spot? I think NLs were at a fine spot before of the last change. While they still weren't #1, they had their own unique ability to bring to the table, which is now gone.

 

What do you really want out of the class that it can’t provide anymore? Every “main” aside from NL and bucc are sitting along the edges of obscurity, destined to follow our DK counterparts sometime in the future.

 

It's easier to point out end game players who don't have NLs or are in the process of creating one. They're ubiquitous in the server and if you don't have a hyper washed NL you're in the minority once you hit the upper echelons of players. This should realistically tell a person everything they need to know about the balance of the game as it's all of the so-called NL haters that have rerolled into NLs at some point.

It's silly to be mad about Alchemist because there are justifiable nerfs to their most important parts of the kit, like Shifter, and Night Lords made it out unscathed this patch because what could have been. There could be multiple major nerfs and I'd still continue investing in mine, because I've played enough other classes to understand their strength.

 

Okay let me try to address these one at a time.

1. Inability to do anything besides bossing: Compared to Archers, this doesn't seem like much of a weakness at all. In fact, I think NLs farming at Night Ghosts has historically remained a popular farming strategy for casual players. NLs also make popular choices for scouts (like searching for Big Foot) due to their insane mobility.

2. Dependence on others: Seeing as how bossing is usually built around party play anyways, this is almost never a weakness. SEs are not only readily available, but built-in standard to almost any group composition on the assumption a Night Lord will be present due to their ubiquity, meaning this is rarely an inconvenience unless you only play solo.

3. Equipment of the class is very expensive: If you look at Equipment 1:1 in terms of weapon attack gained, this is true. However, if you instead look at it from a lens of point of damage gained : meso spent, Night Lords are incredibly efficient in terms of funding.

None of these three points present clear weaknesses in comparison to other classes, especially when you still have the fact that Night Lords are easily the second highest dummy DPM in the game, and in many fights the defacto highest effective DPM due to their ability to better deal with difficult conditions (such as spammy 1/1s and mass seduce). They are also less of a drain on run resources than other classes that you claim to have independence, such as Sairs, as Sairs require heavy Bishop support in content like PB, both in the form of Holy Shield to live Sed and Res when they inevitably die when Shield isn't available.

You clearly made a Night Lord because you wanted to boss, since you've repeatedly said you know what you wanted. Therefore we can assume the inability to do non-boss content is irrelevant. Night Lords only need SE to function well, something that is common, making this an incredibly rare drawback, where as other classes are often just as reliant on support outside of buffs like Shadowers need a Bishop who knows how to Dispel. Finally, funding will take you much farther on an NL than any other class, even if your gear on paper looks worse. I still fail to understand how any of these points justify Night Lords having exceptional damage, survivability, and quality of life where other classes often have to sacrifice 2 of those.

 

I understand, but the same can be said about the following:

1. Inability to do anything besides bossing: Farming at Night Ghosts is a nice niche farming method that can yield a meso or two sometimes when you get lucky, but that isn't what I meant. I meant the inability to do content such as 7F properly. As for bigfoots, sure? But I mean again, that's still under the bossing category. Actually, if we already bring this up, don't forget Night Lords still need SE. Meaning they gotta bring their SE to every map where they find a Bigfoot. That's a lot of time wasted that could have been used by a class like Corsair (who also has some sort of a Flashjump) to shred the Bigfoot.

2. Dependence on others: While indeed in most HT/PB compositions you are very likely to find SE, we both have been in situations where the SE has DC'd or died and the party ran out of resurrections. Additionally, for smaller runs such as NT, BGA, Toad, etc, it's not uncommon to completely cancel out runs because of the unavailability of Bowmen. While I agree that players mostly manage to overcome this struggle, it still can't be disregarded.

3. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. Surely 1 ATT on a Claw is more expensive than 1 ATT on a Stonetooth, but that's because the base ATT of claws is smaller, due to the fact TT/Lucky7 are operating differently than skills like Brandish. But by the end of the day you can always look at the price differences of perfect weapons of different classes.

 

Reroll to bucc. No weakness.

 

Actually I believe there’s a few NLs on ML who have reported 75+m EPH at 7f.

I actually think unavailability of archers speaks more towards how powerful NLs than anything. Most endgame players either are already a NL or are actively rerolling into one (including myself). It’s clear that there’s a large popularity imbalance between classes that needs to be addressed, and with NLs as exceptional as they are now, this problem will only get worse with time. If these changes encourage people to reroll off their Night Lords, that’s likely a good thing in terms of server health, as the balance between active players of each class are heavily weighted towards NL currently and continuing to worsen.

As for the third point, what I mean by that is NL scales so incredibly well with weapon attack that you end up paying more for a perfect weapon, or a 1 attack upgrade, but it gives you more damage than other classes. The DPM increase you get is more for NL per meso spent than other classes.

 

I think you cannot understate the nostalgic factor too. NLs will remain a ridiculously popular class due to many people's perception from the past. I personally never touched pirates in old school maple, same as many people I know. Other than people rerolling, they don't generally do a cost benefit analysis of every class before playing.

If i was aware of all the skill changes made in the server, I would have definitelty made a bucc or corsair.

It also speaks to how trash Dark knights are in this server because they were the other OG class along with NLs but it is hard find dark knights anymore in this server. Continue to nerf NL and buff pirates and this isn't an old school server anymore.

 

Let the man go, no amount of explaining will change his mind..

 

I agree DKs are trash and should be the number 1 priority for BT since they’re so vital to Hp challenges. While I’m happy to see overtuned NLs being addressed, I would much rather see, in no particular order, BT help find Heros and Shads find a place in the meta, address Warrior identity isssues, and please god give DKs some love so people start making them again.

 

I'd have agreed if the case was players who have rerolled into Night Lords getting back to their previous characters. But not in cases where main Night Lords (not only myself) who played only Night Lords since the very beginning getting discouraged by the changes of the BT to the point they no longer want to play the class anymore.

Additionally, there's also the nostalgia aspect. With every change made to the classes the less the server resembles the original nostalgic experience players initially came to the server for. This is very noticeable on classes such as DK. Small tweaks to some skills are acceptable, but completely deleting skills and changing the functionality of a class is unacceptable if you ask me.

As for the rest here? Sure, I can agree on that.

 

Bear in mind that the other half of the repercussions of changes like this is to encourage new players to make things other than Night Lords. If Night Lords remain the best all around choice to make as an attacker, and people continuously keep making more and more Night Lords and nothing else, that negatively affects the overall health of the server.

 

I agree, but I believe they took the wrong course of actions to achieve that goal.

I think the way to achieve that is by repairing the classes that need fixing, and not lowering the standards of classes that are already in a good position so they can be in line with those that aren't.

 

i don't mind if they delete apple and give back alchemist but to each their own right

 

As a matter of fact, as absurd as it sounds - I wouldn't mind that. Apples weren't as accessible in GMS, but also PB wasn't a thing back in that version either.
Nonetheless, advanced content is already here, and rolling back is not an option even if people wanted it.

 

I’m gonna necro this thread just to propose a reversion of the NL change that I think will truly satisfy all parties:

Revert Alchemy skill back to the old system of potion % time increase but remove its effect from attack increase potions.

Thank you for playing Maple Legends.