[Brawler] Corkscrew/Backspin Blow [Marauder] Transformation Issue

this was in the v81(?) balancing patch

 

This. I didnt realize this when I made my pirate and now being 87 I really miss being able to use all my other skills during transformation. It feels like such a useless skill, with shockwave being as slow as it is.

 

Just throwing it out there, but while we're on the topic of buccaneer buffs.

Any thoughts of buffing the damage output for the class? Me and my friend was discussing about the damage of the 4th job skills and some skills like Dragon Strike can be pretty underwhelming. The 4th job skill only begins to out-damage Somersault Kick (1st job skill) after level 11, and is still weaker compared to Energy Blast (3rd job skill) until level 21. Even then, Energy Blast does more damage against <4 targets until Dragon Strike is nearly maxed at level 29.

The class is fun as a whole so far, but I think buffing the damage wouldn't hurt. I've got some suggestions up right now, but I'm not entirely sure whether it'll be too big of a change.

1) Buff the knuckle attack multipliers.

2) Increase the damage % of Dragon Strike and maybe other 4th job skills.

3) Reduce the cooldown time of Super Transformation when maxed to increase the up-time of Demolition.

4) Increase the damage % of Shockwave to make Transformation in 3rd job more viable. The skill's useless right now compared to Energy Blast.

5) Reduce the delay for 2nd job skills such as Double Uppercut to make Brawlers a tad more useful in PQs.

6) Modify Stun Mastery's critical hit rate to allow crits against bosses or to increase damage against monsters resistant to stun.

My suggestions are mostly in improving Buccaneer's viability in bossing. Again, this is coming from a measly level 132 buccaneer without having his core skills max yet, but the results so far has been rather disappointing. (I might be eating my words when I get to higher levels though). Thanks for reading!

 

As a fellow low level Buccaneer (127), I agree with Scepter's post. Buccaneer is an amazingly fun class, but outside of it's fantastic mule-ability (supplying both SI and Time Leap as required), its ability to assist end-game feels a little lack-luster due to its damage output .
Also, to further Scepter's point, while Dragon Strike does out DPS (per target, total) Energy Blast, due to the cool down you have to mix it with a second attack, which effectively mellows out our DPS a little.
I would also like to note a potential buff/nerf that I've thought about that should help our DPS a little during bossing/grinding: reducing Knuckle attacks speeds down to Normal (6), and adjusting either the damage of the skills or the attack speed (and cool downs) appropriately to compensate. This would enable us to fully utilise SI's speed boost (+4) instead of just helping others with it.
I would be interested in hearing out Bucc's thoughts, particularly higher levels as they have more experience and knowledge on the matter.

 

I'd like to add my own to being a recently achieved Buccaneer and hitting the wall that is 120.

1. Just a personal gripe of mine is our mobbing skills minus summersault there is always a catch with them. We have the weirdest sets of enemies attacked too (back blow and corkscrew with 3 | energy blast with 4). I would appreciate the uniform 6 mobs(maybe scale the damage a little for balance sake)

1.5 speaking on that point for our gunslinger brothers I feel that they suffer through enough as it is making invisible shot hit 6 mobs instead of 3 is a mercy on them.

2. 3rd job feels like second job+ and around level 90 we drop off in terms of scaling to the monsters at our level and killing effectively. but I hope that my next point might remedy even a little what we have to endure.

3. I feel that Neckson wanted to give buccs a good skill to scale with (being stun mastery)since most of our attacks are gated by special conditions but only got it half right. Our damage is extremely slow in comparison to other classes but hits pretty hard. I feel if there was a way to just apply stun mastery to all our attacks instead of just stuns our bossing potential wouldn't plateau so hard. Or like spectre said hit harder on stun resistant targets, stun mastery be it useful (some of the time) is pretty laughable to have as a bossing class and adds to the already long list of restrictions to our overall DPS instead of building upon it.

 

I'm not too sure if this is a fair comparison since there's so many variables. But I'd also like to bring up the fact that Buccaneers definitely gets the short-end of the stick when it comes to crit rate and crit damage.

Based off hiddenstreet, here are the classes with a critical base to their skills.

Marauder - Stun Mastery - 60% chance to activate against stunned targets, 60% critical damage increase
Archers - Critical Shot - 50% chance to activate in general, 100% critical damage increase
Assassins - Critical Throw - 50% chance to activate in general, 100% critical damage increase

Maybe increasing the damage for Stun Mastery while reducing the crit rate wouldn't hurt either, especially considering we have a rather huge condition to activate it. Stuns largely becomes useless at higher levels too since non-boss targets are easily killed off by Dragon Strike + Barrage, making the skill rather obsolete. Good points from Neragamo too, there's just some skills in the Buccaneer's arsenal that just feels downright out-of-place.

 

So i understand we cant go past v62 but as I'm leveling and reading these posts about buccs I would like to see some buffing of buccs if that is possible

I plan on bossing and from what I've read I hope we could get the buffs in our skills to make all of our experiences even better

also, I highly agree with changing stun mastery into a general critical rate rather than attacking monsters that are stunned only. That sounds pointless as you cant stun a boss monster.

Hopefully these many suggestions will be considered!

 

Oh guys and gals welcome to my world lol. But like, you're all right. Damage is pretty lackluster most the time and stunning a boss? GG. Our damage can be great during demo on bosses but after that, since we can't stun we are the bottom of the dps charts when it comes to bosses like Zak and HT. Like a way to incorporate the crit would be nice. Or we can find someone with SE ;p

 

I don't really know how to write this but i'll try.
Bucc is in a weird place right now, I agree our damage output isn't great, and the crit chance with damage is weird, i think Neckson was still testing bucc on v62 and its mechanics, and eventually they sort of figured it out.
Now i'm gonna talk about the experiences i had with this class i have now.
Bossing: it's a bit weird, the damage isn't great but it's not that bad since we have i frames and atleast in zakum dragon strike usually kills spawning enemies, and in arms you hit 3 arms with it, but other then SI, there's not much point in bringing a bucc, forget about bossing as a marauder, its terrible and you shouldn't do it. I only really have experience in most bosses except scar and HT.
Training: its slow, really slow. I've primarly solo'd (since nobody wanted to play with me) and i can tell you its really slow and can grade on you, 3rd job is the worst since your main attack can only be used in energy state and the other skills are either passives, useless or can only be used in energy state, but i've played 3rd job before and after the buff in february and i can tell you its miles better now, before the buff energy blast had a 1 sec delay which was painful, so its not as bad now. 4th job is doable but at my lvl its really starting to slowdown at solo. 2nd job is also ok since it doesn't take too long. But i suggest if you get too 4th job and get si to find a mage partner since soloing can be a bitch.
So its not in a great posistion right now bucc, without SI and TL, we would be useless. So i do agree we need some buffs to get our damage a bit up, but atleast its not as bad as it used to be before the delay buff was implemented, else it would be worse lol.
This was me mostly talking nonsense so take what you will from it ¯\_ ツ _/¯

 

I pretty much agree with everything in these posts except with critical strikes on bosses. It's a unique trait in its way, being able to criticar strike stunned mobs but the mechanic of it (requiring the mob to be stunned) doesn't really go with how this trait works. It's quite obvious why archers and assassins by definition should be able to critically strike unlike a melee fist fighter.

The straight up buff that would be insanely good for leveling overall through to 4th job would be corkscrew and backspin to hit 6 mobs. IMO this is the most important and biggest game changer. Up to 4th job the main moving skill will be kick which hits 6 but only being able to group up 3 at a time really makes it weird to train and definitely hinders the tough leveling process the class has up to 4th job.

To add onto the shorter delay on certain skills in one of the posts above. I think they should be kept the way they are because they provide I-frames. Shorter could down would mean effectively more I-frames and I think we already have enough to even have a perm or almost perm invincibility on stationary mobs/bosses (no other class can possibly do this and buffing it would be over the top).

PS: before anyone says that I play a paladin and not a bucc and I may not understand the problems it has, I have a bucc in the making and I've mained the class before. It's by far the most fun class I've played (paladins too, yay for underrated classes )

Edit: Also comparing critical strikes with night lord and archers might not exactly be that fair because unlike them we have way more base health plus survivability from I-frames.

 

I have been thinking about this over the past 2 weeks and I think the removal of the stun check for crit (if this is at all possible) but potentially reducing the damage multiplier to compensate. From playing around with some calcs the removal of the check and the reduction of the damage bonus from +60% to +40% would net an overall 8.4% damage buff to our Barrage + Dragon Strike combo (while if damage did not decrease and remained +60% a damage buff of 12.7% which may be excessive) which I do not think is gamebreaking considering in terms of bossing we are near the bottom of damage dealers.

I personally like the idea of keeping the crit rate higher it keeps the Buccaneer's crit mechanic a little more unique. But of course this is just my opinion.

Also, just to respond the logic of our crit that Buffles mentioned I think it should be put down to 'dirty fighting' as opposed to us aiming for vital/critical spots.

Again, would appreciate feedback and sorry if this is bumping a dead thread. Thanks again.

 

With your proposal, an Archer giving maxed SE to a Bucc would make SE benefit Buccs more than it benefits the archers themselves, giving Buccs a whopping 75% chance to do +180% per hit (average of +135%, higher than Archers +132%.) While I do agree that Buccs would need a slight bump in overall DPS, we need to consider all factors/and scenarios as well, and it's hard to find the right balance.

 

Yes, but you're failing to consider the base percentage of the skills. Yes Buccs would get a better boost, the effective boost is minimal. A crit on hurricane would do a total of 240% (base 100% +140% from crit) so an effective 2.4 damage multiplier (240/100), while a Bucc's Dragon Strike (which effectively hits 10 times) assuming all crit would do 3100% (base 230% +80% then multiplied by 10) for an effective multiplier of 1.347 (3100/2300). But yes, I definitely agree it would be hard to find a nice balance. I'm just trying to see the class I enjoy to play receive a little more love.

Also, where are you getting your numbers from? SE is +40% damage, +15% crit? The suggested +40% from Stun Mastery with SE's +40% is only +80%, where's as archer's get +100% damage with a further 40% from SE for a total of +140% damage, trouncing Bucc's damage.

Edit: Even if the Buccaneer were to get a bigger benefit from SE, is that such an issue? Warriors (specifically DrKs) get a bigger benefit from SI than Buccaneers do.

 

SE is actually +140% at +15% chance. Bowmaster's maxed Hurricane hits 100% without crit, and 340% with critical, therefore averaging 232% per arrow (or +132% per hit as stated above).

 

Did not know that, that might explain some damage discrepancies I had previously noticed. But even so, redoing my previous Dragon Strike calc (again, assuming all hits are crits) would give a multiplier of 1.78 which is still a smaller effective boost than what Hurricane would recieve (which assuming it crits now has a multiplier of 3.4).

 

Hurricane as a skill definitely benefits from SE more but what I really meant to say is, your proposal would possibly make Buccs overpowered with SE. Considering that we have iframes, and are more likely to hit our theoretical max DPM compared to other classes from numbers/calculations it may be too much of a buff when SE is given to Buccs. I don't have the numbers or any DPM chart to support my claim but that's what would likely happen.

I think that you should make a new thread about Buccaneer buffs as we are actually derailing a resurrected thread.