Revert TAUNT fix

from what I've heard from other shads,
taunt can't be used as blindly now. Gotta use them only when the mobs are almost dead.

Doing it this way doesn't significantly hurt EPM, but does require more attention.

I don't play shad however, hopefully other shads can come in and give some comments on this

 

uh no, thats not what i mean.

its still recommended to pump at <150 coz,
you can hit monks at 7F (fastest exp area) till around 10% hp, throw taunt, den finish them off. this won't hurt yr epm significantly

 

basically yeah, i don't see how, in theory, having a well-timed taunt affect your DPM.
but no doubt this takes some skills, experience, trials and error.

so juz git gud

 

mid-tier shad here: yes, this is how you're supposed to be using it. HP doesn't necessarily need to be 10%, but should be low enough that you can 1-shot it after you've used taunt.

I haven't tested epm under the taunt fix, but I think it's possible that the epm is worse at higher levels because taunt can no longer be used as a mobbing skill. Before, I would use taunt to collect faraway mobs while I killed nearby ones. Since taunt lacks this utility now, and there's no other shad skill that can do this, more time needs to be spent moving around. This would reduce the likelihood that you clear the 8s spawn wave, and *could* lead to a net negative effect on epm.

Another scenario where epm would go down might be if you can't get the hp low enough that you can 1-shot it after taunt. E.g., if you did 55k dmg on average, on a silver giant with 255k hp, you would have to do 4 hits + taunt + 2 hits to kill, compared to 5 hits + taunt before.

Again, this is all just speculation; I haven't tested it and I can't since I don't know what my epm would've been before. I'm also not trying to argue for or against changing taunt--but curious if someone has data on this

 

Yeah, that's exactly right. I used to use taunt to fetch far away mobs running away. Now you would have to use bstep, which of course stuns them in place for too long for you to clear everything in time.

Another issue with just waiting until everything is low on health is that there often is collateral damage with taunt hitting a mob(s) that wasn't low enough on health yet, either because you couldn't fetch it soon enough as it was running away and only now came back, or because the next spawn wave just kicked in before you were able clear the wave.

During the last event's bonus exp, my eph was only marginally better than with normal exp rate and pre-fix taunt (with timed taunts). When I last did some tests during the event, my duo eph was only about ~5% higher using taunt, compared to what used to be about ~10%.

In any case, I personally wouldn't recommend maxing taunt early anymore as that 5% is too little to justify delaying nate and shifter.

 

17x shad here, and i have to say that at my level taunt is amazing. I've tested taunt vs no taunt eph so many times after the change and I consistently get about 5-8m eph more using taunt. This is about 7-12% epm increase.

I've spoken to many other 170+ shads and it seems not everyone is using taunt like myself. Most of them say the eph boost is not worth the extra effort of having to taunt when hp is low vs. just spamming bstep semi afk. When i get tired i will stop using taunt as it does require a lot more effort.

 

Wait what happened to taunt?

 

in GMS when something got nerfed they gave out SP reset scrolls that reset all jobs except beginner skills. https://www.hidden-street.net/gms/item/scroll/sp-reset-scroll-0

I think something like this should be added in.

 

Last patch a bug with taunt was fixed so it now functions like it was meant to. Prior to the nerf, mobs that were taunted received like -40 w.def or something like that (basically no difference to damage output). Now, after the bug fix taunt reduces damage to taunted mobs by 40%.

 

I see. The christmas patch was it? I just found the wee little note of that change. Thanks Shiv! :3