Potential Shadower buff

I heard staff is accepting applications for the balance team. Based off the analysis here (excellent job btw), I’d say you’re a shoe in. On behalf of the community, I humbly request that you save this game with your natural aptitude for game balance.

 

rip shads. nerfed after being abused as taunt mules. gonna be nerfed after being abused as smoke mules

 

If the shoo fits.

 

I think we just added a few more hours to the patch maintenance so all of this can be done

 

Let me see if I got the point, you want Shadower to be a hybrid between dagger and Claw by allowing them to wear any knuckle that has claw in the name or well just that knuckle you mention (the level 110 knuckle is named: Dragon Slash Claw)? If that's your point I will give you my opinion.

The why people do the SinDit build is because of how good Lucky 7 is compared to Double Stab, lets see:

Lucky 7 Double Stab
150% twice 130% twice
Multiplier of 5 Multiplier of 3.6
Needs no mastery Needs mastery
Ranged Melee with kinda short range.

And useless skills like Disorder allow you to just max all the claw things without losing on Dark Sight, I think you can even max it with 3rd job points since yep as you said it has lots of useless skills. The special formula makes the skill need no mastery so you can use this skill until getting mastery and/or Savage blow. Just another point both 1st job for pirate and thief alow the user to chose melee or range path (being a bit worst on pirate since you even need different main stats depending on your path) so the first job needs to accommodate both skills, fun fact: Corsairs is the only class in maple that doesn't use the hand that is in front of the camera to hold the weapon because he needs that hand free to use flash fist; fun fact 2: flash fist can be used with any weapon probably because Neckson wanted this skill to be used with a gun as well.

Now how this would play out? Lucky 7 is an awesome skill and so is its upgrade Triple Trow but what makes it so good for NLs? I think is because Neckson made NL a very one dimensional class, if oyu think about it this class does the same thing from lv10 to 200 but you just get upgrades, and the upgrades are what make this skill so good,check this so you can see my point:

1st job 2nd job 3rd job 4th job
Lucky 7: 150% x2 Now you can crit Now you can throw even more stars thanks to Shadow Partner You get literally the same skill but now you throw 3 stars instead of 2
And well you also get more skills that kinda help you like Shadow Star and so on, but you see my point Luky 7 will get outdated and out damaged by other skills like Savage Blow or Assassinate.
Against the melee vs ranged argument, I could say that Shadower like all melee jobs get a crucial skill to gain ground a rush forward skill: Assaulter in Shadower's case, this skill allows you to be more mobile and get closer to your enemeies or to change position better.
So well your new skills will outclass Lucky 7 without upgrades even tho you can attack at a distance, and well adding those upgrades to Shadower would create the best Thief class in the game: Tanky as a Shadower, Awesome 1vs1 damage, Good mobbing, and good decent to awesome cleave in certain bosses.

Now positioning, even if you could throw stars, as far as I know, Shadower will mostly rather be up close to enemies when using its ranged skill: Boomerang (Kinda like Buccaneers with Dragon Strike). Lets take a look:

Zakum:
-You are literally inside the arm hitbox to cleave the best of the lower arms, perhaps you would get some distance and boomerang+Luky7 combo if one arm is up but not for that long.
-On the body part I think is better to stay close because you can hit the summons as well, help your team to kill them as you just DPS thru.

HT:
-To maximize Boomerang cleave you want to be close to the closest part that you can get in order to cleave the most, in fact, Shadower cleave is so awesome because if you stay close jump, and boomerang you can cleave most of the time unlike warriors leading making you do massive DPM 45. Yes if one part is up then perhaps you would combo and perhaps it would lower the suffering on the arms but well I think Assassinate reaches unlike Buccaneers that if you are not transformed your DPM goes bye bye.

Pink Bean:
-I may be wrong but I think Shad can hit up to 2 statues on that phase, and yep you wanna be close so you reach better.
-Perhaps only on the Bean part would be relevant to use your combo but well no upgrades on Lucky 7.

CWKPQ:
-Same, you wanna be close to reach all of the mobs with boomerang.

Jiaoceng:
-Cleave the summons, gotta be near, help your team if it has range attackers.

The 1vs1 guys like NT or Krexel:
-My point that I said before no upgrades you better Assasinate.

The Buccaneer part, yeah we are a weird mix of range attacks and melee but you often favor being up close since like Boomerang hitting other parts on multipart bosses is more efficient if you are close to the target. Also, the Buccaneer states:
-Normal: You can Dragon Strike to deal damage at a distance but you can't spam the skill so you need to combo it with something else to deal more damage but all you can link while on normal mode is melee range: Barrage, Somersault, Corkscrew, and Backspin have a bit of range but not that much.

-Charged: You have Energy Drain but the damage itself is not that big so you need to combo it with a melee skill like Barrage to keep up the damage, Energy Orb is kinda the same most of your bossing power comes from Barrage and these skills are mostly used with it. Even Dragon Strike is better combo with Energy Blast (melee) to mob around more efficiently, you may use Orb only if perhaps you don't want to gather the mobs together with Corkscrew or Backspin after the first Dragon Strike and get some range but Orb damage loss for each bounce is severe.

-Transformed: Yep you can spam Demolition and get some range but unless you get knocked back you don't really want to be too far away from the target since once the Transformation is over you need to reproach with Corkscrew Blow or a quick dash forward, and in Bosses like Nameless you may just want to keep eating the touch damage haha.

So yeah as Bucc you will mostly favor being close to your target even if you have ranged skills, like Shad.

Well, that's my view on this, I must say I like people like you that give a spin to the ideas of Maple Balance, keep it up

Oh, lastly my view on the balance of Shadower more than do changes that may be too drastic to change the identity I would like to perhaps buff what's bad to be just ok or good. With Disorder, I would let it rot in 1st job. I suggested already a buff to Double Stab to benefit those brave ppl that use daggers since 1st job. Shield Mastery is hard to buff but it would be cool if the +100% def applied to all equips if a shield is used, still would be bad but well is something (Khanjard def is so low that +100% def is just 8 more def for 20 skill points lol). And Chakra, I really want this skill to work, would be cool to perhaps give it a cooldown like 10 secs or something (just a quick number I threw) but it heals you at the same rate or perhaps a different rate and it has no delay or a very small delay, like Shadow Star from NL, you can use this skill between 2 TT without slowing down your fire rate.

Sorry for the long reply, care .

 

Before even considering how much this would help the class, or if it would be balanced, I can say that it is way WAY too custom for this server. While we do have tweaks and changes to how skills work, this would completely change the class identity of shadowers. This may not be a bad change, as such, but I think if you want to see drastic changes to classes like this, you'd probably be better off playing on a different server. It just doesn't "fit" here (in my opinion, at least)

As someone with a 16x shadower, I also really don't think they're underpowered or need a buff. While shadower damage output is less than other classes, that's counterbalanced by having huge avoid (and therefore tiny pot costs) and being insanely tanky if washed (with mesoguard and HB, I can take hits higher than 30k and live). On top of that, smoke is pretty damn good and shadowers are really great at grinding compared to lots of other attacker classes. If anything, shadowers are overpowered... just in every way that people don't seem to care about.

 

Thank you for your valiant effort at satiating our thirst for content before the big party begins.
RIP Level 64 buccs, they will never recover after this much-needed shad buff is implemented.

 

He didn't even mentioned pickpocket..

 

People who ask for low level content changes are the same ones that come back 2 weeks later to complain about HP washing.

 

Never underestimate the buccaneer ability to derail any non-bucc thread

 

But no 1's buying GDKs rip.

 

I didn't read your post. That was just my attempt to derail your meme thread into an HP washing thread.

 

Instead of holding down one button to atk like most pepega jobs, you triple your effort by pressing 3 different, carefully timed buttons every ~2 seconds to improve your overall dpm by maybe 5%ish