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Accepted Buff mage's spellbooster skill speed

Discussion in 'Accepted' started by Jafel, Aug 23, 2021.

  1. -ovv
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    -ovv Horntail

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    By what logic? There is no apparent reason for its game design outside of "because".

    Here's the way I imagine the designer's line of thinking:
    • Let's give mages booster. Yay.
    • Let's make the animation super cool. Yay.
    • Let's make the cast time take longer because it's a higher level skill. Okay.
    There really is no reasoning behind it. "It is just the way it is."
    Whether that is good or bad design, that's subjective.

    I reckon the same line of thinking applies to any other type of skill.
    • Let's give Hermits a copy cat skill. Yay.
    • Let's make the animation super cool. Yay.
    • Let's make the cast time long. Okay.
    There really is no reasoning behind it. "It is just the way it is."
    Whether that is good or bad design, that's subjective.

    If Shadow Partner was given a reduced cast time, I'm sure more people would raise their pitchforks because "lul, NL buff?"

    However, in the same hypothetical, if you give Spell Booster a reduced cast time because its original design was deemed bad, 'lul NL buff' does not hold up as a strong argument to not consider giving SP a shorter cast time as well.

    For what it's worth, I think Spell Booster can use a shorter cast duration, but I do not think mages need a buff. Likewise, I think SP can use a shorter cast duration, but I do not think NLs need a buff either.

    This is why I think a trade-off should be proposed instead of asking for a direct buff. It's more reasonable to trade-off and make compromise to stave off linear justifications for other changes.

    If mages were nerfed in other aspects and a buff became warranted, decreasing Spell Booster cast time should definitely be considered.
     
  2. iPippy
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    iPippy Nightshadow

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    This entire line of thinking is hinged on the assumption that the cast time of skills received ANY thought by neckson whatsoever. Im unconvinced that anything beyond "let's give it a cool animation" was considered when designing the skill. Remember this is the same group that made vanilla paladins, after all.

    The precedent for mage booster has been set by every other class booster. The precedent for shadow partner cast speed...? "It is just the way it is". And yet, we seem to be once again equating quality of life with massive buffs. By making mage booster activate faster or longer, we're suddenly enabling massive power spikes or something. In a worst case, making booster a passive skill would equate to an extra ult cast every 200 seconds if no ropes (or nx transformation items) could be found. Or approximately 4 paralyzes/cl casts on dummy, with less benefit as the cast time:buff duration ratio gets worse. Sounds like a chunk, until we look at where those gains are actually applicable. Skeles? Bishops dont need to booster to ult faster than an arch mage on booster. Ulu2? Braindead clearing is limited by spawn rate, not booster casting. Petris? The rope has already been brought up. Multimage? Booster has no power there. 5-6 and bossing applications are the big winners here, but even in 5-6 users still have to move to the hs, giving time to booster while travelling. There have certainly been more impactful damage changes made in the name of "quality of life". Gained damage from easier/more reliable si and tl or dpm gains from hamstring working on bosses quickly come to mind.

    Buffing mage booster cast speed to simply match EVERY OTHER BOOSTER IN THE GAME simply makes sense, and even if your wishy-washy "it simply is this way" logic is true, it does not necessarily imply that it should remain. To do so discredits the motivation for any change, and suggests we should go back to pure vanilla, because "it is just the way it is".

    And they were equal. Bandit was given more because they were closer to the fight, as a direct stance-like buff, and is justifiable within the game space. Scuffed Mage booster has arguably little net impact on the leeching magebot, so where is the justification that it should be strictly worse? Theres at least justification that it should be similar to other boosters if not for quality sake.
     
  3. Nise
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    Nise Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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    Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't spell booster allow for animation canceling? Booster + mediate on a macro (iirc) casts significantly faster than if they were cast separately or in the reverse order? Perhaps enabling that combination was one of the rationalizations for Neckson designing a longer booster cast speed.

    An alternative explanation is that Neckson wanted mages to be centered around long cast time skills (their ults) and designed spell booster to be relative to that.

    Note: I'm not defending Neckson, I'm just putting out other considerations. Keep going guys and don't mind me *grabs popcorn*
     
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  4. -ovv
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    -ovv Horntail

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    I mean I'm still not seeing the justification in that it should be similar to other boosters other than "it should be." Just like there might have been no reasoning for Spell Booster to be made with a longer cast.

    I think there is a difference in opinion whether or not Spell Booster classifies the same as all other boosters. Sure, if viewed with a zoomed in lens in its description, Spell Booster and the other boosters might seem like the same skill. However, the skills that are being boosted are comparatively different. If mages had no spammable ult that targets 15 mobs with 50-100k lines each, Spell Booster might qualify the same as 2nd job skills. However, that doesn't seem to be the case.
     
  5. iPippy
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    iPippy Nightshadow

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    Sounds like your problem is with ultimates, not booster. Sure Mage booster boosts mage skills, similar to how dagger booster boosts dagger skills but doesnt boost lucky 7. I dont understand the attempt at distinction.

    Somebody else would have to quantify that for me. A macro of booster->meditate leaves considerable downtime between the two skills (due to booster needing to finish that entire bit of ending lag before casting meditate). In reverse, it *appears* faster, but that's due to meditate not having any lag after its use allowing booster to be used right after. You still have to wait for booster to finish just as long before you can do anything other than tele, so to me, macro buffing appears to be more of a visual trick, but I dont have the recording capabilities to prove that quickly.
     
  6. Jaewonnie
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    Jaewonnie Capt. Latanica

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    Did Neckson even envision 4th job when 3rd job skills were conceived? When I played OG maple back in 2006 (this was before 4th job and el Nath was the furthest you could go from Victoria Island), I always thought 3rd job skills were designed to be end-game skills and thus had cool (and therefore, long) animations. I also thought that Wizet designed 1st-3rd job stuff and Neckson took over for 4th job and beyond (correct me if I'm wrong here). So to say that booster was designed to be slow along with slow ult skills doesn't seem right.

    It could be possible that Neckson did a 200 IQ and designed slow ults around a slow booster but I think their design philosophy was more like "hey you thought that 3rd job orange popcorn explosion was cool? Check out this 15-mob, map-wiping ultra explosion that disregards all game balance!!!"
     
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  7. -ovv
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    -ovv Horntail

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    I've already mentioned that my problem isn't with Spell Booster but rather with the implications on holistic balancing. They're very much conditional.
    If mages had no ults, the skills that are being sped up would fall into similar categories as other class skills, and the booster as a speed multiplier would carry the same weight. However, since Spell Booster is speeding up ultimates, I don't think classifying the two boosters as the same is an honest assessment.

    At its core, booster is a speed buff (multiplier) on a skill (variable). If the variable is extremely large, the multiplier plays a large role in the total output.
     
  8. iPippy
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    iPippy Nightshadow

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    If NLs had no Triple Throw, the skills that are being sped up would fall into similar categories as other class skills, and the booster as a speed multiplier would carry the same weight. However, since Claw Booster is speeding up stars, I don't think classifying the two boosters as the same is an honest assessment.

    FoxF6

    The magebots arent even the ones to benefit from booster.
     
  9. UnknownCode
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    UnknownCode Nightshadow

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    Please correct me if i'm wrong here because I'm not entirely sure if Spell Booster would be considered a 'spell' or not but if it is as log as Spell Booster is active would Spell Booster be boosted too? (To keep up its uptime, if Spell Booster buff ran out it would stay as clunky as it currently is)

    If thats not an option, why does some maps not have ropes? Would it be possible to add some in those maps that people say that doesn't have any but have the mobs in the map be able to hit them off the rope?
     
  10. Nightz
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    Nightz Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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    Spell booster only affects attacking spells
     
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  11. Nise
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    Nise Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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    Actually this brings up a good potential point*

    Spell booster shouldn't affect the cast time of spell booster itself, but the WEAPON SPEED might :think: Elemental STAFF meta? :DDDD
     
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  12. Nightz
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    Nightz Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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    This is not the case.

    That'd be interesting but also doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever.

    I've also revisited my data and made multiple recording to go through frame by frame. I want to be correcting myself that by taking a more accurate starting and end point on Spell booster I seem to be getting a consistent 2 second cast time before the character starts moving again. So not 3 seconds as I had first mentioned.
    upload_2021-8-26_7-40-14.png upload_2021-8-26_7-40-17.png upload_2021-8-26_7-40-20.png upload_2021-8-26_7-40-24.png upload_2021-8-26_7-40-29.png upload_2021-8-26_7-40-33.png
    Differences are single frames.
     
  13. Soblet
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    Soblet Zakum

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    The 2 seconds makes alot more sense. From my experience there's 3 tiers of speed for buff skills.

    From memory I know I'm not including all skills here.
    The fastest ones that take less than a second to cast (magic guard/armor, focus, iron body, HB, meditation, 2nd job booster and haste).
    The somewhat slower that takes somewhere between 1-2 seconds (meso guard, pickpocket, any others?).
    And the slowest (MW, mage booster, shadow partner, HS).

    The fastest skills are almost exclusively 1st/2nd job skills while the slower groups consist of 3rd/4th job skills. That might be where the cast speed difference comes from.
     
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  14. -ovv
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    -ovv Horntail

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    Shadow Star is lagless and can be cast during any attack. I'm pretty sure it's the fastest buff in game.
     
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  15. Nightz
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    Nightz Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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    For the sake of having the data I'd greatly appreciate if someone is willing to put some more skills in perspective. I'd do it myself but I only have one Archmage & Bishop. Next highest leveled is an MU mule.
    My recordings are at 60 fps
     
  16. Nise
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    Nise Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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    If someone lists out the Skill ID, i can just total up the frames & animation delays in the files to give a solid answer. But I can't guarantee when/if I'll get around to it~
     
  17. OP
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    Jafel
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    Jafel Capt. Latanica

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    The .wz files aren't conclusive tho. Because those mention 18 frames lasting 75 ms per frame. Which would be 1350 ms (unless I didnt correctly check a frame and one of the frames is significantly longer)
     
  18. Nightz
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    Nightz Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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    Seems like purely the animation, as after the spell booster animation is completely gone you are still standing still for a short bit.
     
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  19. OP
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    Jafel Capt. Latanica

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    Exactly.
     
  20. Nise
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    Nise Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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    So from the wz, its 19 frames of 75 ms each which is just the spell animation = 1425 ms total. However, there's also another node that shows the character positioning, which just seems to be the default "alert" animation (sort of like when you take damage from a mob). That animation seems to be 3 frames of 500 ms each = 1500 ms total. As the character animation is what needs to finish before you can do something, the speed would be 1500 ms.

    While I'm not 100% certain how the animation for non-attacks work, the extra time between the above number & Nightz777Nightz777 number could actually just be from the ping. It might actually be more accurate to test on like a local server (this is unfortunately where my tech savy skills come to an end and I haven't figured out how to do this yet xD). But HolpHolp had a great post about how ping affects the speed at which things are cast and I have a little inkling that movement commands also face the same issue.

    https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/shadower-assassinate.31257/

    (ps i was talking about skill IDs for the OTHER booster skills that people might want to compare it with)
     
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