Why class balance sucks.

That seems subjective to me.

 

I wasn't going to argue levels, I was going to argue fun

 

nuke gelts too

without apples the difference between strongest/weakest shrink a ton and gear becomes more important

with apples all that's needed is some akash NL set for some 18 man runs

 

So what is a acceptable gap?
Shadowers are probably the 2nd best farming class after mages and mages have way lower single target dpm but isn't it accepted because mages are good at farming?

 

A good chunk of the playerbase shares your opinion on apples, and I would say its not too late to do something about it. Some possibilites would be nerfing the atk boost down to +80 or even +60, or phasing them out via an expiry date similar to stews back in the day.

 

make apples suddenly and permanently untradeable

apq requires your marriage partner to be present to participate

boxes now randomly and inexplicably teleport during bonus stage when hit

 

likewise

i'd say most classes are beginner friendly, with the exception of corsair/buccs. with the hp challenges, the hp threshold benefit has sort of gone away as well.

anyways, i too will take your shadower example:

corsairs and buccs were made to emulate the corsair/shad dynamic, but on a more in-depth level (that unfortunately didnt pan out that well in gms).

what makes shadowers enjoyable though is that they're faster than buccs (obviously). buccs trade some speed for damage and emulate warriors (see stance from ST, corkscrew blow, etc)

shadowers also emulate warriors for their melee physicality, but in a cool and technical way. they have a lot of debuffing techniques alongside mobbing skills.

shadowers are like a jack of all trades, but they are sort of crum in all aspects as a result, just slightly better than pre-buffed buccs.

to continue the shad-bucc comparisons, buccs backspin blow (stuns) is the equivalent of the shadower's b step (stun).

however, buccs get stun mastery, and shadowers don't, so buccs are an improvement here over the shads (prob Neckson's attempt at pseudo remaking shadowers)

the only other two classes which get critical boosts are the BM/MM/NLs, so it is indeed weird that buccs who emulates shads get it.

what would be cool is to make shadowers deal more damage if an enemy's stunned (exploit weaknesses) like buccs (prob not possible without reverse engineering client and/or making adjustments to the legends.dll that (presumably) sideloads client functions.)

another core concept about shadowers is "high burst damage" with assassinate, like buccaneers during ST using demo (fake boomerang step lol), but i wish it can be extended to their mobbing techniques, a shadower's true focus. b step has a lot of potential stun additional damage was involved here, more than buccs.

imagine: b step stun + assaulter (w/ stun damage boost) or hold assassinate while moving to next enemy across map

their debuff side also goes along this theme of "exploiting weaknesses", but it's just poorly executed IMO. that's where shadowers fall the hardest, and it's not really because of the raw single damage output.

for example, taunt shouldn't give an enemy +40% defense. in literally every other video game, this results in a decrease in defense in some way, i.e. pokemon, league, shin megami tensei, etc. even paladins even give -20% defense with max threaten with other stuff. would be interesting if this can be worked into bosses as well.

let's further the argument of "exploiting weaknesses": venomous stab does this in the 4th job at pathetic rates. that should be buffed to be a nice DoT. obviously, you can balance it so a team of 20 shadowers can't solo PB using just venomous stab, lmao (if poison is even able to affect bosses in the future?)

while b-stepping, venomous stab could take effect, and you can hit the other side while the DoT is doing its job properly.

or if LHC even becomes a thing here w/ its tanky mobs, then shadowers would be a godsend here for coop play.

shads have a lot of potential utility, but their tools suck. if their debuffs can come into play w/ bosses, that could solve the "damage issue" (excluding apples) & make mobbing more interesting for current & future content

TLDR; most classes are imbalanced not because of raw single target bossing damage, but it's because most classes have weird identity crises whose skills aren't matching what we expect them to do. also: Neckson did not bother continuing with the 5 OG class system until much later, and that's in a different paradigm altogether with big bang, big boom or whatever they're smoking nowadays.

 

https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/damage-cap-discussion.49058/page-2#post-335738

what u guys think about my shadowers friends?

 

Reading this i do think shadowers get kinda shafted in comparison to buccs, who have straight up better damage and pretty gamebreaking buffs. Good point on burst the burst damage identity, I think assasinate should offer similar damage to bucc's demo.

 

I agree with that shads get a lot buffs and still somehow behind in some aspects .
and I agree with the new challenge come in shads will stay behind when it comes to choose class , and I'm still think shads should have benefits over other class to make it worth to play
but still I see a lot of endgame shads that have very fun with the class and able to take it to a place they carry runs as main attacker and outdpm nls and specially buccs with way less of what u state there

 

The main buffs I’d like to see on shadowers are a mobility rework of assaulter so that it can be used laglessly without a target and a rework on assassinate so that the charges stack out of dark sight if using another attack. This would lead to different types of play styles and skill expressions like weaving in assaulter, BoT, and maybe even savage blow (which should get a buff too).

The best designed classes make use of skills throughout 1-4th job instead of having their 4th job “ultimate” skill paint over the entirety of their class identity.

 

people forget that as mesos inflate and pot costs increase, shads actually gain the most