Why class balance sucks.

Actually if we are saying that the inflation is proportional to the pot cost increase then shadower wouldn't benefit more since it's proportional... Even if it wasn't, what purpose does it serve to make a shadower and save infinite amount of meso if even with that infinte amount of meso spent on gear they would still be massively outperformed by every single class? Saving and making money is only a "pro" if the ability to do so resulted in shadowers albeit for a short period of time, would outperform their counterparts. Otherwise the whole argument makes no sense since low funded NL (or any meta class) > more funded shad (due to thieir "meso gains). Either way a big part of the playerbase has more than 1 character so pretending like meso making ability is something we can only do in one character is one way to skew the conversation.

 

This thread is not about what "interests me as a player" it's merely about highlighting a fact. Regardless of shadowers changes being made or not, i enjoy the class yet i don't think the current class balance makes sense. I think making this thread about me and how i should just make a different class is the very same reason why the game doesn't make much sense. If the problems aren't highlighted and people just reroll without sharing their experiences and analyzing the class profoundly, no change in favor of the game will ever happen. At the end of the day the popularity of shadowers can be largely attributed to them being considered a cool class and the class reccommendations that aren't really based on facts and there is HARDLY any objective reason to pick shadower over NL or any other meta class. While i do agree that there are things outside of single target damage that defines the strength of a class but realistically damage is the single most important metric. The addition of all the extra perks a class offers has to somewhat compensate for their lackluster damage and i think that's far from being true in the context of shadower. If you compare shadowers to most of the meta classes they are both beaten in damage (By an unreasonable margin) and/or in supporting skills.

Even if some shadower players are satisfied with the class, it doesn't mean that they are aware of the full picture and the issue at hand. I'm 100000000% sure that if a poll were done asking the average player how strong shadower is the class would be overplaced due to how often the misinformation is being spread. I'm sure if forum threads suggesting new classes said "Shadower is a great starting class! You'll do the lowest single target damage and cleave but atleast you'll kill faster and get gear faster although you'd still be significantly weaker!" not many people would pick shadower. I demonstrated this to be true highlighting the disparity between shads and NL for example, but the gap between NLs and other classes like corsair,archers and even warriors in single target is actually smaller than the gap between shadowers and archers, warriors and so on. I'm not arguing that hero or shad is better in this case since they are both pretty underwhelming and im just highlighting a fact damage wise. At the end of the day, i'm a firm believer that there should be objective hard facts to pick any class over another since this is when truly someone gets to pick exactly what they enjoy and want based on pros/cons and aesthetics. Right now picking the "class you like" bites you in the ass performance wise, even when unaware.

 

Maplelegends is known to be somewhat conservative with their class changes and usually it takes years and years of slow buffs to turn a meme class into a viable one (Bucc for example). Compared to what shadowers were in vanilla they are infinitely better here and probably buffed by over 50% of their baseline currently but the amount of times and how hard the buffs have been hardly matter and it's all about the performance it has relative to the rest of the classes. I personally don't think balancing a class like shadower is all too hard since there's already 8 years of experience since the game came out to better understand the impact buffing a class has on the game specially when the goal of this class isn't to overtake the #1 spot or anything. Buffing shadowers wouldn't magically displace the role any class has since it would never provide SE the same way an archer would or provide all the immense benefits bucc can offer, or top the damage corsair and nl can provide. It would simply make them a viable class in the meta where the presence of smoke plus their actual competent damage and survivability would make them an actual class to consider and not really only picked because the pool of active NLs has been depleted. Perhaps consider how you'd want to take an equally skilled Shad at PB over a NL because of their superior gear and the presence of corsairs/darks to juice smoke and perhaps provide more or less the same a NL would provide in that given scenario. Currently there is no given scenario where you can justify this at all objectively.

At the end of the day even if we get a buff for shadowers i'd expect it to be very conservative and i wouldn't be surprised if they go from being the lowest single target damage to the lowest single target damage by a smaller margin which wouldn't really solve the issue but atleast it'd be a more acceptable one. I think moving forward class balance changes should be decided based on what would make the game balanced and not limited by the we already buff this class too much or too many times mindset.

 

I have. Do you know the level of funding this shad has? Because i do. Either way since when does random empirical knowledge and nitpicking cases is better than math to establish damage metrics? There's this very present idea in this community that completely ignores facts like there's different level of gearing and different levels of efficiency in the performance of players. If we establish that NLs have a better damage efficiency and damage than shadowers and the att gap shadowers would have to overcome on gear is 61 on cider and 110 on apple why do we find certain shadowers outperform certain NLs? It has exactly NOTHING to do with the class and everything to do with the player. IF we compare no.1 shad to an average NL then obviously it wouldn't look as bad but trust me, it is still that bad.

 

I completey disagree with this. This is exactly what the forums are for, discussing back and forth. While you say it's obvious that there is a massive gap, it is very clear that it isn't by reading comments that seem to imply shadowers perform at an acceptable level damage wise and many other misinformations regarding their power level that have been spread throughout the years. If people want to argue about the importance of secondary perks shads have by all means i'm open to change my mind if the comments make sense to me yet so far most of the statements seem pretty easily debunked.

At the end of the day as much as we want to say that opinions will differ, not every opinion is informed and i believe uninformed opinions lead to massive waves of misinformation which i believe is detrimental. This post offers information regarding the current state of class balance and in fact i've seen first hand how this thread has made people change their previous opinions.

In regard to making a suggestion thread there's actually a lot of those compiling a lot of great ideas from many different shad players but if awareness isn't raised and no one is aware of the issue then no change will ever happen.

 

Shadower isn't a "Jack of all trades" and you probably read this somewhere in the forums at some point and just type that out here. A jack of all trade would imply that shadowers would do atleast average in every single aspect of the game and this is far from being true and it's not hard to prove. Shads = Lowest single target damage, lowest cleave damage, godly survivability.
Even NL is closer to the definition than shad
Nl= High single target, (Not a cleaver) but no cleaving, and godly survivability
Or if you want a better "jack of all trades"

Paladin = Good single target (exceptional at elemental bosses), Decent cleaving, and high HP (good survivability at everything except pb).

Either way feel free to compare shad to any attacker damage wise and my statement holds true. I'm unsure if you even read the thread because it was nowhere stated that shad should beat NL in single target and it was merely stated that with the current state of class balancing, no amount of gear could possibly put shadowers at a similar lvl to NL. This might sound like an exageration but a lvl 200 NL with 2b spent in gear would still beat a lvl 200 shadower with 100b in gear, i've explained this gap before and feel free to prove this yourself by using akash's dpm guide. No shot a progression game where class choice is 100000000x more important than gear/effort is balanced.

 

That's a fantastic quote, thanks for sharing. While i do agree that's a smarter move than investing in a shadower that itself is the problem. I'm simply of an opinion that every class should be a completely valid main and people shouldn't have to bite the bullet if they happen to like a shit class, even if most of us do.

 

All i'm asking is for the game balance to make sense. I'm not only advocating for shadowers since it's not the only problem but since it's the one i know the most about, i can easily argue based on experience and math when needed. The same issue could be said about hero although there's a few things i can value about hero. In theory their damage isn't "bad" assuming panic usage but since the range on this skill is bad and variable, i'm not 100% aware of how realistic the use of it is in every scenario. At the same time, since the current endgame meta includes a very punishing PB, warriors in general are too prone to death which in turn makes them for the most part unviable but otherwise their damage wouldn't lagging too behind.

What i do see in favor of hero though is how it would be a very solid character for the sole purpose of making meso. CWK and CB are daily content who's expected value is actually very solid and definitely top 4 profit wise in the game and heroes are definitely very good at both of these. If we view class balancing through the performance of classes in high expected value bosses then the argument could be made for hero as a "solid" class. If we also then also take into account that cwk and cb are daily bosses, doing them daily would be a bigger chunk of your meso would come out of weekly PB. That being said, i still think heroes are in a problematic spot and their PB performance leaves a lot to be desired.

 

I wouldnt call the DPM difference in CWK marginal at all actually. The damage gap between 3 cleave shadower and 3 cleave hero is actually quite inmense. If you want to get into that as well i'm pretty sure it's impossible for solo cleave 3 man CWK on a shad while it's definitely possible on hero. Faster runs = higher EV. In terms of CB while i agree both can run, hero is still better. In terms of the ability to farm/drops i don't think there's a "big difference". I'm very sure the killrate on heroes at ML5 is probably even superior to shad up until the point where shad can 1 shot very often which actually takes a lot of investment vs hero who can 1 shot consistently very early on. Given the scenario of a lategame shad that 1 shots, then shad is definitely better although i couldnt say to what extent.

If you want to view this from the angle that shadowers are "more accepted" than heroes across all bosses then i agree since heroes are mostly excluded from PB