Information November 2023 Balance Changes [Explained]

My bad. Seems I was bored aswell because we're all waiting endless maint lol won't feed anymore, especially when he can't even reveal his identity.

 

True, I still have a few NL friends I will happily bring, but if the time comes where I smega I'll take a dpm loss to take a different class into the run unless I know them from before.

 

it’s more expensive to get gear for NL only the shurikens I have are like 200m each if I remember correctly , with the amount of fund for 1 NL to have a perfect claw u can buy literally 2-3perfect swords for ur warrior (I don’t really know the price of the items anymore it’s just an example I haven’t log in months now because they keep the bashing train on the no class) but I assume it would be the price of it

 

this sounds lovely for my IL main <3

 

I feel bad for NLs, since people like you are the reason why they have the unfortunate reputation of being whiny, entitled children. NLs are "nerfed" because they can't flash jump in 1 map anymore, boohoo. NLs have 5 minute ciders, just like everyone else. Cry harder.

Also considering you rarely even play anymore, why bother coming back onto these threads every time there's patch notes? I see ML lives in your head rent free. Go touch some grass

 

You tell me to go outside and touch the grass , aren’t you the one with 3 levels 200? My highest is 165 lmao get a life and educate ur self , welp I guess it too late for you

also I rarely play because they keep on bashing my favourite class , I don’t really want to wait 2 year and wash another ranged class to play

The alchemist nerf made the skill it’s self useless they literally changed the fundamental of the skill , it has no use in this server since everyone is washing to at least 15k+

Also care to explain how did the flash jump did any harm at the bonus stage at cwk?

 

Sorry mom and dad don't love you bud. Talk it out with a licensed therapist, not random people online.

 

Ironically disabling FJ in CWK nerfs non-NLs the most. This PQ is a core piece of content for BMs and cleavers, whereas a NL can always just do something else. Without a reliable means to loot, the profitability of CWK goes way down. Bonus boxes have always been the limiting factor in scaling up CWK for late game

I was averaging over 25mil/hr profit in 3-man CWK, running it almost daily - that puts it just below a basic multi-mage setup which I think is fair for a lv.197 Hero with significant funding and multiple mules. This change to mobility means every 3-man runner needs a multi-PC setup to loot, or go up to 4-man which is a straight up 33% reduction in revenue. Profit in theory suffers even further because fixed costs haven't gone down; The reduction in # of signs did not remove the necessity of at least 1 person muling, anything over 4 man is pretty rare due to the format of the boss fight. For frequent CWK runners, most folks were bringing extra mules anyway because it helps out the party a lot.

If I had to guess, the mobility and sign changes were intended to increase the accessibility of CWK and also make it more "balanced" for early game players, but my gut instinct says not much will change for them but late game CWK runners just got rekt.

 

whatever rat , see you at the extract

 

I appreciate wanting to make mage gearing satisfying and buffing abilities to make mages more viable for bosses. Currently, gearing mages has been a costly and monotonous process. It costs a fortune to make good mage gear before any of these changes, and in the end, you only end up with a power increase that you could have gotten within a few levels. Giving a boost to non-ult skills and providing more viability to mages in bossing is a nice touch. That said,

The process of becoming weaker upon leveling up is weird and counterintuitive. Never would I suspect that a level-up within an RPG would innately lower my damage numbers. It's easy to say that 95% of the mages on this server stacking int wouldn't see an issue here, and you would be right. However, the lack of clarity and convoluted approach to damage here seems wrong. Assuming the goal is to make mage gearing more fulfilling, this change directly nerfs mages who put in luk so they can wear something other than a bathrobe. While luk mages seem to be, more often than not, new players unaware of their "inefficient" build path, I do not think slapping them with something so counterintuitive is the move.

I also do not think "mage gearing" will become any more satisfying, at least for me personally. Most classes have some tradeoff between their primary damage stat and some secondary stats. Acquiring better gear will directly affect what other gear you could wear and improve other stats like accuracy or avoidability. In my experience, most mages opt for equips with zero stat requirements and gambling with scrolls to achieve the highest TMA possible. There's less planning around mage builds other than "MORE TMA MORE TMA." While this approach aims to make mage gearing more satisfying relative to leveling, it keeps the process two-dimensional while introducing an incredibly counterintuitive dmg calculation.


That said, I found one piece of the explanation behind this very interesting.

Is there an issue with stronger elemental staves, especially for only the skills listed? Passing one staff 30 versus seven wand 30s is far too extreme, I agree, but keep in mind staves have a 165 luk requirement, and wands can still use a shield. If magic attack was buffed only for the skills mentioned, this could be an alright option. It would give mages that stacked LUK some viability other than "oh, just vote long enough to fix your character." LUK mages would still have weaker ults, but potentially stronger non-ult 4th job skills. Such a pattern would at least give some variety in mage build paths. Pure int mages would have stronger ults, access to hp/mp washing, and still okay non-ult skills. Due to their higher MA versus int, Luk mages would continue to have weaker ults and less access to hp/mp washing but would have strong non-ult skills. Hell, even int mages scrolling their gear for luk to gain access to stronger non-ult 4th job skills via an elemental staff would be more interesting than what we have now.

That said, I have not done any number crunching. There may be few ways to make the "buffing magic attack" angle work in practice. I'd love to hear more about why you moved away from this approach, including any potential number crunching.

tl;dr - non-ult mages skills becoming more viable for bossing is sick, but in my opinion, mage gearing remains bland and two-dimensional. While this damage formula change won't nerf most mages, this new damage formula feels over engineered and counterintuitive.

 

*image of everyone cursing the staff, and the cwk maps are easier to get from the boxes*

 

This is a REALLY interesting train of thought! Obviously, out of the scope of these patch notes, but the idea of INT mages for farming (Ults) and LUK mages for bossing is a fun idea to chew on.

 

Casual reminder that adding luk on a mage should be done with the purpose of regaining that lost tma elsewhere through gears. Whether or not that's feasible on non-timeless gears is another debate, but over-luking a mage is no different than over-dexing an nl.

 

Stave wielders can also use a shield.

It would definitely be interesting if the new formula allows stave wielders the better accessibility to become slightly stronger battle mages, while wand wielders remain focused on farming and grinding with ultimates.

This also potentially gives value to some LUK-scrolled gears like overalls and shields over the conventional INT-scrolled ones.

 

fyi luk mages got buffed too

 

Casual mages who messed up their calculations get doubly punished now? Is there really a need to nerf ungeared mages while buffing strongly geared one? One can be done without hurting the other imo.

 

If you messed up youre not getting punished. Its more that the changes are highlighting your poor choices.

 

All classes that "messed up their calculations" or are "ungeared" are now significantly punished. Previously mages (and mages alone) essentially got a free pass on this.
They are now just brought in line with all other classes that pursue intentionally off-meta builds

People forget ign EDANN is a luk mage and regularly SMASHES the traditional mages

 

RIP MuscleUncle for CWKPQ.

And no, he's a hero.

 

Good point of view. didn't think like that but yes, seems right.