Fixing Elemental Composition (for both mages)

Regarding this thread here: http://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/element-compositon-elemental-wands.6362/

It's concluded that elemental wands should be affecting Elemental Composition of both f/p and i/l mages, seeing as all their damage is indeed element based, but Neckson screwed up and didn't actually code it properly.

Navi says they can't do anything, as this is purely a client-sided calculation. But as a matter of fact, we can. What we can do is increase the base power of these skills by an appropriate amount though edits to skill.wz.

Spoiler: ANALYSIS

Fire Arrow power with an ele wand:
Mob weak to fire: 225

Elemental Composition power:
Mob weak to fire and poison: 225
Mob weak to fire, neutral to poison: 187.5
Mob weak to fire, strong vs poison: 150


Fire Arrow power with an ele wand:
Mob neutral to fire: 150

Elemental Composition power:
mob neutral to fire, weak to poison: 187.5
Mob neutral to fire and poison: 150
Mob neutral to fire, strong vs poison: 112.5


Fire Arrow power with an ele wand:
Mob strong to fire: 75

Elemental Composition power:
mob strong vs fire, weak to poison: 150
Mob strong vs fire, neutral to poison: 112.5
Mob strong vs fire and poison: 75


This is just a basic comparison for f/p skills. As you can see, fire arrow is undoubtedly better except in cases where the mob is either weak to poison or strong vs fire.

For instance, in most typical situations when dealing with iced-based mobs, which are simply weak to fire, fire arrow wins out in a landslide. The only mob I am aware of that is both weak to fire and poison is Extra D. But even then, fire arrow is faster.

Another common situation that comes up is mobs being neutral to both elements. Once again, fire arrow usually wins out simply because it's faster. There's only a small handful of mobs which are actually weak to poison but not fire. Off the top of my head is Rexton.

When mobs are resistant to fire, this is usually the time for this skill to "shine"... but even then, the damage isn't really that impressive. Gobi Houses and some bosses like Alishar or Lord Pirate are strong vs all elemental attacks. In that case, fire arrow still has the same power as composition, only it's faster still. But on that subject, magic claw has 80 base power. It's just disappointing seeing a 3rd job skill still being outdamaged by a 1st job skill.

I realize f/p composition poisons, and i/l composition freezes, but still it seems that the obvious primary use of these skills is for damage. If we just wanted to freeze things we could cold beam or ice strike, and if we just wanted to poison things, we could poison breath or mist.

So my proposition is this: if elemental wands actually worked properly, one half of the skill's damage would receive a 25% boost, and the other half would receive a 10% boost. This means a total bonus of 17.5% increased damage.

What we can do as a fix to this issue where the elemental wands are not working is increase the power of these skills by that percentage. When maxed the f/p version has 176 power, and the i/l version has 164 power.

By increasing the power of these skills, they can actually be useful for more than just a handful of corner cases which they are now. One good use would be earlier bossing, as these skills tend to at least excel in the single target damage department.

Also: I realize they still aren't the best skills. You might be thinking why am I even bringing anything up if I'm the one that chose to add points to the skill in the first place? Well the thing is, I actually had the same build on a different server. Only there were no ele wands. So in that respect, we didn't have issues with this bug to begin with. Since there were no ele wands there, composition actually had more uses.

When I came to this server, however, I started realizing that the damage I was dealing with composition seemed lower than it should. I was disappointed to find that elemental wands didn't affect these skills at all. And also it meant that the ele wand 2 (the poison one) I had bought just so I could use it to multiply the poison damage in composition was absolutely useless.

TLDR: this topic isn't complaining about how underpowered a skill is or trying to get developers to change the game because of choices I made. This topic is about coping with a bug.

 

It's not better than paralyze if you're using an elemental wand. Remember that the wands have absolutely zero effect on composition? And we aren't even counting when a mob is actually weak to poison...

88 x 1.5 + 88 = 220
210 x 1.25 = 262.5

I agree that IF a mage doesn't happen to have an ele wand, this skill does seem to have quite a "buff" compared to other skills. But if anything, perhaps that's just a slight boon to help balance out all the 3rd job skills. I think most people still wouldn't bother putting points in this skill. Sad as that is. I mentioned composition would give mages some better single target dps, but most players who play mages don't boss anyway.

 

I really cannot see any valid argument at all for keeping a bug in intentionally. Bugs are by definitions .. BUGS. Things that are not working as intended.

If you want to say keep a bug as it is because it's "original v62 gameplay", then speaking of butterfly effects, let's just rebug everything the staff ever fixed too and open up all the old hacker exploits that even GMS was exposed wide-open to. Buffing (which is technically actually "fixing") a skill that was already way underpowered as it is, won't cause any weird side effects. But philosophies that actually contradict common sense will.

 

Don't want you guys to forget about this. Since the ele wands are not compatable with composition even though they should be, how about you throw the mages a bone too?