Information Anniversary 2020 Skill Changes [Explained]

Also, while I'm not necessarily asking for buffs to shads, I find the use of shad's apparent identity as a jack of all trades as justification for no changes being needed somewhat questionable.

While shads have decent single target dpm and good cleave damage, according to the charts DKs and heroes have comparable single target dpm with SE and significantly better cleave damage (with the nuance that shad cleave is ranged). This difference is only widened with SI, which leaves shads tied for last place with buccs for single target dpm (I may be underestimating nates after cancels). Warriors also have high survivability, which means shad's distinguishing characteristics essentially boil down to being "ranged" and meme smoke utility.

If there's a change I'd like to see it'd be for assassinate to be affected by SE (why isn't it affected by SE and pickpocket, anyways?) I might be speaking from a place of ignorance so please correct me if I've missed any key points.

 

this is why i started to lose love to maple. you guys make it different than a game... now it became a science, like a school with formulas for maths the question that rounds my head rn si: "im playing Maple or im Studying psysics". too nerdo Honestly i feel like all those math studies and number you "Smart" guys make just made the endgame players more thoughtful about accepting new players to runs that they dont feel to accomplish the numbers on the math formulas they make. (Im not saying that i dissagre to the "Maple Science") but im saying that this doesnt feel like a game for me anymore but what im talking about? this game its just to look how to bash the same boss in different and efficients ways so guess this study adds you a little fun.

Anyways I feel like you re only asuming cases with perfect gears and bossing aspects when doing balance. but i think thats a wrong statement because you need to think about the average player, the one that comes only to play old school maple on his prime, the ones who loved it regardless how unbalanced it was and were very used to it. you guys are taking off those ppl nostalgia with those balance changes and i think im not only the one who feel that like this.

Well I want to stare my opinion but its for NL balance (regardless im not a NL). you guys "Balanced" alchemist to 125% bonus effect. but have you thought about the bad sides of that? the unwashed nightlords uses Cheeses and Ice cream pots (2k and 4k healing pots) to get with the old alchemist (3000 and 6000 hp respectively). the new alchemist makes them (2500 HP, 5000 HP) if you are a 4k HP unwashed NL (I assume a lv 135 unwashed NL A new person to maple and the server) i bet a honster would not benefit so much an unwashed early game NL as a Ice cream pop. so you subconcientely increased the pot cost for early game unwashed hermits. i guess 15 mins apples were so broken for you but why you didnt make it 150% effect and 125% duration if that was the problem here?. or anyways can you explain me why you "Balanced" alchemist? im a dumb so im asking that.

Second point i want to add about this is the SE-Less "Balance". I know you guys did that because that problem where in that run of 6 NL and 1 BM, got their BM DCED and the 6 NL even with apples didnt completed the HT. but thats not the statement here. think about this, in the nostalgic maple if you are a NL you certainly learn that if you lose the BM you are doomed and y'all get used to it. as NL but hence you get a pro that any other range doesnt have, the shifter and the high avodaibility, the less pot cost and everything. i think that makes the balance since the begining and that things makes a nightlord a nightlord. plus no one likes to run horntail without SE so i think this balance its kinda loses its use to endgame NL that your maths here states. but you affected the Early game sin and hermits that likes to take the game slowly and grind without leech taking off the speed of killing monsters. another thing that in my thinking doesnt makes anyone win anything.

Ok im sorry to type this this LONG and i think there is always some1 that dissagres to anything by a math that their calculator does and calls pepega to some1 that stares just stares the opinion. but anyways to play maple you need a Mouse, Keyboard and ofc an Scientific Calculator. have fun math guys.

 

You guys offer an old school maplestory server in its prime. but you re breaking your own quality factor everyday.

 

Am I stupid? I don't understand why strafe got kneecapped and disguised as a buff. It went from 440% in 4 hits with no crits and 840% with crits to 350% with no crits and 850% with crits. That's like a 1% buff to the max damage and a 21% nerf to the minimum, which means strafe now does less damage in all scenarios except critting every shot , which has a roughly 3% chance of happening. A 3% chance to deal 1% more damage.

Like, cool, this averages out better in the long term for sharp eyes apparently? But what about the first 50 levels you have strafe? You know, third job? Maybe instead of pairing this with a blanket buff to Crossbow Expert, the mastery increases could have been split between Expert and Mastery in second job, so you aren't just taking the least popular class in the entire game and taking a baseball bat to its first 120 levels. Or maybe Strafe could have 80% damage at max level, which would still be a loss in damage in all scenarios except the 3% all crit, but not as big as one, and would make said 3% all crit feel like an actual increase in damage from 840 to 900 instead of from 840 to 850. At level 107, this change has made it theoretically possible for me to have to 3-4 hit windraiders with strafe, where before it was literally impossible to take more than 2.

I dunno if GMs even read the comments to patch notes, but I'm feeling pretty upset right now. I haven't taken a serious math class in like 10 years, so I'm totally open to being completely wrong on this, but I just sat and murdered windraiders for 5 minutes to look at damage numbers and I'm back to hitting <1k occassionally on single arrows. It's a pretty extreme feelsbadman moment.

 

The average damage of no-SE strafe went down from 640% to 625%. I'm just gonna say that this is extremely insignificant because snipers actually don't use strafe all that often in 3rd job, since they're still in grinding mode and you use eruption and iron arrow a lot more during grinding (unless you're grinding on newties, in which case go find a better grinding spot), and there's only one boss that's viable to kill during 3rd job (headless horseman). Even if you're killing bosses, it's only going to take you at most 2.4% more time to kill - a 10 minute HH solo would now take 15 more seconds, and a 2 hour bigfoot solo would take 3 more minutes.

 

I'll just add a little bit more to the Heroes/DK discussion.

We have to keep in mind that those graphics are with 100% Zerk uptime, which now has made easier in most cases because of triangular sushi, and 1h NT sword is being calculated with a 30w.att shield. So heroes would be even lower in dmg in a more realistic scenario. Sky skis are hard to obtain, but Maple Warrior shields are season limited, and also quite rare. Also, 10 slots to perfect. Just pointing out tho. I really think DKs SHOULD have higher damage output because of the tradeoff HP<->DMG, and the extra focus. It makes sense. Im not even asking for a buff for Heroes, i think they're fine as they are, but just got sucker punched indirectly with all these changes (Mostly 2h non-ST users).

What i didn't like is that Heroes have even less utility in parties now. Rage can be replaced by ciders (which now stack at 5) .
Drks are now more consistent with Zerk, which is awesome but they have HB utillity party buff, so people would obviously prefer a DrK with all these perks.
And on top of that, we know that SI will become less common in Boss runs due to the multi-client restriction, so RIP us Normal Speed 2h users. The DPM on Normal speed swords without SI are trash. What im saying is, NL's inconsistency without SE was buffed in this update. But they're already #1 when people are R> Attacker. Why would you choose a Hero over a NL? or a Drk? Or a Archer? Like someone already said here, when SE DC'ed early, the run was over. But for a 2h Hero (NT or Claymore) without SI the run shouldn't even start LOL.

I Wish we could ''made'' SI just as necessary as SE, but this would require the Buccs to recieve some love here. Just tweak things a little bit to make them stronger and so more popular in runs. Its a DESERVED buff to them which will bring:

- More utility for almost every class, as most benefit from SI
- Revive 2h non-ST heroes and maybe make them on par with Drk?
- Make Buccs, who are a very dynamic and fun in mechanics, stronger and more popular

All of this with just 1 class buff. I see it as a win-win
#GiveBuccsSomeLove

 

Jean Justen a big aspect to consider is that using normal pots (not apple/gelt/maybe stoppers) heroes using any of the top weapons on SI outdamage drks. Drks only outdamage heroes on high att pots because of their high weapon multiplier

 

Yeah, i have no problem with that, as i think DrkS should do a little bit more damage without zerk. I just wish SI (real people, no Mules) where as popular as SE

edit: Typo

 

Unpopular opinion: Hero's brandish +1 mob to hit 4 mobs total and 1 more line :3

 

Windraiders is a pretty awful map to train at. I never used strafe 3rd job because AE is so much better. Honestly, any mob at Taipei is far better than using strafe at anything.

 

I wasn't training at windraiders, I just used at the pair that spawn at the top of the map on your way out of the forest because they were nearby.

 

I think you were given some mis-information as to the impact of SI on 2h normal speed sword users. Anyways, lets go to some basics and use the attack speed reference for brandish from ayumilove.

Brandish/Blast
Faster (2): 630ms (-210ms)
Faster (3): 690ms (-150ms)
Fast (4): 750ms (-90ms)
Fast (5): 810ms (-30ms)
Normal (6): 840ms
Slow (7): 900ms (+60ms)
Slow (8): 960ms (+120ms)

The speeds bolded are the ones of interest. Fast(4) is a normal speed 2h sword with booster, Fast(3) is a stonetooth sword with booster, and Fast(2) is any 2h sword with speed infusion.

ms are confusing, so lets translate them to attacks per minute.
Faster (2): 95.2380952381
Faster (3): 86.9565217391
Fast (4): 80

So, comparing a 2h normal sword with and without SI, we have 80 attacks vs 95.238 attacks per minute. That means that when you have SI, you do 95.238/80, or 19% more dps. Looking at this another way, without SI, you are doing 80/95.238, or 84% of your optimal dps.

So, if you do 10m dpm with SI, you will do 8.4m dpm with just booster. Is this huge? Yes, it is, but its nothing compared to the nightlords who lose over 50% of their dps when off se.

Stonetooth fairs a bit better but still has the same issue - you are not doing full DPS without si. Also note that as of right now, there are only 3 places where the multiclient rule hits us. Horntail, Zakum, and scarlion. Maplelegends has tons of other bosses that you can still bring your SI mule to (like cwkpq, or neo tokyo), that is unless, staff decides to extend the multiclient rule to all expeditions.

 

Thanks. So is not THAT bad of a difference.
Still... #GiveBuccsSomeBuffs

 

Hi Nise, thank you for taking the time to generate all this information. I'm glad we have it as a base for evaluating the balance in this game. I hope you're not getting bombarded too much with complaints, and I appreciate that you're taking the time to read people's arguments.I hope you'll have the time to read mine, despite how long it is ^_^"


I wanted to bring up two things: the first is regarding shad dpm and the second is regarding the BM vs. MM damage.

Shad Assassinate Damage

IMO the charged nate damage is overhyped for two reasons: you almost never use the fifth line after a weapon cancel, and you waste a lot of time waiting for the moment to land the charged nate.

Although you can do five lines using nate, I only use the fifth line in two scenarios: (1) when I get knocked back during the first four lines, I can use the fifth for mobility; (2) when I'm in a boss on a flat map, I'll use the fifth line after a weapon cancel only if I can safely tank the touch damage. But, note that this only applies to Scar, Zak, Nibergen (maybe some others that I can't recall right now) and never in HT.

Landing the charged nate as soon as the weapon cancel ends is incredibly hard. Lots of people I run with just continue to hit throughout the weapon cancel, so that once it ends their lines immediately do full damage. Shads on the other hand, have to wait to see the damage lines or wait for the weapon cancel symbol disappear, which is hard when it's obstructed by 1's or when the symbol literally isn't there because the boss is threatened by a pally. Personally, I estimate that I lose 1-3 attacks on average; if you assume that each of my nates do 200k, then on average I only gain about 400k damage (4*200k - 2*200k) per weapon cancel. If you estimate a weapon cancel every two minutes, then in effect, the addition to dpm is only 200k. This would only get worse at higher levels, as your normal nate damage goes up while your charged nate damage is capped. One caveat with this argument though, is that you could chalk it up to player skill; but personally I have never seen a shad respond to the end weapon cancels without any delay.

Shad Single-target Damage with SE

I think you might have missed this comment on the bottom of page 5. I noticed this too and would like to highlight it.


BM versus MM Damage Charts
I think we could reformulate the charts to get more insight to this debate. I propose two views:

1. Fix the amount of attack and make the x-axis vary by level. You could do multiple charts, maybe one for low-funded, medium-funded, and high-funded BMs and MMs. Before these skill changes, the comparison that most people were comfortable with before is that BMs would surpass MMs (with SI) at around 18x. It would be beneficial to see it from this perspective, as I think most people think about levelling up as the method to get more dpm, rather than investing billions in high-att gear. Now, it feels like no matter how high you level a BM, you will always be lagging behind unless you have god-tier gear or constantly use apples/gelts. Reformulating the chart based on levels and lower funding would give more insight, whether it be to show that MMs were overbuffed or to show that the buff wasn't too much and BMs shouldn't feel like they should remake.


2. On the existing charts, look at the horizontal distance between BM and MM and factor in the cost of that difference in attack in order to evaluate the advantage one class has over the other.

To illustrate, let's say you have the example in the starting post: 147 total weapon attack from a 115 weapon, a 12 weapon attack glove, a 20 att bear buff/att pot. Then the BM would need another 25 attack to match their dpm to the MM with SI, and 10 attack to match up without SI. I'd ballpark the cost 10 more attack in gear at 500m.

Another, more funded example: 125 weapon, 14 att glove, 8 att cape, 20 att buff, totalling to 167. To match with SI, the BM needs 20 attack, and to match without SI, the BM needs 5 att. But, upgrading att gear is a lot more costly now; getting 5 more attack at this point would probably cost at least 500m.

I can't make an estimate for how much it would cost to get 20 more attack on that set of gear, but I think it's daunting enough to make any 17x or 18x BM (that's the level I'd picture that gear at) feel very discouraged. Overall, my argument here is not that MMs were overbuffed or not buffed enough; rather, I argue that the current changes make the BM class look really desolute unless you have a looooot of funding. I know some people argue that this is just because MM require more attention to play and should have a higher dpm, but then by that logic, NLs should be the lowest dpsers.

 

Reminder to either fix or the MM/BM dpm graphs, they are starting to spawn discussions based on incorrect calculations!

 

jesscapades with that level of gear cheapest upgrade(s) to 20 more attack would be getting a perfect bow, 15 att glove, and 12ish att cape. (15+1+4 = 20).

15 att glove is prob like 200-250m more than 14 att glove, 12 att cape is like 1.2b, and the perfect bow would be ~5-5.5b (40 white scrolls or so) So thats looking at somewhere like 6.5-7b for 20 attack.

 

I'd like to say I really like this update overall. The exp boost alone is amazing.

However as a 7x hermit who relies on grinding since I can't really boss anything yet, I really wished you guys lowered the crit chance to say 35% instead of 25%.