Buff marksmen

In this thread I will attempt to persuade you that MM is the class that most obviously needs a buff. Even for buccs, sairs, and pre-buff shadowers you can argue that they satisfy some sort of niche that justifies their existence. Now you might wonder, why is it then that shadowers got buffed before MMs? The reason is because shadowers were still a popular class even before the buff, and there were enough shadower players for people to understand their weaknesses and voice their complaints so that the GMs/balance team could understand the problem and implement the long waited 4th hit of assasinate. However MM is such a dead class that there is almost no one left to complain their woes. The lack of discussion about this class leads some of us to certain misunderstandings and prevents us from solving what I consider to be an extremely obvious fault in our class balance. Thus I hope to provide some information about the MM/BM balance and make some arguments that will make it obvious that marksmen should be buffed.

MM is a garbage class. Not necessarily because they are bad in a vacuum, but because for almost all practical purposes they are completely and hilariously outclassed by BMs. The 2 classic refutes to my claim are the following,

1. MMs can mob better with piercing arrow and thus can train slightly faster

I will begin by addressing the first challenge. For archers, the most popular and efficient way to train involves bossing with your single target attack.
The two areas that archers excel the most at is HT and cwkpq, the former due to the fact that SE is virtually mandatory on HT runs and the latter due to cwkpq runs needing an archer that can clear the archer room and puppet control the pirate boss. With cwkpq and HT being the most lucrative activities that an attacker character can partake in, it would not be unreasonable to claim HT+cwkpq to be the most important. Yet piercing arrow is utterly useless for both cwkpq and HT.
Aside from HT and cwkpq, other ways archers gain exp involve zakum, BF, anego, bga, krexel, NT, and of course the accursed shaolin grind. The only place where piercing arrow can be remotely useful is during zakum arms and shaolin grinding. Zakum arms only last for a small fraction of the total runtime, and zakum itself is a terrible boss in terms of both money and experience. While shaolin grinding does give significant exp gains, there is virtually no monetary gain and most people prefer boss instead.
For most of the popular and efficient activities that archers partake in, the ability for an archer to cleave is largely irrelevant in the current meta.

2. Because of snipe MMs are less dependent on gear and are thus stronger in the early game.

This is the more substantial argument to tackle. While it is without a doubt true that MM's start off stronger than BMs, I will argue in this section that the "window" in where MMs are stronger is much smaller than most might guess, and that a massive gap opens between BMs and MMs once you move towards the endgame. Let us begin by considering the dummy dpm of 2 low level archers, say around level 140(which is about the lowest level you can do any bossing without being a mule).

*calculation courtesy of Alyosha

Level 140 Marksman - 120 att shiner cross / 3 att cape / 12 att gloves / 15 att potion 700 dex / 110 str / 150 attack attack range -> 2206-3945 average of range -> 3075 Strafe averages 1064% of range for damage 1064% of 3075 -> 32725 damage on average 6 Strafe / 1 Snipe total damage -> 196k + 200k -> 396k damage in 5.04 seconds 4.7mil DPM

Level 140 Bowmaster - 117 att shiner bow / 3 att cape / 12 att gloves / 15 att potion 700 dex / 110 str / 147 attack attack range -> 2050-3660 average of range -> 2855 Hurricane averages 256% of range for damage 256% of 2855 -> 7308 average per line of hurricane Hurricane casts 500 times per minute 3.65mil dpm

So indeed with the minimum stats required to entertain the possibility of bossing, marksmen do turn out to be stronger at this stage. So let us now ask the question, at what point to BMs overtake MMs? Let us consider 2 level 165 archers, which is about the minimum level you can start being useful at HT. Assuming both archers are base 60 str, with a reasonable scrolled scar/zak helm + htp + mw20 they will end up with roughly ~920 dex. For this amount of dex, the amount of attack necessary for MMs and BMs to have equal dummy dpm is around ~175. Let us assume the following equipment,
120atk bow
5atk cape
14atk glove
2 atk sock

This would put us at 141atk before an attack pot. On HT buff (+30atk) or stew (40atk) the two archers would be about equal. Thus we can estimate that the turnover point is around 165-170 depending on proficiency of gear and atk buffs used.

In my opinion, this equilibrium point happens way too early. Basically as soon as you become a relevant attacker at HT, there is no longer any merit in being a MM. Although MMs have a small window ~140-165 where they are stronger, their dpm isn't really relevant during this stage anyways.

Now let us take a look at how large the gap is in the endgame. If we assume,
-140/143atk bow
-15 atk cape
-21 atk glove
- 1.2k dex
- HT buff
- echo

If you crunch the numbers for both BMs and MMs, it works out that MMs do roughly 85% of BM's dpm.

Up to this point, it doesn't actually look that bad yet. Although the window of MM superiority is fairly small, it can be widened by adding SI and taking washing shenanigans into account. The lategame discrepancy can even be lowered down to ~95% if you assume SI. However we have to remember that we are only considering ideal dummy dpm's here, there are a variety of other factors that further knock MM down in pragmatic situations.

Here is a list of some of these things,

-MM is harder than BM. To maximize their dpm MMs need to count their snipes and watch the snipe cd so that they can use snipe as soon as its off cd, while BMs need only hold down a single button. Practically speaking you will not be able to use snipe at perfect timings in real bossing situations where you are getting knocked around, even on near dummy situations such as a puppeted pirate in cwkpq it is a lot easier to hold down hurricane for 25min compared to maintaining a constant 6 strafe/1 snipe.
-MMs cannot buffer momentum cancels out of their attacks(if you are interested read about it here https://forum.maplelegends.com/inde...um-cancels-an-obscure-piece-of-bm-tech.26358/). Since archers lack shifter/high avoid/stance they have to deal with getting knocked around a lot, buffering inputs out of hurricane is something only BMs can do to reduce the amount of time they waste having to reposition. This also means MMs are unable to do the top right platform rightwards momentum cancel strat in HT as well as the bottem left platform rope grab buffer strat.
-Snipe will occasionally bug and go on cd forever, if this happens on a boss run you will get whited by a shadower
-Blind is useless garbage while hamstring is actually useful. This has been brought up in another thread. Hamstring is actually extremely useful for several bosses (area bosses, bga, nameless, and most importantly cwkpq pirate), but blind doesnt proc on bosses and is basically completely useless.
-MMs do not have access to the hurricane-tab out technique, which is immensely useful when you are trying to multi-client while bossing.
-MMs do not have access to concentrate( +26atk for 3min with 4min cd), which at its very worst (that is when you use coke pill on the 1min of cd) averages to a free 23atk buff. If you are willing to go with a slightly more pricey option, you can use 1 stopper on the 1 min cd, which will average out to 34.5 atk buff (this is a far cheap option than using stew for +40atk).

Compared to BMs, MM is a difficult and unrewarding class with both inferior utility and in most relevant cases damage as well. If we do actually by some miracle get a MM buff in the future, here are a couple of proposed buffs that I have heard,
-Make snipe go through weapon cancel like the legendary Heaven's Hammer
-Make blind work on bosses in some meaningful way
-Buff piercing arrow to the point where it can be used to cleave effectively at cwkpq and HT

My general feeling is that most people would more or less agree than MM is under powered, its more of a question of how bad the situation is. I am interested in seeing the response to this thread to see if this sentiment really is true.