Changes to Crit Throw/NL

Hello, i'd like to start this post off with a little intro/backstory before i begin ranting about the current changes to Crit Throw.

I've mained assassins and hermits since i was 10 years old. Its a very fun class with lots of mobility and high early game damage to make up for nonexistent or pitiful mobbing capabilities. NL's have always done high damage to bosses and that is a well known fact, but there are many drawbacks, mainly HP and the current reliance on SE to boost DPM.
I'm no expert at math or statistics however i think i can understand basic calculations enough to speak on the following (numbers pulled from kimmy's forum on skill changes)
NL Lvl 200 DPM base = 12685208 DPM SE = 19408367
NL Lvl 200 Change DPM base = 13478033 DPM SE = 19408367
[Assassin - Critical Throw] success rate: 50% >>> 25%, critical damage: 200% >>> 350% (buff to SE-less damage)
The DPM increase to NLs without SE is roughly 6% for single targets (bossing) while SE will still provide a 43% DPS increase. Clearly still making SE required in most bossing situations so while barely increasing Nightlords damage at bosses, it will greatly handicap the consistency of grinding before you begin bossing (which most casual players will not do). to grind consistently and efficiently (especially in a party situation where your clear time matters less you harm your party's eph as well) generally a 1 shot or consistent 2 shot is required. with the cut to crit rate you'll have to either grind mobs with a lot less hp in order to 1 hit or 2 hit, or grind on your own in non meta areas like deep ludi by yourself so your extra crit damage doesnt go to waste.

the only positives i can see to this change made to critical throw is that a class who's already handicapped by low hp and bad mobbing will probably have a harder time making it up to endgame where they can boss unless they're able to afford leech all the way, effectively ruining the midgame experience. i genuinely love the grind on an assassin from 30-100/110 and i think this ruins that. not what i was looking for in an oldschool server.

thank you for taking the time to listen to me rant, and let me know if i'm looking at the stats wrong or if there's something i havent considered.

 

yeah i'm not sure either, but honestly the TT reduction still wouldnt matter since most optimal bossing parties would have SE anyways. Feels like change just for the sake of change.

Also, I went out for a smoke this morning and saw a bunch of worms had crawled out onto my patio to avoid the rain, and died from exposure instead of drowning. I wondered then if i would ever find a situation where that metaphor fits. Only took 12 hours

 

Alright gamers I've had some time to talk to a lot of you on discord and have been trying my best to keep up with everyone's input and thoughts. I'm currently doing my best to patiently wait on the anniversary update to be released so what better time than now to summarize what I've heard and add to a few of my points now that I've had ample time to stew.

I do want it to be noted that when the server is up I will be testing out a few of the locations I've recently been to grinding on my last 2 hermits, mainly MP3, kid mannies and CD's. I'm curious to see if my predictions for the increased inconsistency will hold up and i genuinely hope they wont.

One thing i've noticed from discord general is there seems to be 2 types of thief enthusiasts giving input, and this is to be expected because this change impacts both groups in different ways. The two groups being endgame Nightlords who boss, and aspiring shiny eyed assassins fresh out of kpq or lpq dreaming of triple throw and flash jump! (and then also the poor unsung heroes caught in between who just refuse to give up) Obviously this change is overall a buff to Nightlords at bosses where SE isn't involved. Sweet, a damage increase so that a party made up of heavy hitting glass cannons doesn't struggle to finish the kill and reap the spoils, I'm all for that! The ambitious solo bossers who roam the isolated edges of the map hunting boss cards or unique drops to fund their next boomed claw will definitely enjoy this change I can believe it I will as well. On the other hand you have the little guys, maybe you're an unfunded first time MapleLegends player who just recently found the server during quarantine like myself, possibly you're trying out an attacker role after realizing you don't look forward to selling leech on an that arch mage you spent a month making. I've already made my thoughts on how this change will impact this group negatively in the original post so I wont even bother going over why i'm dreading this journey that these people are in the midst of/beginning.

Now, what the hell is going to happen next? Who knows, lets enjoy the event and spend the next few weeks doing our best to manage with the changes, or take advantage of the increased boss damage However this is where i would like to talk about what i think should or could happen in the future. A proposal so i'm not just sat here behind the monitor moaning about the balance team's work.

I see a few options and have heard from other players on what they think a fix might be, assuming this change does make early game hard, and endgame not fast enough. An increase to L7 may help with the inconsistency of either 3 shotting, or 1 shotting the mobs you're training on, but what about pq bosses? Surely this would make early game assassins incredibly overpowered with 350% crit damage. An increase to TT and reverting crit throw's stats? Guaranteed problems with that since the scaling of nightlords and WA has been brought up as an issue. Buffing avenger so your grind up to engame becomes slightly less terrible? Idk does anyone even really like avenger anyways. Obviously there's plenty of little tweaks here and there that could be made to try and increase Nightlords boss damage while relieving them of their crippling SE addiction, and maybe there's a balance somewhere that makes the journey from maple island a little better than that of a corsair (also i want to say i feel for you pirates i really do) Here's my take on the situation even if you don't want to hear it. Why change nightlords? why change Crit throw? Seriously.... why change it when these tiny little tweaks involving 1/4 and 50% increases and decreases cause such a small change on the 4th job side of things. Changes to damage outputs and crit rates could possibly lead to power creep and have massive negative impacts on the server. (maybe not, maybe i'm overreacting we'll see) Why make drastic changes to the first 200 hours of playtime on a character that most people may not ever join a bossing party on?

I spoke to a few people who mentioned that it seems ridiculous to have multiple high level Nightlords in a party, and still have the run go sour because the SE disconnected or died. I do think that's definitely unfortunate given the daily entries into the boss stages. Should it be completely avoidable in my opinion? absolutely not. I'm going to use Zakum as an example here since its fairly universal. If your bishop dies or dc's and isn't around to res the buyer should they lose focus, unfortunate sure, unacceptable? absolutely not. If your main party DPS buff dies or disconnects of course it should scuff the run. Absolutely. If you want your boss loot handed to you by the spoonful there's a regular version of this game where nobody hangs out together and these bosses that we band together to defeat are soloable 15 hours into the server. MapleLegends is an oldschool server where we have the privilege of enjoying a nostalgic and social version of a game that we all gave up on a while ago. Parties should need to have a composition of support and attackers to be successful, that makes sense to me.

I thought about how else to increase nightlords damage should that be the end goal here and honestly couldnt think of anything that wouldnt drastically cause issues somewhere else. However, maybe the balance team could look into certain aspects of the boss fight that cause the run to slow down. I recently bought a Zakum helmet on my intlord and the first run took 52 minutes because Zakum would just not stop using weapon cancel. No damage buff to the attackers, nor SE sped the run up because there was 20 minutes give or take where no damage could be dealt. Seems to me small things like the rate of weapon cancel or perhaps the time the cancel lasts could make the runs a lot more consistent, and especially for speedrunning parties, having 2 runs a day ruined by a moody boss. The HP thresholds would still be the same, your damage to kill the boss would still be required, but the overall time of the run would drastically drop if mechanics like cancels were looked into, without having to make the boss any easier to kill.

that's probably all i've got for today, we'll see. I'll definitely be making another comment once i've been able to spend a few hours at my favorite grinding locations testing out the new skill changes.
thanks to anyone who took the time to read or give input to this post happy mapling

 

while decreasing their ability to consistently measure the amount of L7s they need to throw on the chosen grinding mob to kill it (generally 1 shot or a consistent 2 shot) given the current 50% crit rate its a pretty sure shot that you can rely on. With lower crit rate it will become much more rng based meaning you'll either be 1 shotting or 3 shotting depending on your rng, which could quickly see you overwhelmed with mobs stuck slapping them with your claw for 1s.

 

honestly that doesn't sound like a bad solution at all, there's just one thing. This wasn't meant to be a nerf this was actually meant to help NLs, which seems even more ridiculous given the changes that happened xD

 

averages are obviously going to be higher since there's an overall increase to damage by 6% post change.