Information December 2023 Balance Changes [Explained]

Reminder: This only contains the balance related changes.


Welcome to our balance changes for the December 2023 Patch! This patch focuses on improvement made based on feedback for the November 2023 balance changes, which can be found here. We hope to be clearer in our explanations this time around, learning from our last post. Now, on with the changes!


「 Mages 」

• Magic damage formula for non-ult 4th job skills has been reworked again.
  
  Spoiler: List of skills affected

  The changes only apply to the following skills:
  

  • Big Bang
  • Paralyze
  • Chain Lightning
  • Angel Ray
  • Fire Demon
  • Ice Demon

  Note: Formula for ultimates and summons have not been altered​

The magic damage formula for the aforementioned skills is now:

Code:

maxDamage = { baseINT * [Magic - baseINT - min(baseLUK,100)*0.5] / 6700  +  baseINT/38  +  [Magic - baseINT - min(baseLUK,100)*0.5] / 14 + LOG10[max(1,Magic)] } * Spell_Attack

minDamage = { baseINT * [Magic - baseINT - min(baseLUK,100)*0.5] / 6700  +  {baseINT/38 + [Magic - baseINT - min(baseLUK,100)*0.5] / 14}*(Mastery*3 + 30)*0.0107 + LOG10[max(1,Magic)] } * Spell_Attack

The basic components for the mage damage formula is:
(baseInt x gearTMA) + baseInt + gearTMA,
Where baseInt is the stat points you have in Int and gearTMA is all the Int + Magic Attack from your gear.

The objectives for this new iteration of the mage were to:
1. Ensure leveling up remains meaningful for progression ("leveling is good for damage")
2. Remove stats for gear from baseInt completely, but still allowing gear to scale ("better gear, better damage")
3. Preserve off-meta builds
4. Maintain the viability of luk mages, and keep them on roughly similar footing (similar TMA = similar damage)
5. Ensure players don't lose damage for leveling and not putting int (eg. for washing purposes)
6. Provide cushioning for poor and low level mages (eg. mages who have less base int AND lower quality gear) and not completely demolishing them

Table of test for changes:

Spoiler: Table Explanation

The second bold column (rightmost) represents the damage comparison vs. Neckson's formula. For the most part, adding base int and gear to the formula will see more of an increase in damage. Naked mages still have lower damage compared to the original formula, but the gap is reduced significantly. Also, notice how "odd" builds do not have their damage significantly affected and may even see a buff compared to the original formula. However, percentages might be misleading so that brings us to the other bold column.

The first bold column represents the relative power of the mage, think of it as the average value from the damage range (minimum damage to maximum damage). Lv 120 oddjobber might have a 139% increase in damage, but their damage at the end is still just 22.5. A naked lukless mage (Lv 120 Base + 133) would have less damage compared to the original formula (87% of original), but would still do signficiantly more damage 35.95, when comapred to the oddjobber.

Also note that spell power is applied after this damage value for the above skills (eg. paralyze, chain lightning, etc).

Spoiler: Mathematical explanation of the new formula

Code:

baseINT * [Magic - baseINT - min(baseLUK,100)*0.5] / 6700 

baseInt = base stat for Int
Magic = total magic attack
baseLuk = base stat for Luk

gearTMA is calculated as Magic - baseInt - baseLuk. On a basic level, this provides separation between base stats and magic attack obtained through gear, similar to attacking classes. So, the quadratic term baseInt * gearTMA would be something you might see like Luk * w.att for Nightlords.

The -baseLuk modifier is recognizing that Luk mages would typically trade off baseInt for more magic attack gains from gear, so a 0.5 coefficient is applied to not make Luk mages the default build choice (without -baseLuk) but also not destroy higher Luk mages (if 1x coeffecient was used). In effect, similar TMA should result in close to the same damage between base Luk and Lukless mages. There is also a min(baseLuk,100) that caps this effect to 100 base Luk since there is no gear progression after elemental staff 5 thru 8, so any builds that might add even more base Luk shouldn't continue to be adversely affected by this.

Code:

[Magic - baseINT - min(baseLUK,100)*0.5] / 14

The "gear" term affecting damage linearly.

Code:

LOG10[max(1,Magic)]

There is a log(Magic) addition to the formula just to ensure that players on the very low end of TMA aren't disproportionately nerfed.

Thank you for all the suggestions through the forums and Discord to provide various ideas for testing and solutions. We hope that the updated mage formula addresses some of the shortcomings of the previous patch. Also to reiterate, this formula is not designed to place mages on par with similarly-geared attackers and that this change only affects the 4th job skills listed above. Big shoutout to the Balance Team and especially Chu, who tested many different mage formula iterations.





「 Amorian Party Quest (APQ) 」

• Bonus map will now default the players to max speed/jump. (movement skills are still disabled)

Spoiler: APQ Bonus Explanation

Changes to bonus map were made in the Nov 2023 balance changes thread to ensure fairness across different classes. While the thread mentioned that movement skill were no longer allowed, the more precise description of the change is the map are set as a jump quest map, which unfortunately includes the effect of defaulting to minimum speed/jump. At the time, we knew this was not ideal as max speed and jump was already achievable by all characters. The change resulted in complaints regarding how players' gameplay experience was sacrificed for the sake of balance. However, we cannot remove just that restriction, as it will affect all current jump quest maps and it will take some custom changes that takes time to implement otherwise. Thus, we made the decision to see the impact of the changes and come back to it when we have the time. As it turns out, the reduced speed/jump resulted into "griefing" situations where a misjump from a platform or players taking boxes closer to another player would take an extended amount of time to recover.

While it might already be nice enough to somehow remove the minimum speed/jump restriction, we figured, why not just give everyone max speed/jump? This may have reduced some gameplay intricacies, but the bonus map should not be a stage where class and character differences matter. Teamwork is what will be needed to get the most of the bonus map, and hopefully this change will be received as fair in that regard by the playerbase.

「 Crimsonwood Keep Party Quest (CWKPQ) 」

• Stage 6 (Boss): Heron (Pirate boss) speed is reduced by 10. Thanks for the suggestion here.

We have tested the SI-less MM which does have quite a significantly harder time to pin Heron. The speed change will not make it hamstring-like and it will still require active work to maintain the pin, let us know how it feels!

• Bonus:
  • Bonus map will now default the players to max speed/jump. (movement skills are still disabled)
    
  • Added a teleporter on the entrance door to the middle of the map.
  • Realigned all the boxes to be equally separated horizontally from each other and closer. Thanks for the suggestion here.

Similar to the reasoning given for APQ bonus map changes, we hope these changes will make things fair for all classes and weapon choices.


Common Gachapon Ticket has been added to the following monsters: (Thanks for the suggestion here)

• Mama Monkey
• Wild Monkey
• White Mama Monkey
• Red Goblin
• Blue Goblin
• Strong Stone Goblin
• Yellow Perfume
• Ravana

Gachapon Tickets are dropped by most monsters in the Maple world, and we didn't see a reason why this list of monsters should be excluded. It is likely that they were just missed out when Gacha was initially added to monsters. Thus, we added Gacha drops for each of these monsters for fairness.




We hope this round of changes will offer some refinement for our previous balancing changes and an interesting change for players to play around with. As usual, while there are more changes we would like to work on, they'll need to be saved for another patch. As always, your sincere feedback is much appreciated!

Special thanks as usual to all our current staff members who were involved with the changes!