Update General Patch Notes: Anniversary 2025 Extra

sadly this does indeed kill barrel dancing, which is something that most buccs viewed positively

 

I appreciate the staff trying to "fix" the problems they caused with the recent update, but ultimately these changes are just kinda doubling down on changing the shadower class entirely. I didn't make a shadower to play a warrior, I liked how it was originally, low damage and all.

I'll give the changes a shot but even if they're technically "better" for DPS, they're not the class I actually want to play.

 

is there a Typo with the Shad HP Challenge values, or is that how it is in-game? Seems like each tier got 250 HP more than previous except for Tier 6

 

Lower nl shifter timer for each flash jump they use

 

As a shad main, I would trade stance for passive shifter in a heartbeat. I don't care which skill is better or worse, the vibes are off.

As a Pap hater, I am thriving. Try to knock me off that platform now, clock boy. I'm gonna live here rent free. Shad tower now

 

I think you're right about the problem, but I feel there exists a number smaller than old shifter but greater than 0% that allows for such content to be balanced. Could even just use the lower value only in such content, so shads could enjoy original shifter while farming.

 

I'm not going to argue against inherently flawed mechanics like HP washing and the sunk cost fallacy that follows from it but the truth is if we simply follow this train of thought of "We can't touch NLs because we already invested 5 years of voting" the game would simply be stale and forever unbalanced. As it stands even post nerf the survivability advantage a 30k NL vs 30K warrior is a pretty significant gap, so it's not like this nerf made warriors "tankier" than thieves. One would argue that it would make sense for warriors to have improved survivability over NLs despite the washing gimmick just because it's how it was intended. Changes like this move the game towards a more balanced state and even if we in general can't put our emotions and personal desires behind (Me included), objectively we must admit it simply makes sense and is healthy. At the end of the day NLs weren't dethroned or turned out to be garbage because or these changes, the gap was simply lowered. I don't think this shifter change changes the class standings. NL are still the best at what they do.

 

In terms of needing to reposition, I do believe stance might have always been batter than shifter at keeping position, someone can prove me wrong on this with numbers, (but also probably dependent on which boss/mob you're hitting since they have different accuracy). Now with 75% avoid and a pretty high amount of avoid we definitely reposition less than pre patch I would imagine (once again just guesstimating numbers I'm not calculating anything here)

 

At the end of the day if it comes to our preference and what we grew used to, the OG shifter will always be what we desire but my point really stands, how to make content where a 30k hp shad with 80% avoid and MG struggles and a 30 k warrior has the ability to consistently survive? It's very hard. These changes are a step towards the right direction. It really does open so many possibilities for interesting content.

 

Like I said, the insane dodge rates don't need to be available in what should be challenging content. I think just nerfing it (or trading some amount of avoid for stance) ONLY in certain boss rooms would be a step forward.

 

Won't someone please think of the child[ren]? LPQ brawler (I assume there's only one that exists at least) got a heavy barrel nerf, now waiting 10 seconds between each OHKO golem.

 

The problem is not everyone is at end-game stage bossing and not everyone relies on bossing as their content.
For me, I grinded 7F pretty much throughout. Passive shifter was the most important to me. That was one of the massive reason I chose Shadower in the first place, because I was never interested in hardcore bossing, just the occasional runs with guildies/friends. I never cared about DPM, otherwise I wouldn't have chose Shad. I chose it for its survivability, tankiness and overall independence of gameplay that didn't rely on any other class.

Many shads would much prefer having a nerfed passive shifter than an active one. People just do not want to have to press another buff. Quite frankly, my shad was getting knocked around at freaking CDs the past couple of days when I was cardhunting! That's unimaginable before the patch. What good is a 20 second active shifter going to do for a shad card hunting or grinding through 7F?

Plus right now, we have 75% stance. Yes, have to reposition was one of the most complained issues about the previous changes. But adding giving us stance just feels ???
It doesn't feel right. Although you might be right that some of the changes are too strong (I personally don't think so), I would much rather just have the old Shad back with nerfed passive shifter if needed.

 

I think all of this comes from “out of control” HP washing
If NLs had to rely on HB to survive, no one would really care about their high avoid

But since HB became meaningless late game, we even have 30k HP NLs now,
feels like BT gave up on balancing around “survivability” a long time ago.

 

80% avoid is an over exaggeration and not every thief is washed to 30k hp. This hurts casual players even more. All classes have their own uniqueness/strengths and now they've been stripped of it...

 

it is very creative way to nerf leech selling archmage and bishops due to less demand to buy skele/petri/5-6f special thanks to balance patch

 

700 avoid thief vs 250 acc monster: 71.4% dodge rate BEFORE shifter. NL shifter bumps it to 80% and shad shifter bumps it to 82.8%. Boss accuracy can go a bit higher than that, but so too does thief avoid. 80% can even be an underexaggeration

 

this is a perspective that desperately needs to be factored in - not everyone bosses exclusively or even the majority of the time, plenty of people grind. i can't say much about how good it feels to grind at 7F right now, so i would love to hear the perspective of shads who are giving it a go. however, high level thieves being knocked around by low level mobs is kind of ridiculous and quite frankly breaks any immersion of being a stealthy class. like... i'm meant to be an undetected phantom of the night, blending into the inky darkness of the shadows to sneak up behind targets, silently kill them, and disappear undetected, and yet i am at the local strip mall getting my ass blasted by a Now That's What I Call Music album???? like i know conceptually that's a little hilarious but it's also deeply embarrassing.

another thing that maybe is getting brushed off though is the nx cost, and thought it was worth bringing this up again. most shads have 0 in shield mastery, so we have to reset those 20 points out somewhere. one 3rd job spr is 3800 nx, so to set out all 20 points is 76,000 nx... my dudes, that's hefty. can 3rd job resets be significantly discounted for the event period or something? so few people purchase 3rd job resets anyway, and i don't know about everyone else, but my account certainly doesn't have enough nx to purchase them all and won't for a hot minute, so i feel a lil gatekept if i'm bein' real lol

 

What I don't understand is why 80% through on DK rework which took years and countless threads BT decided to casually rework 3 classes?
What happened to one thing at a time?

Nerf MultiBalance.

 

3 classes that were arguably fine as they were, to be specific.
Replaced by an identity crisis turned faux-warrior, a hot mess that requires 2 PhDs to operate and...
*taps glass* another 100% to Blast, sir! make it quick!

 

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't QoL for grinding 7F be higher now than it was before with this most recent patch even if you never use active shifter? At least on paper, I believe that's what it says for a mid-level shad with respect to chances of getting knocked back, assuming 50% avoid rate with 75% stance. Costs from getting hit more often shouldn't be higher than before either if using meso guard is optimal for your character, which with the new values is the case if under 14k HP from a cost-efficiency standpoint, and you use at least 10% less mesos for meso guard than before, which is the case if you have ~13k or less HP.