Make Bishop Mains 'alright' in Pink Bean

The goal of this thread is to present a challenge to the staff, that of making it acceptable to recruit a Bishop Main for Pink Bean over a Bishop Mule. This is a difficult task, but one that requires attention if every class is meant to deserve a rewarding endgame gameplay.

Making the problem evident

​

Any level 150 Bishop Mule can provide as much utility as a Bishop Main, this devalues the class and the differences don’t make Bishop Mains any more desirable. Mini-beans are handled by the Arch-Mages and no one recruits a Bishop for their statues and Pink Bean damage as those are bad. The only thing Bishops do is provide apples for the run and being a resurrection and shield mule.

The only redeemable quality Bishop Mains had before the patch was being able to do serious damage to the mini-beans, now that has been replaced with the ability to do full damage to Pink Bean as if that meant much to the weakest single target in the game. It’s hard to understand why this was a trade, why was Bishops utility sacrificed for body DPS or why does the last patch-notes propose that Bishops would be broken if they were able to do both. It’s as if the balance decision was thought in a vacuum in which multiclienting doesn't exist when almost every squad was doing it and still does (even more now).

Bishop body damage is mediocre even with the holy resistance removal and it will never be considered as a distinctive quality as it is simply better to recruit a real damage dealer with a bishop mule.


Before suggestions, a small pause to develop something:

Challenging the idea of “should support be a damage dealer”

The following chart lists the best support classes with their best -non redundant- skills applied to Pink Bean. Which explains the lack of ‘Dispel’ due to the existence of All-Cure Potions and Holy Symbol due to most endgame players being 200 and that Pink Bean isn’t run for EXP.

I have also decided to rate the damage these classes do during Statues and Pink Bean phases in the following order: Top Tier > Good > Mediocre > Insignificant. DPM close to Night Lord is to be understood as Top Tier and as DPM varies between classes I’m using the categories to indicate significant DPM gaps.

​

So why I’m doing this? I’m looking to challenge the idea that supports shouldn’t be able to do significant damage. Two of the best supports in this game, Buccaneer and Marksman, already do top tier damage. So there's no reason for being afraid of letting Bishops to be at least ‘alright’ in the final boss of the game. Yea just ‘alright’ because It would be madness to request for them to do as much damage as single target classes or also it wouldn’t be appropriate to overlook how Bishops succeed in leeching and farming, though It could be argued that these are mostly mules that keep mage balance hostage but that's another controversial topic.

Anyway, my point here is that supports can do top tier damage and I’d like for Bishops to be "ok, decent, alright" in pink bean if possible. Dark Knights deserve some love as well but they'll need their own thread with their own suggestions as I'm unaware of what could make their class feel more rewarding to play.

So, what to do SUGGESTIONS

Make Bishops able to genesis mini-beans again and I would suggest to allow Bishops to keep doing full damage on Pink Bean. Compared to a naked mule, this will make magic relevant in dealing with mini-beans, the proposed change keeps statues damage as insignificant and body damage as mediocre. I would say this is enough to keep the class ‘alright’. Bishops will keep getting muled but at least it’s state won’t be as embarrassing as it is now.

So how to move from 'alright' to 'good'. I incentivize looking for creative ways of making the supportive skills more challenging or looking for ways of making bishop mules less desirable. Active gameplay needs to be rewarded with survival, the current dispels are a joke and what is needed is perhaps a mechanic that rewards active gameplay by dodging attacks while dispel happens, real players would dodge while mules would be static and take the hit. Of course nothing would work perfectly but it would be greatly appreciated as it would improve the Bishop experience.


what NOT to do, DOOOOOOOONT

I must admit I had these ideas before when I was feeling upset about the state of Bishops but further thought they are useless

· DON’T: Restricting multiclient or making it a bannable offense

This doesn’t accomplish the goal of making Bishop gameplay rewarding in Pink Bean. Restrictions are lame and as a server we are deep into multiclienting. I’m not looking to make everyone obligated to play in certain ways, this just doesn’t feel right and it’s better if the ‘problem’ is addressed with actual gameplay and mechanics changes.

· DON’T: Increase the minimum level requirement

Let’s be real, due how this game is, almost every endgame player has at least one high level bishop (if not 200 already) from the times they leeched their attackers, sold leech or farmed. This kind of restriction would do absolutely nothing for Bishop Mains and I would say that it would even be worse.


Ending

Please consider accepting my suggestions, keep the thread in topic, leave your input. Agree, partially agree or disagree but try to say why. Thanks​

 

yea the min. level requirement doesn't make sense for the battle in general as there's no reason for levels 150~17x to participate other than being muled. However this would only address DRK and Bucc and the restriction of only 5 bishops would still allow for bishop mules. Regarding mules it's complicated to go against the servers culture as it's been demonstrated over the years to be an impossible battle, it would upset a significant amount of players which isn't something I'm trying to do, as antagonizing too hard would lead my suggestions to nothing. I'm just trying to find a solution centered around gameplay or mechanics rather than restrictions. Thanks for the input!

 

No, Bishops can already do a bit more than half a genesis with a charged big bang, making genesis hit half would only be useful for the area it covers. Elemental resistance and immunity are supposed to be mechanics balanced with elemental weakness, but when the game only throws you the first two in the most relevant content it sucks. I believe the suggestion of making genesis do full damage to mini-beans is pretty conservative considering the state of the class in every other aspect of the battle.

I share your idea regarding Arch Mages, I play one and honestly I enjoyed it more when I spent less time casting meteor and more time DPS the bean, it was pretty fun because Arch Mage had the potential of doing as much or more damage than Night Lords in body but now the importance of Arch Mage is centered once again in the ult which isn't exciting news

 

I'd prefer if we keep the topic about Bishops, I get that multiclienting is the elephant in the room when talking about the balance of some classes but it ultimately works as a distraction because it never goes anywhere. The ramifications are beyond this thread and we would have to get a staff hint to even consider talking about the possibilities but so far I've only seen Kimmy recently saying this, which were the conclusions after the multiclient restriction episode, so I'd propose to circumvent it and talking about solutions that are realistic enough to get a change. And I'm neither defending or retracting it, I'm just ignoring it because whatever my opinion is I think is not realistic to expect a multiclient change.

What I wanna say is that if we are meant to co-exist with mules in bosses -under staff allowance- then it only make sense to consider the mules existence and their implications for balance decisions! Which is something I criticize about the last patch-notes. Bishop changes were implemented under the assumption that multiclient doesn't even exist.

I appreciate this suggestion, is interactive gameplay around the dispel skill, It would require some gymnastics to land those dispels mostly on the mini-beans. I guess it just comes to whether this is possible to implement or not.

 

I wanna add some suggestions Khellz commented me on discord, she isn't a forum enjoyer so I'm posting for her. Thanks for reaching out!

1) Reverting holy immune status on mini-beans and increasing their HP, this would make arch-mages and bishops deal with mini-beans together.

2) Randomize the mass seduces from right bird for phases 4 and 5, this would make it a harder to cheat the seduces with entrance order.