Marksmen should be buffed further

Or you can just hire me for SI lol

 

I don't believe that Marksmen should be compared to other classes under the influence of gelt chocolates. Because a decent portion of their DPM is locked to fixed damage, they tend to gain less overall from attack pots compared to other classes, making the chart a bit misleading(Especially since the use of gelts isn't really considered normal, everyday play), and they would rise a couple ranks without the use of such big attack buffs.

Snipe on cancels would be nice though, but making SI redundant would probably only hinder Buccaneers further. A Blind buff to work on bosses(To a lesser extent than against regular mobs) would be a great addition though, and it would add to the synergy between pirates and marksmen, the set of classes most underutilized. SI could benefit the Marksmen and Corsair, while blind would benefit Buccs and Sairs to help them get more use out of their moderate avoidability, along with SE for more damage as well. It would make for a decent core in optimizing their underperformance in places like Horntail.

 

I deleted my post because I realized that. The fact that less of MM's overall damage relies on weapon attack makes them stronger when neither side is on as strong of attack pots. I bet under normal circumstances (even with perfect gear), MM do more single target damage than paladins and dark knights after the buff.

 

Revert the changes to strafe, for the love of maple just put it back to what it should be, not this 5 hit abomination.
Then, increase sniper's strafe dmg to like 120/130%.

Problem solved.

 

Thanks AioriaX for your post.
I would like to add on to your 2nd point.
-Make "Snipe 30" only at max, penetrate weapon cancels on boss-
This will boost MMs class identity as a utility archer and have more impact in end game boss fights. Doing so, will NOT make the class OP like you've said 100%. At the moment the single target dpm is still amongst the lower bracket lol. Im fine with relying on buccs for SI. We should all rely on one another, so no class will be left out, every class brings value to the party and maple will be more inclusive.

I believe MMs can be distinguished and differentiated further from BMs. Not just "BMs dmg > MMs dmg in end game"

 

Maybe give MMs a chance to hit through weapon cancel, lets say 50%, won't be overpowered...

 

Totally agree. What we love about this private server is that its like the good old maple story, while with little tweaks of enhancements to make the game a little better while not altering the basic essence of the game. By doing with this 5 hit Strafe thing just alter the game's basics.

Anyway, not all characters in the game are created equal. That's what makes playing different classes fun (with sacrifices and gains at their individual areas). So why should we compare different job classes base on a single metric, such as DPM on single target etc.?

 

This chart is highly misleading, this assumes (for the bowmaster) a perf nt bow, 20 att cape (1 or none in game?), 21 att glove, 10 att mon, 21 att sock (hahaha) and gelt for a total of 335 weapon attack.
an actual lv 200 bowmaster has around 220 attack if you assume 10 att mon, perf dragon shiner bow, 15 att cape, 21 att glove and 10 att from 4th job bow mastery skill, and 26 att from concentrate skill.
with this attack a marksman with si actually outdamages a bowmaster.
SO A BOWMASTER WITH A PERF BOW AND GOOD GEAR gets outdamaged now by a marksman and you people want to buff it even further?
A bowmaster literally has to apple at least once each boss to even compare to a marksman now, marksman have become the best late game archer (assuming they have si) now.
only when using an apple or gelt can a bowmaster outdamage a marksman on si now (the treshhold is 265 attack).
Marksman needs a slight nerf now not a buff, they needed a slight buff originally but this was too much.

 

I agree with the type of MM/BM balance that the staff was going for (that is endgame MMs being slightly stronger without apples), but this is NOT what actually happened post buffs. The calculations done in nise's original thread had some errors, which caused some people to be mislead about the actual state of the MM/BM balance. I talk about it in more detail here (https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/bowmaster-vs-marksman-under-the-new-changes.30717/). Long story short, BM are still strong than SI-MM on bears in the endgame, and I think further MM buffs can be justified even at this stage.

 

The real buff to MM would be to remove the melee restriction on piercing arrow, make it fireable in the air so it doesn't whiff when you get knocked up, and remove the annoying charge-up mechanic and replace it with an equivalent length animation. And get rid of the pointless "piercing" part of the skill and just give it a flat damage buff; making the attack stronger as it passes through more mobs sounds cool, but it's not utilized if you kill whatever is at the back too early.

This way MM can take up the role of ranged cleaver, which no ranged class does at the moment besides mages.

The problem is that MM don't really do anything else better than a BM. Piercing Arrow isn't great, so they can't use it as a bossing skill. And grinding on a MM is only marginally better than on a BM.

 

I agree that MM could be buffed further, but we should be cautious with the mindset of needing to equalize the population of BM and MMs. The best example for this is paladins. There are way more heros and dks compared to paladins, this is true at both the mid and high levels, yet most high level players would agree that paladin is the strongest out of the warriors overall and no sane player would suggest buffing paladin at this point. Sometimes population imbalance can be do to reasons other than objective class balancing (although I don't think thats the case here, MM just sux)

 

I think it's because they're boring. Paladins have arguably the worse mobbing skill of warriors. AC is just ugly to look at, and is essentially a glorified slash blast. Nothing can salvage that, unless they make pallys busted strong.

 

I mean, this is precisely the case LOL. I certainly agree that the stuff you mentioned had an impact on the lack of pallys as well, but I think a large reason why they weren't played very much in the earlier days was that people simply didn't understand how strong paladin was. Once people started doing dpm calculations and noticing that Heavens Hammer was absurdly busted for training/bossing, people started started to make more pallys.

 

I know and thanked selquin for her calculations since they showed me the problem was not as great as nise his graphes made them look to be.
She made the graph you refer to, in response to my thread and I used nise his calculations to back up my statements so my original reaction was to a non-existing situation that the wrong graph mislead me to believe.
I actually totally agree with nise his decision to buff Marksman to the point where they are now (if selquin her calculations are correct) and I think this buff was done marvelously.
I don't agree however with ur view that because there are less Marksman in the population its healthy for the game to buff Marksman´s late game potential to a point where Bowmasters can't reach.
A bowmaster starts out with a gap in their damage compared to a Marksman and a bowmaster has to spent a lot of meso to close this gap (it used to be a too small amount of meso in the old patch, its healthy that they fixed this). I believe the gap is in a healthy spot right now its big, and needs truly hard work to overcome but it is doable, I opposed the thought that the gap should be so wide that it is impossible to overcome. Sure it will make the population more equal but it won't make the equation of reasons to pick bowmaster vs picking marksman equal.

 

I also disagree with this statement, im level 168 now and I have been playing for quite a while now (around 1 year i think? im not completely sure) and I leeched my way up to level 135. The gap right now is at around level 160 without si and at near perfect gear with si. Lets take the perspective of a casual player vs the perspective of a hard core player.
The casual player (often used as insult but not here i swear) gets up to lv 180 at max or so? over a time span of 2-3 years (this is just my definition of a casual player it will most certenly differ for other people). Why would they pick bowmaster under this new patch? Well because after 3 years of training and saving meso they finally almost reach the potential their class has and gets close to the damage of a marksman. This seems pretty healthy to me. If they keep playing they might even outdamage the marksman soon, however had they picked marksman they would have been stronger for years already and this casual player has still reaped 0 reward from his choice of bowmaster (exept some afking with hurricane which I also see is a plus for bm but i can't see a reasonable way to fix this/you cant do it in ht at least).
Had they picked marksman they would have done way more damage over this timespan and so there is a good reason for this player to pick marksman over bowmaster.

The harcore player however looks it more in the view of lv 1-170 is a joke ill just leech/ grind that out in no time. From that perspective I can understand wanting to buff marksman even more than has happened, but how much of the population sees it like this? I certainly do not, I think having to work hard to finally get to higher ground than the marksman is good reason to pick bowmaster, take this away and I would have certainly picked marksman (if i was logical, i'm not sure I love bm a lot) or even better just played night lord lol.
From the perspective of a high level player marksman might still be too weak but accouring to selquin her calculations their dps is quite close now even at high level and at perfect gear, so I still believe Marksman and Bowmasters are at a healthy spot right now and offer something to different types of players.

 

Funnily enough, even back during the 3rd job period when 4th job to us was still just a bunch of names and snipers were actually generally superior to rangers, (on GMS at least) there were still far more rangers than snipers. Even if Marksman are buffed further, I don't think it will come anywhere close to overtaking Bowmaster in terms of popularity.