New Mage damage formula

The other thread has became a mess and as promised, I will post a separate suggestion with my thoughts on the new formula.

Firstly, let's start with why a change was needed.

Old damage formula for mages:
MAX = ((Magic²/1000 + Magic)/30 + INT/200) * Spell Attack
Breaking down into its simplest components, it is basically some version of:
TMA^2+TMA+INT, with some other constants thrown in.

For comparison, let's look at the NL damage formula since it is the simples:
MAX = (LUK * 5.0) * Weapon Attack / 100
Breaking down into its simplest components, it is basically:
LUK * Weapon Attack

Hence the main difference is just whether it is an addition or a multiplication.
Older players are already aware of the issue that is caused by the old mage formula, which is the poor scaling resulting from the additive formula at higher levels. Intuitively, you can already tell that the more base LUK a NL has, the more each weapon attack adds to overall damage.

To address it, the new formula developed is:
NEW MAX = {(Z²/100000 + 23 * Z/2000 - 8) + [(Magic - Z)²/18750 + (Magic - Z)/5] } * Spell Attack
Similarly breaking it down into the simplest components, the new formula is:
Player Level ^2 + Player Level + TMA^2 + TMA
Clearly, it is still a additive, so intuitively you can tell it will be difficult to achieve the same effect as the NL formula.

Thankfully, we can test it by doing some simple simulations:

To start off, the NL formula is extremely simple. The chart below shows the marginal damage from 1 additional weapon attack at each level, assuming the NL only has base LUK and nothing else. The increasing trend shows the scaling in effect.


It is slightly more tricky to calculate the marginal damage from 1 tma increase due to the square present in the formula, but it can be done calculating the difference in damage from 2 separate simulations of 1 tma difference (can assume the tma comes from INT, not much difference).

For the illustration, we shall assume that the mage 200 MA from other sources, is pure INT and adds 5 INT every level up. You can play around with other values of additional MA it doesn't change the trend.

Interestingly, the old formula actually leads to some form of scaling by levels due to the squaring (tma)^2.

However, the new formula offers completely zero scaling by base AP and levels. Instead, the scaling is with respect to the current excess tma you have i.e. the better your current gear, the more dmg the next marginal tma adds.
Note: this is also the converse with how weapon attack works. Assume same LUK, the NL gains slightly less proportionate damage with each additional WA relative to the last total WA because each WA adds the exact same amount of damage.

This means that the new formula DID NOT solve the underlying problem of poor scaling at high levels. Instead, it changed the way scaling works to purely reward gear and opened a whole new can of worms. Hence, to the endgame mage mains celebrating your increase in damage and defending the new formula on the other thread: Congrats on your power spike, well deserved, BUT YOU ARE DEFENDING THE WRONG PROCESS TO GET THERE.

Using the example from above, assuming a lvl 130 Mage has 300 excess TMA and a lvl 150 Mage has 200 excess TMA. This brings their TMA to be the same at 967.
In this situation, the lvl 130 mage's damage will be a whopping 41% higher than the lvl 150 mage (if we want to assume that both sources of INT includes MW30, i.e. the lvl 150 mage will have additional 13 INT without adjusting gear, the lvl 130 mage is still 33% stronger).
In fact, the lvl 130 mage is 23% stronger than a lvl 200 mage with the same excess 200 tma.

To illustrate, let's use the same baseline lvl 130 mage with excess 200 tma and see what happens when he adds incremental INT (up to the max of 350 i.e. lvl 200):

In essence, leveling up to gain INT is almost irrelevant in terms of gaining damage now. What you really need is to obtain obscene gear, which gives you the same powerful scaling regardless of level.

You must be thinking, isn't this pretty bonkers? Can you imagine an attacker popping an onyx apple and getting in effect more than 100 wa scaling, depending on how high their current wa is? Well, the staff's method of 'balancing' end game mages so that the damage don't get out of hand is compensate by shifting the intercept down and cutting into the base damage of the other end of the gearing spectrum.

This brings me to 2 main issues brought about with the new formula.


1.Base AP is the basis of damage in old school Maplestory.
The new formula takes away the agency of players in terms of AP allocation, which is a key feature of OS maple. With all things being constant, 2 players with the same INT and MA should have the same damage. Same goes for STR for warriors, DEX for archer etc etc.

The new formula completely goes against this principle by penalizing damage upon level up. Let's do some stress testing. The chart below shows what happens when a naked mage failed to add INT and levels up (assuming he has been pure INT up to this point):

Congratulations, your mage starts doing negative damage from lvl 125.
For anyone curious on how it works in reality, I actually did some testing on my lvl 126 bishop.

Sadly, we don't get to see any negative damage since there appears to be some baseline formula built in to prevent it (and can sometimes do above 1 dmg interestingly)
Shining Ray damage for comparison:


For those people whose response is "just add INT", that is not the point. The point is that we need to respect the fundamental game design. If we go with this, might as well add an "auto allocate AP" button for all mages since the manual selection is obsolete. Guess what, that is modern Maplestory, where AP is prescribed and there is no longer secondary AP.

Fortunately, this issue can be easily addressed. Just switch Z in the formula (which ignores any input from the player) with actual Base INT. This way, there will not be a deduction in damage just from leveling up. Of course, it does not solve the scaling issue mentioned earlier, but we shall go by the premise that the structure of the new formula is going to be kept.

2. The new formula places too much weightage on the 'damage from gear' portion.
Refer to the chart of the baseline lvl 130 mage I have shown above. The reason for this is that the first part of the new formula (Z²/100000 + 23 * Z/2000 - 8) actually results in an extremely small number compared to the 2nd part.

Because the new scaling depends on current tma from gear, it can lead to some crazy results if the damage of current under-geared mages are maintained. Based on the numbers presented, I presume staff just looked at the damage at TMA cap and adjusted the curve downwards from there. As a result, ungeared mages does no damage, and semi-geared mages get a serious nerf.

In the other thread, a staff member cherry picked an example of a lvl 130 mage to illustrate that even 'ungeared mages got a small buff'. This was pretty smart way to mislead readers because lvl 130 is actually one of the most buffed levels post change as it is the last lvl most mages get a huge tma bump from changing to a new wand.

You know what, I can cherry pick too!

This is assuming average gear realistic for a new player (all scrolled with 60%, excluded shield because too expensive). We already know a naked mage will be doing negative damage from the first issue i mentioned.

A lvl 129 mage gets a 32% nerf on their CL, paralyze. Is it not significant? And don't bring in the 'low level mage should only be using ult' argument. We should not be prescribing how a new player should play. More playing diversity is positive for the gaming experience and helps in retention.

Again, going by the premise that staff has a reason to follow, we can also tweak the weightage to ensure that a realistic scenario as above do not get nerfed as much. It is just a matter to tweaking the constants to ensure that the TMA cap damage still follows what staff wants.

Based on a quick testing on my own, I came to the following:
NEW MAX = {(BASE INT²/35000 + 23 * BASE INT/1000 ) + [(Magic - BASE INT)²/76000 + (Magic - Z)/5] } * Spell Attack
Of course, this still does not solve the scaling issue raised above and INT from gear always beats base INT.

So where does that lead us?
My suggestion to staff is either
revert the changes and go back to the drawing board for a better scaling solution (I hope)
OR
review the current formula to at least remove some of the counterintuitive features.

Feel free to take the suggestion with what you will, I have decided that I am no longer going to continue playing much. The changes that have happened over the last 2 years has resulted in a server that is far removed from the OS Maplestory experience I was looking for back in 2021 and the constant deterioration of new player experience is not something that bodes well for retention and long term future. So, thanks for helping to break my addiction, I guess.