Rebalance for 2nd/3rd job mage single-target skills

Since second job IL and Clerics typically go straight for their mobbing skills (Poison Brace in FP's case to kill high level mobs), Cold Beam, Fire Arrow, and Holy Arrow are rarely leveled to max and end up outperformed by Magic Claw all the way into 3rd job. In fact, they are so bad that many IL/FP mages choose Slow over Cold Beam and Fire Arrow.

Furthermore, even 3rd job single-target skills are more or less unused, due to mobbing skills being better in general, and the fact that it takes quite some investment to make the skills viable to use. To fix this to some degree, I'd propose updating Holy Arrow, Fire Arrow, Cold Beam, Element Composition, and Thunder Spear. The following is a draft, and fully open for further balancing adjustments before implementation if this suggestion is approved.

-The Goals-

-2nd Job skills will replace Magic Claw from the first skill point against enemies with elemental weakness. By max, they will significantly outperform Magic Claw against enemies that are not strong/immune to the element
-3rd Job skills will similarly their 2nd job skills.

-Both 2nd and 3rd Job-

-Give all single-target skills 60% mastery from the first point - this fixes the damage stability for not maxing the skills, and instantly makes next-job single-target skills more viable to use over their previous job skills, even with only 1 point in each skill. This is important, because even in the case that the skills are leveled, they are usually done late into the job, which allows them little time for actual use. However, with full mastery at 1 skill point, there is now an argument to add a single point early into 2nd/3rd job, before leveling it more late into the job.

-2nd Job-

-Fire Arrow scales from 63 to 130 Spell Attack (instead of current 33-120), gaining +3 spell attack per level from 1-10 and +2 from 11-30 (instead of +3 from 1-30)
-Cold Beam scales from 62 to 120 Spell Attack (instead of current 13-100), gaining +2 spell attack per level from 1-30 (instead of +3 from 1-30)
-Holy Arrow scales from 62 to 120 Spell Attack (instead of current 22-80), gaining +40 over its current values

The above changes make the spells slightly stronger than Magic Claw at a single point against enemies that have elemental weakness, and eventually replace Magic Claw against all enemies that are not strong/immune to the respective elements. Traditionally, Clerics damage are been weaker than other jobs, however, as Holy Arrow has no special effect (freeze) and Priest has no single-target skill to replace HA, I think keeping the numbers the same as Cold Beam is fine.

-3rd Job-

-FP mage Element Composition scales 122-160 Spell Attack (+2 on each level) (instead of current 80-150 scaling)
-IL mage Elemental Composition follows new FP mage scaling of 122-160 Spell Attack (instead of current 80-140)
-Thunder Spear now scales from 183-250 Spell Attack (+3 on levels 1-10, +2 on levels 11-30) (instead current of 80-170, non-linear scaling)

FP Element Composition is slightly weaker than Fire Arrow at 1 point, but also has a chance to Poison. IL Element Composition is slightly stronger than Cold Beam at 1 point.

Regarding the high numbers on Thunder Spear - TS attack speed with booster is 1140ms, vs 810ms for Comp (ie. 40% longer cast time). TS also has a shorter attack range, therefore I chose 50% more Spell Attack vs Comp with the intention of making it a little bit higher in DPS to compensate for its drawbacks. Also, while it would have a higher Spell Attack at max level than level 1 Chain Lightning (202), CL has a significantly higher attack speed of 690ms (ie. 65% faster than TS) and can hit multiple targets, so I don't think this large of a buff would have any major impact on the state of early 4th job IL. By level 10 CL, I think it would still significantly outperform TS even with only having 30% mastery at that level.

 

Mages do have good mobbing, and probably outperform in second job by quite a bit due to that and their mobility with tele-casting (aside from maybe Bowmen, who can compete a bit better with their insanely high accuracy and training on high exp mobs about 25 levels ahead of them, like Windraiders in the late 40s, or Typhons in the early 70s), but in early 3rd job, they're kinda stuck lagging behind at MP3 since they don't get a mastery skill in 2nd job and have to rebuild their new mobbing skills (Explosion/Ice Strike/Shining Ray) from scratch, while every other class gets to start using their new skills from 1 point. Hence why those skills shouldn't be touched at all, for maintaining the current balance.

Buffing the single-target skills won't really change the grinding meta at all though, since they're single-target. If anything you might see a tiny buff through the early 30s for FP mages (Genin are fire weak), but Genin are already 1-hittable by Magic Claw a few levels later for all 3 mages, and Magic Claw might still be better there regardless of 2 hitting since it ignores walls/floors in its targeting. The buffs would mostly just help with odd things like card collecting and area bosses. 3rd job buffs would help a bit in the late 100s or 110s if you wanted to start doing Papulatus, or maybe throw Thunder Spears at Black Crow.

Yes! When I first played MapleStory, I thought IL mages sounded fun, and a video of an IL mage killing vikings with Thunder Spear made me really want to make one. Thunder Spear is super cool!!