Shadower changes you’d want

I love how the tl dr is longer than the rest of the post. I think you meant for the alternatives to be a separate spoiler haha

I like the idea, though this would make washed shads so much more powerful than unwashed shads (since unwashed shads need to exit darksight more often to pot). That might be a con to consider

 

Also, I would still like to see the dash removed from assassinate and have assaulter dmg buffed instead. This would save lowly washed shads in zak a LOT while you keep the added repositioning dmg with asssaulter

 

not my math, but from memory, currently hero's single target dpm is 10% more than shads on 2h + SI + SE, and equal to shad on 1h (NT 1h is fast 4)+ SE
and paladin is consistently dealing ~10% more damage than heroes on neutral, single targets.

if alternative 1 is implemented, u guys needs one buff to exceed hero's dmg, and being very, very close to paladin's single target damage on 2h + SI, and heroes will consider to spiral down to being the worse class.

Does this means shadower should not be buffed by 20% increase in damage because of hero? Absolutely not. Heroes have identity to be #1 cleave, but this may make a good excuse to request for hero's buff :^)
But at the same time, shadower should not be buffed by this much because are now too close to paladin, who are supposed to be #1 single targets in all melee classes.

Other alternative, I can't say much. But juz don't step into paladin's class identity. Also if this ever gets implemented, I would like to push for an equal hero's buff :^)

 

Personally I find Shadowers to be in a somewhat good spot for what they actually achieve.

What I'd like for them to be feels both extremely unlikely and extremely unbalanced.

Spoiler: It's just a lot to read, you've been warned

I'd love for Shadowers to be like their D&D counterparts, the Rogue.

• Dark Sight always triggers a bonus damage after being in DS for a few seconds(3).
• Dark Sight increases avoid rather than Shadow Shifter(Shadow Shifter becomes a passive linked solely to Dark Sight, gains a boost to fight against the new trend of always setting up in DS).
  
• Assassinate is a guaranteed crit and has damage that justifies its long charge time. It is uniquely catered to initiating boss fights and can be used as a setup attack from Venom. Assassinate would be, at max charge, with Venom proc, the single highest single target damage dealing ability by a pretty wide margin, but the downside is the setup. You will outpace NLs but have to wait, set up, and be put at risk. Assassinate would have a cooldown of 10-20 seconds.
• Venom actually does more than piddly damage. Venom becomes a unique poison effect that stacks per line up to 5 stacks, is triggered by all attacks except Assassinate with Assassinate triggering a bonus tic equal to its entire DoT effect at once, turning Venom into normal Poison DoT that doesn't trigger and cannot be stacked until its duration ends. Duration only lasts for 15-30 seconds, allowing for a refresh of the bonus damage down the line.
• Pickpocket upgrades to Mug, replacing Ninja Ambush. Mug guarantees meso bag drops of up to 20k(when picked up only account for 10% of the monster's usual dropped meso value), based on the level of the monster and the level of the skill(level 1 = 1k for monsters 150+, level 20 = 20k for monsters 135+. Any monsters below fall off at a gradient, leveling out only around +50 to +100% mesos above the normal drop rate of that monster). Ninjas swarm out and mug monsters, dropping mesos up to 3 bags per monster, and shuffling the money into 3 arrangements: dropped directly below the monster, clumped up into one space directly below the nearest monster, or dropped in a line of ten, stacking on top of each other. Monsters can only be mugged 5 times. Bosses can infinitely be mugged but mesos have no inherent cost.
• Assaulter gets the Smash Bros Pikachu treatment, if you can get multiple enemies in range, you can dash several times without delay, while the animation has you locked. Alternatively, you can dash back through the enemy you just dashed through(by pressing the direction the enemy is in and using Assaulter once more) to shatter their weapon defense by 60% for 15 seconds, or enough time to set up a venom assassinate combo. Bosses only get 20-30%. This doubles as a party boost. Assassinate can be continuously used this way, but the monster or boss in question become immune to the effects for 90 seconds. This would be unique to the shadower in question, but not stackable, allowing for multiple shadowers in a party/raid to work together to keep the debuff going.

The concept would obviously try and fit it in with the balance of the entire game, nothing would be so broken as to negate the point of playing other classes, but I feel this would solidify Shadowers as a unique playing experience over any other class. I would also set up Steal to be something useful but not entirely broken, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around what it could be. Maybe a manual form of pickpocket, which is augmented by pickpocket and mug.

I could post more. It's a really dumb idealistic, what if, pointless post. I am over 8000% aware of that. But I love Shadowers and I love making stuff up and letting my imagination soar

 

Nice suggestions but most of these changes would like be too hard to implement.

If SE worked with the first 4 hits of nate, it would only increase dpm by ~3.5%. Its been known for years that trying to code SE on nate is too hard, which is likely why it hasnt been done and probably won't be.

Max nate charge is 12 seconds btw. The first 4 hits of nate scale up every 3 seconds (up to 12 secs) while the dash scales up every 2 seconds (up to 8 secs).

I actually like to dash from nate, its great for repositioning. Overall though, nate has way too many problems with it and the skill could really use a complete rework, but this would likely require too much work so its just a part of the class identity at this point.

When suggesting buffs I think we really need to ensure they are easy for the dev team make. The best suggestion I've seen from another thread was simply to increase bstep damage by ~40%+. This would increase shad cleave dmg in cwk/zak and single target dmg since bstep + nate would do more single target dpm than just nate. This would allow us to do more head damage at ht without hitting wings/arms and get hit even less with bstep iframes.

 

I think this was how they rebalanced Shadowers in GMS by giving them shadow partner, which I think is something that could be implemented into this server. It would reframe single-target strategies and allow for Shadowers to attack mostly heads. I think it worked for b-step, but not sure about Assassinate.

It would also make the coolest move in the game, Savage Blow, much cooler.

Edit:
And to contribute to the thread itself - I think Shadowers being able to attack in dark sight is a really cool mechanic that plays well to its class identity. There is a risk of not being able to repot while in DS, but it's returned with a reward of higher damage output. Pretty cool imo.

Maybe this effect could be done only when Shadow Partner is up? :^)

 

They gave Shadowers Shadow Partner not because of Night Lord but because of Dual Blade's Mirror Image, this also falls in line with Flash Jump

Dual Blade doesn't exist in ML so theres no need to give them Shadow Partner.

 

I'd say the biggest issue with smokescreen is that it is still "unreliable" in terms of cooldown. A shorter duration and cooldown given previously provided a bit more overall uptime due to the numbers, but also made it slightly more accessible in terms of seeing it ready when it's needed. I don't think that went far enough as many times it still needs to be saved for resses, or hope that it remains applicible (as in not immediately thrown into ht w.cancel). Id like to see what happens if that effect is amplified even more, turning it away from a "once every 5 minute buff" into more of a command dodge for a party.

Keeping the current ratio could see smoke become for example a 10 second buff every minute, rather than 45 seconds every 5 minute. This makes it less punishing on mistimed uses (the above mentioned weapon cancel), able to be more often applied in "neutral" situations using smoke to dodge incoming 1/1s or protect squad more actively during seds by covering the right bird. It also enables that smoke will virtually always be available for safe ressing. The immediate downsides I can think of would be less impact on grinding, time leaps not helping shads, and more coordination on smoke resses needed. It would also be harder to mule.

Overall, it'd need testing to see if it actually leads to an overall higher uptime of smoke (and thus dummy dpm boost) at more impactful points, but I believe it worth considering.

Also, I'm still partial to seeing fewer but larger meso bags from pickpocket (with a much larger cap). This would open the possibility to actually making explosion part of the dpm rotation without potentially lagging everybody else in the raid from massive drops of 200 mesos that aren't even worth taking the time to explode. It also rewards actively gearing shads for either more damage, or more meso savings if the large sacks are looted.

 

I appreciate your input, what I meant by what I said is that I enjoy hypothetical discussion, imagining what if scenarios, and creating identities that, while might not be super balanced, would make classes feel super unique even in their own subclass.

I like thinking of ways in which a class doesn't feel incomplete(at least upon first play), but in which everything sort of just clicks once you reach the end game, and a large chunk of your kit throughout the game is still useful, builds upon itself, and overall just feels fun to play.

I have ideas, my brain runs on something I swear it's obnoxious sometimes

 

if we change this secound to less dont need total remove preserving the class identy , but from 12 seconds to 4? for example scaling every second, It can add some dpm and its easy to track if to op for scales sec/delay

 

What about if people are standing in smokescreen and attacking, since they are invisible they can dish out "surprise attacks" which in effect causes critical damage, sort of like SE? I don't know about critical rate and critical damage to make it balanced but it can maybe make people want to bring Shads more.

You can even make it so that the caster of the smokescreen gets a little more out of it than the others to increase his DPM a bit to be a bit more on par with the others, while also being useful for everyone.

 

Maybe the best suggestion for shads that I've heard in a long time. In fact, I think you could even safely further improve on the ratio with the significantly reduced buff duration and up it to something like 15 seconds, which would increase the uptime from 15% to 25%. I've always thought smoke could use further tweaking but there were always lingering fears, whether rational or not, that it would only lead to muling shenanigans. However, with a ~15 second duration it's hard for one to imagine it really being "abusable" anywhere. Sure, it'd technically only take 4-5 shads for infinite smoke but can you imagine perpetually inviting, kicking and repositioning shad mules every 15 seconds? Hard pass. It's already enough of a chore in HT with current smoke.

Smoke with 25% uptime could also simultaneously reduce the large lead NLs have over other classes with their avoid. Imagine, for example, a 6-man comp with two shads, a bish, an NL, a BM and a sair. You'd have 50% smoke uptime, which would of course be enormously beneficial to the BM and sair while having very little effect on the NL.

Boosting crit damage while in smoke would be cute and "make sense". Perhaps in conjunction with the above change shads could become somewhat of a staple as a one-of in comps.

Without rescaling how meso explosion interacts specifically with PP mesos, it wouldn't be possible to make mesos from PP worth exploding without also having PP be too strong as a money printer. For example, PP currently has a 60% proc chance per line and nate has 4 lines while taking about 1.5 seconds to cast. This means in a dummy situation over 3 minutes, you'd cast nate 120 times for a total of 480 lines, which would generate on average 288 wads of 200 mesos. 288 wads is enough to fuel about 26 MEs, which would deal about 530k damage over 20 seconds. In other words, for every 3 minutes of nating at say, 8.5m dpm, you get about 20 seconds of 1.5m dpm ME, which of course is a net loss in overall dpm.

Keeping everything else constant, for it to be worth bombing the mesos the 200 wads would have to be at least 10x greater and be 2k+ bags. 26 MEs using 288 wads of 2k bags would deal 4m damage over 20 seconds, i.e. 12m dpm ME, which would yield an overall dpm of 8.85m (which of course still wouldn't be worth using as fuel for ME over just looting the mesos). You could halve the proc rate to 30% and double the 2k bags to 4k but that wouldn't change the fact that with fat stacks like that PP would be generating 576k mesos every 3 minutes for a grand total of 11.5m mesos per hour. To have that not be an issue, you'd have to make the PP mesos not lootable, which would be a complete waste at a boss like HT where ME isn't usable (although technically they might as well be unlootable regardless with the sweeper changes as a bishop wouldn't be able to loot bags). For ME to be part of the dps rotation, there'd probably have to be a multiplier added to the current ME formula when used on PP mesos.

 

If PP/ME gets buffed then it would be nice to allow ME to be added on the macro skill to make weaving ME in between assassinate more consistent.

 

I think a change that may be good is to replace 3rd job chakra (the skill always seemed weird for a shadower) with a form of advanced disorder that first job has. To make it useful it would have to work on bosses and maybe reduce by 15-20% at max level. It also sorta fits with the class identity where the shadower is able to find the weak points on something to well weaken it. The skill would obviously need a cooldown for it to be balanced, but I think it would be a cool addition. It may not give shadowers a massive increase in dpm but it would increase importance of them in parties. To stop it from being muled, maybe only apply the dmg reduction to party members, but idk how easy/hard that would be to code.

Edit: Or replace ninja ambush with it. Ninja ambush is by far a worse skill but at least it fits the 'theme' of shadowers.

Edit 2: Maybe change ninja ambush for shadowers only (NL are too op already) to basically be a summon like mages and archers have. with both BoT and ninja ambush you're basically 'summoning' your thief friends, so it fits conceptually, and it would make the skill actually worth while, and give a slight dpm boost.

 

I made a suggestion on my crazy shad rework and one of them was making pickpocket worthwhile. Pickpocket would drop up to 20k(it had an upgrade at 4th job, retooling/reworking Ninja Ambush) bags that when picked up only give you 10% of the monster's usual dropped meso value. So those bags would basically cost as they are now but damage based on the median damage to meso ratio(dropping 20k seems to be the sweet spot).

Or we could just make them unlootable, I guess either way lol

 

Just throwing stuff out here but what if the cooldown was long normally but decreased with DPS? That could disincentivize muling and reward shads for getting better gear while still keeping a utility-oriented kit.