Skill balances for all Jobs

It's actually kind of difficult to make assessments of what to buff based on just the dpm calculations alone. Actual damage vs. target dummy damage doesn't account for time spent fixing your character in combat as a Corsair/Bowmaster/Marksman would spend more time than a Night Lord due to Shadow Shifter. The same goes for attempting to maintain Zerk as a Dark Knight vs. a Hero/Pally just continuously chipping away. Under ideal circumstances a lot of the classes look fairly similar in the charts, but things get messy when you're knocked back or need to use a potion and the dpm differences are made more apparent.

I think the dpm calcs have come up a few times in the forums before, and according to them things are mostly fair, but they can't really compensate for the various content nuances, like the vertical range on the Hero's Brandish vs the Dark Knight's Crusher, or mounting/dismounting a ship, or time spent using potions or buffing your party members.

It becomes a mess of variables and ideally we'd have a team work things out on a test server run of Horntail or something, with everyone using some standardized equips at level 170 or something. If it means balancing things I'd sign up for that. Sounds like a ton of work though.

 

Not quite. Freezing has uses even at endgame mobbing, i.e. Shaolin maps. For example, in 5-6, freezing actually gives more dpm on total mobs attacked because it enables better positioning of your char on elevated platforms at the bottom of the map which lets you hit more mobs at the top. Without the freezing mechanic, Meteor users often gets knocked over thus missing their attacks on some of the top mobs. This only applies in a solo situation where you have to rotate both sides of the map. Not a huge difference, but it shits on FP when they're supposedly the highest mage dpm dealer. I suspect this difference will be even more pronounced if ML decides to release new content with tougher mobs. Now that I wrote this, it doesn't seem to be that much of a problem at the moment. Guess I'm just ranting.
Oh and pots saved from getting hit from mobs is a plus too. Not expecting any changes to be made as this thread seems to be all about bossing classes

 

I'm happy with buffing Elquines dpm, and maybe range and freeze duration too. But don't buff Ifrit because I/Ls are hehe

 

nice idea. will give them more reason to do boss runs. but do we want mages at boss runs? they still got the best mobs skills..

 

I think we should stop with the idea that mages shouldn't be encouraged to be at boss runs. I mean, bossing classes have rather easy access to the entire game content, while mages except bishops are somewhat limited to "mobbing content". Where's the fairness in that? Yes, TECHNICALLY mages can do boss runs, but let's be real most parties would rather save splits than invite a mage unless you're buddies. The ability for mages to access boss content should be as difficult/easy as it is for bossers to access "mobbing content", otherwise it's unbalanced and yall will have no right to say "mages shouldn't do boss runs because we're good mobbers". And the truth is it IS unbalanced. Throw in some elemental immunity and mages are even more limited in content. It's sad because bossing is a huge part of endgame content. I mean look at Neo Tokyo, the content is made entirely for bossing classes...
Honestly I'm tired of this excuse

 

-Bonzaitree runs all bosses on her I/L , and she does alot of DPM.
-Dunas has DR (but its wep DR) so mages can hit Dunas and not get affected by DR
-Nameless magic monster is weak to lightning
-Vergamot is weak to lightning
-HT has 8 body parts, so Blizzing the whole run, you inflict alot of damage. While attackers focus the right side,the mage is hitting the left side as well. all the -DPM stacks and does make a difference.
-Zakum arm runs go from 10mins --> 5minutes all becuase of an Arch Mage

people just prefer "bossing classes" on boss runs. iirc, mages were in all boss runs 8 years ago.

 

Exactly

 

Just a random thought and Im not sure if anybody said it yet, but for Stun Mastery for Buccaneers, maybe add another secondary passive effect where there is a critical % that happens on bosses only.

 

Stun Mastery is one of those skills that look great but doesn't come in until it's almost useless, which is really sad. To stun you need to be using the Backspin Blow or Double Uppercut but there's not a very big time-frame where you'd be using those as you'd probably only get Stun Mastery at level 10x+. Shortly after that you start investing in Dragon Strike and Barrage and with Dragon Strike you're unlikely to go from 3-4ko to 2-3ko on most mobs if you stun them first, you're usually better off with another DS rather than Backspin Blow to stun 3 of them for more damage. Or if you're still killing Mannequins Dragon Strike will 1ko without them being stunned.

On bosses it's useless, so it doesn't help with Barrage or Demolition for the most part.

Maybe give the skill a small chance to stun mobs with any skill(20%? 30% maybe?) along with giving the extra damage on bosses.

 

Buccaneer here~
Stun mastery is not that useless actually. Sure, it does not affect against bosses but for training high HP monsters like from shaolin or nt, the skill comes in pretty handy especially when you find a bm/mm that you can train with because it stacks with SE. Combine that with snatch or backspin, this essentially doubles your damage output, making those mobs fairly easy to kill.

 

That actually sounds really fun, I wanna make another Bucc now.

Still seems a little difficult to pull off though. It sucks that the best skill for stunning a mob only hits 3 dudes. Or does Snatch stun too? Does it still require Super Transform? Buccs are complicated. I don't recall the stun lasting too long either, probably long enough to use DS twice? Maybe 3 times? Roughly I imagine you can cast DS 4 times and Backspin Blow 2 times in the time it takes to cast DS 5 times, so there'd definitely be an improvement if SE is involved but off the top of my head it feels like it would be pretty close damage-wise without SE if you have to spend the time to cast a weaker skill that effects fewer mobs.

For large kill piles I imagine it would make a big difference, like at 7f gathering them up(It's so satisfying too hunnngh) but if there's only 6 mobs in your pile I don't think it really matters if you kill 1-3 of them 1 attack quicker. You'd still be left with killing the rest of them with another cast. I think that's one of the main issues with high variable damage with general mobbing, you're still casting the same number of times, it's just that a few of them die quicker. If there's a large pile though, like 8+, it does make a difference because you're hitting new ones quicker. It's why I don't really care for SE on a bishop, rarely are there more mobs on the screen than the 15 Genesis deals with. If it KO's a few of them quicker then you still need to cast it again to kill more of them.

Against infinite mobs it makes a lot of sense but rarely do we get to see that, too often there's just 4-6 mobs in front of a player and time spent gathering them up could be time spent killing. It's a difficult balance.

7f is pretty killer though, gathering them all in a pile is so much fun, and usually better exp for me too. It being a small map and using a Polearm where fish spawn makes it so satisfying.