Suggested Paladin Changes

~ Prologue ~

Since the inception of this marvelous game we call Maple Story, the paladin has been among the most unique yet under-powered jobs. A misconception that many people seem to hold is that to fix an under-powered job one needs to buff their damage. I have put some thought into this however, and it is my belief that there exists a solution that is both NOT a strict damage buff in the most common sense, and does NOT betray the uniqueness of the marvel that is Paladin. Let us now have a rather lengthy discussion.


~ Introduction ~

Most maplers are aware that paladins shine in two very specific situations: (1) Where the enemy has an elemental weakness.
(2) When knock-back is essential in order to pin.

While these are not qualities to be taken lightly, they really only play roles in rather uncommon scenarios. Most notably in Neo Tokyo bosses (specifically Vergamot and Nameless) and in Scarlion and Targa runs, and these are some of the most uncommonly fought bosses in the game.
Outside of these bosses there exists Zakum, Horntail, Crimsonwood Keep PQ, and Jiaoceng to name a few. I will omit any details regarding Pink Bean since I have no experience with it at all, even though I am aware of its neutrality to lightning.

So we can observe that a majority of bosses (notably the most commonly fought bosses) do not care about paladins' elemental charge "advantage", or about their ability to reliably knock-back. In fact, specifically in Crimsonwood Keep PQ and Jiaoceng cleaving (hitting multiple mobs with a single skill or attack) is very relevant to the success of the run, which is a point I as a paladin have been made painfully aware of on numerous occasions.

This leads us to a brief explanation of what I believe are the biggest problems current paladins face.


~ The Problem ~

Just as there are two situations where paladins shine, I would say there are two where they utterly fail:
(1) Paladins cleaving is atrocious.
(2) Paladins must use sword over blunt weapon.

I'm sure many of you could have guessed that I would mention that first point as a problem, but some of you reading this may have looked at that second point with disgust. Allow me to explain why using a sword over a blunt weapon is strictly better and why it is not a matter of opinion. Trust me, as a user of blunt weapons myself I wish this weren't true, but this is the reality and we must face it.


~ Sword vs. Blunt Weapon ~

The age long debate between a sword paladin and a bw (blunt weapon) paladin is a relatively well-known one, and the general consensus is that using a sword is better than using a bw. For anyone that does not know, the reason for this is because the game is coded in such a way that attacking with a sword gives a static damage multiplier, resulting in more "stable" damage, whereas attacking with a bw gives a variable damage multiplier, giving bw's a "wider" or "less stable" damage range. Now let us dig a bit deeper to see why this matters.

Without delving deep into the damage formulas themselves (which you can view here if your interested), we can consider just the multiplying factors of a 1h (one-handed) sword vs a 1h bw. The static multiplier for a 1h sword is 4.0, whereas the variable multiplier for a 1h bw is either 4.4 or 3.2.

You may be asking at this point why there are two multiplying factors for bw's. To understand this we first have to understand that in Maple Story there are two types of melee attacks: swinging and stabbing.
Now that we are aware of the two types of attacks, we can observe that regardless of swinging or stabbing a sword will stay true to its 4.0 damage multiplier, thus providing a more "stable" source of damage.

On the contrary, bw's use a different multiplier depending on whether the attack performed was a swinging attack or a stabbing attack. Since a bw is exactly that, a blunt weapon, the higher damage multiplier of 4.4 corresponds to performing a swinging attack. Of course then the lower damage multiplier of 3.2 corresponds to performing a stabbing attack. If we assume that the probability of a melee attack being a swinging type vs a stabbing type is 50% and 50% respectively, then we can take the mean of the two multipliers and see that the average multiplying value being used for bw attacks is 3.8.

Comparing a bw's 3.8 average multiplier to a sword's static 4.0 multiplier shows rather clearly the disadvantage that everyone has come to know of using a bw.

Well great, I broke your brain explaining something that probably doesn't matter to you. So what's the point?!
The point is this: perhaps we can make changes to paladins that leverage the uniqueness of bw's in a positive way, without changing how the multipliers work fundamentally, and without giving them a strict damage buff to compensate for the difference.
So the next question is, how can this be done?


~ Thesis ~

A healthy improvement to the paladin class can be made through two primary skill changes:
(1) Make the 3rd job skill Charge Blow always do only swinging damage.
(2) Make the 4th job skill Blast always do only stabbing damage.


~ Explanation ~

These changes will allow paladins the choice of using swords or blunt weapons depending on their preferences and priorities without strictly compramising their damage.

(1) Why make Charge Blow deal only swinging damage?
Firstly, the name Charge Blow in my opinion already implies that you will be dealing blunt damage, so why not allow it to take advantage of that aspect of using a blunt weapon? This way a paladin can decide they wish to prioritize cleaving by going the blunt weapon route, making them more "eligible" to join Crimsonwood Keep PQ and Jiaoceng runs and providing more effective training at locations such as 5-6 floor in Shaolin.

(2) Why make Blast deal only stabbing damage?
Well this one should be pretty obvious too, the blast animation is clearly a stabbing fowrad motion. It just makes sense. This way a paladin can go the sword route, maximizing their Blast output and being a more reliable source of knock-back damage as well as single target dps.

In some cases a paladin could even try to leverage both by sacrificing skill points in booster duration and certain charges (ice charge for example, since it is literally useless once you have holy/divine charge). I say this because from my experience the difference in holy being the strongest charge and ice being the weakest charge outweighs the enemies elemental weakness to ice. This however is a subject for another thread.

If making Charge Blow always do only swinging damage and Blast always do only stabbing damage does not suit you almighty GM's, then perhaps just changing the rate at which a swinging vs a stabbing type attack is performed for each attack can be considered.
For example Charge Blow could deal swinging damage 80% or 90% of the time while Blast could deal stabbing damage 80% or 90% of the time.
Or something along those lines.


~ Conclusion ~
If you have read all that I had to say and come to the conclusion that I am misinformed, delusional, or even just plalin idiotic, I at the very least hope this will have sparked some new innovative and creative ideas in solving the problems that many jobs face. Not always is the answer a damage, duration, or cooldown buff (though sometimes it is), but we can sit down and dig a little deeper into what we know about the game and try imporving it in ways that perhaps haven't been considered before.

Thanks for reading~