Information Summer 2020 Balance Changes [Explained]

First, quick apologies for a delayed explanation post, the timing of the patch wasn't favorable this time around for me timezone wise (the main post was written up in advance). Before we delve into the explanations, we'd like to reiterate that our balance philosophy revolves around three major pillars: 1) transparency in reasoning, 2) preserving class identity during changes, 3) making all classes rewarding and viable in their own unique merit. All that said, there is an implicit fourth pillar, which is listening to player base feedback, and we are definitely all ears in cases we missed something! Alright with that said, let's jump into it.

[Boss Changes: Horntail's Separate Seduce Cooldowns]

Spoiler

Horntail is now coded to be more GMS-like, with each seduce having a separate timer (as it was in original GMS). This means separate cooldowns for left/right/jump/mass left/mass right seduce.

Over the years, we've tried our best to make Horntail as similar to GMS as possible. Sometimes these changes take a while because it is ultimately code related and it's up to our brilliant devs to figure out how to make this work. We've gone through many iterations so far, with our earliest iteration being one with random seduces, no mass dispel, and no buffs from wings. We've made lots of progress since then and one of the last things missing from OUR Horntail was the lack of separate cooldowns for each seduce skill.

This was part of a bigger scale change to all bosses and how they use skills. Hopefully it'll introduce some interesting changes to how Horntail is run. Best of luck Maplers!

[Boss Changes: Horntail's Arm Range Revert]
The range for Horntail arm aggro was increased previously due to our seduce limitations. With seduce being changed, we've reverted the arm aggro changes. No more pesky mana drains! (at least once you've crossed the ab line)

[Boss Changes: Separate Skill Cooldowns + Skill cast delay]

Spoiler

• Bosses in general (eg. Horntail, Zakum, Scarlion, Targa, etc) are coded to be more GMS-like
  • Skills can only be cast every 3 seconds
  • Each skill has a separate timer (noted by the seduce change)
  • Magic cancel cannot be cast while in weapon cancel and vice versa (should fix consecutive cancels)

The crux of this change will probably be less spammy skills (caused by a proper restriction to how often a skill can be cast) AND magic cancels and weapon cancels finally rotating properly! No more 17 weapon cancels in a row! Woooot!

[Boss Changes: Improved Aggro]

Spoiler

• Improved aggro, to once again, be more GMS-like
  • Aggro can change once every few seconds for non-auto aggro mob & bosses (should no longer constantly switch aggro targets, and therefore less sliding)
  • Improved auto-aggro targeting/attacking (where it will start targeting when you are in aggro range, opposed to just being in the map)

Tired of sliding bosses? Tired of a boss suddenly becoming unpinned? Tired of aggro switching back and forth for some reason? Well worry no longer (hopefully)! With aggro changes becoming more GMS-like, and fixing some coding issues, aggro shouldn't be constantly switching targets and stay glued to one individual until the next time server checks for aggro (which is every few seconds). Big Foot duos rejoice!

[Boss Changes: Multiclienting Re-Enabled]
Our test period for the multiclienting at bosses has finally ended. It was an interesting run, but we've come to the conclusion that while the function (multiclient block) is useful for certain things (eg. events), bosses shouldn't have multiclient restricted. We do apologize for how long it took for us to finalize these things, but they also came hand in hand with some other changes. Thanks for all the feedback during this test period however!

[Bug Fixes: Speed Infusion]

Spoiler

Speed Infusion bug fixed, where mages were able to benefit from the skill (note in GMS, SI never worked on mages as attack speed was calculated based off casting speed and not weapon speed - which SI directly targets "Uses HP and MP to temporarily increase the attacking speed of a weapon")

The SI bug was one that had been mentioned multiple times over the years as something that would eventually be fixed (the other notable bug pending fixing being the Shadow Star bug). This is because SI was never supposed to work on mages, and the only reason this had happened was due to coding errors.

By fixing SI, we acknowledge that we'll affect a number of things. We curb the overall exp gained by leeching and promote better mage play. Higher gear should net you higher returns. Simply having an SI mule shouldn't compensate for the lack of better gear (or enough gear to 1-hit or 2-hit things). Additionally, SI changes will indirectly help the economy, seeing that SI makes you attack more often, eat up more pots, aka more mesos disappearing from the economy.

[Bug Fixes:Holy Shield where mages were able to Holy Shield to prevent seduce]
Holy Shield was unfortunately a bug, which a number of players had brought up to us as not being GMS-like. With the other code-related bug fixes, we sought to fix this as well. HOWEVER, after our initial balance change post and the feedback garnered from it, we've made the decision to KEEP Holy Shield as it is (it WILL prevent seduce). It'll no longer be classified as a bug, but an actual feature/skill change of MapleLegends.

This is due to the fact that unlike other bugs (eg. SI, Shadow Star), we feel that Holy Shield adds a unique facet of skillful counterplay to boss fights. It allows distinguished Bishops to make the most of their kit, and thereby make it more challenging and engaging for Bishops. Thank you to all the players that provided meaningful feedback that helped us reach this decision! ^^

[Skill Changes: Critical Throw Revert]

Spoiler

Critical Throw for assassins reverted (crit chance reverted to 50% along with crit damage reverted to 200%)

Critical Throw was originally changed to better SE-less gameplay, however it negatively effected non-bossing gameplay. As promised previously, critical throw will be reverted as of this patch~

See: https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/revert-the-changes-to-critical-throw.31035/

With critical throw as an example and Holy Shield, do note that staff listens carefully to player feedback. If you have any suggestions or concerns, please feel free to do so on our forums! ^^

[Skill Changes: Marksman Revert]

Spoiler

Marksman expert reverted (reverted to 90% mastery and 10 weapon attack)

We had previously gotten reports of mastery not working as intended on marksman. The numbers were also a tad bit higher than we had originally calculated. We'll be revisiting the status of MMs after this patch. Please let us know how it feels after you've played with it on live servers! ^^

[Skill Changes: Buccaneer Avoidability Formula Rework]

Spoiler

Buccaneer avoidability formula reworked to = 0.25 * DEX + 0.2 * STR > 0.25 * DEX + 0.225 * STR

We intended the avoidability formula change to be a buff to buccaneer main's avoidability and a tuning down of dex buccs to be roughly the same as normal buccaneers. However, due to some calculation errors, it led to both types of buccs being hit by slight nerfs. The avoidability formula will be changed to: 0.25 * DEX + 0.225 *STR (will probably be changed the following patch, please bear with it for a while if it doesn't make it to summer)

Sorry for the confusion!

[Skill Changes: Heaven's Hammer Damage Reduced For Bosses]

Spoiler

Heaven's Hammer damage reduced for bosses from 199k to 50k (skill still works in full effect doing 199k to mobs)

While the meta has resulted in Heaven's Hammer becoming the primary skill of a Paladin, this was never intended, and we are trying to return the class back to where they should be (in terms of class identity), which is as a single target melee attacker. Over the years, we've made countless buffs to Paladins' single-target skills: 1) blast damage increase, 2) element charge damage increase, 3) horizontal range increase for blast. All these changes have made a Paladin an excellent single target DPS class, but with HH as it was, it also made them an excellent cleave DPS class as well. Thereby undermining the class identity of the other cleave classes (dark knights, heros).

There was also the undeniable issue of HH mules. The game should reward players that invested time/effort to get better as well as improve their gears. We'll keep an eye on this and see how it affects actual Paladin mains, so we look forward to hearing back from you~

Also note that the DPM comparison in this chart never took into consideration Heaven's Hammer damage!



[Skill Changes: Mage Single Target Changes]

Spoiler

• Paralyze buffed from 240% to 290% basic attack
• Chain Lightning buffed from 210% to 260% basic attack
• Angel Ray buffed from 240% to 340% basic attack

We're trying our hand at some single target mage buffs, especially with the Horntail and SI changes. Angel Ray welcomed a bigger buff since Bishops don't have elemental amplification and the numbers seemed quite drastically low.



[Boss ETC Price Change]

Spoiler

Based off the one-of-a-kind boss equip discussions, we've adjusted NPCable ETC prices dropped from Zakum, Horntail, Neo Tokyo bosses & mobs.

See discussion on: https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/boss-equips-removing-one-of-a-kind-feedback.33304/

We decided that removing the one-of-a-kind label seemed to have been pretty divisive amongst the player base, due to the impacts it would have on the scroll market and the sale of services as well. A secondary idea that was floated around by our players was to buff the ETC prices instead so that we can achieve a similar outcome. As such, we decided to switch the trash ETCs to match the price of the boss equips dropped from the bosses. Such as Zakum Diamond being sold for the same price as the Zakum Helmet (500,000 mesos) and the Nine Spirit's Egg being sold for the same price as Horntail Pendant (300,000 mesos).

We'll keep an eye on just how much this affects our economy and we're looking forward to some player feedback on this as well~

[Conclusion]
There weren't that many "skill" changes this time around, but a number of changes that ultimately affect the balance/meta of the game. These changes as well as the big Mid-Summer Bonanza coming our way is done with the best intention of players in mind! Sometimes things work out differently in practice than in theory, so please let us know your thoughts on the forums. Hope you enjoy the event when it goes live! ^^

 

That isssss indeed the hope for the fix yes! We tested some other bosses like Nameless, Big Foot, and Scarlion, but testing scenarios always differ a bit from reality. So let us know if it stops sliding around!

These explanation posts are made with the hopes of being more transparent to you the players! So I really appreciate the positive responses towards these posts. Guess moving forward, it'll be mandatory to every single update... (more work for me oh no)

I uhh... honestly speaking didn't see any of those pots in the last thread LOL because a lot of it came after I had already started writing the post... (this post started being written pretty much as soon as I woke up and got to work). It just took... hmmm 9 am to 4.30 pm so half a day to properly sit down and write this.. welp... (along with other work stuff I have to do)

As an ex-Pally main, I do understand the frustrations of single target vs cleave concerns a lot actually. It is definitely something I've looked into previously, perhaps buffing the single target more so that Pallies are fine without needing to resort to any sort of cleave. The problem became the ceiling was too low... as in it took very little just hit the damage cap, and Pallies just aren't able to scale as high because the 600% and 175% multipliers lead to 199k really quickly.

As for the scaling with weapon attack, it was definitely and idea that was floated around even amongst staff/balance team. We did run into some issues with feasibility, as Heaven's Hammer is a hard coded thing rather than something we can adjust with ease. Going past the coding hurdle, it became an issue of implementation, as in just how much should it scale per skill level + stats. There was also an issue of thematic consistency. Heaven's Hammer is a skill that's supposed to bring everything down to 1 HP. Of course, it doesn't work that way for bosses. If we were to change it to a scaling method, it wouldn't bring mobs down to 1 HP. It could, but then we'd need to code an exception for bosses on top of that...

There were lots of factors and considerations at play, but currently it seems this was the best alternative. I hope that suffices as an explanation!