Summer Event Balance Changes and Bug Fixes

I don't think people really understand how the perception of bishops have changed by the top players. They were always great support but when optimized properly they were top tier damage as well. There's a reason why a bishop has posted the highest DPM 45 that I've personally seen, and it's because once you begin to optimize your party composition for parts being left up the value of cleave becomes crazy as focus for single target DPS shifts to high HP parts.

If you expect your bishop to just be babysitting sed you're paying them way too much.

 

I mean that's an easy fix, just give us random sed instead of this babymode whoever comes in first is sed thing (but give us back holy shield pls)

 

No, enjoy your holy shield nerfs. It is now mandatory every runner bring in a mule so bishop can be 11th person and when you inevitably get wiped by mass sed, bishop can res you pepegas.

 

I rarely HH whenever I am in cwk as I genuinely think that the damage you do within the ~2 seconds of casting HH is greater than actually casting Heaven's Hammer. I have been doing this since Lv 14x and tested my dpm. Moreover, I do think that this pally change does make a difference in 5/6 man HT runs; however, as a fresh level 155 in the future, I am sure people in 10-12 man runs wouldn't mind bringing you along as you have good single target dpm with the addition of HH. There are tons of guilds and bossing discord servers you could join and I am sure they will be happy to bring you to HT. Don't give up

 

Hey Akash, thanks for your input. I actually have a really similar set up like yours however that still seems pretty weak, without SI of course. Despite how common SI mules are, it is actually not easy to obtain SI during a CWK run. As they are usually mules and not an attacker, in order for the party(of 6) to obtain the buff, someone have to leave the party, have the mule join to buff everyone else, then buff that individual that left. These steps despite how simple they might sound, takes more time than expected considering that their main is occupied with attacking. Also, there is usually a HS mule in these runs that require the steps mentioned above. Because of that, i believe people would rather skip a SI mule buff as it takes too much work to repeat for both buffs.

I have read Blu's reply and from what i've gathered is that pallys will only be strong late game when you're able to outdamage your pre-nerf HH combo while cleaving, with just ACB(for example in CWK). This then brings me to the struggle for pallys middle-game performance, where you are not strong enough to compensate for the initial 199K HH damage(which is now only 50k). Wouldn't this nerf just deter people from playing pallys since it is now viewed as an extremely late game class?

 

All I am saying is that these mechanics have been exploited and is the current broken meta that the balance team is trying to fix. No fingers were pointed solely to a single person nor any specifically at you. A lot of people have created DEX Buccs and HH Mules and I admit to have been in a regular squad with either of these mules. No I have not multi-cliented in HT (nor will I ever) but as someone who has been in a 5-man regular HT squad I will openly admit that it is broken to see a nostalgic end-game boss get defeated so easily when you don't even need a maxed out party, and how much easier our runs were when these mules were brought in. Time took to create more HH mules are not specifically relevant when at the end of the day, they were still created by a number of squads and used to ease their experience. They also just have to be levelled to a point where u max HH - with leechstory doesn't sound difficult if you are willing to splurge time and mesos. You can argue that it takes skills to multiclient these bosses but with 30k HP and auto-pot I don't see my party members actively play their mules exquisitely skillfully or swapping their clients into the mules except for when needing to cast HH or SI - unlike how you or I try to reposition to maximise DPM/jump-turn attack/your ledge jump/FJ/SP on rope-jump-back-on-ledge-to-minimize-SP-downtime/not-climb-the-entire-rope-length.

The point is, it is the current meta and it is an exploited mechanic that you have to admit is broken. There is a reason why multi-clienting in bosses were disabled (although inefficiently), and HH was nerfed more than once - ONLY after the introduction of these mules.

I repeat I am not pointing any fingers but only point out that it is the exact mechanic that broke the balance used by myriad of players and it factually remains that:
1. if DEX buccs were not exploited - buccs will not have gotten avoid nerf
2. if HH mules were not exploited - HH will not have gotten damage nerf
3. if those multiclienting with those mules were not exploited - multiclienting in bossing will not have been blocked

But that's in the past and it has been the current meta now and it has already been done, and it is what the balance team is trying to fix now.

 

Please consider making Paladins HH scale off of damage or level. This would eliminate HH mules and make Paladin mains happy.

Hear me out... If it is agreed upon that a flat 200k damage without any funding or gear is stupid, then why is a flat 50k damage smart?

Reversing that logic, if a paladin has perfect gear or insane funding, then limiting a Paladins damage with HH to 50k is stupid (you're prematurely capping a class' cleave damage by not scaling it based off damage).

Why should a pro paladin do as much cleave damage as a scrub paladin that rushed HH?

Why are you guys nerfing the entire Paladin class (mains included) because of mules, when you could just scale HH to a Paladins damage? This would satisfy Paladin mains and get rid of the HH mule problem. Instead you just screwed over main Paladins' cleave damage by not rewarding them for grinding to scroll their equips and level up.

You got rid of dex buccs without destroying main buccs, why can't you do the same with paladin.

BTW I'm a Bowmaster so none of this even affects me. I just think it is unfair for those who have worked so hard on their character to be treated unfairly.

 

I'm hesitant to reply to this because it almost sounds like you have some personal bias... but nevertheless you raise some points that are worth discussing.

1) With SI and equal TMA, Bishops don't come close to out-DPSing AMs. You could argue that MAYBE (although I strongly doubt it) an efficient skele leecher can make just as much net profit as efficient AMs selling 5-6. But you need to consider that skele leech with SI requires some skill and focus in rotating the map, whereas an IL mage can blizzard on the same spot, and FP mages have the benefit of requiring less expensive gear to have the same DPS. Now consider that skeles is the only level range from which bishops can effectively sell leech at. Without SI, an AM selling petris will be getting an even higher EPH than a bishop selling skeles. This means bishops will be forced into selling cheaper for buyers to consider skele leech. You're right that bishops can't be a rule all classes for both leeching and bossing, but AMs already sit in a better spot for leeching and the nerf to both SI AND bossing utility for bishops is undeserved.

2) I agree that bishops will always be needed and thus bossing income is not necessarily affected. My point was that, given a nerf to leech income, a nerf to holy shield will be like kicking a class while it's down...The main enjoyment of running HT as a bishop will be removed and it will discourage current and future bishops.

3) Again, agreed that HH/dexbuccs are more of an exploit and should be removed, and I never stated that it should stay in the game because it was inconvenient for me. My point was that the investment into making these mules have very quickly gone to waste and could have been avoided by better communication.

You go on to say that these nerfs are great for bishops from a balance perspective, and then state that you completely disagree with the holy shield nerf. You also suggest I've forgotten to 'look at the holistic picture', but my holistic point summarised at the bottom of the post was that the changes themselves were less important than the way they have been decided on by the team and communicated to the community.

 

y u do this, i was gonna make epic 30 man paladin zak run where we take down the arms in 4 seconds.

Perhaps the HH damage would correspond to the character's damage range? If you're 3k range, you do 100k, if you're 6k range, you do 200k, something like that.

 

Hahaha that 30 man zak run would be fun to see. I completely agree with making HH correspond to the character's damage range.

It does not make sense that pro funded paladins do the exact same cleave damage as paladin mules with all their AP in luk or HP.

Their solution to nerfing paladin mules was to nerf ALL paladins including mains, which was an unfair solution.

Making the damage scale with the character's damage range would eliminate these mules while also making the paladin class still viable for cleave

 

To be sure, "pro funded paladins" would just not use HH at HT now, it's less efficient than using the amount of blasts you would do in the time you take to cast Hammer, so you are not making their damage the same as unfunded buccs but rather flat out removing that portion of their gameplay. So "pro funded paladins" would now deal a LOT more damage than the noob ones because there's no HH to bloat the numbers and provide 3-4m flat DPM with no gear investment, all your DPM now comes from how strong your equips make Blast.

I don't think we should use that argument if the #MAKEPALADINSGREATAGAIN movement is to be taken seriously. But ya, paladin doesn't qualify as a "cleave attacker" anymore for horntail purposes.

 

You've forced my hand now I will ghost from work, go back home and make a rant video

 

That is true, I forgot cleave will now be shit at HT. But I wasn't only focusing on HT as I was replying to Lin's comment about erasing Zakum arms.

But outside of HT, it could still be beneficial to scale HH off damage for other bosses. I don't see the benefit to paladin mains by capping HH damage to 50k for bosses.

 

Happy to see that you are listening to our feedback, but wouldn't a thread asking for community's opinion/having a thorough internal discussion first be more appropriate then announcing unwarranted and unreasonable changes then having to revert them in less then 12 hours? :thinking:

 

I'm not sure why you think I have a personal bias. If you meant against you, I don't know who you are. If you meant against bishops, I just stated my opinion that I don't think they should be allowed to be leech gods while also being able to boss. There needs to be a give and take and arch mages being better at selling leech is the take for bishops being able to boss, spend less money on pots starting immediately into 4th job and extending to 200, and providing insane party utilty. That's obviously my own personal opinion.

1) They do out DPS arch mages, or come very close at least (don't have the exact numbers on hand) which I feel should not be the case. I'm going to limit my comparison to 5-6 and skeles as these are the end game maps for both classes, although bishop can 5-6 just fine due to the faster cast rate. The reason is because genesis casts faster than meteor/blizz once you factor in SI and this is because genesis without booster casts at the same speed as an arch mages ultimate with booster. At 5-6 a bishop with SI could get 4 casts in before mobs respawned, whereas AMs can only get 3 (I believe it works out to 27 casts per minute compared to 22 or something similar).

I don't get your point about skill. There's very minimal skill involved for optimally playing either class at either map. It's absolutely brain dead. Also I don't think you've ever played an arch mage if you think you can just stand in 1 spot at 5-6 and cast blizzard. You can't do that till late 18x or late 17x (if you have godlike gear) once you get 1350 TMA. This is because before 1350 TMA you have to summon ifrit to maximize EPH and ifrit will auto aggro the gold monsters as soon as they spawn resulting in you getting knocked around like a pinata and falling off constantly unless you consistently reposition your mage. If you don't summon ifrit pre 1350 TMA you just neuter your EPH. Arch mages also have the added difficultly (since they sell trio leech and have 5 people in party) to add and kick multiple mules from the party on a consistent rotation, one of those being HS which is on a very short 2 minute cooldown and has to be moved between each mage every time you want to cast as the mages are far apart. You also have to keep in mind that selling leech at 5-6 requires you to make 2 mages (with gear) just to get a marginally higher meso output of a single bishop 1 hitting skeles with SI in in its pre-nerfed state for similar mesos.

I don't know what the exactly meso rate is for a bishop 1 hitting skeles so maybe you can clarify that for me, but for a mage right now the going rate for 5-6 is 9-10m for trio leech. This amounts to 27-30m/hour, and you'll spend about 4m in pots per hour so 23-26m net since you don't really loot anything on the map. I imagine bishops are pulling in close to that much once you account for 13m from leechers + 4m from looting mesos with MU + dragon scales/equips (again correct me if I'm wrong here). This also ignores that you'll get more gach tickets per hour just because you're killing more monsters since 5-6 you're 3 hitting the map.

Not going to address the rest because we're basically on the same page. I think you misinterpreted my point about holy shield; when I said I agree with the balance changes, I was specifically talking about SI's interaction with mage ultimates. Communication has always been something that's lacking, but I'm sure having a volunteer staff makes it hard to communicate effectively at times; hopefully they can address this in the future and hire some type of communications/PR person.

 

Go figure.
5-6 trio leech w/o looting =>23~26m
1h skele leech w/o looting in top or bottom lanes => 12~16m

Of cos, if you made a loot mule, its +2~4m per hour.

 

Please have some respect towards the staff members who work for FREE so that we're all able to play this game together. You're speaking as though there wasn't any internal discussion at all about these changes which you wouldn't know anything about since you aren't a staff member.

On a side note, I find it pretty funny that some of those commenting about the recent HH nerf either don't play/have never played a pally or have yet to experience end game content. All this talk about "class identity" when they've never seen a pally in action. As Nise says in his explanations of the changes, pallies were meant to be seen as a single-target melee class and I agree. A single-target melee class that can solo scar and pin nameless both fairly easily. And that's thanks to their "class identity". Not too many classes, let alone melee class, are able to say they can do either of those things.

 

You're hitting like 350k damage whats your power level? (Range) 9.5k

 

Yea, make the HH damage correspond to the character's range, but have it capped at 199k, or something like that, idk i'm not a balance team member i just make vids