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What bosses are not safe to jump in then?

 

Yeah don’t get me wrong. I advocated for NL nerfs long ago and believe current state of avoid and shifter are completely fine.

I just find it odd that the justification for even further adjustments are because other classes are still out of balance. The simple solution would be to work on those classes, not buff by proxy via NL nerf. Seems like a no brainer to me.

 

I think that would have been the better step before moving towards active shifter play. Had you implemented more of that during anniversary to be followed with more dodge rate tweaks, I feel like the transition wouldn’t have been as jarring.

The move fast, break, and fix later ideology hasn’t been well received imo.

 

That’s fair. I think the new development of NL adjustments are to directly deal with the unpopular shifter change. Other classes certainly need more love, but in terms of % of players affected if staff deemed NL too powerful and the adjustments weren’t received well I think looking into alternatives is a good place to start.

 

I understand that it feels bad for other classes. But you've entirely missed the thrust of what I said. IMPROVE the other classes. Do not nerf.

 

Seems like this is not a solution for the issue. But what it also shows is how far people will go to just to be able to play like that.

 

I think your point is being heard, but I would gently suggest that it's difficult to have a fully informed perspective on how the class plays at higher levels until you play it, and that you get even more perspective when you play other classes to compare and contrast it to. I agree that it's fine to have a DPM-winning class to look forward to that outshines others in terms of damage, but without any drawbacks this is unbalanced. Having one OP class with few weaknesses is a very damaging thing to a server's health and class diversity. If that high damage doesn't come at the expense of some other aspect of the class, then it comes at the expense of other classes being neglected in favor of making a NL because it's demonstrably better. We're seeing a drought of BMs and MMs in particular as people prefer to roll into the "better versions" of them as NLs (which is fairly ironic considering NLs are dependent on them).

Yes, it would be great to buff other classes to make them great too, but reworking every class to try and make them even remotely compete with NL will not only take years, but has no guaranteed success. The afk, high-damage, high-avoid option overshadows a lot of others. That's where you see a nerf come in, not to make NL bad per se, but to make it a little closer to being on the same playing ground as other classes. What does that nerf looks like? That's debatable, and what you're seeing in this thread. Some say damage, others say avoid. Different people value different aspects of the class.

Regardless, I would really rest assured that any nerfs you see are not meant to destroy the class entirely and make them unfun to play. No one wants that. Even the recent nerf to shifter, though you have not experienced it yourself yet, isn't something that's stopped a majority of NLs from playing - some did, but I (and many of my NL friends) agree that it's still a very, very comfortable class to play even now, shockingly so. Many attacks still miss hitting me, and I have insane damage. I wasn't a fan of the shifter change personally because I value the class identity of being slippery and untouchable, but it did not break the class by any stretch. NLs are still everywhere in content.

Regardless of what the Balance Team does and whether or not people agree on the direction, a lot of thought and care is put into the process and that's why we have these threads now, to source opinions from everyone and try to find a middle ground.

 

Saying that nightlords are overpowered mostly comes down from the history of vanilla prebb and before a lot of the custom changes. As it stands right now, i believe there is literally no reason to say nightlords are overpowered and problematic specially when paladins, shadowers and even buccs have such an important role in the meta. I do believe that the original nightlords before all the changes to legends where definitely very OP but by todays standards, nightlords are in general comparable to other classes in terms of power level. With that being said, i think we need to respect the agenda being pushed by the balance team on reducing scalability and instead of fightback with no productive comments, actually give proper suggestions that might satisfy both parties. Simply asking for a complete reversal of the changes seems complicated, it's completely against the staff team goals and if the shifter changes are reversed, they would simply intend for nightlords to not be a "strong" class anymore, just a very simple class with ease to multiclient. Whether we agree or not, if this is fair or not , The BT is very adamant on this conduct so instead of being being unproductive with comments, focus should be given to finding solutions that at least half pleases everyone.

 

Can someone please explain the need for changes in the first place? What is the driving reason that the character can't be reverted to when no one was complaining about it? Now that people are complaining about terrible changes, you want to completely rework multiple aspects of a character that is genuinely fine and the exact player/ character type that people work towards creating. Like are we really considering just completely changing the character to do less damage but 8 lines and shifter turns off.... like what is this pointless complication on a game that is relatively FINE ??? Nightlord's have triple throw, and a shadow that doubles the lines at 50%. That's what we created the character for. Night lords have high avoid. You take away some avoid, fine, but then you gave us invincibility that is in complete disregard of the character's history and anything people who worked years to create the character signed up for..... Similarly in disregard of identity and history, giving shadowers a warrior stance and even more Iframes.... completely destroying a bucc class that already no one wanted to play and having to revert it... but we still deal with it. Then, you want to revert recent NL changes and reduce damage and take away more generalizations of the character that PEOPLE LOVE or were at least OK with being changed. Why keep driving hatred towards a class? You are literally watching the whole market for a class crumble and people quit, and this is fine...? There is NO NEED for changes when this is the outcome and the claim is you want a more active playstyle. How much more active is never logging in again. JUST GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT... "BALANCE" IS NOT THAT SERIOUS, IT'S A 20 YEAR OLD GAME. Shame on the NL community for creating the character that does the most single target DPM and has an easy time doing it.... Why would you create a character like that!?!?! Oh wait... THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT WE WANTED.

I am not really one to voice my opinion often or post on forum, because in the end it isn't that serious and I will still just play the game. But I am so fed up at this point by the overcomplication. The only outcome as of recent has been uproar from changes that genuinely make zero sense.

 

NLs are not overly strong dpm wise.

Across pb comparison dpms we have:

Timeless NLs will average 13-15m statue dpm and 4.5-5.5 body dpm.
Timeless Paladins will average 11-13m statue dpm and 5-6m body dpm.
Timeless Shadowers will average 11-13m statue dpm and 5-6m body dpm.
Timeless BMs will avg 11-13m statue dpm and 4.5-5.5m body dpm.

While the NLs will have more statue dpm, pallies/shads have the body dpm advantage, and archers will have a party buff (se) to give the party.
This leaves NLs with the identity of having the best statue dpm, but with no party buffs to give, which makes their dpm pretty balanced in comparison to the other popular classes.

With a damage nerf + shifter revert, NLs will lose their damage advantage at statue (even accounting for a dpm boost from more avoid), leaving NLs to be just worse form of pally/shads. Might as well attack on a timeless archer at that point, as you can se your party as well.

Identity would probably still be gone.

My suggestion is roll out those changes without any damage reduction.

 

RE: multi-atking

Is there any way to implement a dmg penalty when there is more than 1 of the same class within a party? This, with pre-anni (OG) NL, honestly seems like the best way to tackle multi-atking scalability w/o affecting single-client users.

RE: dmg

I don't find NLs on cider that over-powered. On apple is maybe a diff story. Perhaps onyx apples and gelts can subtract -200 avoid or something (get rekt sairs).

 

I don't disagree that I don't have a fully informed perspective on the other classes, but I've yet to actually witness a lot of these complaints in practice. I remember in original gms, NLs were incredibly prevelant. But in ML, with all the additional content and class buffs, I see NOTICEABLY less NLs in all aspects of the game. But that's just my experience and vibes, which it really looks like so many other people are just going off their own vibes "it feels bad seeing what they have."

I would love to see hard numbers on actual party makeups for bosses, average dps for those classes, potentially mesos spent gearing (if feasible to include), and graphs comparing them all. That would at least demonstrate that this is an issue worth addressing in the first place. Then we can argue how much its even worth it to nerf them in the first place, if at all. Right now everyone just has vibes (aside from the balance team, hopefully).

 

Going to try to summarize a handful of thoughts in a (hopefully) coherent way.

I think NLs are a lot closer to “balanced” after the shifter nerf. Having them finally see purple numbers while still dealing zero-effort fat damage feels like a much better place to be. As others have pointed out, bringing an NL now means looking for compromises in your party comp. NLs providing nothing other than damage means sacrificing a more beneficial buff just to take them along. Bringing two NLs makes this even worse. This feels like a more appropriate tradeoff, given they’re still powerhouses for holding down a single button.

Removing their SE dependency would probably make them a little too strong, depending on where non-SE damage lands. It would be nice to allow NLs to solo smaller bosses like rav/pap/chao/eph without needing an SE mule or a duo, since this part of the early NL experience is pretty bad. BMs are the independent NLs with extra utility, and their damage suffers for it. Personally, I think that’s a fair tradeoff (assuming post-nerf shifter).

I’d love to see NLs buffed in a way that makes the current Active Shifter a little stronger. While I far prefer the current state of NLs compared to the old, I do agree that Shifter is a pretty lackluster skill in a lot of content. There are niche uses for sure, but in a lot of content it feels underwhelming. Having some mechanic-based approach to enabling Shifter more often or boosting some related passive effect seems like a great direction to move in. I’m not sure if FJ is the right first step, but it feels directionally correct. (Other folks have commented on using the other 4th-job NL skills, which sounds like a great idea!) Having that untouchable thief gameplay because you're a god at doing whatever shifter minigame is implemented sounds sick.

It’s also worth mentioning the elephant in the room: NLs have been under attack for their zero-effort gameplay while dealing massive damage, enabling multi-NL. It’s probably true we’re not seeing many new multi-NL farms, but I’d be curious how many multiclient Paladins are spawning in. Pally is in a similar boat—massive damage from holding down a single button, relatively easy to gear, solid damage reduction, and passive Shifter. They’re also far more independent than NLs, too! It’s easy to see why pre-nerf Shifter, no–damage reduction advocates are upset when Paladin has been receiving exclusively buffs and more or less lives in that “zero-effort, high-reward” space. It can also feel like a slap in the face when Shads are incredibly overtuned and whiting folks they probably shouldn’t be whiting.

The "revert shifter and nuke NL damage" feels like a viable option, but one I personally wouldn't want to see. It sounds like a lot of NL players prefer this over active gameplay. The shifter toggle / damage reduction approach sounds like it would work for both camps, but I agree that folks would become toxic about that pretty quickly. (seeing full HP DKs before any of the buffs made people go feral)

 

personally, that sounds wonderful.(the 20% shifter with attacks that ignore shifter)
I was fine with shifter no longer working with zak pillars

I'm surprisingly in the minority though, it seems


also, pls no on the stance idea for NL. it's leading to a path of modern ms where everyone has stance and flash jump

 

Paladin's (and shads) even have stance, which I would argue for the sake of multi-attacking is now way better than shifter ever was. With the added bonus they take less than 1m NX to wash to 30k HP.

 

There's also the added fact that a thief-heavy distribution is generally favorable to all runs due to the increased ability to soak Sed. Having NL and Shadower be a little overtuned to encourage people to play them and ensure that there's enough available to make a durable roster isn't a bad thing, as long as they're not making other classes irrelevant. As long as there's a healthy supply of all necessary classes for a stable composition, then the "meta" is more or less fine. As it stands, the class bottleneck for PB rosters tends to usually be Bishops and Buccs, implying that there is neither an overabundance nor shortage of NLs, meaning the class could be considered in an acceptable state.

One could make the argument 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'