Information Valentines Event 2021 Balance Changes [Explained]

Map and Mob changes: Click here

Skill Changes

Hero / Crusader

• Enrage cooldown reduced from 8 minutes to 6 minutes

It seemed odd to us that Enrage would have a longer cooldown than Bowmaster's Concentrate, which is functionally the same skill. As such, we've made changes so the two skills have identical cooldowns.

• Enrage adjusted to have better scaling at earlier levels, with Level 1 providing +21 attack, instead of +11 attack

While looking at Enrage, we noticed that the early levels (level 1 - 29) were tied to the relics of vanilla v62 Rage. When Rage used to be a +12 weapon attack buff, Enrage starting at +11 made sense. However, with Rage being boosted to +20 weapon attack, we wanted Heroes to be able to feel the impact of levelling up Enrage immediately, rather than 20 levels into the skill.

Warriors

• Monster Magnet works on non-stationary bosses

Neckson's original design philosophy with MapleStory was for every class to suit the "DPS" role, however that philosophy didn't quite translate to reality. Classes also assumed secondary roles of "supports" (eg. Bishops) and "tanks". Warriors are clearly part of the "tank" role, which is characterized not only by their damage mitigation but also their ability to position the boss (eg. Rush and Snatch are good examples of this). We wanted to lean further into this class trait, and enabled Monster Magnet to work on bosses, thereby giving another positioning tool for warriors. This will hopefully help fix some "class identity" issues that warriors have faced recently.

Marksman

• Piercing Arrow is able to be fired while moving, jumping, and being damaged

It seemed that after pre-bb, Piercing Arrow was given a quality of life change, that allowed it to be charged up while moving and jumping. Piercing Arrow is notorious for getting cancelled when being hit, which is extremely annoying, so we wanted to push this quality of life change for all the Marksmen out there.

Mages

• Big Bang is able to be fired while moving, jumping, and being damaged

Similar to Piercing Arrow we've given the quality of life change for the Big Bang skill as well!

Shadower

• Smokescreen bug where getting stunned into smoke, or right as smokescreen was being cast should now be fixed

People loved and hated smoke. Loved it for the utility it brought, but also hated it for being stuck in it unable to move or do anything if it bugged out. This bug fix should be a huge quality of life change for shadowers and friends of shadowers out there!

*Kim note: This is a client bug fix and not a balance change. Basically, if you got 'knocked' into Smokescreen you would be permanently stuck inside Smokescreen until it wears out. This is now fixed.

Timeless Crafting

• Timeless weapons will require reverse weapons to craft instead of Neo Tokyo weapons
• Timeless weapons will require 15 Pieces of Time to craft (in addition to Rocks of Time)
• Timeless armor will require 5 Pieces of Time to craft (in addition to Rocks of Time)

A lot of players have mentioned how having Neo Tokyo weapons as a shared requirement for both Timeless and Reverse weapons didn't seem right. We agreed, so we're pushing changes that might help stabilize the weapon market, as well as the Pieces of Time market.

Timeless/Reverse Equipment

• Facestomper level requirement increased from 50 to 150 (applies to all existing drops and future drops)
• Timeless/Reverse equipment level requirement increased from 120 to 150 (applies to all existing drops and future drops)

Facestompers were announced a while ago to have their level requirement increased. In a similar fashion, we've decided to raise the Timeless/Reverse equipment up to 150 as well, so that it can be further distinguished from the Neo Tokyo and Dragon weapons.

• Timeless/Reverse mage equipment LUK requirement reduced from 123 to 100 (applies to all existing drops and future drops)

While LUK mages do indeed exist, the 123 LUK requirement for these items made it pretty exclusive for those that fully invested in LUK. With a lower requirement and the other changes we're applying to the gloves and shoes, we think it will be viable for LUKless mages to invest in these items and have it be worthwhile!

• Timeless/Reverse gloves and shoes have had their slots increased from 5 to 7
• Timeless Prelude (magician shield) slot increased from 7 to 10
• Timeless Kite Shield (warrior shield) slot increased from 7 to 10
• Timeless List (thief shield) slot increased from 7 to 10 AND base attack increased from 0 to a range of 7 - 11
  • STR requirement of 75 added
• Timeless/Reverse blunt weapons (Bellocce and Allargando) base attack increased by 10

The above changes are a collective group of changes intended to improve Timeless/Reverse gear that sometimes gets overshadowed by other pieces of equipment already out there. Hopefully, these changes can get them back on people's radars. Do note that these last section of changes only applies to newly crafted and newly dropped items.

Misc Changes

• Ciders will remain a stack of 3

Whilst ciders being reduced to 3 was NOT intended, after receiving feedback from the player base, the general consensus seemed to have been ciders being stackable to 5 was too strong. It was a great quality of life improvement, but objectively unhealthy for the game. As such, we've decided to keep ciders stackable to 3.

Not as many skill changes this time around, but we always look around for more changes in the next patch.