2012-11-13, 02:03 PM
ZeekFox Wrote:I wouldn't generalize too much. Just because Mapler don't have a need to avoid things doesn't mean that they can or cannot do it. You never know what kind of outside experience any given player has.
I will say that I do like a bit of the skill over pure stats thing. Though it wasn't WoW, I did play a 3D MMO where bosses did moves that could one-shot you. However, there was some sort of warning and the chance to get out of the way. What I hate about Maple Story is that they've tried to implement such a system, but have done so in a terrible fashion, like with Damage Reflect. In fact, I'd claim that they've literally gone BACKWARDS on the subject, because the Papulatus from years ago actually accomplished this. Ranged attackers would literally get OHKO'd by the body touch and you couldn't knock it back, leaving you with the strategy of having to walk past it when it was in hibernation mode if you were getting cornered. It took some practice, but it wasn't all that difficult, which kinda made it fun. Damage Reflect could have taken a similar road, had bosses been given a clear, unmissable casting animation of 2-3 seconds before the buff turned on.
Even Ergoth had a bit of a fun-level difficulty to it with the poison+1/1 thing. It could instantly kill you, but only if you neglected to notice that you were poisoned...something that shows up in your chat box.
Most DR bosses do have a second or two of DR animation in which you have a fraction of a second or two of warning to stop attacking (Arkarium, Von Leon, normal Hilla, CHT left head; PB has an animation but I don't know if it's safe to attack during it). The trouble is sometimes the animation isn't long enough and attacks like Phantom cards pop out after you stop attacking and get you killed anyway. Or Arkarium's auto-kill skill, it's barely avoidable, but only if you don't have skill animation lag and are fast enough to get the hell out of the way. Only Phantoms and *maybe* Jetts/Demon Slayers have enough movement to get out of range. Aswan rocks/bomb also lets you avoid them unless you get unlucky with where they appear.
Normal Mode Hilla (and Azwan in general) is a pretty well designed boss IMO, she gives warnings about all her attacks so you can react to them. There's still the trouble of the phantom card thing but whatever. Hard Mode Hilla is much more of a peach but hey, hard mode. Whatever. Hard mode also has 9999 accuracy so even classes with high avoid have to pay attention to where they are when killing her. She's a 2hko touch damage to me so I need to be very careful.
It's really only Empress and to a lesser extent, PB that have screwed up DR, and Empress is a screwed up glitchy boss anyway.