Talk to Nexon about Elemental Wands/Staves

draconius, would you care to explain, in terms of usefullness, how arch mages come anywhere close to bishops. Assuming of course neither has an elemental weapon. I wasn't here to point out every single significant imbalance, since there are many. But one thing I dislike here is how you've said that since these weapons are so rare, it really doesn't make a difference who gets them since its more of a luxury. Well guess what, it shouldn't be a luxury, it should be built right into our skills, not in the form of a hard to get weapon. This is why I'm so strongly for the -75% and ticked that nexon turned this into a moneymaking endeaver whent here are so many other things they can do to make money that don't involve making things unfairly difficult for a particular class. I'm not deluded in any way (plus 99k was an exaggeration, you don't even need 99k to 1hko the strongest training mobs), I just look at things differently than you and I guess that I feel that you're somehow underestimating the usefulness and purpose of being a bishop.

If it were built into your skills, then I will sing Hallelujahs for a day because finally the QQ will stop about this issue. The fact is, its perfectly viable for a mage to obtain the BONUS but not the STATS. This is why Ele wands 5-8 are a luxury. Lukless Archmage that doesn't have 1Bill to burn? Go right on ahead and buy Ele wands 1-4. I understand how many people can rightly point that bishops buy Ele wands 5-8, but Ele wands 1-4 are not nearly as common among bishops/priests because...well, they're kinda too expensive compared to their Lvl 64 counterparts. People are so whimpy that most Ele wands 1-4 barely break 100stats, whereas Maple weapons can break that barrier and more and command half the price. If it weren't meant to be that 5-8 were luxuries, then 1-4 would simply not exist. Ele wand effects are nearly useless until archmage anyways, and so it couldn't possibly be that the intention was to up the 3rd job community (well, it was in JMS, but for purposes here pertaining to the date that these were released in GMS, there is an ulterior motivation). Archmages might not all be able to spend 1Bill for a wand 5-8, but it sure seems like a lot of them can shell out 200Mill for a 1-4. 5-8 are as much luxuries in other versions of the game as they are in ours, and the format in which JMS permits these items to drop from monsters suggests this as well (all of them drop except for 5-8). If archmages deserve this as a sign of balance, then they can still get that with the low level ele wands while the high level ones remain a luxury.

Usefulness is an arbitrary term, and is not pertinent to how we fix these classes. Nexon clearly wants Archmages to be stronger, and I quite frankly don't care that archmages could potentially outdamage bishops at Skelegons (although this is likely giving them pause as to prevent AMP from going up to 150%), but I'm literally hearing nary a peep from Paladins and Shadowers on this issue. Shadowers are overshadowed by NLs in so many different ways that it would be a comedy to compare the much more relative balance in the mage class with that. Paladins have a lol prefix almost reflexively attached to their name. Furthermore, my point is that this is almost certainly not a way to balance the archmage class and shouldn't be about balancing the archmage class, at least the way it is implemented. There are far too few ele wands/staves out there for this to be considered "balancing", and the fact that KMS has been upping AMP dmg (notice that ele wands came out like 2 years ago in JMS) is indicative that there is little correlation between the two.