2010-06-24, 11:16 PM
Post edited to save you all the trouble of scrolling through my wall 
.
So busy all day...kept trying to read through the read, racking up comments to comment on, only to be pulled away every few pages. FINALLY I get to comment. Here we go!
Now for general comments:
Most of what I was going to say was summed up by LegendGospel in his first post. Congratulations to the long-deserved buffs to the majority of classes. I'm glad to see people rejoicing that they can finally drop the "lol" in front of their class name. While this applies to 95% of the classes, Magicians, sadly, still need some tweaking. Most of us will tell you we enjoy what's been done and believe progress has been made, but we're still not quite there yet. Hopefully such changes occur, but with how Nexon seems to treat our classes, who knows.
That being said, I'm personally glad to see, after four years of playing this game (and hell, since the birth of this game in the first place), the much-needed overhaul of the magic damage formula to mirror what the weapon attack damage formula does, the much-needed addition of Elemental Reset to ArchMages, and the much-needed transformation of the 4th Job "Trifecta of Crap" into worthwhile skills.
However, we're still missing a reason to train our classes. The main reason a person trains their class is to access higher leveled content. Currently, 99% of higher leveled content consists of bosses, 99% of which consist mainly of single target DPS battles. All of which Magicians, obviously, do NOT excel at. Now the debate can rage over Bishops being a support class (and while I support that, I feel that even supporting classes need a way to defend themselves and contribute when supporting is not needed [cue Fire Emblem examples of Holy/Anima magic stave weilders]), but the bottom line is that there's nothing for ArchMages to do BUT attack and deal damage. Nexon will tell you otherwise (omg use ur kewl elements to inflict statuses!!1), but if our "kewl statuses" don't even work on bosses, what can we do?
Therefore the changes we need are simple. Either:
1. Design higher leveled content that allows Magicians to showcase their talents for mobbing and inflicting various statuses that makes us useful at said content.
2. Tweak our skills to give us at least one viable single target DPS skill (by far the easiest, and "viable" here means "when DEF ups occur during boss runs you actually see the HP bar drop to a similar speed as it does during MDEF ups") for bossing.
3. Tweak the status inflict system to allow us to inflict various status effects on bosses that, somehow, make squad and expedition leaders want a couple ArchMages/etc. Magicians there.
Once that's done then I will finally say bravo Korea.
ANOTHER EDIT:
.So busy all day...kept trying to read through the read, racking up comments to comment on, only to be pulled away every few pages. FINALLY I get to comment
. Here we go!
Comments to previous posts
Now for general comments:
Most of what I was going to say was summed up by LegendGospel in his first post. Congratulations to the long-deserved buffs to the majority of classes. I'm glad to see people rejoicing that they can finally drop the "lol" in front of their class name. While this applies to 95% of the classes, Magicians, sadly, still need some tweaking. Most of us will tell you we enjoy what's been done and believe progress has been made, but we're still not quite there yet. Hopefully such changes occur, but with how Nexon seems to treat our classes, who knows.
That being said, I'm personally glad to see, after four years of playing this game (and hell, since the birth of this game in the first place), the much-needed overhaul of the magic damage formula to mirror what the weapon attack damage formula does, the much-needed addition of Elemental Reset to ArchMages, and the much-needed transformation of the 4th Job "Trifecta of Crap" into worthwhile skills.
However, we're still missing a reason to train our classes. The main reason a person trains their class is to access higher leveled content. Currently, 99% of higher leveled content consists of bosses, 99% of which consist mainly of single target DPS battles. All of which Magicians, obviously, do NOT excel at. Now the debate can rage over Bishops being a support class (and while I support that, I feel that even supporting classes need a way to defend themselves and contribute when supporting is not needed [cue Fire Emblem examples of Holy/Anima magic stave weilders]), but the bottom line is that there's nothing for ArchMages to do BUT attack and deal damage. Nexon will tell you otherwise (omg use ur kewl elements to inflict statuses!!1), but if our "kewl statuses" don't even work on bosses, what can we do?
Therefore the changes we need are simple. Either:
1. Design higher leveled content that allows Magicians to showcase their talents for mobbing and inflicting various statuses that makes us useful at said content.
2. Tweak our skills to give us at least one viable single target DPS skill (by far the easiest, and "viable" here means "when DEF ups occur during boss runs you actually see the HP bar drop to a similar speed as it does during MDEF ups") for bossing.
3. Tweak the status inflict system to allow us to inflict various status effects on bosses that, somehow, make squad and expedition leaders want a couple ArchMages/etc. Magicians there.
Once that's done then I will finally say bravo Korea.
ANOTHER EDIT:
Personal tidbits about this recent patch