The "Bishop Ult vs. AM Ult" thread

I have to agree with this. At the moment, the abilities of bishops are far too similar to arch mages, and having a holy weak endgame map along with all the priest party benefits simply makes bishops overpowered.

I think you're missing the point. Bishops have "similar abilities" to Arch Mages because they're different takes on the same class: Magician. Bishops are holy element, Mages are dark elements. If Mages get certain abilities, it makes sense for Bishops to have Holy versions of similar abilities. However, by the same rights, Holy elementalists having certain skills or buffs should mean Mages get useful analogues themself.

The application of this is a bit skewed, I must admit, but that's the general idea. In truth, a better application would be to have Mages getting good buffs which are analogous to the Holy Magicians' good buffs; Their 2nd job meditiation should have been actually useful in a party (and the magic added should probably have been percent based), their 3rd job booster should have been a party buff (recall: this is before Pirates were thought of yet), their 4th job Mana Reflect should have been more robust and been a party buff. See, it should go both ways. This "omg take crap from Bishops because they're too good" sentiment many people have is wrong-- you should advocate making your own class better, not try to tear down things which were done well (even if arguably overdone to a degree).

The only problem with Mage/Bishop relations that I think should be addressed on the Bishop end is the cost of Genesis. But by the same regard, I would say that the cast time for each skill should be identical, the MP cost should be identical, the base should be identical, and amp shouldn't affect it at all. But this alone wouldn't even be fair either though-- they still need to make better monsters of other elemental weaknesses.

I think that the class should still play similarly to priests in the 4th job, that being having just enough power to do things solo if necessary, but excelling in parties due to having a large amount of party benefiting skills.

There's no way this could be done in the MapleStory system. It is impossible to gain good experience leeching if you're much higher than the monster's level. This is why leeching through Priest-hood is fast, yet trying to do the same through 4th (or suggesting we should HAVE TO) would be VERY painful. This is why the "cleric is only support" idea is never going to fly. In MapleStory, all classes must function as attackers in one way or another, and as such, these Holy Magicians in MapleStory become more of a "White Mage" than a "Cleric".

It would be interesting if resurrection acted as a fullscreen attack on undead monsters, but had a cooldown. It would be like a guaranteed 1hko like snipe, but only work on undead and have a 10 minute cooldown.

Yeah, there are tons of things which would have made for a better all-around 4th job. Not even just Bishop skills, not just Mage skills; all classes have things about them that could have been done differently and better. Personally, the one thing I was really hoping to get that I don't think anyone else has ever mentioned is Advanced Teleport-- it'd work by a charge timer, and depending on how long it's held, you'd be able to teleport that far away, even clear across maps, yet it would've been able to be spammed to give speedy movement like normal teleport.

You miss my point completely.
You are making it seem like standing on a rope and occasionally HSing someone while getting EXP is the worst thing in the world. It's not.

At 4th job, it is. Every other class would be allowed to gain better experience rates by actually attacking, while an afk Bishop on a rope botting buffs would get crap. Something people often don't realize: more people in the party means more people actively helping; so long as the HSer in the party doesn't actively help, that's means he's getting the smallest cut of experience. And really, if there's any class that is needed above others at endgame, it's the healers-- they should get good experience to motivate them to keep going, not the worst of all classes.

Oh and by the way, there's not really anything that could be done to the fullscreen attacks. Natural order of AoE attacks are that the range gets better as your character becomes more masterful. The range pretty much has to be what it is for it to make sense. And the damage? The DPS on per target hits are only a little higher than 3rd job skills (if I recall, my level 10 Genesis is somewhere around 1.5x DPS on per target hits compared to my SR; compare this to Lucky Seven and Triple Throw). The problem is that because of the range, players no longer need to walk around the map like they used to. Anyone familiar with how/why hacking is effective would know that standing in one place and attacking many at once increases experience rates dramatically. I don't think there's anything which could TECHNICALLY be done, but I guess you could always cut the mob limit down to like 10 (scarcely ever get more than this anyway). You could also divide the hit damage by 3 and increase cast rate by 3. So instead of hitting 50k and looking OMG WAY TOO STRONG, I'd only be hitting 16.5k. These 2 things wouldn't really fix the problem, but it'd help ignorant people to stop thinking things are more unfair than they really are.

EDIT:

If you people think priests/bishop have a hard time leveling, try starting a character of... any other class.

Am I missing something? Is anyone actually suggesting Bishops have it hard? All I've noticed is that people are saying Bishops would have it tough WITHOUT a means to stand up as an attacker, and that is an absolute truth.