[1.2.381] The Wind

If Marksmen also had AFA, what would your reaction be to that? (Not a biased question at all, I'm actually curious)

AFA would raise Marksmen DPS by about 200%/s (4030.32%/s to 4229.1%/s). i.e. it's really bad.

BM's are supposed to be 1v1 and MM's are supposed to be mobbers. You mention the degree of overkill being an issue when comparing the two classes damage on mobs. Now, where I train when not bossing is at Van Leon Castle, where mobs have millions of hp and overkill isn't an issue at all because of the damage cap. Knowing lhc will be nerfed to garbage by Jump, we also know it'll be replaced by Dark Ereve and Monster Park, where the mobs have millions of hp and overkill won't be an issue either.

Having seen a couple vids of Dark Ereve, mobbing 6 monsters into a pile is very doable.
Monster park is more limited.

It seems to me that you want MM's to be equal to BM's in 1v1 when that's not how the classes are designed.

I cannot find it on the site but I do recall several years ago that on Maplestory's main website, they mentioned that choosing a bowmaster would result in a class that shot faster and was better at killing single targets. Choosing a marksman would result in a class that shot slower but was better at killing groups of monsters.

This concept seems to have been a bit lost in the Chaos update but is then set straight again here in the Jump update.

The problem is that the most significant portions of the game are based on single target damage. That's why everyone cares so much about DPS. Bow Masters do as much DPS on one monster as Pierce can do on 3. Pierce can also be severely limited by the damage cap, still, can it not? It's certainly feasible to hit 1m on some of the latter mobs, but if it can bypass the damage cap, then whatever.

After Chaos, Dark Ereve is like what 160~170+? Monster Park has somewhat limited access as well, and the mob spawn certainly seems limited. I just severely dislike how Pierce works. It's a parallel to how Assassins in 2nd job can do so much damage, but are forced to train on monsters that they OHKO because anything higher that they could still theoretically OHKO they will miss on. Pierce can kill monsters faster with the amount of DPS it outputs, but you're forced to wait by charging, and Snipe is just plain stupid.