The "Bishop Ult vs. AM Ult" thread

Bishops need the attack, because leeching is too slow from 4th job onwards.

Leeching was never how priests would get to 120. They would actually attack and earn their exp, but this changed once 4th job and Ludi came out.
Now, all of 3rd job is just one big giant leech. Theres pomegranate all effort required in it at all.
The biggest effort in 3rd job is saying "B> SOME1 2 LET ME LEECH 5M/HOUR@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@"

Bishops are the only support class in maple. If nexon gave mages
godlier skills, there would be a lot less priests/bishops as most people prefer to attack rather than sit back. Who wants to heal and hs forever? Unfortunately this is how it is. Archamges are sort of the victims in this. There should have only been 1 magician class from the beginning if they wanted to turn archmage into this.

Even if the elemental weapons are fixed, i can see the mage class dying. Soon everyone will know to be a strong archmage, you need to spend billions of mesos on a rare gach only weapon. Also Nexon will now have an excuse not to add more elementally weak monsters. While some people think the elemental weapons will help mages, i just think it spells disaster for the future of new mages.

I'd be more satisfied with that than the weapons probably, but if it were a viable option, Magic would be to magicians what Luk, Str, and Dex are to star users, warriors, and bowmen. That is, you're rewarded for putting into a secondary stat because there isn't a 1:1 ratio of ability stat to attack stat. What I mean to say is that if such a thing were a likely thing to be implemented, our magic stat calculations wouldn't be so retarded in the first place.

This is more of a LUKless vs LUK dilemma. I've been thinking about this, and it really isn't hard to fix.
Make it so INT adds only 0.8 Magic.
Make it so MA from equips counts as double.
Only problem is that changing it now would screw over way too many people, jumble up the prices on all INT/MA items, and cause a lot of complaints.


But, that's off topic.

Concerning ultimates, spamming from one spot was never their intended use. That's why they cost thousands of MP in the first place.

But that doesn't mean anything in GMS anymore, so they need another kind of check. I'd say that giving them a cooldown time of 8 seconds at all levels would effectively destroy ultimate spamming, which I never believed in from the start.

Before you start complaining about how it'd be impossible for mages to level, all they need to do is strengthen their other skills. Give AR and Paralyze and CL 400+ base attack, and ID/FD 200. And to give the ultimates some use, halve their casting time and remove their MP cost, to make them the same for mages as Snipe is for high-level MMs.

Then the question wouldn't be "Bishop Ult vs AM Ult", would it?

But I don't see a large-scale overhaul of the mage class being practical at this point. It would alter the current AM/Bishop mindset beyond recognition. People already deep into 4th job would suddenly find themselves with an unusable set of skills. (Reset everyone's 4th job SP? ...Nah.) Besides, Nexon's making profit, why would they care?

I'd be more satisfied with that than the weapons probably, but if it were a viable option, Magic would be to magicians what Luk, Str, and Dex are to star users, warriors, and bowmen. That is, you're rewarded for putting into a secondary stat because there isn't a 1:1 ratio of ability stat to attack stat. What I mean to say is that if such a thing were a likely thing to be implemented, our magic stat calculations wouldn't be so retarded in the first place.

This is more of a LUKless vs LUK dilemma. I've been thinking about this, and it really isn't hard to fix.
Make it so INT adds only 0.8 Magic.
Make it so MA from equips counts as double.
Only problem is that changing it now would screw over way too many people, jumble up the prices on all INT/MA items, and cause a lot of complaints.


But, that's off topic.

Concerning ultimates, spamming from one spot was never their intended use. That's why they cost thousands of MP in the first place.

But that doesn't mean anything in GMS anymore, so they need another kind of check. I'd say that giving them a cooldown time of 8 seconds at all levels would effectively destroy ultimate spamming, which I never believed in from the start.

Before you start complaining about how it'd be impossible for mages to level, all they need to do is strengthen their other skills. Give AR and Paralyze and CL 400+ base attack, and ID/FD 200. And to give the ultimates some use, halve their casting time and remove their MP cost, to make them the same for mages as Snipe is for high-level MMs.

Then the question wouldn't be "Bishop Ult vs AM Ult", would it?

But I don't see a large-scale overhaul of the mage class being practical at this point. It would alter the current AM/Bishop mindset beyond recognition. People already deep into 4th job would suddenly find themselves with an unusable set of skills. (Reset everyone's 4th job SP? ...Nah.) Besides, Nexon's making profit, why would they care?

I know. I'm well aware of the nature of that problem, and how the core of that has little to do with what we're talking about. The point was to illustrate that if Nexon cared enough/if it were a viable option, we wouldn't have so many problems already. If they've not fixed the craptastic deal with the magic stat having equally weighted components when realistically they could pretty much convert it to the same formula as other classes... Well, do you really expect them to completely overhaul the class? I would love for my CL, Demon, Ifrit combo to be strong enough to train with, independent of the ultimates. It would make my single target damage higher, so that bosses wouldn't be so "lolMage" minded, etc. But, unfortunately, I don't see that happening, and it's more complicated than simply tweaking the magic formula would be.

In the end, to me, it's pretty much settled in terms of the fact that Arch Mages are going to be forever less efficient than Bishops. Luk Magicians will be forever inferior to lukless Magicians (Unless they decide to make some level 150 wand/staff for luk that has like, 250 matk base), and (Arch) Mages, unless catered to, will forever be sub-par at bosses. Nexon has shown that they did not quite think of putting the Arch paths on a level with other classes, and now with those imbalances so woven into the fabric of the game, they can't change anything without a backlash that is too big for them to risk.

*Shrug* There's only so much to say. Almost all of the points, if not straight up all of them, regarding the two ultimates have been brought up. Unless they release level 140 training monsters that are weak to fire, holy, and ice, for the same exp, with the same spawn, there will never really be balance between the use of the ultimates, since the Elemental Weapons are gach only (If they even fix them).

^
Oh and Time Temple does not fix this. The only actual element weak mobs are the ice zone mobs, and those are maybe, what, 10x? (Fire Zone mobs neutral to ice? wtp? Pink Bean is also elemental resistant, and even if you mob the statues, the five are just too far apart to mob efficiently, and three of them have elemental resistances, too.)

Russt, I suggested basically the same thing as you did on SW about half a year ago in the magician forums. My specific numbers were less drastic than yours, and still the general reaction to my ideas was hostile. Most 4th job magicians these days are too used to the idea of having spammable screen-filling mob skills. Nobody liked the idea of a 5 second cooldown + buffing all of their other skills to keep up with other classes.

Also, on an interesting note, INT used to add 0.8 magic long ago in Beta. It makes more sense, because the magic attack difference on a Dragon Staff versus a Wooden Staff doesn't come completely from your armor. As things are, the only reason to get higher level weapons is because you already have the LUK to wield them from your armor. However, it was obvious that magicians were going to be much weaker than everyone else after 4x, so Wizet decided an easy fix would be to make INT count for 1.0 magic instead. No idea why they didn't make magic attack count for 1.25 magic, or 1.5 magic, or some higher number than 1 as well. It's stupid to have magic attack do the exact same thing as INT damage-wise.

But still today, I would like to see: magic attack count for 1.5 magic, all 4th job mage non-ultimates buffed so they can do damage on par with phyiscal attacking classes, a 5 second cooldown on ultimates (and maybe slightly nerfed damage - this would be the same as Captains, who are required to utilize other skills in addition to their ultimate to train effectively), an mp cost of 1000 or 500 so the difference caused by amp is less ridiculous, and a much more powerful Holy Arrow, Shining Ray, and Angel Ray so that Bishops aren't made obsolete as an attacker as a result of these changes. I really hate how Bishops can kill monsters faster than most classes when it comes to training. It makes no sense.

^
Oh and Time Temple does not fix this. The only actual element weak mobs are the ice zone mobs, and those are maybe, what, 10x? (Fire Zone mobs neutral to ice? wtp? Pink Bean is also elemental resistant, and even if you mob the statues, the five are just too far apart to mob efficiently, and three of them have elemental resistances, too.)

They're all element weak o_o The weakest place is ice-weak, then fire-weak, then poison-weak.

^I don't think there are any ice-weak time temple monsters besides one of pink bean's statues.

It's stupid to have magic attack do the exact same thing as INT damage-wise.

It's not the exact same; INT adds an extra .005 per spell base. Not that that matters; that's barely 3 damage on an ultimate hit.
But I agree with what you meant.

Oh great, poison weak... Since when do you use poison in 4th job?

edit: nvm, forgot about paralyze...

Some people are suggesting Magician fullscreen attacks should be gimped in some way and their other skills should be beefed up to counter it.

I already touched on it a little why people are opposed to this, but I'll mention it again.

The way Magicians work is often AoE based. This is how it works in MapleStory as well, with each subsequent job getting a better AoE (although FP gets DoT in 2nd job instead, but that's a whole other story). But the point to notice is that in addition to stronger AoEs being harder hitting, they tend to get higher ranges as well. With MapleStory, this can be a problem. To give a noticeable improved range over the 3rd job Mage AoEs, they basically HAVE to make them fullscreen.

So that explains the range, but what about high hit count, the hard hits and slow speed?

The fact that it hits so many at once is tied to the fact that the animation is so epic and the range is so big. It would look awfully silly if the attack only hit 6 monsters on screen if the animation fills up the player's entire screen. Why wouldn't those crashing meteors be able to hit more at once? To put it frankly, these attacks hit so many at once because it would look stupid to see your screen filled with epic attacks, only to not even touch a bunch of monsters.

The hard hit and the cast speed go hand in hand. The cast rate is so low because a fast casting time on something that can hit the whole screen would feel a lot cheaper than this, even if the DPS was similar or even less. So the cast time is low to make it more fair, even if this fairness is more psychological in basis than functional. But with high cast time, there needs to be hard hits to deliver fair DPS. And I mentioned it before, the per hit DPS on the 4th job attacks are only about 1.5x the 3rd job analogues.

It's not really that the attacks are super strong, because the per hit DPS is actually only a little better. The reason these attacks are revered as powerful is that they can hit so many at once (and attack from a large distance) that their relatively poor single target DPS can be multiplied many times over until it is amazing DPS. But if it were done any other way, the attacks wouldn't make sense. If they had a smaller range, they wouldn't seem like a real advancement over their 3rd job AoE attack. If they were faster with low hits, they'd appear even more unfair (conversely, if they had a longer cast time or a delay/cooldown, they wouldn't be applicable in most instances). If they hit fewer mobs at once, the attack wouldn't make sense to have such range and not be able to hit things appearing normally within the range.

And beefing up the single target skills would be counter productive to the Magicians defined function. Instead of being great AoE but poor single target, they'd be just like the other classes-- advancing at single target, but having more than a few AoE attacks that are only functionally applicable some of the time rather than all of the time.

ps for people talking about balancing the lukless build, particularly in regards to level 130 lukless wands: rather than cutting int's effectiveness, you should be advocating making luk worthwhile. Why are so many of you quick to say "make them weaker" when you should be saying "make me stronger"? I would say that luk should add a bit of magic. You make each point in luk add .8 magic, and I think it would be easy to have the gap closed up to the point where everyone would be using luk equipment at endgame (like other classes where the -less build becomes less functional at endgame, even if the -less build has advantages at lower levels). And even if luk added magic, some people might still choose to be a little weaker, be pure int for a while, and have more MP.

Doesn't a 5-10 second cooldown fit perfectly into the Ultimates style though, Afrobean? Perhaps these skills are such a huge explosion of a single element that the Mage simply can't use the skill that often or his/her heart will fail or something.

Doesn't a 5-10 second cooldown fit perfectly into the Ultimates style though, Afrobean? Perhaps these skills are such a huge explosion of a single element that the Mage simply can't use the skill that often or his/her heart will fail or something.

Putting a cooldown on it would make it impractical. Or I should say, putting the kind of cooldown people are asking for would make it impractical. I would say anything beyond ~4~5 seconds puts the skill into a category of impractical in normal circumstances. Furthermore, making the skill take THAT long means that it'd need to hit a lot at once (like 8 or more) to be worthwhile, while at present it is worthwhile without hitting tons at once. I shudder to think of a day when I would think to myself "wait pumpernickel don't use Genesis here, you'd only be hitting 6 and it's not worth it, wait for the next spawn cycle".

It'd also kill Bishop's ability to simply play the game, requiring major overhaul of the Bishop skillbook to give them an alternative attack that is worthwhile (i.e., no matter how much beefing it gets, AR alone would never be enough to carry a Bishop). Changing things like strengths and durations of skills is easy, but Bishops would need to be rebuilt practically from the ground up.

Well, all I'm asking for is a 5 second cooldown. The skills I'd like to see beefed up aren't just single-target skills. When did the definition of single-target skills extend to skills like ID/FD, CL, and SR?

I realize this change would weaken Bishops in terms of 4th job training and make soloing much slower, but right now they have a bit too much going for them.

Don't you think Heaven's Hammer is impractical with a 70 second cooldown? (or whatever it is now, I don't know anyone who's bothered to max it). Paladins don't mind because Blast and ACB are both usable.

It wouldn't be hard to make magician skills match up with other classes without completely owning everybody else. If Chain Lightning was ~2x as strong maxed and Ice Demon was coupled with a Lightning Demon (for 15 SP each I guess) and Ifrit wasn't hell of slow, it wouldn't be necessary to use Ultimates to train as well as other classes, and maybe Magicians would take skill instead of sitting in 1 spot with HB+HS mules. I realize there's not a whole lot of skill required to play MS, but when 3rd job Priests did bosses they actually had to struggle to keep their spot in the party. With Genesis, it doesn't matter who the Bishop is - all of them can spam a single key and repot, and their matk is pretty much irrelevant because they start to 2hko very early (and 2hko is already enough to keep up with spawn rates, 1hko saves a bit of money).


How about for a Bishop skill, make the summon Dragon a lot more intelligent, and more powerful. If it had a Heal type skill, both in casting speed and elemental type (hurts undead, heals players, very fast cast rate), but it dealt its damage intelligently (only heal partied players when they need it, otherwise attack the same mobs the player is using its regular attack or its heal attack, whichever does more damage) and had a longer range to stray from the player (ie full screen range, flies fast) then it would be quite powerful.
Oh, and add a little menu for it like pet looting now has, so you can set it to ignore healing certain party members or classes (ie Dark Knights).

That leaves the Bishop free to use all their other supporting skills while still dealing damage and healing the party, and if they can still cast Genesis every 20 seconds it's not useless, especially to high levels who can 1hko with it.

Well, all I'm asking for is a 5 second cooldown. The skills I'd like to see beefed up aren't just single-target skills. When did the definition of single-target skills extend to skills like ID/FD, CL, and SR?

SR is a 3rd job skill. Mages might be able to get by with their demons being made useful, but to do so would require a change in the system. As it stands, demons are only useful for making the summon do stronger damage. The best way to achieve this, I think, would be to switch summons so that FP uses a Fire summon and IL uses an Ice summon.

And Chain Lightning is commonly associated as a single target skill because it is the IL analogue to FP's Paralyze.

But I digress. This is still against the nature of the Magician class. It's not in the Magician's nature to use a combo of skills to take down single enemies (or small groups). Magicians' nature is to take down large sets in tandem.

But yeah, man, SR is a 3rd job skill. You can't just say "gimp fullscreen attacks and beef up other skills to make up for it" when Bishops don't have a worthwhile skill. You can't say "make SR stronger so Bishops can get by with a weaker Genesis"... that would break 3rd job even more for Priests. I think the only way to achieve what you're suggesting would be to rebuild the Bishop skillbook to look more like the Arch Mage one, and have Bishops have a direct analogue for every skill in the Arch Mage skillbook (presumably collapsing Resurrect's necessary supportive function into another skill like Genesis).

But all of this is beside the point. You want massive reform for Magician 4th job, it'd be better to rebuild it entirely from scratch since there are so many problems with it. Don't say "change this and this and this and this", you're better off saying that things are fundamentally wrong and should not be simply changed, but rather replaced with an entirely new infrastructure.

I realize this change would weaken Bishops in terms of 4th job training and make soloing much slower, but right now they have a bit too much going for them.

No, they don't, at least not as far as subclass relations are concerned. Rather than say "Bishops have too much", you should be saying "Mages deserve more". The mentality shouldn't be "slow Bishops down", it should be "make Mages faster". Stop being vocal as an oppressive force and start being vocal as a constructive force.

EDIT: Stereo, what you're getting at is getting more into the vein of massive overhaul, and that's just not going to happen. You also neglect to notice that Bishops can't stand on AR and Bahamut alone. The only way we'd ever be able to would be to make AR intensely powerful and to do that would break Bishops and make them do an unfair amount of single target damage. It's not like you can tell Bishops to fall back on their OTHER attacking skills, not when one is passive (Bahamut), one is debated to being nerfed beyond current functionality (Genesis), and one is utterly worthless and stupid (Big Bang).

EDIT: Oh and you mention Heaven's Hammer, but that's an irrelevant point to be made. You even said yourself that Paladins have other skills to back them up; Mages do not, and Bishops ESPECIALLY do not.

Once every 5, or even 8 seconds is not beyond functionality. Especially when you consider you already have to stand still for 3 seconds while casting the current Genesis.

ps for people talking about balancing the lukless build, particularly in regards to level 130 lukless wands: rather than cutting int's effectiveness, you should be advocating making luk worthwhile. Why are so many of you quick to say "make them weaker" when you should be saying "make me stronger"? I would say that luk should add a bit of magic. You make each point in luk add .8 magic, and I think it would be easy to have the gap closed up to the point where everyone would be using luk equipment at endgame (like other classes where the -less build becomes less functional at endgame, even if the -less build has advantages at lower levels). And even if luk added magic, some people might still choose to be a little weaker, be pure int for a while, and have more MP.

Is 0.8*INT really that much worse than 1*INT? If you had 600 INT, you'd be losing 120 magic there. Then, since we'd have 2*MA, you'd gain back an amount equal to your equipment MA. Look at the 130 wands. Alone, clean, they have more than enough MA on them to break even after the INT multiplier decrease.
I realize that there's the potential to make some people weaker, but I'm pretty sure if you took all the magicians in GMS and summed up their magic before and after this proposed change, after would be indisputably higher.
Besides, even if INT did get nerfed badly enough to make LUKless inferior, you can convert if it matters that much.

Once every 5, or even 8 seconds is not beyond functionality. Especially when you consider you already have to stand still for 3 seconds while casting the current Genesis.

You make it slow enough and it's only practical applications become the instances where they are insanely strong now. What you're suggesting strips functionality from their fairer, more typical uses, and makes it such that the only times they are functionally useful are the rare circumstances where their power now is identified as too strong. Basically, you cut out the fair areas of use and make them only applicable in instances which are now unfair.

To be blunt, I'd be needing to hit like 8+ at once every time or I'd be wasting my time. And no, Bishops can't just rely on their other attacks. Without Genesis, Bishops are NOTHING.

Is 0.8*INT really that much worse than 1*INT? If you had 600 INT, you'd be losing 120 magic there.

I'm gonna stop you right there.

You're missing the point. You shouldn't be trying to make lukless builds weaker. You should be trying to make luk builds stronger. Rather than thinking "pumpernickel lukless is too strong, make them weaker", you should be thinking "wow luk builds are weaker, they should be stronger". Rather than making lukless build suck to motivate players to use the "right" build, you should- duh- make the "right" build worthwhile. What I have suggested would do this: make luk add magic. If luk added .8 magic for each point a player has of luk, a person could use a 113 requirement Dragon Wand and have an additional 90 magic on top of their weapon's 127 base avg stats, making for a worth of 217 magic clean. Compare this 217 worth to the worth of the level 130 lukless wand: a worth of 145 (assuming elemental boost is not a factor, because if it is, then those things are unbeatable regardless of what balancing is attempted).

LUK adding magic, especially a high amount like 0.8, makes no sense. Under that system, pure LUK would do more damage with Heal than pure INT.

The act of tuning down the INT multiplier a bit does not mean I'm out to kill all LUKlesses. If all changes must be for the better, there isn't much that's changeable.

My way, LUKless either remains the same or gets unnoticeably weaker, while LUK gets a reasonable chance to compete.

Let's throw in some numbers. I'll give the LUKless a 70 elemental and the LUK a 103, just because they're easy to work with and I don't really know where most people cap LUK and what goes on with the standard weapons. I'll also give them both 20 extra MA from scrolls/other stuff, and 605 total INT/LUK after equips.

LUKless: 601 INT, 4 LUK, 105 MA from wand. 706 magic old, 690 new.
LUK: 500 INT, 105 LUK, 138 MA from staff. 638 magic old, 676 new.

The LUKless gets weakened by 16 magic. Can you really complain about 16 magic? It could be a lot worse.

Meanwhile, the LUK build gets a much-needed boost of 38 magic, plus a reason to actually go for higher leveled weapons. (Note that shifting 60 INT to LUK to equip a 163 would cause no change to the old - current, rather - magic, but end him up with 748 new magic. That's the benefit a level 163 weapon should give. Not pretty-looking gachapwn junk that's functionally equivalent to a level 20 staff.)

also factor in the luk or int thats base on a lvl 80+ or w/e robe + the hat + shoes etc.
theres another 10+ in/luk easy and i do say easy.

LUK adding magic, especially a high amount like 0.8, makes no sense. Under that system, pure LUK would do more damage with Heal than pure INT.

Dex adds a small amount of weapon attack. Luk adds a small amount of accuracy.

It's not illogical to have the secondary stat actually give a worthwhile boost aside from merely allowing the player to equip a weapon.

And .8 isn't all that "high" either. Not when that sort of "height" is required to close the gap on these level 130 lukless weapons.

The LUKless gets weakened by 16 magic. Can you really complain about 16 magic? It could be a lot worse.

I'm not even going to dignify this with a response because you ignored the primary problem with lukless being too strong-- the level 130 wands. The balance between lukless and luk before was tumultuous, but it wasn't really broken. Now it is.

Also notice: your way makes lukless weaker and luk a little stronger than they are now. My way makes lukless the same, but puts luk ahead of lukless. I don't see how you could think your way is a better solution.

ps

Under that system, pure LUK would do more damage with Heal than pure INT.

Assuming the formula is right, I would love to see people go pure luk to do a little more damage in 2nd job and early 3rd, only to pineapple themselves over in 1st and 4th.

In other words, I would put such a build in the same category as HP warriors. Way more trouble than they're worth, practically useless at their peak, then completely useless at respectable levels.