Nigh Lord build after the Big Bang, GMS

I have tested a Night lord with the new skills and changes in Tespia. Now I want to share what I have observed.

This will be my build when BB hits the live server, note that this is for a high level NL. I do not plan for the getting there process:

Rouge
Nimble Body: Max
Keen Eyes: Max
Disorder: 6 points
Dark Sight: Max
Lucky 7: Max
Double stab: 0

Disorder would have been somewhat useful on bosses, unfortunantly it does not seem to work on them (no little ghost effect that normal monsters show). -20 att and -10% def at max. Useless for normal grinding. If I am somehow mistaken in this, max it with 4 points from Claw Booster or Shadow Mesos depending on your preference.

Assassin
Claw Mastery: Max
Critical Throw: Max
Claw Booster: 11 points (Max with 3rd job points if you agree with my views.)
Haste: Max
Drain: Max
Shadow Resistance: Max

Every skill is good, but Claw Booster would just gain more time between casts and that you can live without.

Hermit
Alchemist: Max
Meso Up: Max
Shadow Partner: Max
Shadow Web: Max
Shadow Meso: 11 points (2 point if you do it like me and max Claw Booster with those points.)
Avenger: Max
Flash Jump: Max
Dark Flare: Max

Shadow Web, Shadow Mesos and Dark Flare could potentially all be skipped. Web is the same skill as Pre-BB with damage ticks based on monster HP. The success rate is 100% instead of 80% though. Shadow Meso... What can I say? Not even with the uber crappy stats and gear my level 200 Tespia Night Lord has can it beat Lucky 7 or Avenger on single target DPS. Absolute crap. The only remotely usefull purpose it could have would be if you run out of stars. Then again if you run out of stars you pretty much just suck as a Night Lord anyway. Change job. Dark Flare will throw the damage you take at the enemy 1300% at max. Kind of nice for high powered bosses, but not much else since it just hit 1 target. It also has a cooldown, so it is not up at all times during a boss battle unless it is maxed. Then the cooldown is the same length as the duration (thx to Takebacker for pointing out an error here). Another smart thing about it is that it applies for the whole party, so our high avoid is not really a problem when fighting major bosses..

Night Lord
Since Tespia refuse to give you books for free, I cannot test the max of skills, and I wont go to Zakum for the Triple Throw skillbook. I will comment on the skills at level 10:
Maple Warrior: Same as always.
Triple Throw: Can't test, but really, we will max it and it will be great.
Taunt: Same as pre BB, but easier and more rewarding to use now when Avenger is so great for training.
Venom: The damage is nerfed like no tomorrow and it no longer stack with itself. The damage is set, I do not know how it is calculated now. The possitive side is that it works on bosses now and that is infact better than its old powerful form. Pre BB monsters generally die so fast that Venom does not even start to work and it does not work on bosses. Post BB it adds at least some to the DPS on bosses with high HP. Still useful enough to max for sure.
Shadow Shifter: 15% increase in the dodging. Thats 45% of all incoming hits evaded. Epic.
Shadow Stars(the skill formerly known as Shadow Claw): 1 minute longer duration, at max that is 3 minutes. Nice.
Expert Throwing Star Handling: really nice with its boost to Avenger and to lesser extent the boost to Drain. Boosting Lucky 7 and Shadow Meso is pretty much a useless effect for everything besides the Balrog Boss PQ where every high level active skill is blocked but not the passives. The other effect of ETSH is that it can recharge 1 star instead of using the amount the skill requires at a 20% rate (at max). When ever it recharges the following hit will always be critical. Unfortunantly the recharge effect gets canceled by using Shadow Stars. I guess the 20% recharge factor is nice enough to sustain us through most boss fights with 24 sets of stars, but the DPS increase of a guranteed critical hit 20% of the times sounds minimal.
Ninja Storm: Same as always with some beefed up damage. Less useful now when you can throw your stars inside of monsters and poking close monsters is now nothing but a memory.
Ninja Ambush: still a mediocre piece of crap skill. I tested it at level 10 where it says it does 120% damage and it did 2000 something, set damage. So it is still not really based on our damage range. Weak and useless.
Hero's Will: Still a point dump due to its lame cooldown and the way bosses use seduce.

I think that's that! Hope this helps some with the choices post BB!

So.. nothing changed much?

Rogue: Keen Eyes, Lucky Seven, rest.
Assassin: Critical Throw + 5 Claw Booster, Haste + Claw Booster, Drain, Claw Mastery, rest
Hermit: Avenger, Shadow Partner, Alchemist, Dark Flare, rest
Night Lord: Triple Throw, Shadow Star/Shifter, Taunt, Venom, Maple Warrior, rest?

If anything, there's the choice between SP and Avenger for 3rd job training.

Dark Flare seems somewhat interesting. Also, I think it is pretty beneficial to max claw booster like you've said.

So.. nothing changed much?

Basically not. Some skills got better and Venom got worse depending on how you look at it. All in all Night Lords got more balanced. Tremendously better Mob damage, a little boost to single target DPS and higher survivablility thanks to Shadow resistance (higher HP, elemental defence and less chance of being inflicted with bad status) and better shadow shifter. The training style will change some since Avenger will be better than Triple Throw in 2 or 3+ mob situations but not enough to warrant any fears of it being a "different" class.

I don't consider skills whose cooldown is the same as the duration as skills with cooldown.

I don't consider skills whose cooldown is the same as the duration as skills with cooldown.

Point taken, I did not take it to max in Tespia since I wanted to test some other stuff. Constructive remarks I like but the way you wrote it makes it look like you want to be a smart ass. Very few here is of an age or station to patronize me. I'm sure I just imagine the tone of the post though. I'll take it the positive way.

Try reporting the "won't recharge when used with shadow stars" with Expert Throwing Star Handling as a bug. Makes sense. Also, about that... Do you know if it still triggers the 100% critical chance with shadow stars? Just to know if we should just decide between power or saving. If you can't tell right now, how long would it take to test it without a single point in the critical skill, but maxed Expert Throwing Star Handling. Just to make sure.

Try reporting the "won't recharge when used with shadow stars" with Expert Throwing Star Handling as a bug. Makes sense. Also, about that... Do you know if it still triggers the 100% critical chance with shadow stars? Just to know if we should just decide between power or saving. If you can't tell right now, how long would it take to test it without a single point in the critical skill, but maxed Expert Throwing Star Handling. Just to make sure.

When ever it recharges the following hit will always be critical

Pretty sure the Crits are only triggered after the recharging has happened. Shadow Star doesn't hinder the critting effect like suggested, it kills the prerequisite for the crittings to happen.

Pretty sure the Crits are only triggered after the recharging has happened. Shadow Star doesn't hinder the critting effect like suggested, it kills the prerequisite for the crittings to happen.

This is what I concluded also.

Thanks for the info.

Ninja storm can be added to the NL useless skills bag which makes my SP re-allocation much easier post BB.

@above: imo, Ninja Ambush even more useless than Ninja Storm, at least Ninja Storm can kb the mob

Expert Throwing Star Handling: really nice with its boost to Avenger and to lesser extent the boost to Drain. Boosting Lucky 7 and Shadow Meso is pretty much a useless effect for everything besides the Balrog Boss PQ where every high level active skill is blocked but not the passives. The other effect of ETSH is that it can recharge 1 star instead of using the amount the skill requires at a 20% rate (at max). When ever it recharges the following hit will always be critical. Unfortunantly the recharge effect gets canceled by using Shadow Stars. I guess the 20% recharge factor is nice enough to sustain us through most boss fights with 24 sets of stars, but the DPS increase of a guranteed critical hit 20% of the times sounds minimal.

You forgot TT is main attack skill at bosses




Btw. What's the diffirent between "Critical Damage is minimum 120%" and "Minimum Crit Daamge: +15%" ? Does this mean, min~max Crit dmg is 135~150% before enhance by other skill and items ?







Also Expert Throwing Star Handling 100% crit. Gg nexon



Lvl 15 bless, 66 att Lamp

People fail to realise how tiny a difference all critical is.

Average critical damage boost for a Night Lord is 1.23x. If they get an all critical hit, it would be 1.425x. The all critical happens 20% of the time. The damage increase on average is 1.269. Holy pineappleing pomegranate you guys are getting screwed on a 3% damage increase out of this, its the end of the world.

Responses in bold:

@above: imo, Ninja Ambush even more useless than Ninja Storm, at least Ninja Storm can kb the mob
The fact that Ambush sucks got nothing to do with Storm being less useful though. Storm moved right to the bottom of the priority order of skills that have some use. The only skills more useless would be Ambush and Hero's will

You forgot TT is main attack skill at bosses
Of course not. Nothing I wrote remotely contradicts that.

Btw. What's the diffirent between "Critical Damage is minimum 120%" and "Minimum Crit Daamge: +15%" ? Does this mean, min~max Crit dmg is 135~150% before enhance by other skill and items ?
Yes.

Also Expert Throwing Star Handling 100% crit. Gg nexon
Sounds like you misunderstand the skill. When ever the recharge effect takes place (20% chance per attack), the next hit is guranteed to be a critical, the effect is void if you have Shadow Stars active. That is what it says and nothing else.

People fail to realise how tiny a difference all critical is.

Average critical damage boost for a Night Lord is 1.23x. If they get an all critical hit, it would be 1.425x. The all critical happens 20% of the time. The damage increase on average is 1.269. Holy pineappleing pomegranate you guys are getting screwed on a 3% damage increase out of this, its the end of the world.

Thats why I clearly stated it sounds minimal. Everything counts though, so figuring out how it works is hardly worthless.

All class have 5% crit hit base, min~max dmg crit is 120~150%

Thief max Critical Throw add 50% crit, 15% min crit dmg. Therefore thief have 55% crit hit base, min dmg crit is 120+15=135%

Where you get 1.23x, 1.425x and 1.269 from ? or I was wrong ? :f6:

Sounds like you misunderstand the skill. When ever the recharge effect takes place (20% chance per attack), the next hit is guranteed to be a critical, the effect is void if you have Shadow Stars active. That is what it says and nothing else.

Got it, nvm then >.<

All class have 5% crit hit base, min~max dmg crit is 120~150%

Thief max Critical Throw add 50% crit, 15% min crit dmg. Therefore thief have 55% crit hit base, min dmg crit is 120+15=135%

Where you get 1.23x, 1.425x and 1.269 from ? or I was wrong ? :f6:

The 55% chance of critical means the other 45% of the time, they don't critical.

I hope that's not what our Base MaxHP is after BB... If it is, looks like I better start saving NX for HP washing.

I have 42 SP to spend on venom (0), shadow stars (5) or Expert Throwing Star Handling (0).

I can either
i) max both venom and ETSH or
ii) max SStars and ETSH or
iii) max SStars, venom (17) and ETSH (0)

I am leaning toward optoin 1 as SStar time is already longer than what I had pre BB. However I am just interested to know what people think.

p.s. Taunt and both Ninja skills are on 0.

Edit: After reading this thread http://www.southperry.net/showthread.php?t=35624. I have now maxed ETSH so only option 1 and 2 are possible now.