Summon Golem Needs a Buff?

• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2011-11-27 02:09

  Quote from Xentaros;672652:

  All she needs is a nerf
  Her damage is too high, comes with a heal, and able to teleport.
  Just buffing ONE thing on her, will have to buff one ability of every other character.
  
  (And I think she disregards weight when she lifts items, compared to other races)

  
  Heal, teleport.
  
  Pick one.
  
  And no, her damage isn't "too high". Lanns do a hell of a lot more damage (and it's becoming very easy with high defense) and hammer Fionas also do more damage. I'm not sure about Karoks but that already puts her in the bottom half at the very least, if not dead last.
  
  Remember that everything is relative.
• Sayoko wrote on 2011-11-27 02:29
  Rarely do staffies get top damage in raids. It's usually a hammiona or a def stacked lann.
• Xentaros wrote on 2011-11-27 04:09

  Quote from RebeccaBlack;672692:

  Heal, teleport.
  
  Pick one.
  
  And no, her damage isn't "too high". Lanns do a hell of a lot more damage (and it's becoming very easy with high defense) and hammer Fionas also do more damage. I'm not sure about Karoks but that already puts her in the bottom half at the very least, if not dead last.
  
  Remember that everything is relative.

  
  
  But all of the invincibility frames from reverse gravity..
• sakraycore wrote on 2011-11-27 04:22
  reverse gravity has no invinci frames
• Skye wrote on 2011-11-27 04:30

  Quote from sakraycore;672813:

  [QUOTE=Xentaros;672802]But all of the invincibility frames from reverse gravity..

  
  
  reverse gravity has no invinci frames[/QUOTE]
  
  Seriously. lol
• Invertex wrote on 2011-11-27 05:17
  Staff is barely in the top 3 in terms of raw DPS on a punching bag. It's something like Spear Lann > Hammer Fiona = Staff Evie. So she's still in the top half (I recall that she's tied with Hammer Fiona). The main reason she was "OP" prior to the recent raids was that she could very easily stay outside of a boss' range and maintain the high DPS of Magic Arrow spam.
  
  Meanwhile Hammer Fionas and Spear Lanns both need to stack Defence. You also have to realize that Boat 7 Hero + Ep9 made this a lot more viable. Tutelary, Warlord, and Passion were all from this update. Of course this is a huge investment, easily surpassing the cost of a full Wonderland Set (sans Force spam). Hammer Fiona also needs to build SP for Slashing High, while Spear Lann can't compare in survivability without stacking Defence.
  
  I think the main problem is, Staff Evie becomes a lot "weaker" when we start reaching the extremes and enter "endgame". Since an "endgame" Hammer Fiona will have 10k+ Def and 14k+ Attack, an "endgame" Spear Lann will have similar stats. An endgame Evie can only match the abusrd attack numbers, but not the defence, so she loses the "survivability" edge of things and sacrifices that for party support.
  
  So what this means is that she is "balanced" when we get to the extremes. Karok is still viable at this "endgame" level as he technically always has an attack openning, while the Fionas need to wait for Slashing High, the Lanns still need to back off to heal back up, and the Evies need to not get hit. So all four characters are just about as useful as the others when we get to stats very few people will ever see.
  
  But for 90% of the Vindictus population, Staff Evie can do literally everything. Since she also has one of the easiest time reaching the first benchmark of 13k attack and Mana Shields is more useful then 5k Defence in most raids. So for the average player, she does everything the best for the least effort. Hence why people consider Staff "OP".
  
  Except, as it was mentioned earlier, nobody mentions Scythe at all in the "Evie is OP" arguements (sides the mention of Blink, which is Scythe only and costs 40 Stam or something). This is exactly the same problem for Fiona, everyone just told me to "go hammer" half the time when I was having some problems with Sword gameplay. Sword Lanns suffer too as they can't put up the damage numbers of the Top 3, but they barely have survivability. Blaster Karok looks like he's going to be Sword Lann with improved damage, and thus "balanced" to the endgame standards.
  
  So really, they don't need to buff or nerf Staff, Hammer, Karok in general, or Spears. They need to make the other weapons for the other classes viable.
  
  ---
  
  And the short version for you lazy people.
  
  At endgame, everything balances out. But it's easier to get close to endgame stats with an Evie. Except that's not the problem, we're ignoring Scythe Evies, Sword Fionas, and Sword Lanns.
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2011-11-27 05:18
  Reverse Gravity has no invincibility frames at all. It does stop the monster, though, but there's a problem with that. You need to predict when the boss is going to be unable to move about a second ahead of time. When you press the button, there's this animation where the staff is pushed down before RG actually begins. If the boss decides to attack after RG starts actually happening, it won't connect and you're pretty much guaranteed death as you have to wait for RG to end. Evies tend to die in a couple hits, so yeah, even if the boss "stalls" a lot you're still screwed. On top of that, the boss needs to be grounded when you start the RG (by pressing Z), so you can't have him hop into you and then get picked up by RG when it starts. There's a very specific timeframe and ****ing it up means death.
  
  Undoubtedly it's a wonderful skill. Too bad Evies take longer to gain SP than Lann and Fiona by a mile. Probably Karok too, I just don't have enough Karok experience/knowledge to say that with certainty.
  
  Evie only seems overpowered when you don't play her in endgame raids. She does have advantages over other classes and there are things she's good at, but all classes have advantages and things they're good at, except I guess some of the lesser used subclasses (scythe Evies, sword Lanns, sword Fionas), but the more commonly used variants perform well and I would even go so far as to say that Hammer Fiona is probably the best overall class in the whole game. Defense stacked Lanns are good now, but I get the feeling they won't last. There'll come a time where people will start to get ****ed up regardless of whether or not they have 10K defense. It already happens in Hero mode, from what I've heard. I wouldn't know, I've never had that kind of defense.
  

  Quote from Invertex;672855:

  Spear Lann > Hammer Fiona = Staff Evie

  
  Hammer Fiona spin2win does more damage than Staff Evie MA spamming by a noteworthy amount assuming equivalent high end gear. But yeah, I'd say a defense stacked Spear Lann has a pretty big advantage on even her and definitely comes out at a clear #1.
  

  Quote from Invertex;672855:

  The main reason she was "OP" prior to the recent raids was that she could very easily stay outside of a boss' range and maintain the high DPS of Magic Arrow spam.

  
  MA has awful range and might as well be a melee attack. I'd say the main reason was that, in places like Ahglan and a few other bosses around that time, she could ice spear/blind arrow when everyone else was forced to back away. This is no longer the case, as you can stand in the face of most bosses (like Colru) and blast away without having all that much to worry about. I mean, yes, he can hit you, but he's kind of slow and his moves are (usually) pretty predictable. On top of that, he seems to have a fairly narrow range relative to his enormous size and hitbox.
  
  Practice will sort out most problems on the newer bosses. On Ahglan, however... when he starts spinning, you don't have much of a choice.
• Invertex wrote on 2011-11-27 05:22

  Quote from RebeccaBlack;672857:

  There'll come a time where people will start to get ****ed up regardless of whether or not they have 10K defense. It already happens in Hero mode, from what I've heard. I wouldn't know, I've never had that kind of defense.

  
  
  8.5k Def, I still take 1k+ damage from Boat 7 Hero mobs.
  
  However, Hammer Fiona suffers from that too. Her attacks are way too slow to fit in between moves. You saw I was having trouble even putting in a LR with Swords against Hero Irukul with 38 Attack Speed. Hammer only can maintain the high DPS "spin2win" as long as she can tank hits (same as Lann) and activate Slashing High (she has no super armor normally). Without that, she's reduced to only having the survivability.
  
  What this extreme will probably do is...
  1. Make Karoks really viable
  2. Make Evie/Fiona pairs really viable (Fiona turtles, Evie attacks)
  3. Completely screw over Lann
• foreignreign wrote on 2011-11-27 05:31

  Quote from Invertex;672855:

  Staff is barely in the top 3 in terms of raw DPS on a punching bag. It's something like Spear Lann > Hammer Fiona = Staff Evie. So she's still in the top half (I recall that she's tied with Hammer Fiona). The main reason she was "OP" prior to the recent raids was that she could very easily stay outside of a boss' range and maintain the high DPS of Magic Arrow spam.
  
  ...
  
  I think the main problem is, Staff Evie becomes a lot "weaker" when we start reaching the extremes and enter "endgame". Since an "endgame" Hammer Fiona will have 10k+ Def and 14k+ Attack, an "endgame" Spear Lann will have similar stats. An endgame Evie can only match the abusrd attack numbers, but not the defence, so she loses the "survivability" edge of things and sacrifices that for party support.

  
  
  I'm going to disagree here.
  
  What currently makes staff Evie (and to a much lesser extent, scythe Evie) so OP is numbers.
  
  Sick 8 staff Evies against Colru. Give them all trans. They will have it stunlocked for the entire 2 minutes of their trans so long as they all have at least the tier 1 Fatigue skill maxed due to Reverse Gravity chaining. And since high levels of trans gives thousands of ATT/MATT, as long as each Evie has at least a dual rA enchanted +7 weapon, they'll be doing damage just fine as is (and possibly be hitting the cap against a hard raid boss anyway, barring Lionotus).
  
  Colru isn't going to be alive for longer than 5 minutes after that kind of punishment.
  
  You *can* do this with spear Lanns, however, you're going to need to make sure everyone has much higher ATT to do this compared to RG-locking. It's also less safe since Colru might be able to get attacks out between knockbacks if not enough damage is being dealt.
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2011-11-27 05:34

  Quote from Invertex;672861:

  8.5k Def, I still take 1k+ damage from Boat 7 Hero mobs.
  
  However, Hammer Fiona suffers from that too. Her attacks are way too slow to fit in between moves. You saw I was having trouble even putting in a LR with Swords against Hero Irukul with 38 Attack Speed. Hammer only can maintain the high DPS "spin2win" as long as she can tank hits (same as Lann) and activate Slashing High (she has no super armor normally). Without that, she's reduced to only having the survivability.
  
  What this extreme will probably do is...
  1. Make Karoks really viable
  2. Make Evie/Fiona pairs really viable (Fiona turtles, Evie attacks)
  3. Completely screw over Lann

  
  There are some places where Fiona will suffer. I feel staff Evie excels in Irukul moerso than a lot of other classes because Irukul just can't sit still for half a second. I'm mainly arguing that the current endgame favors Hammer Fiona/def stacked Spear Lann moreso than Evie and her days of advantages are (currently) not around. Then again, it's based on how you determine what's important. Do you consider endgame raids like Colru, Lionotus and Glas important? Or do you consider Hero Mode to be the ultimate challenge and the goal worth striving for? No doubt staff Evie is (imo) the best overall at Hero Mode, but a lot of people only go there rarely at best!
  
  Colru and a lot of others have a looot of downtime. You could probably spin2win until you run out of stamina if he ever decides to attack someone else. I know I can MA spam myself out of stamina.
  

  Quote from foreignreign;672875:

  Colru isn't going to be alive for longer than 5 minutes after that kind of punishment.

  
  Definitely. It wouldn't even take 5 minutes. Hell, I doubt it would take all 2 minutes.
  
  But, it's hard to organize this. lol. It's a nice thought, but unless you travel with a guild of coordinated Evies everywhere this situation probably will not occur in day to day playing as you're relying on a lot of other people to perform well in order for you to perform well.
• foreignreign wrote on 2011-11-27 05:42

  Quote from RebeccaBlack;672879:

  But, it's hard to organize this. lol. It's a nice thought, but unless you travel with a guild of coordinated Evies everywhere this situation probably will not occur in day to day playing as you're relying on a lot of other people to perform well in order for you to perform well.

  
  
  It's pretty simple to do in PUGs as long as said PUGs aren't dumb.
  
  Just go down the list and have SP saved up from mini-golems.
• Invertex wrote on 2011-11-27 05:47

  Quote from foreignreign;672875:

  Snip

  
  
  I'll admit I didn't really think of RG Chaining, mainly as I've never actually seen it happen long enough for a boss to die from it. I know I usually see the boss down for at least 30 seconds with 4-6 Evies in trans, but I've never had it become a "win raid" move.
  
  Outside of RG Chains though, I still think Evie is starting to have some trouble, since she doesn't have invincibility on her "dodges", amber is getting weaker, and she can't (usually) stack defence. There is a 10k Def Scythe Evie running around, but that's an extreme case. Outside of abusing RG to stun lock a boss, it's only use is really giving your entire party free DPS. So I sort of lumped it under party support (with Mana Pistols, Corona, Revive, and Freezing). That or interupting certain moves by the boss.
  
  Also, on this note. Blaster Karok's 4 Bar SP move also causes the boss to stagger, meaning it has potentially the same uses. Also there's the theoretical way to semi-lock the boss via Clashing.
  
  

  Quote from RebeccaBlack;672879:

  Snip

  
  I was mainly arguing the hypothetical situation where 10k Defence isn't going to be enough to do the current spin2win tactics that most people use. If there was some (mildly) important content like that, then we'd have some pretty serious problems (with how most people play). It's also easier to MA spam yourself out of stamina versus spinning as you still have to start the combo, and Hammer spinning is relatively slow (9 Stam first swing, 26 for each after. About 8 swings for me).
  
  ---
  As a random side note. I still don't feel like a full Evie party is very viable in most places anyways. I don't think 2 Evies in Gray would work very well...
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2011-11-27 05:51

  Quote from foreignreign;672885:

  It's pretty simple to do in PUGs as long as said PUGs aren't dumb.
  
  Just go down the list and have SP saved up from mini-golems.

  
  It's easier said than done. Someone doesn't RG just once and the whole thing gets messed up. Someone always manages to mess it up and it never fully recovers.
• foreignreign wrote on 2011-11-27 06:04

  Quote from RebeccaBlack;672900:

  It's easier said than done. Someone doesn't RG just once and the whole thing gets messed up. Someone always manages to mess it up and it never fully recovers.

  
  
  Well RG locking is kind of forgiving in this scenario since 8 Evies is actually kind of overkill in the SP department when it comes to chaining. Unless two people constantly overlap, someone should have enough SP saved up for an emergency RG. And even if Colru breaks out, the best he'll do is knock out some Mana Shields until he gets lifted again.
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2011-11-27 06:09

  Quote from foreignreign;672920:

  Well RG locking is kind of forgiving in this scenario since 8 Evies is actually kind of overkill in the SP department when it comes to chaining. Unless two people constantly overlap, someone should have enough SP saved up for an emergency RG. And even if Colru breaks out, the best he'll do is knock out some Mana Shields until he gets lifted again.

  
  The largest number of Evies I've ever seen in a Colru group was 6, and we did manage to mess it up somehow. A couple people didn't RG, for some reason, and then the order was questionable and a few people RGed at the same time.
  
  It's one of those things that should be easy to work out, but just isn't.