[Discussion - Game Balance] Current skills that needs tweaking?

• Slayerj wrote on 2014-02-04 02:44
  Nearly everything in this game actually needs to be 'rebalanced'. If you 'fix' one, you break another in some way. Almost NONE of the skills were made with others in mind and most just do what other do, better or worse or slightly differently.
  
  Taming animals needs to be completely overhauled in many ways. Why the hell do the mobs/animals you tame just run away when you go down a staircase or outside a room/into one. Are they all that scared of stairs/doors? If so we should really just make all our weapons/shields to look like doors somehow. >:l Instant win. lol
  
  Synthesis. My god. Just..just....it doesn't exist anymore. That's how bad it is.
  Metal conversion and fragmentation are the same in my book.
  
  Most crafting life skills need some major changes to things they can make, grades of items, benefits, materials, ect.
  
  ANY skill that causes displacement. This is a major problem that breaks some skills and makes them nearly unusable for fear of "OH GOD WHERE THE FUCK AM I ACTUALLY STANDING?!" Why is this even a thing? Most of the skills that do this are codded to 'stop you' from moving when they discharge but DO NOT STOP YOU FROM MOVING, creating the displacement. (I don't really know but that's what it seems like.) IS explosions, TH hitting a mob, Shock dealing dmg, Fireball exploding, and a few other skills are all on this deadly list. All seriously need to be fixed but never will at this rate.
  
  Bard skills. Healing SP and MP while buffing your defenses is nice. It's good for rooms when you're running low on mp/sp or in between rooms when you need sp/mp.
  
  [SPOILER="I get a little ranty from this point on, sorry!"]Increasing Melee/Range type DMG and attack speed only? That seems...not so good. You just split up two types of players. Increasing magic/alch charge time..? That's it? Alch already takes like half a second for most of it's skills and get's that chain cylinders for the two multi charge skills, not to mention the buff is like..15-20% or something like that (not counting/counting sing added) Magic likes it a good bit but it's still very little and I don't think they've fixed the magic speed stacking yet. (I dunno, have they?) So it's like the attack speed from the last buff....and nothing else.
  
  Movement speed buff? Hella yes. Just make it so all races, at rank 1, become the same speed and it'll seem more balanced. Everyone still gets a speed up of course, but it smooths out and makes everyone the same, so everyone and their god damn mother doesn't hop on a pet the second an elf does it and speed past them to keep up.
  
  Gathering speed up and % up and crafting % up? That's good. Just make it take a lil less time to work...I mean...what's the fucking point of making it take that long again..? What is this skill doing that's hurting devcat sales in some way, because they must hate this skill or something. Even the fucking speed song that can help you not require a pet to keep up with a party as well doesn't shit all over you for using it by taking more than a second of playing.
  The buffs themselves need to not take so long. Just a the same time as Enduring. No one likes waiting for a buff, no mater how good it is. It's impossible to change people so they'll wait, just change the skill timers.
  
  Encore? PFFF You mean that WASTE of AP? I wouldn't rank that shit if I had 8k spare AP laying around and nothing else to do. Step up your game Encore, do something else besides waste AP. Ensure the best performance and then we'll talk.
  
  Smash cock blocks everything because it does a LOT of dmg...but then again, pummel cock blocks nothing, does a good amount of dmg, and ensures you don't get bitch slapped back/ruin a combo for someone.
  
  IS is the only skill that is justified to cock block anything, and that's because of how it works. If you could just freeze something forever while people beat the shit out of it, there'd be no point to doing anything else other than "It's fun" and that depends on the player. I like a challenge at times, but I also like to troll the hell out of mobs and if IS worked any other way, I would grab a few friends, tell them to get in their undies and use their fists to pound the fuck out of a frozen mob in HM/Elite just for an hour of laughing. To fix this skill so it would no longer cock block BUT not be insanely OP would mean changing it at it's core. (Or just make it hailstorm and hailstorm IS...cus they're the same fucking AP cost and one feels like the 'ADV' while one feels like the 'INT'.)
  [SPOILER="Stupid rant from a stupid fox about stupid magic things :p"]GOING ON A MINI RANT ABOUT THAT. Lightning bolt. Basic bolt spell. It's up to 5 charges, just spreads the hits. Feels basic man. Thunder. INT level spell. It's up to 5 charges, spreads more, and hits more with each charge and rank. Feels INT([S]same[/S]) man. Shockwave (God I hope this isn't the 'adv' spell) is completely different from those two. Thought it doesn't feel 'adv' it's all we have for an 'adv' spell for lightning atm. Firebolt is the same as Fireball, just an AoE. METEOR, despite being the same thing, just adding fire to the ground, feels adv CUS YOU DROP A FUCKING METEOR ON SOMEONE. [S]andthatcooldownandapcost[/S] Ice bolt feels NOTHING like ice spear. But Hailstorm feels JUST like ice bolt just stronger. See my point? I hope so. I'm detracted by 5 people atm :l... Not to mention this was me going off on a rant..ME...ME GOING OFF ON A RANT. That alone should shoot up red flags that this shit isn't going to have a clear point, yet still have a point.[/SPOILER]
  
  Respite and a few Fighter skills need some small/major tweaks.
  
  Stomp should let you get ADV heavy for a second, instant use with a 3 sec cooldown (2 at rank 1). You hit to use it, stomp, no mater what's hitting you, and deal some dmg and stun the mob. Unless you can't stun it, which also is something skills need to be balanced for. I'm all for a mob that can't be stunned, IF IT LOOKS LIKE IT CAN'T BE IN THE FIRST PLACE (Not some small punk of a mob/npc that's smaller/same size at me.) But when a skill almost depends that the mob can't move in the first place, that's when they break things. Pummel can't work on it, Blaze can but you won't get the dmg up, IS either somehow still freezes it or doesn't, shock just gets you bitch slapped, counter just makes you go "Haha- counter bi-OH GOD OW!"...you get the point.
  Hell mob skills need tweaks too!
  Skills aren't the only thing that need re-balancing mind you. Plenty of the games content needs to be rebalanced...and then add more to it that's already balanced with current content.[/SPOILER]
• Windyxflower wrote on 2014-02-04 03:37
  Meteor Strike - Reduce the cooldown. It's not worth the 30 minute wait for the damage you can do with this.
  
  Thunder, Fireball, and Ice spear - I would like to see these do more damage.
  
  Firebolt - I would like to see a rebalance of this, not a nerf. Just somehow that int greatly affects the damage so people don't just pick up a wand and instantly be amazing at it just by ranking firebolt and magic weapon mastery.
• RandomguyonMN wrote on 2014-02-04 03:54
  Remove timers on skill pages. Make it so puppetry doesn't outclass all other classes.
• EndlessDreams wrote on 2014-02-04 05:37
  Metal Conversion. At least let people make more than one ingot at a time...
• Tropa wrote on 2014-02-04 05:38

  Quote from EndlessDreams;1194449:

  Metal Conversion. At least let people make more than one ingot at a time...

  
  
  I agree so much, same for duping items with synthesis.
• JoseTheFro wrote on 2014-02-04 16:43

  Quote from Blassreiter;1194363:

  Throwing Attack's cooldown should be lowered more. As it stands even with 2 seconds cool down wont even make it OP, but rather closer in comparison to Elf Melee.
  
  I Disagree. While the 7 second cool down does render this skill pretty much useless (for end game). If it had a 2 second cool down that would be insanely strong. Dishing out 8-10k damage every 2 seconds with 99% aim?. I'm not sure how they would go about making this better but not too OP.. Maybe if it required you to aim?
  
  
  Berserk should give a colossal amount of Strength. At least that's my opinion, being hit for full damage should at least allow almost any warrior to OHKO almost anything.
  
  I agree completely with this one. Berserk, as it stands now, is not worth the risk in most situations.
  
  
  Counter Punch should do more damage or at least include enemy damage like other counter skills.
  
  Strongly disagree here. I can dish 8k+ easily with counter punches. The only thing I find frustrating about the skill is how easily it can be interrupted.
  

  
  
  Just my opinions though! :thumb:
• Perfectio wrote on 2014-02-04 17:59
  [UB]Battlefield Overture[/UB] - Quite frankly, this skill needs to be harshly nerfed, if not flat out gutted into unusability. Look at other MMOs or other RPGs and ask yourself, would a 100% uptime 1.3-1.5x global damage modifer that is relatively easy to acquire be considered balanced?. Yet in Mabi we just accept that you can buff yourself by massive amounts with virtually zero risk. Make it give max attack instead of the % modifier. People complain about game difficulty yet ignore what is essentially between a free elemental 3 to elemental 6 depending on how good the Overture is.
  
  Crisis - Not sure where to go on this one. The crowd control it brings is probably too strong, but magic needs it a lot, and alchemy to a lesser extent as well.
  
  Climatic Crash - Too powerful if it hits 3 times. I'd make it so that subsequent hits on the same enemy do half damage, then 25% damage.
  
  Lance Charge: I would cut it's overall power but make its width a lot wider.
  
  Bullet Storm:
  I'd reduce the cooldown and let it get full damage on all targets.
  
  Hailstorm - Raise the splash width to 250 at 1-2 charges, 300 at 3-4, and 350 at 5 charges.
• Darkboy132 wrote on 2014-02-04 18:59
  Control Marionette
  -FIX THE GOD DAMN COOLDOWN GLITCH!
  
  Pierrot/Colossus Marionette
  -Needs to get more defensive stats. My character has like 2x of their defensive stats and they're pretty fragile against elite, lord, or abyss mobs.
  -Needs to be unsummonable when KOed. I'm helpless to watch my beloved marionette die and that tears my heart apart.
  
  Transformation Mastery
  -Needs to let us use Icebolt, Firebolt, and Lightning Bolt.
  
  Charge
  -Needs less minimal range at higher ranks.
  
  Final Hit
  -The non-dual wielding part should be infinite slash rather than just instantly knocking down the enemy and making them invincible.
  
  Support Shot
  -Rebalance training requirements. Past 9, I have to not knock down an enemy SEVERAL THOUSAND TIMES PER RANK?!
  
  Rest, First Aid Campfire, Cooking, Evasion, Mana Shield, and Meditation
  -Uncap. UNCAP!!
  
  Musical Knowledge and Composing
  -GIVE ME MY MASTER TITLE!!!!!!
  
  Mana Shield:
  -Needs to reconsider defensive stats.
  
  Respite
  -Needs to heal A LOT more.
  
  Tumble
  -Needs invincibility frames.
  
  Grapple Shot
  -Needs moar range.
• Perfectio wrote on 2014-02-04 19:08
  Mana Shield does not need to be touched. It's actually in a perfect state right now, great for mages, mediocre for non mages.
• Slayerj wrote on 2014-02-04 19:13

  Quote from Perfectio;1194572:

  [UB]Battlefield Overture[/UB] - Quite frankly, this skill needs to be harshly nerfed, if not flat out gutted into unusability. Look at other MMOs or other RPGs and ask yourself, would a 100% uptime 1.3-1.5x global damage modifer that is relatively easy to acquire be considered balanced?. Yet in Mabi we just accept that you can buff yourself by massive amounts with virtually zero risk. Make it give max attack instead of the % modifier. People complain about game difficulty yet ignore what is essentially between a free elemental 3 to elemental 6 depending on how good the Overture is.
  

  
  It's not global if it doesn't effect magic and alch.
  
  Here's the problem though. There is no use complaining about difficulty in a game like Mabinogi. If a player can max out every skill and raise their stats to insane levels due to it, then there is no way in hell to balance the game completely, let alone all of the skills or the difficulty.
  
  You will either...
  1. Find something difficult to you for a while but finally out power/skill it.
  2. Blaze through content that's supposed to be new and hard because you're already really strong and still growing.
  3. Hit a brick wall of mobs that are far too buffed HP/DMG/DEF/PROT wise and get frustrated.
  
  Take a Ghast for example. Is a ghast hard? Yes. Is it really hard though? No. A ghast is only hard because of it's HP, defense, protection, and it's massive damage. But that's not really why it's hard. It's hard because it has ADV heavy and spawns in groups with multi agro. If it was multi agro and could be knocked back? It'd be 50x easier to deal with and Peaca Int wouldn't even be considered hard by anyone (Hell I bet some people right now don't find that place hard at all). It's not real difficulty, it's just, "Let's buff the hell out of this thing so it's a brick wall with nukes for fists."
  
  On the subject of battlefield, the only reason that battlefield is really broken is due to sing. Before hand, battlefield meant someone could be a really good bard for the party while slightly buffing themselves. Now with sing, you can get a near max amount for it's %s, and get the full dmg up on your weapon at the same time. While it makes bard more hybrid friendly, only requiring you to rank one more skill to get better buffs and keep your other weapon slot open for something other than a mic or an instrument, it still makes the skill very broken.
  
  Onto more things that need to be rebalanced. Pets have made this game broken as hell too. The first pets to have summon effects did MINOR dmg, but offered stun to help the playing get out of a bad situation. Still not something that should have been aloud, at least not as it is now, but it's far too late to change that. Now AoE summon pets do a number of things from heal and completely halt most mobs, deal a large amount of dmg with stun, or with stun and a debuff.
  
  I would like to see that hailstorm buff. It's splash is really lacking, seeing as good dmg and splash is all it has going for it. I'd rather just let my friend 3-5 charge IS and let that kill everything in the time it takes to get 2 shots of hail off. Because at least IS can splash decently far. lol
  
  I'd agree with lance charge, if the training for it was changed and the AP cost was slightly lowered.
  
  Puppets need a reworking. Maybe so that 50-60% of your dmg goes to them and not 70%. They're already strong from the start, and while they still need your help, a slight nerf could help balance them effectively.
  
  Throwing attack should be anywhere from 3-4 second cooldown.
  
  Range skills need a reworking. Range has the power and distance to be extremely good, but missing screws it up/makes it what it is and semi balances it. But at the same time, other things you'd think you'd have to aim like guns and alch and even gold throwing don't need to be aimed at all.
• Tropa wrote on 2014-02-04 19:14

  Quote from Perfectio;1194595:

  Mana Shield does not need to be touched. It's actually in a perfect state right now, great for mages, mediocre for non mages.

  
  
  This, honestly I've forgotten it even exists, need mana for my damage and I have enough defense to tank lord mobs.
• SlurpTASTY wrote on 2014-02-04 19:32
  As it stands now range is the only skill that acts as a pandora's box if you will, as soon as you hit a monster it can be good or bad but you really don't know until you hit the monster. On one hand you might be able to spam magnum and hit the particular monster 5 times in a row at 10%, on the other hand you may aim to 100% multiple times and miss every shot. The problem is the second scenario happens way too much for it to be acceptable. Someone who mains range is shooting literally thousands of arrows a day, even just 5% of 1000 is 50 shots missed (for a squishy elf like me, that is 50 life or death situations depending on how laggy I am).
  
  For that reason range is one of the worst skillsets on mabi in terms of design, we have the potential to out-dps every skillset by far, but it is not a guarantee. I can and have missed 10+ magnums in a row at 90%+, I have missed crash shot at 100%, etc. Range does not fit in a game like mabi where every single other skillset gives you a guarantee at hitting stuff. There is not a single skill for range that guarantees you will actually hit the enemy for damage (spidershot/elven magic missile doesn't count), they need to change that.
  
  Of course, asking devcat to rework an entire skillset seems silly, so the best way to remedy this is to simply give us a skill that increases effective range OR increased aimspeed when using bows (hitting stuff you can't even see on your screen may be a little bit OP if every archer has access to it). Ever use a bow with effective range 15+? It remedies basically all the problems I've outlined due to the drastically increased aimspeed to the point where missing doesn't happen enough for it to be a real issue.
• Xeno wrote on 2014-02-04 20:32
  Blaze
  This skills is just insanely OP right now. I don't think you should be able to literally 1 shot any group of enemies in the game regardless of crit or non-crit. Sure, you need a puppeteer to set it up properly, but it just feels WAY too strong and it isn't fun AT ALL for groups who play with a Blaze tactic. You literally just stand there and let the puppeteer/blazer 1 shot everything in 3 seconds. Out of all the imbalances in the game right now, I find this one by far the most problematic and obvious. There should not be a skill or skill combo that literally renders everyone else useless AND one shots everything.
• Perfectio wrote on 2014-02-04 20:35
  I think Range should hit 100% because missing is retarded, but the problem is that they gave range absurd DPS to balance the fact that it misses, as well as a secondary skillset that meshes perfectly both statswise and utility-wise. So what should rangers give up to have the ability to hit 100% of the time?
  
  Pretty much, either Crash or Magnum would have to see nerfs, or the dex -> max scaling would have to be hit. But range in its current form without the threat of missing would wholly invalidate every other talent - range WITH the ability to miss has come close to invalidating every other talent in the past.
  
  

  Blaze
  This skills is just insanely OP right now. I don't think you should be able to literally 1 shot any group of enemies in the game regardless of crit or non-crit. Sure, you need a puppeteer to set it up properly, but it just feels WAY too strong and it isn't fun AT ALL for groups who play with a Blaze tactic. You literally just stand there and let the puppeteer/blazer 1 shot everything in 3 seconds. Out of all the imbalances in the game right now, I find this one by far the most problematic and obvious. There should not be a skill or skill combo that literally renders everyone else useless AND one shots everything.

  
  
  Blaze is a horribly designed skill, yes, but if you nerf Blaze you have to buff the rest of the magic skillset because it's not fair to be the worst or second worst talent in the game for 4 generations or so, finally get some buffs to where it's a strong skillset (though still a bit behind range and lance melee) and then get its best skill nerfed again while the physical skillsets remain untouched. It does also have drawbacks (easy to interrupt, requires good latency, etc)
  
  But if you had to nerf Blaze:
  
  Blaze damage reduced by 50%
  Hailstorm Coefficient increased from 3.2 to 4.0 as well as splash radius increase
  Meteor Strike cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 10 minutes
  Ice Spear Coefficient increased from 1.4 to 2.0
  Fireball MATK Coefficient increased from 15.0 to 20.0
  Firebolt MATK Coefficient increased from 0.5 to 1.0
  Enchant MATK increased by 4x
• Tropa wrote on 2014-02-04 20:40

  Quote from Xeno;1194622:

  Blaze
  This skills is just insanely OP right now. I don't think you should be able to literally 1 shot any group of enemies in the game regardless of crit or non-crit. Sure, you need a puppeteer to set it up properly, but it just feels WAY too strong and it isn't fun AT ALL for groups who play with a Blaze tactic. You literally just stand there and let the puppeteer/blazer 1 shot everything in 3 seconds. Out of all the imbalances in the game right now, I find this one by far the most problematic and obvious. There should not be a skill or skill combo that literally renders everyone else useless AND one shots everything.

  
  
  Agreed, but I don't want the "nerf" to be like the previous one, I just want something balanced.