“Hello There:” A Take on Kanna's Ether Pulse

Pilzspiel

Ether Pulse:
Tap the skill key along with an arrow key to teleport in that direction. Any enemies between your start and end path will be damaged with a chance to stun. Teleport to a random spot by tapping the skill key without any direction keys.
Mana Cost: 5

Ether Pulse has been a problematic skill for quite a long time. It’s a unique skill in that no other skill in the game has the same capability to randomly displace or “blink” you, with no cooldown/penalty, in the gross majority of skill-enabled maps. It comes at effectively a cost of 0 mana as you regenerate mana faster than subsequent uses of Ether Pulse can consume it. Since the blink portion of the skill continuously displaces a character it bypasses the attack limit set on most skills in Maplestory. All of these qualities lumped together allow Ether Pulse’s blink to be used without end as long as the character using it doesn’t encounter something that would forcibly stop the usage of skills.

From early on in Reboot’s history Ether Pulse’s blink has been exploited due to the relative freedom the skill has. It more or less allowed a player to afk farm on a Kanna provided their Blackhearted Curse was strong enough to kill the mobs in question. It also facilitated botting among players who make use of scripts or keyboard-native macros. Some players also employ a method of using a 2nd Kanna to maintain Kishin Shoukan so that the farming Kanna only has to be concerned with blinking. Singapore and Malaysia mobs had and have extremely low HP values so farming in this manner was generally restricted to maps in these areas; mob HP in other areas of Maplestory far-outscale the damage capability of blink+Blackhearted Curse for the average and even lategame player. A Kanna could eventually become strong enough to the point where farming with just blink+Blackhearted Curse would be viable, however, it would most likely not be very worthwhile at that stage of the game (note: this doesn’t mean the capability isn’t problematic).

Moving on to early 2018 players discovered that the AltGr function using certain keyboard locales allowed for the input of 2 keys with the input of 1. It also happened to be the case that Ether Pulse’s blink could be used simultaneously with Kanna’s skill Shikigami Haunting: Calls forth a terrifying ghost to attack enemies in front of you. Does not consume Mana. Mapping Ether Pulse and Shikigami haunting to Alt and Ctrl combined with changing keyboard locale (Spanish is the most popular) allows a Kanna to simultaneously blink and use Shikigami haunting by pressing 1 key (side note: Sticky Keys allows for similar functionality). Factoring in boost nodes for Shikigami Haunting the damage gating of farming with Ether Pulse in higher level maps no longer exists. This method of farming is known as “Spanish Farming,” “Spanish Keyboard,” “Spanishing,” among other names. Spanish Keyboard allows a relatively weak Kanna to earn meso rates far above normal capabilities due to the intersection of skill functionality and ability to bypass certain limits that exist in Maplestory.

The ability to Spanish Keyboard further facilitates botting/scripting as previously described and creates a very large grey area in which players who choose to farm this way can operate. Some players Spanish Keyboard out of convenience since holding down 1 key is a pretty simple way to accrue meso and keeps them from burning out. Some players do it because it’s the easiest way to progress. Some players do it because the capabilities of Spanish Keyboarding allow a player to pay little to no attention to the game and do other things while a keyweight does the farming for them. Regardless of where a player might be within this grey area, or maybe they’re outright cheating, Spanish Keyboarding has also lead to massive overpopulation of viable farming maps available to players.

Efficiency in Global Maplestory is largely dependent on having monster spawn rate and count boosted by Kishin Shoukan or Frenzy Totem. With the release of more areas gated by player level, more players have invested time and effort in getting their Kanna or Kishin mules to an equally high level. Even with the upgrade in Reboot's amount of channels from 20 to 30, several farming maps in Arcana remain highly contested and are nearly always full. Spanish Keyboarding has only exacerbated this issue. The ease of Spanish Keyboarding has allowed some players to farm on their main account and Kishin mule account simultaneously. Often, these players make use of keyweights while sparing minimal attention for Kishin Shoukan or rune curses. If you’ll indulge a little bit of hyperbole: progress shouldn’t be as simple or cheap as the act of holding down a single key. Ether Pulse’s blink is not conducive to healthy gameplay and needs some sort of tune down or compensation in gameplay limitation. Seeing someone’s Kanna that died while Spanish Keyboarding continuing to Ether Pulse blink + Shikigami Haunting in town shouldn’t be a daily occurence.

Potential Solutions:
(These suggestions are targeted at tuning down the blink function of ether pulse, not the directional teleport)

1. Ether Pulse receives a debuff after use of its blink function that acts as a cooldown before the next use becomes available. This prevents the random teleporting aspect of it from being used without end. The Blink node is an example of something that already exists in this state.

2. Ether Pulse remains a 0 cooldown skill but receives a debuff with a stacking mana cost when using its blink function. Discourages/disables sole reliance on blink for farming.


3. Mob maps become blink disabled. This is a rather extreme choice, the converse of having Ether Pulse blink only usable in town is a lighter solution. Luminous’ Flash Blink is an example of this.

4. Complete removal of Ether Pulse blink. Unreasonable.

ForeverAsleep

This post. 100%. Personally, option #3 in suggested solutions seems the most practical seeing as a similar form of this already exists within the game.

I've mained Kanna for 3 years now and seeing the community's view of the class change over the course of this period of time has been absolutely horrendous. Ultimately, the class's toolkit has remained largely the same due to two features of Reboot server culture - the need for Kishin Shoukan to be efficient, and player desire for high and lazy meso farming rates.

While there are other issues that should also be addressed when it comes to Kanna (the need for an increase in personal damage not reliant on short minute-long buffs, nerfing to overpowered supportive capabilities in bossing, a fix to the "two-pc meta", and more), Ether Pulse's random displacement is currently one of the most problematic.

Nearly every day, I see Kannas running scripts and Ether Pulse-Shikigami Haunting attacking at towns and mob-filled maps in the Arcane River. Multiple friends are active "Spanish farmers", paying minimal attention to farming while making some of the highest rates as they hold down a single button over 90% of the time. Some even manage to farm on two Kannas on separate accounts simultaneously due to the ease of TP farming.

It's disheartening that nearly a fifth of the Level 250 characters in the Reboot server are Kanna class characters. How can one treat the Kanna class as something to main when the class is filled to the brim with:
- countless Kishin mules
- an army of single button random teleporting Kanna farmers, many of which are bots
- underfunded Kannas taken to "endgame" boss runs with the only requirement practically being Level 25-30 Spirit's Domain

Nexon, please address Ether Pulse, Spanish Keyboarding, and Kanna as a whole.