This is a continuation post to help give ideas for not only creating a game with a lot more powerful supports, but having a lot more supports and different support types to really enable more types of jobs to shine.
Placing a spotlight on certain jobs directly and indirectly by creating more support variety will allow certain jobs that currently are either mediocre or are not doing very well to do very well when paired with a certain support, and vice-versa.
Ice/Lightning Mage:
Category: Disruptor
The main goal here is really make ice/lightning stand out among the three explorer mages, where you have Fire/Poison Mage as the superior damage dealer and Bishop as the true, traditional support with healing, protection, and buffs.
If Ice/Lightning Mage was just another damage dealer, then whatever does more damage between Fire/Poison Mage and Ice/Lightning Mage will be the desired choice and has constant balance chasing. If we move Ice/Lightning Mage into a true support role, that is vastly different to what Bishop can offer, then they can be desired without the need to constantly balance chase and give them a real reason to potentially be wanted over Bishop or Fire/Poison Mage.
This will make it where all three explorer mages have a purpose and finally give a reason to why there are three explorer mages, instead of the current situation of two explorer mages plus that one other explorer mage. Because right now, Ice/Lightning Mage's only draw is that they are easy to play and if you like the visuals of their skills.
The disruptor part to this is that ice/lightning mage will really accel at crowd controlling the boss, with things like slows, stuns, and even adding in a new effect that prevents the boss from using certain skills that cause them to dash, teleport, vanish, etc.
Chilling Step:
Reworked:
Toggle: Upon using the teleport skill, have a 100% chance to freeze the ground for 10 seconds, all enemies on the freezing ground will be slowed by 40%, including boss monsters.
Self and party members on the freezing ground will move 100% faster, this can exceed the speed cap.
Frost Ward:
Reworked:
Deal damage to up to 12 monsters and apply the Inhibiting Frost debuff for 10 seconds.
Inhibiting Frost will slow Normal Monsters by 99% and cause Boss Monsters to be unable to use certain skills that will cause them to dash, teleport, or vanish in anyway.
The same Boss Monster can only be affected by this once every 45 seconds.
Cooldown: 60 seconds.
Teleport Mastery:
Reworked:
Toggle: Upon using teleport, create a large electric explosion at the new location, dealing damage to up to 8 monsters and stunning them for 2 seconds, including boss monsters, the same monster can be stunned once every 10 seconds.
Electric Explosion Cooldown: 2 seconds.
Chain Lightning:
Addition:
Monsters that are currently stunned and struck by Chain Lightning will have their stun duration extended by +0.1 second, includes boss monsters, up to +1 second.
Frozen Orb:
Modified:
While Chilling Step is active, Frozen Orb will freeze the ground below it as it travels for 10 seconds.
Elquines:
Modified:
While Chilling Step is active, Elquines will freeze the ground when it attacks for 10 seconds.
Lightning Orb:
Addition:
Monsters that are currently stunned and struck by Lightning Orb will have their stun duration extended by +0.25 second, including boss monsters, up to +3 seconds.
Absolute Zero Aura:
Adjusted:
Toggle: Self and party members under the effect take 10% less damage, including from attacks that deal % HP; instead of taking 20% less damage and not reducing damage from attacks that deal % HP.
Monsters under the effect now additionally have the slowing effect by Chilling Step's frozen ground increased by 50% [60% slow instead of 40%].
Ice Age:
Modified:
While Chilling Step is active, Ice Age now also freezes the ground for 15 seconds.
Bolt Barrage:
Addition:
Monsters that are currently stunned and struck by Bolt Barrage will have their stun duration extended by +2 seconds, including boss monsters, up to +2 seconds.
Spirit of Snow:
Modified:
While Chilling Step is active, monsters that are slowed by frozen ground and struck by Spirit of Snow will have their action and projectile speeds decreased by 50% for 2 seconds, including boss monsters.
Battle Mage:
Category: Buffer-Protector
Something I want to see is when a job is able to heal the party, be able to actually heal the party on their own, rather than in the current state of the healing skill basically does not even exist. The degree of healing will still vary among every healer, but every healer needs to be buffed up massively so that they can properly solo heal and not feel like you have to have a Bishop or Lynn (these two should still be the best at healing however) in order to have a real healer, giving players actual options for party composition.
The main role for Battle Mage will be as a buffer with strong healing and dispelling on the side and very strong tools to keep the party from dying.
The buffing power for Battle Mage will be moved, in the ideal hopes of, allowing weaker parties to boss better or able to defeat a boss in time that they otherwise would not have had the ability to otherwise. This is keeping in mind of trying to make Battle Mage worse in the "final damage stacking bind and burst" gameplay and do a better job at helping out struggle party bossing. This can be done, but it will be hard to do and involves a lot of trial and error to get it into a good spot.
Aura Scythe:
Modified:
New* Passive: While any aura is active, all other auras are also active at 25% effectiveness. While Aura Scythe is active, all auras are active at 100% effectiveness.
Hasty Aura:
Heavily Changed and Improved:
Passive: Battle Mage gains Speed +40, max Speed +20, Jump +20, and +3 Attack Speed.
Toggle: Only party members gain +12 Speed and max Speed. Self and party members increase their total movement speed by +20% per second, up to 100%, this can exceed the character's max Speed.
[25% effectiveness would be: +3 Speed and max Speed for party members, and self and party members increased speed by +5%, up to +25%.]
Passively I combined the current passive and aura effect together for Battle Mage always gains the full benefits.
The toggle I changed to something to be not only way more useful for modern MapleStory since giving attack speed as a party buff is not very valuable these days, but make it way more fun and exciting with the ability to more than double everyone's movement speed! This creates just a fun aspect of giving the entire party zoomies, but also help out the less mobile characters to more easily dodge boss patterns with the faster movement speed.
Dark Chain:
Modified:
Now can pull in boss monsters slightly; instead of boss monsters being completely immune.
(Note: Boss monsters that cannot move, like Gloom, still cannot be moved by this.)
Draining Aura:
Changed and Buffed:
Passive: Battle Mage heals for 5% HP every 4 seconds.
Toggle: Self and party members heal for 5% HP per 0.5 second.
[25% effectiveness would be 1.25% HP per 0.5 second.]
This is so much simpler, the current aura is overly complicated for what does basically the same thing.
Blue Aura:
Reworked:
Passive: Battle Mage gains 50 abnormal status resistance, 50 elemental resistance, and takes 40% less damage.
Toggle: Self and party members take 10% less damage, including attacks that deal % HP damage, and reduces the duration of all abnormal status effects by 100% every 5 seconds.
[25% effectiveness would be take 2.5% less damage, cleanse reduces the duration by 25%.]
[Example: If a party member received a 2 seconds stun, 25% effectiveness will reduce the stun time by -0.5 second. 100% reduction is just a dispel effect and removes all abnormal status effects on you and party members.]
Hyper Passive: Blue Aura - Dispel Magic:
Buffed and Changed Slightly:
Now makes the cleanse all abnormal status effects happen every 3 seconds, instead of every 5 seconds.
This skill is in desperate need for a modern MapleStory update. Now it reduces damage taken from all attacks and always dispels abnormal status effects, making it way more useful and desirable to use.
Dark Aura:
Buffed:
Toggle: +20% Damage for self and party members.
[25% effectiveness is 5% Damage.]
Hyper Passive: Dark Aura - Boss Rush:
Buffed:
Adds on +8% Boss Damage for self and party members.
[25% effectiveness is 2% Boss Damage.]
[It is currently very weak and non-existent power. It would be cool if this had a cool effect to it, but I cannot think of a good and fun effect for Dark Aura.]
Weakening Aura:
Reworked:
Toggle: Applies a stack of Weakening on nearby monsters every 15 seconds, up to 40 stacks, for 30 seconds. The very first stack of Weakening is applied immediately.
Monsters with at least 1 stack of Weakening will have their dark elemental resistance reduced by -10% and all other elemental resistances by -5%.
In addition, monsters take 1% increased Final Damage from party members per stack of Weakening, up to 40% Final Damage.
[25% effectiveness would be -2.5% dark elemental resistance, -1.25% all other elemental resistance, and +0.25% Final Damage per stack, up to 10% Final Damage.]
Hyper Passive: Weakening Aura - [Renamed]
Reworked:
Stacks of Weakening applies every 10 seconds, but the maximum stacks is decreased to 20.
This is so that it works better with the Aura Scythe improvement of having all the auras always active, and to get full power of an aura either Aura Scythe needs to be active or you need to have that aura be the currently active aura.
The other aspect to this is making it possible for long boss fight parties to be able to kill bosses that normally would be impossible while ensuring Battle Mage is not being picked for bind and burst gameplay.
Party Shield:
Buffed Significantly:
Create a barrier for 30 seconds that protects self and party members inside, reducing the damage they take by 40%, including from attacks that deal % HP damage.
Cooldown: 120 seconds.
Hyper Passive: Party Shield - Cooldown Modifier:
Replaces Cooldown Cutter:
Decrease the cooldown to 40 seconds and decrease the duration to 10 seconds.
Hyper Passive: Party Shield - Persist:
Reworked:
Party Shield now applies and re-applies as a 5 seconds buff for self and party members that make contact.
