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Check out the v.255 - The Dark Ride: Ride or DIe Patch Notes
here!
What a mess of things the recent "balance" changes happened to Bishop caused.
~ Directly, reduce the recharge time for Divine Punishment and increase the max charge hold back to 8. This skill feels so much better with feeling like it is always available.
If Bishop was my only main, I probably just quit this game as a result of all this and see if any loves come to Bishop in the future. For now, I will just depressingly play my Bishop until some absolutely insane improvements come Bishop's way that fully embraces her support side, and only because I am not a single main player.
Moving on, re-focusing Bishop (and bring her up significantly) as a super healer and protector would be the best move rather than revert the atomic bomb of party buffs removals and nerfs. This would make up for Bishop's incredibly low damage with very strong defensive and utility skills for herself and her party member.
A lot of skill reworks are involved with this as well, but not in what the skill does and rather how you use the skill. This includes overhauling Decent Holy Fountain and Holy Fountain, including completely removing the unnecessary restriction of can only have one fountain in play at a time, and bringing Decent skills back to their original purpose of being weaker self-only versions of the real party skill version.
What an awful mechanic to introduce where multi-Bishop parties can screw each other over with Holy Fountain placement and non-Bishops can screw over the Bishop with Decent Holy Fountain placement. Absolute trash of a system and you should be ashamed of yourselves for even implementing this in the first place.
Re-Focused Skill Direction for Bishop:
All of this is to update Bishop into modern MapleStory and allow her skills to be proactive rather than reactive, creating a much more pleasant experience for the Bishop player (and for everyone can be healed by Holy Fountain).
Heal:
Reworked:
Deal damage to Undead Monsters. Apply a healing buff on yourself and party members for 15 seconds [increased further with Buff Duration] to heal for 10% HP every second.
Cooldown is removed completely; every cast of Heal deals damage to Undead Monsters and refreshes Heal's healing buff.
Heal gains Hyper Passives, replaces Holy Magic Shell Hyper Passives (more on this below):
1: Heal can now damage all monsters.
2: Heal heals for +5% HP more every second.
3: Heal lasts for +5 seconds longer.
Holy Magic Shell:
Improved:
Heal yourself and party members for 100% HP and apply a protective buff for 15 seconds [increased further with Buff Duration] to ignore all incoming damage and reduce damage that deals % HP by 15%.
Cooldown: 90 seconds; no longer has an on-target applied cooldown.
Now defends against an infinite number of hits as long as the duration lasts.
Dispel:
Reworked:
Cleanse all abnormal status effects on yourself and party members, then apply a buff that causes yourself and party members to be immune to abnormal status effects for 10 seconds [increased further with Buff Duration]
Cooldown: 90 seconds.
Holy Water:
Reworked:
Apply a buff to yourself for 20 seconds [increased further with Buff Duration] to increase healing done from your skills by 30% for yourself and party members, and allow your healing skills to ignore all anti-healing mechanics for party members.
Cooldown: 120 seconds.
Holy Fountain:
Reworked:
Place down a stationary fountain for 60 seconds that heals yourself and party members while near the fountain for 10% HP every second.
Cooldown: 60 seconds
All weird placement rules for multi-fountains is removed entirely.
Bishop as the caster cannot place Decent Holy Fountain if Holy Fountain is summoned; Holy Fountain replaces her own Decent Holy Fountain.
Decent Holy Fountain:
Reworked:
Place down a stationary fountain for 60 seconds that heals yourself only while near the fountain for 10% HP every second.
Cooldown: 180 seconds at rank 1; 60 seconds at rank 30.
I see Decent Skills as being an effect that is about roughly half the power of the real thing and only applies to the caster. This way you don't need any weird gimmicky and very unnecessary rules around the skill to make it "work".
In this case it appears as the same power as Holy Fountain, but only applies to the caster. It actually works at half power since Bishop has other healing skills to go alongside Holy Fountain and in this case Decent Holy Fountain and Holy Fountain would be able to stack and combined would equate to doubling Decent Holy Fountain's power when in a party with a Bishop - like how Sharp Eyes is roughly double the power of Decent Sharp Eyes.
This Holy Fountain change is a lot better for the game as it allows all players of any skill level to be able to be healed by Holy Fountain and it gives full control for party healing back to the Bishop where it should belong. Current Holy Fountain and Holy Water can heal for a lot, but only for the knowledge-able AND skilled, which defeats the purpose of a healer-protector which is to help keep those alive that are not good enough to keep themselves alive.
If you are good enough of a player already to know to use current Holy Fountain well, then you are good enough of a player to never need a Bishop's utility to boss in the first place and rely solely on Power Elixirs and managing your potion cooldown.
Ultimate solution: Supports needs to be brought up significantly and new ones are needed to create a very wide and deep pool of supports.
This will make it where players are not just looking for one class to party with since if there is only one option then that is the only option they can go with, and the solution is not to keep nerfing a class when it needs to be buffed up significantly as well.
Supports can allow for new refreshing and exciting bossing experiences since their utility will create a different experience with that same boss fight, and this can only occur when supports are both brought up to be very strong and there is a ton of them. And a ton of them create more variety for differing player playstyles so that it is easier to party up with any support and be happy with what is in the party because they are all brought up to a proper supportive power level.
Comments
It is probably a better direction for supports to have strong defense and/or utility skills for the party over damage giving buffs, this allows players to get through boss fights that are not good enough otherwise (unless they burst the boss to ignore all of the boss' mechanics).
They can also ensure any (or most) parties can clear any boss this way while still fulfilling the support fantasy of being the most useful and impactful member of the party without needing to deal raw damage output for this. And it makes party bossing more exciting with classes that can drastically alter your experience with that boss, bosses become stagnant faster if the experience is always the same (which would occur if everyone was just a damage dealer with no supports).
It is really being bottom damage and being worthless in parties, something needs to be brought up since things are extremely imbalanced with this "balance" update.