So, we got a few changes... and not only do they not fix the problems the class has, but they kinda end up making it worse in most ways. I'll be using >s to separate each point.
>100% boss damage to the caster added to Domain does not compensate for 18% FD being removed from solo kit for endgame players. At 540% combined boss% and damage%, the player loses more damage than they had before this patch, which impacts regular server players even more since they have access to Bonus Potentials and higher tiers of familiars.
On top of that, the skill still needs to be charged in party play, using their main burst skill, and the Kanna can't burst at the same time as other classes without losing a ton of damage (which the buff to Vanquisher's Charm damage only exacerbates the difference between having it and not having it for party burst). This process can also still be interrupted (stuns) or can be forced to be canceled (if you have to teleport to dodge to avoid dying, you lose charge and thus party damage).
The skill (Spirit's Domain) also still doesn't use the normal damage formula and doesn't benefit from critical hits or normal/boss damage%.
>Shikigami Haunting is still a three-input skill, which causes very fast attack limiting when attacking in place/during party burst (since you can't use Vanquisher's Charm for reasons mentioned above). Trinity treatment/turning it into a single input skill that does 12 lines instead of 3x4 would help. If it still interacts the way it does/allows Tengu Strike to animation cancel every now and again, that would be nice. Otherwise, if Tengu Strike weaving/cancelling (mostly requiring Filter Keys as a windows setting/third party program) can’t be fixed this way with Shikigami Haunting being turned into a single input skill, adjust numbers to compensate for the technique no longer being possible.
More damage on the skill in general would be nice, because it's very weak during training and struggles to kill enemies in Hotel Arcus and Odium despite being close to Sacred Power requirements and being in full damage gear, with normal monster damage via links/hyper stats/legion.
>Vanquisher's Charm has a ten second keydown time, in 2023. Shortening this a bit and increasing damage/attack interval would be appreciated so it's easier to fit in when future bosses are unable to be bound by anything except for Origin 6th job skills.
>The class suffers from a general lack of base stats in the first place, which is what the old final damage node values used to pad over. Kanna has no passive final damage, IED, boss damage, and very little critical rate from 1st-4th job, and none of its skills deal additional normal monster damage, making it very weak to train and very expensive to fund, which is doubly exacerbated by the fact that Haku's weapon does not benefit from IED, Damage, or Boss Damage lines (only benefiting from Magic ATT, INT, or All Stat).
>Yuki-Onna and barriers both still have issues with taking multiple inputs/casts to properly cast. (Server side issue?). Barriers are also heavily position dependent on random Mana Veins (not being able to place the veins manually, having server and client desync between when they actually disappear so it looks like it eats a vein to place a small barrier when the vein vanished a few seconds ago). Suggestion would be to further limit the number of active barriers to either 1 or 2, but make it so that the Kanna/caster benefits from the barrier's effects from anywhere on the same map, similar to Blaze Wizard's placeable buff.
>Oni Lord Legion still requires charging, and charge time does not count during its uptime. Effectively turns the skill into a 3 minute+however long it's active cooldown skill, de-syncing it from the rest of Kanna's kit and from party cycles. Recommendation would just be to scrap the charge requirement entirely, since it feels incredibly jarring and annoying to manage.
>Oni Lord Legion’s damage is very, very poor for a 5th job skill and lasts an abnormally long time relative to similar skill among other classes (Soul Eclipse, Infinity Blade, Abyssal Lightning, etc.) Unsure what the skill identity is supposed to be, developer notes would be appreciated.
If the skill is meant to be a burst skill, recommended to heavily decrease the attack interval (existing time is 5 seconds, maybe to 2.5-3 seconds), decrease the skill duration (existing 60 seconds future to 40-45 seconds, and maybe increase the number of repeats on skill manual activation/ending time for some burst damage, since the class still mainly only relies on Vanquisher’s Charm with Sakuno’s Blessing active for burst damage.
>Liberated Spirit Circle still has no visual indicator to when it’s prepared and forces the character to not attack if they aren’t on top of the boss to avoid wasting the skill, on top of doing significantly less damage to smaller enemies.
Recommended to add a toggle to allow the player to manually cast the skill, and either shorten attack interval, increase damage%, or slow the skill down while in contact with enemies/give it a maximum attack count.
>Current state of Kanna’s 5th job skills are very poor for total damage contribution as Enhancement Cores when 6th Job comes out, and make the class a very poor choice to invest in. As is, the class as a whole is in a very poor state and will only be even worse in the future if it doesn't receive changes to both its total solo damage output and its overall damage profile on its 5th job skills, seeing as with the current iteration, Liberated Spirit Circle is the only 5th job skill that does more than 2-3% of your character's full damage rotation.
The class's existing support kit with this patch's changes does not warrant the low damage output it currently does, especially comparing it to existing "support" classes (Bishop, Dawn Warrior, Battle Mage, Blaze Wizard, or many other classes with much higher damage output that have some party support/debuffs on the side) when the main feature of its kit that retains some relevancy (Pandemonium's 15 second bind) is slated to become irrelevant in future content with non-Origin bind immunity.
More posts with pre/post-patch damage comparisons may be added after tomorrow's patch finishes and there's been time to compile them.
and 4 others.
Comments
Editing this so it doesn't look like a bot. This post is true and real.
Editing so it doesn't look like a bot. This post is real and true.
I feel like I'm wasting my time playing this class as it gets absolutely trashed by the community and now we also get trashed by devs/changes.
After getting nerfed to the ground and staying literally in dead last place in damage charts for a year, more changes come and we get hopeful, just to be slammed down even further into the ground.
I don't understand how anyone can think 100% boss damage is a usefull compensation buff to our damage when its one of the most common stats you can get with all the systems in the game, legion, item sets, familiars, etc.
The only thing my main had going for it was being able to buff everyone a lot, making it able to join bosses like hard seren even tho my own damage sucked.
Now there's less reasons people want kannas in their party AND our solo damage will be EVEN WORSE.
This class suffers from low critical rate, low Ignore enemy defense, low final damage, etc. etc. and unless we can kill bosses by boring them to death because of our good survivability, we won't be viable as a class with these changes at all.
I'm still trying to progress the dev's feedback vs the changes: 'we decided to focus on kanna's damage rather than the party support ability' but in reality, the trade of final damage to boss damage is SEVERE if you're not a kanna mule (especially when you consider how final damage scales).
The result of these changes is just nerfing both support and damage of kannas. If your wish was to get the weak kanna mains kicked out of parties due to lack of damage nor a buffing support, You're on the right track.
If you're in a party with classes that gives a dmg% or boss% buff, you really lost fd here.
It also forces any kanna's with boss% on their main weapon to pay to recube it back to m.atk%. Since you get so much boss% from domain anyway it's a worthless line. Same goes for boss% on your inner ability, you have to reroll it to attack speed or cd skip now.
Also how did they change vanq, and not see its ridiculous 70s cooldown as an issue? It's not even 60s since the cooldown doesn't start until you release the key. And since it's not a 1min cooldown, it desyncs from domain, and you can literally only use it twice every 3 minutes.
You use it to charge domain for 5s or so with these changes, you have to wait 25s until you can use sakuno's blessing/sengoku forces, wait 35s so vanq comes back, use it for 10s with sakuno's blesisng fully stacked 35 seconds afte you used it. It's now been 75s into domains 196s cooldown.
If you wait another 60s and try to use vanq for 10s, domain now has 51s left until it comes back, vanq has 60s, you don't want to delay domain by 10s solo or in a party, so you just have to not use that 3rd vanq!
Either reduce its cooldown to 50s, or make the cooldown start ticking down when you press the key, not when you release it if you're gonna try and make it a main damage skill please.
Not to mention the issue laid out there that kanna's burst still takes 65 seconds to set up. Which is unusable in bosses like CSlime and Kalos with very tight burst windows. Not only do you have to plan your burst way in advance so sakuno's blessing is stacked by the time it happens, you have to use vanq to charge domain before the burst happens, so you can't use this important main damage skill during your burst, in these 2 most burst reliant bosses in the game.
Kanna was too ''overpowered'' as a support <- this is invalid just because of the one fact that bishop exists.
'we decided to focus on kanna's damage rather than the party support ability'
So now kanna has the worst damage in the game as well as the worst support
Heck, are these dev's even playing the same game we're playing?
If what I previously stated was the goal, then the decrease to the final damage provided to the party by domain should have been accompanied by an increase to Kanna's individual final damage by an amount that is larger than the reduction. For example, reducing Kanna's domain contribution by 18% could have been accompanied by having Kanna gain 50% individually, resulting in a (1.65 / 1.33) * 100% = 24% increase in her damage while using domain. I don't know the amount of increase that would be justified, as I'm not aware of the specific goal with balancing the class, but something like that would make more sense than what was presented.
Another potential change for domain, and one that the Kanna community have been advocating for for some time, is to have domain scale with int similar to how bishop's benediction scales with int. In addition to buffing Kanna's damage, this would reduce the effectiveness of unfunded Kanna mules (it's ridiculous that completely unfunded characters are more valuable than appropriately funded characters of other classes).
Other issues with Kanna include, but aren't limited to:
People have invested thousands of hours and dollars into their Kannas, yet they do significantly less damage and provide less utility than other classes with each patch. I unironically believe that at this point Kannas should be offered job changes in a similar manner to how Jetts were offered them (ideally not adventurer locked, but I'll take what I can get).
Another buff bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another buff bites the dust (yeah)
Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Kanna buff bites the dust
Nope, Just the sad Kanna in me doesn't know how to use words, because I was in a state of shock.
Now I am back to "its just another day in Kanna hell".
I get that Nexon was trying to nerf supports and thats fine but those "supporting" class got their Final Damage tack on their own class passive.
Vanquisher charm change was literally a margin of error negligible numbers.
Kanna’s existence in Maplestory has been tumultuous to say the least. The latest balance changes once again reflect a lack of experience and proper testing protocols needed in the team responsible for these balance patches. Whatever data and testing methods that are being used seem in sufficient or out of date. The slow response to issues the class has faced over the years have stigmatized the class in the eyes of many.
Nexon's Intent vs. Reality:
"We have designed Kanna to excel at various fields that can serve various roles, but as we adjust overpowered spec, Kanna’s characteristic became vague and the overall power level became low. In order to solve this, we decided to focus on Kanna’s damage rather than the party support ability."
While Nexon's goal seems to be to shift Kanna to a primary damage dealer rather than support, the recent changes have not achieved this objective and leave Kanna in a state where she is not a good at either.
Skill Concerns and Suggestions:
I’ll be going over many if not most of Kanna’s skills below. While I have 7 years of experience playing the class I do not claim to be a master and there are certainly better and stronger players out there. The following is just my own opinion.
• Geomancy/Blossom Barrier/Bellflower Barrier: Mana Veins' have inconsistent spawning makes any increased reliance on them problematic, especially during mobile boss battles. Fortified barriers appear larger visually do not have a matching hitbox. Teleporting to veins and barriers will occasionally break in boss maps after patches. There is also no way to dispel a barrier once placed.
• Haku:
◦ Haku's Blessing has seen many changes since it first was implemented. It provides the largest amount of flat magic attack in the game, over 300 for end game Kannas. This isn’t necessarily a good thing as it disproportional affects mages. IF the intent to lower Kanna’s support abilities, changing this to be a 20/40 atk and matk buff would be better.
◦ Breath of the Unseen is very underwhelming since it’s full 30% final damage boost require the player to be in a party of 6. Removing that requirement and adding back the IED the skill had originally would be of great value.
◦ Personally I'd like to see Haku's fan become a true secondary, giving players the full stats and potentials. This gives Kanna a lot of it's missing base stats the class is missing from passives. Be able to roll IED or Boss lines on the potential could help a lot of players from having to roll extremely expensive 3 line matk.
• Shikigami Charm: Not as consistent as other classes upjumps due forced height, backwards push and cooldown. Reworking it to match other classes upjumps would be good.
• Radiant Peacock: Should be a passives
• Soul Bomb: Needs an entire rework or replacement. This skill has never been useful.
• Tengu Strike: This might be a controversial and selfish opinion but I feel the animation canceling effect should be removed. Fix Haunting so it is rapid and smooth, bump it's numbers if needed. For other skills; speed up the animations or don't lock the player into them. I don’t think ‘weaving’ as we call it and the reliance on things like sticky keys, filter keys, adjusting key repeat timings and 3rd party programs, is good for the class or players.
• Kishin Shoukan: The cooldown and duration could be adjusted for a better experience and remove Night Ghost Guide’s ability to increase this skills duration.
• Shikigami Doppelganger: Has lost a lot of it's impact from early post revamp due to bug fixes and the boost node nerf. Without just getting a damage boost I think having the damage be spread out over the entire animation would help since sometimes it will activate when you are out of position and even though the animation might be still happening, moving in range of an enemy won’t cause them to take damage.
• Yosuzume: Increase damage, lines or number of charms spawned to match the standard set by Assassin’s Mark because at the moment this skill lacks the damage to help farm and doesn’t contribute enough in bossing.
• Binding Tempest/Veritable Pandemonium: Dual binds are has been useful but with Erda Nova’s availability, newer late game bosses being immune to normal binds and all 6th Job Origin skills being true binds, the overlap is becoming a pain point.
• Nine-Tailed Fury: Not sure why this is a 180 second cooldown skill with a 150 second buff. Making the buff a passive and shortening the cd back so it can be used in mobbing might make better sense. Supposedly the mana usage was an issue.
• Orochi Unbound: The knockback resistance and floating abilities have been supplanted by the more versatile Blink Node. The attacks essentially pulse every second for up to 6 seconds rather than being continuous damage which means the damage ends up being too low. Being a keydown skill that locks you in place leaves the player too vulnerable.
• Falling Sakura: Reconsider how the healing is done and give a visual indicator of the area that is affected. Right now it only affects players between the enemy and the caster.
• Nightghost Guide: The skill has lost it’s place. The chance of bonus EXP is low and it increases the chance that an equip might have a higher starting potential not actual drop rate. The damage is negligible.
• Linking NGG to Kishin was done to limit the effectiveness of the spawn increasing effects Kishin used to have. Without that there isn't really any point and just makes Kishin cumbersome.
• Circle of Suppression: Needs significant rework or replacement. As a hyper skill this should be far more powerful, and long gone are the days of teleport farming in Singapore or Malaysia maps.
• Princess Sakuno's Blessing: A very powerful buff that unfortunately combined with the rest of Kanna's kit, creates one of the worst burst setups in the game. It backloads a large amount of final damage and gives the player a small window to capitalize on it. Far too often something will happen that prevents the player from getting their full burst off.
• Sengoku Forces, Assemble!: Ayame gives 17% crit damage and there is no scenario where a player wouldn’t want that over any of the other buffs. Having it be RNG which appears is not a good design. This skill should allow players to choose which are summoned similar to Loaded Dice or should summon all 4 members since the other 3 are more nice to have buffs.
• Yuki-musume: Was an amazing skill back in 2016 when kanna was a hurricane class and only had 100 mana since it dealt with our main limiting feature: low mana. Now it's mostly used for the healing, though the v244 now requires this skill be active in order to use Vanquisher’s Charm.
• Spirit's Domain: Should have had changes made to it back in 2017, but it has sat untouched until now. Changing from 33% final damage for all members in a party to 15% final damage for the party + 100% boss damage for the caster is not something I think I have ever seen anyone propose. The drop in final damage for the entire party is in no way compensated by adding 100% boss damage for Kanna. The recent reduction in mana cost to reach stage 2 is very welcome but I’m not sure exactly how this is going to work in the players burst rotation.
• Liberated Spirit Circle: Due to it having a moving verticle hitbox and activating automatically after 30 second when using your main attacks, it is an unreliable skill while bosses. Every Kanna could probably recall an instance where Circle missed because they weren’t perfectly positioned under the boss. Interestingly, from what I've seen, Maple-M's version will actually slow on contact with enemies, which would make it far superior to the one we have.
• Great Oni Lord's Legion: This skill lacks focus on whatever direction Nexon is intending for it and as a 5th job skill, it should have a lot of impact, especially because Kanna’s first two skills were utility and support and the third is essentially a passive attack. Instead it’s been an unreliable iframe that requires charging and a farming skill; luckily the recent patch now saves the charge after death. The damage is too low, at 5 second intervals and stretched over an entire minute for it to be an effective bossing skill.
As others have noted, 6th job enhancement cores are going to preform very poorly on Kanna since 3 of our 4 Vskills are low damage support skills. Kanna is going to need serious thought put in to the direction Nexon wants to take the class and how to bring it to a good state. Many of these complaints we have had for years, though they often got brushed aside for various reasons. I am concerned that changes like these happen because Nexon's balance team does not have a reliable and repeatable way to test balance patches at various points in a theoretical players progression.
I'll apologize now because I've surely made some mistakes or missed things. But this should give a general idea on things.
dealing proper damage in bosses as their burst is hard to time with other party members.
"Well we took off 18% here and give 100% there, this is 82% gain for Kanna! We f--king genius!"