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Check out the v.255 - The Dark Ride: Ride or DIe Patch Notes
here!
Make Supports Powerful: Illium
This is a continuation post to both make supports powerful and truly meaningful to the power levels they should be at, but also bring up a lot more classes to properly be classified as a support (as well as more new support jobs to be added to the game).
The game is healthy when there are a lot of supports for a deep pool for player playstyle variety and so that when forming party combinations it becomes a lot easier to find a support player. Strong supports will create a scenario where more people are able to boss that either cannot boss because it is too difficult for them or will not boss because the mechanics of the fight is too much for them, without the need to reduce the boss' difficulty for those that still seek a good challenge.
Illium historically and currently is one of the most overlooked jobs in the entire game, I don't know if most players even know he even exists.
Illium has an insane kit for bossing, great mobbing, and decent support, but he kind of just exists and does not really have a place in the game that others cannot both fulfill and do better than him. The other part to low playability is that people just do not gel well with his playstyle, this does not need to change, but we can make him a lot more desirable and exciting for party play which in turn gives more awareness of the job instead of being one of the forgotten.
So we are going to ramp up his support ability and give him even more tools and really give this job his well overdo lovings that he needs!
Support Category: Healer-Protector
Lucent Brands:
System Change:
Party members are now always able to receive Lucent Brands no matter what instead of only during the Resonate Wings skill.
This was a weird condition that both does not need to be here and should have never been here. Let Illium be able to always assist the party and not conditionally assist the party!
Crystal Skill - Wings of Glory:
Modified:
While Illium is flying, all party members in the same map will also gain flight.
This would be both a very fun and exciting ability that sets Illium apart from all other jobs while being an unique support ability. All party members gain the same full movement speed flight that Illium receives and able to freely use most of their skills (things like jumping skills would be disabled in this state) while having the very strong movement state of being able to fly around!
This would need to be accompanied by a right-click to cancel buff mechanic for party members so that allies have a way to cancel the flight effect early if so desired.
Crystal Skill - Resonance:
Reworked and Buffed:
Toggle: Consume MP per second to create a beam of light between Illium and the Elder Crystal, healing for 20% HP per second and granting a stack of Lucent Brand for himself and struck party members.
To be clear, this no longer has a cooldown nor is linked to Crystal Charge in any way, shape, or form. This is simply an always on-demand toggle allowing Illium to always be able to heal party members at the cost of consuming MP every second while active.
Longinus Spear:
Modified:
In addition to what it already does, will now apply a buff to struck party members for 5 seconds allowing healing done from Crystal Skill - Resonance to ignore all anti-healing, does not apply to self.
Crystalline Bulwark:
Buffed:
Cooldown reduced to 90 seconds from 180 seconds.
Maybe if we cut the party invincibility skill's cooldown in half would be enough to make Illium finally desirable.
Crystalline Spirit:
Modified:
When party members are near a Crystalline Spirit, they take 5% less damage, including from attacks that deal % HP damage, up to 10% less damage when standing near two Crystalline Spirits.
Crystal Gate:
Modified and Slightly Adjusted:
Party members can now use the gates too to teleport between them.
Recharge time to use the gate again is applied to the character itself rather than to the gate itself.
Just a little bit of added cool utility Illium can provide. The gate usage cooldown being applied to the character rather than to the gate is both to prevent grief scenario, but most importantly to not decrease the play experience on the Illium player to what they are used to currently.
Comments
I have played with Illium before, this alone would make me instantly black list all Illiums. It's annoying enough to deal with the random floating from Lara, changing the way my character moves seemingly randomly is just going to make me never want to play with your class.
The other suggestions were good.
It was more like, give Illium something special that makes them standout that is not Benediction reskinned and makes sense for Illium - Bishop Benediction, Lynn Awaken, Kanna Domain, etc...
Otherwise it would be you are always happy to see an Illium, but never have a reason to go out of your way to search for an Illium in your party. Unless the party iframe becomes strong enough that it has that effect, kind of like how Paladin iframe is a key factor for Paladin (though, Paladin needs to be boosted up massively, not the long iframe, but everything else for party utility).
Flight really is the strongest mechanic you can have for bossing, but it would probably need a right-click to cancel buff mechanic too for party members. Right-click to cancel among the top right corner where the active buffs are.
Or just see if his party iframe with half the cooldown would create that exciting moment to why you want an Illium in the party.
Lara needs her areas way bigger and able to always have 100% uptime on the Manifestation skills. Both the increased range of movement of flight and constant access would help fix the Lara problem, the wind manifestation not always being active is where the problem is at because it can come up at any time which throws you off.
And for Lara no cooldown Manifestation skills allows for all 3 skills to be activated with a single active skill and it will just be based on what elemental dragon vein you are activating - exactly like how Absorb / Summon skills work.
(I really want them to do my River Manifestation rework where Lara can give herself and party members a 4-direction dash [double-tap directional key to use while in the area]. This would massively help her out for solo bossing and give her something special for party bossing in combination of flight - imagine upward dash into flight, or for flash jump classes can now have a dash to quickly dodge boss attacks, for Blaze Wizard + Lara combo, Blaze Wizard would finally be able to reposition while in the air.)
Making Lara's wind skill 100% of the time would help with the reliability but some classes need to use up + jump to activate their up jump, some classes also need to hold up to activate alternate versions of skills, if they happen to jump while they are holding up, even if they do not hold jump, Lara's skill can make them float which messes up their movement.
Fix this issue to where the game actually checks if jump is being held or not and I think you fix this problem with the skill. This does delay the float time slightly but honestly I don't think many players like or know about this feature of the skill so I'm not sure if you would actually be losing anything.
The same could be applied to Illium where you must hold up + jump for 0.5s before you start flying which might still be prone to accidents but it would at least be more reliable and less chaotic than forcing people to instantly start flying.
This has the same problem as Illium's float, it changes the way your character movement works. A lot of players do micromovements by double tapping their arrows keys, this would make them dash and die instead. One solution to all of these problems might be a new skill in the basic tab which could be customized to enable/disable movement skills from other classes. Similar to the way that Phantom has a skill which allows him to select which stolen skills he wants to use, this could pop up a UI with a list of all the support movement skills and allow you to disable the ones you do not wish to receive.
Lara's flight should just be hold jump to fly, release jump to stop flying. Nice and simple.
You would have a visible blue background for a river manifestation rework so the party would know if they are able to dash pretty clearly. With everything being 100% uptime would help the party members to plan things out, the Lara user can also tell them how the skills work too and they can practice with it in the boss lobby area.
Especially if they make Lara's flight work with hold jump only, can use the flight to stop the dash instantly in case of accidental usage.
I guess that would be the best to do if they give Illium party flight too (just hold jump to fly while the ability to fly is available), but I thought it be cool where you could fly and attack at the same time to make it a real moment of power aspect - so maybe >party members only< gain like 50% true damage reduction while flying as well to make up disabling of flash jump skills and the like.
Granted Illium if they just buffed all of his current party utility and added a little extra might not need an extra big moment utility if the party iframe becomes desirable enough as is. Just want to give him something big and exciting so players would want him in the party rather than just be happy to have a support in the party.
Delay be clunky and feel bad to use.
Pre-lobby manifestation skill warmup should be good for players to get used to it before entering the boss fight, and with no cooldown to the manifestation skills, this makes it easy to do. The awareness of what the skills do beforehand and how they function I feel should be good enough.
Also, Lynn can murder the party if she so chooses to...
We are getting the buff organization quality of life feature soon that organizes party buffs together too. This can help lead to more fun party skills in the future with easy access to cancel certain buffs (since it would be easier to find said buff).
I am not about to ask them to change the way they play just so I can continue to play the way I want to play. You should see why this is a problem.
If you can choose to ignore certain skills entirely then neither player has to change what they're doing and those who wish to take advantage of the utility are given that option. Everybody wins and nobody has to deal with something they don't want to.
Same problem still exists here, I would rather just not change the way my character moves at all even if I don't gain damage reduction. Give me the ability to ignore the utility while letting other players use it if they want. Otherwise it's onto the blacklist the character goes.
I agree, but right now it's very easy to accidentally activate on certain classes.
That is a deliberate choice (assuming Lynn didn't press it by mistake) so it's a bit different but is still a problem I would agree.
You could put a small iframe or damage reduction here to prevent Lynn from doing that. About half a second is more than enough time for players to realize what happened and adjust to their new location. For regular groups it's not a problem but there is high potential for abuse in PUGs (And I have seen it abused)
Asking players to use their mouse to cancel certain buffs mid-fight is a bit too much for me, I think giving them the option before the fight to opt-out of these skills entirely is the better option.
I don't like how Holy Fountain works at all.
Bishop should have changes to have better usability for the user and for the party, allow Bishop to be in full control of the utility.
~ Heal: Reworked into a 15 seconds applied buff to self and the party that heals for 10% HP per second. Duration increases with buff duration. Cooldown is removed entirely, every cast deals damage to undead monsters (if you wanted to kill ghosts and skeletons with heal spam like the good old days), new hyper passive added to allow heal to attack any monster and not only undead monsters (replaces Holy Magic Shell hyper passives).
~ Holy Fountain: Reworked into a healing summon, heals for 10% HP every second to self and party members standing hear the fountain. Duration increases with minion duration (it already can increase in duration now).
~ And then you have Angel Ray which has the 10% HP heal to self and party members per attack.
~ Holy Magic Shell: Adjusted to be infinite blocks (blocks really only work against Lucid's bombs) and true damage reduction and entirely durational based. Duration increases with buff duration. No longer has an applied on-target cooldown. Heal increased to 100% HP so Bishop still has a full heal skill. 90 seconds cooldown.
~ Holy Water: Full Rework to be a buff that grants increased healing power (like 30% increased healing or something) for Bishop's healing skills towards self and party members and allows Bishop's healing skills to ignore all anti-healing mechanics against party members only (so this won't counter Holy Blood's anti-heal, consequently makes Bishop have to try hard during Verus Hilla). 15 seconds duration, increased further with buff duration, 90 seconds cooldown.
~ Dispel: Reworked to be a proactive buff of dispelling all abnormal status on self and party members as it does now, then applying a buff granting abnormal status immunity for 10 seconds, increased further with buff duration. Cooldown of 90 seconds.
(This makes it more distinct from Lynn's dispel buff as well, just make Lynn's skills increase further with buff duration + all focus skills are self applied always, barrier needs to be reverted to exactly how Cat Tree worked (30 seconds CD, 10 seconds duration, 40% true damage reduction, and healing per second), but with prevent death instead of dealing damage to monsters, prevent death needs a lingering buff duration to make it actually do its job and not be useless, and over-healing needs to ignore anti-healing mechanics for Lynn's healing skills while the over-healing buff persists [it should work for every boss fight]. Focus heal, party heal, and dispel working with buff duration allows the possibility of more than 100% uptime, which Lynn's kit really was designed around with this idea in mind [over-heal does nothing without her healing buffs being currently active, dispel can only activate 5 times per cast].)
If Holy Fountain was just a healing summon it would be infinitely more useful and not be another thing people need to do alongside dealing with all of their skills and boss mechanics. Plus having to actively use the Holy Fountain and Holy Water at that point you are better off just using a potion, less effort to do that.
These changes makes it where Bishop is still an active healer, but can do a lot more than only spam heal unlike back in old maple where it was spam heal and make sure you always had enough MP to stay alive and spam heal (not fun or engaging gameplay). Being in full control over your utility properly fulfills the role of a healer-protector and really allows Bishop (and other supports) to keep the party alive for the long fight.
Boss fights are too complex and hard for reactive utility anymore, everything needs to be proactive to properly work out for Modern MapleStory.
I guess there could be a feature in the Options Menu that disables all movement altering skills from party members.
This has a risk of both grieving the one that enabled the feature to disable party movement and the entire party for skills like what Lynn has. Lynn teleports everyone during Seren test except the one guy that has movement disabled and wipes the party. Self grief when someone disables the feature that really should not have and actually needs the extra help.
Granted the better way of doing things might be a new beginner toggle that disables key usage for movement altering skills if key inputs are required, then you can place it on your keyboard to turn it on or off whenever you want. This feature, when the toggle is turned on, would only disable things that require holding jumping or double tapping a directional key to dash or pressing up to use a party skill teleporter from Mechanic or if they turn Illium's gates into teleporters, but not affect Lynn's teleports.
I guess a beginner skill opt-in and opt-out could work. Default state would be all party skills always work on everyone and you have to actively turn off this type of usage.