EDIT CLARIFICATION: I just wanted to make clear that this was intended to be an extremely vague concept of the direction to take Phantom in. It is important to retain key gameplay feel to his current abilities, while at the same time enhancing it in such a way that makes it more smooth and fluid to play without taking away how Phantom currently plays.
Very broad summary of what I like to see out of a Phantom Full Rework:
~ Retains the customization aspect of making your own skill kit in some forming utilizing the 15 explorers in some way.
~ Retains and further emphasize Phantom as a support job, meaning his support side is a lot stronger and truly meaningful and impactful. This goes with making supports strong where they should be at for a healthy game for the long term.
~ Phantom gains his own identity and his skills on only his, rather than being a melting pot of a bunch of random explorer skills like a Frankenstein project. This with keeping in mind of retaining the ability to customize Phantom utilizing the 15 explorers in some form.
Phantom is cool and I like the idea of his customization of skills and be the only true support that is a part of the thief job-branch.
With that said, I do think he is kind of a mess right now and needs a significant overhaul to clean him up and allow his ability kit to be his own and about his own skills.
Below I will present a concept kit (that will be very hard to properly showcase and explain my ideas for Phantom) to give some fresh ideas for the developer team go with a direction for Phantom.
A big thing to it would be instead of Phantom able to directly steal skills from explorers, he will instead utilize the essence of the 15 explorers to customize and modify the skills of his kit, this means the skill to steal skills directly is removed and he will be offered the essence of the explorers immediately and always available.
Phantom Rework Concept:
Job 0:
Heart of the Explorers:
Use this skill to open up a window to assign what Primary Essence to assign to your Essence Skills, creating how the skill operates based on the selected Essence.
Job 1:
Essence of Warrior:
Do an attack forward with Phantom's cane that attacks up to 8 monsters.
[Essence of Hero:] Phantom's cane mimics a quick sword attack. {Fastest and weakest attack, shortest range.}
[Essence of Paladin:] Phantom's cane mimics a heavy hammer attack slamming down. {Slowest and strongest attack, most vertical range.}
[Essence of Dark Knight:] Phantom's cane mimics a thrusting spear attack forward. {Moderate attacking speed, worst vertical range and longest horizontal reach.}
Flash Jump:
Jump up to two additional times horizontally or one additional time vertically if you jump while holding the up directional key.
Job 2:
Essence of Thief:
A movement type skill.
[Essence of Shadower:] Teleport a set distance in one of four directions and be placed into Dark Sight state for up to 3 seconds afterwards. Can teleport in mid air and teleport if there is no platform to teleport to.
[Essence of Night Lord:] Dash backwards a short distance while throwing out a giant card with a picture of a shuriken on it forward, dealing damage to up to 10 monsters.
[Essence of Dual Blade:] Dash forwards a long distance, dealing damage to up to 10 monsters that you pass through.
Job 3:
Essence of Pirate:
Summon a card for 30 seconds that attacks monsters. Use the skill again to unsummon the card.
Cooldown: 30 seconds.
[Essence of Corsair:] The card acts like a battleship that moves quickly that Phantom and party members can ride in, regenerating a shield for those inside by 5% HP shield per second, up to 50% HP shield. The card is constantly firing a short ranged cannonball forward, dealing damage to up to 6 monsters.
Party members use their up directional key when near the card to enter the card battleship and the down directional key to exit the card battleship.
[Essence of Buccaneer:] The card acts like a flying sea serpent that Phantom and party members ride on granting him the power of flight while active. Party members gain 10% Final Damage while riding the card sea serpent. Passing through monsters with the card sea serpent deals damage.
Party members use their up directional key when near the card to enter the card sea serpent and the down directional key to exit the card sea serpent.
[Essence of Cannoneer:] The card acts like a cannon that fires long distance cannonballs, dealing damage to struck monsters. While holding down the skill key upon initial placement, use the up and down directional keys to set the card cannon's firing angle.
If Phantom or party members use the up directional key while near the card cannon, then they enter it to get launched along its trajectory.
Job 4:
Essence of Archer:
Phantom uses his cane like a bow and cards like arrows to form attacks.
[Essence of Bowmaster:] Phantom rapidly fires cards forward, dealing damage to 1 monster, prioritizing the monster with the highest HP.
[Essence of Marksman:] Phantom fires a single powerful card forward, dealing damage to 1 monster and then splintering off into multiple cards to deal half the damage to up to 6 monsters.
[Essence of Pathfinder:] Phantom alternates between firing off 3 different relic cards forward, 1 at a time, dealing damage to up to 3 monsters.
Red relic card heals self and party members for 15% HP.
Yellow relic card slows struck monsters by 50% for 2 seconds, including boss monsters.
Blue relic card reduces struck monster defense by 40% for 30 seconds.
Essence of Magician:
Toggle: Create an aura of magic around you, draining MP per second while active.
[Essence of Bishop:] Heal yourself and nearby party members for 15% HP per second.
[Essence of Fire/Poison Magician:] Inflict fire damage to nearby monsters every second and allow Phantom's healing abilities to ignore all anti-healing effects for yourself and nearby members.
Every 5 seconds, create poison gases that linger for 15 seconds, dealing damage per second to struck monsters and reducing their healing by 50%.
[Essence of Ice/Lightning Magician:] Slow nearby monsters by 50%, including boss monsters, and self and nearby party members take 10% less damage, including from attacks that deal % HP damage.
Every 15 seconds, create a pulse of lightning, dealing damage to up to 12 monsters and stunning them for 3 seconds, including boss monsters. The same monster can be stunned by this once every 12 seconds.
{For Clarification: slowing effects are multiplicative on each other making it impossible to have 100% slows (which would be a near-bound state). So 50% slow and another 50% slow would be a total of the monster moving 75% slower.}
Hyper Skills:
Passives:
1: Essence of Archer gains +20% Ignore Enemy Defense.
2: Essence of Archer gains +20% Damage.
3: Essence of Archer gains 50% more attacks, but deals -40% less Final Damage. {i.e. Essence of Bowmaster goes from 2 lines to 3 lines, Essence of Marksman goes from 10 lines to 15 lines, etc.}
4: Essence of Warrior hits +2 monsters.
5: Essence of Warrior gains +1 attacks.
6: Essence of Warrior gains +20% Damage.
7: Essence of Magician gains +10% Item Drop Rate while active for self and party members.
8: Essence of Magician gains +10% Mesos Obtain while active for self and party members.
9: Essence of Magician gains 30% increased range.
Actives:
1:
Essence Enhancement:
Use this skill to open up a window allowing you to further enhance Essence Skills with a Secondary Essence.
One Secondary Essence per skill, the same Secondary Essence can be used multiple times.
[Essence of Might:]
~ Essence of Warrior: This skill gains 100% Normal Monster Damage.
~ Essence of Thief: This skill gains 100% Final Damage against Normal Monsters. Essence of Shadower gains invincibility from Normal Monsters for 3 seconds.
~ Essence of Pirate: This skills gains 40% Damage.
~ Essence of Archer: This skill gains 30% Boss Damage.
~ Essence of Magician: This skill deals damage every second to nearby monsters.
[Essence of Intelligence:]
~ Essence of Warrior: Hitting normal monsters creates a chain lightning that bounces to up to 6 monsters. When a monster dies, a fiery explosion is created, dealing damage to up to 6 monsters. Hitting a boss monster will heal nearby self and party members for 10% HP.
~ Essence of Thief: Leaves behind trails of frost that slows monsters by 50%, including boss monsters.
~ Essence of Pirate: A surrounding lightning field is created around the damaging source, making it easier to hit monsters.
~ Essence of Archer: Burn struck monsters for 15 seconds, dealing damage per second.
~ Essence of Magician: An affect is applied causing self and nearby party members to not die if they take lethal damage, this effect can occur once every 300 seconds against the same target.
[Essence of Cunning:]
Essence of Warrior: Now also attacks behind you.
Essence of Thief: Can be used immediately a second time.
Essence of Pirate: Everything moves 50% faster.
Essence of Archer: Every 3 seconds, a shadow will mimic the attack for 1 second.
Essence of Magician: Effect lingers on party members and monsters for 5 seconds.
[Essence of Aim:]
Essence of Warrior: Hits +4 monsters and is 40% larger in size.
Essence of Thief: Moves to the furthest monster in range and range is increased by 30%.
Essence of Pirate: Aim towards the monster with the highest HP. Essence of Buccaneer ignores all touch damage.
Essence of Archer: The skill gains +10% Critical Damage.
Essence of Magician: This skill gains 50% increased range.
[Essence of Luck:]
Essence of Warrior: 10% chance that monsters killed by this skill drops an additional mesos bag.
Essence of Thief: 10% chance using this skill grants invincibility for 2 seconds.
Essence of Pirate: 10% increased Item Drop Rate for self and party members currently using this skill.
Essence of Archer: 25% chance to heal self and party members for 10% HP. 10% chance for Essence of Bowmaster.
Essence of Magician: 10% chance for self and nearby party members to not die if they take lethal damage.
2:
Generic Skill:
Grants 10% Damage for self and Hero jobs for 60 seconds.
Cooldown: 120 seconds.
3:
Essence of Explorer:
Buff self and party members for 180 seconds.
Primary Essence:
[Warrior's Essence:] Take 10% less damage, including attacks that deal % HP damage.
[Magician's Essence:] Heal for 10% HP per second.
[Archer's Essence:] Gain +8% Critical Damage and +20% Critical Strike Chance.
[Thief's Essence:] Increase total movement speed by 50%, exceeds the movement speed limit.
[Pirate's Essence:] 20% chance for attacks to deal 200% Final Damage, 60% chance to deal 100% Final Damage, 19% chance to deal 50% Final Damage, or 1% chance to deal 0% Final Damage.
Secondary Essence:
[Essence of Might:] +30 Weapon and Magic Attack.
[Essence of Intelligence:] +5% HP per second.
[Essence of Cunning:] Increase total movement speed by +25%, exceeds the movement speed limit.
[Essence of Aim:] +4% Critical Damage and +10% Critical Strike Chance.
[Essence of Luck:] +10% increased Item Drop Rate.
Comments
Calling Card: Increase vertical hitbox above and below and reduce the delay in the skill
Skill Swipe/Impeccable Memory: Remove skill slot limit so we cannot "forget" skills. Allow Phantom to steal skills from player's own Legion so players don't need to hunt other players. Job instructors could work.
Rapier Wit: Reduce the skill's delay and change the skill so isn't broken into 2 parts.
Vol D'Ame: Change from an enemy buff remover to a bind that also removes buffs and grants an iframe (doesn't need to hit mob for iframe.)
Mille Augilles: The 6th job ability to use it midair and change its forms should be granted at 4th job.
Card Trick (New Skill:) Upon reaching 5th Job and unlocking Luck of the Draw, allows Phantom to "cheat" and pick a card to always pop up instead of leaving it all to luck for Judgement Draw and finishing the skill Luck of the Draw. If the player rigs Luck of the Draw, they cannot draw the Wild Card.
Ace in the Hole: Change the targeting for the instant attack or add a command to allow the card to explode at Phantom's location instead of going to a nearby enemy in a bad location.
This is what I got so far. Just changing some skills to remove some random elements, having to find specific players and just making early leveling a bit more bearable as well as giving updated utility to an old skill
This is a horrible idea from your own viewpoints. Don't change core identities of classes, if they're going to be changed at all it should be because Nexon's hand was forced due to upkeep of the class being too difficult. (RIP Jett and BT)
I hope they don't do this concept, just the general premise of the concept.
The problem with Phantom now is that they have no identity, but I also tried to showcase something that keeps the same feel of their current actual skills.
They still have a double flash jump, still can have a hurricane attack, can have hard hitting moves, still can have a form of chain lightning, etc.
More options and more fun movement, while emphasizing their customization even better than it is now, is how I see Phantom.
I think it would be way harder to implement short term and way easier to balance long term with a self-contained Phantom ability kit. They do have to get it right and this is something that they can very easily mess up royally on multiple levels.
The problem with Lynn is that they removed all of the fun gameplay, movement, mobbing, and bossing from Beast Tamer while nerfing everything in the kit.
Where is the near-endless free-movement flight on Lynn?
Where is the hurricane skills?
Where is the always available fluid, smooth, and super fun movement that combos into each other nicely?
Where is the tornado go brrr?
Cat Tree was basically stronger than Lynn's entire kit by itself.
They also removed the customization of gameplay that Beast Tamer brought with the 4 animal forms.
Lynn they can fix with buffs and skill changes. Bring up the support skills and implement hawk mode gameplay into Lynn's kit, dash becoming 2 seconds recharge is for fun gameplay and mobbing.
Phantom is currently a support.
Pretty sure Phantom is a 3 minute Hurricane Thief Hero that benefits greatly from Cooldown reductions. Only time he really supports is when he used to HS others is Lionheart Castle, HOH or SDH2 during Party play days or just helping someone else train. Just because he has access to other buffs of other explorers doesn't make him a full support.
Impeccable Memory is designed better as it allows you to try out ALL 15 classes as much as you grow instead of just being limited to mimicking warrior (poorly) until you reach 2nd job. The system grows so you make it to 4th job, you can steal better skills so you get to retire your 3rd stolen job and turn it to a buff instead. Only issue with this concept is only have limited slots and having to "forget" a skill to learn a new one. Even with a all the stolen skills stored securely so we cannot lose them, it still allows players to customize as you are working with THEIR skills instead of making a skill based of that explorer.
My personal take on supports is that there shouldn't be support classes, but all classes have a supportive role. This sounds boring but the supports should come in the form of debuffing the target when attacking it with their main skills or sharing a passive attack boost for being in the same map.
EXAMPLE for Phantom: Binding your target with Vol de ' Ame (an addition to what I posted above,) will not only bind and remove targets and Phantom an iframe, he could suck a large amount of vitality from the boss making them take DOT, dropping defense or increase damage intake from attacks. If they want, they could allow a successful bind to buff Phantom's attack or even his party members. This skill would be turned from just canceling buffs off the few bosses that buff to a multi purpose tool. This will make Phantom an excellent binder as he will also buff your team and cripple the target's movement and defenses. The Iframe utility makes it so Phantom can use this as just an iframe if he uses Erdra Nova and wants to use his bind/buff/de-buff/iframe as just an iframe in other survival/greeding situations.
Pretty sure Luminous players hate that their iframe and bind are the same skill.
The entire pre-100 experience should be slowly introduce skills for modern MapleStory, this prevents the player from being overwhelmed as they learn the class and try to master one skill at a time.
Game is healthy when there are strong supports and clearly defined damage dealers, with hybrids of the two aspects mixed in as the 3rd group.
The problem with trying to make everyone be the same is that players will just play whoever is the best with no standout features and polarizing differences.
Strong supports, and a lot of them, really helps promote the social aspect to MapleStory; otherwise it just comes down to my number is bigger than your number and the only reason to party boss is because that boss is impossible to clear solo. That fun team building aspect really enhances the gameplay experience, and the excitement to see that uber strong support finally in your boss party is a thrill you cannot get any other way than to have jobs standout more apart from each other.
Better plan would be trying to add smaller support kit into existing classes that are known for offensive without redesigning the whole class just to have more support classes. The idea of having support classes will just make them harder to receive actual buffs to their offensive kits. Content such as Liberation and Culvert are purely solo/duo is a pure test of your controll and growth. Having a class be support based would make them hard to compete or survive in solo content. Class buffs and passive should be designed to also benefit party members even if it scaled down for broken skills that give you 30% FD etc. I don't think healing should be a party addition offered by parties because the point of the boss is to get rewarding for mechanics and growth and not just surviving and supporting others. Aside from sharing buffs so everyone is buffing the party, attacks should also debuff the boss so aggressively targeting the boss makes your allies deal more damage to it as well. With larger parties, the amount of people attack will mean more buffs to share and more debuffs stacked on the boss. In terms of distinction, it should just be down to aesthetics and theming and less so their role. Who you handpick for your teams should be down to who you enjoy playing with and if they are good at the class. Pick Bishop because that player is a strong, skilled bishop, not because they are a support class.
Supporting needs a re-focus where it is about healing, defense, and utility and less about giving damage buffs to others.
And if everyone has buffs / debuffs, then this is a pointless situation as it would be better just to not have this and increase everyone's damage instead. If very few characters are buffers, then the buffing aspect is exciting when you find a buffer for that boss party since it is abnormal to your regular play that you got used to.
Even with this concept, it would allow you to be as much of a damage dealer with basically no support skills as you want or go minimum damage with maximum healer and supportive power.
Liberation is not a problem anymore with the introduction to 6th job. Duo play for the last 3 bosses was implemented for supports in the first place.
6th job enabled everyone to be able to solo liberation.
Half the jobs should be supports and the other half be damage dealers.
The supports will enable the damage dealer that normally don't do well to do well, otherwise you will see less than 10 jobs be played and only the top 10 gets to boss. You would have massive gatekeeping without supports, people already gatekeep with supports being as weak as they currently are.
Do you ever PUG? You claim we only have two supports as is and people certainly play more than the top 10 classes. There are the more popular ones sure, but people play a bit of everything.
You have a solution for a problem that just doesn't exist.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo... you don't say? I thought literally 0 people played every other class this whole time, this a great awakening with this insight...
Multiple people main every class, and you know what I meant.
You do realize it is not a problem for people that are currently bossing right?
I rather people actually experience a boss fight than nuke the boss. The nuke the boss option won't be removed, but there being an alternative will help players learn the boss mechanics and get better at bossing. You cannot gain the experience of improving your bossing with ever experiencing the boss fight.
For example, you have more ways to tone back the penalties to Verus Hilla, more people will do long runs for her and learn how to maneuver the attacks, red strings, and cleansing. These are things you never will do if you go in to one burst the entire fight.
The big thing is opening up more alternatives to achieve boss victory, not replacing any current way to boss. Can still solo challenge or nuke the boss fight, but can also party with meaningful supports as that middle ground of challenging yourself while opening up bossing to more people that would not boss otherwise. The training wheels is a necessary part to learning to ride a bike and learning to ride a bike without training wheels.
The easier solution is to make all classes potentially viable without changing the identities of half the classes in the game (especially the ones you are clueless about) to supports. KMS made new bosses with fail conditions such as losing all skulls, getting creation/destructive cursed, burning out the sun meter so there is no more midnight etc. KMS designed these endgame/harder bosses to make players rethink their strategy so they aren't just brute force healing and taking turns bursting but actually have to engage with the boss's numerous mechanics so they don't die out themselves or end the fight for the whole party. We get guides from Kobe and Reddit on how to tackle upcoming KMS bosses and there are some youtubers that take about boss mechanics. Class Discords also show off niche techniques and growth/gameplay advice.
Reality: Something something something, burst numbers go brrr, boss dead.
Also Reality: Cannot go brr to boss? Boss doesn't exist.
Discord groups are a niche of a niche (extremely small percentage of people that play that job which every job in the game is a niche of the total player base by default then you factor in a small % of players in that job actually do bosses in the first place where some jobs the number is even smaller).
And no suggestion has changed how the class plays at all. Phantom here is an exception that still upholds key gameplay aspects to still hold true, or just suggesting to make something more fluid to use like Phantom's teleport.
This type of concept would lead to like over 1,000 different ways to play Phantom, so not entirely sure how a current Phantom main's experience gets ruined here. Different animations, but you can still acquire the same gameplay feel if you set it up the way you like him.
Guides are bad.
1: If you need a guide to know how a boss works, then the boss is designed poorly and needs a rework and/or substantial changes to address the issue(s).
2: Most people will never use a guide regardless. This is something a small fraction of players will ever use.
3: A guide ruins the game by removing discovery for yourself and figuring out how to do things for yourself.
Supports are a way for players to help people boss, while still allowing players to figure things out for themselves and learn by gaining real experience with the game. This opens the player up to making their own story (journey) for the game and really grow and get better at it.
Beast Tamer's Hawk Mode was like bossing on easy mode as the user with the benefit of being a true support like Bishop. This opened me to eventually doing every boss in the game and doing it on multiple other different kinds of jobs, but would not happen without that entry point.
So if supports were able to enable this state for others, then it will open up significantly more people to the world of bossing. Keep in mind, you cannot solo a boss with a support, so if someone wants to ever increase their weekly mesos they would need to break free from the training wheels eventually.
Make a class viable would then require to make substantial gameplay changes to that class without supports. This means that class would then play differently which would ruin the experience of the user and why they enjoyed playing the class in the first place.
Supports being strong allows everyone to be viable without altering the gameplay experience on the user. This is because it does not directly affect the user and leads to an optional choice for the user to make.
This is outside of the scope of quality of life and skill improvements that occur on jobs that need it still.
Do you even lift bro?
Just saying non-sensical words like "PUG" is a whole other problem on its own.
I am not going to ask what is a "PUG" because it is completely irrelevant to begin with, so does not matter what it is. Nor do I care about what it is since it would not change the point and purpose of everything else.
Problems don't exist in a world where you are never aware of the problem in the first place.
If you grow up in a basement always flooded, you will never think that is a problem because that is what you got used to and think flooded basements is the normal standard of living.
A flooded basement is a problem that leads to a whole lot of other problems, just because it is not being acknowledged as a problem does not mean it is not a problem. It is still a problem whether you acknowledge it as one or not.
Lastly, this derailed too much to the main topic and no clue what point you are trying to make, nor if you even know what point you are trying to make.
Skill issue. That is their problem if they don't want to open a guide or join a community to share ideas. Many serious boss parties communicate through Discord for organizing and communicating through the fight. There is nothing wrong with opening a guide and most parties expect you to know the mechanics for harder bosses. A Seren party would rather go with a 5 man fight if their 6th support is going to be a liability tripping on lasers, pillars and Iframing or missing the short pillars when the team has agreed on taking the test. This isn't bad design, this is vetting.
Pretty sure you want half to be support so you can get carried by on as many characters as possible while cowering behind a DPS and giving the illusion of helping them so you can say you bossed on X chars when reality you only spectated. If you didn't actively fight in the boss or deal a signifant chunk of the damage, you shouldn't be considered as a bosser. KMS won't make create more support classes or change classes to be supports just so they can "help."
The fact that you do not know this very common MMO term is concerning.
Problems also don't exist when they simply don't exist.
I am making the point that there is no problem in the first place, you are simply trying to force others to change to meet your own strange vision of the game.
Ironic if you ask me.
This is your insecurities speaking.
What you just said is this:
"Look at how smart I am speaking in if you know, then you know terms."
and
"You are so stupid, loser, everything you say is a mute point."
You got to be careful saying stuff like this because it is only coming from your own insecurities within the world and nothing more than that.
It is irrelevant because this entire premise is not about people who are currently bossing. You saying the specifics about something else is a nothing statement, hence to why I said not to bother with telling what a "PUG" is, because it is on the opposite end to why strong supports are needed in the game.
Supports also just add to the social aspect to what is supposed to be an MMO since the only way to gain their benefits is by interacting with other people.
Again, there is no and was never any changing of the way people play, quite the opposite actually. I am preserving current play patterns while adding in another option that allows for more freedom of fun to be had in several aspects, include the fun of experimenting with various party combinations of what will happen when different supports mix and mingle with themselves and with damage-dealers.
Nothing would be changed to how you like the game currently, this just would open up the game to more players to help it grow for the long term. If you only make the current players happy, then the game will never grow and eventually die out. We need a mix of making the current players happy AND figuring out how to appeal to more players of differing personalities and playstyles.
Leave off with this, this would be a change that needs to be committed to and see years of gameplay to really see the effects of it. Everything is to unpredictable to really know what will happen long term, but a focus on utility and defensive party skills and a de-emphasis on damage buffs would lead to a situation where it helps with bossing, but does not accelerate people doing bosses faster than intended.
Please take a break from the internet if being online is upsetting you this much.