Why are we drastically changing skills in such a way that alienates the class from what players like about the class?

This is the patch that just ruins the game. Skill changes should be improved based on upholding to the class' identity and as well as not trying to make all the classes play the same to each other.

Undo all of these skill changes and rethink things over some more because right now this is the grim reaper of skill changes.

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Some specifics that are truly outrage that ruins the play experience of the class:

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LARA:

Fun points about Lara actually is a combination of the dragon vein gameplay and the fact that you can decide between wanting to attacking with Eruption Skills or Absorption Skills, and then base your build and playstyle around that main decision.

And for Absorption Skills gameplay, maxing our your chance to skip cooldowns and seeing the absorption skills constantly go off is the most satisfying and fun gameplay possible! Removing this is destroying the reason why a lot of Lara players like playing as Lara, and this is not how you do skill changes / improvements!

If Lara needs more damage, then increase her damage, but all of these skill changes need to be reverted.

And the dragon vein system lets the user have control of what summon they want to place where for when they are on hunting maps. What would be nice would be an increase to the Eruption Skills durations.

What Lara needs is something more simple which are improvements to the Manifestation skills and a remake to the River Manifestation Skill.
Do this first and then see if or what Lara needs after.

Summon: Manifestation!:
NEW* Skill: Upon use, causes Lara to summon forth a Manifestation based on what type of Dragon Vein this skill was used on.
Function Change: All Manifestation Skills are now directly passive skill and this new skill will be the only active to summon all three Manifestation skills respectively based on that specific Dragon Vein.

Manifestation: Wind Swing:
Function Change: To take flight, change from needing to hold up and jump to simply needing to hold jump to enter and remain in flight mode within the wind area.
Improvement: Increase the size of the area by at least 100% Horizontally and at least 100% Vertically.
Improvement: Increase the duration of the area to 600 seconds from 30 seconds. (Duration of the buff is unchanged.)
Improvement: Cooldown is removed.

So that this skill can always be relied on as a core movement skill for both herself and providing unique party utility that her party members can properly rely on with a flight area that is always available with a much larger size and very long duration.

Plus the current way to enter flight is way to hard to do, especially for party members that don't play as Lara. So a simple hold jump to enter and remain in flight is the best solution to fix this problem.

Manifestation: Sunlight-Filled Ground:
Improvement: Increase the size of the area by at least 100% Horizontally and at least 100% Vertically.
Improvement: Increase the duration of the area to 30 seconds from 20 seconds. (Duration of the buff is unchanged.)
Buff: Increase the healing to 25% HP every second from 10% HP every 2 seconds.
Improvement: Cooldown is removed.

Allow Lara to properly function as an actual healer. This is the bare minimum healing speed needed to actually feel the impact of a healing skill and for it to serve its purpose of keeping her party alive.

Manifestation: Where the River Courses:
Remake: Change to a skill that functions similarly to the Wind and Sunlight counterparts with the same size, creating an aquatic area to restore 2% MP every second to Lara and Party Members inside. While inside, double tap any of the 4-directional keys to quickly dash in that direction for Lara and party members, press the jump key to instantly stop the dash early.
Improvement: Duration set to 600 seconds.
Improvement: Cooldown is removed.

This would provide cool utility for the party as a support class.

For solo play, this really helps out Lara to get around maps for mobbing and helps her boss as well by giving her a 4-direction dash that can be used on the ground or in the air to either dodge a boss attack, get back to the ground faster, or help her get higher into the air with her vertical jump + dash combo.

The press jump to stop the dash early is for a safety feature to correct accidental dash usage.

EDIT:
Forgot to mention, but having a key bindable vertical jump is extremely important for the fun to Lara's gameplay and how you can combo vertical jump into her horizontal jump really helps with a smooth and satisfying level of movement.

Stuff like this is very important for the fun of the game.

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BLAZE WIZARD:

These changes are an absolute mess for Blaze Wizard and I would undo everything and then do less changes and slowly build from that with more frequent updates.

The fun to Inferno Sphere is that it is always available and NOT a burst skill... I repeat, this is NOT a burst skill, but rather a skill that provides a lot of useful utility for bossing with the air stalling function it has, super stance it provides, while also dealing strong damage when it gets used. For mobbing it is nice always having the skill to evaporate monsters whenever you want.

Inferno Sphere needs to be embraced for this skill always being available because that is where the fun to this skill is at. Using this skill less only removes the fun from Blaze Wizard.

Fires of Creation is a good change to be infinite duration and just be a toggle between Fox and Lion Mode.

Savage Flame I am perfectly fine removing the stacking mechanic and just making this cooldown based.

Now more specifics for things Blaze Wizard needs to improve on their gameplay:

Phoenix Drive:
Improvement: Increase the total damage by 100% and cooldown by 100% so that this skill is used less frequently which is the annoying part to the skill, and feels like a proper burst skill which having the moment of power is the fun part to the skill.

This skill does not need to be changed in its functionality at all, it just needs to be treated like a proper 2 minutes burst skill.

Salamander Mischief:
Skill Change: Turn this into an always active toggle skill, ON summons the Salamander to fight by your side and OFF will unsummon the Salamander.
Retuned: Retune the values of this skill for the Salamander always being active.
Improvement: Cooldown reduce to 1 second.
Improvement: Duration increase to infinite.

This skill already has something going on 100% of the time, but the fun to the skill is having the cute salamander flying around doing his thing constantly! Embrace the fun side and remove the annoyance of constantly needing to remember to reactivate him.

Do all of these changes, revert everything else, and take it easy and do more if needed in more frequent skill change updates. With the consideration of not thrashing the gameplay to something entirely different for no reason.

Players decided to main classes for a reason and this needs to be considered a lot more than it has been and just focus on making skills better to use rather than completely changing a class' identity and alienating the player.

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EXPLORER MAGES:

Infinity making this a passive is good since Infinity management is annoying to do, but a big fun to these classes is getting damage from stacking buff duration.

So I would alter this further to having a lower base value and let it increase further in Final Damage with Buff Duration. If you have 30% Final Damage as the passive and 100% Buff Duration then it will double the passive to 60% Final Damage, if you have 30% Final Damage base and 150% Buff Duration now you will have 75% Final Damage in total for the passive Infinity.

This way this retains the fun of buff duration stacking for explorer mage builds to make Infinity stronger, while also improving on the skill by removing the need to manage Infinity since it is now a passive skill.

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KHALI:

This is a broad talking point, but Khali is effectively a perfect class for the most part so why are we wasting time, resources, and money and making not only pointless changes that only risk making the class worse, but also...

...Why would anyone want a mechanic that stops your dash on terrain which does nothing except would make the class feel awful and clunky to play by enabling this feature?

Everything else to Khali in the KMST update is just weird and should not be implemented as well.

Bit of a Rant:

This current KMS Director just feels like a bloated bureaucracy where he tries to look like things are happening, when in reality he is intentionally trying to make things worse to then try to make half-arsed solutions by making changes to things that don't need changes.

All in the meanwhile wasting the company's time, resources, and money when all of this could be better served at actually making the game better, more fun to play, and allowing players to play how they want to play.

This guy tries to make every class play the same, has no creativity whatsoever, wants everything to be solo (rather than just make things solo capable), deletes supports because it doesn't align with how he wants to play the game, and for some reason thinks bosses are good way to have player retention...

And all of the Decent Skills are still not turned into passives!

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