In the Heroes of Maple update, one of the greatest skill change resolutions came to pass, the conversion of many active buffs into passive skills. This resolution reduced skill clutter on your keyboard and total time needed to recast your buffs. KMS had a second coming of this in the first patch after their BEYOND/Override update.
Although this resolution greatly improved gameplay QoL, there's still a lot of active buffs
as well as toggle skills Edit: You know what, I've decided to leave toggle skills alone. that could easily be converted into passive skills. However, there are principles for this resolution. These principles are: Must not be a party skill, a toggle skill, a skill with cooldown, a counterattack skill, a skill that enables a mobility skill to deal damage, a skill that provides infinite ammo, a Shadow Partner-type skill, an Enrage-type skill, a Hyper skill, or a 5th Job skill. Plus there are a few additional exceptions to this resolution. The following list shows all the possible candidates and their reasons for why.
Common
Weapon Booster skills - Almost all classes have a "Weapon Booster" skill, and the link below is the discussion on how it can be changed into a passive skill.
http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/discussion/12201/make-weapon-booster-skills-passive/p1
So far, Bowmaster, Wind Archer, Wild Hunter, Phantom, and Xenon had their boosters changed to passives.
F/P Archmage
Elemental Decrease - The active effect gives the same stat you can get from your Insight trait.
I/L Archmage
Elemental Decrease - The active effect gives the same stat you can get from your Insight trait.
Shadower
Mesoguard - With Meso Mastery, Mesoguard's Meso consumption would hardly affect your Meso balance. At the very least, this should be a toggle.
Shadower Instinct - This skill can be changed into a passive skill by having it act like Explorer Magicians' Arcane Aim.
Dual Blade
Self Haste - The only place where movement speed and jump boosts that are received from temporary skill buffs should be in is party buffs, which Self Haste certainly isn't.
Buccaneer
Crossbones - The active effect simply increases your damage.
Corsair
Jolly Roger - Most sources of Stance come from passive skills. In fact, Dawn Warrior's Soul Pledge, Dual Blade's Thorns, and Xenon's Offensive Matrix were all originally active self-buffs.
Cannoneer
Counter Crush - This is an inverted entry. Counter Crush should be converted into a Toggle Skill. Click
here for more info.
Pirate's Spirit - Most sources of Stance come from passive skills. In fact, Dawn Warrior's Soul Pledge, Dual Blade's Thorns, and Xenon's Offensive Matrix were all originally active self-buffs.
Jett
Bounty Chaser - The active effect simply increases your Critical Rate and your Weapon Attack.
Slipstream Suit - The skill simply increases your DEX.
High Gravity - Most sources of Stance come from passive skills. In fact, Dawn Warrior's Soul Pledge, Dual Blade's Thorns, and Xenon's Offensive Matrix were all originally active self-buffs.
Blaze Wizard
Ignition - The skill is basically Explorer Thieves' Venom that must be recast every 5 minutes. At the very least, this should be a toggle.
Mihile
Enduring Spirit - Demon Slayer's Black-Hearted Strength, originally an active self-buff, is solid evidence on why this skill should be converted into a passive skill.
Aran
Drain - When would you ever NOT turn this skill on?
Snow Charge - I/L Archmage's Freezing Crush could justify on making Snow Charge passive.
Evan
Elemental Decrease - The active effect gives the same stat you can get from your Insight trait.
Blessing of the Onyx - The skill simply increases your Magic Attack and your Defense.
Mercedes
Water Shield - Demon Slayer's Black-Hearted Strength, originally an active self-buff, is solid evidence on why this skill should be converted into a passive skill.
Ancient Warding - When an active buff that gives max HP expires, any excess HP past your original max HP will be lost. By changing this skill into a passive skill, this frustration would be removed.
Luminous
Arcane Pitch - The active effect gives the same stat you can get from your Insight trait.
Demon Avenger
Ward Evil - Demon Slayer's Black-Hearted Strength, originally an active self-buff, is solid evidence on why this skill should be converted into a passive skill.
Diabolic Recovery - When an active buff that gives max HP expires, any excess HP past your original max HP will be lost. Furthermore, it doesn't make sense that you have to keep this skill on to regenerate HP, when other classes that have HP regen acquire them from passive skills. By changing this skill into a passive skill, this frustration would be removed and the skill would be consistent with other HP regen passive skills.
Xenon
Circuit Surge - The skill simply increases your Weapon Attack.
Kaiser
Cursebite - Cursebite works similarly to Hero's Chance Attack, Mihile's Righteous Indignation, Demon Slayer's Insult to Injury, F/P Archmage's Burning Magic, and I/L Archmage's Storm Magic, all of which are passive skills. So Cursebite should be a passive skill as well.
Angelic Buster
Power Transfer - Turning Power Transfer into a passive skill can work out very well because it acts like Blaster's Blast Shield and Marksman's Aggressive Resistance.
Iron Blossom - Most sources of Stance come from passive skills. In fact, Dawn Warrior's Soul Pledge, Dual Blade's Thorns, and Xenon's Offensive Matrix were all originally active self-buffs.
Star Gazer - The skill simply increases your Critical Damage.
Hayato
Military Might - When an active buff that gives max HP/MP expires, any excess HP/MP past your original max HP/MP will be lost. By changing this skill into a passive skill, this frustration would be removed.
Kinesis
Psychic Armor - There's already a lot of Avoidability/Evasion effects granted from passive skills or skill effects.
Comments
When you're just socializing in town and don't want those red spinning orbs around you - or, worse, around a seemingly random part of your chair or mount.
Or when you're doing a tricky jump quest and want as few visual distractions as possible.
(In fact, people have asked to be able to hide Lumi's orb, Cannoneer's monkey, Kanna's Haku, and Evan's Mir, for the same reasons).
Maybe an additional rule can be added to your list of when a skill can't be fully passive: when it has a visual effect.
Possibly a leftover from the time when MP potions were expensive, and skills took a lot of MP, so mages - especially of the Cleric branch - sometimes preferred to take the full hit to HP and not lose MP.
I am not as familiar with the other classes you list, but I think that in general, the skills that were made into toggles instead of passives, have some rare situation when you would want them off. I think the solution to that is: The game should preserve the state of toggle buffs when you die or disconnect. If it can remember exactly how many seconds were left on a skill cooldown when you disconnected, then surely it can remember whether your toggle skill was on or off.
Wild Hunter's Feline Berserk, Wind Archer's Albatross's cape, and now Luminous's Eclipse and Equilibrium's face change can have their visual effects toggled on and off by right-clicking their skill icons in the Skill Inventory. So a solution to the visual effect rule is making all visual effects from buffs toggleable by right-clicking their skill icons in the Skill Inventory.
But don't mages have a very low health pool?
I remember that you said the reason why some skills are toggles instead of passives is because of Chaos Pierre. But I have a solution to that. Skills that don't trigger Damage Reflection shouldn't trigger same-hat-color-Pierre's healing. In other words, make Pierre's healing effect follow the same logic as DR. Attacks to Pierre that matches his hat color with yours would normally heal him, but if an attack that cannot trigger DR hits him, his healing effect should not happen.
Toggle skills annoy me to no end. The default state, that is when there's no icon in the buff bar, should be that the toggle skill is active. For example, wind archers should not have to reactivate trifling wind each time they respawn. There are only a few rare occassions where a player wouldn't want all of their toggles active all the time.
Also to weigh in on Hero's combo orbs, you can just use panic and shout a few times to burn your orbs away.
Toggle skills are soooo annoying.
Combo orbs I wouldn't mind being passive, although I wish they make it turned "On" and undispellable upon death by default cause I never really hotkey the skill and it's annoying having to turn it on everytime I die or relog.
This may sound like a complaint but for Maple Warrior, just make it passive already, mastery books are so easy to get now that there's almost no point of using it in parties since everyone can get it to level 30 easily by paying 8m for 20 and 30. I know it lasts 15 minutes but at that point, it should just be a passive if it's going to last that long for a buff.
Evan once had a party skill called Magic Resistance, but when his revamp came, it was changed into a passive skill, downgrading from a party boosting skill to a self boosting skill. So I guess I could allow a few party skills to be downgraded to only work on the user, but you'll never know when Rage's reflection effect comes in handy, so rather than removing it to outright turn the skill into a passive skill, Rage should be turned into a toggle skill that would work similarly to Mechanic's Perfect Armor, passively giving 30 Weapon Attack and 30% Damage Reduction, and when toggled on, reflects back 500% of damage taken.
This party skill on the other hand, I completely agree.
Yes, everyone can have it and max it - in 4th job.
But I often have my Bishop cast it on the low-level mules I'm training. It helps them quite a bit.
I also disagree about Rage, though more from an "ideological" standpoint than a practical one. Yes, the game is becoming more and more "SoloStory", but that's no reason to turn party buffs into passives/toggles just to save a keypress.
Rage reflection effect does like no damage for it to be any useful. When you take 1 damage, you deal 5 to it, it's like useless and only aggros mobs that you don't want to aggro.
I can agree with maple warrior for mules but in the end, it takes like 1-2 hours to get from 1-100 if you know where to train.
Rage I'm suggesting a change because it's almost useless for a party skill. Phantoms have better buffs to use and rage's reflection effect doesn't help at all other than a very weak counterattack to aggro mobs. Rage should need different effects if they don't want to make it passive.
I'd suggest changing all "counterattack/damage reflect" skills to be able to be toggled and based on the damage range used for normal skills, like how Aran's body pressure is. That way it isn't useless and you can turn it off if you don't want it interfering.
Wind Archers have the most active buffs out of any class, yet they've never gotten a single one made passive. The closest thing to it was in KMS, when they made the attack, DEX, and HP boosts from Touch of the Wind passive, but not avoidability (??????)
As for archers, one more skill I'd propose making passive is Soul Arrow (Fairy Spiral for WAs). This skill completely negates the use of arrows due to it providing attack and/or other boosts. What Nexon should do with this skill is make it that you can use skills without arrows, but arrows in your inventory will still be consumed. I would also add a very infinitesimal boost to normal Arrow for Bow/Crossbow, by 1 attack, to make them somewhat needed again early on.
KMS made their first step on this resolution since the creation of this list!
Well, that gets rid of Mercedes having to worry about the stacks I think.
Hoping for Rage to be passive or making 30 attack and 30% damage reduction passive or just remove the "500% counter damage effect." Counterattack skills just suck in general and do really low damage.
i was quite happy about this change
I think it will still require stacks, but you won't need to cast the buff to get the 40 attack.
Unless they make it so phantom can steal non explorer skills (which I doubt) or significantly rework phantom ( which is highly unlikely) the actives shouldnt become passives, of course it isnt just like that for phantoms.
Makes perfect sense. All explorers should keep suffering with recasting buffs every 3 minutes, just so phantom could steal them.
The concept of Phantom as a Master Thief that steals skills is nice, but having 14 other classes re-designed to suit (or, in some cases, thwart) him, instead of their own internal logic or a general game trend (like making buffs passive), is a problem. Phantom needs rethinking.