Flearas' proposed Kanna balance changes:
The following is a list of balance changes I'd like to propose given to Kanna to substantially increase the mechanical ability of the class and refine its bossing prowess. The goal of this post is not to focus on upgrading her solo damage. Rather, the suggestions made in this post mostly revolve around making old skills relevant. Only the first suggestion in this post focuses on Kanna's core solo damage. Beyond that, any further changes are about utility first and damage second. Following this list I'll provide an extensive explanation for each change and why it was made. Some of these changes are extreme but not without reason. That said, feel free to leave your thoughts, both good and bad, about these changes.
(note: Before the Haku nerf, Haku's Blessing was granting both flat magic attack and % magic attack at the same time effectively making Haku's Blessing many times stronger than it was meant to be.)
-Haku's Blessing: Flat magic attack buff removed. Now gives % magic attack instead. No longer affects party.
-Haku Reborn: Final Damage stacks are now applied if party members are being buffed by Kanna's barriers.
-Shikigami Haunting: Now allows 90 movement speed while in use.
-Ether Pulse: Moves Kanna at the beginning of the teleport instead of the end. Ether Pulse's hidden cooldown remains the same. Cast delay removed.
-Rock Yaksha: Old effect gone. Now teleports Kanna to the nearest monster. If no monsters are found, the skill can't be used. Rock Yaksha smashes enemies at the teleport location. Damage: 120%. Number of hits: 4. Max monsters hit: 6. Chance to stun: 60%. Mana cost: 20. Mana cost increases to 40 if used within the last 4 seconds the skill was previously cast.
-Shikigami Charm: cooldown reduced to 1 second.
-Soul Bomb: Leaves a 2-3 second cloud where the enemy died. Damage only dealt within the original range of Soul Bomb. Soul Bomb now crits.
-Soul Shear: Now has a node. Soul Shear now crits. Soul Shear now returns 1 mana per target hit with every shard.
-Kishin Shoukan: Now deals 3 lines per hit. Now has a node.
-Blossom Barrier: Now affects %HP attacks. Duration decreased to 30 seconds.
-Vanquisher Charm: Now targets 5 enemies by default.
-Falling Sakura: Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds. No longer need to hit an enemy to apply healing to party. Area of effect from healing increased. Applies all cure effect upon use.
-Monkey Spirits: Now applies Enemy DEF: -20%. Enemies hit by Monkey Spirits take 500% more damage from Soul Bomb while debuffed.
-Dawn Warrior: Cast delay removed.
-Demon's Fury: Cooldown removed.
-EDIT: Shikigami Haunting passives: add an additional target hit each. Refer to the "closing remarks" (2nd post) for more on this.
---Hyper Skills---
-Vanquisher's Charm - Spread: removed
-Vanquisher's Charm - Range added: Provides an additional 100 units to Vanquisher Charms horizontal range and 20 units to vertical range.
-Falling Sakura - Vitality: removed
-Falling Sakura - Cooldown Cutter added: Reduces cooldown by 5 seconds.
-Bellflower Barrier - Persist: Now affects Blossom Barrier as well.
-Bellflower Barrier - Cooldown Cutter: Now reduces Blossom Barrier's cooldown by 30% as well.
-Blackhearted Curse: Damage decreased to 400%. Deals 2 lines of damage. Now has a node.
-Veritable Pandemonium: Provides invulnerability during skill animation.
---Explanations---
-Haku's Blessing: It can't be stressed enough the change to this skill is reflective of the state it was in after the original tune-up but before the Haku nerf. Before the nerf, Haku double dipped with both flat magic attack, % magic attack, and then boosted that same flat magic attack by an insane amount. Removing the flat magic attack but keeping the % magic attack would take away a sizable chunk of power Kanna had before the nerf. Don't underestimate how powerful the flat magic attack was with the % buff in play. Making Haku's Blessing only apply to Kanna makes balancing the skill less of a hassle and the lost party utility can easily be made up through other skill changes.
-Haku Reborn: This skill is a headache. It functions exactly like Bishop's Blessed Ensemble but without any of the skills that made Blessed Ensemble easy to use. Haku's buffs are cast by themselves without the player's input on a 40 second timer. If a player misses the buff, the Kanna must wait until the next rotation before it can be reapplied. If the Kanna dies, the buff is removed and the skill doesn't come off its cooldown. This means Kanna can't see the cooldown before the next buff and she's forced to play without this buff until it comes around again. In addition, dying in combat de-syncs the buff cooldown from that of other players by several seconds causing a lot of confusion and scrambling during a boss battle. For that reason, it's best to move this skill to being affected by Kanna's barriers because it encourages Kanna to use her barriers more, encourages parties to position themselves inside the barriers, and prevents all the confusion this skill originally had. It's a massive pain to maintain the final damage buff in its current state.
-Shikigami Haunting: This skill isn't widely used by Kannas once they obtain Vanquisher's Charm because in a boss fight Haunting stops you from moving and Vanquisher's Charm doesn't. Also, Haunting pushes mobs and gives Kanna endlag before they can walk back up to the monster they were attacking. This is slow and contributes, with Ether Pulse, to the reason why people quit Kanna. Add on Haunting's lackluster hitbox up to 4th job and Vanquisher's Charm seems far more appealing. Even when Kanna has 0 Mana, using Haunting will get her killed and that's why this change to the skill is introduced. 90 movement speed is high enough to allow Kanna to keep up with the monsters she's attacking and keep her alive in bosses. Given Haunting is designed as a backup when Kanna is out of options, there should be some minor penalty applied to make it less than ideal for all situations, hence 90 movement speed instead of 100 (a 10% penalty from the default speed.) Kanna has Yaksha skills which are supposed to aid in reposition monsters but they don't work over half the time and don't eleviate the "clunky" nature of the class or skill. (Nobody uses Yakshas.)
-Ether Pulse: This skill is responsible for several Kannas getting killed during bosses and the reason why many people quit the class because it feels slow. There's nothing wrong with the cooldown Ether Pulse already had, but the skill has a grotesque cast delay when you initially use it. In a game like Maplestory where you frequently need to react in a split second during bosses, this delay is the defining factor of life or death.
-Rock Yaksha: Unfortunately the skill doesn't work as advertised. You can try to pull enemies with this skill but they'll rarely listen. This is a common bug with most pushing/pulling skills in the game so the simple solution is to move Kanna to the enemies. With the new changes, the skill performs the original intended function by bringing Kanna and the monsters together without the bug from pulling skills. Let's not kid ourselves, the new version of this skill absolutely eats mana when used in succession within the 4 second penalty so the only skill this combos well with is Shikigami Haunting since Haunting uses no mana. A Kanna relying on this skill too heavily for attack skills after 2nd job will immediately lose their mana after a few casts. Rock Yaksha was replaced with this combo effect to use with Shikigami Haunting and its 2nd job buff since Kanna's 2nd job didn't previously have a primary offensive skill. (As an aside, I'd like to note the aesthetic of this new skill now resembles the thematic of Kanna teleporting around on the battlefield for re-positioning.)
Clay Yaksha performs the same function as the old Rock Yaksha so Kanna still has the old, buggy function of rock yaksha (in the form of clay yaksha) and the new correctly functioning re-positioning tool with the new Rock Yaksha without interfering in the power level of 1st job. I recognize this is possibly the most controversial change on this list, and for good reason, but the fact is the old Rock Yaksha simply didn't perform the function it was intended for. The 4 second penalty applied to this skill is designed to absolutely drain Kanna's mana reserve if she uses it in succession or with mana costing skills but allow Kanna to combo this skill with Shikigami Haunting.
-Shikigami Charm: Functionally the only method Kanna has to cancel clunky animations. It's arguable whether Shikigami Charm should have a 2 second cooldown instead, but many people are turned off from how slow this class feels where Shikigami Charm could fix that by allowing another way out. The bomb provided by Shikigami Charm is useful (and vastly overlooked) but nowhere near powerful enough that one bomb provided every 1 second could present any amount of relevant damage. This is good. This skill is primarily about mobility and the current 7 second cooldown makes it difficult to classify this skill as a comfortable mobility skill.
-Soul Bomb: In its current state? Useless. This is a skill every Kanna picks up and forgets. The changes proposed do little to provide additional damage against a boss but it does provide increases in line output which is becoming more relevant as we move forward. With Monkey Spirits, this skill change provides a small chunk of damage to mobs. An alternative change would be to make soul bomb deal 3-5 or more lines upon the additional explosion instead. Either way the line output is similar.
-Soul Shear: Ever heard of burst damage? This skill from it's conception screams exactly that. Unfortunately the execution is abysmal. It takes time to build up the shards required to use Soul Shear at its fullest and returns a net loss in DPS compared to any other attack skill. It also chugs a substantial amount of mana. Most Kannas fore-go this skill for these reasons. With the proposed changes, Soul Shear provides small, burst amounts of damage which take time to charge up and, against bosses, provides a net loss of negative 15 mana instead of 30 provided the skill is being used at its fullest charge. Currently this skill is supposed to provide the mana return function but it's bugged and isn't functioning properly. Allowing Soul Shear to crit and provide it with nodes would supply the skill with the burst it needs to be worthwhile. Bosses which move around will still make this skill difficult to use, but the burst combined with the mana return will still make it worthwhile.
-Kishin Shoukan: You need a magnifying glass to see the amount of damage this skill scrapes off of monsters around your level. The proposed skill change turns this scrape into a tiny chunk you can see with the naked eye and provides more line output potential on bosses. Since Kishin Shoukan only hits once every 1.5 seconds, this line output is fractional compared to what you pull from other skills. Regardless, giving Kishin Shoukan this change ensures the skill will be useful for boss fights and mobbing.
-Blossom Barrier: The year is 2k17 and all bosses deal % damage. You know what Blossom Barrier doesn't currently do? Protect from % damage. Other protective skills in the game, such as Battle Mage's party shield already provide this function. As it stands, Kanna's Blossom Barrier is virtually useless in any given situation. Let's be fair, protecting against % damage is a powerful ability so the skill changes respect that. This skill change greatly reduces how long the barrier lasts to compensate for its power and, even with the hypers discussed later, doesn't last as long as Battlemage's shield. It also sports a stronger reduction so it evens out.
-Vanquisher's Charm: Hitting 1 enemy at a time is dreadful. Even more dreadful when you have to wait until level 162 to make this skill hit three enemies. Even at that point it's not very good. As a Kanna, our Christmas wish for V patch was to allow our Vanquisher's Charm to target additional enemies with nodes. Suffice to say that didn't happen so this skill change bumps up Vnaquisher's Charm to a default of 5 enemies hit and turns it into a multi-target skill meaning the skill is now affected by the multi-target aspect from nodes. This doesn't do anything to increase DPS, but against bosses like Lucid, it's often difficult to hit the target you want when there's too many monsters on the field. A change like this would put Vanquisher's Charm, Kanna's primary offensive skill, more in line with the capabilities of other classes. (Also this change is respected with the removal of the spread hyper mentioned later.)
-Falling Sakura: Nobody uses this skill despite it being a 4th job party healing skill. Normally that'd be fantastic, but considering the short radius this skill affects, the fact you must strike a target to activate the healing, the amount of cast delay attached to this skill, and the incredibly high 20 second cooldown delay and you have a recipe for making nobody happy and yourself killed. The changes for this skill allow it to be used more reliably with far less hassle and the added all cure affect marginally increases the relevance of this skill. I'd argue this is one of the most difficult skills to use in the entire game in its current state.
-Monkey Spirits: Right now the current Monkey Spirits provides a buff, but you'd have to read the skill description to realize it has one and then remember it's useless. Providing additional modicum amounts of exp is nice but negligible and the secondary effect of providing a chance to drop an unidentified item has absolutely no value in today's version of the game. Now there's more useless junk flooding your inventory. The changes to Monkey Spirits grants the monster defense debuff common to several skills in the game and provides a needed buff to Spirit Bomb. This buff mostly effects mobbing since Soul bomb is rarely used in bossing. Aesthetically, you're coating your enemies in alcohol so the explosion from Soul Bomb inflicts greatly increased damage. This is effectively a combo as Monkey Spirits strikes remaining enemies and Soul Bomb helps kill them. Even with 500% increased damage, Soul Bomb doesn't deal anywhere near the amount your attacking skills do, but it does dish out a chunk more than before. For bossing, this would in no situation be enough to change the DPS ratio the skill formerly did. Consider the debuff a bossing change and the Soul Bomb effect a mobbing change. Also worth mentioning the debuff provided by this skill only ever increases DPS by 1-3% and becomes stronger when stacked with the same affect from other classes.
-Dawn Warrior: The cast delay was supposed to be removed. It wasn't. Please remove it.
-Demon's Fury: The only appropriate time to use this skill in its current state is if the damage is great enough to kill the enemies in one shot. Outside of that you lose DPS by using this skill over Vanquisher's Charm and with a great cost of mana. Removing the cooldown from this skill gives it a use for mobbing with a greater cost to Mana. Sure the skill could be spammed faster but this skill eats a hekaton of mana anyway so there's no real reason to cap it with a cooldown.
-Hyper Skill - Vanquisher's Charm - Spread: Removing this skill because it's no longer necessary with the change to the base mechanics of Vanquisher's Charm and the node for Vanquisher's Charm will supply the same effect.
-Hyper Skill - Vanquisher's Charm - Range: This skill replaces Spread with a mechanic several Kannas have been suggesting for a long time. Right now, many of us feel Vanquisher's Charm attack range is almost perfect. However, when we attack with it, we notice several deficiencies when the skill seems like it should reach a target but doesn't. For one, Vanquisher's Charm has no vertical range below the animation however the hitbox extends a few pixels above, but not exactly high enough. In other instances like Gollux, Vanquisher's Charm's range will often make you believe you're in the safe zone during the second phase when you're really not despite it being a ranged skill. No part of this change would increase damage output, but it would provide several kannas with the change they've been asking for.
-Hyper Skill - Falling Sakura - Vitality: Removing this skill because it did nothing. Replaced with a new, functional hyper listed below.
-Hyper Skill - Falling Sakura - Cooldown Cutter: 15 seconds is a long time for a heal skill but the heal skill I proposed is also powerful. For that reason I only shortened Falling Sakura to a 15 second cooldown to respect its power and gave an additional 5 second reduction with this hyper because a 10 second healing-all cure Falling Sakura feels appropriate through a hyper. This hyper is also infinitely more useful than the previous hyper skill Falling Sakura had.
-Hyper Skill - Bellflower Barrier - persist: Adding Blossom Barrier to the affected list for this skill due to the radical changes made to Blossom Barrier. The old Blossom Barrier had a duration of 150 seconds. Considering the heavy nerf Blossom Barrier was given, this hyper now also increases that duration to 50 seconds. Not quite the duration Battle Mage's Party Shield has, but the reduction itself is also higher.
-Hyper Skill - Bellflower Barrier - Cooldown Cutter: Despite the changes to Blossom Barrier, the Cooldown is the same. At three minutes, the buff is a little short lived to match the time before it can be cast again but the duration on such a powerful buff can't be kept too high otherwise we'll just be tanking everything forever. A 30% reduction decreases the cooldown of Blossom Barrier by 54 seconds. A Mercedes character card can further decrease this cooldown to 120 seconds. This gives Blossom Barrier a total of 50 seconds uptime, 120 seconds down time. The downtime for this skill is greater than 50% meaning more than half the time you don't have the protective benefits of this skill. Also, this skill can only be placed down in one area at a time unlike Bellflower barrier so decreasing the cooldown of this skill means you can use the skill more often.
-Hyper Skill - Blackhearted Curse - As nice as this skill is, it doesn't do anything in its current state against monsters around your level or bosses. I propose giving the skill two lines but with a slight loss in damage%. The two lines provides a fractional increase in line output for boss enemies which require lines to kill and a slightly harder punch toward monsters. Considering this attack only strikes once every two seconds, it's hard to argue this change could come close to outclassing Kanna's attacking skills. This is yet another tiny "chunk" of damage for a formerly negligible skill.
-Hyper Skill - Veritable Pandemonium - This kills the Kanna. Several times. Using this skill in a boss fight is always a last resort because the cast delay takes so long. It's incredible to have a backup bind in case the first fails, but in the end no Kanna wants to resort to using this in the heat of battle. Providing this skill with invulnerability resolves this and provides a new dilemma. Do you "waste" your backup bind to avoid fatal damage or do you risk binding a boss when it's no longer resistant to binds at an inappropriate time for the same reason? In the end, the current Veritable Pandemonium provides little to no advantage over Binding Tempest since using it will likely get you killed. Granting invulnerability to this skill for its casting duration provides Kanna with a vital bossing skill and gives Kanna a safety helmet from dying to it again.
(Closing remarks in next post.)
