[EMS] Inner Ability Progress - 1/3rd Completion

 

Sup guys! It has been a slight while since my last update about my Inner Ability progress after I obtained the Legendary-ranked Ability last Valentinesday.

Yesterday I managed to obtain one of the first Inner Ability lines which I want to keep - I didn't blog yesterday because Luxatus and I have a strict policy of not posting during April's Fools. It's the only "official" Rayque3-holiday we have the entire year, consider we even have uploaded content on our relatives/own birthdays and during the Winter holidays as well. That aside, let's get back on subject.

The first line I managed to obtain is the "Increases Skill Level of passive skills by 1" which is a rare line that only appears for Legendary-ranked Abilities. It increases the SP of all passive Fourth Job skills by one, which can go beyond the Master Level. The number of SP increase for this line cannot be more than 1.
See the example of my Skill Inventory below.

Active Skills are not affected by this Ability (note Enrage and Hero's Will above), although the Party Skill "Combat Orders" (for short "CO", Paladin-only) and Decent Combat Orders (Potential-only) can increase them. Paladin's version increases by two SP and the Decent Skill increases by one. However, all three are limited to Fourth Job skills and cannot increase skills from earlier Job Advances.

The only three skills that are affected on my Hero are Combat Mastery, Advanced Final Attack and Advanced Final Attack. Three skills may not sound much, especially if you look at the total increase that it gives from Level 30 to 31:

	Combat Mastery	Advanced Combo Attack (ACA)	Advanced Final Attack (AFA)
Level 30	Increases PDR Ignore by 50%	Increases total Combo Orb Damage to 10% each Orb	Increases Weapon Attack by 30
			Increases Accuracy by 10%
		Increases the total amount of stackable Combo Orbs to 10	Increases the total Final Attack chance to 60%
		Adding a 80% chance to charge two Combo Orbs ("Double Charge") instead of one when triggering a Combo Orb charge	Increases the total Final Attack damage to 250%
		Increasing total Sword/Axe Mastery (One-Handed and Two-Handed) to 70%	Increases the amount of Final Attack hits from 1 to 2 when triggering a Final Attack
Level 31	Increases PDR Ignore bonus to 51% (+1%)	Increases “Double Charge” bonus to 82% (+2%)	Increases Weapon Attack bonus to 31 (+1)
			Increases Accuracy bonus to 11% (+1)
			Increases Final Attack’s total chance to 61% (+1%)
			Increases Final Attack’s total damage to 253% (+3%)

Even worse, the only increase from Advanced Combo Attack is nullified because I already have a 100% chance (Hyper Skill increase) to charge two Combo Orbs. This means that the actual increase comes from two skills, instead of three.

Having invested in this Hyper gives me a total of 100% chance to "Double Charge" whenever I charge a Combo Orb.
This bonus is crucial if you want to make good use of Puncture during combat, as described in an earlier post of mine.

However, if we look beyond those numbers, things are actually more "game changing" than it seems.

First of all, as mentioned twice earlier on my blog, I'll be aiming for Self Combat Orders. This means the passives will be Lv 32 instead of Lv 31. Several skills in MapleStory have an inconsistent growth (in example, increasing a stat every two SP instead of one) - this also applies to Advanced Combo Attack.

- Level 32 ACA increases the Mastery to 71% (+1%) in addition to another (nullified) "Double Charge" bonus.
- Level 32 Combat Mastery gives 52% PDR ignore, increasing by another percent.
- Level 32 Advanced Final Attack increases the Weapon Attack to 32. The chance for triggering a Final Attack goes to 62% (+1%) and Final Attack's damage will go to 256% (+3%). The accuracy remains unchanged unless you have Level 33 (which would increase Accuracy to 12%).

In addition to all of this, all actives will become Level 31. Hero already works with frenzy percentages and thus every small increase actually becomes quite large! Even on a larger scale of numbers (so future-funding-wise) the increase will be much more notable.

I'll be honest that on a realistic point of view, without Self Combat Orders this Inner Ability on a Hero is dull. Certain classes with quite some passives like Soul Master might benefit more from it. You could gamble with this Ability to see what will happen with 5th Job (will CO-like effects go past Master Level at 5th job?), consider we don't know what it will give or how it will work as time of this post.

So, what are the next Abilities? Actually, if you might remember my post about obtaining Legendary-ranked Ability, I mentioned to obtain Critical Rate, Attack Speed and +1 Target on Multiple-Target-Skills. The latter Ability line was the one which I was doubting between the target increase and this CO-like Ability. The choice would be dependent on how this CO-like line would work, consider there wasn't really a consistent answer on several MapleStory forums (in example, certain topics said that this Ability wouldn't go past Master Level while others said it would). This means I'll still go for Critical Rate and Attack Speed - but as I just mentioned above, we don't know what 5th Job will give. It might be Attack Speed increase, it might be more Critical Rate, who knows. At least if 5th Job would give these, I can concentrate on different lines which does interest me - I can only hold three at the same time so I have to choose wisely!

That's it for now, see you guys again next post!