The Beyond wave gave Hero one signature skill and one shared skill, in addition to several updates to both existing and first wave skills. Yes, I know Beyond also gave Decent Holy Symbol, but I don't see much use of covering that in this blogpost. However, I will cover a few things from the skill changes, as some of them are quite significant.
Introducing the Hero's signature skill from the Beyond update - Combo Death Fault (KMS, "CDF" for short). I mean Deadly Combo Fault (MSEA). I mean Worldreaver (EMS). Seriously tho, who comes up with all of these unnecessary name changes between localized versions? But hey, Nexon has finally decided to introduce split screen multiplayer into the game. Ha! Get it? Cuz y'know, the attack splits the screen (and defeated non-boss-enemies!) in half...
Anyway, if you've asked me before the Big Bang update, heck, even after the RED update if I'd ever expect Hero to need an ultimate skill that wipes the entire screen, I would've said no. Hero's mobility has been pretty great for years now, so it didn't need it and an ultimate skill would be a lazy solution in order to improve a class' mobility.
However, don't be fooled by Combo Death Fault. There's more to it than just being a full screen wipe. If there's one thing that Nexon has shown me with these two waves of 5th Job skills, is that Nexon knows what they're doing - like with any Job Advancement, the skills you get fill in a particular role that was either unexplored or missing from your skill tree. Hero hits like a truck, but its defence is paper thin. So Nexon gave us a skill that hits like a truck, gives us even more burst damage for a short duration AND makes us fully invincible during the entire animation sequence.
As a recent recurring mechanic in Hero's skill tree, some significant skills have multiple purposes to them. Whenever it's the "fighting game" gimmick where pressing down with the skill key would result in a different effect (as with Shout and Combo Force) or with Sword of Burning Soul and Enrage where pressing the hotkey would swap a skill's form, Combo Death Fault keeps the trend alive. It's a skill that is suitable for BOTH bossing and mobbing environment. Now that sounds pretty interesting and useful at the same time.
When Combo Death Fault is activated, it consumes five Combo Orbs, 500 MP and hits 15 enemies with seven lines of a whopping 832% damage each. At Level 25 the skill damage each line goes to freaking 1600%! Its cooldown is only 20 seconds, and it gives a buff of five seconds where the damage boost from the lost Combo Orbs is being compensated. So you essentially lose five Combo Orbs but you don't lose the damage - and thus you're allowed to charge for fifteen Combo Orbs worth of damage boost at a maximum peak, but you would only hold a maximum of ten physical orbs. I usually call the burst damage "Ghost Orbs", as you don't really get the physical orbs but you still receive the damage for more than ten. So even if the skill does encourage you to use it, the burst unfortunately isn't 24/7. AS IF NEXON ISN'T EVEN TRYING TO HINT FOR EXPERT COMBO ATTACK, HMM? Naaaaaaaaaaaah. However, I think we'd all agree that a passive/active wave without cooldowns is something we'd all want in 5th Job.
Anyway, the burst damage is incredibly useful, as Hero has so many multipliers to work with. This skill is fantastic with Terms & Conditions and Mu Gong's Boss Soul effect. Any other burst-related skill or effect would work wonders too. Certain daily bosses here now only require half of the original time I spent before this update - purely because Combo Death Fault and Blitz Shield add so much burst damage. That's not all, as we're now going to dive into one of CDF's most game changing features - the invincibility feature.
Invincible frames ("iframes" for short) has been a recurring game mechanic in MapleStory - even way before the Big Bang update, several classes were exploiting this as a class or secondary skill gimmick. It's been a feature that was continuously added and removed during skill balancing between several classes. But most melee-oriented classes have at least one or two of them. One of the most famous examples is "Rush", or any "Rush"-like skill. Hero always had Rush since 4th Job was introduced in 2006, and the RED update from 2013 introduced Combo Force as a replacement for Monster Magnet - ultimately receiving the Hookshot effect in the Reboot update of 2015. However, the invincibility of Rush is only for a brief moment, as it only occurs at the maximum speed of the skill (so the acceleration and deacceleration does not give any iframing), and Combo Hookshot is also fairly limited as well. Not to forget, both skills does force your character to move around, which might not always be a preferred action.
Combo Death Fault gives a fairly long, stationary iframe. From the moment you have the ginormous sword in your hands is when the iframes start - and it will last until the exact frame you can move again. This is definitely the most gamechanging feature of this skill, as the long stationary iframe literally ignores anything that is thrown at your face. Akyrum's infamous screen crack? Suu's death laser? Pierre's hat cycle? As long as you time them well, and the duration of said attack does not exceed the duration of the invincible frames, you should be able to ignore it. Map hazards are ignored too. So, unfortunately, we can't ignore Chaos Vellum's laserbreath yet (for now: git gud). But as shown in the GIF above, you can ignore any status effect (note the "RESIST") - including Pierre's otherwise forced hat cycle... Which is hilarious if you ask me, as having no hat at Pierre's Red/Blue cycle means you can dish out full damage at both phases. Sounds amazing for Chaos Pierre, but I don't do CRA runs so that's really something someone else should try out.
If you thought that was all there is to cover about CDF - you must be new to this blog I suppose (welcome by the way if you are!). Because there are several more things that are worth (if not, crucial) to note:
- Combo Death Fault is affected by attack speed. That means the faster your Hero runs, the shorter the iframe becomes. But then again, Hero really benefits from being nimble, as Combo Death Fault does immobilize you for the skill's duration. In addition to the fact that running a slow weapon speed makes Hero rather heavy, so the longer iframe might not be in your favor.
- Because Combo Death Fault consumes five Combo Orbs, you cannot use both Panic and Puncture after it, as that will require eleven Combo Orbs. Fortunately, they will reduce Puncture's Combo consumption from four to two (and that is a popcorn worthy skill change I'll probably warrant its own blogpost for, in the near future) in the same update they'll increase the consumption of Combo Death Fault from five to six (!), which also means CDF's burst ability will be enhanced even further.
- Because Combo Death Fault consumes five Combo Orbs, it's highly recommended to use the Advanced Combo Attack - Opportunity Hyper Skill. Not just for getting back to ten orbs, but also to make good use of the burst effect. This particular Hyper Skill for ACA is something I've been recommending for years now, but it seems some Heroes and other lazy copy/paste websites still can't learn or understand. Hero's best mobility comes from making good use of all the Combo-related skills at the right time, which means having the highest possible charge rate (and a more consistent one too because without this you have 20% chance to charge only one orb if you hit the 80% chance to even charge something, that is) is one of the most important things you need to get. Because you will use Panic, Puncture, Combo Death Fault and such regardless of what Hypers you've invested in, having a guaranteed double charge is essential for getting back to ten orbs asap.
- As described in the skill description: the burst effect from Combo Death Fault ONLY occurs when you connect a hit on any target on the field with this skill. Having the skill not to connect will only result in you iframing and consuming five orbs - which does have its uses though. So you could use the skill just to ignore something lethal, or to get the burst. Or maybe both! It's entirely up to you.
- Combo Death Fault does activate Aura Weapon and Sword of Burning Soul! So make good use of that ridiculous high damage from CDF with Aura Weapon...
- Combo Death Fault's burst effect works extremely well with Russellon's Pills, as the use of these items are explained here.
- As of the release of this update, CDF has a bug which gives a LOT of boss damage when the burst effect occurs, which probably is related to Advanced Combo Attack's boss damage Hyper Skill. The thing is, it always applies even if you don't run the boss damage Hyper Skill (as I don't, for example) - but they will fix this in an upcoming patch soon.
- Combo Death Fault might seem like a full screen attack, but that's slightly deceiving. Its total horizontal reach is pretty much full screen (total = both in front and behind you, although the reach behind you is limited so always make sure you aim on targets up front), but it cannot entirely reach the full height of your screen if you stand somewhere at the bottom. Make sure to jump (and/or use Flash Jump for that extra height) to make good use of its hitbox, as CDF also hits below you. Its hitbox is a huge rectangle with most of its coverage facing forward, and you're in the center horizontal axis of it. Just make sure you try out different things to learn the hitbox by feel.
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Blitz Shield
Ah yes, Blitz Shield (KMS, "BS" for short). I mean Blitz Shield (EMS). Wait, they seriously decided not to rename this one? *shrugs*
Blitz Shield is an interesting skill that doesn't seem to offer a lot of versatile use at first. And then you probably go to Rayque's Blog and read what is up with it. And then you get to this blogpost, and click on the hyper link from my previous sentence, and remain in an infinite loop for eternity! *insert evil laugh* Anyway, let's get back on track.
As with Combo Death Fault, this skill is both suitable for bossing and mobbing environment. There might not be as much to it as CDF, but there is still quite some nifty uses and interesting features it offers.
First of all: Blitz Shield is a great AoE skill that covers quite a lot of ground. When you cast the skill, you'll create a barrier that lasts for six seconds. The barrier can be detonated manually into an AoE by pressing the skill hotkey, but the detonation is only allowed two seconds after creating it. The barrier will automatically detonate if the barrier is still present after the six seconds duration.
Fun fact: while casting the barrier might take a fraction of a second (casting speed is affected by attack speed), the explosion itself is no delay (not affected by attack speed). This means that this skill can be combined with any other skill at the same time - Blitz Shield even charges Combo Orbs! This makes it an interesting skill to combo with other Hero skills that consume Combo Orbs, as the no delay allows you to instantly roll a 80% chance to charge Orbs back...
To even make things more interesting: the auto-detonate after six seconds is forced. You can still explode and apply damage when you're sitting on a chair, on a mount, hanging on a rope, walking around, or even using a transformation potion! Only exploding manually will bring you into the "combat alert" position; the forced explosion will not.
Even though this skill is shared with Paladin and Dark Knight, it does have quite some excellent horizontal coverage and it also has a ridiculous Y-range, especially with the negative Y! So Blitz Shield, as a mobbing skill, already pairs well with Shout, Rage Uprising and Combo Death Fault. A cooldown of only 15 seconds isn't too bad either!
However, using Blitz Shield as a mobbing skill is one thing - like with many other Hero skills, it definitely has some more uses...
The barrier you create with Blitz Shield, is a fairly new mechanic in MapleStory. As seen with classes like Zero and Blaster, barriers are a separate entity on top of your HP, rerouting all direct damage to the barrier's health instead, including map hazards. This means as long as the barrier has enough HP left, your health will remain untouched. So healing effects such as White Knight's "HP Recovery", Dark Knight's "Beholder" skills, Familiars and Aran's Character Card effect will immediately go to your health instead, as they clearly state to recover "HP", not "Barrier HP".
This is where things become a bit more complex, so I'll try to explain in context. Blitz Shield consumes HP in order to give you the barrier effect. It mentions to set a percentage "of your HP" as the barrier's HP, but it does not consider your "current max HP" (the HP you see on your user interface) - it seems to set the percentage from your pure clean HP, which excludes all skills, all equipment, all Union board effects, and so on. The higher Blitz Shield's level, the less HP you would require to cast the skill and the higher the barrier's HP will become. So at Level 1, to most people, Blitz Shield will consume more HP than it will "give". It's a good way to stop incoming attacks and directing them to the barrier first, but with such a low barrier's health, its uses for survival remains limited until you max it out and gain more clean HP by leveling.
However, the barrier's HP is where a fantastic opportunity is born. All damage that exceeds Blitz Shield's HP will go to your health directly and remove the barrier, but the remainder of the HP of said barrier will be deducted from the incoming hit. So if you have a barrier of only 1500 HP, and you'll receive a 100% HP attack, you'll be left with only 1500 HP, rather than dying instantly. Keep in mind that this requires you to be at maximum health, because the barrier's HP goes on top of your HP - so if you only have 28000/30000 HP left with 700 HP of Barrier because the skill requires HP to cast in the first place, a 100% HP attack of 30000 damage will still leave you with "-1300" health, which means you'd die from the attack. This is why I mentioned those healing methods all three Adventure warriors have and can obtain - it's difficult to use a potion to compensate the lost HP in order to tank an otherwise fatal hit, as you are left wide open with the remainder of the barrier's HP and still have the effects of potion cooldown applied at certain bosses where you'll need this...
That is why Blitz Shield is encouraged to be raised in level until you get to the "break even" when the skill gives more HP than it consumes. The actual level for this will vary between classes and players individually. Using recovery effects that usually are on cooldown is not very efficient. So "gaining" more Barrier HP than the HP you consume is preferable. In addition to reducing the HP cost, Blitz Shield already does pretty high damage at Level 1 (520% times 5), which goes to 1000% (!) at Level 25. It does not get reflected back from targets that use Damage Reflect but it does not bypass Damage Reflect either. Don't forget that any hit received while the barrier is up will reduce the barrier's HP, so that also means that the barrier's HP will greatly affect Blitz Shield's effectiveness. Skills that consume HP will also be deducted from the barrier's HP, so pay attention to when Blitz Shield is up when you want to use skills like Erda Nova or Aura Weapon as those are likely to remove the barrier instantly.
There's more to the barrier that is also very important to mention. While the barrier will last for six seconds and has its own HP, it can only sponge a maximum of five attacks before it is removed automatically. Because the default invincibility for all characters after being hit is less than one second, it's difficult to keep Blitz Shield up if you're getting spam attacked by multiple targets if you're not allowed to detonate it manually until after the barrier was set up for two seconds. Fortunately, most players fund in the "Extend invincibility duration after being hit" Potential/Nebulite/Item Set effect, so that should aid in keeping Blitz Shield up. Don't forget that you also have Rush and Combo Death Fault to stall out the "two second" rule.
The reason why I mention this is because the barrier can only be detonated when it's still present. If it is removed due to any of the aforementioned methods, Blitz Shield's detonation function cannot be used because you don't have the barrier set up. You essentially "sacrifice" the barrier to attack, after all. However, as long as the barrier's HP is low at Level 1, most non-Star Force/Arcane Force enemies can remove the barrier in two or three hits so... Definitely keep an eye on that. Whenever if you use Blitz Shield as a defense or offense manner, that's entirely up to you!
I personally think its best use lies within both worlds, but obviously it's context driven.
While Combo Death Fault can ignore Status Effects, Blitz Shield unfortunately does not. There are several attacks that give a Status Effect when it hits, so even if it lands on the barrier's HP, the Status Effect is not nullified. Poison (and map DoT such as during Magnus, Poison clouds or the lava floors in Death Mines) does immediate damage on the barrier's HP itself. This does make using Blitz Shield at Magnus and stuff rather difficult, as the barrier will immediately break outside the blue zone.
As the last thing to mention: Blitz Shield does not activate Aura Weapon or Sword of Burning Soul. I think that it's safe to assume all "shared" skills such as Sengoku Secret Manual, Soul Driver and Blitz Shield cannot activate Sobs and Aura Weapon. Which makes sense, and I wouldn't expect any future shared skill to activate them either. Obviously all of the aforementioned shared-skill-examples (minus Aura Weapon) can charge Combo Orbs, though.
Ah yes, Blitz Shield (KMS, "BS" for short). I mean Blitz Shield (EMS). Wait, they seriously decided not to rename this one? *shrugs*
Blitz Shield is an interesting skill that doesn't seem to offer a lot of versatile use at first. And then you probably go to Rayque's Blog and read what is up with it. And then you get to this blogpost, and click on the hyper link from my previous sentence, and remain in an infinite loop for eternity! *insert evil laugh* Anyway, let's get back on track.
As with Combo Death Fault, this skill is both suitable for bossing and mobbing environment. There might not be as much to it as CDF, but there is still quite some nifty uses and interesting features it offers.
First of all: Blitz Shield is a great AoE skill that covers quite a lot of ground. When you cast the skill, you'll create a barrier that lasts for six seconds. The barrier can be detonated manually into an AoE by pressing the skill hotkey, but the detonation is only allowed two seconds after creating it. The barrier will automatically detonate if the barrier is still present after the six seconds duration.
Fun fact: while casting the barrier might take a fraction of a second (casting speed is affected by attack speed), the explosion itself is no delay (not affected by attack speed). This means that this skill can be combined with any other skill at the same time - Blitz Shield even charges Combo Orbs! This makes it an interesting skill to combo with other Hero skills that consume Combo Orbs, as the no delay allows you to instantly roll a 80% chance to charge Orbs back...
To even make things more interesting: the auto-detonate after six seconds is forced. You can still explode and apply damage when you're sitting on a chair, on a mount, hanging on a rope, walking around, or even using a transformation potion! Only exploding manually will bring you into the "combat alert" position; the forced explosion will not.
Even though this skill is shared with Paladin and Dark Knight, it does have quite some excellent horizontal coverage and it also has a ridiculous Y-range, especially with the negative Y! So Blitz Shield, as a mobbing skill, already pairs well with Shout, Rage Uprising and Combo Death Fault. A cooldown of only 15 seconds isn't too bad either!
However, using Blitz Shield as a mobbing skill is one thing - like with many other Hero skills, it definitely has some more uses...
The barrier you create with Blitz Shield, is a fairly new mechanic in MapleStory. As seen with classes like Zero and Blaster, barriers are a separate entity on top of your HP, rerouting all direct damage to the barrier's health instead, including map hazards. This means as long as the barrier has enough HP left, your health will remain untouched. So healing effects such as White Knight's "HP Recovery", Dark Knight's "Beholder" skills, Familiars and Aran's Character Card effect will immediately go to your health instead, as they clearly state to recover "HP", not "Barrier HP".
This is where things become a bit more complex, so I'll try to explain in context. Blitz Shield consumes HP in order to give you the barrier effect. It mentions to set a percentage "of your HP" as the barrier's HP, but it does not consider your "current max HP" (the HP you see on your user interface) - it seems to set the percentage from your pure clean HP, which excludes all skills, all equipment, all Union board effects, and so on. The higher Blitz Shield's level, the less HP you would require to cast the skill and the higher the barrier's HP will become. So at Level 1, to most people, Blitz Shield will consume more HP than it will "give". It's a good way to stop incoming attacks and directing them to the barrier first, but with such a low barrier's health, its uses for survival remains limited until you max it out and gain more clean HP by leveling.
However, the barrier's HP is where a fantastic opportunity is born. All damage that exceeds Blitz Shield's HP will go to your health directly and remove the barrier, but the remainder of the HP of said barrier will be deducted from the incoming hit. So if you have a barrier of only 1500 HP, and you'll receive a 100% HP attack, you'll be left with only 1500 HP, rather than dying instantly. Keep in mind that this requires you to be at maximum health, because the barrier's HP goes on top of your HP - so if you only have 28000/30000 HP left with 700 HP of Barrier because the skill requires HP to cast in the first place, a 100% HP attack of 30000 damage will still leave you with "-1300" health, which means you'd die from the attack. This is why I mentioned those healing methods all three Adventure warriors have and can obtain - it's difficult to use a potion to compensate the lost HP in order to tank an otherwise fatal hit, as you are left wide open with the remainder of the barrier's HP and still have the effects of potion cooldown applied at certain bosses where you'll need this...
That is why Blitz Shield is encouraged to be raised in level until you get to the "break even" when the skill gives more HP than it consumes. The actual level for this will vary between classes and players individually. Using recovery effects that usually are on cooldown is not very efficient. So "gaining" more Barrier HP than the HP you consume is preferable. In addition to reducing the HP cost, Blitz Shield already does pretty high damage at Level 1 (520% times 5), which goes to 1000% (!) at Level 25. It does not get reflected back from targets that use Damage Reflect but it does not bypass Damage Reflect either. Don't forget that any hit received while the barrier is up will reduce the barrier's HP, so that also means that the barrier's HP will greatly affect Blitz Shield's effectiveness. Skills that consume HP will also be deducted from the barrier's HP, so pay attention to when Blitz Shield is up when you want to use skills like Erda Nova or Aura Weapon as those are likely to remove the barrier instantly.
There's more to the barrier that is also very important to mention. While the barrier will last for six seconds and has its own HP, it can only sponge a maximum of five attacks before it is removed automatically. Because the default invincibility for all characters after being hit is less than one second, it's difficult to keep Blitz Shield up if you're getting spam attacked by multiple targets if you're not allowed to detonate it manually until after the barrier was set up for two seconds. Fortunately, most players fund in the "Extend invincibility duration after being hit" Potential/Nebulite/Item Set effect, so that should aid in keeping Blitz Shield up. Don't forget that you also have Rush and Combo Death Fault to stall out the "two second" rule.
The reason why I mention this is because the barrier can only be detonated when it's still present. If it is removed due to any of the aforementioned methods, Blitz Shield's detonation function cannot be used because you don't have the barrier set up. You essentially "sacrifice" the barrier to attack, after all. However, as long as the barrier's HP is low at Level 1, most non-Star Force/Arcane Force enemies can remove the barrier in two or three hits so... Definitely keep an eye on that. Whenever if you use Blitz Shield as a defense or offense manner, that's entirely up to you!
I personally think its best use lies within both worlds, but obviously it's context driven.
While Combo Death Fault can ignore Status Effects, Blitz Shield unfortunately does not. There are several attacks that give a Status Effect when it hits, so even if it lands on the barrier's HP, the Status Effect is not nullified. Poison (and map DoT such as during Magnus, Poison clouds or the lava floors in Death Mines) does immediate damage on the barrier's HP itself. This does make using Blitz Shield at Magnus and stuff rather difficult, as the barrier will immediately break outside the blue zone.
As the last thing to mention: Blitz Shield does not activate Aura Weapon or Sword of Burning Soul. I think that it's safe to assume all "shared" skills such as Sengoku Secret Manual, Soul Driver and Blitz Shield cannot activate Sobs and Aura Weapon. Which makes sense, and I wouldn't expect any future shared skill to activate them either. Obviously all of the aforementioned shared-skill-examples (minus Aura Weapon) can charge Combo Orbs, though.
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Raging Blow
The hitboxes of almost every Hero skill is a frequent topic that I've written about on this blog. It makes Hero's mobility one of the most broken in the game. I have often mentioned and laughed about Puncture's ridiculous range and to even make it worse Nexon is going to reduce the consumption from four to two Combo Orbs, making it even way more broken than it already was - but the hitbox changes of Raging Blow has caught my eye and was to me rather unexpected when I first read about it when they changed it in KMS.
It's pretty difficult to find people in KMS who actually write about certain details of every (new) skill (changes), usually narrowing it down to "Ray, you gotta be patient for half a year and figure it out yourself". Hence why I prefer to cover them on my blog, as nobody else usually would do that on the internet.
I figure that the reason why they've adjusted Raging Blow is because a lot of people who play Hero cannot simply understand that all Job Advances together define your class, so that everything from Beginner to 5th Job actually matter. And as such a lot of Heroes can only learn to use Raging Blow because they only look at the shortest skill descriptions and ignore any other skill description that seems either complex to understand or "oh, this is very specific, so it must have a niche to non-existent use". The trick to maining any class is to know and understand your skills, but also to think outside the box. Always verify a skill's hitbox thoroughly, regardless of the skills' original purpose. Anyway, let's get back to the actual changes to Raging Blow, as I otherwise would ramble on about this for several pages.
Raging Blow's hitbox has been improved upon several times. One of the main reason why Brandish was so great before Big Bang was because it had a fantastic hitbox. The remarkably high Y-range remains a specialty of Hero, as it returned multiple times throughout the years in new skills and revamps of older skills. When they replaced Brandish with Brave Slash however, the "trademark" Y was lost, until several years after they've introduced Raging Blow to replace Brave Slash, they returned the "trademark" Y during the RED update. However, Beyond made things more bold, as they have greatly extended the already bonkers Y-range and X-range of BOTH the default and "Enraged" Raging Blow - as you can see in the GIF, the things I've shown were previously impossible with RB.
That's not all. The Beyond update has also introduced a new expansion to Raging Blow, that was never done before on any of the main attacks from Hero. Enraged Raging Blow can now also hit slightly behind you and also below you - both of which, you couldn't do before as Raging Blow was always very straightforward with "everything in front and above you". This is a fantastic addition because this was always lacking with Hero, and you would usually need to use secondary attacks to hit enemies below you (Shout, Blitz Shield, Combo Death Fault). Before Rope Lift and Combo Hookshot was introduced, this was a recurring flaw with Hero's mobility. This addition was something I secretly wanted for almost seven years, so I feel satisfied now.
Anyway, as Enraged Raging Blow was affected the most, during 5th Job you'll really start to notice this, because ERB is so common due to the side effect of Valhalla and Sword of Burning Soul changing default's Raging Blow form into ERB mode for mobility usage. Which brings us to something I also must mention and discuss in this blogpost: the amount of lines to Raging Blow.
This has been a topic often discussed on various forums of MapleStory, as most people believe that Raging Blow's amount of lines going down from 10 to 6 and increasing the damage per line is an improvement - unfortunately it's not and a lot of people have forgotten one thing in all of the calculations: Critical Damage. Yes, the six lines in total deal more damage than the ten from before Beyond, but don't forget that as Critical Damage is an additional multiplier each line, you'll actually lose damage in the end because you'll have less lines to multiply.
Of course we also have things like the physical defence of enemies, the percentual damage reduction, weapon mastery, boss damage, monster damage, enhancement cores, Hyper skills, damage reduction based on level, damage reduction based on elements, Arcane Force, Star Force, Puncture's Bleed effect, Chance Attack, and so on - but that pretty much should've debunked the "10 to 6 is an improvement" theory right from the start, as the damage per line for Raging Blow hasn't been buffed that much. It's not that we went from 10x187% to 6x350% or something, as the total damage "gained" by RB itself is barely higher. Anyway, don't forget that we've gained a fantastic hitbox improvement as a countermeasure - and if you have the core slots reserved for it, Combo Death Fault and Blitz Shield can easily make up for it. So still, seems like a more than fair trade (and if you play Hero only for damage or just one skill that got added during a certain update while there probably will be many more similar updates to come to introduce new skills to all classes, including for the main you've just replaced with a Hero, I can't take you seriously in the first place - no offence).
I mentioned I would also talk about some significant skill changes. And this is one hell of them: the adjustment of Raging Blow's hitboxes (again!).
The hitboxes of almost every Hero skill is a frequent topic that I've written about on this blog. It makes Hero's mobility one of the most broken in the game. I have often mentioned and laughed about Puncture's ridiculous range and to even make it worse Nexon is going to reduce the consumption from four to two Combo Orbs, making it even way more broken than it already was - but the hitbox changes of Raging Blow has caught my eye and was to me rather unexpected when I first read about it when they changed it in KMS.
It's pretty difficult to find people in KMS who actually write about certain details of every (new) skill (changes), usually narrowing it down to "Ray, you gotta be patient for half a year and figure it out yourself". Hence why I prefer to cover them on my blog, as nobody else usually would do that on the internet.
I figure that the reason why they've adjusted Raging Blow is because a lot of people who play Hero cannot simply understand that all Job Advances together define your class, so that everything from Beginner to 5th Job actually matter. And as such a lot of Heroes can only learn to use Raging Blow because they only look at the shortest skill descriptions and ignore any other skill description that seems either complex to understand or "oh, this is very specific, so it must have a niche to non-existent use". The trick to maining any class is to know and understand your skills, but also to think outside the box. Always verify a skill's hitbox thoroughly, regardless of the skills' original purpose. Anyway, let's get back to the actual changes to Raging Blow, as I otherwise would ramble on about this for several pages.
Raging Blow's hitbox has been improved upon several times. One of the main reason why Brandish was so great before Big Bang was because it had a fantastic hitbox. The remarkably high Y-range remains a specialty of Hero, as it returned multiple times throughout the years in new skills and revamps of older skills. When they replaced Brandish with Brave Slash however, the "trademark" Y was lost, until several years after they've introduced Raging Blow to replace Brave Slash, they returned the "trademark" Y during the RED update. However, Beyond made things more bold, as they have greatly extended the already bonkers Y-range and X-range of BOTH the default and "Enraged" Raging Blow - as you can see in the GIF, the things I've shown were previously impossible with RB.
That's not all. The Beyond update has also introduced a new expansion to Raging Blow, that was never done before on any of the main attacks from Hero. Enraged Raging Blow can now also hit slightly behind you and also below you - both of which, you couldn't do before as Raging Blow was always very straightforward with "everything in front and above you". This is a fantastic addition because this was always lacking with Hero, and you would usually need to use secondary attacks to hit enemies below you (Shout, Blitz Shield, Combo Death Fault). Before Rope Lift and Combo Hookshot was introduced, this was a recurring flaw with Hero's mobility. This addition was something I secretly wanted for almost seven years, so I feel satisfied now.
Anyway, as Enraged Raging Blow was affected the most, during 5th Job you'll really start to notice this, because ERB is so common due to the side effect of Valhalla and Sword of Burning Soul changing default's Raging Blow form into ERB mode for mobility usage. Which brings us to something I also must mention and discuss in this blogpost: the amount of lines to Raging Blow.
This has been a topic often discussed on various forums of MapleStory, as most people believe that Raging Blow's amount of lines going down from 10 to 6 and increasing the damage per line is an improvement - unfortunately it's not and a lot of people have forgotten one thing in all of the calculations: Critical Damage. Yes, the six lines in total deal more damage than the ten from before Beyond, but don't forget that as Critical Damage is an additional multiplier each line, you'll actually lose damage in the end because you'll have less lines to multiply.
Of course we also have things like the physical defence of enemies, the percentual damage reduction, weapon mastery, boss damage, monster damage, enhancement cores, Hyper skills, damage reduction based on level, damage reduction based on elements, Arcane Force, Star Force, Puncture's Bleed effect, Chance Attack, and so on - but that pretty much should've debunked the "10 to 6 is an improvement" theory right from the start, as the damage per line for Raging Blow hasn't been buffed that much. It's not that we went from 10x187% to 6x350% or something, as the total damage "gained" by RB itself is barely higher. Anyway, don't forget that we've gained a fantastic hitbox improvement as a countermeasure - and if you have the core slots reserved for it, Combo Death Fault and Blitz Shield can easily make up for it. So still, seems like a more than fair trade (and if you play Hero only for damage or just one skill that got added during a certain update while there probably will be many more similar updates to come to introduce new skills to all classes, including for the main you've just replaced with a Hero, I can't take you seriously in the first place - no offence).
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Other changes
Speaking of Enrage, Sword of Burning Soul does now also apply to Enrage's damage increase. No, I wasn't refering to the "Enraged Sobs" effects, as those just work as intended. But Sobs should also gain damage boost from Enrage itself, which didn't happen during 5th Job's release. Makes sense, it's also something you wouldn't think of at first anyway. Don't forget that Summon Duration will soon no longer work with 5th Job skills, as some Maplers (read: mainly Kaisers) have spread around this what-first-seemed-to-be-intended gets fixed soon (I mean, it's not that Summon Duration was mentioned anywhere in the 5th Job Matrix or descriptions about the limits of 5th Job, hence why it has caused quite a confusion about if it was truly a bug or intentional), so the duration of Sword of Burning Soul will get hit hard (but its base duration will be increased in a future update as a fancy compensation though!). Just keep that in mind. Sobs is still so far our most important 5th Job skill.
As of 5th Job, something that I have starting to notice, is the incredible amount of MP burn Hero has due to spamming Combo Death Fault and re-casting Sobs/Valhalla. Unfortunately for now there's not much you can do, but it's much easier to chew through 10.000 MP as our MP recovery becomes less efficient. Not even an Evan Character Card or MP cost reduction effects can fix this, unless you dedicate at least two lines of -30% MP Cost from Legendary Potential.
There are two things I am not entirely certain of about Hero that I wanted to address eventually on my blog, so I would put them here. If I'm not mistaken, I've seen Heroes in KMS (not KMST) use Combo Death Fault with Enrage to apply to all fifteen enemies in range. Rage Uprising has also appeared to be used in mid-air in some Korean Hero videos. Why can't we do that in EMS? I dunno. But then again, we had a modified Luminous for ages, until Nexon understood it was a stupid idea because of course all the Luminous revamps and 5th Job skills are tailored for the KMS version, not the GMS one. If only they would also fix the option to choose between Luminous' good or evil storyline, as I didn't want to kill Lania ; - ;
Last but not least, I figured out a few months ago that Erda Nova can actually charge Combo Orbs. In addition to that, you can use that skill (and other 5th Job commons like Rope Lift and Will of Erda) when you're mounting, making it the first attack that you can use on a mount! Haven't tried out the Decent skills. Sounds like a bug, to be honest.
Yes, there is more to discuss - believe it or not! One is definitely significant, if you ask me. Aura Weapon's ability to ignore Enrage has been patched. To be honest I can totally understand that it was an oversight, but I think it was important to mention here anyway. Sengoku Secret Manual still ignores Enrage however, but its cooldown is 3 minutes so it's not that you can use it often... Also: Aura Weapon is still bugged. For some reason it gives the damage of Level 25 at Level 1, and the damage of Level 50 at Level 25. Everything else is correct though, but this bug has been here for several months.
Speaking of Enrage, Sword of Burning Soul does now also apply to Enrage's damage increase. No, I wasn't refering to the "Enraged Sobs" effects, as those just work as intended. But Sobs should also gain damage boost from Enrage itself, which didn't happen during 5th Job's release. Makes sense, it's also something you wouldn't think of at first anyway. Don't forget that Summon Duration will soon no longer work with 5th Job skills, as some Maplers (read: mainly Kaisers) have spread around this what-first-seemed-to-be-intended gets fixed soon (I mean, it's not that Summon Duration was mentioned anywhere in the 5th Job Matrix or descriptions about the limits of 5th Job, hence why it has caused quite a confusion about if it was truly a bug or intentional), so the duration of Sword of Burning Soul will get hit hard (but its base duration will be increased in a future update as a fancy compensation though!). Just keep that in mind. Sobs is still so far our most important 5th Job skill.
As of 5th Job, something that I have starting to notice, is the incredible amount of MP burn Hero has due to spamming Combo Death Fault and re-casting Sobs/Valhalla. Unfortunately for now there's not much you can do, but it's much easier to chew through 10.000 MP as our MP recovery becomes less efficient. Not even an Evan Character Card or MP cost reduction effects can fix this, unless you dedicate at least two lines of -30% MP Cost from Legendary Potential.
There are two things I am not entirely certain of about Hero that I wanted to address eventually on my blog, so I would put them here. If I'm not mistaken, I've seen Heroes in KMS (not KMST) use Combo Death Fault with Enrage to apply to all fifteen enemies in range. Rage Uprising has also appeared to be used in mid-air in some Korean Hero videos. Why can't we do that in EMS? I dunno. But then again, we had a modified Luminous for ages, until Nexon understood it was a stupid idea because of course all the Luminous revamps and 5th Job skills are tailored for the KMS version, not the GMS one. If only they would also fix the option to choose between Luminous' good or evil storyline, as I didn't want to kill Lania ; - ;
Last but not least, I figured out a few months ago that Erda Nova can actually charge Combo Orbs. In addition to that, you can use that skill (and other 5th Job commons like Rope Lift and Will of Erda) when you're mounting, making it the first attack that you can use on a mount! Haven't tried out the Decent skills. Sounds like a bug, to be honest.
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So, the second wave by itself...
Is preeeeetttyyy amazing. To almost every class, Beyond delivers again with an actually more useful wave than the first. As I often call the first wave "the marketable, first taste of what will be 5th Job as a body of work in a few years" where we all get flashy skills to give the "woah" factor. The second wave is a much more reliable and gamechanging one, as a lot of classes gained short cooldown skills that gives quite some significant addition to everyone's skill tree. Both Combo Death Fault and Blitz Shield are great, if not, fantastic. I would say Sobs is still the first skill to max, followed by Aura Weapon (extends duration), Blitz Shield (increases efficiency) and Combo Death Fault as the least important one. Yes, having high damage is always nice on a skill, but that's literally all there is to maxing CDF, while maxing out duration and non-damage effects might be in Hero's case more beneficial. Even if Damage Reduction works on % HP Attacks from most enemies now, that doesn't mean you can sponge hits, as Hero still remains frail.
Obviously I'm curious to wave three, as of the time of this writing, has not surfaced or been confirmed yet - but if they would do something, can't we all agree it's time for passive skills and actives without cooldown? I still want Expert Combo Attack, as that's the only thing I truly ask from Nexon to be delivered. Everything else is just icing on the cake. But getting a wave like this sounds like a good move and feels right for a third wave. Do we really want to have another wave of cooldowns and keyboard micromanaging directly after these two, even if the skills are amazing?
Of course when the third wave hits EMS, you can expect a blogpost about it in a few weeks after release. That's it for today guys - I'll see you again next post!
Is preeeeetttyyy amazing. To almost every class, Beyond delivers again with an actually more useful wave than the first. As I often call the first wave "the marketable, first taste of what will be 5th Job as a body of work in a few years" where we all get flashy skills to give the "woah" factor. The second wave is a much more reliable and gamechanging one, as a lot of classes gained short cooldown skills that gives quite some significant addition to everyone's skill tree. Both Combo Death Fault and Blitz Shield are great, if not, fantastic. I would say Sobs is still the first skill to max, followed by Aura Weapon (extends duration), Blitz Shield (increases efficiency) and Combo Death Fault as the least important one. Yes, having high damage is always nice on a skill, but that's literally all there is to maxing CDF, while maxing out duration and non-damage effects might be in Hero's case more beneficial. Even if Damage Reduction works on % HP Attacks from most enemies now, that doesn't mean you can sponge hits, as Hero still remains frail.
Obviously I'm curious to wave three, as of the time of this writing, has not surfaced or been confirmed yet - but if they would do something, can't we all agree it's time for passive skills and actives without cooldown? I still want Expert Combo Attack, as that's the only thing I truly ask from Nexon to be delivered. Everything else is just icing on the cake. But getting a wave like this sounds like a good move and feels right for a third wave. Do we really want to have another wave of cooldowns and keyboard micromanaging directly after these two, even if the skills are amazing?
Of course when the third wave hits EMS, you can expect a blogpost about it in a few weeks after release. That's it for today guys - I'll see you again next post!
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