Let's start out with talking about the changes made to (Advanced) Final Attack. Previously, all Final Attack variants had its own unique hitbox when it was activated. These hitboxes would appear in front and behind you, but the length of the hitbox itself was shorter than Raging Blow in Hero's case.
While at the time this was a good addition to the game, boss designs did change over time while Final Attack's hitbox stayed the same. Modern boss designs started to encourage you to keep a distance from them to avoid being instant killed or pushed into hazards, which meant that Final Attack couldn't reach these targets often because they were out of reach.
Between the Ark and the Black update in EMS, an undocumented change to all Final Attack skills occurred where its unique hitbox was replaced to take the same size of the skill's hitbox that has activated it. This by itself was a significant change because it made Final Attack a lot more reliable for doing additional damage, which is the whole idea behind this skill in the first place. If you would hit a target from a distance with a long-ranged skill, Final Attack will hit this enemy with the recent changes.
When this change was implemented, I could immediately tell the improvement in my weekly Mu Lung Dojo runs, given that I have the habit of making too much use of Raging Blow's horizontal length. I mean, you could almost say that I did Mu Lung Dojo without AFA because my targets would be out of range all the time because of that. That said, the improvement was not free - a significant drawback to this change was that FA would no longer hit behind you because of the hitbox copy.
Fortunately they changed this with the Black update, as Final Attack will not only take the hitbox of the skill that activated it, but it would also apply that hitbox to both sides again! So with a skill such as Enhanced Raging Blow, Final Attack has only become much more useful than it already was.
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New Skill: Combo Instinct!
Fighter starts out with Combo Attack and has one Combo Finisher: Combo Force. Crusader has Combo Synergy and has two Combo Finishers: Shout and Panic. Hero has Advanced Combo Attack and has one Combo Finisher and one Combo Buff: Incising (Puncture) and Enrage. With 5th Job only having Combo Death Fault so far, it was a matter of time before we got another Combo Buff: Combo Instinct (GMS: Instinctual Combo / MSEA: Combo Instincts).
Look at that line vomit. Hot damn. There was a time where Hero only did two lines with Brandish, y'know. Let's see what Nexon has given us for Maplemas, as I'm always a big fan of trying out new toys to play with.
Combo Instinct (CI for short) is introduced as a short burst skill that supercharges you with a respectable amount of things. In short, consider it a "going ham" skill. There's a lot to talk about, and I'll cover as much as I always do.
Let's start with the basics. Combo Instinct is a 30 second buff, that does the following:
So, let's dive into the first subject of Combo Instinct to get this out of the way: the stat boosts.
The stat boosts from Combo Instinct have been somewhat mistaken by the majority of the community, and I haven't found any discussions about it so far. To be fair, most people struggle with understanding what skill descriptions in Maple are even trying to say. (It's not too difficult, you just need to know Nexon's writing style)
Many players think that Combo Instinct gives additional Final Damage, Boss Damage and % Attack on top of all other effects that we already have. Kinda like how Enrage gives us additional Final Damage and Critical Damage, but is separate from the boosts from Combo Attack or any other skill. However, if you have looked further into the actual damage you deal with Combo Instinct, the damage increase you gain is small. Why so? It has to do with the exact context of how Combo Instinct's boosts are applied, which is something not many are aware of, unfortunately.
So, to make things clear: Combo Instinct only multiplies the stat gains from Combo Attack, which further is greatly affected by the amount of Combo Orbs you have. Let me try to explain this in context of what this means.
The increase is not too shabby and the Final Damage increase should be noticeable, but it doesn't feel as "big" as that 20% shown on the skill tooltip. I did say it was only going to be a slight increase, after all...
Important note: if you haven't invested in the "Boss Rush" Hyper Skill, Combo Instinct's multiplier will do absolutely nothing for the Boss Damage department. Currently without investing in this particular Hyper Skill, ACA would just have "0% Boss Damage" per Combo Orb. So the multiplier of CI will happen, but multiplying zero still means zero. Whenever if you should or should not invest in this Hyper Skill is a whole topic by itself, which I won't discuss here.
But remember, Combo Instinct really isn't about that Combo Attack stat boosting. It's all about the additional lines and hitboxes you'll spam after each Raging Blow. And this part is the main beef of CI.
For each time you use Raging Blow, it summons a short barrage of hits. These barrages are called "rifts".
A single rift does three separate attacks of six lines, on a maximum of six targets. Each separate attack may appear unique on screen, but the damage per line and their hitboxes are identical. A rift adds a total of 18 (!) additional lines to each Raging Blow, which is a ridiculous amount of damage reinforcement.
The damage per line on these rifts (at Level 30) is somewhat comparable to a fully enhanced Raging Blow with Hyper Skills and Enhancement Nodes applied to it. So essentially that means at Level 30, the total damage you deal with Raging Blow during CI is four times higher than it usually would've been without. Even at Level 1, those additional lines by themselves make quite a difference, because they start out strong already with 208% per line. It's kinda like with Sword of Burning Soul or Combo Death Fault. It'll hit hard at Level 1, but it'll even hit harder when maxed out... But at least, that should be obvious.
There is no cooldown between rifts - they appear as fast as you can swing Raging Blow. You cannot summon rifts with any other skill other than Raging Blow. So unlike Sobs or Aura Weapon (which can be triggered by many skills), Combo Instinct is really focused to be used only with Raging Blow.
So as a burst skill, Combo Instinct is extremely impactful. It can easily become a game changer when you combine it with your other skills. It's great for (short) daily bosses or for stuff where there's actual time between runs to let the cooldown run through.
But is there more to Combo Instinct than what meets the eye? Are there any 200 IQ plays for this clearly-to-be-only-used-for-bossing skill that I might only find on Rayque's Blog until it becomes mainstream knowledge? Of course there is. I wouldn't write this question if I didn't have a follow up.
What if I tell you that there's an even better use for Combo Instinct outside of bossing? The best thing about Combo Instinct is what the rifts do: it gives you a larger hitbox with Raging Blow, and it allows Hero to run a continuous string of large hitboxes for 30 seconds. Take a look at the image below.
The hitboxes of the rifts are even larger than Enhanced Raging Blow's! So no, Combo Instinct does not activate Enhanced Raging Blow like Sobs and Valhalla does, but you can clearly tell from that image that it doesn't have to.
So, a problem that Sword of Burning Soul and Valhalla introduced with their Enhanced Raging Blow effects two years ago is that there is a significant downtime of half a minute where Hero's mobility is left vulnerable without any backups. The duration and cooldowns of Sobs and Valhalla don't align nicely, so you end up having a moment where both skills are on cooldown. And to be honest, that half a minute downtime without Enhanced Raging Blow sucks.
Combo Instinct effectively gets rid of this downtime as it fits almost perfectly in this cycle, because its duration is about the same as the downtime! Its cooldown of 240 seconds doesn't mean much within this context because by the time you'll hit that "half a minute downtime" again, CI is already available again. Convenient, isn't it?
I personally find a video like this to clarify this significant game changer to be more helpful than a wall of text, so hopefully this should give a good idea on what to expect. For some reason, I haven't heard anyone mentioning this either...
Important note #2: maxing out Sobs is required for this cycle to work. The duration of Sobs increases each two levels, thus freshmen 5th Job Heroes cannot use this cycle until they can afford the Nodeshards to increase Sobs' level. Cooldown reducers are not mandatory, but it does help to smooth things out.
One thing that I have to mention about this cycle is that Combo Instinct's target count is still rather low. While a base of 6 targets isn't too bad, it might require additional rifts to clear maps with dense spawns. Fortunately 5th job maps are often very large and the spawn is spread out thinly, so it's not that big of an issue. Expanding the maximum targets on Combo Instinct can be really rewarding on multi-part bosses (such as Chaos Zakum) and dense maps, though...
To clarify the targeting of enemies with the rifts: even if the rifts are three separate attacks of six lines each, they all share the same targets. So, if the first attack targets the maximum allowed enemies and kills them, the second and third attacks won't search for new targets and these will go to waste.
So, the new mobility cycle can be explained with the following image:
Try to remember it, but honestly you should get the hang of it soon enough when you try it yourself. Let's jump into Ryude's Ruling before we can talk about the drawbacks of Combo Instinct, though.
Ryude's Ruling
"Does Ryude's Sword work with the rifts of Combo Instinct?"
Yeah, it seems like Ryude does. This is most likely due to the fact that the rifts made by Combo Instinct are considered normal attacks, so they apply to Ryude's effect.
I suppose it does make using Ryude's Sword a lot more appealing, but it isn't like Combo Instinct is going to be up all day so...
So, are there a couple of things to talk about Combo Instinct's drawbacks. Let's start out with the fact that Combo Instinct cannot be cancelled, similarly to Sword of Burning Soul and Terms & Condition. When you've casted it, there's no way to stop it - the only way to do so is to just sit it out. Perhaps this was done on purpose to prevent you from accidentally disabling it with your mouse, given that these skills are rather important and have a fairly long cooldown.
Speaking of which...
Combo Instinct's cooldown is 240 seconds, so you won't be able to have it out often. Heck, if you would use it for the mobility cycle, it will pretty much always be on cooldown and not at the times when you may need it. It's really similar to Valhalla in that sense.
But the most important drawback about Combo Instinct is the fact that it halves your recharge rate for Combo Orbs, and Nexon made sure that you cannot outsmart it. It seems like Combo Instinct's reduction in recharging Combo Orbs is absolute and overrules all possible workarounds that usually would do the trick. This recharge rate reduction is really noticeable because recharging becomes only 40% - and to make it even worse, this recharge also disables Combo Force's recharge overlapping. So it's really challenging to recharge orbs while CI is active.
To put it in context: you might not even recharge all your orbs before Combo Death Fault's buff has expired. You expend 6 Combo Orbs to cast it but there's no guarantee you'll get it back in five seconds. Usually Combo Force would be your best bypass if you were out of orbs, but then again, you would most likely be spamming Raging Blow all the time so...
And no, despite that the rifts are considered regular attacks by the game, it does not recharge Combo Orbs. The skill description even mentions this. I'm aware that it was possible to recharge with the rifts in KMST before it was released, but they fixed it soon enough in KMS and this fix was present day 1 in EMS.
However, all things considered: losing Combo Orbs during Combo Instinct doesn't always have to be a negative thing, y'know. As long as you don't need max charge to one shot enemies while you grind, which usually does not happen under normal circumstances because the rifts will finish off targets either way. If you're going to spam Raging Blow during a boss in the context of Combo Death Fault - it's all up to luck, but you will gain additional damage during CDF's buff regardless. It's just that you might have a temporary drop after it expires, but then one could argue that you'll be dishing out additional lines so it doesn't really matter too much... As long as you're aware of it while using Combo Instinct, you'll be fine.
But what about Combo Synergy's chance to recharge Combo Orbs after being hit?
I mean, you surely might give me the Russellon Pill argument that I've been giving out on my blog for years. The thing is, Nexon often implements changes ahead of time. A couple of weeks before they revealed Combo Instinct in KMST, they already retired Russellon Pills as they removed the effects on it. Russellon Pills won't poison you anymore, and I already had the feeling that this change was only there to prevent certain exploits with the fifth skill wave. Russellon Pills have been in KMS for one-and-a-half decade, and thus Nexon suddenly caring to change this item after that long could only foreshadow the upcoming update.
So no, you cannot use Russellon Pills to cheese the Combo Instinct's reduction in recharge rate. The cheese has passed its expiration date, unfortunately. Kinda like how pills do have an expiration date in real life.
The thing is, even if there was a new exploit, cheese or if you would use Combo Instinct in an environment to make use of that Combo Synergy's effect, forget about it. I've already told you that Nexon made sure to close all the possible loopholes. This isn't something that is mentioned in the skill description; but Combo Instinct seems to completely shut down the ability to recharge Combo Orbs after getting hit. Just watch the video, and you'll understand what I'll mean.
Anyway, so if increasing the level of Combo Instinct only reinforces the Combo Orb stats and the damage of the rifts, is it worth to max this skill out as soon as possible? Yes, I would recommend maxing this skill out after Sword of Burning Soul and Aura Weapon.
I'd say that the damage reinforcement is worth the investment. It will certainly give you more than trying to do Combo Death Fault or Blitz Shield earlier. Despite its 30 second duration, the damage increases per level on the rift lines go up real fast, which pretty much allows you to hit much harder with it. Efficiency is the biggest gain by leveling Combo Instinct, so. Just make sure that Sobs and Aura Weapon are maxed out first.
Fighter starts out with Combo Attack and has one Combo Finisher: Combo Force. Crusader has Combo Synergy and has two Combo Finishers: Shout and Panic. Hero has Advanced Combo Attack and has one Combo Finisher and one Combo Buff: Incising (Puncture) and Enrage. With 5th Job only having Combo Death Fault so far, it was a matter of time before we got another Combo Buff: Combo Instinct (GMS: Instinctual Combo / MSEA: Combo Instincts).
Look at that line vomit. Hot damn. There was a time where Hero only did two lines with Brandish, y'know. Let's see what Nexon has given us for Maplemas, as I'm always a big fan of trying out new toys to play with.
Combo Instinct (CI for short) is introduced as a short burst skill that supercharges you with a respectable amount of things. In short, consider it a "going ham" skill. There's a lot to talk about, and I'll cover as much as I always do.
Let's start with the basics. Combo Instinct is a 30 second buff, that does the following:
- It slightly increases the stat boosts from Combo Attack,
- It halves the chance of charging Combo Orbs,
- It gives additional lines (and hitboxes) after each Raging Blow.
So, let's dive into the first subject of Combo Instinct to get this out of the way: the stat boosts.
The stat boosts from Combo Instinct have been somewhat mistaken by the majority of the community, and I haven't found any discussions about it so far. To be fair, most people struggle with understanding what skill descriptions in Maple are even trying to say. (It's not too difficult, you just need to know Nexon's writing style)
Many players think that Combo Instinct gives additional Final Damage, Boss Damage and % Attack on top of all other effects that we already have. Kinda like how Enrage gives us additional Final Damage and Critical Damage, but is separate from the boosts from Combo Attack or any other skill. However, if you have looked further into the actual damage you deal with Combo Instinct, the damage increase you gain is small. Why so? It has to do with the exact context of how Combo Instinct's boosts are applied, which is something not many are aware of, unfortunately.
So, to make things clear: Combo Instinct only multiplies the stat gains from Combo Attack, which further is greatly affected by the amount of Combo Orbs you have. Let me try to explain this in context of what this means.
Context:
Advanced Combo Attack gives you Final Damage, Boss Damage and Weapon Attack per Combo Orb. The gains per stat is entirely dependent on how you've built your Hero. The minimum Combo Orb count for ACA is 1, and the maximum is 10.
So, that means that ACA gives you:
● Final Damage × Total number of Combo Orbs
● Boss Damage × Total number of Combo Orbs
● Weapon Attack × Total number of Combo Orbs
Combo Instinct will multiply these stat gains by a set percentage, based on the level of Combo Instinct. The higher the level, the higher the multiplier. It increases by 0.50% per level. It is 20% at Level 30.
So, this is what Combo Instinct does to the ACA stats:
Advanced Combo Attack gives you Final Damage, Boss Damage and Weapon Attack per Combo Orb. The gains per stat is entirely dependent on how you've built your Hero. The minimum Combo Orb count for ACA is 1, and the maximum is 10.
So, that means that ACA gives you:
● Final Damage × Total number of Combo Orbs
● Boss Damage × Total number of Combo Orbs
● Weapon Attack × Total number of Combo Orbs
Combo Instinct will multiply these stat gains by a set percentage, based on the level of Combo Instinct. The higher the level, the higher the multiplier. It increases by 0.50% per level. It is 20% at Level 30.
So, this is what Combo Instinct does to the ACA stats:
● Final Damage × Total number of Combo Orbs × CI multiplier
● Boss Damage × Total number of Combo Orbs × CI multiplier
● Weapon Attack × Total number of Combo Orbs × CI multiplier
This means that if you only have one Combo Orb, the CI multiplies almost nothing. Heck, even if you have 10 Combo Orbs with Level 31 Advanced Combo Attack and the corresponding Hyper Skills, it'll simply end up like this:
● Boss Damage × Total number of Combo Orbs × CI multiplier
● Weapon Attack × Total number of Combo Orbs × CI multiplier
This means that if you only have one Combo Orb, the CI multiplies almost nothing. Heck, even if you have 10 Combo Orbs with Level 31 Advanced Combo Attack and the corresponding Hyper Skills, it'll simply end up like this:
● 13% Final Damage × 10 × 1.2 = 156% Final Damage
● 2% Boss Damage × 10 × 1.2 = 24% Boss Damage
● 2 Weapon Attack × 10 × 1.2 = 24 Weapon Attack
This means that you'll gain 26% Final Damage, 4% Boss Damage and 4 Weapon Attack while Combo Instinct is active when you have 10 Combo Orbs charged.
● 2% Boss Damage × 10 × 1.2 = 24% Boss Damage
● 2 Weapon Attack × 10 × 1.2 = 24 Weapon Attack
This means that you'll gain 26% Final Damage, 4% Boss Damage and 4 Weapon Attack while Combo Instinct is active when you have 10 Combo Orbs charged.
The increase is not too shabby and the Final Damage increase should be noticeable, but it doesn't feel as "big" as that 20% shown on the skill tooltip. I did say it was only going to be a slight increase, after all...
Important note: if you haven't invested in the "Boss Rush" Hyper Skill, Combo Instinct's multiplier will do absolutely nothing for the Boss Damage department. Currently without investing in this particular Hyper Skill, ACA would just have "0% Boss Damage" per Combo Orb. So the multiplier of CI will happen, but multiplying zero still means zero. Whenever if you should or should not invest in this Hyper Skill is a whole topic by itself, which I won't discuss here.
But remember, Combo Instinct really isn't about that Combo Attack stat boosting. It's all about the additional lines and hitboxes you'll spam after each Raging Blow. And this part is the main beef of CI.
For each time you use Raging Blow, it summons a short barrage of hits. These barrages are called "rifts".
A single rift does three separate attacks of six lines, on a maximum of six targets. Each separate attack may appear unique on screen, but the damage per line and their hitboxes are identical. A rift adds a total of 18 (!) additional lines to each Raging Blow, which is a ridiculous amount of damage reinforcement.
The damage per line on these rifts (at Level 30) is somewhat comparable to a fully enhanced Raging Blow with Hyper Skills and Enhancement Nodes applied to it. So essentially that means at Level 30, the total damage you deal with Raging Blow during CI is four times higher than it usually would've been without. Even at Level 1, those additional lines by themselves make quite a difference, because they start out strong already with 208% per line. It's kinda like with Sword of Burning Soul or Combo Death Fault. It'll hit hard at Level 1, but it'll even hit harder when maxed out... But at least, that should be obvious.
There is no cooldown between rifts - they appear as fast as you can swing Raging Blow. You cannot summon rifts with any other skill other than Raging Blow. So unlike Sobs or Aura Weapon (which can be triggered by many skills), Combo Instinct is really focused to be used only with Raging Blow.
So as a burst skill, Combo Instinct is extremely impactful. It can easily become a game changer when you combine it with your other skills. It's great for (short) daily bosses or for stuff where there's actual time between runs to let the cooldown run through.
But is there more to Combo Instinct than what meets the eye? Are there any 200 IQ plays for this clearly-to-be-only-used-for-bossing skill that I might only find on Rayque's Blog until it becomes mainstream knowledge? Of course there is. I wouldn't write this question if I didn't have a follow up.
What if I tell you that there's an even better use for Combo Instinct outside of bossing? The best thing about Combo Instinct is what the rifts do: it gives you a larger hitbox with Raging Blow, and it allows Hero to run a continuous string of large hitboxes for 30 seconds. Take a look at the image below.
The hitboxes of the rifts are even larger than Enhanced Raging Blow's! So no, Combo Instinct does not activate Enhanced Raging Blow like Sobs and Valhalla does, but you can clearly tell from that image that it doesn't have to.
So, a problem that Sword of Burning Soul and Valhalla introduced with their Enhanced Raging Blow effects two years ago is that there is a significant downtime of half a minute where Hero's mobility is left vulnerable without any backups. The duration and cooldowns of Sobs and Valhalla don't align nicely, so you end up having a moment where both skills are on cooldown. And to be honest, that half a minute downtime without Enhanced Raging Blow sucks.
Combo Instinct effectively gets rid of this downtime as it fits almost perfectly in this cycle, because its duration is about the same as the downtime! Its cooldown of 240 seconds doesn't mean much within this context because by the time you'll hit that "half a minute downtime" again, CI is already available again. Convenient, isn't it?
I personally find a video like this to clarify this significant game changer to be more helpful than a wall of text, so hopefully this should give a good idea on what to expect. For some reason, I haven't heard anyone mentioning this either...
Important note #2: maxing out Sobs is required for this cycle to work. The duration of Sobs increases each two levels, thus freshmen 5th Job Heroes cannot use this cycle until they can afford the Nodeshards to increase Sobs' level. Cooldown reducers are not mandatory, but it does help to smooth things out.
One thing that I have to mention about this cycle is that Combo Instinct's target count is still rather low. While a base of 6 targets isn't too bad, it might require additional rifts to clear maps with dense spawns. Fortunately 5th job maps are often very large and the spawn is spread out thinly, so it's not that big of an issue. Expanding the maximum targets on Combo Instinct can be really rewarding on multi-part bosses (such as Chaos Zakum) and dense maps, though...
To clarify the targeting of enemies with the rifts: even if the rifts are three separate attacks of six lines each, they all share the same targets. So, if the first attack targets the maximum allowed enemies and kills them, the second and third attacks won't search for new targets and these will go to waste.
So, the new mobility cycle can be explained with the following image:
Try to remember it, but honestly you should get the hang of it soon enough when you try it yourself. Let's jump into Ryude's Ruling before we can talk about the drawbacks of Combo Instinct, though.
"Does Ryude's Sword work with the rifts of Combo Instinct?"
Yeah, it seems like Ryude does. This is most likely due to the fact that the rifts made by Combo Instinct are considered normal attacks, so they apply to Ryude's effect.
I suppose it does make using Ryude's Sword a lot more appealing, but it isn't like Combo Instinct is going to be up all day so...
So, are there a couple of things to talk about Combo Instinct's drawbacks. Let's start out with the fact that Combo Instinct cannot be cancelled, similarly to Sword of Burning Soul and Terms & Condition. When you've casted it, there's no way to stop it - the only way to do so is to just sit it out. Perhaps this was done on purpose to prevent you from accidentally disabling it with your mouse, given that these skills are rather important and have a fairly long cooldown.
Speaking of which...
Combo Instinct's cooldown is 240 seconds, so you won't be able to have it out often. Heck, if you would use it for the mobility cycle, it will pretty much always be on cooldown and not at the times when you may need it. It's really similar to Valhalla in that sense.
But the most important drawback about Combo Instinct is the fact that it halves your recharge rate for Combo Orbs, and Nexon made sure that you cannot outsmart it. It seems like Combo Instinct's reduction in recharging Combo Orbs is absolute and overrules all possible workarounds that usually would do the trick. This recharge rate reduction is really noticeable because recharging becomes only 40% - and to make it even worse, this recharge also disables Combo Force's recharge overlapping. So it's really challenging to recharge orbs while CI is active.
To put it in context: you might not even recharge all your orbs before Combo Death Fault's buff has expired. You expend 6 Combo Orbs to cast it but there's no guarantee you'll get it back in five seconds. Usually Combo Force would be your best bypass if you were out of orbs, but then again, you would most likely be spamming Raging Blow all the time so...
And no, despite that the rifts are considered regular attacks by the game, it does not recharge Combo Orbs. The skill description even mentions this. I'm aware that it was possible to recharge with the rifts in KMST before it was released, but they fixed it soon enough in KMS and this fix was present day 1 in EMS.
However, all things considered: losing Combo Orbs during Combo Instinct doesn't always have to be a negative thing, y'know. As long as you don't need max charge to one shot enemies while you grind, which usually does not happen under normal circumstances because the rifts will finish off targets either way. If you're going to spam Raging Blow during a boss in the context of Combo Death Fault - it's all up to luck, but you will gain additional damage during CDF's buff regardless. It's just that you might have a temporary drop after it expires, but then one could argue that you'll be dishing out additional lines so it doesn't really matter too much... As long as you're aware of it while using Combo Instinct, you'll be fine.
But what about Combo Synergy's chance to recharge Combo Orbs after being hit?
I mean, you surely might give me the Russellon Pill argument that I've been giving out on my blog for years. The thing is, Nexon often implements changes ahead of time. A couple of weeks before they revealed Combo Instinct in KMST, they already retired Russellon Pills as they removed the effects on it. Russellon Pills won't poison you anymore, and I already had the feeling that this change was only there to prevent certain exploits with the fifth skill wave. Russellon Pills have been in KMS for one-and-a-half decade, and thus Nexon suddenly caring to change this item after that long could only foreshadow the upcoming update.
So no, you cannot use Russellon Pills to cheese the Combo Instinct's reduction in recharge rate. The cheese has passed its expiration date, unfortunately. Kinda like how pills do have an expiration date in real life.
The thing is, even if there was a new exploit, cheese or if you would use Combo Instinct in an environment to make use of that Combo Synergy's effect, forget about it. I've already told you that Nexon made sure to close all the possible loopholes. This isn't something that is mentioned in the skill description; but Combo Instinct seems to completely shut down the ability to recharge Combo Orbs after getting hit. Just watch the video, and you'll understand what I'll mean.
Anyway, so if increasing the level of Combo Instinct only reinforces the Combo Orb stats and the damage of the rifts, is it worth to max this skill out as soon as possible? Yes, I would recommend maxing this skill out after Sword of Burning Soul and Aura Weapon.
I'd say that the damage reinforcement is worth the investment. It will certainly give you more than trying to do Combo Death Fault or Blitz Shield earlier. Despite its 30 second duration, the damage increases per level on the rift lines go up real fast, which pretty much allows you to hit much harder with it. Efficiency is the biggest gain by leveling Combo Instinct, so. Just make sure that Sobs and Aura Weapon are maxed out first.
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New Nodestone: Experience Nodestone!
When Nodestones were first introduced to the game, I already had the feeling it was just a matter of time before we get different variants that give different skill pools.
The Ark update was the first one to do this, where Nexon introduced us to the Mirror World Nodestone. With Black, they introduced us to another new one: the Experience Nodestone.
So, regular Nodestones will always give a random Node (excluding Spider in Mirror and Concentrated Experience), Mirror World Nodestones will always give the Spider in Mirror skill, and Experience Nodestones will always give Concentrated Experience.
The Concentrated Experience Node is an interesting one. It only exists for one purpose. It gives a slight EXP boost to any skill of choice. The EXP boost is worth three duplicate Nodes, so it usually means you'll get at least one instant level in most cases.
This brings me to a very important advice I want to give to anyone who's reading: please do not use the Concentrated Experience Node on anything other than Spider in Mirror.
Why's that? Because Concentrated Experience is only worth three duplicates, it's hard to justify using it on any skill that is easy to find or can be purchased with Nodeshards. In addition to this, Experience Nodestones have been extremely rare as they only appear during events, which usually only allows you to purchase one or two per event, for a steep price.
Spider in Mirror can only be obtained through Mirror World Nodestones, which are expensive and can only be obtained from Hard Will. In addition, you're going to need 54 duplicates, which would usually mean purchasing 54 of those specialized Nodestones.
I mean, whatever you do with your Concentrated Experience Node is entirely be up to you. Most players would probably prefer to prioritize on something more urgent or skills that would give more impact for the level up. I can respect that mindset, even if it might not be the most efficient use of valuable resources.
The Experience Nodestones from the Black event are permanent (and so are the Concentrated Experience Nodes), so you can always keep them until you hit Level 235 to unlock Spider in Mirror. Oh and uhm, you can't use it as an actual skill or extract it for Nodeshards, obviously.
When Nodestones were first introduced to the game, I already had the feeling it was just a matter of time before we get different variants that give different skill pools.
The Ark update was the first one to do this, where Nexon introduced us to the Mirror World Nodestone. With Black, they introduced us to another new one: the Experience Nodestone.
So, regular Nodestones will always give a random Node (excluding Spider in Mirror and Concentrated Experience), Mirror World Nodestones will always give the Spider in Mirror skill, and Experience Nodestones will always give Concentrated Experience.
The Concentrated Experience Node is an interesting one. It only exists for one purpose. It gives a slight EXP boost to any skill of choice. The EXP boost is worth three duplicate Nodes, so it usually means you'll get at least one instant level in most cases.
This brings me to a very important advice I want to give to anyone who's reading: please do not use the Concentrated Experience Node on anything other than Spider in Mirror.
Why's that? Because Concentrated Experience is only worth three duplicates, it's hard to justify using it on any skill that is easy to find or can be purchased with Nodeshards. In addition to this, Experience Nodestones have been extremely rare as they only appear during events, which usually only allows you to purchase one or two per event, for a steep price.
Spider in Mirror can only be obtained through Mirror World Nodestones, which are expensive and can only be obtained from Hard Will. In addition, you're going to need 54 duplicates, which would usually mean purchasing 54 of those specialized Nodestones.
I mean, whatever you do with your Concentrated Experience Node is entirely be up to you. Most players would probably prefer to prioritize on something more urgent or skills that would give more impact for the level up. I can respect that mindset, even if it might not be the most efficient use of valuable resources.
The Experience Nodestones from the Black event are permanent (and so are the Concentrated Experience Nodes), so you can always keep them until you hit Level 235 to unlock Spider in Mirror. Oh and uhm, you can't use it as an actual skill or extract it for Nodeshards, obviously.
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Verdict
Usually I would be on the fence for a skill such as Combo Instinct to have a cooldown of 240 seconds. But to be honest: I don't feel like that.
I watched the Black livestream from KMS live at the time when it aired. I've already told people plenty of times prior to the Black update that facing the Black Mage would be the perfect excuse to introduce us to skills such as Expert Combo Attack and the whole "passive skill wave" thing to break the mold of the usual 5th Job skill designs, which so far have only been skills on cooldowns at this point. Maplers have been in need of something more than this, and they have been vocal about it.
When I saw the reveal of Combo Instinct, I honestly didn't expect Nexon to give us a skill like this. The first thing that came in my mind was: is this passive? Is there a cooldown? What's the duration? Why does the skill take such a strong different aesthetic design from the usual Hero aesthetics? And before I knew it, the cooldown was confirmed to be 240 seconds, while its duration was just 30 seconds. I refused to give in to my slight disappointment so I did as much research as I could before the skill even hit EMS. Of course I would gladly accept pretty much anything that Nexon is going to give Hero, as that's just who I am. But there had to be something more to it, or at least some reason for why the skill is like this.
After a couple of days, I found plenty of KMST videos regarding Combo Instinct. Then I started to realize what CI actually did, which the livestream didn't show us. Combo Instinct allows Hero to have a consistent cycle of large hitboxes at all times, by cycling it with Sobs and Valhalla. But of course, it was difficult to give a proper judgement on it until I could actually play around with CI on my own character.
The moment I could confirm my suspicions about that cycle, the skill just felt right. The thirty seconds downtime with Sobs and Valhalla was a problem to many, and Combo Instinct is there to fill in that gap. I stopped being concerned about its cooldown and it's one of the few times in a lifetime that I don't even mind it at all, given to what it does allow us to do when it's active. Yes, having a shorter cooldown would've been nice - but it doesn't feel like a necessity anymore.
Either way, Combo Instinct does what most core Hero skills do: it's a skill that has a straightforward purpose, but using it on creative out of the box ways does get rewarded. I could've requested for a longer duration on Sobs or a shorter cooldown on Valhalla, but I'd say this does the trick. 5th Job is still an ongoing work in progress, so I did somewhat expect more additional skills to "do the same thing" (such as how Combo Instinct appears to be), just so that ultimately our mobility became consistent. Otherwise they would've given us a permanent Sword of Burning Soul from day 1. Hero's certainly an oddity among classes, to use strange type of skills to keep up its mobility... but I suppose that is also what makes me love playing it. The class has always felt cohesive.
But what about the passive skill wave I demanded? Well... the Black update has definitely broke the mold regardless. While Hero got Combo Instinct with the short duration/long cooldown shtick, a couple of classes such as Striker, Eunwol and Kaiser *did* get passive skills. So for what that's worth, the chance of Expert Combo Attack to become a thing has gone up again... The plot thickens!
There's no 6th wave revealed in KMST yet, but given the fact that the max level was raised to 275 and 5th Job Matrix has been expanded with more slots, it's safe to assume that there will be more. I wonder when Expert Combo Attack will arrive, and if we might even have more Combo related skills. Starting from 3rd Job, there has always been two Combo skills and one Combo Mastery. Maybe this will change with 5th Job, maybe not. Time will tell.
Before I close this post - I certainly really do like the new Experience Nodestones. I want to see more of these to appear in the near future, and I definitely want to own more of them. These are absolutely useful.
That's it for today - Happy holidays, and I'll see you guys again next post!
Usually I would be on the fence for a skill such as Combo Instinct to have a cooldown of 240 seconds. But to be honest: I don't feel like that.
I watched the Black livestream from KMS live at the time when it aired. I've already told people plenty of times prior to the Black update that facing the Black Mage would be the perfect excuse to introduce us to skills such as Expert Combo Attack and the whole "passive skill wave" thing to break the mold of the usual 5th Job skill designs, which so far have only been skills on cooldowns at this point. Maplers have been in need of something more than this, and they have been vocal about it.
When I saw the reveal of Combo Instinct, I honestly didn't expect Nexon to give us a skill like this. The first thing that came in my mind was: is this passive? Is there a cooldown? What's the duration? Why does the skill take such a strong different aesthetic design from the usual Hero aesthetics? And before I knew it, the cooldown was confirmed to be 240 seconds, while its duration was just 30 seconds. I refused to give in to my slight disappointment so I did as much research as I could before the skill even hit EMS. Of course I would gladly accept pretty much anything that Nexon is going to give Hero, as that's just who I am. But there had to be something more to it, or at least some reason for why the skill is like this.
After a couple of days, I found plenty of KMST videos regarding Combo Instinct. Then I started to realize what CI actually did, which the livestream didn't show us. Combo Instinct allows Hero to have a consistent cycle of large hitboxes at all times, by cycling it with Sobs and Valhalla. But of course, it was difficult to give a proper judgement on it until I could actually play around with CI on my own character.
The moment I could confirm my suspicions about that cycle, the skill just felt right. The thirty seconds downtime with Sobs and Valhalla was a problem to many, and Combo Instinct is there to fill in that gap. I stopped being concerned about its cooldown and it's one of the few times in a lifetime that I don't even mind it at all, given to what it does allow us to do when it's active. Yes, having a shorter cooldown would've been nice - but it doesn't feel like a necessity anymore.
Either way, Combo Instinct does what most core Hero skills do: it's a skill that has a straightforward purpose, but using it on creative out of the box ways does get rewarded. I could've requested for a longer duration on Sobs or a shorter cooldown on Valhalla, but I'd say this does the trick. 5th Job is still an ongoing work in progress, so I did somewhat expect more additional skills to "do the same thing" (such as how Combo Instinct appears to be), just so that ultimately our mobility became consistent. Otherwise they would've given us a permanent Sword of Burning Soul from day 1. Hero's certainly an oddity among classes, to use strange type of skills to keep up its mobility... but I suppose that is also what makes me love playing it. The class has always felt cohesive.
But what about the passive skill wave I demanded? Well... the Black update has definitely broke the mold regardless. While Hero got Combo Instinct with the short duration/long cooldown shtick, a couple of classes such as Striker, Eunwol and Kaiser *did* get passive skills. So for what that's worth, the chance of Expert Combo Attack to become a thing has gone up again... The plot thickens!
There's no 6th wave revealed in KMST yet, but given the fact that the max level was raised to 275 and 5th Job Matrix has been expanded with more slots, it's safe to assume that there will be more. I wonder when Expert Combo Attack will arrive, and if we might even have more Combo related skills. Starting from 3rd Job, there has always been two Combo skills and one Combo Mastery. Maybe this will change with 5th Job, maybe not. Time will tell.
Before I close this post - I certainly really do like the new Experience Nodestones. I want to see more of these to appear in the near future, and I definitely want to own more of them. These are absolutely useful.
That's it for today - Happy holidays, and I'll see you guys again next post!
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