With our previous traditional 5th Job wave being (over) a year ago, the Adventure update only introduced us to Pathfinder's 5th Job, so it's been a while since we actually had new stuff to play with. That said, the Glory update gives us a couple of 5th Job skills that are shared among various classes, and as usual I will only focus at the (only) one Hero receives; the skill Maple World Goddess' Blessing. Hero has also received its Skill Link: Invincible Belief.
However, most of this blogpost will actually be about the recent skill changes that happened between Black and Glory. And well... Hero got a bunch of them - so there's a lot to talk about. There are even ones that have yet to arrive in EMS as of the time of writing, but I'll save those for the next "skill wave blogpost". Let's start with the skill changes first.
The following general changes were made to our skills, listed in order of Job Advancement. Most of them are positive improvements that streamlines our gameplay for a better experience.
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1. Changes to Combo Attack
Combo Attack's active skill icon on the top right of the screen now shows the amount of Combo Orbs you currently have charged. Alright, not necessarily a huge change but it's a nice addition I guess?
Wait... why didn't they take the opportunity to adjust the Combo Attack icon? The skill icon is still the same as the one introduced with RED (same applies to Enrage), despite that they've put back the original Combo Orbs after some minor complaints. Funnily enough, Advanced Combo Attack still uses the original skill icon from before RED...
Although because of this, the skill icon now has to refresh each time the number of Combo Orbs changes and this causes the skill icon to always bump to the most recently casted buff... which is basically going to happen a lot. Not sure if I should consider this to be somewhat of an inconvenient nuisance, but I can imagine that this doesn't particularly sit well with some players. It gets worse if you have more of these kind of skills (i.e. having four Skill Links that tend to refresh in addition to Combo Attack) and it's probably tough if you have a lot of active icons to pay attention to.
For what it's worth: this "icon bumping" with Combo Attack has been a thing since its original release with 3rd Job. Combo Attack was originally a buff that would only last about 200 seconds, and each time you would change the number of Combo Orbs, it would do the same thing as it does now. The RED update changed Combo Attack from a buff to a toggle skill, which got rid of the skill bumping - but it seems that the recent changes has returned this "issue" since the skill icon has to display a number now.
It's just how the game is programmed, is all. You would have the same thing with Sword of Burning Soul by continuously picking it up/placing it back on the floor, or with certain Skill Links. Maybe that would be an interesting (but challenging) user interface thing to improve on.
While we're nitpicking... If only they could also bring back the animation in Combo Attack that gives an additional visual feedback to when you charge orbs. Back when players had a 100% chance to charge Combo Orbs, you would get this cool (and useful!) visual feedback to see that you've successfully charged an orb. But nowadays with a reduced charge chance of 80%, they also took out the charge feedback. That feels silly doesn't it? It's one of the few things I genuinely miss in modern day Hero. It can't be hard to program that back in the game, right?
So, why on earth would they include the number of Combo Orbs in the skill icon, given that it's rather easy to count the amount of Combo Orbs you currently have by just looking at your character? I would love to say that it could be a sign that Expert Combo Attack is on the horizon, but let's not jump to early conclusions and stick with the main reason at hand. They've included this additional visual feedback because you can now toggle the Combo Orb skill effect off, if you so desire to hide the Combo Orbs while playing the game. This keeps Combo Attack active, but it just hides the complete skill from view.
Oh boy, I do have some personal beef with this one. I'm not even sure if I should write a long wall of text about my subjective feelings towards this, so I'll keep most of that to myself. However, that said...
It is never a bad thing to give players more options in how they want to play the game. Regardless of how I feel about it, I've seen plenty of people who don't like Combo Attack as an aesthetic thing. That's fine to them, they can now toggle it off if they desire to do so. However, by doing so comes an issue that's been ongoing for the past couple of years: certain transparency features are forced, and have no means of undoing this. Let me try to explain what I mean with that.
Most modern raid bosses will forcefully remove every party member's skill animations and damage display on the screen. The change was implemented a few years ago in order to reduce clutter on the screen, and possibly to make space for heavier skills (such as 5th Job). The concept of a filter is a good idea, but the execution leaves to be desired because the player has no option to decide for themselves whenever the filter is necessary. By doing this, it can be debated if whenever if it can be called an improvement.
Having forced Skill Transparency to reduce clutter on the screen and removing damage numbers from other players is not really beneficial to those who want this feedback to know what is going on during a raid. This also means if you're just playing casually with a friend, the filter will apply to anyone who joins you. Even if it's one guy in your party.
With forced Skill Transparency it is much harder to decipher what skills everyone is using. Without showing everyone's damage numbers you can't really tell how much damage everyone is doing on a boss. On top of that, we currently *already* have options for manual Skill Transparency on/off and invinsible Damage Skins for those who want it *on top of the current features*, but close to no options for those who want the opposite: to gain that game-to-player feedback or information.
With skills such as Combo Attack not being visible to others because the filter includes it, you create a problem with not communicating to the rest of your party about your resource management. Of course there will be people in your party who can't care less, but there are players who would like to have this information at hand when they're trying to clear difficult bosses that require lots of time to even get such a raid organized. Summons are fortunately not forced to be hidden from other players (i.e. you can tell when a friend has a burst or support summon out so you can plan accordingly for the sake of the raid) but Combo Attack is one of those skills that not only determines Hero's damage, but it also allows the player to contribute to the raid by using Combo Finishers. Not being able to communicate this to other players sounds counterproductive.
So if you can't see how many Combo Orbs your party member has just because the player doesn't want those to be shown or because the new filter gets rid of it, you can't determine if the Hero has enough orbs left to apply Puncture or Panic to a boss, or if the Hero is able to use Combo Death Fault to avoid certain death. Heck, I could even say that because of the current Skill Transparency, I can't even show my party members when I use these finishers either.
I literally can't show them that I am debuffing, or when another player uses their own debuff on a boss too. This also applies to the commonly used Binding skills, which is a staple to clearing many raids this day.
Even if Nexon would address the transparency filter and make it an option for players to choose for themselves whenever if they want to hide things or not from their own user interface, the new Combo Attack visual toggle brings another issue entirely. If someone doesn't want their Combo Orbs to be visible, the toggle decides for everyone, whenever if you want that or not.
So I don't have a problem with giving other players options to customize their stuff to their liking, especially if that improves the general experience of the game. But I do have a problem with introducing those concepts without going full circle and allow those key visuals to be an option to turn back on to those screens who need it, because at that point you give something new to one part of the community while also taking away something from the other half and leaving them empty handed in the process. Basically, it breaks something that was fine for what it was.
It's not like we're going to disconnect from seeing too many skills on the screen, since we're no longer allowing thirty people in the same boss rooms anyway. We're only just talking about some visual feedback, dammit. So, keep the current stuff as it is. I just want to see to more menu options for that "boss filter" so that I can have that old means of seeing what is actually going on in a raid.
Anyway, I made my point. (heck, my original draft for this matter was almost twice as long)
... it's just a shame that having any of this here is probably not going to change anything. That is probably the most upsetting in all of this. I just sometimes feel like one of those kids in the Land of Innocence after someone kicks the toy castle and eats the bowl of candy.
Interestingly, you can see other players' Combo Attack even if they have no active Combo Orbs, but only if you enter the map at the moment they have none. Notice the wings that usually are removed on your own character if you have no orbs available.
Another way to trigger this kind of visual error seems to also occur when you're sitting on a chair. But this only seems to happen when you enter a new map when you have no orbs available. The order in what you need to do seems specific, for some reason.
I wouldn't mind having the wings to be visible on my own character all the time... There's just something cool about it.
Wait... why didn't they take the opportunity to adjust the Combo Attack icon? The skill icon is still the same as the one introduced with RED (same applies to Enrage), despite that they've put back the original Combo Orbs after some minor complaints. Funnily enough, Advanced Combo Attack still uses the original skill icon from before RED...
 |
| Depending on what you have included with your Hero's build, it may be actually worse than what is shown here... |
For what it's worth: this "icon bumping" with Combo Attack has been a thing since its original release with 3rd Job. Combo Attack was originally a buff that would only last about 200 seconds, and each time you would change the number of Combo Orbs, it would do the same thing as it does now. The RED update changed Combo Attack from a buff to a toggle skill, which got rid of the skill bumping - but it seems that the recent changes has returned this "issue" since the skill icon has to display a number now.
It's just how the game is programmed, is all. You would have the same thing with Sword of Burning Soul by continuously picking it up/placing it back on the floor, or with certain Skill Links. Maybe that would be an interesting (but challenging) user interface thing to improve on.
So, why on earth would they include the number of Combo Orbs in the skill icon, given that it's rather easy to count the amount of Combo Orbs you currently have by just looking at your character? I would love to say that it could be a sign that Expert Combo Attack is on the horizon, but let's not jump to early conclusions and stick with the main reason at hand. They've included this additional visual feedback because you can now toggle the Combo Orb skill effect off, if you so desire to hide the Combo Orbs while playing the game. This keeps Combo Attack active, but it just hides the complete skill from view.
It is never a bad thing to give players more options in how they want to play the game. Regardless of how I feel about it, I've seen plenty of people who don't like Combo Attack as an aesthetic thing. That's fine to them, they can now toggle it off if they desire to do so. However, by doing so comes an issue that's been ongoing for the past couple of years: certain transparency features are forced, and have no means of undoing this. Let me try to explain what I mean with that.
Most modern raid bosses will forcefully remove every party member's skill animations and damage display on the screen. The change was implemented a few years ago in order to reduce clutter on the screen, and possibly to make space for heavier skills (such as 5th Job). The concept of a filter is a good idea, but the execution leaves to be desired because the player has no option to decide for themselves whenever the filter is necessary. By doing this, it can be debated if whenever if it can be called an improvement.
Having forced Skill Transparency to reduce clutter on the screen and removing damage numbers from other players is not really beneficial to those who want this feedback to know what is going on during a raid. This also means if you're just playing casually with a friend, the filter will apply to anyone who joins you. Even if it's one guy in your party.
With forced Skill Transparency it is much harder to decipher what skills everyone is using. Without showing everyone's damage numbers you can't really tell how much damage everyone is doing on a boss. On top of that, we currently *already* have options for manual Skill Transparency on/off and invinsible Damage Skins for those who want it *on top of the current features*, but close to no options for those who want the opposite: to gain that game-to-player feedback or information.
With skills such as Combo Attack not being visible to others because the filter includes it, you create a problem with not communicating to the rest of your party about your resource management. Of course there will be people in your party who can't care less, but there are players who would like to have this information at hand when they're trying to clear difficult bosses that require lots of time to even get such a raid organized. Summons are fortunately not forced to be hidden from other players (i.e. you can tell when a friend has a burst or support summon out so you can plan accordingly for the sake of the raid) but Combo Attack is one of those skills that not only determines Hero's damage, but it also allows the player to contribute to the raid by using Combo Finishers. Not being able to communicate this to other players sounds counterproductive.
So if you can't see how many Combo Orbs your party member has just because the player doesn't want those to be shown or because the new filter gets rid of it, you can't determine if the Hero has enough orbs left to apply Puncture or Panic to a boss, or if the Hero is able to use Combo Death Fault to avoid certain death. Heck, I could even say that because of the current Skill Transparency, I can't even show my party members when I use these finishers either.
I literally can't show them that I am debuffing, or when another player uses their own debuff on a boss too. This also applies to the commonly used Binding skills, which is a staple to clearing many raids this day.
Even if Nexon would address the transparency filter and make it an option for players to choose for themselves whenever if they want to hide things or not from their own user interface, the new Combo Attack visual toggle brings another issue entirely. If someone doesn't want their Combo Orbs to be visible, the toggle decides for everyone, whenever if you want that or not.
So I don't have a problem with giving other players options to customize their stuff to their liking, especially if that improves the general experience of the game. But I do have a problem with introducing those concepts without going full circle and allow those key visuals to be an option to turn back on to those screens who need it, because at that point you give something new to one part of the community while also taking away something from the other half and leaving them empty handed in the process. Basically, it breaks something that was fine for what it was.
It's not like we're going to disconnect from seeing too many skills on the screen, since we're no longer allowing thirty people in the same boss rooms anyway. We're only just talking about some visual feedback, dammit. So, keep the current stuff as it is. I just want to see to more menu options for that "boss filter" so that I can have that old means of seeing what is actually going on in a raid.
Anyway, I made my point. (heck, my original draft for this matter was almost twice as long)
... it's just a shame that having any of this here is probably not going to change anything. That is probably the most upsetting in all of this. I just sometimes feel like one of those kids in the Land of Innocence after someone kicks the toy castle and eats the bowl of candy.
I wouldn't mind having the wings to be visible on my own character all the time... There's just something cool about it.
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2. Changes to Panic
Ever since Panic's release with 3rd Job, it was intended to have a chance of applying the status effect "Blind" on enemies that are hit. While I won't go into detail how this concept was changed over time, I will explain that the importance of Panic became much more relevant after the introduction of "Chance Attack" with the Big Bang update.
Ever since Chance Attack, Panic has gone through a number of improvements because of Panic's relevance for applying the Blind status effect to enemies for that extra multiplier. Something that was kept consistent in the past one-and-a-half decade was the (intended) 90% proc rate for Blind. It seems that Nexon has decided to change this for the better, by increasing that proc rate to 100%. That's pretty good.
While a 90% rate is very likely to land, it seems that not many players are aware of a (recent?) change made in favor to bosses: enemies in the game seem to have a higher status resistance to player-based status effects if the enemy is higher than the player's level. This change was most likely made to prevent classic exploits with skills such as Poison Fog from ever happening again, that could apply Damage over Time to enemies of any level. Before the Big Bang update, it was a common used method for Fire/Poison, Flame Wizards and Night Walkers to apply DoT to enemies such as Jr. Newties, Bigfoot or Female Boss as an accuracy bypass - this would allow them to train or leech on 4th Job enemies despite the player being only 2nd or 3rd Job. This is also why modern EXP penalties exist and why the majority of maps now require levels to enter.
With 5th Job, it is now rather common to go up against enemies or bosses that are a higher level than yours (a good example is the Black Mage, having a required level of 255+ but the boss himself is Level 275), so that does give this change to Panic some proper justification aside from "for the sake of convenience and consistency". Although this isn't the only improvement made to Panic, though.
Panic's hitbox has been greatly improved. The previous hitbox of Panic was misleading. The reach of the skill was smaller than the skill animation. This caused applying Panic to be difficult if you wanted to keep your distance from a target.
Now, with the improved hitbox, Panic not only reaches further horizontally, but it is now also possible to hit enemies slightly above your head, under your feet, and enemies that are placed very close behind your character's location! Panic's slowly feeling more like a mid air Z-Saber slash, and I love that.
Ever since Chance Attack, Panic has gone through a number of improvements because of Panic's relevance for applying the Blind status effect to enemies for that extra multiplier. Something that was kept consistent in the past one-and-a-half decade was the (intended) 90% proc rate for Blind. It seems that Nexon has decided to change this for the better, by increasing that proc rate to 100%. That's pretty good.
While a 90% rate is very likely to land, it seems that not many players are aware of a (recent?) change made in favor to bosses: enemies in the game seem to have a higher status resistance to player-based status effects if the enemy is higher than the player's level. This change was most likely made to prevent classic exploits with skills such as Poison Fog from ever happening again, that could apply Damage over Time to enemies of any level. Before the Big Bang update, it was a common used method for Fire/Poison, Flame Wizards and Night Walkers to apply DoT to enemies such as Jr. Newties, Bigfoot or Female Boss as an accuracy bypass - this would allow them to train or leech on 4th Job enemies despite the player being only 2nd or 3rd Job. This is also why modern EXP penalties exist and why the majority of maps now require levels to enter.
With 5th Job, it is now rather common to go up against enemies or bosses that are a higher level than yours (a good example is the Black Mage, having a required level of 255+ but the boss himself is Level 275), so that does give this change to Panic some proper justification aside from "for the sake of convenience and consistency". Although this isn't the only improvement made to Panic, though.
Now, with the improved hitbox, Panic not only reaches further horizontally, but it is now also possible to hit enemies slightly above your head, under your feet, and enemies that are placed very close behind your character's location! Panic's slowly feeling more like a mid air Z-Saber slash, and I love that.
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3. Changes to Shout
The alternate Shout by pressing the command input "down arrow key" + Shout (commonly referred as "Down Shout") has been removed from the game completely. This is most likely because not many players used this particular variant of the skill at all.
Down Shout had a couple of reasons to exist. While it reduced the amount of attack lines and came with a smaller hitbox, it would apply stuns on enemies and a debuff on bosses. Enemies with stuns could be used in conjunction with Chance Attack to make the next following attack hit harder (assuming they survived the first attack). The debuff on bosses would increase Hero's own chance of applying Status Effects by 100%. While Down Shout's hitbox is smaller than regular Shout's, it actually has a different placement that caused the skill to hit slightly lower than regular Shout's.
Before the recent update to Panic, it was the only skill of Hero not to have a 100% success rate at maximum level. Down Shout's main purpose seems to have been there to ensure applying Panic and early levels of Magic Crash/Puncture (since they are only 100% at max level), assuming we don't add the aforementioned enemy-based status resistance to the equation. As you can imagine, being able to apply early levels of MC and Puncture is useful in theory, but since you gain so many SP per Level Up with 4th Job, you'd barely get the chance to make use of this benefit. No, I don't count Combo Force among the "not have a 100% success rate" since Combo Force is an exception to many rulings compared to our other skills.
Down Shout's debuff could not allow one to bypass a target's immunity to Magic Crash or Bind, as that would completely disregard why patched out Magic Crash/Bind locks from the game (as proven with Neo Tokyo, keeping it in the game would've been stupid).
I don't think Nexon could've done much to get this one to work without making it too powerful, so removing it felt as a logical decision from a streamlining perspective.
Down Shout had a couple of reasons to exist. While it reduced the amount of attack lines and came with a smaller hitbox, it would apply stuns on enemies and a debuff on bosses. Enemies with stuns could be used in conjunction with Chance Attack to make the next following attack hit harder (assuming they survived the first attack). The debuff on bosses would increase Hero's own chance of applying Status Effects by 100%. While Down Shout's hitbox is smaller than regular Shout's, it actually has a different placement that caused the skill to hit slightly lower than regular Shout's.
Before the recent update to Panic, it was the only skill of Hero not to have a 100% success rate at maximum level. Down Shout's main purpose seems to have been there to ensure applying Panic and early levels of Magic Crash/Puncture (since they are only 100% at max level), assuming we don't add the aforementioned enemy-based status resistance to the equation. As you can imagine, being able to apply early levels of MC and Puncture is useful in theory, but since you gain so many SP per Level Up with 4th Job, you'd barely get the chance to make use of this benefit. No, I don't count Combo Force among the "not have a 100% success rate" since Combo Force is an exception to many rulings compared to our other skills.
Down Shout's debuff could not allow one to bypass a target's immunity to Magic Crash or Bind, as that would completely disregard why patched out Magic Crash/Bind locks from the game (as proven with Neo Tokyo, keeping it in the game would've been stupid).
I don't think Nexon could've done much to get this one to work without making it too powerful, so removing it felt as a logical decision from a streamlining perspective.
- If they would've allowed the debuff to increase party member's chance of applying Status Effects by any additional rates, the debuff would become way too good: it would introduce a complete new meta and a bunch of unnecessary exploits.
- Reducing the base proc chance of applying Panic/Puncture/Magic Crash, only to justify Down Shout's existence, would've been a poor decision.
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4. Changes to Maple Warrior/Epic Adventure
Any regular no delay skills such as Maple Warrior and Epic Adventure can no longer overlap with any other skill in the game. The game does no longer accept such a layered input. You can still use these skills when you're walking, climbing a rope, or any other activity that does not involve using another skill in conjunction with it. So if you want to cast Epic Adventure, you will need to use it during a frame where no other skill is being used, and only then it will apply instantly.
No delay toggle skills such as Enrage and no delay attacks such as Blitz Shield remained unchanged, possibly because they are intended to be used like that. Keep in mind that it is less likely that Enrage and Blitz Shield would be changed because unlike Maple Warrior and Epic Adventure, Enrage consumes Combo and Blitz Shield requires two seconds before exploding, in addition of being stuck for a brief moment when casting the skill (as is with many skills in the game). But in the end, Nexon has the final say in all of this.
By the way: Hero's Will and Will of Erda seem to remain unchanged. Which is a good thing, if you ask me.
A while ago, Maple Warrior was changed to become like Epic Adventure: a "no delay" skill that would not interrupt the character so that the buff would be applied instantly. No delay skills became notorious for "skill overlapping", a sequence where you could use two skills at the same time, i.e. casting two burst skills at the same time such as Epic Adventure with Terms & Conditions, or casting Maple Warrior during Combat Orders. Apparently it seems that Nexon changed their stance on this, as they have changed the functionality in how no delay skills work.
Any regular no delay skills such as Maple Warrior and Epic Adventure can no longer overlap with any other skill in the game. The game does no longer accept such a layered input. You can still use these skills when you're walking, climbing a rope, or any other activity that does not involve using another skill in conjunction with it. So if you want to cast Epic Adventure, you will need to use it during a frame where no other skill is being used, and only then it will apply instantly.
No delay toggle skills such as Enrage and no delay attacks such as Blitz Shield remained unchanged, possibly because they are intended to be used like that. Keep in mind that it is less likely that Enrage and Blitz Shield would be changed because unlike Maple Warrior and Epic Adventure, Enrage consumes Combo and Blitz Shield requires two seconds before exploding, in addition of being stuck for a brief moment when casting the skill (as is with many skills in the game). But in the end, Nexon has the final say in all of this.
By the way: Hero's Will and Will of Erda seem to remain unchanged. Which is a good thing, if you ask me.
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5. Changes to Sword of Burning Soul
A safe rule of thumb to determine if Sobs-turret is still within allowed distance is to see if the sword doesn't disappear out of view. Assuming that the camera view puts you in the center of your screen: the closer the sword is to the edge, the more likely it is to teleport back to you.
Having a larger minimum distance before it teleports back to your hands means that it's harder to use that trick where you use the auto-teleport function to conserve MP, since you have to travel a much greater distance now for it to work. For instance, it can no longer be used at a Commerci Voyage because that map is too small to work within the new boundaries.
Although obviously the potential gains from this improvement outweighs the niche. The new maximum distance would allow us to maintain safer distances from certain bosses, while keeping up an optimal damage rate. For bosses such as Lotus, Damien and Dunkel, it wouldn't hurt to start considering to use its stationary form more often. Having more (practical) options with Sobs is great, but don't forget that using regular Sword of Burning Soul is far stronger if you need the damage, though.
The maximum allowed distance between you and the stationary Sword of Burning Soul before it teleports back to you has been greatly improved, which allows for new ways for using the skill.
A safe rule of thumb to determine if Sobs-turret is still within allowed distance is to see if the sword doesn't disappear out of view. Assuming that the camera view puts you in the center of your screen: the closer the sword is to the edge, the more likely it is to teleport back to you.
Having a larger minimum distance before it teleports back to your hands means that it's harder to use that trick where you use the auto-teleport function to conserve MP, since you have to travel a much greater distance now for it to work. For instance, it can no longer be used at a Commerci Voyage because that map is too small to work within the new boundaries.
Although obviously the potential gains from this improvement outweighs the niche. The new maximum distance would allow us to maintain safer distances from certain bosses, while keeping up an optimal damage rate. For bosses such as Lotus, Damien and Dunkel, it wouldn't hurt to start considering to use its stationary form more often. Having more (practical) options with Sobs is great, but don't forget that using regular Sword of Burning Soul is far stronger if you need the damage, though.
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6. Changes to Aura Weapon
A small change to Aura Weapon - it can now be removed with a right mouse click at the skill icons on the top right of your screen.
This is important because Aura Weapon is known for disconnecting when you use it in locations that have way too many monsters packed together (i.e. Dimensional Invasion). Plus there might be certain instances where having the extra projectile might not be desirable. If you accidentally activate Aura Weapon at a location you do not want to risk disconnecting (such as Commerci), you can now cancel it to rectify the made mistake.
This is important because Aura Weapon is known for disconnecting when you use it in locations that have way too many monsters packed together (i.e. Dimensional Invasion). Plus there might be certain instances where having the extra projectile might not be desirable. If you accidentally activate Aura Weapon at a location you do not want to risk disconnecting (such as Commerci), you can now cancel it to rectify the made mistake.
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7. Changes to Blitz Shield
The change made to Blitz Shield is probably the most impactful among our skill changes between Black and Glory. As a part of ongoing quality of life improvements, Nexon has improved the rulings behind barrier skills.
Before this change was implemented, all skills that would consume HP would be deducted from the barrier's HP first. Barriers are supposed to protect the player from incoming damage by deducting any HP loss to the barrier first.
In hindsight that also meant that in cases of Blitz Shield, it's effectiveness would be greatly reduced (if not completely nullified) if you used Blitz Shield and then follow up with a couple of HP-consuming skills. Keep in mind that Blitz Shield only has up to 21% Barrier HP, so if you'd use Spider in Mirror, the barrier would only have 6% HP left at Level 30, which wouldn't allow you to use something like Erda Nova if you want to keep Blitz up, as Erda Nova costs 15% HP to use. Using Erda Nova at that point would remove Blitz Shield, which doesn't allow us to explode it manually for five 1100% (!) damage lines that also has a chance of recharging Combo Orbs.
Deducting Blitz Shield's Barrier HP with your own skills is more harmful than it sounds on paper because for bosses such as the Inferno Wolf or other bosses at Mu Lung Dojo, they repeatedly hit high numbers so if most of the frequently-used 5th Job skills consume HP, you would not be able to use Blitz Shield at all because you're obliged to have it out for two seconds before you can explode it.
Blitz is by far one of the most important 5th Job skills Hero has access to because of the no delay combo's you can pull off with any other skill (mainly with Combo Death Fault) and the fact that you can combo Blitz into Invincible Belief (our new Skill Link).
With the most recent change, skills that consume HP no longer affects barriers. The HP consumption goes directly into your HP instead, so you can now freely use Blitz Shield without worrying that you'd punish yourself for casting skills in the wrong order or moment. The barrier HP is now only properly affected by anything other than your own skills, which is a great change.
Before this change was implemented, all skills that would consume HP would be deducted from the barrier's HP first. Barriers are supposed to protect the player from incoming damage by deducting any HP loss to the barrier first.
In hindsight that also meant that in cases of Blitz Shield, it's effectiveness would be greatly reduced (if not completely nullified) if you used Blitz Shield and then follow up with a couple of HP-consuming skills. Keep in mind that Blitz Shield only has up to 21% Barrier HP, so if you'd use Spider in Mirror, the barrier would only have 6% HP left at Level 30, which wouldn't allow you to use something like Erda Nova if you want to keep Blitz up, as Erda Nova costs 15% HP to use. Using Erda Nova at that point would remove Blitz Shield, which doesn't allow us to explode it manually for five 1100% (!) damage lines that also has a chance of recharging Combo Orbs.
Deducting Blitz Shield's Barrier HP with your own skills is more harmful than it sounds on paper because for bosses such as the Inferno Wolf or other bosses at Mu Lung Dojo, they repeatedly hit high numbers so if most of the frequently-used 5th Job skills consume HP, you would not be able to use Blitz Shield at all because you're obliged to have it out for two seconds before you can explode it.
Blitz is by far one of the most important 5th Job skills Hero has access to because of the no delay combo's you can pull off with any other skill (mainly with Combo Death Fault) and the fact that you can combo Blitz into Invincible Belief (our new Skill Link).
With the most recent change, skills that consume HP no longer affects barriers. The HP consumption goes directly into your HP instead, so you can now freely use Blitz Shield without worrying that you'd punish yourself for casting skills in the wrong order or moment. The barrier HP is now only properly affected by anything other than your own skills, which is a great change.
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8. Changes to Erda Shower
Erda Shower has received a new mechanic. Notice in the GIF above that Rage Uprising gets pushed back with a forced knockback, while Erda Shower stays in place. Basically, the skill's hitbox can no longer be moved (away) by the game, allowing it to become a safe approaching option if you're going for a kill. Let me try to explain how that works.
When you use an attacking skill, where the hitbox is going to appear is based on your current location. Hitboxes can also become warped (increase/decrease in size) and manipulated by movement acceleration, but that's a completely different subject that I won't cover today.
So, if you were to be moved away by the game during an attack, not only would you be moved away, but the location where the hitbox is going to appear will also not be at the location you'd expect it to be... This can potentially lead in your skill's hitbox being unable to reach your intended target because of the displacement. Not that it usually would happen in an one-versus-one situation, though.
If you were to use Erda Shower just a couple of frames before you would be pushed away, with the current changes it is guaranteed to be located there, even if you somehow were to end up in the opposite side of the map. Basically it's more or less a frame 1 skill now. It's almost an unique mechanic in the game as it is neither a skill that gives (Super)stance upon cast or an iframe, which usually is the kind of skills that allow for indirect guarantees to plant a skill's hitbox in a certain place.
Generally speaking it is more useful in theory than in practice. For classes other than Hero that don't have 100% stance, it would allow the player to use Erda Shower on the edge of a platform before they would get knocked off said platform and still hit all the targets. The problem with Erda Shower having this mechanic is that despite you could guarantee to land the hitbox, you'd still have to soak up the hit (and possibly even the knockback). And even if we take hitbox displacements into consideration, Hero's hitboxes are generally that huge that you're most likely to land the skill on a boss anyway. It's a more than welcome improvement for the skill (as any is any), but I suppose other classes would notice the change more than one who plays Hero.
Also let's not forget that Erda Shower cannot be used in mid air. That does mean that once you're knocked back you can't use Erda Shower for that "frame 1" advantage because your character is briefly considered in the air until the knockback effect is over.
When you use an attacking skill, where the hitbox is going to appear is based on your current location. Hitboxes can also become warped (increase/decrease in size) and manipulated by movement acceleration, but that's a completely different subject that I won't cover today.
So, if you were to be moved away by the game during an attack, not only would you be moved away, but the location where the hitbox is going to appear will also not be at the location you'd expect it to be... This can potentially lead in your skill's hitbox being unable to reach your intended target because of the displacement. Not that it usually would happen in an one-versus-one situation, though.
If you were to use Erda Shower just a couple of frames before you would be pushed away, with the current changes it is guaranteed to be located there, even if you somehow were to end up in the opposite side of the map. Basically it's more or less a frame 1 skill now. It's almost an unique mechanic in the game as it is neither a skill that gives (Super)stance upon cast or an iframe, which usually is the kind of skills that allow for indirect guarantees to plant a skill's hitbox in a certain place.
Generally speaking it is more useful in theory than in practice. For classes other than Hero that don't have 100% stance, it would allow the player to use Erda Shower on the edge of a platform before they would get knocked off said platform and still hit all the targets. The problem with Erda Shower having this mechanic is that despite you could guarantee to land the hitbox, you'd still have to soak up the hit (and possibly even the knockback). And even if we take hitbox displacements into consideration, Hero's hitboxes are generally that huge that you're most likely to land the skill on a boss anyway. It's a more than welcome improvement for the skill (as any is any), but I suppose other classes would notice the change more than one who plays Hero.
Also let's not forget that Erda Shower cannot be used in mid air. That does mean that once you're knocked back you can't use Erda Shower for that "frame 1" advantage because your character is briefly considered in the air until the knockback effect is over.
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9. Changes to Combo Instinct
As I've mentioned last time, the amount of lines one can do with Combo Instinct is bonkers. But because of the large increase of attacks, it was very likely to trigger one of the oldest anti-bot measures in the game that has been there since the beginning.
If you stand still on your current location, you're only able to do up to 100 attacks until the game refuses any more inputs. This number only resets each time you move a certain distance. Since Combo Instinct adds three rifts per Raging Blow, you effectively get close to eight attacking attempts per second, and that is not counting Sword of Burning Soul, Advanced Final Attack and Aura Weapon. It was rather easy to hit that 100 ceiling, so using CI would require you to move frequently.
With the most recent change, Combo Instinct seems to be exempt from this rule, which allows you to do that bursting without having to be concerned about moving around. Good.
If you stand still on your current location, you're only able to do up to 100 attacks until the game refuses any more inputs. This number only resets each time you move a certain distance. Since Combo Instinct adds three rifts per Raging Blow, you effectively get close to eight attacking attempts per second, and that is not counting Sword of Burning Soul, Advanced Final Attack and Aura Weapon. It was rather easy to hit that 100 ceiling, so using CI would require you to move frequently.
With the most recent change, Combo Instinct seems to be exempt from this rule, which allows you to do that bursting without having to be concerned about moving around. Good.
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B. New 5th Job Skill: Maple World Goddess' Blessing
Man, Nexon really put themselves in a bind with this one. Introducing what is probably among the most balanced 5th Job skills in the entire game: Maple World Goddess' Blessing (called "The blessing of Maple World's goddess" in EMS).
Maple World Goddess' Blessing is a skill available to all Adventure, Resistance and Legend classes. For some reason, Beast Tamer also gets this skill, despite she should've gotten the Anima Blessing (but that wouldn't really work because the Anima Blessing variant is designed around Ho Young's unique mechanics). The skill is basically a mastery for Maple Warrior (or, Maple Hero, depending on what localized version you're playing).
Maple Warrior is the only skill that has consistently appeared in every class of the game. The skill is so basic yet effective: it gives % All Stats to everyone in the party, but the stat gains is only based on your AP-investment. It never has been an incredible skill by all means, as it always has been acknowledged to be useful but hard to be called anything beyond "middle tier". Free stat gains are always nice, so Maple Warrior does its job decently well.
With the original release of 4th Job, the skill could only go up to Level 20. This was later changed with the release of Pink Bean - originally being the only source for Maple Warrior's Level 30 Mastery Book. Although while that gave an incentive to do this boss back then, said incentive was gotten rid of rather quickly with the introduction of Premium Mini Dungeons in EMS - which also took away the incentive to do Horned Tail raids for Blizzard/Genesis/Meteor/Triple Throw 30's. I'd say PMD was for the better with these drops, but at the time I was in the minority with such an opinion.
Possibly the biggest upgrade for Maple Warrior's sake were the (three) subsequent increases in level caps. Whenever the level cap was raised to 220 with the Supreme server, 250 later with the 10th anniversary of the game or the fairly recent 275 that came with the Black update, this positively affected MW because the players would receive more AP to spend in their main stat. Having more AP means a stronger MW effect. Unfortunately the reality is that MW has only contributed less for our overall output because modern resources such as Arcane Force and 5th Job skills demands more of the cake.
So, with 5th Job's release positively breaking many status quo's and introducing new and exciting stuff, just thinking about a 5th Job mastery for Maple Warrior could lead into something interesting that could potentially help MW to be more impactful, now wouldn't it? Yes and no.
At Level 30, Maple World's Goddess' Blessing multiplies the boost of Maple Warrior by four times, and also gives a whopping 20% Total Damage. Alright, I'm liking the sound of this. However, the skill is not passive, as it only lasts for one minute, and the cooldown is three minutes. Dammit, we were so close with this one.
Basically, you get a Level 1 Terms & Conditions for one minute that can be stacked with anything else you already own. That is pretty good though, all things considered. It could potentially make your weekly runs a couple of seconds shorter. Yay for a 2k STR boost and a bit of range multiplying I guess? Aside from stacking it with other burst skills to hit harder, using Blessing for anything else might not do "that" much...
See what I mean with it being a balanced skill? There was not much that Nexon could do more with it. Examples:
However, there is something important about Maple World's Goddess' Blessing that I have to address. The stat boosts for Maple World's Goddess' Blessing is completely dependent on the Maple Warrior that is active at the time of casting the skill. You also cannot cast Maple World's Goddess' Blessing if there is no active variant of Maple Warrior on you, even if you only want to have the % Total Damage boost.
Maple World's Goddess' Blessing blindly takes the current stat boost you gain from Maple Warrior and multiplies it by four (assuming Level 30). That means that the level of your Maple Warrior matters. Level 30 Maple Warrior gives 15% All Stats. Level 31 Maple Warrior (achieved through using Combat Orders) gives 16% All Stats.
So, if you were to use Maple World's Goddess' Blessing with a Level 30 Maple Warrior, you won't get as much as if you would use the skill with a Level 31 Maple Warrior. The moment you cast Blessing, you're stuck with the current boosts as it is, and it can no longer be increased or decreased until the next time you cast the skill. So if you were to cast Level 30 MW with Blessing, you'll end up with a "Level 30" effect of Blessing. Even if you were to use Level 31 afterwards, Blessing remains unaffected, and you'll only increase the gains from MW, not for both skills.
As I've been telling everyone for several years now, having Combat Orders is a must for any serious player out there. CO is mainly used for increasing the levels of as many 4th Job skills as you can for min/maxing your output and/or gameplay experience - its relevance has only become more apparent with the introduction of 5th Job because a respectable number of 5th Job skills are affected by the condition of your pre-existing 4th Job skills. Goddess' Blessing makes Maple Warrior no exception to this established situation.
The difference between Level 30 and 31 MW with Blessing is well over two hundred STR (!) in my case. Don't forget that two hundred STR is actually more significant by the fact that Maple World's Goddess' Blessing gives 20% Total Damage on top of that and will be often used in conjunction with burst skills. It will matter, and it will only matter more the older Maple becomes. Remember: the higher the level cap, the more AP, the stronger MW gets.
The biggest problem in all of this is party play. There are so many players still allergic to using Combat Orders because they believe the gains of using CO are neglectable. Fine, if you still have your head stuck in the sand, then I probably can't change your mind in all of that. But that is also the problem I'm trying to describe: people that don't use CO don't have a 16% All Stats Maple Warrior. And with Maple World's Goddess' Blessing, that might become a (social) problem.
Because Maple Warrior is a skill that every class owns, only a minority of the players have access to Self CO to make it Level 31. That means if you party play or are in a location where buffs are forcefully shared (with pretty much no way to opt-out), it is very likely that you're not going to get a Level 31 Maple Warrior. Basically, you gotta communicate with the people in your party or in your map and tell them to stop downgrading your stuff. But as we both know, that's not how reality works.
Or worse, if you're in the same boat as me, you have Self CO for 31 MW, but everyone will keep throwing a Level 30 at you because they either have it in their macro's or in the nuclear-tier case scenario they have it on their pet auto-buff. And nobody that really either knows or gives a damn whenever if they will override your Level 31 MW or not. That pisses me off greatly.
Can we talk a minute about using Maple Warrior on your pet auto-buff? Just no. Don't be that guy, especially if you don't use Self CO. Every time if someone uses Level 31 Maple Warrior, the pet will immediately replace it with a Level 30 version and this shit infuriates me. You don't want to know how often that happened during the Black update, where I was instanced with someone who had Level 30 MW on auto-buff. Imagine if another guy has Level 31 MW on auto-buff in the same room. You keep receiving a new Maple Warrior every second, and that causes latency issues for everyone involved. Now, imagine those two guys just sitting on a chair the entire hour for AFKing sake, because that's how they want to do their dailies.
That matter of not getting the right MW is going to be even worse now because of Maple World's Goddess' Blessing. It's probably as frustrating as someone using a bind on the Inferno Wolf when you're using Body of Steel. If you do happen to use Self CO with a pet auto-buffed MW though, then you're good to go and I have no issues whatsoever...
Which is silly because Nexon could just add a piece of logic that blocks overwriting skills with a lower level variant and that the Inferno Wolf is immune to binds, then I'd be fine and all is well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maple World Goddess' Blessing is a skill available to all Adventure, Resistance and Legend classes. For some reason, Beast Tamer also gets this skill, despite she should've gotten the Anima Blessing (but that wouldn't really work because the Anima Blessing variant is designed around Ho Young's unique mechanics). The skill is basically a mastery for Maple Warrior (or, Maple Hero, depending on what localized version you're playing).
Maple Warrior is the only skill that has consistently appeared in every class of the game. The skill is so basic yet effective: it gives % All Stats to everyone in the party, but the stat gains is only based on your AP-investment. It never has been an incredible skill by all means, as it always has been acknowledged to be useful but hard to be called anything beyond "middle tier". Free stat gains are always nice, so Maple Warrior does its job decently well.
With the original release of 4th Job, the skill could only go up to Level 20. This was later changed with the release of Pink Bean - originally being the only source for Maple Warrior's Level 30 Mastery Book. Although while that gave an incentive to do this boss back then, said incentive was gotten rid of rather quickly with the introduction of Premium Mini Dungeons in EMS - which also took away the incentive to do Horned Tail raids for Blizzard/Genesis/Meteor/Triple Throw 30's. I'd say PMD was for the better with these drops, but at the time I was in the minority with such an opinion.
Possibly the biggest upgrade for Maple Warrior's sake were the (three) subsequent increases in level caps. Whenever the level cap was raised to 220 with the Supreme server, 250 later with the 10th anniversary of the game or the fairly recent 275 that came with the Black update, this positively affected MW because the players would receive more AP to spend in their main stat. Having more AP means a stronger MW effect. Unfortunately the reality is that MW has only contributed less for our overall output because modern resources such as Arcane Force and 5th Job skills demands more of the cake.
So, with 5th Job's release positively breaking many status quo's and introducing new and exciting stuff, just thinking about a 5th Job mastery for Maple Warrior could lead into something interesting that could potentially help MW to be more impactful, now wouldn't it? Yes and no.
At Level 30, Maple World's Goddess' Blessing multiplies the boost of Maple Warrior by four times, and also gives a whopping 20% Total Damage. Alright, I'm liking the sound of this. However, the skill is not passive, as it only lasts for one minute, and the cooldown is three minutes. Dammit, we were so close with this one.
Basically, you get a Level 1 Terms & Conditions for one minute that can be stacked with anything else you already own. That is pretty good though, all things considered. It could potentially make your weekly runs a couple of seconds shorter. Yay for a 2k STR boost and a bit of range multiplying I guess? Aside from stacking it with other burst skills to hit harder, using Blessing for anything else might not do "that" much...
See what I mean with it being a balanced skill? There was not much that Nexon could do more with it. Examples:
- If they would increase the MW boost, that could potentially make Paladin, Bishop or Xenon benefit too much from it...
- If they would increase the Total Damage, the skill would start to add maybe a bit too much oomph.
- They can't adjust the cooldown and duration because they've been back and forth with it during Tespia, because players kept complaining that the original proposed 2 minute duration with a 3 or 4 minute cooldown was too good. The other Blessing variants for this skill were criticized for not being as good as the one for Adventures, so they had to tone ours down and buff those who ended up with the short end of the stick. Fair enough.
However, there is something important about Maple World's Goddess' Blessing that I have to address. The stat boosts for Maple World's Goddess' Blessing is completely dependent on the Maple Warrior that is active at the time of casting the skill. You also cannot cast Maple World's Goddess' Blessing if there is no active variant of Maple Warrior on you, even if you only want to have the % Total Damage boost.
Maple World's Goddess' Blessing blindly takes the current stat boost you gain from Maple Warrior and multiplies it by four (assuming Level 30). That means that the level of your Maple Warrior matters. Level 30 Maple Warrior gives 15% All Stats. Level 31 Maple Warrior (achieved through using Combat Orders) gives 16% All Stats.
So, if you were to use Maple World's Goddess' Blessing with a Level 30 Maple Warrior, you won't get as much as if you would use the skill with a Level 31 Maple Warrior. The moment you cast Blessing, you're stuck with the current boosts as it is, and it can no longer be increased or decreased until the next time you cast the skill. So if you were to cast Level 30 MW with Blessing, you'll end up with a "Level 30" effect of Blessing. Even if you were to use Level 31 afterwards, Blessing remains unaffected, and you'll only increase the gains from MW, not for both skills.
As I've been telling everyone for several years now, having Combat Orders is a must for any serious player out there. CO is mainly used for increasing the levels of as many 4th Job skills as you can for min/maxing your output and/or gameplay experience - its relevance has only become more apparent with the introduction of 5th Job because a respectable number of 5th Job skills are affected by the condition of your pre-existing 4th Job skills. Goddess' Blessing makes Maple Warrior no exception to this established situation.
The difference between Level 30 and 31 MW with Blessing is well over two hundred STR (!) in my case. Don't forget that two hundred STR is actually more significant by the fact that Maple World's Goddess' Blessing gives 20% Total Damage on top of that and will be often used in conjunction with burst skills. It will matter, and it will only matter more the older Maple becomes. Remember: the higher the level cap, the more AP, the stronger MW gets.
The biggest problem in all of this is party play. There are so many players still allergic to using Combat Orders because they believe the gains of using CO are neglectable. Fine, if you still have your head stuck in the sand, then I probably can't change your mind in all of that. But that is also the problem I'm trying to describe: people that don't use CO don't have a 16% All Stats Maple Warrior. And with Maple World's Goddess' Blessing, that might become a (social) problem.
Because Maple Warrior is a skill that every class owns, only a minority of the players have access to Self CO to make it Level 31. That means if you party play or are in a location where buffs are forcefully shared (with pretty much no way to opt-out), it is very likely that you're not going to get a Level 31 Maple Warrior. Basically, you gotta communicate with the people in your party or in your map and tell them to stop downgrading your stuff. But as we both know, that's not how reality works.
Or worse, if you're in the same boat as me, you have Self CO for 31 MW, but everyone will keep throwing a Level 30 at you because they either have it in their macro's or in the nuclear-tier case scenario they have it on their pet auto-buff. And nobody that really either knows or gives a damn whenever if they will override your Level 31 MW or not. That pisses me off greatly.
Can we talk a minute about using Maple Warrior on your pet auto-buff? Just no. Don't be that guy, especially if you don't use Self CO. Every time if someone uses Level 31 Maple Warrior, the pet will immediately replace it with a Level 30 version and this shit infuriates me. You don't want to know how often that happened during the Black update, where I was instanced with someone who had Level 30 MW on auto-buff. Imagine if another guy has Level 31 MW on auto-buff in the same room. You keep receiving a new Maple Warrior every second, and that causes latency issues for everyone involved. Now, imagine those two guys just sitting on a chair the entire hour for AFKing sake, because that's how they want to do their dailies.
That matter of not getting the right MW is going to be even worse now because of Maple World's Goddess' Blessing. It's probably as frustrating as someone using a bind on the Inferno Wolf when you're using Body of Steel. If you do happen to use Self CO with a pet auto-buffed MW though, then you're good to go and I have no issues whatsoever...
Which is silly because Nexon could just add a piece of logic that blocks overwriting skills with a lower level variant and that the Inferno Wolf is immune to binds, then I'd be fine and all is well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In a similar vein to the Knights of Cygnus and Citistance (Citizen Resistance) Skill Links, you'll need one copy of each class in order to max it out. To max out Invincible Belief, you're going to need one Level 120 Hero, one Level 120 Paladin and one Level 120 Dark Knight. For some reason, mine didn't work until I actually linked it to a different character on my account.
So, what does this Skill Link do? It basically heals you fully once every 240 seconds when your HP drops below 15%. This is a really, really good Skill Link for all three Adventure warriors, because the Skill Link seems to be designed to work well with Blitz Shield (which is also exclusive to the three OG brothers).
One of Hero's largest drawbacks as a class is the fact that it has no means of dealing with "HP throttle". Certain bosses in the game tend to drop everyone's HP continuously, so healing is required in order to stay alive. Potions are often on cooldown during these bosses so in most cases anyone who plays Hero is very likely to bleed out as the average HP consumption is greater than what you're able to heal. This makes Hero rather unforgiving and a difficult class to main because once you make a mistake, you're very likely to die - thus the only real way to main Hero is to become precise with movement, being preseverant and also being able to cope well with game over screens.
Hero is in a rare position among all attack-oriented classes as it stands out as one of the only few melee characters without proper healing, dodge chances or instant-revives. Yes, I'm aware of the fact that Hero has Self Recovery and shares Blitz Shield with Paladin and Dark Knight, but that holds no candle to the majority of what other melee characters can do in the game. Yes, one could take a Reaper's Pendant, healing Familiars and Fairy Tears; but guess what? You can use that with every class. Breath of Divinity doesn't fix everything either. This is why Combo Death Fault has a short cooldown of only 20 seconds. It is a band-aid fix for Hero's biggest flaw. The flaw still remains there because it's part of the class, and unfortunately means that Hero becomes only good enough among stubborn players who stick long enough with it. That's why the class loses its bandwagon traction among players who get far enough in the game where the difficulty curve starts to matter. It's the classic question of "why should I main Hero if there are clearly better options available?"
And then we have other long-ranged classes that basically makes all of the above moot. Y'know, long-ranged classes that has proper healing combined with dodge chances, practical mobility and a powerful damage output. Compare that to Hero... Sometimes Maple's game balance is fascinating. Ah well, as I sometimes say: the class and server type basically decides how difficult your MapleStory experience is going to be. Hero just happens to be one of the most difficult of them all, from a practical perspective that is.
The Hero community has asked Nexon for a very long time to at least give something to deal with HP throttle, because it is a serious and common issue that is often what ends up killing Heroes during raids without party healing. It is not necessarily a far-fetched request or one that is asked too much of... especially when you consider that the majority of other melee classes are clearly the more "superior options" in terms of how to deal with survival. It is almost as if Hero has been kept excessively difficult on purpose to keep the player base small and loyal. That said, giving Hero improved healing would be a drastic change in how Hero would move forward. It is perhaps also why we haven't seen such a game changing move done by Nexon, despite that it's almost a criminal offense at this point when you look at what other classes have. Haven't even begun talking about Bowmaster, which is not even a melee character to begin with.
Anyway, so Invincible Belief tackles this particular issue - it allows Hero to deal with HP throttle once every 4 minutes. This makes it land in a particular sweet spot that's just perfect: it won't proc enough that it changes everything, but it being there with such a cooldown does mean that it'll save you at least once a run when you need it. That's great for short or difficult boss runs and certain bosses with limited respawns.
So, about the healing of Invincible Belief. When your HP drops below 15% and the skill is not on cooldown, it will immediately activate and heal you in chunks of 35% HP. The skill will only heal you three times (35% per chunk), once each second. So no, it is not a full and instant heal, but I also think being healed in three chunks is actually better because it would prevent the burst heal to be immediately countered by a boss after the first heal by giving you two extra's after.
And yes, the healing is not affected by the reduced effects of Hard Magnus (unlike i.e. Power Elixirs), so you get the complete healing there. That is actually great because a Skill Link like this would be important for something like that. Unfortunately I have no access to True Hilla as I'm not anywhere close to Level 250 yet, so I can't verify if the Skill Link bypasses her healing rules as of now.
Fun fact: you can forcefully proc the Skill Link to occur when you drop your health manually below 15%. That's some old school MapleStory stuff right there. It doesn't matter how your HP has dropped - as long as it's below that 15%.
As mentioned in the description, Invincible Belief cannot be affected by any cooldown reducers, cooldown skips, healing modifiers or buff duration. Nexon seems to be hell-bent on keeping the skill in their exact intended numbers, so it's best to go with it as it is and assume that any workaround will be patched out.
Also worth to note: it doesn't seem to work in places like Wondroid, where one might consider it to be a resourceful tool for that final escape sequence. Honestly, just buy a Reaper's Pendant and you'll be fine. The skill cannot activate in towns, which is interesting because this would disable one to use the Skill Link during a GM summon event. Y'know, the one event of all things where players are going to die. Ironic.
Combo Death Fault allows us to iframe through most of the attacks in the game, nullifying any damage or Status Effects that could've been thrown at us if timed right. But because CDF has a cooldown of 20 seconds, you're very likely to have it often on cooldown because you're using the skill often. Plus, there's also an issue with requiring six Combo Orbs, which may or may not be a problem in certain pinches.
Blitz Shield, as mentioned before, allows us to survive one lethal attack of 100% HP damage due to the nature of how barriers work in the game. However, this often leaves us vulnerable to follow up attacks because using a Power Elixir straight after this means the potion goes on cooldown at most relevant bosses.
Invincible Belief allows us to use Blitz Shield to tank one 100% HP attack that would've been lethal and walk away with it. Blitz Shield would drop us conveniently under the 15% threshold in most cases, so Invincible Belief would kick in. Worst case you can always use something like Erda Shower to forcefully get your health under the 15% threshold to activate the healing. Because both the Skill Link and Blitz Shield are shared among the three Adventure warriors, you can achieve this combo with Paladin and Dark Knight as well!
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Verdict
So, as you can probably tell from all of this, I'm generally speaking mostly positive about the inclusions made with Glory. The Combo Attack thing is just a personal beef, and as I've described before: it's there for those who want it. Seems like I'm just not one of those.
Maple World's Goddess' Blessing is unfortunately stuck in that middle tier limbo. It is certainly a lot better for increasing your damage compared to Body of Steel (since BoS is more likely to be used for Superstance). You should only really invest in this skill after you've finished your essentials and higher priorities. I do believe that this skill will become more useful with age, as is with Maple Warrior. The higher level we'll be able to reach and the higher our base ranges become, the more impact this skill will have. So for now, only time will tell in where Maple World's Goddess' Blessing will lead us to. It can only go up from here, as it's already a more than decent enough inclusion to our skill tree.
Although the introduction of Invincible Belief was not free, ironically. Yes, we basically get the Skill Link for free, but Nexon has changed a couple of other Skill Links to accommodate this. I'm not happy with all of these changes, because the space for something new is artificially created by changing the old. The % HP boost from the Adventure Pirate's Skill Link (which was the old Cannon Shooter's) has been changed to a flat HP boost. Soon, Kaiser's Skill Link will also drop in % HP. Yes, we got the very valuable Damage Reduction in exchange for the changes done with the Pirate's Skill Link, but that doesn't change the fact that Damage Reduction came ironically at the cost of HP. Although don't get me wrong: I'm a big fan of Damage Reduction, but I don't like seeing a HP drop as a trade. While Cygnus' Skill Link now gives Attack/Magic Attack, they have reduced the Status and Elemental Resistance bonuses. Hyper Stats also no longer gives Elemental Resistance, which upsets me.
Might not really seem like a big deal but my build has taken quite a hit because of it. I immediately see the difference at (Chaos) Vellum because the stuns take two~three frames longer, which does make a difference in terms of being able to do anything before Vellum goes back under ground. I will have to compensate if I would want to have this perk back (i.e. Hyper Stats), but for the time being that would fall under luxuries with a low priority. The fact that Nexon suddenly reduces these stats that is otherwise ignored by the majority of players means only one thing: future content is going to rely more on these and they slowly ninja it out of existence to ensure we can't prepare enough against it. Meh.
Anyway, that's that. The Rise update is wrapping up in KMS and there is unfortunately no new skill wave included.
But as you probably know by now, I'm always keeping an eye on everything and everyone as I always plan ahead. Join me next time where I'll go over the seventh skill wave (which will take a while, since we don't know when that's going to be), together with a couple of brave skill changes. The list includes Soul Driver, a supposed buff for Combo Hookshot, something that seems like a straight nerf to Aura Weapon, something that may or may not make Self Recovery suddenly one of the best skills in the game... and to nobody's surprise: Puncture's getting another buff. Again another Puncture buff, dammit!
That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!
So, as you can probably tell from all of this, I'm generally speaking mostly positive about the inclusions made with Glory. The Combo Attack thing is just a personal beef, and as I've described before: it's there for those who want it. Seems like I'm just not one of those.
Maple World's Goddess' Blessing is unfortunately stuck in that middle tier limbo. It is certainly a lot better for increasing your damage compared to Body of Steel (since BoS is more likely to be used for Superstance). You should only really invest in this skill after you've finished your essentials and higher priorities. I do believe that this skill will become more useful with age, as is with Maple Warrior. The higher level we'll be able to reach and the higher our base ranges become, the more impact this skill will have. So for now, only time will tell in where Maple World's Goddess' Blessing will lead us to. It can only go up from here, as it's already a more than decent enough inclusion to our skill tree.
Although the introduction of Invincible Belief was not free, ironically. Yes, we basically get the Skill Link for free, but Nexon has changed a couple of other Skill Links to accommodate this. I'm not happy with all of these changes, because the space for something new is artificially created by changing the old. The % HP boost from the Adventure Pirate's Skill Link (which was the old Cannon Shooter's) has been changed to a flat HP boost. Soon, Kaiser's Skill Link will also drop in % HP. Yes, we got the very valuable Damage Reduction in exchange for the changes done with the Pirate's Skill Link, but that doesn't change the fact that Damage Reduction came ironically at the cost of HP. Although don't get me wrong: I'm a big fan of Damage Reduction, but I don't like seeing a HP drop as a trade. While Cygnus' Skill Link now gives Attack/Magic Attack, they have reduced the Status and Elemental Resistance bonuses. Hyper Stats also no longer gives Elemental Resistance, which upsets me.
Might not really seem like a big deal but my build has taken quite a hit because of it. I immediately see the difference at (Chaos) Vellum because the stuns take two~three frames longer, which does make a difference in terms of being able to do anything before Vellum goes back under ground. I will have to compensate if I would want to have this perk back (i.e. Hyper Stats), but for the time being that would fall under luxuries with a low priority. The fact that Nexon suddenly reduces these stats that is otherwise ignored by the majority of players means only one thing: future content is going to rely more on these and they slowly ninja it out of existence to ensure we can't prepare enough against it. Meh.
Anyway, that's that. The Rise update is wrapping up in KMS and there is unfortunately no new skill wave included.
But as you probably know by now, I'm always keeping an eye on everything and everyone as I always plan ahead. Join me next time where I'll go over the seventh skill wave (which will take a while, since we don't know when that's going to be), together with a couple of brave skill changes. The list includes Soul Driver, a supposed buff for Combo Hookshot, something that seems like a straight nerf to Aura Weapon, something that may or may not make Self Recovery suddenly one of the best skills in the game... and to nobody's surprise: Puncture's getting another buff. Again another Puncture buff, dammit!
That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!
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