After a bit of delay, EMS released two new skills for Hero's toolkit. Introducing Upper Charge and Leap Attack, a pair of powerful skills that's significant enough to warrant its own dedicated blogpost. Originally released shortly after the Rise update in KMS, Nexon decided to postpone this patch for several additional months so they could include these with our edition of the Awake update instead. To say the wait was painful is an understatement, but at least the Celestial Festival and Mark of Honor III events were nice distractions and gave out some great rewards.
So, basically: Upper Charge and Leap Attack are here to improve Hero's movement options, allowing us to perform a multitude of new ways to tackle platforming and dodge boss attacks. While these skills are shared with Paladin and Dark Knight, as usual I will only focus on the in-depth applications with Hero.
Upper Charge (UC), a skill that unlocks at 3rd Job, is the perfect counterpart to Rope Lift.
The two skills go hand-in-hand as UC is designed to perform better in situations where Rope Lift left a bit to be desired. It doesn't invalidate Rope Lift's existence, as it is clear when UC falls short by comparison. Thus, both skills have their own reasons to exist - it's up to the player to use the strengths of each skill to their fullest potential.
Upper Charge swiftly throws your character in the air, allowing you to reach platforms above much faster. The skill has no cooldown, the reached height is always the same and the skill doesn't eat up your double jump. The skill is not hindered by Crazy Skull (inverted controls) or Weakness (disables jumps). The skill can only be performed on the ground and it is considered an attack, so it can activate other skills such as Sword of Burning Soul, Aura Weapon and Final Attack. As it is an attack, it comes with its own set of targets, damage and hitbox.
These particular traits is what sets UC apart from Rope Lift. Rope Lift is considered an utility (or, movement skill) by the game's coding, but UC is incredibly similar to Rush. In fact, if I had to describe Upper Charge in a few words, it would literally be: "vertical rush". It is more literal than you might expect - I'll get back on that later.
Anyway, the greatest strength of Upper Charge is the ability to perform upward jumps with little to no limitations. It's not the fact that you can "jump upwards" when you feel like it, it's about what you can do after using Upper Charge.
Because UC cannot be used in the air (this includes Soaring), you'll always have your flash jump (War Leap) ready to further extend the vertical height of the jump, or to make certain jumps that previously required the hookshot from Combo Force (which is entirely reliant on precise enemy locations, which made it unreliable and cumbersome).
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| With UC leaping higher than War Leap, certain platforms that were previously too high up for us are now within reach. |
Of course, you're allowed to use Rope Lift after UC to grapple on certain platforms that are too high up for Rope Lift to reach. You no longer need to use War Leap for this, unless the map only allows movement skills.
You could even perform a combination such as Upper Charge to War Leap, followed by Rope Lift and end it with a Combo Hookshot without touching the ground during the combo... But then there are also nice synergies with using skills with large hitboxes after UC, such as CDF and Puncture, which helps clearing out difficult-to-reach enemies (including those that fly around) at certain maps a lot.
What is interesting about UC's ability to activate other skills such as Sword of Burning Soul and Aura Weapon has to do with the respective quirks of each of these type of skills. All of these skills have their own conditions and "activation speeds", and this shows when you take a better look at them.
You're literally able to clear out multiple platforms with a single Upper Charge if used well.
Because Sobs activates relatively late, triggering it through UC means Sobs will be applied mid-air, which is surprisingly useful for grinding in maps as it would immediately take care of enemies on the platform you're either passing through or about to land on...
And Aura Weapon activates pretty much instant as it would with any other skill, and this allows you to potentially clear out remaining enemies as you move to the platform above you. Given AW's excellent horizontal coverage, it certainly is a valuable skill combo with UC...
Although, activating Advanced Final Attack isn't as favorable as the other two. If you can recall how the hitboxes of AFA work, the AFA hitbox copies the hitbox of the skill that activates it. So with a narrow vertical hitbox with UC, it's very likely that you aren't going to land AFA on anything. AFA will only activate on the enemy that is hit by the skill that activates it, so if you one shot enemies with UC, there will be no AFA activation.
Speaking of the hitbox, while it's there, the hitbox of Upper Charge isn't huge or anything. It's also limited to a base target count of five enemies (this can be further increased with the right upgrades). Most notably, the skill also hits behind you. Since the skill's hitbox is relatively narrow, it's best used at enemies that have wide horizontal hitboxes. Notice in the GIF above that its hitbox is smaller than the animation or jumping height might imply.
The dealt damage is also just a single line, with a fair 300% skill damage. There will be instances where you use UC through enemies that are not hit, despite that it visually would seem that you should be able to. This is because UC's damage is applied at the very start of the skill. Enemies that just spawn in or crosses your path as you're sent upwards is a common occurrence - it ultimately is a matter of timing - or well, unfortunate timing at that.
So, what about that vertical rush thing? Upper Charge does not only send you into the air... it also "teleports" you for a very brief moment. Similar to Rush, there's a couple of frames of invincibility in order to allow the game code to guarantee to move you from one place to another, which temporarily makes you intangible to anything. Of course, since it behaves very much like Rush, you can only make use of the intangibility as long as what you try to clip through doesn't have more active frames than you have (i.e. the tail attack hitboxes from Chaos Vellum linger for too long so you can't abuse UC for that, but Chaos Pierre's purple umbrella whacks are short enough to work with).
Basically, what all of that coding amounts to is the ability to quite literally jump out of Lucid's Nightmare Golem's detection box, as the golems only continuously check for characters that "exist" with their relative vertical positioning in the map. That is what happens if you would design a vertical Rush that scales a very generous height. It's very difficult for Nexon to program this anomaly out without fundamentally changing the way how Upper Charge works. Without the frames of intangibility, the player's jump becomes interrupt-able and by the power of friendship called the "spaghetti coding", you would probably "yeet" the player to an alternative dimension where people are able to call Orchid thirty times in order to obtain the almighty "pillow fight chair". In short, they'll probably fix this weird instance as it's an honest case of "too good to be true", but that does make me wonder what will be left of UC after they patch this...
Anyway, setting aside the consequences of programming a few frames of invincibility to an attacking skill that teleports the player upwards, there are other less destructive applications for this skill during bosses. One particular challenge is to safely move around mobile bosses that spam super knockback attacks that also happen to ignore Power Stance.
Example. Let's say you have a boss like Lotus. The map is fairly cramped and Lotus is often occupied with the mindset of relentlessly throwing you around like an angry professional Ultimate Frisbee player. If you were to apply a hit-and-run technique to maintain a safe distance, you will eventually run out of space due to the two-dimensional aspect of the game. In most traditional platforming games such as Mega Man Zero 3, the game would provide you with a consistent and reliable means to jump over a boss to remain safe. In Maple however, this isn't always the case, as most characters will have to resort to difficult and cumbersome workarounds - if they are among the lucky few to have one, that is.
With Upper Charge, Hero receives an invaluable benefit of being able to jump high enough so that you could flash jump over your target, as long as the map's ceiling allows for this. That said, this also means that Hero can use Upper Charge in order to evade attacks that would hit players if they were standing on the ground or slightly above that. Projectiles, earthquakes - you name it. But it's not just limited to those either. A noteworthy example would be something as simple as Pierre. Pierre can't reach you with his purple umbrella attacks, so when you need to navigate between those falling hats, UC is your most safe, reliable and consistent approach. Then, there's also something to be said about Black Mage phase 3: use UC to get on those mid-air platforms to avoid his lethal vortex attack on the floor.
So, what about those drawbacks where Rope Lift performs better than UC? While Rope Lift has a short 3 second cooldown, it can be used in the air, and only as long as there's a platform above you. Not only is the maximum reach of Rope Lift more than twice the height of UC, Rope Lift gives you a momentum boost that can be used with War Leap to cover some crazy distance.
But Rope Lift's ability to grapple and slingshot you into the air comes at the cost of speed and reliability. Rope Lift is prone to human error/server lag and with a cooldown of 3 seconds, making a mistake is punishing. Rope Lift became too useful for its own good: the cooldown of 3 seconds meant that frequent use would also leave you "waiting" in order to use it again. Especially this was detrimental for scaling maps with too many platforms, and the problem becomes worse when pet looting is involved. UC comes in perfect for these situations to give Rope Lift a much-needed backseat, as you no longer need to use Rope Lift for everything. UC will suffice for a lot of cases.
Because UC is an attack, as mentioned earlier, it cannot be used in any map that only allows for movement skills. In these maps, Rope Lift can still be used. UC also puts you into the "alert" state as any other attacks would, which hinders menu options such as changing channels, using upgrading tools or entering the Cash Shop / Auction House. Plus, there are certain moments where you simply don't want to aggro (or kill) enemies around you.
Leap Attack (LA), a skill that comes with 1st Job, is presented as an "extension" of Upper Charge. Looking at the skill by itself though, it is worth way more than that.
Nowadays, there are so many skills in Maple where you can zoom across in a horizontal direction. There are plenty of skills where you can fling yourself upwards. But there are very few skills that allow you to do what Leap Attack does. It gives Hero one of the most valuable skill properties in the game: a means to move downward faster.
In mid-air, you can use Leap Attack to immediately drop down while performing a small "ground smash". The skill is very similar to Hayato's Falcon Dive in concept, but quite different in execution.
When studying the general gameplay speed of MapleStory, one of the most notable moments where a limited amount of actions can be performed is "air time". Air time in Maple can either be two things: either you are moving around, or you are being forcefully moved around by the game.
Leap Attack exists in order to get rid of unwanted time spent in the air. This is the basic foundation of the skill. However, knowing how Hero skills work, Leap Attack provides much more than just that. It's not necessarily about getting rid of unwanted air time with LA, it's about how you can utilize LA's properties to your advantage where it will even prove to be useful for bossing endeavors where "micro-spacing" is required.
LA is Hero's only skill that can only be used in the air. Relative to the floor, there is no minimum height required for the skill to be used, but the distance between you and the floor you want to use LA on cannot exceed about "three characters stacked on top of each other". Sometimes I do feel it wouldn't hurt to be allowed to use this up higher in the air, though. The three-character-height feels a tad short every once in a while.
Dropping down with LA can be performed in two types of directions. If you use the skill's default command input by only pressing the skill's hotkey, you will drop down vertically. If you use the skill's hotkey while pressing in either the left or right direction, you will drop diagonally in that direction.
Naturally, one would say this works perfectly with skills such as Rope Lift or Upper Charge, as you often end up higher than the platform you want to land on. When using this combination of skills, it becomes noticeable that LA's effect is achieved by eliminating any gained momentum as you "snap" as quickly as possible to the nearest platform.
Basically, LA feels like a strong magnet. It allows us to get rid of excess distance in order to make our movements more precise or efficient. "But wait a minute, does that mean you could also halt skills such as War Leap?"
That is correct.
A fascinating mechanic that isn't available to many character classes is the ability to abruptly stop any sort of momentum. Leap Attack gives this rare trait to Hero's toolkit. What this means is that for skills such as War Leap (our flash jump), you're able to use Leap Attack in conjunction to "cancel" our horizontal movement. By doing so, you can decide where you want to position yourself when using flash jump.
In the ever-increasing gameplay speed of boss designs in MapleStory, bosses start to require more precise movement. Instances where Rush is either too short or too long becomes prevalent. Flash jump mechanics lack a certain precision as they are too fluid. Time windows to respond to boss attacks are decreasing. "Micro-spacing", as certain competitive games use this term, becomes more important in our game too.
How often have you come across an instance where using flash jump comes at the risk of bumping into a lethal hazard? Sometimes you simply don't have much of a choice. Walking is too slow, Rush isn't always a safe option as you have a brief moment of immobility towards the end and flash jump could potentially send you too far away. Leap Attack allows us to benefit from the speed burst from flash jump by eliminating its only potential weakness/risk.
From a practical perspective, with a bit of thorough practice in getting your timing right with Leap Attack, you could potentially use it to navigate between Vellum's stun pillars, Dusk's stun meteors or even True Hilla's puppet strings.
But of course, if you're a frequent reader of my blog, you know that there's even more stuff to talk about.
The beauty of Leap Attack is that like with Upper Charge, it doesn't contain many limitations in its simplicity. Leap Attack is as free to use as Raging Blow or any other attack, meaning that it can be used as a double flash jump, a semi-teleport skill and a means to abuse the boss AI of the game.
It's not that Leap Attack requires you to use a platform under you. LA just requires any platform that is nearby within its reach, regardless of gaps. This means you could use its diagonal effect to lock onto platforms that are next to you, as shown in the GIF above. The diagonal reach is a bit on the short side if you ask me, but it'll do.
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| Wait, what? |
As mentioned earlier, there is no minimum height required to use this skill. This also means you can immediately use LA on the "first pixel" above the ground, which allows you to cancel jumps.
By using the diagonal effect, you can "scuttle" over the floor, which is essentially a short hop. A practical use of this would be to allow yourself to escape from nearby danger such as using Rush to move away from boss attacks, but to LA's advantage, the leaped distance is much shorter and also achieved faster, which may be preferable or beneficial in some cases.
The only major thing that hinders this "scuttling" technique is the fact that LA is currently the only attack in Hero's skill tree that is not affected by attack speed. The attack speed is always the same.
The "recoil" of this attack is noticeable because of this, which unfortunately holds it back from being spammed. It isn't as bad as Combo Hookshot (which disables Rush and movement for far too long) but it's more apparent than Rush. Speaking about Combo Hookshot...
Yes, it is true that you can now use Combo Hookshot to fling yourself downwards like LA, even to a point where Combo Hookshot's reach is significantly better. However, Combo Hookshot leaves you far more vulnerable as it disables your movement for a significant amount of time. This is quite a risk during bossing, and it's something you really don't want to do unless you have no other choice. Lastly, Combo Hookshot requires an enemy to latch onto, while LA does not.
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| "They said that once you use flash jump, there is no turning back. Sike! Not anymore!" |
Last, but not least, what is probably the most interesting aspect of Leap Attack, but is arguably a tricky one to consistently pull off. Because LA allows you to move diagonally, it is possible to use War Leap to fling yourself in one direction, turn around and use LA to bounce back where you started. This has several benefits.
There are certain instances during bosses where using Upper Charge is not a safe means to dodge an incoming attack. In most cases, flash jumping away is a valid alternative, but then approaching the boss for your next attack can be difficult. A recent example of this would be Akechi Mitsuhide, which in Hero's unfortunate case makes it difficult to apply a hit-and-run tactic as his attacks cover a significant horizontal distance. Flash jumping away to avoid these attacks is difficult with Akechi because by the time you run back to him, these attacks are no longer on cooldown.
So, the trick with using War Leap and Leap Attack is to drastically reduce the time required to "get out and get back in", allowing you to attack and escape before those attack cooldowns reset. Leap Attack is able to trigger skills such as Sword of Burning Soul, Aura Weapon and Final Attack, which should help to keep some damage up.
The opposite can also be performed. If you can deal enough damage, you could use War Leap and Leap Attack to safely "get in and get out". You would bait a boss to perform an attack because you're approaching his proximity with War Leap, and then teleport yourself away to safety by using diagonal Leap Attack away from it. Skills such as stationary Sword of Burning Soul and Spider in Mirror would need to be used to provide most of the damage. This will keep the boss artificially at bay as it wastes its time by attacking thin air, and this can lead into a continuous loop.
It's not that you need to always use these kind of tricks, but it's now a potential option you can decide to use, even if it's for a brief moment to ensure your survival while maintaining some amount of damage. Speaking of survival, that's another thing worth discussing.
In example, using both flash jump / LA (or a combination of) to avoid Lotus pushing you back. As aforementioned, using UC can be done to achieve the same thing, but there aren't always moments where you can guarantee safety. Especially during the laser attack, when (lots of) falling debris continue to fall: you don't want to upward jump into those (the debris can push you sideways without Superstance, which is a risk not worth taking in mid-air). Having different ways to overcome the same issue is always better.
And all of that for just a "measly 1st Job" skill, huh. Not bad.
Just don't expect LA to really "do" any significant damage, though. It's a rare oddity in modern Maple that comes with two lines of 90% skill damage. Yes, in the literal sense each individual line deals 10% less damage than using your default "poke" attack, which does 100%.
Most people might have forgotten by now, but in the past many classes (including Hero) had skills that deals less than 100% damage. In Hero's case, the original Slash Blast had under 100% skill damage at lower levels (which was further exacerbated by the defunct Final Attack halving penalty, which explaining would require its own blogpost) and at max level, Shout would only do a single line of 30% (!) damage.
Anyway, not that this particular information is relevant to this blogpost, but I thought it was an interesting bit of trivia that's worth mentioning as it's a rare sight nowadays. Another (recent) skill that falls in this category is Illium's Radiant Orb, but its low 50% skill damage is only temporary as it's replaced by Radiant Orb II with 4th Job.
Lastly, LA's hitbox is nothing special. It's visually what you would expect. In terms of horizontal distance, it's a bit shorter than Slash Blast. It hits slightly above you but it's rather difficult to rely on it to hit stuff with it. With such a small hitbox, a base target count of 4 enemies is reasonable (which can be further increased with the right upgrades) but in most late game content it's going to be rare to make the most out of it.
Upper Charge and Leap Attack are undoubtedly great additions to Hero's toolkit. It hits a certain middle ground that I wholeheartedly support: improving Hero's mobility/survival by rewarding skill, without taking away or changing the core gameplay of the class. If I had to choose between additional bulk, healing or movement options - I would prefer the latter. In the end, Hero is a lightweight class that relies heavily on speed, so it would be nice to have more of that.
The two skills have a bit of a learning curve and require some thorough use before you can master them, but I do believe that the payoff can be immensely rewarding. It's been that much of an improvement for me that I was able to casually pull off my first Normal Lotus solo ever. It wasn't part of the plan, really. I was gathering video material to provide GIFs for this post, but in the end continuously jumping over Lotus made that much of a difference that I came to a point where I might as well clear the boss. I didn't even need to use Valhalla/Body of Steel for Superstance, use pets, Androids or familiars. Or a decently functional keyboard at that.
Y'know, Upper Charge was long overdue if you think about it: when Rage Uprising came out in late 2012, Hero was shown to be able to "perform" a vertical double jump. Of course, the attack itself couldn't be used to do such a jump, which left a bit to be desired. Funnily enough, by comparison, UC makes us jump higher.
One particular thing I avoided to talk about is the ability to use command inputs to activate both Upper Charge and Leap Attack. While it's a nice option to have, in practice there's really no reason to not use dedicated skill hotkeys for these. The problem with using command inputs, like with boss souls, is that it takes too long to perform them. Any serious Hero main would sell themselves short if they have to press two or three keys to perform something that could've easily been used with one instead.
Not having enough space on the keyboard is not a valid excuse. That's because you never have enough keyboard space. In the end, you choose to make keyboard space. Or you don't. That's how it always has been, and a lack of keyboad space never stopped me from finding a place for everything and going through the effort of adapting to a new layout. If you don't have at least as many skills on your keyboard configuration as I do, go make some damn space.
At least Nexon realized that Upper Charge's command input (up + attack) is a part of the input required to activate boss souls (down + down + up + up + attack), so they give you the option to disable UC's command input (by right-clicking the skill icon in the skill tab) as UC's input takes priority over boss souls.
So, before someone is going to ask me about it:
"Does Ryude's Sword work with Upper Charge and Leap Attack?"
Anyway, it's interesting to see that none of my (initial) expectations regarding Hero's 3 new skills are met. Upper Charge and Leap Attack are more notable than I anticipated, due to the extended utilization it provides outside of its presented use. Sword Illusion ended up being completely different from what I thought the skill would be. But talking about that one will be for a different blogpost, as in mid-or-late-December I'll publish about the next skill wave.
That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!
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