[EMS] Milestone - 5th Job's ninth wave!

Finally, a weapon to surpass Metal Gear.

Before delving into the 6th Job territory, there is one 5th Job skill left to discuss. Released after the Milestone update, Holy Fountain is the latest 5th Job skill after a three year hiatus. As eluded in my coverage of Crest of the Solar a few months ago, Holy Fountain proves that there's still a place for new 5th Job skills in the current 6th Job environment.

Even though Holy Fountain is a 5th Job skill available to everyone, I would go so far as saying it's one of the better 5th Job skills, period. In today's blogpost we'll take a look at Holy Fountain, alongside a quick coverage of changes made to Hero's skills and examine how much any of this update addresses the Destiny revamp.

Reminder that this blogpost will act as a prelude to future 6th Job blogposts, but as with the COTS blogpost, it is not mandatory to have read either in advance. Where necessary, I will refer back to this blogpost in the same way I have referred back to certain chapters of the Destiny blogpost in the past.

Table of Contents

1. Changes to Hero skills

Echo of Hero's cooldown has been cut from two hours (!) to five minutes. We basically have Echo of Hero available all the time, and we no longer have to rely on Time Leap mules or the occasional Rune of Skill to maintain uptime.

Maple Warrior and the 5th Job equivalents for both Speed Infusion and Advanced Blessing are now passive. MW finally addresses its compatibility issues with Maple World Goddess' Blessing, as it's no longer possible for someone else to grief your damage output. Keep in mind that the original (and Potential) Speed Infusion and Advanced Blessing remain active buffs, and they do not stack with their relatives as only the effects of the strongest version are applied. That said, 5th Job SI being passive makes for a great investment on every character as it only costs 140 Nodeshards.

Having less active skills is better too. Not only does this make room on pet auto buff, it also removes icons from the top-right corner. Especially with Hero's issue having too many yellowish orange skill icons, any improvement is good.

Maple World Goddess' Blessing has been drastically changed. Prior to this update, the skill would require 3 minutes to recharge itself, and you could then hold up to two casts for an one-minute buff. For some reason, they reverted it to its original form and conform it to the two-minute burst cycle. It's now a bog-standard one-minute-duration skill with a two-minute cooldown. Unfortunately, this means you no can no longer opt to save Blessings for a two-minute duration.

I would've preferred a fundamental fix for losing prepared skills upon logout, seeing as exempting Blessing does not fix the root cause. Aura Weapon and the upcoming Aura Blade VI still has this issue. Speaking of Aura Weapon...

Aura Weapon now has a slightly larger vertical hitbox. Finally, it now has a proper hitbox where it can hit stuff in front of you! This has been long overdue, to say the least. It took them eight (!) years to fix this.

Upper Charge, Sword of Burning Soul and Sword Illusion now activate faster. In particular, Upper Charge received the largest speed increase (not that it really needed one, but any is better nonetheless). Personally, I believe this boost should've gone to Leap Attack instead, which still suffers from jank and being unaffected by attack speed. SOBS being faster helps to address some of the issues created by the Destiny revamp, but the speed boost isn't significant enough (according to Nexon: only an approximated 7%) and more importantly: toggle cooldown isn't affected by this change.

The base damage for Rage Uprising (including RU6), Valhalla and Combo Instinct have been raised. In particular, Valhalla sees the most substantial boost in base damage, and also the afterimages themselves activate quicker.

Traversing this distance used to be more difficult with only 153% movement speed.

Perhaps the most substantial change from this update is for Warrior Mastery. It raises our maximum speed to 160%, which used to be 153% (until Monster Life was replaced by Union Artifact). Monster Life was the only source for more maximum speed, with the Pumpkin Bat giving a 3% increase. However, as Union Artifact only carried over the basics, a lot of unique Monster Life resources were lost in the transition. Remember this; it will be relevant later.

160% has been the (minimum) standard for a lot of melee classes for many years now, so it's good to see we're not being left behind*. Not only does 160% make for easier kiting, it is significant for War Leap as it gains more distance.

*Assuming you've read the Destiny blogpost, you know that's been the recurring treatment where Hero often ends up with the short end of the stick.

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2. Buff Display expansion

While the poor post-Destiny skill icon designs remain unchanged (for every skill that has yet to be superseded by a VI Mastery on 6th Job), a fascinating upgrade to the UI came out of nowhere that indirectly solves part of this issue.

So, the main issue that I had with the post-Destiny skill icons is that it's hard to tell the difference between them, right? The easiest fix would be to edit the bad ones and that would've sufficed. Instead, the madmen at Nexon went the extra mile by creating two entirely new UI elements, which could not have been easy at all. Impressive, to say the least.

The first UI element is to automatically sort skill icons in the top-right corner into four groups (upwards of 13 icons a row, which after it creates a second row). While not perfect, it does greatly reduce clutter and is easier to read.

• The first group are all skills that are included in your character's class lineage and must already be owned.
• The second group are external sources without involving other players. Includes equipment (i.e. Petite Luna set effect, Reaper's Pendant, Pendant of the Spirit, Custom Title), skills not part of your class lineage (i.e. Wings of Fate, Mapae Specials*, Noblesse Guild Skills, Mounts, Skill Links), Housing Buff and Runes.
  
• The third group revolves around the use inventory, including shared consumables (i.e. Guild Blessing), consumables from other players that specifically target you (i.e. Maplemas Party Potion), and items disguised as buffs but evade going into your inventory (i.e. the buff from touching Combo Kill marbles).
• The fourth groups are buffs received from other players, which either must be from a different class lineage or are skills included in your class lineage but you do not own yet (otherwise they are sorted into group 1).
  

*While regular Special cores are sorted into the first group, all five Specials obtained from Mapae Nodestones are sorted into the second group.

Quiz time! If you share Rage with another Hero (assuming this guy has no Skill Points invested in Rage), in which group is it sorted? Answer: it will always sort Rage into the fourth group until he invests at least one SP in this skill.

As long as there is at least one Skill Point invested, Rage remains "owned", to which subsequent instances of Rage are sorted into the first group, regardless of its skill level and who casted it. Rulings! They keep me awake at night.

Which snowman buff did you just receive? You can't tell while using the new sorting feature...

Though for some weird reason, sorting buffs in this new UI disables the descriptions of all icons when you hover your mouse over them, so you have no access to this information as long as you use this sorting feature. I doubt that it's ever going to cause major problems, but it can be annoying for the few events as shown above.

Thankfully, you can still remove buffs by right-mouse clicking them. So, at least that still works with the new UI.

However, what truly makes the new UI element powerful is combining it with the other new element: Buff Favorites. What if I told you it's possible to remove skill icons of choice from the top-right corner, and to have them displayed elsewhere? That's what this new feature does. It isolates skill icons of choice (though only from the first group*).

*There are exceptions. Several skills from equipped items (second group) are allowed, such as Reaper's Pendant and the Petite Luna set effect.

While I have no influence on Nexon's poor skill design endeavors, I now have control over what skill icons I can assign to this new UI. Remember when I said I have a hard time telling if Enrage was active or not? Toss it in Buff Favorites. Done. Hard time finding Valhalla or Body of Steel? Throw it in there as well. It's such a simple but effective solution. The layout settings are quite flexible. Even better: you can drag this window to any location on your screen!

But if you ask me, Buff Favorites is at its best when you keep it to a minimum. It is tempting to go ham on many rows and columns, but you really only need one for a handful of skills. Its strength is not found in seeing skill durations, but the fact that you can remove icons from the top-right corner and always see through Buff Favorites if skills are active. 

For that reason, the most effective use of Buff Favorites are (in my opinion) for the following skills*:

• Enrage: to immediately see whether if it's active or not.
• Body of Steel: to keep track of Superstance duration.
• Valhalla: same reason as Body of Steel.
• Terms & Condition: Cooldown Skip means reading quick slots is no longer as reliable.
• Mu Gong: same reason as Terms & Conditions.
• Sol Janus: to see Dawn's duration and to keep track of the three-second cycles of Twilight.
• Familiars: not only to see whether if it's active, but also to keep track of remaining fuel for the day.

*This list is only relevant until the implementation of the Skill Sequence, at which point including skills such as Terms & Conditions and Mu Gong are no longer necessary as they'll always be activated through Skill Sequence. Though you'd still need to know when to recast them when CD skipped.

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3. V Matrix expansion

As Nexon focuses their efforts on 6th Job, support for 5th Job will dwindle. The maximum amount of 5th Job slots has been greatly expanded, which marks the end an unfulfilled potential of 5th Job that never really materialized.

During the original pitch for 5th Job, one of the unique selling points was “I will make my own choices for the 5th job skills that make me stronger!” although anyone that has been playing MapleStory long enough will be able to tell you that choosing between options has never really worked. Everyone always choosing the same approach is inevitable.

At some point different 5th Job routes was an idea that was thrown around, quite possibly a way for classes to branch out into different specialist roles like those found in ARPGs such as Path of Exile. Though 5th Job ended up becoming very much the same as the original 4th Job, just executed better. With the way how 6th Job has a definitive number of skill slots and without the ability to unequip them, Nexon's straightforward plans for 6th Job are made very clear.

That said, we have so many 5th Job skill slots that we can now have everything equipped in one preset. In fact, you start out with even more 5th Job skill slots for a stronger early game. With the abundant slots, you can now have every Self skill at maximum level to min/max passive stats, alongside three pairs of trinodes to ensure every important skill is boosted. Furthermore, you are also going to need these extra trinodes to unlock certain 6th Job skills later.

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4. Holy Fountain

Ya know me, I'm always a fan of practical stuff. This is way more difficult without Holy Fountain.

At first glance, Holy Fountain appears to be just another run-of-the-mill 5th Job skill. On the contrary, it's a true game-changer on the levels of Upper Charge or the Blink revamp, as it drastically reduces the game's difficulty for everyone.

Holy Fountain is a skill that originates from Bishop. Bishop can switch between variants of certain skills, including turning Holy Fountain into Fountain for Angels, but 5th Job's Holy Fountain is its own thing. While these variants can co-exist in the same map at the same time, there can always only be one instance of Holy Fountain in the same map - no matter if it was the 5th Job Holy Fountain or Bishop's. You can deny others Holy Fountain by summoning your own.

Casting Holy Fountain installs the summon at the location it's used. It cannot be summoned on top of a (yellow) portal, but it can be summoned very close to one. It cannot be placed in mid-air, and unlike Sword of Burning Soul you cannot summon or interact with it while using the Soaring skill. Holy Fountain can be summoned on conveyor belts, although with the lack of accessible moving platforms nowadays I'm unable to tell you how moving platforms interact with it.

When standing anywhere inside the fountain's sprite (regardless of height), you can press ↑ to attempt to drink from Holy Fountain to restore 35% HP, and there is no cooldown between sips. You can restore health even while under the effects of status conditions such as Potion Lock, Seal and Zombify. The input for drinking becomes ↓ while under the effects of Crazy Skull. You cannot use Holy Fountain to bypass healing restrictions from bosses (i.e. Will or True Hilla).

Higher level Holy Fountain sees a longer duration, a shorter cooldown and higher HP restoration. If you are serious about bossing in MapleStory, it is highly recommended to have this skill at Level 30. Only at maximum level will it have a permanent uptime of 60 seconds with a 60 second cooldown, with the 35% HP-per-sip restoration. Even though it is a Self skill, Holy Fountain is the only Self skill in the game that can be shared with party members. You cannot extend Holy Fountain's duration, lower its cooldown or improve its healing proficiency any further.

An example of Holy Fountain running out of restorations. Notice the skill's appearance changing into Holy Trace.

While it provides a tremendous healing support, you can only drink from the same fountain up to 20 times. Once the fountain is empty, Holy Fountain becomes dormant. Its appearance then changes into Holy Trace, to indicate that this fountain no longer has any restorations left*. Regardless of state, you must wait until either Holy Fountain or its trace expires before you can summon a new one. Even if you leave the map, it'll remain there for its remaining duration.

*This transformation only happens to the 5th Job Holy Fountain. The original one used by Bishop leaves the field after running dry.

Because you aren't allowed to heal while under the healing restrictions of certain bosses (including Lucid's debuff), attempting to drink Holy Fountain will not deduct a sip because the skill cannot successfully heal you. Remember to always play with sound effects on: a successful restoration from Holy Fountain will play a distinct sound.

An example of a Nightmare Golem removing Holy Fountain as it destroys the platform along with it.

It is possible to lose a Holy Fountain by allowing it to be destroyed. This is an unlikely scenario that can only occur under a very specific condition. For this to happen, Holy Fountain must have been summoned on a platform that can be removed. There are three locations where this scenario is most likely to occur (though also easily avoided):

• During Dusk, when the giant eye opens up and two tentacles form temporary platforms to stand on.
• During phase 2 Lucid, whenever bullet hell occurs or when platforms are destroyed by Nightmare Golems.
  
• During phase 3 Lotus, when he transforms platforms (top-row only) into homing projectiles.

Once these conditions are met, Holy Fountain is lost as it disappears together with the platform. In a party, another player can then summon a new Holy Fountain. However, if this happens when going solo, you'll have to wait until the cooldown has run out. An unlikely scenario to happen (most likely a misplay), but a fascinating one nonetheless.

Additionally, here are a few other locations to keep in mind, though these will almost never (but can) happen:

• During Urus, when temporary platforms appear to climb on top of the boss during grab/eating attacks*.
• During Guardian Angel Slime, the basement that opens up every three minutes.
• During phase 2 Zakum, where the floor becomes lethal and you have to climb on six smaller platforms.
• During phase 3 Black Mage, temporary platforms that appear before the Creation/Destruction attacks.

*Though 5th Job's Holy Fountain cannot be used at Urus, Bishops can use the original one as it's a 3rd Job skill.

As for the 20 drink limit: it is very difficult to use all of these up by yourself. This is because you can only attempt to drink from Holy Fountain when your HP is not full, and it will only consume a sip when it successfully heals you. You can in fact cast Blitz Shield at full health (which reduces your health by 5%) and consume a sip to offset the skill cost while keeping the barrier. This is such a powerful combo as Holy Fountain makes it trivial to keep your health full at all times, and with the appropriate cooldown hat investment you can have Blitz Shield's barrier half of the time. Keep in mind that Holy Fountain is much more likely to run dry in a party, as it becomes a drink limit of 20 for the entire party.

With all of that in mind, I can assure you that Holy Fountain is as good as it sounds. One of Hero's greatest struggles has always been chip damage, because Hero lacks the strong, instant and reliable healing options that most classes have. Power Elixirs on a cooldown is a rough experience, because even with one of the best movement options in the game and CDF, there are still times where the amount of incoming damage is too great to overcome. But not anymore.

This changed with Holy Fountain, as having it all to yourself makes short work of chip damage. This has the added benefit of pairing nicely with Body of Steel, as you can afford to take damage to build up stacks. You can be greedy with Holy Fountain and hardly get punished for it. 20 restorations every minute is more than plenty, and it's possible to brute force your way through certain bosses. You no longer have to worry about losing HP for casting skills such as Spider in Mirror and Crest of the Solar. Self Recovery healing only 4% HP is no longer a concern, and it also solves the finite supply of Fairy Tears* by offering an alternative. Holy Fountain is an unlimited resource - which makes it far more economical as it doesn't touch your potion supply and while bossing it is preferred not to be on potion cooldown. My advice: always prioritize using Holy Fountain over potions, and save potions as your last resort.

*As Monster Life was replaced by Union Artifact, you can no longer obtain Fairy Tears as the Monster Life shop is gone.

Because of its 60 second cooldown however, you must be wary when using Holy Fountain if a boss is about to change maps, as you cannot summon a new fountain as long as it's on cooldown. For Will's first phase, both dimensions are treated as the same map, so even in a party there will always be one dimension without. Despite the few drawbacks that Holy Fountain has, it is a very generous skill that turns a large number of difficult boss encounters into something much more forgiving. Though with such a powerful skill, staples such as Khali's Skill Link become less necessary...

To summarize: Holy Fountain is more than just a 5th Job skill - it's a quality of life update. And with Union Champions on the horizon, it becomes an essential skill and a worthwhile investment for any of your bossing characters.

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5. Mapae Nodestones

Well, I hope there's a sequel in the pipeline, because Kazax did jack shit. Where is Vale when you need him...

Surprise, surprise. In the midst of 6th Job, Nexon created another jellybean nodestone, and I'd be remiss not to write about them. I know that have I haven't talked much about Special 5th Job cores on my blog, as these have remained straightforward so there isn't much to talk about (until now). With so many underwhelming special cores - and the rule you can only equip one at a time - you'll inevitably end up with only a few that are worth mentioning.

Mapae Nodestones are timed exclusives, introduced with the lukewarm Ride or Die event. Basically, they give unique Special 5th Job cores. But as we all know from experience, items like these are doomed.

However, for how much I despise these intentionally designed short-lived content like Mapae Nodestones, they have interesting effects that'll make their fleeting existence all the more frustrating. It's such a shame too, because all of that time and effort spent on development is wasted into something that'll inevitably cause more bugs in the long run.

The first problem with Mapae Nodestones is that they are considered Special 5th Job cores. As you can only have one special core equipped at a time, you must unequip your current one to use it. No presets; this must be done manually.

The second problem with Mapae's are that while they are considered Special 5th Job cores, they do not follow the same rules as the original specials and are exempt from the updates that affect them. You cannot extend them*. You can also not craft them, like all other jellybeans. Mapae Specials are exclusively sourced from Mapae Nodestones, and these skills will only last a week. This wouldn't be a problem if they were always available, but we've seen many times before that developer support for events (Sengoku Badge, Phantom Forest Sundays) are upwards of 3 years.

*Even though you can extend regular Special 5th Job cores, it is not recommended to do so because the game charges a premium of Nodeshards to do so. It charges double the amount to extend in advance - you might as well just craft a new one every two weeks.

The third problem is where you source Mapae Nodestones. They can only be obtained from the Ride or Die event, which I don't have to explain how cumbersome it is to obtain these in bulk. These Mapae Nodestones are incredibly rare, not to mention exorbitantly priced. They will also expire after 10 days, so you cannot stockpile them.

Remember: Mapae Nodestones, Sol Janus and the Tallahart symbol were released in the span of a year.

The fourth problem is that there are five possible Mapae Specials you can find when opening a Mapae Nodestone. While all of these are useful, god forbid we are allowed to choose... so good luck trying to get the one you need.

• Luck Power: 20% Item Drop Rate. Duration 20 seconds. Cooldown 30 seconds.
• Wealth Power: 20% Meso Drop. Duration 20 seconds. Cooldown 30 seconds.
• EXP Power: 10% EXP. Duration 20 seconds. Cooldown 30 seconds.
• Inspector Power I: 40% Boss Damage. Duration 20 seconds. Cooldown 30 seconds.
• Inspector Power II: 40% PDR reduction. Duration 20 seconds. Cooldown 30 seconds.

While in a vacuum these specials are good, these directly compete with Fatal Strike and Auto Recovery for that single special core slot. Furthermore, once we compare Mapae Specials with the likes of Sol Janus (providing 100% EXP) and Tallahart's symbol (50% EXP, 15% Mesos and 15% Drop Rate), the stats are quite frankly, underwhelming. It just further shows the stark difference in design philosophy between the two teams, and not in a good way. Do I even have to point out other event staples, including large EXP modifiers on all daily content, VIP Boosters and EXP Vouchers?

Anything else? Well of course there is a fifth problem, dammit. Unlike the real Special cores, Mapae's cannot activate until half a minute has passed after you've equipped them, even though that won't discourage anyone from switching to these when necessary. They're making it very difficult to say anything positive about these Mapae skills. It's that "no fun allowed" mentality that brings out the worst aspects of this game, even though anyone can understand that Mapae Nodestones could've been an easy way for Nexon to win players over. Did it really need to be this way?

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6. Verdict

Holy Fountain is a fantastic skill. The changes to Hero skills are good, but there's still a lot about post-Destiny Hero that can be improved on. Fortunately, 6th Job will address a lot, that much I can tell you in advance. However, Mapae Nodestone is the kind of shit that should never have been made. We all know from two decades of update history that non-KMS content comes at a great risk of making the game client unstable, and that sometimes you'd be better off not trying. In fact, for many years now has Nexon gone through great lengths of cleaning up the client to a point where we were in a good spot. With Inkwell retreading old ground, one could wonder why they even bothered to begin with.

Mapae Nodestones will certainly cause severe issues with the 5th Job coding in the future. If we have to judge based on the current situation, Inkwell's code monkeys regressed the game by ten years and I am not looking forward to the long-term damage it'll cause. The paradox of FOMO-inducing content like Ride or Die, is that the dumb amount of emergency maintenances, bugfixes and future issues will inevitably cost Nexon more than it generates short-term. 

Somehow, my complaints about Changseop rushing content around Destiny is put into perspective, as while KMS has since found its footing, the few months of "Go West" has been far more damning. And here I thought I've seen it all.

Reminder: they can't just remove Ride or Die and Mapae Nodestones without causing issues. Once tainted, there's no turning back. That's how it always has been, and that's why the EMS client size is so large for a game that's relatively small. Out of necessity, there's always been a large amount of unused or dormant code. So much in fact that it could warrant its own blogpost. If anything, the next few years will only see this issue compound the more junk is added in.

And that's how I'll end my coverage on 5th Job for now. Not on a high note with Holy Fountain, but with the obnoxious invasion of one man's unchecked greed. Time will tell how bad it'll be, but I'm confident in my foresight & experience. 6th Job will be the next subject to write about, and thankfully I have many good things to say about it. I'll take a short break for now, build something for Ouroboros and then start working on that 6th Job blogpost for the first two waves.

That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!

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