In today's blogpost, we'll discuss the impact that 6th Job has and examine the many new skills we're given. Similar to 5th Job, 6th Job is an ongoing work in progress as new skills and updates are released in batches. Thus, this blogpost can only cover the first three skill waves but I'll continue to write for future updates to 6th Job as I have done with 5th.
As always, I've tried to be as comprehensive as possible. Writing this blogpost took a few months and a bit more effort than I expected. It's obviously not as long as the nightmarish behemoth that was the Destiny blogpost, but it's the long promised sequel to it. But first, as is the tradition: before we dive into the subject, it's time for another history lesson.
Hyper Skills, while a significant addition, felt very safe. It didn't strive to break the game or to revolutionize it. Instead, every class would only receive three new skills, up to five enhancements for existing skills and for most classes, their impact were modest. By comparison, a dedicated class revamp (such as RED) proved to be far more significant.
It took Nexon ten years to release 5th Job. The first Job Advancement in a long time; you can't say it wasn't a big deal. However, with that came the expectations that 5th Job would redefine every class the same way 4th did. Interestingly, Nexon decided to maintain the status quo, explaining that 5th Job would "not radically change existing battle patterns". By doing so, it damned itself before it even started and they stuck to that plan. Nexon preordained 5th Job to become a successor to Hyper Skills, not 4th Job. We didn't get a new class name, we didn't see the successor to Raging Blow or Combo Attack. Instead, the vast majority of 5th Job skills are samey: long cooldown, short duration. And as we see in practice, there's only so much you can do with this concept of many skills being the same. They all blur together.
Why couldn't 5th Job replicate 4th Job's impact? For better or worse, it wasn't allowed to. As a result of streamlining, everything (including bosses, equipment and classes) became homogenized. Nothing is allowed to truly stand out or be too unique. Bosses are now immune to all kinds of skill effects, movement options became favored over strategy*. The expedition system for up to 30 party members is gone, time limits have gone from 10+ hours to under 30 minutes and boss HP continue to skyrocket. None of these were issues during the early days of 4th, but were made one in the years leading up to 5th Job, and have persisted since. By design, it just wasn't allowed to challenge this status quo.
However, with the change in directors, Changseop has been actively trying to fundamentally fix the game. One of the ways he intends to achieve this, is through 6th Job. By embracing power-creep, it reduces the minimum requirements for late-game content, so players receive better rewards sooner. Furthermore, 6th Job is designed to be integral to the game - far more than previous Job Advancements, as it's designed around daily and weekly content. Unlike 5th Job, these tasks reward you a healthy and steady progress on 6th Job, which is handled far better than Nodestones.
In a way, 6th Job benefits immensely from the twelve years of working on 5th Job, which itself learned from the ten years of working with 4th Job. Because of all of that know-how, 6th Job is off to a strong start. Let's take a closer look.
6th Job is available starting Level 260. It goes without saying that it requires you to have advanced to 5th Job. 6th Job can be finished before starting Cernium, even though Cernium is required to unlock the "final" 5th Job skill. Story-wise, 6th Job is an expansion to the events that occur after the defeat of the Black Mage. Like the Genesis weapon, it does not really affect the main story as much as it should, but it does build on some story elements introduced with 5th Job.
That said, I did thoroughly enjoy the overall presentation of the 6th Job Advancement. Using the latest technology, this job advancement felt grand - a cut above its predecessors. Furthermore, I'll give another shoutout to the quality in the English voice acting, which has come a long way since the early 2010s.
Though the process of advancing to 6th Job wasn't without its fair share of problems, unfortunately. To advance to 6th Job requires an unbelievable amount of EXP; even worse during its first year. 6th Job's storyline progression is divided in chapters, and each chapter ends on a cliffhanger that requires you to grind EXP to start the next. In total, you had to grind an eye-watering 50 billion EXP, but the Milestone update has reduced this to 10 billion. Nowadays that's possible within 10 VIP Boosters when using the commonly available 3x EXP and 50% vouchers - it's not that bad anymore.
Personally, I don't mind the cliffhanger approach. As I was invested in the storyline, I looked forward to seeing how this story unfolds. If anything, my biggest gripe was that they didn't fully commit to the immersion by disabling your Arcane Symbols and having to grind in their respective regions to restore them. However, I understand gradually lowering the difficulty, as 50 billion EXP is steep. Even with the huge advantage of access to Shangri-La (which at the time had the highest EXP yield in the game), it was still a three hour grind. Now imagine that for new players on a fresh account.
Advancing to 6th Job unlocks the VI Matrix and the ability to obtain Sol Erda (Fragments). This time around, you'll only receive your first Origin skill for free (at Level 1) and you'll have to unlock all other 6th Job skills manually. This freebie is only given once when advancing from 5th to 6th Job; when using Open Job Advancement you'll have to buy this skill for the class you switched into but any Matrix skills bought are kept on that character, just in case you want to go back.
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As explained in the ninth skill wave blogpost, 5th Job's modular skill system didn't work out. 6th Job returns to a direct and simpler approach, where you invest in available options. You no longer have to spend time opening Nodestones to unlock skills at random, sift through dozens of cores, extracting, crafting and calculate how many duplicates you'll need. For 6th Job, there are no more slot enhancements*, Ability Points or certain level requirements (i.e. Spider in Mirror and Crest of the Solar being locked behind 235 and 260, respectively) and we're back to Level 30 skill caps.
However, a noticeable change from 5th Job is a predetermined amount of skills. This time, there'll only be eighteen skills, and we're already halfway. You see, when 5th Job came out, it wasn't made clear how many skills we would be getting. This has proven time and time again to be an incredible benefit to 5th Job, as new skill waves could come out at any moment to generate hype and this could continue forever. It's such a strong marketing tool and I'm disappointed that 6th Job will not continue this. It means that every skill counts more than ever, but on the bright side: we no longer have to deal with choosing between too many skills for not enough Matrix slots; a problem that early 5th Job faced.
Saving Hexa Stats for its own chapter (→ chapter 6), the VI Matrix provides us four groups of 6th Job skills:
- There will be six new Origin skills, exclusively to your class. Currently, we only have Spirit Caliber.
- There are four Mastery skills for our pre-5th Job skills. In total, these four masteries provide enhancements and new effects for: Raging Blow, Rage Uprising, Incising, Final Attack, Valhalla and Aura Blade. The latter mastery also provides us with a new passive skill: Furious Edge.
- There are four Enhancement skills that increase the damage of a select few 5th Job skills: Sword of Burning Soul, Combo Instinct, Combo Death Fault and Sword Illusion. Nothing more, nothing less*.
- The final group are four Common skills, available to every class. Currently, we only have Sol Janus.
Something from 5th Job that is missing for 6th Job are skills shared by specific groups (i.e. warrior exclusives like Aura Weapon and Body of Steel, or a skill only for Adventure warriors like Blitz Shield). You'll either get something exclusive to a class, or something available to everyone. There's no in-between, but perhaps this may change for later waves.
All of these skills are available for purchase from the start, after advancing to 6th Job. Unlike 5th Job, none of these are locked behind certain levels, and you do not unlock (additional) slots by reaching a higher level. What you see is what you get. There are some requirements for Mastery and Enhancement skills, which I'll mention when relevant.
- While 5th Job cores can be unequipped, 6th Job skills are permanently unlocked and cannot be reset.
- Some 6th Job skills require certain 5th Job skills to be equipped. If you were to unequip the required core, their related 6th Job skill effects become disabled until the correct 5th Job skills are equipped again.
- 6th Job skills are disabled at Urus, but exceptions include passives effects of Sol Janus and Furious Edge.
Warning: once you equip Incising VI, you can no longer use Final Attack for this fight! See chapter 3.4.
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Last but not least, a late addition to the VI Matrix is the Erda Conversion tab. Here, you can extract surplus Sol Erda by banking it to other characters (though there's a hefty exchange rate involved*) or craft HEXA Boosters (one day duration). Unlike VIP Boosters, HEXA Boosters have no daily limit and thus it is only limited by your Sol Erda supply.
Now, let's talk about how to unlock 6th Job skills in the next chapter.
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Unlocking and leveling 6th Job skills is done through payment by Sol Erda and Fragments. No refunds after paying! Opening Nodestones for random skills are no more. No more crafting or extracting. The new currency takes a similar role to Nodeshards. Each level requires you to pay the right amount in both Sol Erda and Fragments, and there's an emphasis on different costs for each skill type. Certain 6th Job skills are more expensive or cost-efficient than others*.
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Sol Erda is accrued through Sol Erda Energy. These are smaller chunks of Sol Erda, and consider it a point system. When you collect enough energy (a thousand points), it'll be automatically exchanged into one Sol Erda. Depending on the source, the game can either give you whole Sol Erda directly or smaller chunks of points. You can only store up to twenty Sol Erda in total, but you'll quickly learn that everything related to Sol Erda is a non-factor.
You must have advanced to 6th Job in order to unlock Sol Erda and Fragments as drops. If obtained through events, you cannot use them on that character until 6th Job. Outside of events, there are several ways to obtain them:
- Fragments and Energy are rare drops from monsters in Grandis Force maps. Fragments obtained this way are the only non-exhaustive source for tradeable fragments, which makes it a very important method.
- Energy can be extracted from any 6th Job character by using Erda Conversion, though with exchange rate.
- Energy and Fragments are obtained from supplementary (either) daily/weekly quests that go with your daily Grandis Symbol quests. Not available and tradeable in every region; most notably absent in Korea.
- Fragments and Energy are obtained (in decent amounts) from the weekly Epic Dungeon content.
- All weekly bosses starting from Silver 2 (Hard Lotus/Damien) drop Energy (in small amounts).
- Erda and/or Fragments can be bought (in limited quantities) from the Cash Shop. This includes the Reward Point and Mileage shops. Not available in every region; most notably the latter method is absent in Europe.
- Fragments can be obtained (in decent amounts) as a Weekly Reward from Guild Castle. This requires you to have completed the Weekly Mission "Cache of Greed" during the previous week, and have unlocked the necessary Personal Research skills. Not available in every region; most notably absent in Korea.
Suffice to say, the quantities and acquisition rates of either Fragments and Energy greatly vary between sources. In particular, if something can only be done once a week, that doesn't mean it provides the best amount or that it's the most time efficient. All of these numbers don't really communicate well on their own, so let's give it some context:
- Let's say you just reached 6th Job and want to unlock Raging Blow VI. The first level costs 3 Sol Erda (which equals 3000 Sol Energy "points") and 50 Sol Fragments. If you have to grind this manually, it will take forever because on average you can expect between 1 and 3 Fragments every 3000 kills, and only a few hundred Energy points. However, if you do the daily quest Erda's Request, you'll receive 600 Energy and 12 Fragments for only a few minutes of work. It's likely that you'll have this unlocked in four days.
- Unlocking 6th Job skills is slow by design. The early levels are cheap, but these required costs ramp up quickly. Few dozen fragments per level quickly becomes a few hundred. One Erda quickly becomes a few. In total, expect several thousand fragments and over one hundred Sol Erda per 6th Job skill. It can take months to max out a skill, but you'll commonly raise a skill's level every week. On the bright side, 6th Job provides the most amount of gains for the mesos spent*. It is exceptionally cost-efficient and rewarding.
- Not all weekly content will provide an equal amount of fragments or Sol Erda for the time invested. Weekly bosses will only give you a few dozen energy points each, even if some of these bosses can take up to half an hour to defeat. Clearing a single Epic Dungeon guarantees you at least one Sol Erda and 10 Fragments for about 15 minutes of work. Cache of Greed (5000 mobs) guarantees you at least 16 Fragments for 17 minutes of work; up to 31 Fragments for Level 5 Castles. However, each additional source does adds up.
- Because you can trade for Sol Fragments, this is going to be the most common method of obtaining large amounts for those more expensive unlocks. However, as Sol Erda can only be accrued over time, weekly content that provides seemingly small amounts of Sol Erda Energy become all the more important. It is not uncommon to choose Sol Erda (Energy) over Sol Fragments from events that can only give you one or the other. Thankfully, the combination of Sol Erda being time-gated and its maximum storage capacity keeps the prices of Sol Fragments in check. This avoids one of the major issues we saw with Nodestone pricing.
- Events will be a common source for high quantities of Sol Erda and Sol Fragments. It is not uncommon to receive several Sol Erda and hundred(s) of Fragments from events every (two) month(s).
- Any Sol Erda or Fragments bought directly from the Cash Shop is poor value because you would've been better off selling the Maple Points for an absurd amount of mesos (to buy way more fragments with it). It's important to mention that items such as the Sol Erda Booster Pass cannot be bought with Maple Points.
- As 6th Job continues, more sources for Sol Erda (Fragments) are added and higher amounts too. It's very similar to Nodestones, as they were exceptionally scarce during the first years. It was only after many years that we saw events give dozens of EXP Nodestones and over a thousand Nodestones for free.
I personally find Sol Erda (Fragments) to be a significant improvement over Nodestones. This is mainly because of the daily quest and the "day 1" integration of 6th Job into a good amount of side content. It adds so much gas as you're able to unlock those new skills much faster than the original 4th or 5th Job. Reminder that, during its first years, it took forever to progress on either. Another advantage of how Sol Erda (Fragments) are handled are the consistent rates of acquisition; you should have no issues with getting those skills maxed out by just playing a few minutes daily. I find it funny that the first two years of 6th Job so far has been a much better experience than the nine years of 5th Job.
As mentioned earlier, both Energy* and Fragments can be found from monsters in any of the Grandis Force maps. It's very convenient that you can find those while working on your daily symbol quests, and this further helps to boost the acquisition rate on top of Erda's Request. The storage limit of twenty Sol Erda is negligible; fragments are so easy to source that you'll rarely have to be concerned about it. 6th Job brings an interesting dynamic where you gain so much raw power, it gives you access to more valuable boss crystals which in turn can be exchanged for more fragments.
So, you could say that incorporating 6th Job into the current gameplay loop (as an additional reward) works in its favor as it avoids having to create or justify a lot of new content around it - which was one of the struggles seen in the early days of 4th Job. It's fascinating to see that letting 6th Job run in the background as a "highly rewarding system that requires little effort" became an ideal approach. Now that we know how to level these skills, let's take a closer look.
What sets Origin Skills apart are the introduction of new game mechanics, exclusive to them. The first skill introduces us to skill cutscenes and the Origin bind. We'll discuss the second skill's new game mechanics in a future blogpost.
Skill cutscenes are exactly what the name implies, as the souped-up game engine is now ironically able to catch up with this innovation found in plenty other mobile gacha game slop. During this skill cutscene, you'll receive your typical invincibility - though for outliers like receiving Damien's 7th brand during the cutscene, you'll be killed after it ends if it didn't finish off the boss. Thus, skill cutscenes cannot prevent True Death and its rulings, but it can briefly delay it.
Similar to Combo Death Fault, the invincibility lasts slightly longer than the skill cutscene itself; this gives you ample time to reposition yourself before the invincibility ends. For example, you can use Rush twice during this short period.
During the skill cutscene, you are stuck in a state where you can't do many things. You cannot activate other skills* manually, interact with NPCs or portals. You can remove buffs, use potions, drop items and interact with some of the UI. Pet loot is allowed and if you collide with Combo EXP orbs (i.e. Elite Bosses), they will be collected. Skill cutscenes are allowed to be ended early by the game when it forcefully moves you to another map (i.e. to the next boss phase).
The Origin bind is a higher tier bind that allows you to bind most bosses that are immune to the regular bind. It's the same way Superstance succeeded Power Stance in 2017. We'll take a closer look at the Origin bind in chapter 2.1.1. Furthermore, the beefier game engine allows Origin Skills to do an overwhelming amount of damage; dealing over 1000 lines is now a common feat among 6th Job skills, which previous was only found in a few skills in the game*.
Spirit Caliber is Hero's first 6th Job skill, and it's the only skill you'll receive for free with your job advancement. It's a skill that's designed to hit hard while applying a bind. However, nothing is simple in this game so we'll take a closer look at its nuances; Spirit Caliber is somewhat of a double-edged sword. But let's start with looking at its leveling cost.
Spirit Caliber activates a whopping total of 81 separate attacks spread throughout the skill cutscene, and all of these separate attacks do a tremendous amount of damage. Most of it is towards the end of the skill, like Sword Illusion. If anything, Spirit Caliber is similar to Sword Illusion as it shares a lot of the same quirks - for better or worse.
As you can see from the table above, Spirit Caliber's cooldown never changes and the only improvement it sees is the damage you'll only do once every 6 minutes*. Yes, the 8% damage increase per level, PDR reduction and boss bonus are significant because it's applied to all 1182 lines. However, Origin skills are the second most expensive skills. There are far better skills to invest in that yield greater results at half the cost! Because of that, Spirit Caliber should remain Level 1 until much later (see chapter 7.1). As Sol Erda are time-gated, leveling this too early will only slow you down!
Compared to what other classes received as their first Origin skill, ours is pretty straightforward. Spirit Caliber hits like a truck, applies the new Origin bind and grants invincibility during its duration. There are no additional effects during or after the skill (which some classes have), but Spirit Caliber is designed with some of our other skills in mind:
- Each separate attack can charge Combo Orbs and activate Sword of Burning Soul when possible.
- Every tenth attack summons one Furious Edge (→ chapter 3.3.2), guaranteeing at least eight of them.
- Spirit Caliber cannot activate Combo Instinct's rifts as this remains exclusive to Raging Blow, so using both together is a waste. Some form of compatibility between the two will be added in a future update, though unfortunately this won't be as good as it sounds. I'll write about it in the next 6th Job blogpost.
- Spirit Caliber is treated as a Swordsmanship skill. It can activate Valhalla's afterimages and the 81 attacks it will expend all 15 of 'm, though for some reason this never happens outside Fog Forest Training Center.
- Each separate attack can activate (Advanced) Final Attack (VI). Spirit Caliber has an unlisted 100% chance to activate Final Attack (confirmed by Nexon), but a quick Battle Analysis reveals this is not true.
- Aura Weapon can only activate once after the skill ends, not during it. As we know it can activate (multiple times) on other (similar) skills, this leads me to believe Spirit Caliber's incompatibility is an oversight.
- Every separate attack can activate 5th Job's Special Cores and item skills such as the Continuous Ring.
- Spirit Caliber works with Ryude's Sword, which further increases its damage output past 1200 lines!
While Spirit Caliber's long invincibility is incredibly useful, it's not as versatile as Aion of Creation's because you can't really do much while being stuck inside the skill cutscene. The way Spirit Caliber interacts with the game is identical to Combo Death Fault: a "get out of jail free card". It's a fantastic defensive skill that binds and deals a lot of damage, but because it lacks the extra post-skill effects that other classes have with their Origin skills, ours isn't ideal for bursting.
Out of all skills we have access to, Spirit Caliber has the largest hitbox. It reaches beyond the borders of the screen, but not by a huge amount. Those specialized mini maps are incredibly useful to learn about these hitboxes.
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As Spirit Caliber activates 81 separate attacks, each separate attack can hit up to 15 enemies. In theory, it could clear up to 1215 enemies - though we've yet to see this many. That said, when you grind it's worthwhile to save it for the occasional Stormwing Hunter Portal or Elite Boss. Spirit Caliber's duration is shorter than the respawn timer, so it can only clear up to one wave of mobs. However, in special maps such as Cache of Greed, it can clear two if timed well.
When taking a closer look at how the Origin bind mechanically works, there are a few oddities that stand out.
As one might expect, Origin binds are not treated as the same as regular binds. They are considered their own unique status effect. Because of this, Origin binds do not share the same immunity cooldowns as regular binds, so you're able to extend the total bind time by applying one after the other. However, with Spirit Caliber's six minute cooldown, it's not a skill you can use often. It's also a lengthy skill and the long skill cutscene eats away at the bind's 10 second duration.
When using Spirit Caliber, it creates two separate area of effects: one continuously applies the Origin bind, the other deals damage. This ensures the bind to always apply before dealing damage, preventing targets from escaping. The two area of effects do not share the same hitbox; it's possible to have far-away enemies bound, but not damaged.
Origin bind can be applied to enemies that are immune to regular bind, such as Black Mage. However, general rules still apply. Hidden enemies, ally enemies and reactors are still immune, however I suspect "Invincible Monsters" are fair game (as evident by pre-Destiny Panic being able to apply Blind). Boss attacks that visibly show them leaving the field are not affected by Origin binds; the bind will miss its target. I would've loved to test Hekaton as I suspect he is immune. Urus should be easy, as there was a time where you could stun-lock him. But that's a post for another day...
Because enemies within range are immediately affected by Origin bind, the bind will always apply first the moment you activate the skill, even before damage calculation's done. As Origin bind only lasts ten seconds, its effective duration after the skill cutscene ends is only five seconds. This does diminish its usefulness, as you cannot do anything while the cutscene remains active. So if you're pairing this with Erda Nova for 20 seconds bind, 5 seconds will be wasted as Spirit Caliber's damage output is lower than an all-out burst. Try not to use Spirit Caliber together with Combo Instinct, even after we have the skill change that allows Spirit Caliber to activate the (60% chance) variant of Combo Instinct.
As learned from the Magic Crash lock, enemies struck by Origin bind become immune for 100 seconds. This leads me to believe we'll receive two more Origin bind skills for a self-sufficient rotation. Make sure to use the debuff display to time your binds, because it tells you the remaining time left on Erda Nova and Spirit Caliber's binds by subtracting ten seconds from the starting time (i.e. if the immunity starts at 100 seconds, the bind will end at 90 seconds left).
Anything else? Well, because Origin bind can be used against a lot more bosses, it opens up defensive and strategic options. In my opinion, the best use of binds are to deny boss mechanics by cancelling them out. A notable example of this is Dusk. Its biggest threat is the Fear Gauge, and having five seconds of full invincibility means you can skip half of it while forcefully extending the time Dusk's eye remains open. For Dunkel, you can use it when the fight becomes too claustrophobic with all the hazards spawning in. True Hilla ensures a safe passage into reset, and for Will it's an easy way out of phases 2 and 3 when combined with the Citizen Resistance link and CDF. It's very practical.
But remember, as with Power Stance and Superstance, it's just a matter of time before newer bosses become immune to Origin binds the same way as regular ones, and we'll do this all over with 7th Job and again until the end of time.
Perhaps my contribution to this discussion is far too late, but I feel like it's important to have mentioned it nonetheless. Spirit Caliber's damage output of the 81 separate attacks spread throughout the skill cutscene, was originally different.
You see, the original Spirit Caliber would only do 12 separate attacks of 14 lines of 3900% damage each. This lasted for half a year until the Dreamer update. As you've seen in chapter 2.1's table, they drastically lowered the damage-per-line, but increased the amount of separate attacks more than six times. People believed that this was a nerf, but as I always tell everyone: the way MapleStory handles damage calculation, a higher line count is always superior.
To further prove this point (and having learned a bit from the Destiny blogpost), here's a before and after. While at face value the damage on Spirit Caliber is slightly lower, there's a drastic difference caused by Advanced Final Attack. This was also a year ago; Final Attack VI and Furious Edge now exist, which makes the difference night and day. Under the old Spirit Caliber, Furious Edge would've only activated one, rather than eight (!). A change for the better, I'd say.
Cost-wise, Mastery Skills are arguably the best of the four skill types. For the price of one maxed out Origin skill, you could've maxed out two of these instead! Heck, Common skills are even worse because you could almost buy three Mastery skills for that price - though we'll get into that discussion later as Sol Janus is a tough one to argue against.
But to give you an idea on what to expect: every line on Raging Blow is more than doubled, even more so in a future update. This would only cost 4502 Fragments, which is just enough to max out Spirit Caliber. The other two Mastery Skills are not insignificant either, as Furious Edge is a fantastic addition and the higher damage on Final Attack and Valhalla are huge. The buffs are so tremendous, that 5th Job is no longer our main source of damage. These are now.
If I was able to have this blogpost out during the first wave of 6th Job, I would've correctly predicted Rage Uprising, Aura Blade and Incising as the remaining three Mastery Skills. Unfortunately this selection is quite boring, as with only four slots I would've preferred to see something more daring. Though they've added enough effects to shake things up. Besides, for some of the skills that got nothing from 6th Job (i.e. Flash Slash), they'll receive some changes soon.
Requires Enhancement Core (5th Job) for Raging Blow to be at least Level 40 and equipped.
Hail to the king, the master of Y. Raging Blow VI (RB6) is upon us, and it has decimated the landscape as our one and only supreme overlord. Raging Blow VI is the type of skill that 5th Job needed, and is update has been long-overdue.
Ever since the introduction of 4th Job, one of Hero's characteristics has been its signature bossing skill. Brandish did not only have a great damage output, its reliable hitbox remained leagues above its competition. It's this consistency that has remained consistent throughout most of Hero's lifespan*, and 6th Job continues this trend with Raging Blow VI boasting an impressive hitbox increase and a staggering damage output - which is going to be even higher soon!
Let's start with the bigger hitbox first. Hero's horizontal reach is drastically improved, making grinding effortless. There aren't many classes that have such a reliable skill. It is exceptionally good, though unfortunately it's not as large (in all directions) as the skill animation suggests. Most notably, its vertical hitbox remains identical. Fortunately, Sol Janus is incredibly forgiving as it tends to compensate for these questionable design choices (→ chapter 5.1).
A 6th Job variant for base Raging Blow exists, but as you know, you'll never really see it. However, this Raging Blow VI also increases the hitboxes of Sword of Burning Soul and Combo Instinct, as otherwise they'll fall behind. The former's horizontal length becomes even greater than Raging Blow VI's, though it's a missed opportunity to improve its vertical hitbox because it's still not as good as Raging Blow. Even worse, the larger hitboxes for CI only applies to the first and third attack. I have no idea why Nexon insists in making one of CI's most notable flaws even worse. It's oddly specific.
But let's talk about the damage output. Looking at the skill description at face value, you'll receive a consistent 6% damage increase per level for base Raging Blow and 7% for Enhanced Raging Blow. It sounds like any other damage reinforcement... but it is not that straightforward. The thing is, this effect is way stronger than most people understand.
What Raging Blow VI exactly does is changing the numbers of your 4th Job skill, rather than adding them later as a 6th Job effect. The 348% damage per line becomes 590%, which already is a huge increase on its own. But because it overwrites 4th Job, the 2.2x multiplier from 5th Job becomes a multiplier for 6th. Rage Uprising VI (→ chapter 3.2) further boosts the damage per line to 738%. Each damage line is more than doubled, and with five lines the increase from these two skills is staggering. In a future update, Raging Blow VI's damage per line is raised to 700%*, for a total of 848% damage per line when combined with Rage Uprising VI. Truly numbers worthy of Raging Blow's reputation.
Though because 6th Job overwrites the 4th Job values, Combat Orders isn't as good anymore as it used to be. None of the Level 31 or 32 stats are carried over, except for the higher damage on Aura Blade. To be honest, with how much 6th Job adds, this hardly is an issue - but I do find this interesting as it teaches us how 6th Job interacts with the old.
Last but not least, let's talk about the animation. I've grown to really like the post-Destiny animations, so it's a shame to see it go this soon. However, what's clever about Raging Blow VI is how Nexon improves the clarity of the animations, by separating the single animation for five swinging motions into two and alternating between them. You see, for the longest time Enhanced Raging Blow had five swings but as the game became faster, so were the animations. In doing so, some animations became a cluttered mess - too fast for the eyes. You could hardly see what was going on, so it makes sense that they'd split Raging Blow in half. It's such a simple change but the results are nice.
Unfortunately, the only real reason why Rage Uprising VI is so important is only because it further boosts Raging Blow VI's damage per line. Without this effect, RU6 would've easily been the worst of our four Mastery Skills. Furious Edge (→ chapter 3.3.2) has certainly made Rage Uprising VI more useful, but it doesn't really address its shortcomings.
Rage Uprising VI does two things: it redesigns Rage Uprising from scratch and it boosts Raging Blow VI's damage. The latter has already been discussed in the previous chapter, so we'll look at the new Rage Uprising itself.
Rage Uprising VI takes an example from our other skills like Sword Illusion and Combo Instinct, as it now attacks four separate times. With how damage calculation works, this is always an improvement. However, it is notable that the damage per line (at Level 30) is more than halved and this hurts it more than it needs to. Though its saving grace is that RU6 can now activate other skills (and Ryude) up to four times, including Final Attack VI (→ chapter 3.4.2).
The four separate attacks behave identical to Sword Illusion, in that attacks occur at set intervals within a short period of time. This means you can pull off the same kind of tricks Sword Illusion does, however RU6 happens so fast (blink and you'll miss it) it's going to be much harder to do. Attacks can miss if a boss teleports away, though because Rage Uprising VI and its attacks are instantaneous you might only see this happen once in a lifetime. At least its new attack speed is considerably better than the state the Destiny revamp left it in, it feels better to use.
Rage Uprising VI comes with a larger hitbox, however in practice the difference is negligible. It keeps the problem of the animation being much larger than the hitbox, and then there's the inherent disadvantage of a hitbox that can only hit in front of you when Hero already has other skills that do the same, but better. There's one significant advantage that Rage Uprising VI has over others, though. The beauty of quadrupling the amount of attacks means that one RU6 can now clear up to 52 enemies. While you're unlikely to see that many monsters in range, you will often have more than 15, which is the hard cap on many skills. For such occasions, RU6 is simply better than our other options. I just would've liked to see Rage Uprising VI be changed to hit in all directions, as the vacancy left by Shout is still felt today.
So I hope you understand why my opinions on Rage Uprising VI are mixed. In a vacuum, this skill is pretty good and worth using for the small burst of damage. It's even better once you have a cooldown hat for this and Sword Illusion. "Pretty good" is a tough sell once it requires 2252 Fragments, now doesn't it? Would we still be as enthusiastic if the skill never came with the Raging Blow VI boost? I feel that this Mastery Skill is missing that little bit extra, y'know?
Requires Enhancement Core (5th Job) for Aura Blade to be at least Level 40 and equipped.
Out of the four Mastery Skills, Aura Blade VI (AB6) changes the skill mechanically the most. Not only does it greatly increase the skill's damage, it halves the cooldown and adds two new skills. What makes the damage even better are the Enhancement Core bonus from 5th Job. Most people forget that because Aura Blade is a 3rd Job skill, the bonus is 3% Final Damage per level as opposed to the usual 2%. This turns Aura Blade VI into a legitimate bossing skill.
In case you wonder, yes: Aura Blade VI continues the unusual attributes introduced with Destiny, as explained here.
Perhaps the most significant change to Aura Blade is the rework of its cooldown. It is replaced with the ammunition system. One Aura Blade is prepared every four seconds, and up to two can be stored. This means that Aura Blade no longer works with effects such as chance to skip cooldown. However, we get to use the skill earlier and shooting twice opens up more gameplay options. In particular, Aura Blade VI pairs strongly with Sol Janus: Dusk (→ chapter 5.1.1).
Interestingly, Aura Blade VI is supported by Skill Alarms and will notify you each time ammunition is prepared. Usually, these types of skills are not supported (as seen with Maple World Goddess' Blessing and Aura Weapon) but it appears AB6 is an exception to this rule. Perhaps because it was already supported previously, like Ryude's Combo Hookshot.
Unfortunately, despite the significant damage increase and cooldown cut, AB6 isn't a huge improvement. Its projectile is big, but it's all show and no substance - the amount of enemies it can hit has remained unchanged. Great hitbox, but you can't get the most out of it. Furthermore, I'm surprised to see that Aura Blade's horizontal distance is rather short.
That said, the reworked cooldown helps to give this skill some legs (as we can use it twice as often), but it's still not a direct improvement over Shout. No matter how you slice it, a single-direction projectile will never have the versality of an AoE. As mentioned in Destiny's Rage Uprising, we have many skills competing with each other whereas Shout had no competition. But if you are creative with Aura Blade VI, you will find that being able to shoot projectiles in different directions certainly has a value that none of our other skills can currently offer. If only this skill shot like Optic Barrier...
However, the new skill features that come with Aura Blade VI are its main appeal, and we'll discuss these in the next two chapters. But remember the notion to change traditional skill cooldowns into ammunition; this'll become a relevant through line for the next 6th Job blogpost as Aura Blade is not going to be our only skill to have received this rework.
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As is tradition, Hero has an unusual obsession with alternate modes for skills. Historically, they've been hit or miss and more have been deleted than have stayed. This time it's Aura Blade's turn, but thankfully it's a pretty good one.
So, because Aura Blades can be stored, you can use the skill twice in a row. However, Aura Blade VI adds a gimmick: if you fire it again within two seconds after shooting the first, the second shot becomes a stronger one. This effect is called Final Blade, and as always it's treated as a separate skill entirely, but it does seem to be treated as Aura Blade so it does receive all of Aura Blade's external support (i.e. 5th Job Enhancement Cores, Raging Blow's passive effect).
What is interesting about Final Blade's attack delay is that there is virtually none. You can activate Final Blade after Aura Blade VI as fast as you can pull the trigger. This further helps its usage because you can have Final Blade out as quickly as you can use Raging Blow or Rage Uprising, meaning there's no penalty for using this skill as it's not slower to do so. This is also important because rapid firing counts twice for Furious Edge (→ chapter 3.3.2). Plus, while kiting I find myself often having free potshots, which further helps to mitigate the downtime when no damage is dealt.
Now, the only real difference between Aura and Final Blade is the damage output, or should I say damage calculation. Remember when I said that Aura Blade's Monster Damage is not as good as it ought to be? Oops, it appears I may have convinced Nexon because Final Blade addresses almost every single complaint - even to the point where Hunter Portals have been deleted in KMS entirely. Well, shit. I can't argue for Hunter Portals if they no longer exist...
That said, Final Blade's damage output is really good, in part due to the staggering Final Damage bonus from its 5th Job Enhancement Core. Final Blade also forgoes the Monster Damage, so it's all raw skill damage now. As I said in the previous chapter, AB6 has become a legitimate bossing skill alongside RU6 because the output is good enough. And because of that, I find myself rarely saving the second Aura Blade for later, though both styles have their uses.
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Furious Edge is such a weird phenomenon. When reading the skill description, it gives the impression that it's top-tier: when directly attacking five times, it summons Furious Edge. It's like a passive mini Combo Instinct: for a short period of time, everything nearby is hit multiple times. You can even have up to five of these summoned at the same time! Whenever it activates, it's a lot of extra damage and generally speaking I'm happy with this addition to our toolkit.
However, devil is in the details and when talking about Furious Edge the following observation just can't be avoided: in practice, the skill is worse than the description would suggest. It's a reminder that we can only judge a new skill once we get our hands on it. Calibrate your enthusiasm with this one, as what would've been an incredible skill and an easy win for Nexon is dragged down by its many hidden (and obtuse) nuances that are only apparent once you examine it.
The culprit is the improper use of the term direct attack. The way the skill description uses it, is not what this means. We'll get to the nitty-gritty in a bit, but what the description should've mentioned is that only a select few skills count as a direct attacks for Furious Edge. In fact, the amount of skills that can activate Furious Edge is very limited, and this nuance is the reason why the skill activates far less than it should. Single or multiple targets makes no difference.
In practice, what constitutes as a direct attack in MapleStory is incredibly broad. Basically, if it's treated as a separate attack instance, for a lot of scenarios the game would treat it as a direct attack. If it can activate skills like Sol Janus and Panic, it's a direct attack. Most summons are not treated as such. Examples of what are (not) direct attacks:
- Basically, any non-summon that's reflected by Damage Reflect, is a direct attack.
- Skills such as Rage Uprising VI and Sword Illusion ("chase cuts") are treated as multiple direct attacks.
- Damage over Time, caused by Incising or Rune of Destruction are not treated as direct attacks.
- Rune of Giant is treated as a direct attack, but it cannot activate our other skills.
- Final Attack is treated as a direct attack as it can activate a lot of other skills, including SOBS and Panic.
- Sword of Burning Soul is treated as a direct attack and it can activate Sol Janus.
- Soul Driver and Blitz Shield are shared skills with Paladin and Dark Knight, but are direct attacks.
- Both Sol Janus and Aura Weapon are treated as direct attacks. They can activate other skills too.
- Last but not least, basic attacks are treated as direct attacks.
So basically, what should happen is that Furious Edge should activate very often, as Raging Blow is considered by the game's own rules to attack several times as other skills like Final Attack VI, SOBS and Aura Weapon are used with it.
Now, what happens in practice is Furious Edge only occurs once every five Raging Blows. What's even worse is which skills are allowed to activate it, and those that are not. In example, Sword of Burning Soul, Soul Driver and Final Attack do not count, while Rage Uprising VI counts (up to) four times and Sword Illusion (up to) seventeen. There's also this arbitrary rule where Valhalla, Combo Instinct and Spirit Caliber will only count as half an activation*, but each rift from either Valhalla or Combo Instinct are thankfully treated as direct attacks, so with three rifts per attack it adds 1.5 each.
Pedantry aside, let's talk about the technical details of Furious Edge. See table above; not enough are compatible because only two skills on this list can be used in conjunction with Raging Blow. For all other compatible skills, only one of these can be used at any given time. Though because Valhalla, Combo Instinct, Rage Uprising and Sword Illusion are the fastest skills to activate Furious Edge, it's yet another reason why cooldown hats are so important.
Furious Edge cannot recharge Combo Orbs and it can't activate Final Attack. Furious Edge is not treated as an eligible direct attack, so it cannot summon itself. Ryude's Sword does not work. It can activate Sol Janus: Dusk, however.
Furious Edge receives its own skill icon in the top right corner. In fact, it receives two (but these appear identical):
- The first skill icon is your tally; it keeps track of your eligible direct attacks and on the fifth it goes away.
- The second skill icon is the amount of active Furious Edges on the field. You cannot exceed five at any given time, but this ceiling can be raised temporarily to ten while Combo Instinct is active.
- Both are supported by the Buff Display expansion, but you cannot choose one or the other.
When Furious Edge is summoned, it is summoned at the current location of a target. It stays there for four seconds or until it has attacked four times, regardless of the target(s). Now, four attacks with three lines of 277% is great on paper, but remember that Furious Edge doesn't activate enough so its main appeal is to increase burst damage. Thankfully, a future update will make each Furious Edge stay around longer and it'll hit the same enemy more times.
Now, a common complaint I've seen regarding Furious Edge has to do with it being a stationary summon. Bosses tend to move around, so there will be times when they'll step away from Furious Edge, causing it to miss. This complaint is certainly valid, although it's not anything new. It's a common problem that's also found with SOBS, Valhalla, Swilo and Combo Instinct. But if anything, Furious Edge is among the least worst skills for this to happen because out of the five skills mentioned, it has the second lowest damage but it's also the most commonly seen. Besides, these skills matters the most during bursts, which are pretty much always done with binds, anyway. In practice, this is not really an issue.
This inherent flaw however can be advantageous at times, only limited by its short duration. Having a hitbox stuck on the field that can damage anything nearby is great. For whatever reason, each can attack up to eight enemies, which is ridiculous. Though its practical applications for grinding are limited. It's made worse by the fact that the future update turns Furious Edge into a single-target skill. In the grand scheme of things, both have a rather unremarkable impact on grinding because the skill is not allowed to last long on the field. If only these could last for more than four seconds...
I'd recommend to unlock Furious Edge after RB6 and Sol Janus, as it gives a huge damage boost*. Unfortunately, the damage increase per level is not all that great compared to our other options, so I can't recommend leveling it until you have maxed out the other Mastery Skills (and Sol Janus). Even if Furious Edge receives a solid 5% damage boost per level, the skill doesn't activate often enough to justify a higher priority and neither does it have the Enhancement Core support that the other Mastery Skills have. Until those are maxed, Level 1 Furious Edge is plenty and will do just fine.
But what's perhaps the most fascinating aspect about Furious Edge are its future prospects... I believe it has changed the way Hero plays, how you interact with the game and that moving forward there'll be more emphasis on activating Furious Edge as part of Hero's new core gameplay. We see evidence of this with a few skills working extremely well with it, and I expect more skills will follow their example in future skill revamps and skill waves...
Requires Enhancement Core (5th Job) for Incising to be at least Level 40 and equipped.
Because we only have four Mastery Skill slots, giving one to Incising is kind of a waste. However, it's clear that Nexon understands this, as they made sure to make it worthwhile. Incising VI is excellent for its boosts to Final Attack and Valhalla. After maxing out the Raging Blow duo and Sol Janus, Incising VI is easily the next best one to max out.
As mentioned in chapter 1.2, 6th Job skills are disabled at Urus. Once you learn Incising VI, Final Attack is turned off indefinitely for this fight*. In order to restore Final Attack, you must unequip enough levels of Incising's Enhancement Core until you reach below the Level 40 requirement. This also means that your Enhancement Core set-up matters!
As for Incising VI itself, it's alright. The skill's less clunky than its Destiny counterpart, so there's that I guess? Its hitbox is unfortunately not as large as I would've liked. There's also a missed opportunity to increase its debuff duration or its bonus damage effect. The damage over time is pretty much irrelevant until they decide to make it a few thousand %.
Remember, like with Aura Blade VI, the amount of enemies that Incising VI can hit remains unchanged. So while it does have a slightly larger hitbox, in practice it's not as effective as it could've been. It's a shame that not much is done with Incising, even though the Mastery Skill is called Incising VI. Though its other skill effects are pretty good...
Valhalla VI pushes Valhalla's damage into absurd amounts. At max level, the damage per line is almost doubled and this is on top of the 5th Job Enhancement Core boost. Even with the hard limit of 12 attacks every two minutes, these attacks dealing three sets of two 1010% lines on a 2.2 multiplier is ridiculous. It's easily one of the strongest skills in the game, and for how much I lament its limited activations; 6th Job at least makes them count.
That's also everything to it. There are no changes to the buff duration, cooldown, effects or the amount of activations. It would've been nice to see more, but the outstanding damage increase and Final Attack VI more than makes up for it. That and Valhalla also has good synergy with Furious Edge, which further improves both skill's effectiveness.
What's important to mention were Valhalla's performance issues introduced with the Destiny revamp. Can confirm this problem is resolved as of the NEXT update. What's really interesting though is what seemingly caused it to happen: it was the GMS encryption, which is notoriously known to be the worst one out of all MapleStory encryptions.
Encryptions are related to the handling of code. In particular, the server heartbeat. Handling of things like pet loot and quest tracking. Explaining how it works is way out of scope but it's apparent that they've modified the encryption with the NEXT update so that the new UI could work. Evidence for this are the faster updating of the quest tracker and it's safe to assume fixing Valhalla's performance was a byproduct of this modification, rather than the intended bugfix.
Final Attack has come a long way. It's the first time in nine years (5th Job's Enhancement Cores in 2016) that the skill has seen a major damage boost, even longer for a new mastery as Advanced Final Attack came out during the Jump update back in 2011. Final Attack VI (FA6) is the fabled "Expert Final Attack" that I've wanted to see for over a decade.
As with other Mastery Skills, Final Attack's damage is drastically increased. It's by far the second highest output boost for our skills by virtue of FA6 having a near guaranteed activation off so many skills. Even better is that we now have more than just Sword Illusion to activate multiple Final Attacks off a single skill; look no further than Rage Uprising VI.
The difference that Final Attack VI makes is significant. Before this Mastery Skill existed, AFA's damage contribution was rather small because Raging Blow VI and 5th Job dealt so much damage. But to my surprise, 5th Job fell behind once the third skill wave arrived as Final Attack VI adds way more damage than any of our 5th Job Enhancements or Furious Edge, because Final Attack VI's frequent activations makes up for its relative low line count and skill damage.
Unfortunately, Nexon did not take the opportunity to further increase Final Attack's activation chance or line count. Regardless, Final Attack has made a full comeback and the damage output alone makes it our third most important Mastery Skill. It's the most significant part about the Incising VI package, more so than either Incising VI or Valhalla VI.
Each Enhancement Skill requires their related 5th Job skills to be at least Level 25 and equipped.
It's worth pointing out, that unlike our Origin and Mastery Skills, Enhancement Skills do see an appropriate higher stat yield for the more expensive levels. As explained earlier, skills like Spirit Caliber and Raging Blow VI see a consistent increase, despite that we can see that certain levels are considerably more expensive. Be mindful of cost efficiency!
Enhancement Skills are only for Sword of Burning Soul, Combo Instinct, Combo Death Fault and Sword Illusion. The first two picks are perfect, the latter not so much. We have plenty of other 5th Job skills that needed the enhancement more than CDF/Swilo: Blitz Shield, Erda Shower, Body of Steel, Aura Weapon and SIM/COTS come to mind - though I understand that 6th Job's Enhancements Skills are only meant for class exclusive 5th Job skills, and not shared ones.
Interestingly, we do see a handful of Enhancement Skills on other classes receive additional effects. Though these are exceptions; Hero is not among the lucky few. Personally I would've preferred to see Sword of Burning Soul's duration be increased, though not long after starting writing this, there'll be a duration increase for stationary SOBS soon. While Raging Blow VI does increase the hitbox for SOBS and Combo Instinct, because it was not part of the Enhancement Skill package, it means that Combo Death Fault and Sword Illusion get nothing extra from 6th Job (at the moment).
As it stands, Enhancement Skills are the second lowest priority as investing in almost anything else is simply better. Out of the four, Combo Instinct is clearly the best one because its Final Damage applies on every separate attack, and CI occurs as many times as you can use RB. SOBS is good, but you must understand its once-per-second activation rate greatly diminishes its effectiveness. This is especially true with the upcoming skill change reducing SOBS' burst mode to only 20 seconds. You'd spend 3383 fragments for only twenty SOBS activations every two minutes!
People like to make fun of Combo Death Fault's Enhancement Skill being useless, but dare I say Sword Illusion does not fare better. Even ignoring Sword Illusion's shortcomings, I can't justify spending 3383 Fragments on either skill. I'm going out on a limb by saying to never touch these, not even Level 1. They are not required by the game. As long as you don't have six SSS-Rank Union Champions capable of soloing Champion Mode Kalos*, they're not worth it. Heck, even if I did, I'd much rather sell the Fragments and convert the Sol Erda into HEXA Boosters for Level 290+ because people forget the daily meso cap is per character, not account. I fail to see why you'd ever want to level these two.
I understand that not many would agree with me in not investing anything in Combo Death Fault and Sword Illusion's Enhancement Skills. But to those I'm genuinely curious: you really think they're really going to do anything? And if it somehow does, do you really think it's worth the 6766 Fragments? Remember, this is CDF/Swilo we're talking about.
Return to Table of Contents
Currently, we only have one Common Skill: Sol Janus. This is quite possibly one of the best skills in the game, if not a contender to be number one. Sol Janus is a masterclass in skill design and one that's so ridiculous it warrants the title of being 6th Job's most expensive skill*. You pay a premium, but you also receive a premium skill worthy of that price.
What defines a masterclass in skill design? Is it a skill that trivializes the game's difficulty so much that it immediately becomes best-in-slot? Is it a skill that tackles a fundamental problem of the game in a new and exciting way? Is it the innovation or creativity that a skill brings to the table, or the logical evolution that moves the game forward? Or is it the unexpected - a delightful surprise where you receive something far better than you could've imagined?
Truth is, a masterclass in skill design is not so different from a masterclass in writing. It is one thing to write a dialogue between two characters. It's a good dialogue if it gives us insight(s) about the characters. It's even better if it's integral to the story, possibly advancing it and setting up one or multiple payoffs for later. But the moment you are also able to add subtext and challenge the reader to engage with the medium, you end up with something special. This degree of layering requires many rewrites and a dedication to the craft; Sol Janus may as well be considered as such. Deem it adjacent to art: Sol Janus is dense enough to be the answer to all the questions asked in the previous paragraph.
Sol Janus is skill with two modes: Dusk and Twilight. You can only have one of either active at a time, and both have their strengths and weaknesses. You'll receive two skills that can be assigned to the keyboard: one toggles between Dusk and Twilight (this has a three second cooldown), the other skill is for using whichever mode is selected. You are allowed to run all three with Skill Alarms, and the two modes are compatible with the expanded Buff Display features.
Understandably, this table contains an overwhelming amount of information but we'll look at the finer details in the next three chapters. But what are important are four specific levels when upgrading Sol Janus. Dusk receives an additional activation at Level 15 and 30, while Twilight receives an additional summon at Level 10 and 20. Furthermore, Twilight's duration increases every 10 levels, with the most significant increase for its duration (40 seconds) at Level 30.
I almost forgot to include this, but at Level 30 you'll also receive a 30% Monster Damage bonus on both. Pretty much a nothingburger of a bonus with how insignificant Monster Damage is when you're 6th Job... But it's something, I guess.
Some additional remarks that apply to all modes of Sol Janus. Their duration, cooldown and line count are static; they cannot be improved any further. Increasing the amount of monsters only applies to Twilight, because Dusk is a single-target skill. Ryude's Sword has no effect and both cannot activate Final Attack or Furious Edge (→ chapter 3.3.2). As is common for all skills, both become disabled while using mounts, but Dusk (and COTS) can be used with Proto-suit.
It is said that Sol Janus cannot be used in boss maps*, but this is not entirely true as there are exceptions. Sol Janus can be used at the Shaolin Monk, The Boss and Kaede Castle daily bosses. Furthermore, Sol Janus can be used in any of Epic Dungeon's non-boss maps, which is especially useful with Angler Company's abundance of mini-bosses. But most notably: Sol Janus can be used at Inferno Wolf and against Monster Park Extreme's Bigfoot, where it shreds.
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Sol Janus: Dusk is an exceptionally powerful skill, and I'd argue it is the stronger of the two modes available. It bears a striking resemblance to Rune of Thunder, but it's even better. After engaging combat*, Sol Janus automatically fires a volley of attacks, targeting random enemies within range. This effect is continuous, and it's what makes the skill great. Because Sol Janus: Dusk is a passive skill effect, the only way to turn it off is to switch to Sol Janus: Twilight.
Sol Janus: Dusk is designed to solve the discrepancies between classes by simply giving every class such a strong map-clearing effect, that no class really stands out anymore. The advantage that comes with Dusk is that it greatly reduces the time required for completing daily quests. These quests provide you with more Sol Erda and Fragments, which in turn can be spent to upgrade Sol Janus even further. Beyond that, Dusk has a profound effect on the game as its map-clearing effect is useful anywhere it's allowed to be used. So much so, unlocking this skill is a priority.
When I examined the Destiny revamp last year, I noted that the revamp as a whole didn't contribute much in improving Hero's mobility. Monster Park and Maple Tour runs did not become shorter, which was in part due to some of the poor decisions made in revising Hero's toolkit even though Nexon aimed to improve it. With Sol Janus: Dusk, the average run for Park and Tour have become 10 seconds shorter, which is a significant difference. Proof is in the pudding.
But how exactly does Sol Janus: Dusk work? Dusk is a three second buff, and all the magic happens there. When it activates, it searches enemies in range and fires high-damage single-target attacks*. How many times Dusk is able to attack depends on its skill level. It starts with 9 attacks, becomes 10 at Level 15 and at Level 30 you'll have 11 of them. However, in case there are less enemies in range, it can focus multiple attacks on the same target (i.e. Inferno Wolf gets destroyed by Dusk) and if there are no enemies left, Sol Janus: Dusk will hold onto them for the remainder of the skill's duration. This is an important nuance and why the skill is designed as a buff; it ensures that the skill is ran as optimal as possible. Though with its short duration, you aren't going to see withheld attacks be fired later very often.
It goes without saying, but because Sol Janus: Dusk is treated as a single-target skill, you cannot increase the amount of monsters it can hit. It'll always be between 9 and 11 enemies, depending on its skill level. And remember: no Ryude.
Because Sol Janus: Dusk is a buff, you can activate it and take it with you to another map. However, as per the rules of the game, entering a portal keeps your state of engaged in combat (i.e. can't Change Channel) but summons and skills like Dusk will not do anything (even if the buff is active) until you start a new attack in the current map.
Sol Janus: Dusk is not treated as a summon like Spider in Mirror or Crest of the Solar. In fact, the attacks are treated like any other normal skill. It can activate several skills including SOBS, apply debuffs and recharge Soul Weapons. It is able to charge Combo Orbs and any kills by Dusk contribute towards Erda Fountain. In that regard, Dusk has more things in common (mechanically) with Night Lord's Mark of Assassin than it does with its own likeness Spider in Mirror.
Speaking of Erda Fountain: back when I discussed it during the Destiny blogpost, I stated that you should never use Erda Fountain over Erda Shower because it's simply too slow. I've also mentioned that the moment Fountain would be better, the state of the game would be drastically different. With Sol Janus, that is the case because it easily doubles the amount of enemies killed. Dusk is an effective pair with Fountain because it trivializes its activation requirements*, making it a viable option after unlocking 6th Job. If anything, that just speaks volume of Dusk's impact on the game.
What about Sol Janus: Dusk's range? Turns out, pretty much any monster in view can be hit. That's the main reason why this skill is so great. Remember when I complained that Hero's new toolkit leaves us unable to clear all platforms? This is no longer much of an issue as long as the remaining monsters are in range. It's not the prettiest solution, but because Sol Janus: Dusk brute forces its way through, it kinda makes up for the shortcomings in the latest series of lackluster class revamps. However, this inevitably means Dusk becomes a crutch for lousy class revamps, and I'm not sure if that's the right approach to this. A good example of this, is how Aura Blade became better because of Dusk.
Now, let's discuss the unspoken learning curve that comes with Sol Janus: Dusk. At face value, when Dusk activates, it seemingly attacks monsters at random. Some claim the game is programmed to give priority to the oldest monsters in a map first, but in practice this theory falls apart under scrutiny. Regardless, it's a fool's errand trying to control its randomness. What is a far better approach is to work with its random nature, by reducing the variables. You may not be able to tell Sol Janus what to do, but you can control which enemies you leave for Sol Janus to pick off. There's no better way to learn this when trying to clear Monster Park (as Hero) under 50 seconds. It simply cannot be achieved without a plan that utilizes Sol Janus: Dusk to the fullest extent. You'll have to rewire your brain a bit to get there.
In terms of raw numbers, I've ran some tests with Sol Janus: Dusk to see how far I'm able to push Hero's kill rate. My current map of choice as a Level 288 is Sunken Ruins 4, and together with a Chains of Resentment and VIP Boosters I was able to clear 27.000 monsters in half an hour. Tracking was done through the Champion Burning event. Granted, this was back in January before the third skill wave and the permanent uptime of SOBS. At the time of testing I could not one shot and I did not skip the Hunter Portals. Due to Dusk's single-target attacks, 9999 Combo EXP is achieved in about 42 minutes. This wouldn't be as fast with Sol Janus: Twilight, but we'll discuss why that is in the next chapter.
The last bit I want to discuss about Dusk is its cooldown. On paper, its cooldown is equal to its duration: 3 seconds. In practice, it's actual cooldown is only two seconds because the skill itself takes one second to perform. Funnily enough, because of Dusk's short cooldown you're able to grind AFK. Normally the game would disable skills like Crest of the Solar after a while but Sol Janus: Dusk is treated as engaging in combat*. So Dusk reactivates COTS, which itself can activate Sol Janus again in an infinite loop until COTS expires. This phenomenon is also true for SOBS and Fountain.
If Sol Janus: Dusk is best compared to Rune of Thunder, Sol Janus: Twilight's closest comparison is Erda Fountain. While not as good as Dusk, Twilight has its own clear strengths and scenarios where it's better than Dusk. The only reason why it's not as good as Dusk is because there are some really dumb things about Twilight that holds it back.
On paper, Sol Janus: Twilight sounds fantastic. It's everything Erda Fountain, but better. You can summon up to three and place them almost wherever you like, and these will attack automatically like stationary SOBS. Even better, you can install these mid-air to further increase its potential map coverage. That said, that's where all the positives end.
The skill gets worse the closer you examine it. First, the hitbox. It's another one of those cases where the skill's hitbox is smaller than the skill's appearance. And while you can summon up to three, you cannot summon these too close or too far away from each other. You'll always have to summon them around the same vicinity, which limits its usefulness. Even worse, each summon can only attack up to 10 enemies, which even if boosted is far too few for its hitbox size.
Second, the attack intervals. There's this unspoken rule that people don't read descriptions, and Sol Janus: Twilight is a living example that confirms this statement. Somehow, someone at Nexon thought it was a great idea for Twilight's attack intervals to become slower with the more Twilights you summon. This means that having Twilight unlocked early on (with only one summon) does not represent its performance on later levels once you are allowed to summon more.
Now, how bad is it? Not atrocious, but the difference is significant. It's enough for Sol Janus: Dusk to potentially beat it. You see, Twilight starts with an inherent attack interval of once per second. With two summons out, the skill becomes half a second slower. At three, all summons attack only once every two seconds. Two seconds might not sound much, but in the current landscape that's three, if not four Raging Blow VI casts. This then leads to the inevitable paradox of demanding larger maps so that you can dedicate a section of the map to justify Sol Janus: Twilight's usage. However, as explored previously with things like loading zones and MSD you end up with a worse grinding performance than if you would've picked an extremely dense map with Dusk that doesn't waste a lot of time on traversing the map itself.
If you aren't using RB6 twice a second for an average of at least thirty monsters, you aren't grinding fast enough.
Third, Sol Janus: Twilight's damage is not as high as it should be. Ideally, a skill like Sol Janus should be higher than, let's say, Raging Blow VI. This ensures one shots across the board with all key skills. Dusk's damage is indeed higher than RB6 even with all the additional modifiers from 5th Job and Hyper Skills. Twilight's damage however, is lower. If you can't one shot with Twilight, you'll need more funding - and everyone knows that's easier said than done.
Fourth: the damn tedious summoning method. Nothing kills a grind more than downtime. The last thing you want when grinding is not to accrue more kills. The worst part about having three summons is that you can't replace or switch out each summon individually. Once you have three out, reusing the skill resets it back to summoning your first one, and you'll have to summon the others again manually. You have to actively spend time traversing the map to use this skill; time spent on not grinding. Why bother, if you can grind without downtime with Sol Janus: Dusk? Sounds inefficient to me. This is why I keep saying that skills with two modes always ends up competing with each other; Twilight requires a lot of effort and the payoff is nowhere as close as Dusk's. Even worse: you have to do this every two minutes*. Unless you're maining one of the scant few classes with a teleporter, you gotta spend time walking. I also probably don't have to point out the following, but as is common for all stationary summons: they are lost when leaving the map or dying.
Fifth: unlike Dusk, Twilight follows the same anti-AFK rules found in skills such as Spider in Mirror. The skill won't do anything unless you are constantly engaged in combat. This is especially counterproductive when you have to refresh the summons. If you don't attack in-between summoning new ones, the ones already on the field will stop attacking. To avoid this, you must use stationary SOBS and/or Erda Fountain, or move around by Upper Charge/Flash Slash/Rush. By the way, not that Hero has a problem with the following thanks to Self Recovery, but each summon costs 10% HP. If only Union Artifact carried over the passive HP recovery effects from Monster Life when the artifacts superseded it...
Sixth, a problem that's shared with Erda Fountain is that once you place Sol Janus: Twilight, there's no way to resolve misplacement of these summons. Because Twilight runs a small hitbox, there are instances where the room for error is small. In long grinding sessions, mistakes will happen and when they do, you're out of luck. Twilight is stuck in that position until you can reuse it again after a minute, which is awful. SOBS at least has the decency of allowing you to move it around, which is a feature that should come standard with all stationary summons. It's in moments like these where I lament Nexon for not implementing the mouse more often. Imagine clicking and dragging summons around.
Now, what actually are the scenarios where Sol Janus: Twilight is better than Sol Janus: Dusk? From all the rigorous testing that I've done, there is only really one place where it manages to barely stand out. It's the one place I'm unable to convince enough people to give a damn about: the final Cache of Greed, as seen in the GIFs of this chapter. There, consistency is king. The custom respawn timer and map layout aligns perfectly with Twilight's ideal use-case scenario. Though the only reason why it's better is because SOBS and Erda Fountain can pick off the few monsters that Twilight leaves behind. You can clear the map all the same with Dusk before monsters respawn, but in that comparison lies the true strength of Twilight: laziness. For better or worse, it requires less effort. Until you have to reset the summons. And then you still end up with worse results. Thus, Twilight is truly Erda Fountain's successor: lackluster and outclassed.
But aside from the Cache of Greed, I've noticed that Sol Janus: Twilight excels in the rare case scenario where kill rate consistency is preferred above all else. In particular, when using VIP/HEXA Boosters, defeating their special monsters is your priority as they provide much greater EXP. Furthermore, these monsters run on a separate respawn timer and their spawn locations are always the same, which allows you to get the most out of Sol Janus: Twilight. However, while this might sound great on paper, it's somewhat of a paradox. You see, you'd have to play maps that are small enough to have three summons cover the entire field. Not only are these extremely rare (i.e. Sunken Ruins 4), you'll also run against the problem that not every good map is equally good with boosters. Optimizing booster EXP is a can of worms by itself, but it requires the highest level monsters available and a map that has the most special monster spawns. No matter how you slice it, you'd have to sacrifice one thing or the other, but the consistency of Twilight is nice at times.
Perhaps an unusual subject to dedicate a chapter for, but it's important. While it's true that Sol Janus provides a huge 100% permanent EXP boost at Level 30, not many understand how this works. In fact, this effect is not as strong as you'd expect. You see, Sol Janus does not truly double your EXP, it only adds a 100% of the base EXP. If something gives one million EXP, you'll get one extra million for free. But what happens if we add many more EXP multipliers?
The stacking of EXP multipliers and how effective they are, are decided by groupings. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to focus on the most common sources and leave out the esoteric ones (i.e. Eluna, Ring of Torment, Fishing set).
- Group 1: Base EXP: "You received EXP"
- Group 2: "Equip Item Bonus EXP": equipment items such as Pendant of Spirit.
- Group 3: "Bonus EXP": progression-related sources (i.e. passive skills, Hyper Stats, Union and events).
- Group 4: "Buff Bonus EXP": runes, active skills and use items (incl. 50% MVP) except for EXP coupons.
- Group 5: "Burning Field Bonus EXP": well, what else could this be?
- Group 6: "Accumulated Hunt Bonus EXP": EXP coupons, only the highest will apply.
Groups 2~4 are additive, and because of Sol Janus we should mainly focus at Group 3. To get a better understanding of the example case I'm about to discuss, let's take a look at all the multipliers I had. I left out the 50% coupons from weekly bosses because this was a quick test. You'll understand how it would've worked after reading this, anyway.
- Group 1: Priest of the Source, which has a base EXP of 5118587.
- Group 2: For this test, I had no Pendant of Spirit available as you don't have them all-year round.
- Group 3: Level 3 Mercedes Link (20%), SSS-Rank Zero (12%), Hyper Stat (10%), Union grid (10%), Union Artifact (12%), Level 30 Sol Janus (100%), Event (15%). Total: 179%.
- Group 4: Extreme Gold Potion (10%), Decent Holy Symbol (35%) and a Rune (100%). Total: 145%.
- Group 5: Level 10 Burning Fields are everywhere because... EMS. Total: 100%.
- Group 6: Union Buff (or any 2x EXP coupon) as they're always available. Total: 100%.
With all of these sources known, we can confirm the in-game numbers and verify if they're correct. Let's see, shall we?
In-game screenshot for good measure; no smoke and mirrors. Looking at the results, the (expected) math checks out.
- Group 1: 5118587
- Group 2: N/A
- Group 3: 9162271 (5118587 * 1.79 = 9162270.73)
- Group 4: 7421951 (5118587 * 1.45 = 7421951.15)
- Group 5: 5118587
- Group 6: 5118587
- Total EXP: 31939983
Here we can see the tangible proportion that Sol Janus gives. The base EXP of Priest of the Source is 5118587, and Sol Janus at Level 30 just provides exactly that. Another five million. Without it, Group 3 would've been 4043684 EXP. As Group 3 is additive, you can see that Sol Janus contributes a huge chunk. However, in the grand scheme of things, it's only five out of a near-32-million-total. Though it's certainly not insignificant as this is per monster. It definitely adds up over time, but as you can tell the 100% Bonus EXP from Sol Janus is not as grand as it might've implied otherwise.
Unfortunately, this is just the way the EXP calculation works. Long gone are the days of Premium Mini Dungeon's EXP rates where you see an outrageous 32x multiplier*. In the example above, the sources contribute towards a multiplier of 6.24x (total of 524%). That's nowhere near what it used to be. But with Level 290 being the most important objective and the inevitable long grinding sessions, there's a case to be made that Sol Janus has a return on investment due to the Grander Symbols stats and the skill bolstering your grinding prowess to find more Sol Erda (Fragments).
Of course, a higher EXP multiplier is simply always better. In particular, the boost that Sol Janus provides has become really interesting when VIP/HEXA Boosters or Hunter Portals* are involved, seeing as these come with a tremendous base EXP per monster. Even better when event perks boosts this further. Remember: HEXA Boosters are unlimited.
Now, here's an even more interesting question: how much does Sol Janus make a difference, assuming you do dailies without much additional grinding? While Monster Park Extreme is now weekly content, back when it was still daily I've kept track of the overall contribution in preparation for this blogpost. Basically, the rule of thumb: MPE, the Daily Quest EXP and the 3000 kills to get there are at a 2/2/1 ratio. If MPE gave 0.4%, quests yield 0.4% and the remaining 0.2% were monsters. Before Sol Janus, this was about 50/50, rather than 40/60. Admittedly, that's not a huge difference. However, without Sol Janus boosting my EXP I wouldn't have been Level 288. Furthermore, the change from daily MPE to weekly has reduced its EXP. In its place, we got HEXA boosters, which works better with Sol Janus anyway.
So, while the 100% Bonus EXP is a rather nuanced topic and doesn't provide as great of a result as I'd hope to see, I'm still an advocate for giving Sol Janus the highest priority as the first 6th Job skill to max out. Due to symbols, Hyper Stats and Union, levels are the most valuable resource. With how long it takes to unlock the later symbols and the inherent level requirements for Destiny weapon (i.e. Baldrix), you're going to need all the EXP modifiers you can get.
I originally dismissed Hexa Stats during the early days of 6th Job. But as Fragments became tradeable and affordable in bulk, I got a better understanding of its place once I coached players to Genesis in the months leading to NEXT.
You see, when you progress in regular server there's a certain point where cost efficiency is king. Once you have all the low-hanging fruits, spending a (few) billion in Fragments to unlock Hexa Stats gives the most bang for your buck. Unlike other 6th Job investments, Hexa Stats is the only one that's inherently not time-gated by Sol Erda as you only have to pay Sol Erda to unlock "Level 0". Then you can immediately get Hexa Stat to max level. This is such a great opportunity at any given point to obtain a significant amount of stats, especially early on for Union Champions.
At the time of writing, only the first two Hexa Stats are available in EMS. We don't know when we'll see stats 4 to 6.
You unlock one Hexa Stat every five levels, and with two Hexa Stats starting Level 265, you can pretty much buy more than a max symbol's worth of stats - for a fraction of its price. While normally I'd advocate for stats like total damage or boss damage, the game has progressed to such a point where we get plenty of that elsewhere and Hexa Stat doesn't really give enough of them to justify it until Hexa Stat 4. It's way more interesting to focus on a STR and Attack boost.
Now, how does Hexa Stat work? It's quite simple. You pay Sol Erda and Sol Erda Fragments to unlock Hexa Stat 1. Then, you can dump several hundred fragments until you reach the cap of Level 20. We'll discuss the costs in a bit. Maxing out Hexa Stat 1 unlocks Hexa Stat 2 for Level 265 and above. Max out Hexa Stat 2 and be at least Level 270 to unlock Hexa Stat 3, etc. You get the idea. It's safe to assume Hexa Stats 4 and above will follow the same rule.
When leveling Hexa Stats, you can choose three stats. The first becomes the primary stat, the other two secondary. Which one you choose to be the primary doesn't really matter; with up to six Hexa Stats you are going to have every stat selected as one. Each level will boost one of the three stats by one level*. The end results can vary a lot. If you are concerned about getting the most out of Hexa Stats without rerolling them, you can change the three stats for 100 million mesos after they're maxed out. Basically, max all your available Hexa Stats first, then change the three stats on all of them as you see fit. This way you can at least ensure some good results by making the most out of it.
The exact costs to max out a Hexa Stat depends on your luck*. In particular, the stronger your primary stat becomes, the higher the fragment cost also becomes. As seen in the table above, at Level 0 you'll only have a 35% chance to level up your primary stat and the cost doesn't go up until Level 3. Thus, it's possible to fail the 35% success rates enough times for the cost to never go up. In a way, maxed out Hexa Stat can also be described as "pay fragments for 20 rolls, and each roll that levels primary stat makes subsequent rolls more expensive". But let's take a closer look.
To understand the cost calculation, we have to look at how the game balances success rates between the primary and secondary stats. Each stat has their own success rate, and the sum of all three is always 100%. The success rates for secondary's are always equally divided until either is maxed out (see image above). Each roll only selects one of the three stats, based on their success rates. The maximum amount of times the same stat can be selected is 10. If that happens, the remaining rolls will be between the other two. If the primary stat becomes Level 10, the success rate for secondaries become 50/50. If a secondary becomes Level 10, the success rate for the primary doesn't change and the residual (100% minus the primary stat's success rate) becomes the success rate for the remaining secondary.
Due to the way the success rates are balanced, it's very likely to level your primary stat at least thrice. Even though it's possible to max out both secondary stats, the chances of this happening are astronomically low. This is also true for maxing out primary stat. But as the success rate of primary stat drastically decreases at set intervals, it's reasonable to expect something among the lines of 4/8/8 with a tolerance of one level in either direction for all three stats. No matter the distribution, the sum of levels will always be 20 because you're guaranteed to always level one of the three stats.
With an expected average of 4/8/8 for every Hexa Stat, we can refer to the table to form a reasonable expectation on how much stats we'll get. As every stat appears once as a primary and twice as a secondary, with the 4/8/8 ratio we can take the Level 4 primary values and add them with two Level 8 secondary values. We can expect 2000 STR, 100 Attack, 7% Critical Damage, 20% Boss/Total Damage and 15% PDR Reduction from all six Hexa Stats combined.
But seeing as Hexa Stats have high level requirements and the fact that we only have two Hexa Stats available, what stats would I suggest to prioritize? My opinion is not any different from other proper guides out there; Attack, STR and Critical Damage are the first that come to mind. You can never have enough Attack and STR. Crit Damage is not going to be a lot, but even a few % is significant and it doesn't eat up another Skill Link slot and is at least guaranteed to some extent. The other three stats are always good, but in the current landscape we already have loads of them.
If we look at Boss Damage, Total Damage or PDR Reduction as a Hexa Stat, a few % is only interesting for stats 4 to 6 because at that point that's all we have left. Only Hexa Stat 1 to 3 are truly important. Hexa Stat 4 to 6 not as much but they are still a worthwhile investment, certainly towards late game when most resources have been exhausted.
As alluded before, you have the option to reset your Hexa Stats to roll it again. If you ask me, it's absolutely not worth rerolling at all. You can imagine that each Hexa Stat costing less than a billion is a steal, but this also means it costs a billion for each reroll and there's no guarantee it'll amount to anything meaningful. Just invest in Hexa Stats once, and leave it be. The fragment cost per Hexa Stat isn't too much of an investment, but if you're thinking about redoing you're still better off using your Fragments and/or mesos elsewhere. Don't fall for this trap. Remember: cost efficiency is king.
As I have talked about my thoughts on 6th Job at length, I'll take the opportunity to throw some additional thoughts in here in the same way I have for the Destiny blogpost. Basically, anything else that I wasn't able to fit elsewhere.
If you ask me to look back at 5th Job in its entirety, I'd say it feels incomplete. You could say, abandoned. For it is a layered and complicated phenomenon that I'll try my best to explain why it is - it does affect the way I look at 6th Job. What I'm about to say (specifically 5th Job, but also applies to everything else including the unresolved criticisms for the Destiny revamp) doesn't change anything I wrote in the past. I still stand by those words, just making that clear.
While 5th Job has introduced us to many great (and dare I say, now iconic) skills, it's also all over the place. What sets 6th Job apart from 5th Job is the fact that lots of skills are passives without a cooldown. It is a return to form, but it also means 5th Job sticks out like a sore thumb. It's become more of a bona fide system rather than Job Advancement, as it became a platform for class balancing with a greater emphasis on common skills compared to what came before*.
As we're moving towards the new era, 6th Job takes over 5th Job's role for class balancing and as evident from the few skills we currently have (i.e. Spirit Caliber, Sol Janus) and the upcoming fourth skill wave (Ascent Skills) it's going to continue 5th Job's marketing strategy by incorporating quality of life updates disguised as new 6th Job skills.
5th Job was designed as a modular system that could continue for as long as needed, but as Maple moves on it risks becoming a product of its time; stuck in an era we're leaving behind. It's also much a more difficult system to revamp or revisit because it inherently is a progression system like Potential or Star Force. Players have to invest Nodeshards in everything and it's the reason why we've haven't seen 5th Job skills deleted on existing classes* until last Thursday, nine years since the release of 5th Job. The latest KMST update reworked Ice Age and Unstable Memorize into brand new skills, the kind of hard calls to fundamentally fix the game that were long-overdue. According to Changseop, these reworks will continue in the next months so whatever's relevant for Hero will be discussed in the next 6th Job blogpost.
Before this KMST update, the closest we got to deleting 5th Job skills on existing classes was Shadower's Eviscerate, which got reworked within a year of its original release. It's not as drastic as what's happening now, but that's the only time something comparable has happened before. When talking about deleted 5th Job skills, Dragon Warrior, Beast Tamer and Jett come to mind even though these classes were reworked into Mo Xuan and Lynn. My point being is that it's historically proven that Nexon is reluctant to drastically alter 5th Job skills, but thankfully we're seeing a change for the better. 5th Job skills being reworked can be beneficial for Enhancement Skills, as explained in chapter 4. So if you have been stuck with lackluster Enhancement Skills for two years, all bets are off now.
To be honest, with 6th Job being a streamlined (and arguably better executed) system I would go so far as declaring I'd prefer 5th Job reworked into a traditional skill tree (i.e. 1st to 4th Job) with Skill Points and incorporating the bloat in other systems (i.e. Union) while they still can. Though with how complex such a transition is and the fact that there are far more pressing matters to prioritize on, that's not gonna happen. As such, we're kinda stuck with 5th Job as it is in all of its flawed glory: a true successor to Hyper Skills, condemned as it is. It's also why they haven't backpedaled on slot enhancements by raising the master levels on 5th Job skills to Level 30 as the current cap was a consequence of not committing to the original plan. That by itself encapsulates how 5th Job has been shaped: improvised as they go.
As 6th Job came out of nowhere, it also confirmed they were done with 5th Job. At the time, I couldn't understand why they did so and I still don't because 5th Job was pretty much good enough to continue forever. People were hyped for 6th Job, but my initial response was "wait, that's it for 5th Job?". Further updates solidified its fate, and future support will be limited. I'll remind you that while 5th Job has 30 slots, you'll only have four exclusive skills, which is the least amount of exclusive skills per Job Advancement for the majority of classes; only rivaled by the Beginner tab. Painful.
However, while I said that future support for 5th Job will be limited, we do see signs of Nexon slowly changing their stance on how restrictive 5th Job is allowed to be and opening up to the idea of giving 5th Job a more prominent role as a proper Job Advancement. That is what I originally wrote before the latest KMST update, because it was already true then. But since that update, it's even more true now. We have seen several 5th Job skills gradually becoming passive or have their uptime improved, though in some cases of skills becoming passive (i.e. Speed Infusion) has made leveling them rather pointless. In Hero's case, stationary SOBS's duration will soon match its cooldown. Maybe one day we'll see them allow summon duration, Passives +1 and CO to work with 5th Job skills (again)... But if there's a low-effort change I'd like to see, is having enough Matrix Points/Hyper Skill SP to have them all unlocked/maxed.
I'd wish that 5th Job had a greater emphasis on signature skills. Sword of Burning Soul, Combo Death Fault, Combo Instinct and Sword Illusion just isn't a lot. We didn't get more Combo Orbs, which breaks the tradition. Ghost orbs just isn't the same. Seeing how 6th Job greatly enhances older skills like Raging Blow VI, it's exactly what 5th needed to do. When thinking of 5th Job, most of its contribution and legacy are the tremendous amount of support skills. They're all terrific and each of them have made a huge impact, but as they're all common skills they're no different from their predecessors. As proven by them, they could've easily been sourced elsewhere. At its core, 5th Job is bare-bones as evident by the Job Advancements that came before and after. Which is why despite the shortcomings on certain skills on a technical level (i.e. Rage Uprising VI) I'm happy to see 6th Job leans more towards signature skills, as it should.
During its first two years, 6th Job became the default way for class balancing, as much as 5th Job was during its time. I do not fully agree with this approach because there's such a significant gap until Level 260 and then you still need to pay expensive amounts of resources for what are essentially a couple of quality of life improvements. The proposed idea to rework classes for the next few months is a step in the right direction, though most changes so far are related to damage and attack speed, which doesn't solve discrepancies between classes on a more technical level. As it's still early, perhaps we'll see more fundamental issues resolved later but we'll have to see if any of this improves the pacing to Level 260. 6th Job is so good - perhaps too good - that getting to it a drag. It makes the game rather backloaded as all the good unlocks like Raging Blow VI and Sol Janus isn't until much later. For many classes the stretch between 4th and 6th remains samey. This is why I feel that 5th Job needs a rework and the only real way to achieve this is to turn it into the proper Job Advancement it always should've been. A common phenomenon that even the best MMOs struggle with is the handling of (the true) early and mid-game; all of MapleStory's regions are no exception to this*.
In practice, Hyper Burnings aren't always available and I have to actively persuade those I coach to not spend much time trying to boss, upgrade gear or grind before 6th Job. In other words, to not engage with really anything the game has to offer until you reach 6th Job. Understand that your average (returning) player isn't aware how much it makes a difference, or that Level 260 and the 6th Job Advancement are only trivial under the right conditions. What is common sense to us experienced players isn't to them; you gotta tell them even if it's stating the obvious.
But as far as 6th Job is concerned, the first three waves' pretty good in a lot of ways. Game development's never been easy, nor is anything in life. 6th Job is a testament of MapleStory's long history of not being shy to try out a lot of stuff, and finding the nuance of what ultimately works. The only "bad" skills on this list are the Enhancements for CDF/Swilo, and that's more of a problem caused by 5th Job's limited amount of signature skills, rather than to blame 6th Job for it. Everything else is at least exceptionally good, with a few outstanding skills like Sol Janus: Dusk and Raging Blow VI.
In general, 6th Job adds a lot to our overall gameplay. As mentioned at the start of this blogpost, 6th Job advances the game(play) in many ways the Destiny revamp couldn't. While Destiny replaced important skills with downgrades, it's 6th Job that takes a skill like Aura Blade and pushes it further with Final Blade and Furious Edge. Sol Janus drastically changes the way the game is played, more so than any of 5th Job has ever done. And while it has added tremendous support skills (i.e. Erda Nova, Blink, Holy Fountain), looking back at the most impactful updates made during 5th Job, it was actually Upper Charge/Leap Attack that did much more for Hero than Combo Death Fault/Blitz Shield ever did, and it was Blink's rework that pushed this even further until the combination of skills became a standard for all classes.
Now, what's really interesting to talk about is how many issues caused by the Destiny revamp have been resolved by now - through either 6th Job or other small (upcoming) skill changes. It's only been a year since I published my critique but somehow most of my main complaints have been resolved in some capacity since then. Remember that during the twenty-one months of writing this blogpost, Hero was one of the few that hardly saw any adjustments until they started to appear a few months after it was published. While I'll never know how much of an influence my niche blog has been in all of this, I can however observe the differences before and after. Any of the issues I have left about the revamp are obviously minor in the grand scheme of things, but at least having the major flaws addressed gets us a step closer to that envisioned class overhaul Changseop strived for. There are still many things left to improve on... *cough* orange *cough*
As explained in chapter 1.3, value for price is very important when considering which 6th Job skills to unlock first. Sol Erda Fragments are still hard to come by and expensive in bulk, and investing too much in certain skills too early is a significant setback. It's very much how 4th Job was in its early days. Because it's such an integral problem to 6th Job, it's why this blogpost has a placed a greater emphasis on raw data over technical stuff, which doesn't happen often.
Besides, I've frequently stumbled upon the issue that I miss good informational (re)sources while working with 6th Job. In a way, this blogpost intentionally is written as such to fulfill this niche as it collects all the raw data into one place. For instance, you can find all of this data scattered on different websites but none have really contextualized the level boost relative to the cost, or (as seen in the table below) how drastic the costs differ on a per-level-basis between the 6th Job skill types. As always, I strive to deliver among the best and most comprehensive work as possible - for free.
Let's start with a refresher by looking at the numbers again. When presented like this, we can see the cost ratios for each type of 6th Job skill. If we take Origin skills as our base price, we can observe that per level, Mastery Skills are 50% of that price, Enhancement Skills are 75%, but Common skills are gradually more expensive than Origin skills: 25% for the first 9 levels, 50% every tenth level and 37.5% for all remaining levels. Values are always rounded up.
With such drastic differences between prices, and the fact that you get so much stuff for Mastery and Common Skills, Enhancement and Origin skills have to take a back seat. Even though Sol Erda and Fragments will become easier to accrue in time, this does not change our leveling priorities. This is also true if costs are ever reduced. The only times we'll re-evaluate our leveling priorities is when any of our 6th Job skills are drastically altered, i.e. cooldowns reduced.
Now, you might be surprised to hear that my suggestions aren't anywhere close to what others recommend. Lots of folks suggest an optimal balance between skill bonus and cost efficiency. For instance, a common advice is to raise Raging Blow VI and Rage Uprising VI simultaneously. I'd go so far as saying this is not the correct way of doing things. It is under the assumption that two skills provide (enough of) an equal yield to justify this approach. That's simply not the case; it's like 5th Job where you'd focus on one skill at a time. Then, there's another nuance: Union Champions.
So, simply put: the best leveling priority takes one of two routes - main character or Union Champion. For mains, it takes the objectively best route that puts a greater emphasis on long-term goals with the greatest payoffs, factoring goals like Grander Symbols as the utmost priority. Champions however have different needs as they also come after you've properly established your main, and thus have access to shortcuts your main didn't have. The Champion route has a greater emphasis on short-term goals like Genesis as soon as possible, but this would genuinely also be a good approach for seasonal and/or casual players that are not planning to seriously commit to play for a long time because you'll otherwise be stuck accruing over six thousand Fragments for a long time (Sol Janus), which could've been spent maxing out both RB6 and RU6 instead (which is enough to solo Hard True Hilla) with 1739 Fragments left to spare.
The big difference is the fact that Sol Janus has a much higher priority on a main. As explained, this is because levels are currently the most important objective. Not only does it unlock the Level 290+ Symbols to bolster money making, it's also a necessary requirement for Destiny weapon progression as entering bosses such as Baldrix are inevitable. It is faster and more efficient to start with max level Sol Janus and then the others, instead of the other way around.
The leveling priorities are pretty straightforward. Unlock the essentials first. Ignore the Enhancements and Origins until much later. As explained in chapter 4: don't bother with CDF/Swilo, they are not worth it. You should never choose to level another skill if the argument is that it's cheaper to do so. If it takes a few additional days to invest in another good level up, so be it. The end result will always be better. Anything else is at the expense of your time, and as it's common for 6th Job skills to require months to max out. Every decision matters as the degree of the game's punishment will be according to the severity of your misstep. It is what it is. It's a necessary evil that comes with Sol Erda's design.
To further elaborate on the order of maxing out: anything Raging Blow is first because it makes the largest difference, assuming Sol Janus is already Level 30. Incising VI is the second greatest investment because of Valhalla and Final Attack. Furious Edge is not better because it's damage output is proven to be far behind Final Attack. This is because Final Attack activates so many times and it has a major damage reinforcement through 5th Job, which as explained in chapter 3.1 also applies to 6th Job. That said, Furious Edge is easily the best option after Final Attack because it's the last option that applies all the time. Enhancements Skills (→ chapter 4) are prohibitively expensive; SOBS/CI are only worth it after you've maxed out the four Mastery Skills. The upcoming Silent Cleave is powerful, but if it doesn't make short work of your weekly bosses, it's best left at Level 1 until you've exhausted all other low hanging fruit.
For Union Champions, the main goal is to build five characters that can solo Hard True Hilla. That's currently the sweet spot. With how much 6th Job embraces power-creep, it is by far a much lower hanging fruit than most give it credit for. Almost everything is now a budget options because most of the costs are upgrade-related. With all of the modern tools and a properly established main, sourcing 17 Star Force Pitched Boss, Eternals and a good Seed ring isn't much of an investment because trading and banking carries the game; even for those trade-restricted. The entry requirements for Hard True Hilla has been lowered so much that it's better to settle for two lines on (Additional) Potential and start using cubes for Union Champions, as triple lines requires an incredible amount of cubes. Events play a pivotal role because you'll frequently get hundreds of 100% ICOGs, Black Flames and premium attack scrolls for Pitched Boss and Android hearts. Each Union Champion would then be able to provide you one billion mesos weekly alongside additional rolls on every reward chest. This establishes a proper cashflow and the way to afford further progression. The alternative's a fool's errand because you waste billions and gear for a zero sum; don't even bother with it until you have an account established that can quickly generate the necessary revenue because it objectively is a much better strategy.
For Union Champions, you also do not need to have maxed out everything if Champion Mode True Hilla is the current objective. You do not need over 5000 Fragments to reach the minimum requirements; the remaining funds should go in gear. Of course, more 6th Job skills makes the goal easier to achieve if boss difficulty is a concern. Once you clear True Hilla on your Union Champion Hero, it'll be more cost effective to start funding your next character.
Sol Janus can be relevant for Union Champions once you'll start running against the (per-character) daily meso cap on your main and want to expand your repertoire, or if you are planning to grind your Champions to reach certain levels earlier. It'll be a very expensive optimization as long as there's low hanging fruit left, so this should only be relevant to those willing to commit MapleStory as a full time job. Though at that point I'd say you should value your life more...
Now, you might have noticed I left out Hexa Stats. This is simply because Hexa Stats are best leveled the moment it becomes your cheapest upgrade at any point. It's not time-gated and it can be measured with a price. Furthermore, you might not always be at the required level. This will especially be true for Union Champions, as they'll level slower than your main. Apply common sense. If, hypothetically, one Hexa Stat costs a billion you obviously shouldn't prioritize it over something impactful like Ring of Restraint Level 3 when it's a fraction of the cost. I'll leave it to your descretion.
As a lot of things about the game changes with 6th Job, as much does it affect the importance of certain Hyper Skills. In the past, I would've recommended certain Hyper Skills over others. But with a couple of changes introduced with 6th Job, that information is no good. Time for an update, with the necessary explanation of why.
To be honest, there's only one change: "Raging Blow +2 targets" to "Advanced Final Attack +15% activation chance".
The reason for this is simple: Sol Janus. Even with the much larger hitbox with Raging Blow VI, Sol Janus changes so much that the extra 2 for RB rarely comes into play. Not even the return of spawn modifiers or the fact that it's not too difficult to find service can really justify to "preset" Hyper Skills because the spawn density for even the best 6th Job maps are unfortunately not ideal. I'll accept the case that can be made for those that're planning to grind serious hours between bosses, but understand these folks are an exception to the rule and that the difference per hour is not much.
Final Attack VI is also an important factor for all of the reasons explained in chapter 3.4.2, so it's become worthwhile to invest in AFA's only good Hyper Skill again. I'm going to say that I'd still like to see a proper Hyper Skill rework...
With all of the Mastery and Enhancement Skills out, there are only four Origin skills and three Common skills left to be released. Silent Cleave will be our next skill wave, and as always I'll start writing about it around the time it comes out.
It'll be very interesting to see whether if the remaining Origin and Common skills can continue the introduction of new ways to play the game. Each one of them has been refreshing and adds to the overall gameplay experience. They set the bar really high, perhaps even impossibly high with Sol Janus. I'll be looking forward to see what's next.
Judging by how long it took for every class to receive Hyper Skills, or the long history of 5th Job skill waves, it's going to take another four or five years before the remaining 6th Job skills are released. But as we know all too well about MapleStory, nothing is quite set in stone. If anything, I'll go so far as making a prediction: the current amount of matrix slots is just a mere suggestion. There'll be more 6th Job skills after, unless they decide to reset the cycle with 7th Job.
That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!
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