Tree of Savior Forum

About the upcoming Miko balance changes

Class and Rank Cleric
#1

No wonder the developers still don’t know what to do about Miko.
With their recent developers blog [http://tos.nexon.com/lab/dev/view.aspx?n4ArticleSN=112]
they revealed planned changes to Miko skills to make the Class “better” than it was before.

Edit: patch is now live, with a few changes: http://tos.nexon.com/news/update/view.aspx?n4ArticleSN=1432&n4CategorySN=0

Let us take a look at the planned changes:

1. Gohei

The new Gohei is supposed to remove more buffs and debuffs per cast (1-3 buffs and 1-5 debuffs).
There will also be a recovery effect of 150% of your Healing value per removed debuff on an ally.

However, in return, the number of overheats is reduced to 2 and the cooldown time is increased to 12 seconds.

Now, what is wrong with this?
Easy, you lose a lot of potential damage output. With the changes, you can only deal 2x damage every 12 seconds. The main problem of Miko is that she has basically only 2 active damage skills, the low CD Gohei and the high CD Hamaya.
With Gohei becoming a skill that deals less damage, the build has to compensate somehow.
Adding e.g. the new Exorcist would be tempting if it wasn’t for the majority of Miko skills being completely useless for the new Exorcist.

About the buff&debuff removal increase : this was basically just adjustment to have a similar effect to the new Cure and the new Sheriff buff removal skill.

2. Hamaya

The new Hamaya gets a little animation delay decrease (by 0.3 seconds) and basically the Aqua Benedicta treatment:
higher SFR,additional SFR per skill level and improved skill duration, but in return the damage interval is reduced to one hit per second.
This means that Hamaya is now ± a better Nahash, but with less AoE and more damage instead.

The real issue with Hamaya were two things: the AoE and the CD time for the low damage.
The question is now: is the user supposed to throw Hamaya and the use Kagura for 8-9 seconds to get the most out of the skill?
I still miss any in-Class synergy between skills (something that even Kabbalist has).

Well, at least Hamaya can now compensate for the damage loss on Gohei if you invest, but this just shifted points from Gohei over to Hamaya, and achieved nothing else…

3. Omikuji

With the buff duration increased to 30 seconds and the CD time reduced to 15 seconds, the skill is finally worth something.
This change exactly targeted the weakness of the skill, the low uptime and high downtime ratio on top of the luck factor when drawing out a fortune.

4. Kagura

A new attribute is added that reduces the enemies critical resistance and lets magic skills ignore up to 15% of the enemies magic defense.

Edit: with the live patch they changed both the skill CD time and the duration to acceptable levels.
Duration is now fixed to a maximum of 10 seconds
and CD time is 40 seconds at level 1, reduced by 5 seconds every skill level, which makes is useful in combination with at least Hamaya.

And now to the reason why the developers didn’t receive any good playing data from Miko and why it is completely and utterly useless for most of the game:

Clap

I wonder how the developers didn’t find a flaw within this skill. This skill only works on the skills of one single Class, Dievdirbys. You cannot prolong the duration of any other installments or magic circles in the Cleric Class, which should be the option, at least via a skillchange attribute.

This skill is complete and utter failure in game design, and the sole reason why the combination of Dievdirbys and Miko is forced together.

How can the developers not notice this complete design flaw?
15 skill points in this skill on any build without Dievdirbys do absolutely nothing.

Broom

Another completely useless skill. You can add up to +1 skill level to any magic circle or installation casted inside the AoE of the skill.
However, this has a fatal flaw:
Oracles Death Sentence and Divine Might are way more efficient than this skill.
Not only do they have less CD time and less SP costs, but they are mobile and don’t lock you into a channeling animation for up to 5 seconds.

But that is not all. The efficiency of adding +1 skill level to installations and magic circles is really bad.
Basically the only skill really benefiting is the new Aqua Benedicta.

For damage skills, the Oracles Death Sentence that can refresh its CD time is also way better.
Even if Broom would add +1 skill level per skill level of Broom, the skill is just bad.

Maybe it could become a new damage skill with channeling and low CD time (like the old Bwa Kayiman) that deals damage to the monsters that walk into the cleaned area and the broom could knock them down if hit.

Anyway, this skill is another waste of skill point investment, and yet the developers didn’t seem to bother with it.

With 2 of 6 skills being completely useless, I cannot see a comeback of Miko anytime soon, especially outside of a support slave build and with real investment.

4 Likes
#2

The costume is still cute :blush:

2 Likes
#3

I was really hoping for some cd reductions since that was what it mostly needed with hamaya, omikuji and kagura dance. the only good thing to come out of the balance was omikuji and being able to remove rank 3 buffs/debuffs to mess with zealots/PD.

1 Like
#4

I was most hoping for a change in Clap but we didn’t get that. I have no idea why they skipped out on changing Clap at all and Broom is completely useless in every way to me and I think they should get rid of that skill and give us something else instead tbh. Either get rid of it or rework it completely.

I’m happy with Miko being looked at and now I can finally use Omikuji, but overall the changes are just eh for me. I was hoping for more synergy with my Miko-Exo but looks like I’m not gonna get that anytime soon.

#5

They didn’t really look at Miko (except for the concept of the new skill Omikuji) and it was even admitted by them since they didn’t have enough “gameplay data” outside of Dievdirbys+Miko builds.

If they really looked at Miko, they would have fixed Broom and Clap first and then gone on with adjusting the rest of the skills (it was basically just an adjustment of what the skills do, their OH count, CD time and damage interval).
Instead, it was a quick fix like the work performed on Exorcist.

It worked well on Exorcist because it is a pure damage dealer Class, but it didn’t work on Miko because the main point of the support skills that are not just buffs stacked on your buff column besides your character name is how they actually perform in the game.

Worst thing is that they didn’t even consider the other two Classes in the build at all for the balancing changes.

Imagine you channel Kagura for 30 seconds. What about all the other support skills that go off CD while you are channeling? What use is a low CD support skill if I can’t use it again because of channeling?

Sure, it might be nice with Sadhus OOB so you can get 50% additional OOB attack damage for 30 seconds, but not being able to cast Mass Heal,Cure,Heal,Fade,Gohei,Revenged Sevenfold,etc. or even retry the new Omikuji after 15 seconds if your roll was bad is a huge disadvantage, especially if your build is a support build (which is probably the only build option outside a Diev or Sadhu build utilizing Kagura) that lives by applying/reapplying recovery- and buff effects.

Even with the new changes, the majority of players will still be disappointed by the Class.

2 Likes
#6

It’s at least good that they highlighted and addressed Miko meaning that people will automatically play it once the update hits and give feedback, which in turn will force more and better balance changes to the class.

1 Like
#7

Wow, they actually changed even Kagura for the better,
now with 40 - (5xskillevel -1) seconds CD and a maximum channeling time of 10 seconds.

But there remains the problem of Clap and Broom being still useless.
As it stays now, you max Gohei, Hamaya, Omikuji and Kagura if you’re not a Diev, have 0 points left and grabbed all decent skills. This is pretty sad.

Maybe I’ll try Miko nonetheless instead of my Oracle, I doubt I’ll like it, but at least I can give a more-detailed feedback then when the character is invested into.

#8

I wonder if they are adding any new attributes, as it feels the class is not even defined. I think they need to add a consistent healing option or shield (Safety Wall or bubble) to make it more a green class.