WARNING - This thread isn’t made for new players or those that seek guidance on how to use said class, please look for proper threads regarding it such as class overviews and build guides. Design Breakdown is a design discussion thread only and has no purpose to help players on practical aspects of the game.
Starting another Design Breakdown with a not so recently reworked class that is the only of its kind, Musketeer. There will be some slight changes on the usual format due the unique weapon and how the class system deals with it, without further due let’s start it. In case this is your first time on a Design Breakdown topic go to this link for some basic information.
Musketeer - RANK 7 - ATTACK
I believe this description wasn’t changed after the class rework, when it was first announced they stated Musketeer was going to take the role of the long range single target “archer” class, that’s the identity we’ll take.
The real life Musketeers were soldiers that had training with muskets, a long barrel gun that had more accuracy and range than it’s contemporary counterparts. Unlike rifles, their barrels were smooth and as such didn’t had the additional penetration power and precision that rifling provides by adding spin to projectiles, therefore the use of Rifles is inaccurate to the class but can be ignored to simplify it to the average player and how the weapon evolved through history. At this point it shouldn’t be necessary to say that this technology is what made sniping possible today, and just to make it clear all armies in history knew that fighting on long range was more effective as it puts less risk to their soldiers.
For games that have classes restrained to bubbles or small branches the gameplay of a class can be designed over the weapons they use and often have all skills usable, this doesn’t apply here as most of classes are arrow based and don’t allow their skills to be used with firearms for the sake of thematics. The result of such design decision is a rift between Musketeer and the other classes that don’t have such restrictions and can take either Bow or Crossbow, at least for the lower ranks.
As a Musketeer the amount low rank skills that can’t be used is quite big, in fact only Sapper, Hunter, Wugushi and Appraiser have all skills usable while Quarrel Shooter and Rogue have a strict skill set that doesn’t waste point if taken as far as they can, the remaining classes can’t support it at all leading to fewer building options, Archer is specially guilty on it as it is the base class and waste points on all circles.
The worst part is that a fair amount of skills could support it as they don’t really have any thematic hurdle.
Archer - Multi Shot, Heavy Shot, Twin Arrow
Ranger - Barrage, High Anchoring, Critical Shot, Spiral Arrow, Bounce Shot
Quarrel Shooter - Rapid Fire (questionable)
Scout - Flu Flu
Rogue - Vendetta
Even with that there be classes and skills that won’t work with Rifles and that’s completely fine as long as the 3 lowest rank classes can be taken without wasting points or a fixed skill set.
One thing that Rifles do right as a two handed weapon is having a secondary action with the C button, it may be dull for some people but it’s a nice touch that can be quite useful if done right. Actually it would be even better if they added an off-hand (or even a main weapon) window to equip basic attacks and/or functions learnable through attributes, in this case it would be possible to have either Buttstroke or Bayonetta Thrust using C with a Rifle.
Covering Fire (E) - Relief
This tactic is used to open paths and to protect allies that are in danger range by shooting constantly to prevent enemy action, it’s a really effective strategy as it forces enemies to take cover and that allows allies to reposition.
Instead of having an own mechanic and identity Covering Fire is just a Rifle version of Multi Shot , there’s nothing special to comment on nor a real reason for it to be a new skill. I’m aware there may be some people down there complaining it isn’t fair as many skills have versions being them for different weapons or not, however Musketeer has so many restrictions on the lower ranks that could be easily lifted so it make sense for Covering Fire to exist.
It is possible to employ it properly by using reverse channel, first select the location and then release to start shooting, any directional input will only move the fire location and hitting the skill key again will stop the skill before it hits full duration, that simple. Having a small knockback on it would be a plus.
Headshot (B) - Lead
The two major vitals are head and heart but as the first one is more visible and easier to aim it became sniper’s favorite.
A fairly simple skill yet it is a great starting point to take the identity, the lack of floor isn’t an issue as this skill is meant to be the Lead yet it isn’t that interesting as the effect is fairly limited to magical enemies, that if they survive as the damage factor is fairly high.
One thing that could be done to improve it at identity level is to change the INT/SPR component into an execution threshold or chance, something on the line of - if the enemy (that isn’t a boss) HP is lower than X%, if post damage HP is lower than X%, increases critical chance based on missing HP, etc. It’s mainly a thematic touch, in the end the skill is quite good at its job.
Penetration Shot (A) - Relief
I can see this as better way to employ suppressive fire than Covering Fire does, at least the mechanical aspects, as theme wise it shares the same principle.
This skill has the potential to be one of the best skills in the game, the concept is fairly simple, shot in a straight line and push enemies further. Enemies closer to the fire range gets up to 5 hits and enemies farther may be hit only once, against bosses it can deal 3 hits at least as their hitbox is large - it’s plain beautiful skill design.
It would be nice for it to have some short duration stun at the end of its execution or an attribute to increase the skill push and range, it would be a nice addition to support the class playstyle.
Grooving Muzzle (F) - Complement
Remember about the rifle and musket distinction i pointed earlier, they brought it up here. Honestly it doesn’t make sense for a skill to apply what was suppose to be a natural effect of the weapon as rifles should have grooved muzzles by default, but since they made a whole skill for it we can at least see how that element was adapted.
It’s known that the spinning motion increases the penetration potential of any force and that applies from carpentry to the belical industry, the way such feature was translated is by having it to ignore a portion of the enemy defense and having additional hits when the shot is empowered by it, also rifling does improve accuracy and that was added as well. The only part of it that doesn’t connect is the chance to activate said additional hits as in real life we don’t have a distinction of lethality as broad as in games but i can buy for the sake of balance.
Grooving Muzzle was added with the latest rework and it’s nothing more than a plain point dumpster, its purpose is to give Musketeer something to do while skills are on cooldown, that wouldn’t be the case if the class had support from earlier classes and could use their skills instead of relying on its own.
Right when IMC figured out that having buffs duration extended with level doesn’t work they make a skill that has duration as the only improvement. The skill itself isn’t bad but the execution is more than questionable, i’d love to see it reworked as a regular buff that has real reasons to be leveled.
At the current state any poor soul that decides to stop here will have a bad time, the weapon restriction kills any practical build change aside for a possible R9 filler. Covering Fire may be useful yet it can easily be removed and replaced by Volleyfire as it has similar purpose or by Birdfall as an alternative within the identity scope, any of those would allow Multi Shot to replace Covering Fire along with other quality of life changes.
It’s super important to stress that the restriction issue under Musketeer is enhanced as this first circle has only 15 points to use and even spreading them as much as possible you can’t get a decent skill coverage, even Grooving Muzzle that was suppose to compensate for it flaps as it has such short duration.
Volleyfire (A) - Midground
Another military tactic, this time one that requires a platoon to shoot in coordination, as muskets had to be reloaded after each shot, the effect it has is the of a shooting barrage. It would be impractical to employ it if the skill required more Musketeers to be used so it’s fair to have it as a directional barrage attack.
A great midpoint between single and multi targets, it has a fairly small hitbox and a fixed amount of enemies to hit, those two factors work together as you seldom will have more than 8 enemies inside a hitbox like that. One element to notice with this skill is how it can make use of Penetration Shot in a powerful combo, both have the same range and the push effect helps the use to stay in safe range, in fact the execution time is so short it can be twice and have Penetration Shot in between uses.
If IMC wanted to give it some extra thematic value they could add a Volleyfire buff that increases damage of other Musketeers when using the skill, it ain’t practical nor needed but would be a nice touch to the theme.
Birdfall (B) - Counter Lead
Hunting was always a survival tool but once mankind evolved and food wasn’t as much of an issue it rose as a sport, it started with bows and transitioned to firearms once they developed and that’s where Birdfalls comes from. Even tho the theme is justified it isn’t within the Musketeer realm, i’d say it’s right at the edge as it’s something that can be done with muskets/rifles but not something employed in army as the source would.
The strong conditional effect makes Birdfall an interesting skill to be taken, it would be interesting to have information on the bonus power as “additional damage” can be anything from +1% to +10000% or even a flat value, we assume it’s either 50% or 100% but it’s good to know the real number.
As the skill remove flying effect buffs and the name suggests it should apply a ‘grounded’ debuff changing the unity movement type temporarily (i’m not sure if it does) for a couple of second, along with that it should make the affected unit take additional damage from Birdfall on the same value as a flying target. Which such change the Fire Master attribute could be reworked into ‘apply Birdfall debuff to ground enemies’ making the second use deal the bonus damage.
Snipe (C) - High Lead
The only elements that require attention here is the scope aim and the free targeting the skill has as it takes the basic element of shooting.
As much as i like the concept and execution of this skill i have to point an issue with the skill on different resolutions, the screen targeting might not fit it and it can make the usage troublesome. Another issue with the aiming aspect is that for the skill to connect you need to aim the hitbox circle or the center of the enemy, even if you aim at another part of its body it may miss as the game won’t register it.
Even dismissing those issues, Snipe has a miss on execution as the skill will auto target the locked enemy, this feature makes the whole thematic execution pointless as for most of the time you’ll get the right target with little to no effort when aiming, as it is it acts just as Headshot.
There are some ways to make it engaging and reward players that aim for themselves, one example is adding hit circles on highlighted enemies, those circles can be used to trigger special effects based on their location, it can also be done with a single circle for some simpler interaction.
Lastly the additional damage on bleeding enemies also lacks the value, it’s believed it adds 20% damage yet it isn’t properly informed.
There’s no much improvement for the issues, new skills are welcome and the extra points do help a little on skill repertoire yet the major problem is still there. This circle deserves some praise to as it introduces two skills that can be used as combo for the class assuming you the c1 counterparts, they aren’t mandatory so you can either work around without them or take for the extra synergy.
Sniper’s Serenity (D) - Complement
To get into the themes that this skills uses we need to talk about shooting. As easy as it may look it isn’t as easy land a precise shot, among the variables to take into it we have wind, distance, target movement and speed, steadiness, angulation and noise. For a person to have all those calculations performed it is required a lot of training and focus as having a single element out of check may result in a miss, as such each sniper may have a different way to clear their minds of any distraction and increase their success on shooting, at this point it should be obvious that it also comes with a load of stress. The way it’s implemented it feels just like a regular power channel and that doesn’t match the class theme, it’s understandable if it were done before each shot or a couple of shots, or if the user were a wizard as they channel their magic, even if that’s done for the sake of simplicity it feels off.
Sniper’s Serenity takes the shortest and most boring approach to this concept by having a buff to be casted and basically binds the user to the cast location, it does fit the class identity and takes the theme into it but there’s so many ways to do it, if you really want to capture the essence of shooting you need to add new mechanics.
It is possible to fit the theme by adding some simple gimmick that was used on old Basketball games and recently in Undertale attack mechanic, a precision gauge. As such it’s possible to determine zones that grants more and more power based on the player accuracy and timing, for ToS it can be done by using the core casting mechanic and releasing the skill button on the right time. One interesting thing about that is the possibility to make the leveling component into easier shooting such as larger gauge, larger zones, slower pointer, additional bounces, etc.
Having gauge before skills also keeps the mobility restriction the skill has but only towards offense as it would allows regular movement between skills, as opposed to the current execution that basically bind the character to a location where it can spam empowered skills, in fact basic attacks can’t allow movement while the skill is active.
I know that such thing might not be that practical but that would add some skill expression that isn’t present within the class, if that isn’t possible at all at least give it a different animation so it will be more cohesive to the action as no one aims without the intention of shooting.
Prime and Load (F) - Complement
Prime and Load is a command to signal soldiers to clean their muskets and reload, as having a dirty barrel could result in the gun exploding. Since all the disadvantages of muskets/rifles are removed in the gameplay only the load part of it is kept, the only reason the skill keeps the prime part is that Load is a boring name for a skill and that’s a reason good enough to have it as Prime and Load.
However the skill embraces all the stacking issues of weapon restrictions, it yells “we didn’t gave Musketeer enough synergy from previous ranks so we’ll just let it refresh it own skills instead of fixing it”. It may be the laziest designed skill so far in the game as it could be a hotfix for a class rework, the worst part is that the same time and effort put in it would be enough to do something as simple as changing weapon restrictions in a couple of classes.
To add salt to the injury the average cooldown for Musketeer skills is 20s, being Snipe the one with the highest cooldown on 25s, even if so said skill is needed why is it is at the last circle? Even the shortest Musketeer skill only rotation would take at least 7s to be completed if done perfectly with no disturbance, that excluding the few yet present skills available to fill the rotation and the abomination Grooving Muzzle is - there’s no single skill that justifies it to have a dedicated refresh on the class.
It feels like they gave up on c3, Prime and Load could be considered a skill worth for such rank and circle yet it should be at circle 1 to be really effective at is intended to do, Sniper’s Serenity can be quite good within the niche and setup required to be used efficiently. There irony on it is that this single feature allows Musketeer to reach such PAtk values to the point it can hit the damage cap without an overlord tier weapon, it may be the reason it lacks an offensive skill at this circle as that would be an overkill.
Conclusion
In general there’s no skill that doesn’t work or have no use at all and this is a huge plus for the class, if it weren’t for weapon restriction issue haunting it and the class could easily reach its peak. Musketeer skill set is really good and i have to consider their effort into giving it some kind of temporary fix even if its done poorly.
| C 1 | C 2 | C 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | C | B | C |
| Theme | B | A | B |
| Gameplay | B | A | B |
| Cohesion | B | A | C |
| Point Distribution | D | C | C |
| Dropout | D | D | B |
For the first time i’ll try adding a poll for the next class to be covered (as no one brings any suggestion), for the next 2 or 3 threads clerics will be banned from it as it’s already ahead on the class count. Again, drop comments and arguments on the class design, so far the best discussions were related to practical experience and that can’t be perceived by analysing data only.
Pick 2 or 3 options to vote
- Templar
- Hoplite
- Cryomancer
- Linker
- Schwarzer Reiter
0 voters
