Tree of Savior Forum

How to balance Merkabah

Suggestions Game
#1

When talking about Kabbalist, there are many problems, but the most urgent problem is how the class just has abysmal skill factors.

Of all the skills, Merkabah has by far the worst scaling.

Every skill level only adds +92% SFR and another 3.1 x skilllevel%,
starting at 1x 92% SFR at level 1 and capping at 5 x 104.4% = 522% at skill level 5.

If we go back to the time before Re:build, Merkabah had always access to level 6 since Divine Might was still on Cleric, and the SFR was 350% x 6 = 2100% at skill level 6.
That’s not much, but it was a lot more than it currently has.

The skill factor was then lowered, like most skill factors, but unlike most other skill factors that were gradually increased, especially during the large rebalance patches on episode 11 and episode 12 patches, Merkabah was never touched again, and now it just received another ability that doesn’t help the initial use of the skill,which is for damage purposes.

The damage purpose is evidential from the basic skill properties, which make the skill a high velocity multiattack skill. You can only make use of its Divine Protection ability and its arts if you also activate the Slow Movement attribute to modify the movement speed to a level where those effects actually become viable.

Here is a solution of how to save the skill:

Merkabah

maximum skill level 5

skill cooldown : changed to 20 seconds

skill factor : changed to 1234% + 462.8% per skill level past level 1

number of chariots: +1 per skill level (unchanged)

Merkabah: Reduced Movement Speed

when active: increases skill cooldown by 15 seconds

This means Merkabah has 20 seconds cooldown without slow movement activated, so you can use it as a damage skill when you don’t need the support abilities, and 35 seconds with the slow movement attribute active.

The skillfactor adjustments are based on the recent Miko balance of Gohei(15428% SFR at maximum skill level with 20 seconds cooldown), a skill that has similar properties as Merkabah.

To make up for the additional effects you get from the slow movement attribute active, the cooldown is increased to its current state (35 seconds), meaning you have the option to trade off the buff effects for a reliable damage skill by keeping the attribute off.

#2

I always thought you were a little too exaggerated in your suggestions, but I found this to be quite reasonable although I found it difficult since the IMC greatly buffed the healing effect of the kabbalist’s skills

#3

You know that kabba already changed in ktos?

– Kabbalist –

  • Gematria
    The skill is deleted.
  • Ein Sof
    Recovers HP equal to the caster’s and target’s HP Recovery every 2 seconds.
  • Merkabah
    When a boss monster is attacked, reduces the target’s damage dealt by 3% per skill level for 10 seconds.
  • Nachash
    When a party member within the magic circle attacks an enemy, they recover HP equal to the caster’s HP Recovery.
  • Gevura
    Now increases damage taken by [calculated number] * 10%
    Duration changed to 5 seconds per skill level.
    If a boss monster is affected, every 30 attacks it takes will reset the cooldown of the skill that did the 30th hit.
  • Tree of Sephiroth
    Holy Water consumption changed from 10 to 1.
    HP recovery cycle changed from 0.5 seconds to 1 second.
    Now reduces damage taken by 20% while inside the magic circle.
#4

Note that this info is before some adjustments, like they nerfed gevura reset gimmick

#5

first changes:

patched:

#6

I know the changes, but this doesn’t mean that IMC cannot give Kabbalist any damage at all.

Miko is also a pure support class and they gave it a lot of damage with the same patch.
And it’s a fact that you cannot do anything with the damage the Kabbalist skills deal.

It’s reasonable to give a skill that’s just about crashing 5 chariots into the enemy at high velocity some damage so you can clear content with it, mainly episode 11 & episode 12 maps.

They could just remove the healing effects of Nahash and Tree of Sephiroth in return for giving Merkabah and Nahash reasonable damage so the class is not left in the dust compared to other support classes with much better support and offensive capabilities.

For example, Dievdirbys can deal great amounts of damage with Carve Owl alone while providing great support, Oracle has no damage but overall much better support for the whole party, Pardoner has more damage and better healing, Priest has the most utility and a useful damage skill to breeze through dimensional collapse stage 10/11 because of instant kill mechanics, Miko has the best magic&burst support and high damage and Plague Doctor has party heal, movement speed boost, status recovery &immunity and magic damage boost.

Meanwhile, Kabbalist has a weak damage boost, 1 reliable and 2 unreliable recovery skills, a status recovery skill with high cooldown and a gimmick iframe locked behind arts as well as abysmal damage on 2 skills.

I know this, which is why I put up this suggestion in the first place. Support classes need to have damage to stay viable in a game that mostly lives from killing monsters.

There’s nothing to be won if Kabbalist cannot secure its space on an off-meta build (i.e. a build without Priest>Diev>Oracle), which is why they gave Miko damage,too, because it’s common sense that the class on its own is not attractive enough to be used on magic damage builds.
Kabbalist also needs to become an option for hybrid support/damage builds like Miko to not have to compete with full support classes, which would just shift the meta and make another class unattractive again, starting the balance circle anew.

The new changes to Gevura make the class really appealing to multihit classes, especially physical ones like Inquisitor&Zealot, but also converted Druid and Krivis, since the recovery of Ein Sof is not based on your low Healing stat, and Merkabah can actually help increasing the damage of your multihit skills, but in return, the damage output of Kabbalist is so bad that a stable 40% damage boost of Druid/Zealot is more attractive than opting for all the difficult mechanics of Kabbalist (which also consume a lot of time to set up, meaning you lose more DPS), not to forget that Druid provides better recovery,too, with more uptime.

So, to make Kabbalist viable, it needs more damage, and the recent Miko patch is a good model of how a decent rework can include support improvements and damage improvements so the class is viable for both damage and support builds.

I’ve just listed Merkabah because it would be easy to change and to adjust because all its beneficial effects rely on the slow movement attribute to have maximum effectiveness, while it is just a (very bad) damage skill without it, to be the first step to make the class better.

One more thing to note here that most people don’t know: Merkabah actually uses your AOE attack ratio to determine how many targets are hit by the explosion, so it will usually only hit very few targets without excessive investment.

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