Tree of Savior Forum

KToS General Thread v4.0

General Discussion
#4149

Simply by just making the AI of Bosses smarter it would make encounters much harder then making encounters based on your position relative to the boss.

Velcoffer was just a really good example of poor boss encounter/AI design.

Velcoffer Skills
Auto Attack: Uses it always on highest treat target.
Cleave. Uses it after a few auto attacks, or after every 2nd auto attack. Silences.
Cleave Combo: Generally alternates between cleave and the cleave combo after 2 cleaves but sometimes just spams it. Cleave Combo consists of 2 cleaves with a final big cleave that re-positions Velcoffer
Charge: Uses it every 10-15 seconds.
Magic Ball Cast: No idea what causes it but its good when he bugs out and just spams cast this
Purple Puddle of Death: Purple puddle comes out of his tail and is thrown at a random party member when someone is not face hugging Velcoffer. Only casts it in Phase 3
Ranged Power Wave: Only used when no one is in melee range of Velcoffer. Has a small push back
Cursed Breath: Slow debuff, continuously damages target if in breath, brakes magic circles

So how do you handle/counter all of these skills.

  • Cleave is easy just tank and spank bring despellers so you don’t get silenced.
  • Cleave Combo same as cleave
  • Charge: Face at Wall
  • Magic Ball Cast: Tank and spank does the least amount of damage
  • Purple Puddle of Death: Face hug Velcoffer then he never casts it. Also Merkabah is counted as a party member for some reason so dont cast it.
  • Ranged Power Wave: Make sure someone is in melee range of Velcoffer.
  • Cursed Breath don’t stand in front

Now if we make small AI changes and skill changes we can make Velcoffer go from tank and spank to quite a difficult encounter for the player base instead of just a numbers check.

  • Cursed Breath cone goes from 45 degree to 135 degree. Casts when close to wall and facing it. Casts it every 30 Seconds. Has a cast time so the party can re-position
  • Charges only to get to highest threat target. 15 second cooldown. Cast if no one is in range and after casting Ranged Power Wave or Purple Puddle of Death cant cast both skills back to back.
  • If everyone is not in melee range of Velcoffer in 5 seconds casts Purple Puddle of Death.
  • Purple Puddle of Death is cast when he loses 5% hp or if someone in the party is not face hugging Velcoffer.
  • Cleave does damage that cant be tanked by a single person and needs other people next to player to share damage. Still Silences
  • Ranged Power Wave when no one is in range or charge has been used recently. 15 second cooldown. (Forcing players not to get hit by charge)
  • Phase one ends at 50% hp
  • Magic Ball Cast turns into magic brake and happens after phase 1
    Phase 2 ends at 0% hp
  • Still uses reversi after phase 2 casts after losing 10% hp
    Phase 3 Starts as Velcoffer reaches 0 HP, recovers HP to max and takes 200% more dmg does 1% more dmg every 10 seconds till death.

These changes just made Velcoffer into end game content that can truly be challenging instead of the current snore fest of tank and spank.

6 Likes
#4150

I do welcome some difficulty improvements in TOS, but I found heal tile is adding unnecessary complexity more than difficulty.

Diifculty can be dodging boss AOE and healing party members, difficulty could be observing boss action and use defensive skill before a boss dmg burst. Furthermore, cleric heal should really be a supliment healing in rebuild, for any healer necessary content in that case with stronger healing skill like mass heal available for dedicated healer, heal tile would be fine. However, since IMC haven’t really classified tank/Dps/heal/support role, i bet there will be many player using cleric only as healing class. In that case I would prefer heal being the new single target heal if it is the only healing skill available

1 Like
#4151

@frustratedsquirrel2

But i think this it exactly the reason why we need some bits of simplicty now, because as i’ve stated many times before, Re:Build will not be the same Tree of Savior we currently know, the game is no longer easy anymore. Bosses are more resilient now and hit harder thena before without over exaggerating, and our damage capabilities have been further limited. There’s now a need for well thought decisions and hopefully, if the way we fight bosses is also re-disigned, it will lead to more strategy development in real time as opposed to following a single cheap strategy that will always work regardless of your actions. By adding unnecessary complexity as @kurokawamayumi stated, to an already hard game we are not making it more engaging, but rather frustrating. This is something no well designed game should fall under. And while you might feel underwhelmed by the fact that your class no longer has complexity, i’d argue that it is more complex, more difficult and way more valuable than before after this changes. Feeling like a real icon of succor to your party rather than a dispenser sounds way more exciting in my opinion.

@Velthari

I really like the changes you’ve made here, the way the phases transition and they way you handle the boss. Not to mention that spicy addition of the third phase. I hope the developers also start looking at our feedback regarding boss design.

#4152

I will wait for the changes to hit kToS and know more about before commenting more about it…

#4153

Even if the game is made harder, it’s still just like making a really easy game a bit less easy. It’s still going to be easy, and almost ANY functional complexity being removed from the game is bad, imo, when what it needs is more complexity.

Also, adding complexity to a hard game doesn’t make it frustrating. Complexity gives you more to learn, more to master, and therefore more reasons to practice and actually play the game. When you start removing complexity, you start removing value. If there’s a reason to use that complexity then there’s more reason for the game to be hard. And the kind of ‘hardness’ they’re adding to the game is also entirely fake difficulty. They are not making the minions AI better or giving us better reasons to strategise, they’re just making everything hit harder and tightening our resource management restrictions.

I don’t see how the changes to heal can add ANY mechanical complexity that wasn’t there before. How do I feel like any less of a dispenser when all I’ll be able to do is dispense heals with the new system? How is it more difficult when I no longer need to even factor in the placement of my tiles or care about my spacing and positioning anymore, or the positioning of my teammates? I can feel like a real icon of succor to my party with heal tiles as they are right now.

I get that my stance might seem unreasonable or like I’m pushing for the game to be needlessly hardcore, but one thing I really can’t abide is seeing games strip away mechanical complexity when it doesn’t need to be stripped. It leads to a slippery slope where we end up with abominations like Pokemon Let’s Go and cheapens the integrity of game designers trusting their players to figure stuff out and get invested in their mechanics.

1 Like
#4154

cleric fans, please continue your healing tiles debate here @Developer, please read these thread about iToS people's opinion regarding healing tile at Re:Build

6 Likes
#4155

this thread is close to maxing out on post…

#4156

On the topic of complexity, I think it’s fine if they make the game a lot simpler first before later on adjusting the complexity. Currently the game is what it is due to adding layers and layers of adjustment (and RNG), like most of the more recent attributes, velcoffer gear etc. etc. and active players simply got used to it.

User Experience is surprisingly reaaaaaally really dumb, not just in games but in almost everything that involves people. Dumbing down is usually not enough, people will continue to not understand how the most basic of things work so I think simplifying the game might benefit it more in the long run (esp. when it comes to increasing the user base).

A lot of changes people are worried about is a result of certain classes losing some changes that were only added later on, like those losing attributes (doppel, dragoon etc.) or skills (falconer, featherfoot etc.). I think this is a result of these changes being used as a bandaid solution in the first place to make those classes viable because their original intended identity didn’t work out. (although I disagree with them removing blood curse, but it might be inline with them wanting to make healing a lot more scarce)

3 Likes
#4157

Nice title

So we have this iteration of “tab targeting”. How else would anyone recommend to implement tab targeting given that it has to work for all control schemes? 1 2 3 4 keys instead of directional? At least a numeric set of keys can directly correspond to a party members placement on the party UI.

#4158

i really dont understand why new falconer keep hanging shot but delete preemptive strike? is hanging shot a popular skill at ktos?
parthian shaft got deleted, it is the least invested skill for mergen

#4159

it’s probably because they want falconer to be a utility class and not a dps class? but they already changed the icon to red so I dunno lol.

#4160

and here you’re wrong. Heal is no longer meant to provide the main healing, because it’s very limited in both power and effect (i.e. only one target at a time).

This means the “Healer”(if there ever was sth like that in TOS) was shifted away from Cleric to Priest.
As Pardoner is still somewhat the natural profession building up on Priest, I count him into that category,too.

HOT was shifted from Krivis’ Aukuras to Paladins Restoration, so you can easily have sustainability on attacks you can’t evade while promoting active damage management.

Cleric by itself is no longer a Healer, Heal is there to provide every Cleric the ability to survive the burdens that his own gameplay puts upon him (i.e. melee range with most skills and long animation/cast/channeling times that make him more vulnerable to attacks).

To expect the Cleric to use his Heal on other characters is sheer madness, they have more sturdiness and/or the ability to actively or passively evade attacks with their skill set.

With halved potion CD times, many buffs that decrease damage and attacks suffered by especially Archers,Scouts and Swordsmen, and the ability to utilize Restoration scrolls, I don’t really fear for the acceptance of non-Healer Clerics into parties but rather that people still invest too much into their weapons and not into survival instead.

Those who need a Healer are either heavily under-geared, built their characters the wrong way or are too lazy to actively avoid damage.
There are at least 4 different potion types one can utilize (Bernice pots, Keistas pots, Alchemist pots, NPC pots) to counter the damage taken by monsters.
On top of that, there are Restoration scrolls for the needy that at least recover 417 HP(Restoration lvl 1 with 0 SPR at lvl 390) every 3 seconds for 5 minutes.

If that still isn’t enough, you’re not utilizing your base Class potential.
Swordsmen and Wizards can reduce incoming dmg with Bear (up to 18%) and Magic Shield(up to 34,5%) while Archers and Scouts can boost their evasion [ Swift Step by up to 27%, Free Step by up to 36%] to evade a part of incoming damage completely.
Clerics can boost their Heals power with Guardian Saint by up to 45%,
so they can Heal the extra damage they take in comparison to the other Classes that either reduce or evade damage.

1 Like
#4161

I stumbled upon this video a while ago, perhaps you might be interested.

It is useful in certain situations, so it is more of a gimmick than anything else when it comes to PvE.
However, as far as i know, it’s been fixed so that now you’re safe from melee physical attacks if i’m not wrong. So perhaps this skill will have more use on PvP scenarios.

Yes, you are right. I apologize, this was bad wording from my part. What i meant to say and i sort of cleared in subsequent posts was “basic” healing tool not “main”.

#4162

That moment when you can’t relate to these healing discussions as a cleric main because you’re a Monk main that simply Double Punch and leaves your party to burn and die on purpose.

(Jk)

6 Likes
#4163

Developers really shouldn’t pander to dumb players though by dumbing down their game. If a player doesn’t understand how a skill works, then the game should remind them that this is fine and give them reasons to LEARN what their tools are and how they operate.

We don’t have to dumb down anything. This game has already been super simplistic since launch. This Rebuild is a chance to rectify that and make the game more complicated and something people can take a bit more seriously, and improve the difficulty as necessary to allow for a better learning experience.

Of course, doing this would require IMC to kind of get their thumbs out of their butts and actually give us tooltips, tutorials and early game missions that encourage players to experiment, adapt and grow.

I do have some hope that these removed attributes such as Quick and Dead riccochet are just being removed as an oversight and will make their way back into the game.

#4164

New maintenance & update today, we’ll see the changes in about 2-3 hours

1 Like
#4165

That’s good and all ideally speaking, but unfortunately pursuing that ideal will only work out if your game can develop a sufficient niche/cult following like dark souls or other similarly challenging games. It’s simply not sustainable for a free to play MMORPG, with higher budget competitors in a genre that’s rapidly losing general popularity.

3 Likes
#4166

You can still sell a game on being hard/aspire to make it appealing to both casual and hardcore players if you only advertise it as such. Path of Exile, Warframe built their player bases on this concept. Maple Story 2 is doing it. Ragnarok Online was well known for its brutal difficulty and complexity. ToS could EASILY have built upon that legacy and been a really solid, strong and hardcore mmo experience, but IMC chose to go with the 'cater to casuals and modern western mmo players" route and now look where we are.

Because it sells more gacha.

2 Likes
#4167

KTEST Patch

Skill Balance
-Skills from all class lines can no longer be canceled from taking damage while casting.
-Fixed a tooltip error with Tri-disaster Charm and Creeping Death Charm.
-When using the Rubric: Speed Reading attribute, the duration of Rubric will now decrease by 2 seconds.
-Invocation skill factor increased (100 / 0 -> 185 / 6.2).
-Dark Theurge skill factor increased (117 / 3.9 -> 126 / 4.2).

Monster Balance
-Reduced attack of Elite monsters (100% -> 90%).
-Some bosses that were stronger than intended have been downgraded (example Saalus Convent, some mercenary mission bosses, etc).

Class Balance
-The health percentage ratio for classes has changed. (Please see the list).

image

Events
-New plant and grow crop event.
-Fishing talt event (same as iTOS).

Fixed many bugs with Re:Build.

5 Likes
#4168

Isn’t that the HP gain modifier per level?