Tree of Savior Forum

KToS General Thread v4.0

I must be honest. I’m kinda hyped to get my hands on those new 4k% skills.
It will be fun for couple weeks, and I want it so bad. lolz
:distinguished:

https://tos-kr.neet.tv/items/494143
lv400 voucher? :tired:

I tried both, Sneak Hit full+3x Werewolf Cards and no Sneak Hit at all. I didn’t feel any noticeable difference. Rumor has it the whole “back damage” mechanic is bugged and thus Sneak Hit doesn’t work properly, and I honestly think so as well.

I’d love to be proved wrong with data from a thoroughfully detailed research (the kind of research I can’t conduct due to time limitations), but until then I’ll ignore Sneak Hit.

1 Like

LOL it is like they transformed the KTEST initial item into a cash item.

1 Like

Something tells me that lv400 is far from the end tho.
https://tos.neet.tv/misc/exp-tables/character
https://tos.neet.tv/items/643045

It’s very likely that the exp tables are simply determined by a formula, so I wouldn’t read too deeply into it being particularly deliberate. Other than designing the formula to go to level 500 without blowing up, I don’t think it’s something that required much attention or focus. That being said, I think they are open to the possibility of it going that far, but still don’t have anything concrete planned and things are very much subject to change.

The level 500 design was stated way back before beta was released, in the devblog posts after the game’s announcement. I didn’t quite believe we would reach that, but here we are already at 420.

1 Like

Bigger numbers = better (see also huge skill factor buffs) so they’ll probably decide 1000 is a better level cap at some point

Plus that way they can sell 16x XP tomes etc.

I don’t care if a game uses big or low numbers, what I don’t like is when the numbers are arriving at the cap damage of the game …

makes me feel like Final Fantasy late game,

"do a great preparation causing debuffs and buffs and then use my supreme skill with 1m animation cause 9.999 damage, "

“simply use my basic atk with a double atk effect weapon cause 2x 9.999”

it makes the game really boring and dumb, massive damage skills become useless, only imports multi-hit skills and fast reuse skills, and it becomes a game of who can spam cap damage hits in less time

1 Like

Big Question would be: Assuming we will go till lvl 500 (or even 600 if I emember correctly from a statement way back in days) -> Will there be anything more classwise?

I mean we are getting the Art-System which is more or less fine n dandy (but was it even lvl bound in any way, or was it just lvl 65+ attribute something?)

I would not like the idea of getting a 4th class, since there would be too many skills to handle for most people. So maybe Masterclasses will be a thing in the distant future?

We would need something, because lvling just for the sake of lvling for dozens and dozens of levels would just feel too boring, this is not Diablo folks.

My take and opinion on the SFR changes and damage cap change.

As you may have seen, the last couple updates on KToS significantly raised SFRs for most classes and also raised the damage cap to 3 million.

Is this a bad thing?

It’s been this way for a long time. A lot of end game players are used to dealing damage cap, though it requires a very geared player to consistently do so in most situations. Some of this might not apply to a lot of players since it specifically is an issue for very geared people, but it’s the reality for people at the very end game of gear. With the damage cap change, it’s going to happen much less frequently, but it will still happen.

Hitting for damage cap isn’t a new development. Before [Re:Build], I was doing damage cap with Shadow Thorn on boss monsters as Shadowmancer. Even as a Necromancer, my Shoggoth could hit damage cap. Now as a full summoner build after [Re:Build], my summons can hit for damage cap even on Skiaclipse/Boruta very consistently. This isn’t a brag; this was the case for a lot of other classes too. The damage cap was a good and bad thing.

The damage cap was the limiter keeping everything in balance for a lot of classes, before [Re:Build] and after. No matter how hard you could hit for, you were still limited to damage cap, and that capped you at how fast you could kill any given thing. When a monster has 500 million HP, and you can only hit it for 1 million with each hit at best, it’s going to take some time to die no matter what. Content can’t simply be deleted by the amount of damage some classes can achieve due to stacking multipliers and other damage sources. It also prevented cases of balance that IMC didn’t think of that could cause things to hit ridiculous amounts of damage; it didn’t matter, because the damage cap would stop it.

However, it was also a bad thing; any class that hit a low amount of times for a very large amount of damage suffered. A good example of this is Inquisitor. God Smash is notorious for hitting extremely hard and easily reaching damage cap. However, that’s just the problem; they use God Smash, they hit damage cap a few times, and then it’s on cooldown. That’s it for most of their DPS. My Shadowmancer before [Re:Build] had the same problem: four Shadow Thorns, then sit and wait. Other classes would surpass me in DPS easily because I simply couldn’t hit enough times and the damage cap stopped me from doing as much as I could. This makes sustained damage of classes that have this problem over time poor, because they can only burst out as much damage as the damage cap allows and then they just have to wait on cooldowns. You may see videos of Inquisitor performing very well on Amiss Dog and card album bosses, but since then, they have not been considered a good DPS. What happened?

Bosses have way more HP. Boruta having billions of HP and Skiaclipse having over 500 million made Inquisitor not so appealing. That amount of damage is still decent, but it pales in comparison to other options. With the damage cap now raised to 3 million, their God Smashes are also much less restricted. Inquisitor may not suddenly start hitting for 3 million with each God Smash, but their potential as a class is now much higher and they are going to be a lot stronger. This is good for the game, as more classes now are able to keep up in damage output. The amount of hits something does isn’t as much of a worry when balancing damage.

Damage cap had a secondary effect. For very geared people, it started to become a meta-game of finding which class deals the most number of hits and doesn’t get limited by damage cap. Which class was the best at this? Taoist. Their main DPS skill hits 60 times at minimum for lower amounts of damage with each hit. This means for the most part, they completely ignore the fact a damage cap (limiter) is in place, and can melt everything down due to the sheer number of hits and damage multipliers. IMC patched Taoist and reduced its number of hits greatly; they know this was a problem. However, they also raised the damage cap so that this is no longer something to even have to worry about building around. The changes to Taoist still needed to happen, as the class was far beyond any other class option in the game in terms of DPS, but IMC also started to use it as a “standard” for how strong classes should be.

A lot of people are seeing these very high SFR numbers and wondering why IMC is doing it, how the game is going to be balanced afterward, etc… and yeah, some of it is pretty strong. However, there were already some classes in game (Taoist) that have been this strong, all this time. It’s not a new development. More classes are now just being given access to that level of damage (not even as much as Taoist had, as their new baseline is beneath current Taoist). The newest content IMC has been putting out is definitely balanced with this in mind, as Misrus, Skiaclipse, and Moringponia are far more difficult than anything the game has seen up to this point. Older content may suddenly become significantly easier for most people, but this shouldn’t be a problem. You can already experience this level of power by playing the classes that are the “meta.” IMC is simply trying to expand that to many more classes, and really live up to the philosophy they keep saying: a goal of being able to build your own character through your own choice of classes and have fun. You should be able to do this without feeling like you are going to be extremely weak if you don’t pick the exact correct options (or, the meta). In the end, I think the changes are healthy for the game and if the numbers are tuned correctly, we may have a much larger array of classes that can compete and perform in end game content and PVP, which sounds great. However, I would not be against them adjusting some older content a bit so it is not completely destroyed if it gets too easy, and adding more content balanced around this new level of power.

Now, my real concern is classes that are already strong and going to benefit from the damage cap change. IMC specifically is avoiding buffing SFR of classes that were already strong by too much. An example of this is Spike Shooter not getting buffed on Sapper. This skill is already super strong and is popular to use for Sappers… it does not need buffs. Yes, I know Rubric had its SFR buffed, but Gregorate also got significantly nerfed and needed to be: the version KToS had is not the one we have and is significantly stronger. The Rubric change was done to offset the nerf to Gregorate, not much different than Taoist’s skills being buffed in exchange for the nerf to Creeping Death.

However, even ignoring the SFR changes, just the damage cap change is going to shift things. Some classes are very powerful and WERE kept in check by the damage cap to a reasonable extent… an example would be something like Exorcist. With the damage cap raised, classes with large amounts of damage multipliers and were stuck doing damage cap are suddenly potentially going to be up to 3x stronger. IMC literally made a set bonus (Proverbs) to raise damage cap before they did this change, because they knew such a thing would have value and be appealing, to at least some classes. We’ve already seen the new damage cap being hit from KR videos such as the dagger classes fighting Misrus, hitting for 3 million with critical hits and defeating him in around 2 minutes. This is largely due to SFR buffs and those classes having a large number of different damage multipliers, scaling damage easily to the cap.

A shift in the meta is nothing new, not a bad thing and is honestly welcome, and as long as IMC pays attention and stops cases of classes spiraling their damage out of control because of the damage cap being raised, the game should be just fine. The other big priority is adding more content actually balanced around this new standard of damage output. It’s the start of a good series of changes as long as it’s done with care, but honestly a necessary one as we’ve been stuck with trying to fix these problems for too long. Hopefully these changes bring a lot of those underdog classes out into the open and we start seeing some really cool new stuff happen.

9 Likes
1 Like

Sneak Hit cannot raise your critical chance past cap and is useless if you’re already capped. He’s using Drakonas Pasiutes set and has 1409 critical rate. Combined with Hallucination Smoke and/or Knife Throwing, this should be capped critical chance on everything in the game except plant monsters.

4 Likes

I don’t have a problem with the SFR changes per se, but the lack of explanation why its done and leaving players in the dark is not an optimal approach.

The normal and ARTS dmg (SFR) increase attributes look pretty bad for most skills now, so there’s no reason to invest time and money into them now unless an update is planned for those as well.

The PVE balance is now completely out of whack as well. You can already get through the game rather easily as it is, but with these SFR changes all standard PVE enemies, story bosses, hunting ground monsters, etc. are basically piñatas that will pop as soon as you use any skill. The current and future PVE scenario needs heavy adjustments for every enemy that doesn’t have billions of HP and defense.

if you call that a bad move, maybe you didn’t study them well enough.
Enhancement attributes can upgrade your SFR% from 100% base value to up to 160% base value.

Enhancement arts are multiplicative to the enhancement attributes +SFR, so you can get to a total of 180% base SFR% with both enhancement attribute at level 100 and enhancement arts at level 10.

The good thing is that you can now have a good effect with less overall investment, due to the enhancement arts being multiplicative in nature.

E.g. you invest into your enhancement attribute until level 80 to get 2/3 of the SFR boost, which costs you about 22000 attribute points.
To get the final 20% boost at enhancement level 100, you’d have to invest another 81000 attribute points. However, if you learn the enhancement arts instead, you only invest about 30000 attribute points till level 10, boosting your base SFR from 140% to 157.5%.

The re-balance in costs and requirements made enhancement arts a viable alternative for maximizing damage output with a minimum investment of 53000 attribute points for 57.5% additional SFR instead of the current 103000 attribute points for 60%.

Of course, it might not be viable for many skills that already hit cap with their 10000%+ SFR, but it doesn’t stop you from putting your points into weaker skills instead for a better overall build.

In the future, spending attribute points will fluctuate more within builds and equipment,
giving you the option to go with less investment when your gear is better and vice versa,
with attributes being more of a supplement than the necessity they are right now for top performance.

2 Likes

I just hope that they realize that it is not only the SFR that makes a class popular (altough I admit it is most of the problem of some classes), but also how the skill kit and their mechanics works.

I can’t look to all of this and consider it that beneficial. Sure for a boss battle perspective it might be a good thing, but for other smaller enemies / hordes, some videos are showing the content being even more bland and people just breeze trough it. For me, it looks like a really bad thing, more tedious than fun, honestly.

I could bring here the argument that they could avoid all of this changes and stick to the Re:Build principles by just tackling the Taoist situation, and also adjusting the HP of these new bosses so they will be more equal to the time we will spend killing them after those changes. Other than that, they would have to keep checking the classes concepts and skills that are bad in performance, instead of rebalancing all SFR of the game.

It seems like they are overthinking and spending a lot of efforts rebalancing everything instead of dealing with what was always waiting for changes, like Homun ones teased for the beginning of the year and nothing so far, recent pet AI and Sadhu changes announced that ended up postponed due to this overall redoing of SFRs.

At the end, we might have all classes dealing higher damage, but the ones that have bad performance due to how their skills and concept works, rather than SFR only, will probably still suffer from low popularity and still act on a small nieche, even if they SFR match the ones from more popular classes.

3 Likes

I’d like master classes as a good medium between the old circle system and the new “pick 3 classes”.

2 Likes

Why cant IMC make pass worthwhile to use and not objectively worse than just playing dievdirby. Pass could very well be 50%, they should just remove the mistake that is the solo pass attribute.
I know support wizard is dead, but i can dream of a future support class right?

1 Like

They could just leave the part where you can’t be affected by other pass for 40 secs and that would be fair I think, specially now that Tao is nerfed.

1 Like

image
Did they forget matross has a 60% cannon damage buff making this entire point of trying to make them not mandatory together kinda moot?