Tree of Savior Forum

KToS General Thread v4.0

Don’t forget about the other one which makes enemies freeze and they also take additional damage :slight_smile: love archerz

Here we go again. Maplestory 2.0

It’s not all good, you’re right. For content like you’ve described, it can make things bland and way too easy. And you’re also right that simply changing SFRs is not going to fix everything. They’ve been making other changes too, and I hope they continue to make important changes.

However, I also don’t want to doom and gloom and say things are all bad. There are positives to these changes, and I also want to be positive that they will do some good as well. The game changes constantly and IMC takes game balance more seriously than most developers. They change the balance almost nonstop, delivering patches over and over purely aimed at just buffing and nerfing things about the classes. People can definitely say they are not always on point with these changes, but they’re trying and I’m hoping that things continue to improve.

The issue with this is then it will benefit skills with extremely long cooldowns. I agree that Pass got nerfed pretty hard, but I think the skill is still decent. The issue is more that Chronomancer’s support is lackluster outside of this single skill. They should not be defined solely by this so much that it getting nerfed hurts the class so badly.

I’m okay with the Pass change, but they need to change other parts of Chronomancer to be more appealing as a result.

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My only concern with all these changes is how it will come to ITOS because large updates come every 3 months in general. If by any chance they release half of this SFR changes it will be a mess for another 3 months until they release the rest.

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tsai tom is replying

Yeah, we all know IMC do balance patches constantly and diligently. The problem is that they have been running this game for more than four years but the balance is never slightly fixed on point. It irritates me to see them seem to try quite hard yet the result is still terrible as ever. The balance patches IMC have been making these few weeks, of course, are the same case. Go ask any kToS player how he/she feels about the recent balance changes, I believe 95% would give you a negative feedback. I, as a player on Korean server myself, am not satisfied at all either.

Some classes have already undergone general buffs, but factors of certain skills remain neglected, such as Tiger Hunter’s Ambush and Sheriff’s Peace Maker. The DPS gap between single target skills and AoE ones is still large (for example, Shadow Thorn 7324% against 1 target v.s. Yin Yang Harmony 38800% against 15 targets). Furthermore, let’s take a look at the upcoming Musketeer nerfs from the Developers’ Blog on kToS. Yes, Snipe with two Overheats is very strong now. “With the intent to maintain Musketeer’s performance on PvE and to adjust the overpower on PvP”, by saying so, IMC decided to drastically nerf every Musketeer skills to the extent that Musketeer would be unplayable on both PvE and PvP if these changes did happen. It is not the first time IMC slap their own face and do stupid, excessive balance adjustment, and it surely won’t be the last time. No wonder kToS players call their server “the real test server”, and the dev team “겜알못” (which means people who don’t have a clue about the game they made.)

To be honest, I do not know how you can stay so optimistic. After all these years, my faith in IMC and the balance team no longer exists. In spite of these many changes being made, IMC have never changed.

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Its like IMC hires and fires developers on a regular basis, and each developer has different, conflicting ideas into helping the game thus nothing ever goes right.

A developer comes, makes an idea, gets told to balance it, fails and quits, another developer comes in, gets told to balance the work of the previous developer or rework it, does what that developer feels is the way irrespective of the intentions of the previous developer, gets told to balance it, fails and quits, and the cycle repeats. Even if one good idea comes out from one of the previous developer, the next developer will probably screw up the intentions of the previous developer, thus this endless cycle of counter-productive things that IMC has been doing that has been screwing up the game. Once in a while there will be that glimmering good idea, which then gets screwed with the next few patches. Add to IMC’s tendency to over-buff and over-nerf things and the problem becomes worse.

IMC announced Re:Build to reduce damage numbers for easier balancing, and then buffs them back up. IMC made plans to help hybrid magic-physical Cleric builds, then rolls out specialized stat allocation to punish players going hybrid with stats. IMC makes a damage cap increase set effect, then increases everyone’s damage significantly. IMC is doing the exact same thing on Monk right now making Monk focus on Double Punch and Energy Blast for Arts System that allow Monks to have proper damage without relying on Inquisitor and give Monks build freedom to choose other classes, then screwing Monk’s Art Attribute up by giving damage to everything BUT those two skills, making it not even worth using those two skills in a damage meta where it is better off using every other skill that will do at least 4-digit skill factor multi-hits in much less time, thus turning Monk back into a class that must take Inquisitor yet again to be viable. Tons of other counter-productive things IMC does exists for a long time, to be honest.

Most players who tried Re:Build after its pre-Re:Build already guessed that a Re:Build 2.0 will be coming as it did not solve much of the problems it aims to fix at all. We are just in the midst of an alpha-testing Re:Build 2.0 that seems to not fix any of the important problems the game has either, so … Re:Build 3.0?

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This can be partly contributed by the fact that many devs left the company over the years, with the most recent one in early 2019 (Q1). Perhaps the frequent change of hands for the ToS Development seems to let each new head dev project the game in their own idea to salvage the current situation. (lack of fresh Playerbase issues, bugs, exploits) It has been a roller coaster ride with its hits and misses.

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I don’t have a choice. All we can do is give feedback and hope things improve. I agree with some of what you’ve said, but I’d rather be optimistic and try to stay positive about the situation - and there are some positives that I’ve outlined in my post.

Hopefully KR continues to give feedback that moves things in the right direction, as we here have minimal to no say in what changes happen, especially these that are about to be implemented in KR.

i dont even know why they’re making Snipe 2 OH changes, it something that shouldnt ever happen because everyone will know that is purely absurd for pvp content,
now all the utility from musketeer are basically removed, its a very heavy nerf on pvp aspect on paper for musketeer

prime and load 3s charging is pretty much nonexistence to be any useful in pvp, unless you’re out of combat. Lets say a scenario where you are able to dash in combat as archer in ktos, you sniped someone then dash away (let say you can escape, you have to be pretty far from any player threat, and casting prime and load, and then snipe cooldown which is 15s in ktos prolly will be down to somewhere around <10s which is why this skill is close to nonexistence with future patch, if its implemented in ktos)

snipe changes to normal magic circle targeting with fancy crosshair UI, now they removed ignore block, evasion, and %chance of stun that is pretty low and very short duration too in ktos, which basically they removed identity of Snipe itself which in terms of theme it should be something super accurate and can penetrate any armor (since they’re talking about they want to make musketeer into more of sniper concept gameplay from rough translation), better to just remove that fancy UI too at this point. Not to mention Snipe AAR also removed that reduce pve performance for musketeer too in terms for mobbing.

i dont know how i felt about 30% armor break or +50% crit change (or something around that way), right now musketeer without groovling deal much less damage even with serenity, if we are going to compare it to other tier 1-2 dps class. (in exception of ranger build, which also pretty much not effective for content outside boruta)

Also in terms of pve, some/most of archer class known to have garbo skill hitbox especially musketeer, with no one knows what will happen to aiming and circling in ktos future patch this will affect musketeer mobbing/cm performance a lot, as we can see that they literally killed chrono pass at this point.

I dont know what is ktos standar of “unplayable” is it steam rolling every content under 5 minutes or so? or other criteria, because as far as i see musketeer in pve right now in itos is still decent with the mixture of each class in the build, but it still “penetration shot the class” because every other skill dealt very low damage and musketeer have to keep cast/de-cast serenity to make them relevant not like other tier 1 class where you could just pressing 1 skill without have to keep re-setup like serenity and then you dealt hugeload of damage (its not bad, but its not super great taoist/exo itos tier , as long you can perform and clearing content nicely), but it performance will be reduce with snipe AAR removed and possible heavy nerf to aiming+circling in future patch like i mention above.

with all of those issue above we also have rubberband and other server-user lag issue in itos which obviously you cant leap with ease especially with serenity because of the rubberband, you cant combo headshot-snipe very fast because target will rubberband and it cause you to miss your target, and other problem that keep occuring.

nb: this is prolly one of their way to make tiger hunter become relevant class, which is a class with 100% pvp skill-set but they keep trying to make it into somewhat a pve boss hunter which on paper its absurdly bad and not even close comparable to sapper-musket variant, but lets see how it will perform in future patch. And im pretty sure IMC only balancing around ktos feedback not even consider any itos balancing feedback.

Plus if they really want to make builds with various class combinations viable why is their game still full of hard weapon restrictions and buffs that are lost when you change weapons?

I still think it was an overall good move (even with conflicting thoughts about Linker and Thauma). For me, they failed on tackling classes that were still bad right after it - like Monk as you said, Hunter (or rather pet AI), Homunculus specifically and also QS that entered a limbo after Re:Build. It is not that community never said which classes are bad - specially here on iTOS, although they don’t seem to consider our feedback at all. In my particular case, Sadhu is pretty OK now damage-wise, still with clunky mechanics, but it seems that people are not willing to use it anymore due to how long it took for the SFR to follow along other classes, that they are not willing to give the spirit system a try, so it got this bad reputation after all this time. Still need more, but it is not far behind like the classes I said before.

I honestly think they were going on the right direction if they have kept Re:Build ideas and continuously fine tuning game aspects, instead of reinventing the wheel every 3~6 months as you said. They were somewhat slow and neglecting some things, but still not an almost complete u-turn with this sudden SFR increase.

Like “oh, we want boss fights to be hard, so lets put more HP and damage on them”, then “sheet, it got too strong, some classes can’t even be decent anymore. I know! Let’s buff everything up to a point there is no hard content anymore, instead of bring HP and damage of these bosses to a more decent level! If PvP got wrecked, we can change damage formula to deal less damage there, no biggie. Seems OK”.
/sarcasm

After all I’m also jaded that they teased me with Sadhu changes (specially these ones that seemed to finally acknowledge that spirit system was not good anymore) to just postpone it for this Re:SFR.

I usually envy you guys for having the updates faster than us, but this time I feel sorry for you, specially for how long they are taking to adjust at least SFRs for red classes, making it live in patches instead of bundle everything together after proper testing on… well, the test server.

I think the problem is the auto swap feature. It certainly was not the intent of Lancer to have access to Peltasta defensive skills by holding the 2h spear idle and auto changing it only to attack… This feature came to help Archers, who are heavy weapon dependent, but once it got extended to other branches it became a problem (iFrame Scout build, anyone?), also conflicting with concepts. I’m not against auto swap, but I always felt like a cheap way of fixing build diversity, instead of fine tuning classes that could work as overall good fillers for specialized weapon builds.

Doppel is kind of a good example, for me, of having a weapon-dedicated class (I know it is not restricted to 2H sword, but it was for a long time), but also having other classes that can go along with it to make it decent: barb, highlander and nak muay. The 2h sword deserve other class(es) as well for more diversity, but it is not like you don’t have good choices to build around it. Archers don’t have a good filler class aside from Sapper I guess, and Piper. Other ones that doesn’t depend on weapon are in a very bad shape in my opinion.

Personally, i’m OK with the concept of some specialized classes and filler ones. I honestly don’t think that virtually any combination should work or be good, specializing classes can help players to focus on building without feeling overwhelmed. But the filler classes have to be decent for this to work, what is not the case for a very long time on Archer tree.

Ironically, we never had so many options of Sword+Shield classes, but at the same time they are, still, not that viable. Now for archers, specifically, Wugushi seems to be turned into a decent filler alongside Piper and Sapper, but again not only because SFR increase, but more because the changes they made on the skill’s mechanics.

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IMO one of the biggest problems is that instead of giving some classes skill synergies with classes that use different weapons to open up potential builds, most of the class synergies are between classes that were already used together like Hoplite+Dragoon/Lancer/Cata, Barbarian+Doppel, Rodelero+Murmillo, etc.

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Ardito needs a dagger to throw bombs but Matador can make a fire trail with the ox charge, still don’t get it…

I was doing an exercise a couple of weeks ago to try rebuild swordman classes skill sets in order to be fully compatible with any class in the tree. The rules were simple, every class has to be assembled over an unique identity and provide an alternative path for those that don’t use the class default weapon.

The first thing i realized is that a 15-10-5 point system is impractical to work as it forces skills to be paired in every tier or else you put the alternative building path in a point disadvantage (such as not being able to max their limited skill options), meanwhile it also makes difficult to have any utility component to be enhanced with skill level due the level gap alone. Using debuff duration as example, if the desired maximum duration is 10s a level 5 skill can have around additional 2~1s per level to have this leveling component, doing the same with a level 15 skill puts the level strength to 0.66~0.33s per level. The only reason we had 15-10-5 was due the nature of the rank-circle that couldn’t work otherwise.

By breaking this established rule it felt like the best way to set this system is by having every single skill on each class to be 10 level max (and limited, with no exception, to 6 skills per class) and decrease the class level to 30, keeping the expected skill point distribution in maxing a single tier 1, 2 and 3 skills, as an advantage players can also have more building options such as getting all skills at level 5. Attributes can also be set as deal breakers requiring skills to be at level 6~8 to be unlocked to push builds to be more personal based on the class when aligned with the free class building goal.

The only reason i’m bringing this up is because the auto-swap system, despite being effective, should only be a band-aid fix or an extra alternative for unconventional class combinations but for that to work in the first place we need classes to be designed to have at least one path that is available to everybody, yet classes need solid and clear identities for that to be viable in the first place. What infuriates me the most about the whole game design is that most of time there’s at least one effective solution for the problem for the time that isn’t impractical nor out of reach, this particular idea isn’t really the case but even can be developed in stages by prioritizing the right aspects.

I’ll just end that here since it already went too long and off-topic.

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I simply dislike how these skill factor changes are taking away time that could be spent on more important things like some class reworks (just going to point out that IMC stated they were going to buff Chaplain since early or late February, and IMC hasn’t touched Chaplain a single time since other than adding a special Arts Attribute to Visible Talent in Arts System), especially how IMC could have just fixed this whole damage balancing problem by focusing on the two classes causing it in the first place, being Chronomancer + Taoist. No one is going to be fooled into thinking that these skill factor changes will be balanced correctly right off the bat, and more resources + time will be spent on these changes for sure.

I’ve been waiting for Sadhu rework for quite some time, especially since IMC finally acknowledged after all these years that they want to address and work on how Out-of-Body is one of the main reasons why players avoid Sadhu due to how awkward it is to use it (Out-of-Body rooting you in place, Out-of-Body’s stacking for Astral Body Explosion etc).

As if my profile picture, my countless posts stating I only care mainly about Monk stuff as a Monk main, and how I really only talk about stuff related to Monk was not enough, I really thank you kind Sir for pointing out the painfully apparent, Mr Obvious.

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the bad thing is people dreams balance. in a game with dozen classes.skills.effect.build.

the worst is imc dilligently nerfing a.k.a update, mostly based on complaints from PVP and little less from PVE.every MMORPG PVP will never be balance. now tell me one MMORPG that got a balance in PVP. there will always be meta build. meta team.carry.

if one considered “broken”, let others get equally “broken” as well. let others be unique as well to reach its “broken” point. nerfing only leave negative impact. just bring other classes so they can get equal damage, effect or uniqueness.

i felt like i wrote that sniper will get nerf like months ago and here we go…
for those who keep complaining, invest crazily on sniper welcome to this game dude…

and despite the promise of diversity, the fixed distribution stat is still no go. still felt like a mobile grinding video game with fixed path an expected result.

one simple thing to keep in mind is dont love your build too much
everything in this game are still subject to changes
thats why i ll rather not crazily spending time or money so much on a beta game

i even return just to grab 20k+ vasalos coin, grab those freebies to get a little relevant and ready to retire again
i still love the game, mostly the arts but i dont even mind if this game shut down tommorow

Hey let’s introduce a new progression system to the game then like 1 month into it change all the base structure of it,nothing can go wrong!

Seriously,just make the game a Diablo clone already, the MMORPG aspect is done.

I disagree cause I don’t think it’s reasonable to every single class to be compatible with every single other. Using the example that I gave before, how would Peltasta, a class that uses shield defensively, possibly fit with Lancer, an offensive class that uses 2h lances, therefore “no hands left” for a shield? Auto swap gave this quick fix, but at the cost of making it broken because Lancer was not created to have synergy with this particular class. So you either have to give other concept to some Peltasta’s skills to act more offensively, hitting Rodelero that is another shield user but in an offensive perspective since Re:Build (and also Murmillo in some extent); or find a defensive concept for Lancer while using 2h spear, one of the main motifs of this class. It can be a very hard task to accomplish and will ultimately change what each class was supposed to do to fit both together.

And for me this is where IMC ultimately fails when balancing classes. Sure SFR is important, specifically if you gonna compare DPS classes, they should match DPS output in some sort of way. But more than that every class have a role connected to its concept and making all classes viable to every single other will ultimately break those roles at the end of the class build. If they could define some groups (aoe attackers, CCers, single target/bossers, tankers, debuffers, you name it), then split classes in those groups, might be easier to analyze synergies between classes inside each group, but also groups that can be paired together. Also not an easy task, but would make more sense, specially if you settle some filler classes (in a good way, more like jack-of-all-trades) to couple with classes that are ultimately heavy dependent on things such weapon type.

It might not be too easy to create diversity, but also expecting an universal compatibility looks like a goal beyond reasonable.

EDIT:
Maybe TOS uniqueness of having lots of different classes and weapon choices interconnected is what doom the developers… You don’t see it in most of other games, you are normally stick with one concept for that character and class progression usually just extend that concept, doesn’t bring a new one as TOS does. Maybe we are experiencing why other games doesn’t do this, and maybe this is why balancing in this game is such a hard task. I just wish devs would listen more to us and take in consideration what we have to say. Ultimately, we want the game to thrive.

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I don’t actually care about the game having perfect balance. A lot of the “perfect balance” complaints can be solved just by returning class identity to the individual classes and undoing all of the dumb changes they made to the game to make sure every class is good enough at everything that your build doesn’t matter outside of who does the most raw damage. Some classes can be better at PvP, some can be better at boss hunting, some can be better at farming, some can be better at raiding, etc., just so long as all those things actually matter and the best PvP class isn’t also the best at everything else.

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There’s no real need to add offense to Peltasta nor add defense to Lancer, the whole point about combining is to complement strengths or decrease weaker points, any player that goes both sides should be overall weaker at both but i don’t think this option shouldn’t be available.

While i was doing this exercise i was forced to change classes significantly to find a route in which they wouldn’t conflict (or at least be significantly different from similar classes) to make it work, and with that in mind i’m quite aware of how hard and time consuming a move like would be. My point is that if the game really wants to promote true diversity then every single class should be an option, even if a limited option, and that can only be achieved if they add a minimum compatibility factor to the class design (such as allowing spear lunge to be used with rapier).

Let’s take tanking as an example (and drop the thematic logic of classes just for this thought experiment), the core elements of this role are resilience and mob management, the only perceived tank class in the game is Peltasta as it can do both. Just as a thought experiment, let’s swap Rodelero’s Slightering with Peltasta’s Swash Buckling, on one side we get Rodelero another CC skill that will ensure the aggro on it at the cost of some conditional resistance and Peltasta to be even more resilient but not able to generate aggro instantaneously. When a player is presented those two classes it will have to chose between survivability or enemy management. For real tankiness you need both classes or replace one of them for a class that performs on the same field, Barbarian and Fencer can be two good candidates for offensive variants (replacing Peltasta).The first (by adding some sort of self heal skill and a revive) being less reliable on raw defense as it has to keep fighting at full power to survive and keep aggro (perhaps even the highest aggro generator), meanwhile Fencer requires you to time your skills properly to mitigate or avoid damage completely while attacking. With 4 completely different tanks you have to chose between which aspects you value the most, the best boss tank might end up as Pelt-Barb-Fencer since it has the best survivability and aggro sustain but it may end up as a poor character for crowd PvE and PvP as it can’t hold anyone in place, meanwhile Rode-Barb-Fencer end up as the best PvE and PvP tank but have a hard time against nukers.

Back to the Lancer, if you want to have some sort of tank value each option will provide different strengths and weaknesses. Peltasta is the life insurance you need when nuking bosses and great for PvP but will offer no offensive value, Barbarian complements the aggressive side but might put you on a risky spot as you’ll get the aggro all the time when fighting bosses, Fencer will demand you to time out skills perfectly to reduce damages being less effective when fighting crowds (due evasion mechanic), Rodelero can only be effective in mob PvE and PvP, additionally only Barbarian is expected to have most of all skills available while the other three are weapon based classes.

Lancer and Peltasta should never be 100% compatible, but they should at least have a minimum compatibility of having a skill distribution that doesn’t require weapon swap, since making and enhancing equipment is still a major complain among players and IMC seems more reluctant to change it over classes (which could make multi-weapon builds truly viable), even if that means replacing some of the weapon exclusive skills with skills that are less tied to the weapon itself (such as non-shield skills for Peltasta and Rodelero).

That’s where all my insistence about class identity comes from, the only way for multi class to have a real balance point is if they way they achieve their goals, their strengths and weaknesses are really well defined, else it is unlikely for us to end up with more and more classes that can just replace others because they do the same but with different weapons. For class diversity to work the game also has to present scenarios, specially through PvE, in which these elements are valuable, cc is the one that has less and less value proportional to other classes when their damage ratios are buffed (still relevant in PvP i suppose).

In theory it is possible to achieve this state, yet any idea it can flop, unfortunately i don’t have access to the game code nor the structure required to run a server to really try it out.

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