With JP heavily nerfed in the hit-count limit, JP’s main use for maximizing damage is with nukes such as Blood Curse. It seems a lot less party friendly now; no longer a go-to class unfortunately just for that spell alone. It’s a shame too, Linker was perhaps the first Wiz class to give you a sense of OPness - which was probably the problem.
What of Physical and Spiritual Link? Were they finally fixed in this update?
JP could be better reworked, low duration and higher CD, could be without hit limit but halved damage on linked mobs and not allowing multi linked hits.
Now it really became a bad filler class.
Same for FB, could had lowered the damage to 20% and increasing 2.5% or 5% per level, keeping the hit counts and the size.
They can make JP not working with the user 's skills/attacks.
Only other players in the party will benefit from JP.
In before all the doppel mains come here to tell you that linker its still OP and needs to be nerfed or rather deleted completly.
Its very sad what happened to linker since it was a flawless class, the ONLY class that actually was filling the role that it was suposed to fill, but now, after too many people crying over and over since beta this is what we finally got, another usless non-party friendly class.
Im always gonna laugh at people that complained about linker because of this two actual facts:
1.- Linker only works in PVE and has only 2 functional skills (JP and HK). And dont forget, with the new monster changes PVE has become a joke, mobs die too fast to even think that linker can be an “OP” class, but rather an utility class that helps to clear things faster, but hey, that’s totally OP.
2.- People complain and ask for nerfs about a class that does what its supposed to do and does it well, and then proced to complain when the class becomes totally usless cause of the nerfs and start to ask for buffs.
Im still waiting for the swash buckling nerf, i mean, that skills its op too it makes mobs go into 1 spot, wich kind of sorcery would allow a class that its oriented to lure mobs and tank them to actually do that? better nerf the skill and make to provoke only 1 mob each 2ranks so people would actually have to take pelt 3 or ■■■■ themselfs.
RIP the best and unique concept class of this game.
The worst part of the continuous changes to link, is that it went in the complete opposite direction it should have gone.
The main problem with Joint penalty was the fact that AOE damage was heavily multiplied and damage became too front loaded. This led to insta-killing packs of 10 mobs of similar hp. There are plenty of ways to fix linkers.
Some possibilities that could have balanced the damage issue:
But instead they just lowered the number of hits before it breaks. Now Joint penalty is only useful for 1-2 skills while still having a 22s cooldown. Linker is now relegated as a non-party support, yet still has the same problem of being a front loaded nuke. I can still link > blood curse kill almost anything under 300k hp, I just can’t do it in a party.
And to rub salt into the wound, the remaining skills are still useless.
Phys link will get your glass cannons killed (and on this note, is there a point to getting more than 5 links? My understanding is that you need to be in a party, so anything past 5 pts is useless).
Spiritual chain doesn’t link most of the buffs that are worthwhile.
Umbilical cord only has a 50% uptime, and the stat gains are useless for most builds (e.g. giving STR/DEX to a wizard, giving INT/SPR to a swordsman or archer, giving CON to anyone with the current mechanic that it only increases max hp and not current hp).
Linker is now relegated as a non-party support, yet still has the same problem of being a front loaded nuke. I can still link > blood curse kill almost anything under 300k hp, I just can’t do it in a party.
This pretty much sums up the state of linker at the moment, and where i agree on that i totally disagree on the “reducing” the effects from linker, sadly people fail to see the point on linker skills and keep sugesting ways of nerfing it instead of making it viable while respecting the original role that the class was supossed to fill.
Oh, and by the way, the way that IMC forced linker players to go c3 its totally retarded, instead of buffing/reworking their c2 and c3 skills, they nerfed the only 1 skill from c1 that was good, such a beautiful balance isnt it?, they should totally look for improvements in the c2 and c3 circle to make them appealing because as you said, spiritual chain is trash, almost no buff its wortwhile sharing and the same goes for umbilical chord.
All on all i had lost my faith on IMC and in the community itself, if anything this big “rebalance” patch was nothing but a high ammount of nerfs to so many classes to the point where the “good ones” are limited to just a few. For me rebalancing stuff its not about nerfing toons that do what they supose to do, but about of buffing toons that are not doing what they are supossed to, that being said, when a communty has a selfish behavior and they care more about soling then party oriented content you can expect them to consantly ask for nerfs and complain.
While I understand your sentiment, I don’t think any game designer could accept a skill that is effectively a 10x damage multiplier. The direction IMC with multipliers is fairly clear with the new patch, and a nerf to JP was inevitable. To keep in in line with the other damage support skills, tying the damage to stats seemed like the most logical step.
I fully agree with you on the C1,2,3 issue. Linkers were pretty much a 1 trick pony, and I would like to see them get more options rather than remain a JP+HK bot. Ideally, I would like to see the skill set balanced to the point where it would make sense to not even have JP in a linker build.
I am in a similar position as you; I have little faith in IMC’s design and development choices. The linker support class was the only reason I picked this game up in the first place. It’s fairly disheartening when I remember the class choices and build options advertised back in beta.