Tree of Savior Forum

Patch Notes - March 3, 2021 - Collective Analysis of Classes Changes

General Discussion
#1

As I was returning to the game, IMC launchs a hell of a patch.
The amount of changes isn’t as big as Ep.13’s release. But it is relevant for the game, specially because brings significant changes to the mechanics of about half of Cleric’s and Archer’s classes trees.
With this in mind, I invite everyone to share their thoughts on the changes of the classes they are more attuned to.
I am no class master, but I know a few things about the meta game and how it works later in the game. And also have way too many characters on my lobby to be considered ok.

With this introduction, I will begin with my own - I hope not too salty - analysis.

Following the changes as they are listed on the patch:

Cleric - 2 new attributes for Guardian Saint for DPS builds. Both nerfing Healing. Maybe the end of “I shall never die” builds? I still believe Cleric is a bad base class for DPS builds.

Druid - Buffed as a self-support class (increasing the effectiveness of other classes in the same build), but nerfed as a DPS class.

Crusader - New Art for IMC’s list of memes. Less damage amp from Chant and less healing effect from all skills. Class nerfed. But Chant now changes the property of all magical damage dealt by the character to Holy. Huge buff for any build where it is included (Crusader-PD-Krivis becoming a thing…), and is not Exo-Miku.

Krivis - Now a real self-support class. Excellent with Crusader and Exorcist for the Brilliance debuff. Pretty sure it was good when I left, about a month ago, and it will be really good tomorrow. And press F in respect for the skill scrolls…

Exorcist - Koinonia met Giltine’s embrace, and Grand Cross took its place. The kit got buffed through new combo and more damage, and strangely it is not a Rubric buff …

Sadhu - Somebody in IMC’s dev team decided Sadhu is only playable when with its Vaivora just because. These changes do little for those who don’t have it, and are more of the same for those who do.

Musketeer/Tiger Hunter - Overall classes got buffed, more fluid to play, and gained consistency when played with classes which don’t use [Musket]. Any individual nerf is compensated somewhere else.

Cannoneer/Matross - Read last paragraph, just replace [Musket] with [Cannon]. I would say it is not awesome because cap damage is still 10M and classes lack multi-hit.

Arquebusier - Class seems more fluid with its execution. Got an attribute to keep up with the changes of the classes which share its burdens. Ooops, I mean ‘weapons’. I would say it is not awesome because cap damage is still 10M and class lacks multi-hit.

Arbalester/Wugushi - Surprisingly buffed. And in a very explicit way. Can’t recognize IMC’s usual handwork in here. Both classes became BFFs, btw.

Quarrel Shooter - Tried to keep up with the changes of the previous classes. All are buffs with Arbalester on the build, but are Arbalesters picking QS?
Clearly, if you choose to use a crossbow, you will pick Arbalester due to weapon and Wugushi because it is powerful. But would you pick QS instead of Ranger? Or Falconeer? Or Appraiser?

Paladin - “Unplayable”, “too weak”, “this is a joke”, “delete this sh!t”, “cry for rework”. All reactions from those who think this class has only 1 skill.
For everybody else, and those who play GTW, thank goodness!

Oracle - Half of the class got nerfed. Pointing and laughing maniacally Ha ha.

Monk - “Hi guys, I exist!!”. Yeah, sure, whatever Monk, go back to the bench. See you when your Vaivora comes out.

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#2

Crusader:
I wonder if the changes really did anything aside of putting it as a filler to allow PD stick to Chaplain for the buffs. Krivis is already fully holy property with the patch with the change so Crusader conversion does nothing to it. Plague Doctor doesn’t benefit at all from the holy conversion unless you bring it together with Paladin or Chaplain to boost the property,rather, not having holy property but a broader coverage seems to be more important now that different magic properties deal more damage against different armor types, making Chant a detriment in case the enemy does take extra damage from poison or fire property (with fire,poison and holy you have full coverage for plate,leather and cloth, holy alone only covers plate).
The only combination that really won is the combination with Sadhu because psychokinesis is an oddball.

Krivis: being either strike property or holy property is a huge upside for the class, focusing on anti-plate damage and being an option for new builds on the physical tree, mainly because of Aukuras and Piety, which is a very strong attack skill, especially with the art against bosses.
It’s better for physical builds now than for magic builds since for magic builds, Druid is still the better option with the addition of the Sterea Troph attribute that makes it like Zalciai, offering Druid a better crit coverage, which the physical side has covered with Zealot,while offering decent recovery on top of it.

Druid: got upgraded to more stable damage boosts now that fits magic builds much more, while removing the healing ability from Krivis, making Druid more of a staple for magic builds again (probably only fighting with Plague Doctor now).

Paladin: Barrier:Devotion wasn’t groundbreaking and just bad design. It’s sad they didn’t rework the effect, now it’s just more of a “now I die for everyone” thing than before. Support builds will probably ditch it for Kabbalist.
The rest of the class is ok, still needs a maximum skill point rebalance (like most of the classes in the game), at least it can shine in auto-matching where you are last man standing most of the times, saving runs from wipes.

Exorcist: Vaivora was indirectly nerfed, but they needed the time for Grand Cross to fit into the rotation.

Monk: Energy Blast being strike property finally means you can build a full strike build and use the strike damage booster NPC cards and Misrus assister to boost its damage. Monk vaivora is coming in about two months to double down on the strike aspect, which is great news for all Monk players,myself included.

Cleric: the attributes are really useful for CM automatch and field farming since you nearly never take any damage there anyway. More damage means faster clears, what’s there not to like.
I initially thought that the attributes are useless, but looking at the actual gameplay I know that there are contents where the healing boost just does nothing at all.
Maybe they should’ve made the boost 20% and removed the badly designed boost from Guardian Saint and Smite in return, or at least make the enhance attribute of Guardian Saint affect the 10% value.

Oracle: Divine Might was overpowered,looking at the boosts one could achieve with it when coupled with the goddess sets and vaivora effects, so the balance was probably necessary.
I hope the developers will consider boosting more via equipment and balance patches rather than having everything depend on these buffs to maximize damage output.

Sadhu: Press F to pay your respects, the poor guy is still meditating to achieve enlightenment while his astral body whacks monsters

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#3

You gain ease to use (30 min buff) but with a nerfed version (+10% damage instead of +20%) which gets diluted in all the bonuses you’re supposed to have with your equipment (dysnai/glacia + balinta + ark + accessories). And unless you play something like inquisitor with zero investment in spr/healing the -80% you get on healing simply means you’ll never use the Faith version.

Healing has been nerfed but is now available by default, so instead of choosing DPS or healing, you get both with a factor around 80% DPS and 20% healing. See this as Balinta effect skills.

Meanwhile my Paladin/Inqui enjoys smashing faces with Conviction and Demolition, while feeling like stone with Stone Skin :wink:

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#4

Somebody in IMC’s dev team decided Sadhu shouldn’t be playable, even with its Vaivora

Fixed it for you :tired:
One day
2031. Sadhu will be playable, mark my words

10% final damage isn’t bad, but I don’t think it’ll help much.
And you lose good healing, which isn’t as necessary these days on dps, but feels very rough to see happen.

I’m really glad Krivis got some love. It deserves it.
Though, Krivis and Druid just feel like Highlander and Barbarian now…

I’ve never been fond of Exor’s recent entire-tree rotational playstyle thing, and now I think I dislike it even more. For those that like it, it looks really cool.

Ranger-Arbal-any is a good starting point for Arbal. QS seems okay as the third leg. The skills hit pretty hard, and have a channel for Dahlia. It’s a bit of a toss-up.
Wugu looks better dps-wise, but has a hefty range requirement.
QS skills aside from Caltrops have a pretty low cd compared to Wugu’s, but can probably easily hit cap with Crit Shot’s bonus, even with a shield.

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#5

maybe in case of magic Cleric. Physical Cleric is kinda hard-capped at about 30% max HP per Heal (not including the linger attribute HoT) unless you max res sacrae for more SPR.
I’ll do some testing on HP recovery for Balinta in the next weeks, it will probably outheal any healing skills in the long run with enough investment.

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#6

I haven’t played all classes that got changes, but in my opinion:

Krivis rework: Very nice.
Druid: F for thorns.
Exorcist’s Grand Cross: Decent, I like it.

Musketeer rework: I like it a lot. My main complaint about the class was how serenity reduced mov speed by so much, making gameplay a lot clunkier, but now it’s all good. I also like the changes to Penetration Shot and Covering Fire. I can’t comment on the changes to Snipe and Headshot though, my Musketeer is only used to do 1 CM per day, so I don’t have those skills.

Arquebusier changes: The Precision Fire sfr nerf is kinda sad (especially since I use the channeling set, now I don’t cap with every single hit). However I do have to say the targetting of this skill feels more consistent now, at least on controller mode.

But the biggest change for me is the new armor advantages. As a Shadowmancer main, dealing more damage to cloth targets is a very welcome change. The ‘Attack against Cloth’ line on the Diffuse staff finally makes sense.

Also I’d like to say a big “haha no” to the hard mode res sacrae instance. The relic system sucks. Good thing I can just ignore this content, at least for now.

#7

After playing around with Krivis, I’m seeing potential problems ahead:

  1. Piety (rework of Melstis)

The skill feels a bit clunky to use because it only works when there is a monster with the brilliance debuff near the caster, and with near I mean about the range of 100.
You read nowhere that the range of the skill is only this low, starting a lot of frustration if you don’t know how far that is exactly, since the game tells you that you cannot use the skill if the target is out of range.

The second problem is the skill animation, which is like Heal, just a bit longer,making it come over as strange when using the skill in a physical build while also being slow for a skill that has 3 overheats and only 10 seconds of Cool down. The developers need a bit of fine-tuning when Krivis switches to physical (delay reduced by attack speed would be nice).

The third problem is the reliance on brilliance to be there. Brilliance is a debuff that is applied when you deal damage with Divine Stigma or Zaibas, and it lasts only for 5 seconds.
This means you have 5 seconds after dealing damage with these two skills to use the 3 overheats of Piety, and only targets affected by the brilliance debuff will receive damage (Piety can only hit up to 10 targets so it’s no problem with Zaibas, but Divine Stigma only affects 5 targets), so for dealing damage to a boss you can rely on Divine Stigma to use Piety whenever it is off cool down.
In Challenge mode, Division singularity or simple field farming, you have to rely on the new Aukuras attribute that affects nearby targets with the brilliance debuff (and provokes them with it) for 30 seconds after cast. This means you have 50% downtime on this mechanic to use Piety against mobs, not as bad as it initially looks, but it heavily limits the AoE capabilities of Krivis in general, relying again mostly on Zaibas, so keep that in mind if you consider Krivis as your main class.

As a bonus, the brilliance debuff does not get applied instantaneously via Divine Stigma, making you wait a bit before you can use Piety to deal damage, so keep that in mind,too.

  1. Aukuras
    The additional damage is really good, but the rework brings two potential problems with it.
    First of all, IMC considers this skill as last priority to level up, looking at the release of the Krivis vaivora, since Zaibas is still not good at low levels even with the Catatumbo arts (hit count stays the same, so lvl 1 Zaibas only hits 5 times) and you will rely on higher levels to apply the brilliance debuff to use Piety.
    Second, the attribute that applies brilliance will provoke the enemies affected by the debuff, and the range and AoE is larger than the range of Piety, so it is hard to keep in check how many targets are debuffed and still can get hit with Piety using this strategy, and it lasts only 30 seconds with 60 seconds cool down, which is bad for CM and DS for obvious reasons.

  2. Zalciai
    The rework has a weakness, although I don’t know if it really matters that much outside of Res Sacrae dungeons, that being Zalciai fixed as a removable buff in tier 1 with 60 seconds cool down.
    I’ve already suffered a loss total of 2 times in 1 run by it being despelled shortly after reapplying the buff, the higher cool down time surely is punishing here. The 30 minute duration is a boon,though, just like Daino, less skills to take up space in the skill set 1 in controller mode.

Edit: Another issue I found with Zalciai: The buff is divided into tier 1 and tier 2 buff, and both versions don’t stack… If you use your own Zalciai, it is a tier 1 buff that can be removed and replaced, and god forbid some party member is also a Krivis and uses Zalciai, your Zalciai is removed and replaced with a tier 2 buff (second column, cannot be removed by normal means).
This wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that Zalciai only has half efficiency if it isn’t your own buff (the tier 1 first column buff), so you also have to watch out for this in case you’re in a party with other Krivises. You can replace it with your own Zalciai if you accidentally step into another players Zalciai, but that by itself is seemingly bugged, so I had it happen to me already that I had to use Zalciai twice after my own buff was replaced to get my own buff effect back, meaning 3 minutes with halved Zalciai.

I wonder why this is still a thing, they should have made it the other way around, party Zalciai 1st tier first column buff that can be removed/replaced and your own Zalciai 2nd column second tier buff that cannot be removed/replaced by any means, including another players Zalciai.

  1. Daino
    The loss of some accuracy and the damage boost attribute in return for block penetration isn’t so bad, as long as it has that 30 minutes buff duration.

  2. Zaibas
    I still believe this skill isn’t worth the investment, especially after realizing that the hit limit stays the same even with the catatumbo arts. You will still need it at least at lvl 1 to apply brilliance to use Piety since Aukuras and Divine Stigma cannot cover multiple targets alone.

  3. Divine Stigma
    If it wasn’t for that initial delay until brilliance is applied (about 1 second) this skill would be perfect.
    Every second, it reapplies brilliance debuff after dealing damage, so you have the full 20 seconds of its cool down covered against a single target like a boss monster to use Piety. The cool down reduction really helped the skill a lot, and against devil types it even has full uptime of 20 seconds with damage.
    The only downside of this update is the huge loss of damage by the Melstis change(14 hits at lvl 10 with full arts and attributes are only about 37254%SFR, which is half the damage of Piety against a single target with twice the cool down) , but in return its now more stable for single target damage and has that 5% defense ignore effect (no idea if it makes a big difference since it’s only that low, but better than nothing) for other strike/holy property skills applied to the target.

To recap the changes:
Krivis has become a great addition to any Cleric build that has the basics covered and that doesn’t care about optimizing damage but rather is looking for stability instead.
With Aukuras,Daino and Zalciai, stable damage output is increased, and Piety is a reliable tool to deal with pesky boss monsters in combination with Divine Stigma.
However, Krivis is not the perfect choice for min-max players since it lacks crit rate boosts (Druid and Zealot are still the better choices here), and stable damage still has the weakness that bursting value is really low, so it will perform worse in raids,WBR and JS than similar classes with higher burst potential(again, looking at Druid and Zealot).

One thing is for certain: Krivis is now a full-fledged red circle damage dealer class, although it is still more lop-sided to the support tier just like Zealot and Druid.

#8

wugushi change, become really strong if you have pardoner for support

#9

As a Musketeer main (Musk/THunter/Arquebus), my toughts are:

PROs for PvE: Finally! Damm I can’t say for how long I’ve been wishing changes like these… Like, since way back after the Musketeer rework? Sniper’s Serenity no longer puts you in a Wheelchair <3 and no longer loses duration. THunter’s buffs becoming 30min long is a dream come true (so you don’t have to switch VVR every 35s in order to rebuff). Also, Snipe have always hit dmg cap due to the insane SFR even at level 1 (Headshot would hit it as well very often). These changes cutted their SFR by half but compensated with the “wound” debuff, so now we can actually spend points on these two without losing damage due to cap. Covering Fire is way more consistent now but the buff to Volleyfire actually made it far better than CFire (+2 targets in comparison and now has way more SFR despite being a lvl10 skill instead of CF’s 15)
CONs for PvE: Arquebusiers aren’t able to switch between VVRs (Lever Action <> Triple Steps) anymore due to the new obligatory buff in order to use the class’ skills, which is a HUGE NERF (every single musketeer I know dropped Arquebusier due to this change) and does massive impact in some scenarios like trying to get rid of multiple targets (Triple Step’s speciality) such as Small Gribas on Moring Raid or the Assault Mechanic on WBR. The new auto-targeting system might sound good, but in reality you just end up targeting whatever is closer to your character i.e when you use Precision Fire trying to hit that sweet line with X mobs in CM that are perfectly alligned, but you end up shooting against an empty wall because there is 1 single mob in that direction and the auto-targeting BS aimed for it. Also, Blind debuff now is a huge problem as now you can’t use Lucky Strike, Penetration Shot, etc in cases where before you would just turn to the target and use it even blind (so in moring Automatch, I now have to chase the plant because I can’t use most skills while blinded). The nerf on Eye Of The Tiger’s critical chance isn’t that impactful tbh, I tought it would look worse in-game. The SFR nerfs are very perceptible though: Precision Fire still hits hard, but not 10kk every single shot like before, same goes for Lucky Strike. Pinpoint Fire always hit cap, so buffing it doesn’t change anything at all.

General PvP: I’ve tested it on Gemstone and TBL (and yes, there were newbies and good players as well)and I have to say… RIP. On PvP this class has always been kinda lackluster when comparing to others, but now it seems laughable. New Snipe and Headshot now don’t deal full damage on hit; for PvE this change to both skills are positive as explained, but you’d never hit 10kk on a player (jeez, on GTW/TBL you wouldn’t even hit close to 50k sometimes due to the amount of protection buffs and PvP area rules) and since the concept for this class on PvP always has been long range one-shot, it is now kinda shitty as people can now heal or use debuff removal skills, not to mention that both bleeding debuffs removes stealth, wtf??? Another huge loss is Grooving Muzzle, which used to give us a huge Accuracy buff and would make us not worry that much about this attribute for PvP, couldn’t they at least compensate it on the Sniper Serenity’s attribute that’s already there???. As for the Arquebusier nerfs, I guess Precision Fire and Lucky Strike won’t be as good on GTW now? (ok, they were KINDA strong before, but you wouldn’t compete with a Fletcher/Mergen LMAO what about those IMC?). Once again, not being able to switch to my Triple Steps is a HUGE nerf.

Guess I’ll have to abandon my PvP Musketeer then…

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#10

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