Hi there, good morning! (because it’s morning here!)
I am Satoru and although I was not granted the key to participate on the International Server test, I have a Nexon KR account, so I could played on their CBT the last few days.
Currently my highest character is a Psychokino level 60, and I will base my feedback from what I learned while playing him, but not all topics here will be too specific for the Wizard tree itself.
Well, lets start!
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1) Skill’s Scaling
Before talking about the skills I think it’s important to understand how damage is calculated in ToS. It is fairly simple, they roughly only use addition and subtraction:
Damage = weapon_damage + your_damage stat + skill_damage - enemy_defense
There is still things like Critical (which I also think is flat value) and skill Attributes (which are the only % in the game), but I don’t know if the later only increase the base damage of skills or the final damage as a whole.
So, thinking about it I noticed there are 3 questions to determine if a skill is worth leveling or not, they are:
a) Does this skill gain max number of hits or duration when leveled?
Most of the time these are the skills you want to level up with your job points, like Pyromancer’s Fireball (hits) and Elementalist’s Ice Rain (duration), or almost any buff skill. They can get ridiculously strong if you go deeper into their Circles, reaching level 10~15 on those skills. Usually this type of skill is barely useless at low levels, though.
b) Does this skill has any CC/utility?
Unless the skill also fits on category “a”, you will most likely leave it at level 1, but they will be good nonetheless to have on your bar.
Example of skill that also fits category “a”: Telekinesis (it’s a form of CC that get extra hits with levels, so leveling is good).
Example of skill that do not fit category “a”: Earthquake (only gains small amount of damage as level up, but has a strong AoE CC, meaning level 1 is fine).
c) Is this damage gain worth it?
This is a tricky one. When you are leveling and just got your new and shiny skill, you may think that the numbers it shows are great, but the truth is that they will fade away later on the game as you level up and upgrade your weapon. Remember how I said damage was calculated?
Early when you have 100 physical attack from stats and weapon, your hit-once-nuke with 250 base damage will be doing an amazing 350 final damage. However, when you get your Rank 5 class and your stats and weapon grants you 600 physical attack (that’s the damage you will do with your auto attacks), your hit-once-nuke won’t be a nuke anymore at 850 damage.
Skills from high Rank Classes will probably have high amount of damage gain per level, but early Rank skills will be meaningless for investment.
Example of skill with bad scaling that is still good to put 1 point: Energy Bolt (always has the same number of attacks and splash as level up, the damage is low, but gives you AoE power).
Example of skill with bad scaling that is not even worth at level 1: Flare (will only hit monsters that are burning, once, and the damage is rather weak for its cost and cooldown)
Conclusion: number of hits and duration scales harder than damage, even if the damage of the former is also low (having a skill do 5 “auto attacks” is still better than doing only one), because of how damage calculation works.
Skill Attributes, being % based may lower the problems here, but I don’t know what is the max level for them and they will still work better for high Rank Skills than the lower ones.
The most practical fix would be to make all skills do % damage, instead of flat.
The least practical fix would be to make every skill has at least one of the following: increasing number of hits, increasing duration, AoE or utility/CC, so they are worth leveling.
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2) Specific Skills/Characteristics
Fireball and other skills that gain hits every level: they start with low hit count, but steadily gain more hits with each level.
Example: Fireball at level 1 has 1 hit, at level 15 has 15 hits. This is an insane change from useless to rather broken.
Skills like this should be homogenised, like level 1 having 3 hits and gaining 1 extra hit every 2 levels, leading to 10 hits at level 15. IMC had done this with some skills already (ie. Reflect Shield) and seems to be the appropriate approach they should take.
Firewall: the nerf from CBT2 to CBT3 was way too harsh. Unless you go for Pyro Circle 2 and 3, it is not worth investing into Firewall. The nerf made it into an homogenized scaling ability (gain 1 extra square every 2 levels, instead of every level like before), which is good, but now level one gives only 1 square (6 squares before). I think it would be fair for this skills to start with 3 squares, still half from what it was last beta.
Telekinesis: this skill is super cool, but way too clunky. At level 5 I can grab an object and hit it 3 times on the ground, but here are the clunkiness:
- If I grab a monster and it dies on my first hit, the skill is canceled even if I have 2 more hits to do.
- If I grab a Fireball, it will start to proc when a monster is hit and will disappear, canceling my skill too before the max hit number.
- The skill makes me stand still while other monsters gather around, but the AoE of the squashing is too small and won’t hit them, making me an easy target.
- Even though this skill has high cooldown and the gimmicks above, it seems to only hit 2 other mobs on the squashing area, which I think is too little.
Things I think should be changed so this is skill is not useless in PvE (really, I have this and Psychic Pressure, but Pressure is only good for bosses and Telekinesis is clunky, so I am leveling with Energy Bolt and Fireball only since level 15… TAT):
- Make it hit 4 monsters on the ground when squashing.
- Increase the area of the squashing so we can damage monsters that are murdering us while standing still.
- If I grab a monster and it dies from the damage, make it explode only after the skill is finished, so it won’t be canceled so soon.
- Not necessary, but it would be nice if Fireball and other objects like traps (i think they are grabable too) only started to procc after they are dropped from the bubble, so it won’t cancel the skill too.
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3) Stats
I will get this short because I am tired from typing this post (/lazy).
Intellect seems to be an underpowered stat now, since they moved Block Penetration from it to Spirit. Now every stat does 3~4 things, except for Intellect that only raises magical attack.
Strength: physical attack, critical damage and max carry weight.
Constitution: max HP, HP regen, critical resistence and max carry weight (yes, both do it).
Intellect: magical attack.
Spirit: max SP, SP regen, block penetration and magic defense (only every few points).
Dexterity: critical chance, evasion and precision.
We could move Critical damage to Dexterity and max carry weight just for Constituition, so both damaging stats keep simple, but still necessary. Or add something back to Intellect.
This is not a big issue, just doesn’t seem fair.
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4) Mouse Control
There were a few bugs when using Mouse option for control, including the fight against Nephelentes boss (you need to gather something from his mouth, but Mouse would only allow you to attack) and a quest on the Chapel 2nd floor (level 35 i guess, where we had to put some stones on pillars around).
But a day after I found those IMC made an update to fix some other clunkiness Mouse Control had, so it’s possible that the bugs are fixed already (I mentioned it so people could check later the quests).
This is it. I don’t know if I will be playing more on the Beta, so good work for everyone starting today and leave me your opinions later!
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@Update
