You are right, was not clear enough - didn’t mean all of the Sword classes.
I don’t feel that it was completely my fault as I took every single skill available and still only ended with 3 actual “Hit” skills (even being generous and including Earthquake and Energy Bolt). I had 2 skills classified as “Hit” because they could be attributed to deal a whopping single tick of 60% of my MATK lol Yeah, takes 2 of those skill “hits” to deal about as much as a single AA, as odd as that is.
While I do understand that my picks were setting up for a favorable late game, and a very specific play style and goal in mind, I don’t feel that IMC has properly balanced everything out yet if I have to go 5 ranks with that kind delivery. And if I wanted to go C3 Alch after all of that? How can it be allowed to even possibly have a class route that actually has to AA for 90% of their DPS? And that’s not just solo play. After a full buff/debuff rotation, what, as a support I should just be content to stand there for the other 40 seconds doing nothing as a buff-bot until my cd’s hit? I don’t think the party would much enjoy that either.
I really hope they flesh out some additional skills for the classes that go C3 because as it is I’m not complaining about the lack of usefulness of the skills I have but mainly of the lack of skills to choose from. If they add additional skills, and additional “Hit” type skills, to some of the C2 or C3 ranks, then I think my problem would be solved. See… my route, as I mentioned, had 3 actual attack skills even with taking every single skill available to me. Another 2 skills were improperly classified as “Hit” only because their attribute did less than an AA (Thaum’s Shrink/Swell body). Were it that I had additional skills to choose from at my C2 and C3 elections then I very likely wouldn’t have had this situation.
Example: C1 Wizard (5 skills to pick from)-> C1 Pyro (5 skills) -> C1 Linker (4 skills) -> C1 Elementalist (4 skills) -> C1 Sorcerer (4 skills) -> C1 Necro (assume only 4 skills since we had all skills at c1 this cbt)
Total skills available: 26 skills
Example2: C3 Wizard (8 skills to pick from) ->C3 Linker (6 skills)
Total skills available: 14
By R6 alone C3 routes have roughly half the skills available as compared to C1 routes. Not every skill is even useful though and the C3 routes force you to sometimes invest in skills you may not actually want to simply because you don’t have other skills to choose from. Yeah, the C1 route probably wouldn’t be too cohesive, and it they’d be missing out on elements that would make them shine from C2 or C3 of specific ranks, so I’m not saying it would be viable or realistic. What I am saying though is that at every new circle you get 2-5x the skill choices that you would get from some C2 elections and almost assuredly every C3.
It just brings me back full-circle. So let’s say you decide, hey, full support. The whole game even. What then? Buff buff buff, your durations are golden because you’re C3 and have skilled into them, debuff debuff debuff, everything is on cd.
Stand there? Or auto attack the remaining 90% of the time because you don’t have enough hit skills to cycle through even if they are situational? You’re suggesting that I have to auto attack because I made poor class elections and I’m contesting that I have to auto attack because there is no other option given to me by IMC in my classes.
EDIT: Just catching up on the kcbt3 thread again and I’m noticing more and more C2 + C3 skills opening up for some classes so hopefully more are added to Wiz elections too xD
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Personally I think that SP should be brought to the front as a skill use limiter, and cooldowns should be pushed to the back. Managing skill use by managing your SP bar is a far more hands on way to integrate skill use in combat than simply locking them behind a cooldown. The overheat system was an improvement, but I think a further improvement would be if the overheat system was applied via increasing SP costs (exponentially, and perhaps also globally) rather than just locking down the skill with a cooldown.
I see no reasons swordsmen shouldn’t be rewarded for pushing their SPR up a bit in an attempt to make up for one of their glaring weaknesses, or likewise be rewarded for forgoing it all together with less convenient busts of damage.
Pre-renewal had a great relationship between attacks and skill use and I think ToS would only benefit from being influenced in that regard.
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On the other hand, I believe IMC is trying to avoid making ToS into the skill spam game that RO turned out to be.
In RO, virtually all of the relevant skills (whether support or attack) can be spammed if you have 145+ DEX and the support of a 130-140 INT Clown. Third party programs like AHK allow us to spam skills even more efficiently, and because HP/SP pots have almost no cooldown/delay, a program like ROMedic has changed the playing field in RO. These days, unless you use very specific builds with specific equips (status/DD Sniper with BG Bow), you almost do not normal attack at all because the damage can simply be potted. For many classes, you simply spam the same skills until your enemies die (DD Biochemists, DD High Wiz, DD Stalkers, etc). As such, winning 1-on-1 usually came down to a) whoever attacks first and b) whoever has better ping, assuming equipment is not an issue.
From what I can see in this game, IMC tried to avoid most of that. Skills with cast time have their mechanics changed so that no stats affect casting time anymore (DEX affects cast time in RO, and it’s possible to get instant/near-instant cast). Many skills have significant cooldown especially if they are seen as particularly strong. No skills can reduce your cooldown to almost 0, like Bragi did in RO. HP and SP potions have significant cooldown, so you cannot spam even if you are the richest guy in the server. Although you may not need to, if you have those high level potions which probably heals you up to full per pot.
I think these are interesting changes. No doubt, the cooldown of some skills really need modification, and the damage of some skills should certainly be increased. But I view this as more of a balancing issue rather than a fault in the mechanics. Some classes are disadvantaged in this “normal-attack oriented” system (like Cryomancer), while others are more fortunate.
There are two things I would like to see in this “normal-attack oriented” system. The first is to make sure that almost every offensive class has a buff that would benefit them when they normal attack. Pyromancer is fortunate to have Enchant Fire, but it’d be nice if Cryomancer (maybe 2nd Circle, if not 1st Circle) has something similar, like Enchant Frost, to deal more damage. Maybe someone wants to argue that Cryomancer is NOT an attack class because it has a BLUE icon, which implies that it is a class based on DEFENSE, but I’m not going to go into that discussion. That was just a class I’d personally appreciate a buff on.
The second thing is to create more variations in one’s normal attack animations (and maybe change the damage multiplier as well). In fighting games, we have things like Weak Attack, Medium Attack and Strong Attack. It’d be more interesting if we had more varied animations like that. Maybe it already exists in this game, but as a Wizard player, I really don’t notice much of a difference in its normal attacks animations.
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I think in TOS it’s more about rotation than infinite skills spam. Even in case of cryomancer, skill rotation works fine. Sure they lose to static DPS comparing to pyromancer, but not all enemies are standing still for you to spam your skills like no tomorrow.
Wait what, you went Wizard 3/Thaumaturge 2? I can’t stop laughing. This is a masterpiece so I can’t help but quote the whole thing.
This is why it’s so good to allow these insane builds. Even if you’re just joking, that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while. Wizard 3, and then not going elementalist. In fact, going thaumaturge of all things. And suggesting alchemist afterwards. One of my friends tried wizard 2 and gave up right away and rerolled.
I checked your post history to see if I was being deceived, and
I’m dying over here. This deserves a medal. Post some screenshots.
Make up your mind.
Then why did you list swell arm?
Trying to stay at range doesn’t guarantee you’ll never get attacked, and the new subzero shield works on magic damage.
Where is it documented that it’s supposed to work on unattributed lethargy and isn’t glitched too? The fact that it’s the same bonus as the maxed attribute makes it look like it’s there to account for the attribute.
So what? Everyone will get the attribute anyway. If there’s strike damage purely from being frozen, that means it’s not wizard-specific. It would be dumb to remove that effect from a wizard’s freezes while keeping it for other freezes.
Everyone uses a dagger instead of a shield, which does allow meleeing. That is a lame problem with rods, but that doesn’t make ice wall something you never need to use. Weapon swap exists to allow taking advantage of the shield bonus.
Your video shows a wizard killing things by meleeing. How do you reconcile this with this?
So in conclusion, wizards can use melee attacks, but you think they’re not strong enough and need buffs, so the only reason you “didn’t have the option” is your melee attack is too weak.
Frozen enemies take more damage from autoattacks. The place to buff cryo would be Ice Blast, which is pretty pointless after the nerf it got.
As for those of you asking for more animations, I can accept that as a reason for complaining about the current autoattacks.
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In conclusion, wizards should be able to use weapons with main physical damage for physical attacks.
The buffs already exist. We just aren’t allowed to use them.
and the animations exist. If anything was proved by the multi-classing script abuse it was that all class outfits have the same animations done. You don’t crash your client if you’re wearing a psycho outfit and swing a melee weapon.
Yeah, I certainly did, to test late game viability of support roles with a later class election to deliver damage.
C3 Wiz for the QC attribute, Thaum for self-buffs and a later C3 election for INT stacking, leading up to a few final class elections to provide skills to deliver the increased damage ratings.
I don’t regret it at all and will be doing it again lol
But that does not negate the point that you are implying that “class choice matters” but at the same time that I only had auto attack as delivery for the first 5 ranks because I made a poor choice? You’re saying because I chose a specific path that I should bend over and accept that I have to auto attack whereas I am saying that, regardless of role or route the player chooses, they should not be forced to rely on AA, but should have at least a few other viable delivery options.
That being said, additional skills brought into C2 and C3 circles would help all classes shine in their respective roles without having to self-gimp themselves early game and become AA reliant. I know the route I picked is niche and a set up for later. It doesn’t mean I should accept that IMC has specific routes that have little to no damage delivery methods. Hell, look at Cleric type choices. Healer, support, doesn’t matter what they are listed as they all have very viable delivery choices.
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Heck no, NO more of that go train on training dummy till you reach peak DPS BS.
People who loves to button spam got what they got…back in the year 2000. And we ending up with carpal tunnel elitism. We don’t need more DDR for MMO games.
OF that, some of it is still build choice if not a bit pigeon hole choices. Swordies probably have the closes thing to what WoW-era players are familar with.
But AA swordies being the prime class right now shows more of IMC doing it right then wrong with these desgn decisions.
Swordman tress have the most hit skills, no CD skills, self buff multipliers, Combo skils, and fillers…but…most people leave their Int @ 3…
Swordies are the button spammers of all base classes, Yet they are the ones who most do not have SPR to keep it up. That’s a good design choice. IF you want to be a dex swordie, fine, if you want to be a str swordie, fine as well, if you want to be a hybrid or maybe even SPR swordie, fine as well.
There’s so many nice swordies skills, you can practically link combo after combo after combo, especially fencers, so many linking combos…but you do like your dex for some unknown reason.
Wizard classes… that’s a tough one but it also makes sense since wizards were always about nukes and AoE, and more often then not, blowing your sp and CDs at once is the way wizards are…rest going poke poke with that AA is no a surpised design decision.
Heres what I don’t understand about your position:
How is spamming auto attacks different than spamming skills?
An auto attack is a skill with low damage, no sp cost and no cooldown.
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this i totally like as well. This way you aren’t double penalized. I don’t mind spaming sp pots to keep up with skill spamming. My trade off is the money it takes to buy those pots.
I’m really confused. You seem to be expecting something out of your build that isn’t present, and has a good reason to not be present.
Also, quick point of clarification, the “HIT” icon you see on your skills, is a mistake. It’s meant to be “HOT” ( and has been fixed in the kcbt ). This means that it is a popular skill, nothing else.
You literally chose a class path that only benefits late game ( whatever final damage class you choose with Quickcast + Thaumaturge Buffs will have a great DPS boost, maybe necromancer flesh cannon would be great ) and then wonder why you’re only able to auto attack until late game…
And then on top of that ask what would happen if you chose Alchemist. Well, it’s obvious - if you chose wizard c3 and then didn’t follow it up with any DPS class capable of taking advantage of the quick cast attribute and sure spell, then you’re gimping yourself hard. That’s not the game’s fault. That’s the beauty of the freedom of the game.
It’s not really that IMC has specific routes that are gimped… It’s that you consciously chose of your own freedom to take a path that is clearly gimped until late game. That’s your freedom, and why the freedom of choosing classes in this game is great.
In the end, your build might be worth it, if you choose your final classes wisely. But you have to know going into it - wizard c3 is a chore to level, because in the end it’s so good when used with a class that synergizes well. Thaumaturge does not synergize with wizard c3, it only adds onto it’s potential when you finally choose a DPS class. Thaumaturge is ultimately synergizing with whatever final DPS class you pick.
Also, just to add to the overall discussion of auto attacks: Wizard autos are very strong, and do a lot of damage if you jump-auto. I don’t see anything wrong with them, other than that they should be just as fast if you do them normally or if you jump-cancel. The delay for standing still is too long and silly. For most wizards, if you’re not mixing in auto attacks, you’re not doing as much damage as you should be doing.
The big difference is that AA is a part of battle system and IMO a minor part of it.
A skill type battle system is more or less a complete part of it.
What you would call dance dance revolution mmo. Non stop button press in a precise rotation to generate DPS is so yr2000.
A balancing of AA maybe old school but it isn’t as stale as training your muscle memory to do a series of button presses under stress. bad bad bad. We’ve had enough of those wow clones.
Right now i think the balance is decent. Some builds are very spammy some are burst and some are low. That’s fine because it makes it a lot MRE flexible then an entire game of DDR online
uh, again, what is an auto attack but another button in the line of buttons to press? In world of warcraft you could easily claim that is it different, as your character would autoattack automatically.
But in ToS ‘auto’ attacks are triggered the exact same way skills are.
Preface: I don’t want to come off as sarcastic so, if I do at any point, don’t think anything of it mate. I feel very strongly about specific classes (not just Thaum) who lack the option of damage delivery skills. Again, I hope this remedies itself by having more skill choices added later on to C2 and C3 of every class.
Believe me, I know and understand the implications of choosing my classes the way I did. I pointed this out in my post describing my feedback on my progressions and the Necromancer etc, in the full context of the actual quote that was made in this thread (not just the snippet), and even in this thread as well; in all these ways I’ve accepted that, yes, I did limit my offensive capabilities early on. That doesn’t mean that I agree that the reliance on AA is justified.
The snippet revisited:[quote=“Shadeborn, post:7, topic:124708, full:true”]
This beta I went C3 Wiz-> C2 Thaum -> C1 Necro. But I only chose Necro because of the limited selection I gave myself in terms of damage delivery… sure, I could buff up, but I didn’t have any skills to deliver that buffed damage when soloing lol And… oddly, there was a lot more soloing than I’d have expected lol So…yeah, Necro.
The next time I play I will be going C3 Wiz-> C3 Thaum-> ???-> PROFIT
I am still keeping my eyes peeled for something that really speaks to me and, the moment people whispered about Mimic months and months ago, it has had my interest. I have some ideas of what they could do, but no idea what they will actually do, and there are plenty of speculations. I will likely take a slow leveling approach though and make an alt if needed once I hit my R7 election. And even then I’ll need to be 100% sure on the exact number of ranks available and how the hidden class ranks will be counted lol (i.e. do you have 3 hidden classes available at R9 and can pick one for each C1 of R9, R10, and R11? Or perhaps you can pick only one hidden class quest and it takes you from R9 through R11? Or are you able to skip these hidden ranks and just pick additional classes from lower ranks? etc etc etc). Until more concrete evidence is out I likely won’t know my exact path =) But I know the first 200-240ish levels worth and that should give me plenty of time between the wait for another beta and the grind to R7 =P
[/quote]
The point that I’m attempting to make in this thread though is that no class should be forced to rely on AA, not even supports. Essentially what is being stated is that “you went support, so get used to auto attacking” lol See what I mean? There are only X buffs to cast and X debuffs, and X situational skills. We’re left with AA. Isn’t that a little silly? I can’t think of any other game where the support is just expected to stand there until the party’s buffs expire. Supports aren’t buff vendors that should be forced to stand there or hop around like lunatics in attempts to not passively wait. Archers and Swordies obviously don’t have to worry about a lack of delivery skills. Every possible combination of classes in their trees will result in greater than 3 attack skills, even if they are looking to fulfill the role of tank or just service vendor. Cleric has a few “gimped routes” aka support routes, so it isn’t just my class choice. C3 Cleric -> C3 Priest for instance. So after they have cast their buffs, or I have cast mine, and we’ve exhausted our situational support skills and debuffs, we… we… lol we’re expected to hop around auto attacking? (But that almosssssst doesn’t even count because there is no comparison between the effectiveness of a lv15 Heal/Cure vs a lv15… energy bolt and earthquake? lel because those skills for Wiz scale so utterly terribly they are almost a waste of points unless you’re desperate unlike the Heal/Cure counter-argument).
It is not so much the idea that it is broken, that in every other games even supports have damage skills, but it’s the fact that rather than just agreeing that a few offense skills would help these builds you’re just saying “yeah that’s how it’s supposed to be.” lol I mean… okay. Hear me out. Let’s say they really flesh out all C2 and C3 class skills and add 1-2 more skills in each. It doesn’t mean that I magically get OP and cackle on a mountain with lightning raining down around me. It means that my points are suddenly more important- I have the option to go full support or pick up a damage skill or two and sacrifice those points. My someday C3 Thaum is stretched thin as it is and I had to make cuts where I didn’t always want to. Imagine the difficulty of having to choose between a couple more viable skills?
In the end though my wishes for more skill selections may not mean a lot. I admit that. I mean, we have 400 more levels of content, X amount of end-game class elections that may get expounded upon later months after release etc. Maybe even just by 600 a full-time support will have enough skills to cycle through that they won’t have time to squeeze in even an auto attack. Meh. I guess we’ll see. But for now I still find it silly that any class choices, even up to 240ish at R7 pick, should be expected to hop around to fill their free time.
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Fair enough, but I don’t totally see how Wiz C3 is a support. To me, that’s a setup for a later DPS class for yourself, no benefit to others via supporting ( except reflect shield, but c’mon ). If you had gone, say, pyro c1 linker c1 thauma c3 that would seem more like a support build, and with pyro c1 you wouldn’t have any problems in the DPS department.
I also don’t see anything wrong with auto attacking on a wizard. It’s really pretty strong. Stronger than an archer’s auto, for sure. If you’re going wiz3 to prepare for some amazing r7/r8 class, then that’s kind of the price you’re paying. You’re still offering a party full thaum c3 buffs, so it’s not all horrible.
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Eh, true, I only said support though because it was the first thing I could relate to in word-choice that described an election whose class skills resulted in buffs. C3 Wiz definitely is a setup kind of class for late game, for sure, and lv15 Sleep alone isn’t enough to fit it into support lol But it’s more a support than a dps class because it lacks delivery choices (Earthquake, Energy Bolt… at least Magic Missle isn’t terrible and supposedly now it fires off without the required sleep synergy). Everything else it does is buff/debuff.
After all of this… maybe my gripe is just C3 Wizard. I mean, sure, I still feel all the classes could use a few more skills. Something to give more choice in build, not just by the freedom of class. But C3 Wizard… now that I’m thinking about it… that’s why I had to hop around the whole game. Energy bolt sucks so badly. Earthquake helps save you once in a while by the CC it offers but it disrupts party play and the damage isn’t great even at lv18 with the +3 weapon (which I used way past the time I should have lol). I didn’t realize it until I mentioned the C3 Cleric route that their cleric skills offered serious damage, even more so now that Heal is 15 tiles at lv15 in kcbt. Thaum is listed as a support, so attack skills should be limited (but still an option in there imo)… but Wizard’s energy bolt and eq aren’t really even viable at any stage of the game lol They really don’t compare at all… o.o
I’ll leave the thread for now, I think I need to think on the reasoning to really make a solid point in respects to the C3 Wiz route now. My agitations for AA and the route I chose aren’t necessarily because of the class route itself but because the base delivery skills for Wizard are just that bad. I mean… of the three attack skills, only one is truly viable, which resulted in buffing/debuffing and only having one attack skill to use. If energy bolt/earthquake either didn’t exist and were replaced with viable skills, or they were scaled appropriately to become viable at higher levels than just Red Kepa, then I would have 3 actual attacks and not just a lot of hopping, even maybe taking me through my Thaum phase lol
Cure + Zaibas + Heal + Autoattack
Just remember to upgrade your weapons.
I don’t really agree with this, unless you were in one of three scenarios:
- You were a mage. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with spamming skills if you spec into a non-nuking mage.
- You were in PvP. TTK is what it comes down to.
- You were on a mid/high rate server or had things like healers and what not available to you.
Instead of thinking of your most recent end game fights, think more about your time spent as an archer or swordsman. You had maybe one or two kills worth of SP if you used your skills. More if you pushed up your INT, as it should be.
Your assessment is based on extreme scenarios, and doesn’t hold any water.
Actually…many many games make a point to never give up AA. Especially in Eastern games.
You are probably a bit too glass tinted on western game(of the WoW nature) where again, DDR-button spam became a “thing”
Asians theories have asian implementations as they say. Unlike WoW-clones which generally cookie cutters jobs and characters for the sake of balance and “skill-based play”
Asian games tend to say screw with balance, and opens up massive amounts of stat and class changing options.
Basically Western theory since WoW was such that, you can never stab yourself in the foot. Playing a preset character with a preset balance, and a preset skill set design. Eastern theory states, everything is the player’s doing, go reset/remake your character.
Eastern ideals, you did exactly that: You went off the deep end, and regret it, and now whine because you’re unhappy vision did not equal result (wasn’t it obvious?)
It’s like running into a game with 1/1/1/1/9999 stats, and then not being able to beat a story boss, complaining “no game should make an unbeatable quest boss!”.
No developer would balance around a 1/1/1/1/9999 battle scenario, they just don’t care. Same with AA. Developer don’t care if you choose a bunch of passive skills, and then complain about it.