Sleep lv 5 and Lethargy +100% strike damage debuff is definitely better than all of the spell Warlock offers. While I’m neutral with your idea, your statement shows that you need to learn more about how to use your character.
Energy Bolt don’t really fall off at late game due to the scaling and relatively short cast time/coold down. But again, it’s up to how you utilize it.
Sorry, my point wasn’t that it was super low, but that it’s still over 100 levels away from hitting level cap, so its damage will go up dramatically with more stats, attributes and better gear.
Surespell + Quick Cast so it’s only a 5sec cast and it can’t be interrupted, making it not very difficult to get off.
My point really isn’t about the strength of that particular wiz build, but how the rank 2 choices would make excellent legitimate R1 choices and how that would allow other builds to be more powerful.
The restriction is making many good builds seem weaker, because they aren’t making use of the bad C1 they’re forced to take.
nobody used c1 skills other than clerics and swordsmen, dps classes dont have to, especially bcuz they get better ones later. and if the c1 skills were powerful for dps classes, that woudnt be fair and balanced bcuz then all of their skills wil be ridiculously good and it would be broken to have all the skills op, so it only amkes sense for them to fall off.
so then technically i can make this build at rank 7:
Build1 = pyromancer c1 > elementalist c3 > warlock c3
which would be competing with someone like this at the same rank
build2 = wizard c3 > elementist c3 > warlock c1
first of all, all the higher ranked classes have better skills so technically i could skip most of the beginning classes for the later classes. thus making wizard a useless choice to begin with. Why bother having wizard at all if you can just skip that rank?
if i didn’t want pyromancer in my specialized build, wouldnt we have the same problem as you described? according to your logic it will be a “HUGE POWER IMBALANCE!!!1!!” aswell no?
in almost every game the beginning skills are become useless in the end game. not sure if this solution solves the problem other than the fact you dont want to waste a rank on wizard in your specific build.
You’re saying that
Wiz 3 > Ele 3 > War
is better than
Wiz 1 > Pyr 3 > Ele 3
Because the second build has Wiz c1. And like. That’s not why. The reason why is that you’re stunting your build by grabbing Ele a rank late.
Build 1 is going r1 > r2 > r3 > r4 > r5 > r6 > r7
while the second build is going
r1 > r2 > r3 > r4 > r4 > r5 > r6
I don’t know anything about wizard, but as far as I can tell, you’d be better off going Wiz 1 > Pyr 2 > Ele 3 > War. Obviously people go Wiz 3 in that build instead of Wiz 1 > Pyr 2 because Wiz 3 has better synergy with Ele.
yea i agree with this, all dps skills scale poorly.
there would literally be no benifit of using rank 1 at all. unless your a cleric
I’m aware of the strike damage, but not everything is a strike attack, the number and importance of your strike attacks varies highly with different builds. Warlock adds a number of high damage skills (Agony: 1154dmg, Theurge: 1219dmg, Mastema: 2064dmg) which far outweigh the increase of a few buffed strike hits. Sleep would be almost entirely irrelevant to something like a cryomancer.
Well your statement shows that you’d rather resort to a subtle jab than consider the issue properly. I’m well aware of how to make use of the skills, but that doesn’t prevent them from restricting a vast number of potentially great builds.
I’m not trying to point at the builds I gave as examples, but at all of the builds which would become available as a result of this potential change.
i think you should not forget that the leveling will go to around 600 or so, and that there will be a few more class ranks too…
at the end it doesnt matter if you have that 1Wiz and then a lot of powerful classes, or if you have 3Wiz and some other powerful classes.
As soon as we get class rank 8 or 9, your image would be wrong.
so i dont think that anything should change at all.
with rank 9 you could for example:
3 Wiz, 3 Ele, 3 Warlock
or you go 1 Wiz, 3 Pyro, 3 Ele and take the 2 “new and more powerful classes” at 8 and 9.
There is a big issue with your logic OP. and i’m affraid it’s literally everything. the whole point of a Rank 1 Circle 1 class is NOT to be as strong as a rank 7 class. guess what, even pyro c1 is stronger then wiz c1. why? Cuz its rank 2. thats how it works. Rank 1 classes are your bread and butter “This is the type of character you are going to play.” there are builds that do, indeed use C2/C3 of the rank 1 class, and use them quite well, but that does not mean a Circle 1 rank 1 needs to be as strong as a Circle 1 rank 7. theres a reason the class is at rank 7. On top of that, Even the ever popular Wiz3/Ele3/WL build doesnt use all its spells. it uses, in order of priority, Sleep if linker is around, Quickcast+Sure spell, frost cloud, hail, and then the warlock stuff(I have no investment in what warlock does. aside from pretty costume doesnt interest me, so i take Runecaster instead), notice here how, outside of sleep, only C2 and C3 wiz skills get bothered with, is because thats why they take the class further than rank 1. it synergizes, Not with what they have early, since even at Wiz3 your Magic missile will only be OP for so long, but rather, it synergizes with everything they’re going to take LATER. saying that you should be able to choose different, HIGHER RANKED classes, to be your starting class, is just not going to fly. This is not a ‘Limitation’ This is a Core mechanic of the game and it is why we have websites like Tosbase with its skill simulator to help us figure our builds out ahead of time. basically by your suggestion you’re saying i could choose to have say, Necromancer 3> Warlock3>Featherfoot and that would be okay?
No.
Divide them by the CD.
Sorry, i should have made it clearer (I’ll edit). The builds I gave are just examples. The problem is that following the Rank 1 class gives a huge bonus, as you can get two C3 choices and a good C1. if you don’t make use of the forced R1 then at best you can get two C3s and a poor C1.
See the layout of my beautiful comic-sans employing graph for what i mean. I’ll write it up better later (servers just went up!). 
I get what you mean and why you would want to have it this way, however i’m concerned about what comes after that, like people asking that Rank 3 classes should also be selectable at start, then Rank 4, then all Ranks should be selectable from the start.
Another thing is balancing :
Rank 2 classes are balanced for Rank 2 content, so they’d be overpowered in starting maps.
That means the developer would need to rebalance the skills so they properly do not-OP damage in starting maps, however that would also mean that the C1 of the class will be weaker if the player takes the classic class route.
Example:
Pyromancers fireball 5 does 145 damage per hit. That’s ok for Rank 2 maps, however for beginner maps that’d be way too strong.
So the developer needs to reduce it to, say, 70, so it’s balanced for people who take Pyro as their first Rank.
However, that means that for those people who go Wiz->Pyro the fireball also deals only 70 damage, making it weaker for those who take this classic class route, and essentially it would make all existing Pyros who made their characters before your suggestions got implemented (and thus had to go wiz->pyro ) far weaker. The only solution would be to add an additional modifier for all skills which increases damage depending on rank, which however would also require complete reworking and rebalancing of all skills.
Not what I suggested in the slightest.
To get to Wiz C2 & C3, as they have incredible buffs.
If you didn’t want Pyro, Wiz, OR Cryo, then we would. But that’s a diverse range of paths to choose from. Great self buffs (wiz), great AoE damage (pyro) or great CC (cryo). Haivng just wiz as the starting point limits the available build synergy, whereas the choice of those three paths opens it up.
No.
I fail to recall a single game which follows that logic. In every single RPG I can think of, you have a limited number of skills at the start, and you gain more as you improve. The skills you start with level up and scale to endgame. Your framing of this was rather irrelevant though, considering even in ToS what you said is completely wrong. Wiz skills can scale, if you choose to put more skills in them with further circles, it’s only when you don’t choose that option, that the circle becomes less meaningful, hence this post.
Think of this like putting points in to a vast skill tree, except your first points are chosen for you, and for many peoples builds, are in a path they don’t wish to follow.
Yeah I wouldn’t want it to go that far either. I just want a more balanced starting option for all builds. A choice at the start lets you specialize better, which makes more builds viable and prevents base orientated builds from having a clear power advantage in the attainment of C3 skills.
When Rank 8 and 9 are added the problem is really skill attainment. Base class orientated builds have an unfair ability to reach three C3s, thus accessing more of the (usually) better skills.
The current 7 Rank builds are effected heavily too. Base class builds can achieve two C3s and a good high-end C1 of their choice where as no other build at all can possibly achieve two C3s if they have a specific choice in mind for their 7th Rank. I feel I could probably explain this a lot better than I am, so I’ll work on that.
The change would make all of the under-powered niche or alternative builds much more effective, bringing them closer to the best/meta builds.
Personally, i think that the notion of opening rank 2 classes to rank 1 is somewhat difficult to balance around, especially even now at the current cap level. Mages aside, the swordies, archers and clerics would fall off quicker since all three classes use at least one of their current basic class skills often even post 200.
Mages, although they have a weak basic class, their rank 2 and above covers up for it(at least in the current meta). If IMC were to open the rank 2 classes to rank 1, then the other basic classes are given the choice to fully specialize in one factor but lose out one or two of the good scaling skills that comes with the basic class.
Taking that into consideration, most clerics will still start out on the basic cleric for the scaling heal and lose out 1 rank either way. This would be unfair to them since their basic class comes with the heal, and the other healing skills quite non-existent, besides Priest c2 with their mass heal but even that only heals 1/3 of a player’s max hp with a 30 sec cd with no overheat.
Then we have swordies C1 with Gung ho and Concentrate in which doesn’t really scale but the buff is good nevertheless(+70 raw damage Gung Ho + max attribute), if players were to start at c2, but doesn’t opt for Swordman C1, they would lose out in a noticeable amount of dps compared to swordies that actually took c1 since Lv5 Gung Ho + lv 50 attribute amounts to almost 25% of a two hand weapon damage at lv 220, and 15% of the lolopanther’s lv 270, and if the player opts for a one hand weapon it would amount to at least 30% boost or more.
Archers lose out on swift step and oblique shot, while it doesn’t seem like much, oblique shot takes over almost every archer’s basic attack because of it’s 0 cd and hits two targets( Then Ranger C3 would be so much more preferred and nobody will go for Archers/QS unless committing for C3). And Swift step’s attribute grants up to +25% crit rate while having another attribute for a party wide buff, contributing a lot especially in later in the game since it scales.
The problem it would create just by allowing rank 2 into rank 1 would jumble the balance it has right now since mages will always have perfect class rolls while clerics or swordies may have impaired ones since their basic class has something that can be used even at the current cap level. Also making dps classes from cleric class trees being reliant on other clerics that actually took some form of support, overall lowering the amount of support clerics we have now.
As of now, although there are many complaints about wiz c1 being pointless on these builds, is probably for the sake of balance since rank 2+ mages outshines pretty much all of the swordies class in both dps and utility. While being weaker than archers in single targets dps, most if not all mages have tons of AoE which most archers don’t.
But the real question is, do we need mages to be even stronger than it already is, considering that;
1.Even with wiz c1, most mages are dominant in higher level in both CC and AoE dps, which is needed for grinding.
2.Magic doesnt miss, and has at least 1.5x the damage per hit of most, if not all swordie classes, not counting magic amplification and AoEs.
3.C1 Linkers, Thaumaturge and Chronomancers have a lot of strong buffs/debuffs( Swell arms, Joint penalty, Quicken, etc) and can be more valuable than most classes of the other basic branches since these are the 1-rank-wonder classes, not even mentioning C2/C3 of these classes with absurd buffs, Thauma C2 +111 phys/magic party wide buff, effectively doubling most 1h weapon stats at that level plus scales with skills since it adds damage before multipliers, which is better than sacrament + maxed blessing.
4.Is viable even when going just 1 rank in most of the classes while other class trees have to throw in a C2 or C3 to be viable, since most of the better skills are in C2/C3.
Theres probably some that I missed out but playing at post 200 even a Cryo or Pyro C3 alone can do more than any swordie/archer/cleric with any combined rank 6 classes in most situations. So I think its really unnecessary for them to get such a luxury, especially since some of us rely heavily on the basic class just being at C1.
You’re ignoring what I’m saying. I’m not talking about those specific builds, I’m using them as examples and explaining how your training is incorrect.
You seem to be under the impression that taking a class to circle 3 is always inherently better than not. The reason you think this is that damage skills do not and are not supposed to scale. On the other hand a large number of buffs and utility skills do scale.
Wizard 3 isn’t useful late game because wizard 3 has great damage skills. Wizard 3 is strong late game because sure spell and quick cast scale well.
Wiz 1 isn’t useless because it’s a rank 1 circle 1 class. Wiz 1 is useless because you seem to insist on taking damage skills.
The reason wiz 3 is super popular isn’t to avoid wasting a rank. It’s because quick cast is strong and has very good synergy with meteor.
Your issue seems to specifically be with quick cast. You say this is an issue with the system, but other classes don’t have this issue. Cleric usually goes to 2, because 3rd circles aren’t inherently more valuable, or circle 1 into priest. Archer usually goes c2 for the Swift step attribute or stays at c1 and is happy with oblique shot’s 0 CD. Swordsman usually goes c1 and gets hung ho and pain barrier, or c3 for restrain (with c1 being more popular because c3 is not inherently better!).
So like. If all of this doesn’t convince you that this is not a system issue I don’t really know if anything will.
how is it not? you pretty much want to skip Wiz because its not useful to you.
your missing the point here. all rank 1 classes kinda suck sparing one or two skills that scale well. if you dont need those skills, everyone would just skip rank 1
so your suggesting that we lower the rank of pyro and cyro to rank one, all the other classes got rank 2. thus giving each tree 3 different options to start out as? you specifically talking about YOUR personal issues with the build. but obviously the game cant work like that. theres probably someone who doesnt want to go Pyro, Wiz, OR Cryo and they would make the exact same argument you’re making. lol why not just let anyone pick any class at anytime?
No!
please enlighten me about a game where the all your first skills you learn are useful in the end game. It has to be similar to something ToS.
That’s exactly what i said.
Do you see me insisting on ANY type of skill at all anywhere in this entire thread? I didn’t even suggest a build. I’m just commenting on the circles less relevant nature in builds which don’t go C2 or C3 wiz.
I didn’t say it was. But it’s still in imbalance compared to the vast number of other builds which don’t make use of further wiz circles.
This is about how builds which can make use of the locked R1 choice do have an advantage in accessing C2/3 skills which no other build has. It doesn’t matter if the circles are relevant to every build, the point is that for many (like the prime Wiz3 example) they are.
Ending with a classic passive aggressive comment just makes you sound like an ■■■■■■■. Some of your feedback was otherwise good.
Exactly! Because builds which wiz1 IS useful to have a circle advantage over builds where Wiz1 is not useful! Do you see how that’s an issue? Builds which make use of the C1 benefit. If you could pick from the others (which you have to take one of eventually anyway, if you aren’t going wiz) then you wouldn’t ave any wasted circles. I know the skills can be used still, but they just aren’t relevant for many builds. it’s restrictive to the number of viable builds and is a large part of why wiz is in the state it is.
I’m not saying SKIP it. I don’t mean you can start at C2 wiz. Most C3 classes are well balanced. base class builds reach C3 faster, that’s imbalanced.
Why? You can balance anything in a game. it’s a game. There are no forced outside influences. Damage numbers and utility isn’t defined by the gods. A dev made it. Easily balanced. Also this doesn’t have to effect end-game at all, you just change the balance of skills at lvl1 and make it reach the exact same final numbers by Circle 3.
No I’m not. My build uses wiz, this isn’t personal at all. It’s a suggestion base don my observation of how the player populations builds are unfolding. Why would we want every single magic class in the game to have the same few starting skills, even when they don’t use them? ESPECIALLY when some of those players DO use them. It’s redundant skill placement in a large number of builds, especially once you’re partying with a C3 wiz who provides all of the same utility at a more efficient rate.
You’re either trolling or have never played any other MMORPG. Meta may change which skills are used, but the order in which a skill is earned rarely has any relevance to its usage at endgame.
RO, WoW, Rose, Maple Story, Tera, ArcheAge, Lineage - Vast majority of starting skills scale to endgame perfectly. There’s no point extending the list as I can’t think of a single RPG where this DOESN’T happen. You’re a fool for even suggesting it. Go find proof if you still believe it.