The shop gave around 1600ish damage with blessing… And she said her Lv 290 char is full SPR. It gave 60 Def when buffed from shop, but around 170 Def if she cast it manually… It’s not worth buying anymore. Is it still like this @ iToS?
Because IMC wants to give that power to sorcerers/necros pets.
You see, if you nerf something, you have to buff something.
it used to be op
that why they nerf
They are not done with the skill modifications; IMC did say that the overhaul patch was a broad sweep, and they were going to be going through individual skills and making adjustments. They will likely revisit skills such as Aspersion and Increase Magic Defense, both of which don’t scale to meet the ranges of the modern combat formulas.
However, Aspersion is popular with SPR Chaplains now because it results in crazy damage for the Aspergillum synergy. It’s become a lopsided combat skill used more for augmenting Aspergillum.
But yes, right now, the defense impact is negligible; you won’t notice even if you get buffed with maximum Aspersion. It eats up a valuable buff slot, so better off avoiding it altogether.
For Increase Magic Defense; you’re better off getting inside a Barrier if you want actual magic defense. I’d also advise against using Increase Magic Defense because it eats up a buff slot.
3 Likes
With the current formula… even if Aspersion still buffs 50% of defense, it still wont be OP since it is almost impossible to get 1 damage like we used to.
I hope they do for these 2 skills…Increase Magic Defense used to be scalable from SPR before the rebalance, right?
Increase Magic Defense still scales off spr. It just scales shitily.
Edit:
Before it used to be 1 spr = 1 mdef.
Now its some long formula that basically ends up at level 15 increase mdef with 500 spr giving 270 mdef.
def is still useful even u don’t take 1 damage
It’s not so weak. My Kabbalist still gets around 300-400 defence from the buff shops that offer 2700-2900 damage Blessing. That’s around 1/3 of my total defence(gear is bad but I don’t want to advance to non-315 rare gear since it’s not required to do Saalus or 290 dungeon), so I still buy it.
It’s not so OP now, but very useful for lowlevel/undergeared players as their gear provides way less defence.
And it’s still about 100-500 damage less recieved, so you still save on pots/Heals.
I think referencing low level player defense is kind of irrelevant now. With the current combat balance, players don’t really face a threat until somewhere around level 100-200 to need armor in the first place. Things like the modern day Blessing have made low level content a walk in the park. The best defense is a good offense, in the current system.
The Aspersion/Increase Magic Defense effect is not in the same ballpark of other skills. Sure, you can say that a Pardoner buffing an overdriven Aspersion can get you 300-400 defense (which I’ve never seen - I see mainly around 170-200 from max SPR, but maybe those shop titles are lying). But does that make a difference compared to even a +1000 Blessing buff?
A +500 damage Blessing makes the level 50 and 80 dungeons a walk in the park; and +500 damage Blessing is not hard to achieve as a Priest at mid level. A +400 defense Aspersion, which only a max level extremist can achieve, will save an HP potion or two, yet eats an equal count of Holy Water, which costs more than Holy Powder for Blessings. Both use a buff slot. The equivalent level Priest may only be able to muster a +100 defense Aspersion.
You also aren’t saving 100-400 of damage; the combat formula is an ATK/DEF scale with diminishing proportions as DEF increases.
Using x = 0.9 from their published formula:
ATK 100, DEF 100 = 30 Damage
ATK 100, DEF 400 = 11 Damage (300% more defense, 63% less damage)
ATK 1,000, DEF 500 = 457 Damage
ATK 1,000, DEF 800 = 347 Damage (60% more defense, 24% less damage)
ATK 10,000, DEF 1000 = 9511 Damage
ATK 10,000, DEF 1300 = 8614 Damage (30% more defense, 9% less damage)
So at low level, it makes damage even more trivial, but at high level, you may save a healing potion. But if you only have 30kHP and face a 10k damage attacker, you’ll still die just as quickly, with or without an overdriven Aspersion. You save a healing potion because you won’t even get to use it!
Compare a typical low level scenario between a regular Aspersion and Lethargy (which scales with INT now):
ATK 1000, DEF 500 = 457 Damage
ATK 1000 - 50 (Lethargy), DEF 500 = 421 Damage
ATK 1000, DEF 500 + 50 (Aspersion) = 432 Damage
And you’ll see that, point for point, modifying ATK now is more significant than modifying DEF except in extremely high ATK cases, at which point the massive ATK numbers overwhelm anything you can do to the final damage. The current combat system generally focuses on attack and offense, so defense boosts like Aspersion are already on a weaker scale to start. Aspersion’s changes matches the focus on offense; its damage output went up while sacrificing its original defensive buff role.
You can’t even turn off the Aspersion buff aspect. Since it’s weak and would mess up existing buff counts, if someone has Aspersion for offense, it becomes a liability to the party if they use it as an attack. (But then again, only SPR Chaplains seem to get Aspersion for offense, and they’d use Aspergillum instead of Aspersion.)
I’ve also heard an argument that you can stack defense boosts like Squire armor buffs and Lethargy and Aspersion and such; but you can stack numerous attack skills too, so that is not a meaningful argument. If anything, non-Aspersion armor buffs are more valuable because of the limited buff slots.
Anyway, the long-winded point is that the Priest/Pardoner skill scaling is lopsided. Defense boosts like Aspersion and Increase Magic Defense are not noticeable at high levels, but Blessing is noticeable - because it scales significantly.
In comparison, Barrier scales well - jump in my Paladin Barrier (who is fairly average and doesn’t max any stat) and you’ll get close to 800 additional MDEF. In Saalus or Uphill, you’ll feel my Barrier MDEF protection; you won’t even notice my Aspersion or Increase Magic Defense.
3 Likes
well, that 10-25% less damage still looks fine enough, considering that the buff from a pardoner lasts 60+ minutes while e.g. Stone Skin lasts only 35 seconds with 25 seconds downtime with a similar damage reduction (10-20%).
It becomes insignificant with your equipment progression, but so do skills that reduce incoming damage by a fixed amount like e.g. Mackangdal.
And if you have 8-9 buffslots anyway that are mostly empty when you play,there’s no reason why not to take that 10-20% damage reduction if your gear isn’t that good yet (especially if you can’t heal youself).
Why are you making excuses for a bad skill… a bad skill is a bad skill. You dont need to compare it with other bad skills or the availability of a buffslot (the latter one is such a silly argument).
Stone Skin is a bad skill (due to low uptime mostly), but at least you dont need to exhaust 15 points like it did for Aspersion. They are both equally as bad right now. Only chaplains max that skill for the damage part of Aspergillum. No sane non-pardoner regular priests are crazy enough to have Aspersion (even 1 point is a waste). You can easily compare (as @Elodean did) with Barrier, which gave a significant increase with just 5 points invested.
7(archers & mages)-9 buff slots that are mostly empty you say? It really depends on your class… to thaumaturges it is a nightmare i tell ya. Particularly if you meet with chaplains / chronomancers. Not counting the many dumb people sharing reflect shield / swift step to the party when there are buffers around.
About mackangdal, it is useful for invincibility (paired with safety zone when the buff is about to end)… What fixed amount are you refering to?..
I’m not making excuses Oo
I just stated the fact that 10%-20% damagereduction is still a viable buffslot use since you save on pots if you’re undergeared.
I never stated that non-buffshop Pardoners should get the skill at a high level, I simply stated that Aspersion is still a better skill than most others are.
Revive e.g. does nothing unless you’re stupid or you’re running ET. Yet Chaplains still dare to waste my buffslots with it. It’s worse than Reflect Shield/Swift Step in that aspect.
Quicken is also a waste of a buffslot in most cases since I mostly play Cleric/Wizard that don’t need the ASPD/critrate boost. CC immunity skills are also wasting my slots a lot of times, e.g. Oracles Prophecy. Arcane Energy is currently useless…
The worst buffslot waster is still Missile Hole since it’s useless and you can’t remove the buff by right-clicking on the buff icon <_<.
And about buffslots, I know that there are exemptions, since I also have a buff build, Wizard3>Thauma3>Runecaster>Enchanter (with a maximum of 8 possible buffs).
That’s why I always prepare some self-made level 5 Daino scrolls on that char to not overcharge my bufflimit. Rank 9 might introduce a new horror, Thauma3>Chrono3 builds, but let’s best hope there won’t be such chars outside of ET…
However, it’s not that common yet, and it’s more likely to encounter some Priest C3 throwing Revive and Stone Skin at you…
My Clerics on the other side have mostly 4-5 unused buffslots throughout the dungeon runs as they tend to not have many self-buffs (Divine Might is in most cases the only buff aside from 1 Class-specific self-buff[e.g. Transmit Prana,Ein Sof or Healing Factor]and Safety Zone; My Pardoner-PD has more skills but since he’s also Krivis, he can’t be bothered by the bufflimit…)
It’s the attribute that reduces the taken damage by up to 200.
all of these talk makes me wonder if I really should ever give buffs to my party but I need it for my own necessary 
or make my own daino
What about stone skin then? I still think that Aspersion>Stone skin now.
Don’t get me wrong. I am used to 1 1 1 damage from aspersion and it’s sad but I welcome this change than that huge difference when not in aspersion
Personal and maybe unpopular opinion, all players should get daino scrolls at least level 1, they are usually cheap to craft or buy, also its not like we cant comunicate with our party members to kindly ask to dont use certain buffs depending on team composition. Just as a personal experience, the day i decided to make a chapplain i decided to use daino scrolls lv6 while in long dungeons/farm sessions, and with the new increase on range for buffs this is more important now, however, with the extended duration people can manualy delete buffs that they dont want/need, on the other hand you need to play smart and know when you can use your buffs and when there are more important/or useful buffs than yours and play accordingly to that.
There are some buffs that are totally usless and i agree that people should avoid using them (like RF or SS), but aspersion/stone skin/revive are not that bat in some situations and if daino scrolls are being used, or there are no other buffers on the party. That being said i think that as a buffer you have, IMO, the resposabilty to use daino scrolls, but as i said before, dont see why buff count its such a big issue when daino scrolls are so cheap.
Well well, that’s my unpopular opinion, just for the record my main its a wizzard so i know how bad its to reach the buff count and that’s the main reason i use high level daino scrolls because i want my haste and my thau buffs up all the time!, so if i want them i know what to do to get them.
Long story short:
1.- Get daino scrolls, there are no excuses for this, at least level 1 ones.
2.- Comunication its key, we are not playing with robots, we can comunicate with party mambers and explain why they should/not use certain buffs under certain circumstances.
3.- Play smart, if you are a buffer dont try to use all your buffs all the time just for the sake of doing it, learn that there are instances were some buffs are needed and when are not, so dont go spaming your buffs without caring, see if there are more important/useful buffs before and play accordinlgy to that.
4.- If you need to self buff but your party dont want to get that buff, just get away from them and buff yourself.
There are some Aspersion formula changes in Korea… Does it make worth having it in build now?
Although they claimed to improve the aspersion/IMD formula, I cannot find the difference between https://tos.neet.tv/skills/40201 and https://tos-ktest.neet.tv/skills/40201
The only difference is its duration 
(I’m aware about the duration change in patch notes)
Aspersion sucks because the defense increase fades when you change maps.
1 Like
maybe it is not updated yet… Aspersion buff really needs a big improvement
Aspersion got nerfed. It takes a while for imc to buff stuff they nerf.
Good news everyone! Looks like Aspersion’s defense effect is going to get scaled more appreciably. Increase Magic Defense gets a hefty boost too. Aspersion is more or less double the current scale, and Increase Magic Defense supposedly scales 4x more than now.
We’ll see how the new numbers play out, but right now it feels like defense in general is not a major factor in light of the way HP and damage scales. I did some Saalus runs with a friend of mine the other day and afterwards, he realized he didn’t have any armor on. It’s really a shame that armor and defense skills have such little impact, even in a Mausoleum run.