Magic shield Lv.5 - reduces damage taken by 20%, consumes 1% sp for each hit taken.
Stone Skin Lv.15 - reduces damage taken by 6%.
This just doesn’t even makes any sense. Don’t think I have to write anything because it is clearly visible that something went wrong here with balance team over there.
Stone Skin doesn’t rape you ears constantly so is better on my book
Also magic shield consumes 1% SP every hit, if you take many hits you are constantly out of SP.
But I agree, Paladin is already a shitty class, at least give him 10~15% damage redution.
Because long ago IMC decided the game is about equipment and barfing new sets with effects and skills every couple of months, instead of making unique classes with clear identities. This oversight is only a symptom of that mentality.
Please take the 7.5% (or 15% in future) physical-only damage reduction from Monk, oh Paladins. I want old Iron Skin back to block and reflect physical hits back at Velcoffer again.
Skills between different classes are not supposed to be comparable or equal. There are many other pros and cons to take into account and directly comparing two skills like this doesn’t work.
I’m not saying anyone should do it but between OoB lvl 15, Stoneskin, Monks Iron Skin, and Magic Wall plus plate or cloth mastery, you can basically take damage taken to stupidly low levels.
As crevox said, you do not simple compare skills between different classes for a multitude of reasons, and 1 of them (which goes unsaid) is also how all these skills work in tandem with one another.
Lets say Stoneskin is buffed to 20% or 30% as a single target buff.
Now I put OoB and Stoneskin together for 50/60% damage mitigation. Im in a party with a wizard and they give me another 20%.
If this is additive it becomes stupid very quickly.
(When one thinks this is a meme thread but gets serious replies)
To be fair to the OP, Magic Shield is a skill that takes 5 points to get that much utility, and is a base Wizard class skill that doesn’t really have many other skills that would take away from Magic Shield. There aren’t much use getting other skills, and every Wizard can readily take the skill without much downsides. Furthermore, the skill can be toggled as a Party Buff.
Stone Skin, Iron Skin and Out-of-Body, on the other hand, are self-buff skills that require 15 points to max to get the full utility (which still kinda pales in comparison to Magic Shield) and are skills in Paladin/Monk/Sadhu classes containing a plethora of other skills to max over maxing those skills. One has to, firstly, take those classes and then prioritize those skills over other useful skills, a double whammy to any build, compared to Magic Shield that is readily available at base Wizard class and only requires 5 points which is readily available. Also, with the same argument of stacking skills in the same tree, Wizards also has Genbu, Levitation, Stop, Shadow Pool etc, skills that only need 1 point, only needs 5 points to max, or are skills in a class where there are plenty of points to spare. Each of these skills are powerful effects/invincibility frames that easily outdoes Stone Skin etc etc (Clerics also have their respective powerful skills too I guess), but I’ll not get deeper into that.
I’m not saying that Crev’s point is wrong or invalid. I agree that there’s more to just simply directly comparing skills like that. There IS, however, a weird irony with a base class having a 5 point skill that has a better effect than 15 point skills from advancement classes. Its like when Re:Build first came out, and base Cleric Skill Smite at 5 points has better DPS than anything Monk could put out. Doesn’t really help the argument that Sadhu, Monk and Paladin aren’t in the best shape right now to readily afford maxing Out-of-Body/Iron Skin/Stone Skin, and that those classes are quite underwhelming right now for anyone to even want to take those classes in the first place as of now.
While the effect of such skills are subject to balancing, in terms of skill point investment and how accessible the skills are to their classes trees, I believe there’s no argument to say that Magic Shield is indeed better than those other skills. At the very least, the irony is worth laughing and meme-ing about.
Cleric have heal, wizard don’t…please make wizard have heal too so we can be equal 
All the classes have powerful base skills…
The attack skills are generally the exceptions to that though.
Pain barrier.
Cloaking
Heal
Magic shield
(I feel Archer doesnt have a defining potent skill in its base class but that isnt an inherently bad thing).
The point isnt the value of the skills it is the long term effect like when we had a lot more invincibility skills in the game that were culled in rebuiled.
Skills arent islands they coexist in a system with the skill suite of their class and the skill suite of their other class types and the party possibilities.
There is a lot of factors, 1 to 1 comparisons often work poorly
Haha by all means let every class have Heal 
. Heal isn’t going to do much unless one invests in SPR for healing power anyways. Heal is quirky to use, and a healer build depends more on Priest, Plague Doctor and Kabbalist anyways. Without much healing power, it is more efficient to take HP potions to be honest. If only parties shouting for a Healer will accept any Cleric just because they have Heal. At least Featherfoot heals aren’t based on healing power …
I am simply pointing out the irony in Magic Shield and other skills like Stone Skin, as per the topic, nothing beyond that, and already said I was only taking into account the skill point investment and the accessibility of those skills, not the balancing lel. Also, like I already said, I am not going to go deeper into discussing skill interactions across the board and all as one can ramble on forever with that, and only pointed such things out as you brought up skill interactions etc like no one knows it exists.
Of course skills shouldn’t be compared on a skill-by-skill basis, but if you can’t agree that a base class skill like Magic Shield that has 20% damage mitigation party buff (32% after attribute) at 5 points while advancement class skills like Stone Skin take 15 points of investment but even with attributes, barely even make it close to half the amount of Magic Shield BEFORE enhance attribute is not worth laughing or meme-ing about, then I believe we are going nowhere with this.
(Inserts Stone Skin is better than Iron Skin memes)
Wizard’s base class has much more balance in terms of supplementing your later choices I feel. There’s something there for you that works with whatever you pick.
Meanwhile for Cleric… despite G.Saint, heals don’t really help out much at all as a physical Cleric: something Pally will mostly be picked for. And that’s mostly all you get out of the Cleric base. Smite and Fade aren’t all that phenomenal.
Since heals aren’t as good with a physical build, you would think that a class like Paladin would supplement that downside better than it does atm.
Especially considering that it’s more or less “Defensive class, but physical”. But nope.
Am I the only one who doesn’t use Magic Shield because of the SP drain and the god awful sound?
I only use Magic shield in specific situations, like pvp or bossing, where the sp cost isn’t a huge problem. But if I were to use it in crowded areas like CMs, goodbye sp bar. Meanwhile skills like Stone/iron skin dont have that big drawback so they can be used 100% of the time.
The fact that I get a ton of Sp from gear doesn’t help me either… on a 10k Sp bar every hit drains 100, so its hard to keep up sometimes.
Oh and the sound doesn’t bother me because I play with the game muted. Would be nice if it was removed/toned down for the people who like to hear the in-game sounds though
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