Hello, I’m an old player who’s been around since the first beta tests of the game, and there’s just something I have to talk about, because I’ve been waiting for some action on this for years.
Alchemist is complete trash, and this from someone who loves archetypal alchemists in any game.
And no, not because it isn’t strong in combat, but because almost all of the class’s abilities are unfun and fundamentally broken or redundant by design.
First, let’s look at the Alchemist’s offensive core. We have two abilities - Combustion and Alchemic Missile.
Combustion works from an aesthetic perspective. You blow up one of your items. That’s boring but alchemist-like. Serviceable. However the way this skill is designed is so infuriating. You can dig up your items using Dig and try to explode them, but you will usually pick up most of those items before the animation for Combustion goes off. This has been a problem since the release of the game and IMC has had so many chances to fix it. You can work around this somewhat by using Combustion to explode pyromancer fireballs, which is far more effective…but it’s also unreliable. sometimes the fireballs explode and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they deal only one batch of damage, other times they deal more. The hit box on this skill is terrible, it has a decent skill factor but a cooldown that’s on par with a far, far more powerful ability, an aoe ratio of 4, and no overheat. Everything about this skill seems to have been designed to be as uncomfortable as possible and it doesn’t even look satisfying to use. Complete and utter trash. Also, the part about it working on fireballs is VERY IMPORTANT and yet is not listed anywhere on the tool tip.
Alchemic Missile on its own is an ok skill. It actually hits pretty hard and is fairly spammable and easy to use. However, thematically this ability is probably the most unoriginal and boring thing they possibly could have chosen. Why does an ALCHEMIST fire a psychic bolt? How is this missile in any way Alchemic? Shouldn’t this be a Psychinoko skill? It’s also functionally very similar to the basic wizard spell Energy Bolt, but with the ‘luxury’ of a cast time included. Laziness incarnate. Whoever designed this just didn’t care.
And so then there are the other abilities…Dig. This is supposed to allow you to dig for items, and yet most of the items you can dig for are junk. It says they’re useful for Alchemy, but they’re not. Can’t even be used in Magnum Opus with the exception of maybe one. Some people say you have a low chance of getting minerals, but I’ve never found any. This is supposed to have some synergy with Combustion, but as mentioned before, it doesn’t. OH, and you can’t use it in dungeons or instances, so even if it did work well with Combustion, you can’t use it as part of your offensive core.
Magnum Opus is such a cool idea! And yet…the list of useful things you can make with it is quite limited. In-game documentation on how to use this is basically non-existant. The UI is horrible and tedious. If only we could use this ability to upgrade our crafted potions, imbue them with different interesting effects, or manipulate consumables in a cool and interesting manner, but instead we get this lame transmutation skill that’s only good for making Homunculi and Dawn Crystal Fragments.
Tincturing gives us a bunch of potions we can make but they’re all really boring. There’s also nothing to distinguish one alchemist’s potions from another, so trying to compete on the market boils down to whoever can sell them cheapest without selling at a loss, and encourages flipping.
Awakening used to be somewhat cool, but now it’s another boring shop with no way to actually compete with other players. Gone are the days of building an alchemist specifically to be able to clear an item dungeon easily. Now we just park ourselves down and put some meme in the shop name and hope someone has a premium awakening stone lying around.
and don’t even get me started on that useless homunculus…
When I think Alchemist, I think of a class that manipulates items and crafts powerful and useful consumables and then uses them in battle. A playstyle that centers around managing wealth, gated by your supplies, how much effort and hard work you’re willing to put into crafting your regents, having unique ways of solving problems and supporting other players or yourself. Using magic to create deadly chemicals, fires, explosions, gasses and oils. There are other classes in the game already that feel MORE like an alchemist than the Alchemist does. Plague Doctors with their flamethrowers and gas guns, Enchanters with their Enchant Rounds (even if those are badly balanced and useless to attack with), even Wugushi with their poison pot mixing (also a half-baked mechanic but more alchemist-like than anything the alchemist has)
Alchemist is just half-baked. It has so many mechanics and design choices that just don’t work, or feel incomplete. It doesn’t satisfy its role at anything other than potion maker and even then does that in a barely acceptable manner. Please for the love of Godesses IMC, do something about this miserable class. Anyone who’s played Atelier or Mana Khemia should be able to tell you - alchemy can be fun! It doesn’t have to be boring!
Now how would IMC go about fixing a train wreck like Alchemist? For starters, even though it is a crafting class, there’s no reason why the abilities have to be so broken and useless. Starting with a complete re-work of Combustion would be a start. Here’s how I’d prefer to see it done.
Dig - changed to Scatter Flask. The player throws alchemic materials onto the ground. This skill checks for certain items in your inventory and tosses them at a targeted location. Charging the skill causes an icon above your head to cycle through these items as they’re arranged in your inventory from left to right (they are found in your consumable items tab) and when released, will toss that item plus a few copies of it down onto the ground. These items can be created through Magnum Opus and Tincturing and would have a fairly small sample pool so as not to clutter the skill up too much. Alternatively, the Alchemist would have a unique inventory window similar to Wugushi’s poison pot, allowing them to select an item from their inventory to throw when this skill is used (maybe a selection of up to 3 items to cycle through). 3 overheats.
Combustion: double the size of the explosion hitox. Increase AOE ratio and allow for more items to be exploded at once, and lower cooldown by at least 10 seconds. If it explodes a fireball, causes it to hit 3x per fireball. Adjust the damage if need be to compensate for buffs. Only allow this skill to explode specific items produced by Scatter Flask. Combustion produces different exploding effects based on the items thrown. Bombs will create damaging explosions, Potions will explode into a mist and spread their effects to allies nearby, acid will explode and cause armor break, etc.
Alchemic Missile = changed to Chemical Missile. The alchemist fires a flask full of unstable chemicals at the target, exploding and creating a poisonous field beneath them to deal damage over time. Enemies marked by the poison are covered in oil and can be targetted directly with combustion and will automatically create explosions if they come into contact with Scatter Flask items until the debuff wears off.
Magnum Opus = Simplified to a + shaped grid with a space for main item in the middle. Allow magnum opus to modify the effects of existing potions, as well as craft regents for the new flask throwing skill. The design could be more intuitive and more about mixing items together to create an understandable result. Example: placing a glass flask in the middle, then some insect object on the left of it and some holy water on the right would create an antidote. Placing a condensed HP potion in the middle, Magic Powder on the left, holy water in the other 3 slots might create a darkness defense potion that also increases magic attack a little. HP potion in the middle + all four slots magic powder = potion that only increases magic attack by a larger amount.
There are a lot of ways an alchemist could be fun and interesting to play in a game like ToS. Even without the offensive skills, if the crafting abilities are more interesting, then it is a much better class overall. I really hope IMC is planning some kind of rework, because Alchemists (and Pardoners to a lesser extent) have just been in such a sad spot ever since release.
Let’s do this…