50 replies to this topic

[Bensch]

When u get to higher lvl and higher gears you wont be worrying much of your sp but still bring sp potions just in case. About what you said that theres no true instant skill the soulmaker (correct me if i misunderstood your comment) soulmaker is all about casting their skills instantly such as sacrifice soul extinction death spell and immunity. And about the aoe i believe sm's has the highest damage output in terms of aoe its like releasing 5 fire bolts all at once to 5 dufferent people.

[4615140119234425113]

I do believe it was simply a misunderstanding, as I mean instant cast AoE specifically, though also all of the skills you listed are only instant cast if we have placed the Glass Mental debuff from Mental breakdown on them. As for our Mental Breakdown being AoE, to hit those 5 people you have to have the Soul Injection debuff on all of them, which is only applied through Death Spell and Soul Extinction, which neither are instant cast, unless as priorly mentioned you have the glass mental debuff on them. As we are very squishy it is difficult to to pull large mobs without having to worry about the fact that you can only take out 5 at once when farming. Though I could see issues in balancing this out for end game, as I was more referring to the fact it is insanely difficult to profit having an SM as your main. And yes, we do massive damage with the Mental Breakdown xP

PS Hai there guildie ;]

[Bensch]

Wait what!? Guildy? Who are u :3

[Greven79]

My question would be why the soulmaker needs a instant cast AoE?

• Meteor Swarm has a casting time and a very long animation time
• Land of Darkness has a long casting time
• Arrow Shower has a casting time at lower levels and an animation time of ~3sec
• Grand Cross makes you immobile for 2~3sec
• Lightning Crush and Thunder Storm a cooldown of 3sec
• Brandish Storm an animation time of 3sec
• Lord of Verdillion can't be casted on a specific target
• Lord of Vermillion, Beast Tornado, Shadow Fang and Rolling cutter are close range AoEs instead

Therefore the 0.5sec casting time and 1sec cooldown for Death Spell is actually quite good. The 220% are also more than ok for a skill that can be used that frequently. But it even gets better when you've casted Death Spell once. Thereafter, the Soulmaker can use either Mental Breakdown or Soul Extortion. Both skills are instant cast and can hit up to 5 targets every second dealing more than 420% damage.

 

Since Brandish Storm f.e. has an animation time of ~3sec, Deathspell can - at worst - be casted twice as often dealing half as much damage... quite fair.

 

Both of the other Soulmaker skills (Mental Breakdown & Soul Extortion) deal the same amount of damage as a Brandish Storm in 1/3 of the time, resulting in triple damage, but only half the number of targets. Seen over the course of time, the Soulmaker still deals more damage than a Warrior.

 

All in all, the Soulmaker is actually one of the AoE classes out there.

 

Mana costs are a drawback, but suggesting that Awake should restore SP completely seems a fix at the wrong place, especially since most Soulmakers I know only casted only Cure while we were grinding.

[4615140119234425113]

@Bensch; I'm Cleansing; Just joined the guild yesterday =P

@Greven I don't know enough about other classes, or care enough, to argue with you about that stuff. But I don't want to sit there and just grind all the time, I like to farm stuff too ya know?<3 On that note I have to go cast cure a whole bunch =/

[Greven79]

@Greven I don't know enough about other classes, or care enough, to argue with you about that stuff. But I don't want to sit there and just grind all the time, I like to farm stuff too ya know?<3 On that note I have to go cast cure a whole bunch =/

 

Sure thing. But what makes you want a instant-cast AoE for that? Most other classes don't have one either and can't rely on a stackable cure.

 

So let's take Deathspell f.e. Starting with 220% damage, a 0.5sec casting time and a 1sec cooldown, it would be easy to cut the casting time, which is about 1/3 of the total time of the skill and cut the damage down by the same scale.

 

Then, Deathspell would match quite well with Rolling Cutter or Shadow Fang... But how would this new instant-cast Deathspell improve your farming/grinding?
 

Edited by Greven79, 11 September 2014 - 12:28 PM.

[xLottex]

I have to agree with Greven79 that SM's have decent AoE skills and that the extension of Mental Breakdown past 5 targets is unnecessary since the damage would be decreased even more as it jumped from target to target. SM's were designed as a Support class but thanks to ML we are able to make successful hybrid builds since we get so much power. If you want to farm and target more mobs I suggest getting a pet to help dps but using Death Spell is sufficient for AoE's with a .3 casting time especially since mobs tend to die fast with Soul Injection applied to them and doing a DS to MB or SE rotation. But the problem is the animation times since Death Spell makes you jump in the air.

 

I would appreciate any feedback on the class since it allows me to see what others are thinking.

Just a warning classes are supposed to have their own roles.

[Bensch]

I dont see any problem with sm's skills except for the links....(pvp wise)

Edited by Bensch, 12 September 2014 - 10:34 AM.

[aoi911]

Up for Bensch xD

[4122130526210046830]

Woow, so many problem with sm , my unique suggestion is update the links a little more of this ml 30 era

[skippyang]

Character Name: killaWattOne

Suggestion Type: Skills: MentalBreakdown, SoulLinks, CurePearl, and Dispel

Suggestion Description: 

 

Mental BreakDown - the cool down is eventually pointless for this skill as there an animation lag in-between casting different skills, and also MLGears gives enough vigor to reduce the cool down to milliseconds. In my opinion the cool down is rather pointless as there is an animation lag in-between casting skills.

 

SoulLink - currently lot of people would like to extend the range of SoulLink buff. But as of now, if it the dev's doesn't like to make changes to SoulLink range, why not just make it instant cast, and as a more spamable skill. By spam-able, I mean being able to cast it instantly without the dreaded cool down timer, and the dreaded casting time, while also being able to use it when moving.

 

SoulLink Revive and Concentration - this skill in general needs to be casted like how ranger use there arrow shower. I hate the fact that I have to press the button, point where my party is, and click. Why can't I just skip the point and click part, and just plain straight casting Revive and Concentration to whoever is in the surrounding area around me that large radius. 

 

CurePearl - I find it use full when I'm far away from the enemy and I take aggro. But I suggest this is far-off better if the devs could add an sp recovery to the skill cure pearl, even if its just a tiny amount of SP Recovery.

 

Dispel - is currently a useless skill, people only put 1 point in it as it is a skill pre-requisite to SoulLink Revive. 30% is really rather low probability. As a Soulmaker who has low defence against other classes, I'll be dead before I could even get un-stunned. I request along with other players to increase the probability rate of this skill.

 

 

 

 

[stradie2]

I dont see any problem with sm's skills except for the links....(pvp wise)

 

try PVP with a bear or knight on an almost equally geared basis. Then tell me about it

[Greven79]

try PVP with a bear or knight on an almost equally geared basis. Then tell me about it

 

I don't see how a knight is exceptionally harder to kill than other classes.... and I guess what Bensch meant was that the skills of the Soulmaker are "not exceptionally crappy". It might be that this class lacks a perma-stun, BT or Hide  in duels, but one-on-ones are rare and arranged. Cure however makes the SMs a powerful addition in any WoE fight.

 

In regard of duels, it also depends on how you play them. Do you start at 25m+ range, do you allow Ymir/Awake or even pots amd do you allow pre-casted skills? And unless you can one-shot a SM, they're more or less invincible (just try a no-refine fight). Sad thing however is that sooner or later many classes can.

 

But more on the skills:

 

Attack skills:

With a 420% Mental Breakdown, your bread-&-butter skill already deals more damage than comparable skills and a 1265% Sacrifice isn't that bad either, if you compare the non-crit. non-hide damages. The soulmaker can also follow up with another 1050% damage via Immunity while enemy is still knocked down. The Soulmaker gets 4 items with Vigor - including the weapon - which allows him to achieve a Vigor rate of up to 50%. That also cuts the cooldown of Soul Extinction below 3sec and therefore below the duration of the immobilisation effect from the SE Mastery.

 

Heal skills:

Cure is the absolute winner here. That skill alone can render a Soulmaker invincible against most forms of damage that can't one-shot him. And because that skill can also be sustained easily on many other teammates as well, it can highly improve any assault or guardian team. t even saw a 14k trigger (with buffs) the other day. And a SM can still use other heals & pots. Restore is the best non-cooldown heal skill out there. And although many players claim Dispel to be weak, it can be a life saver if it procs (f.e. against monks).

 

Buffs & Links:

In my opinion, they're all crap. Not just because the threads are easily cut, but because their effects aren't that great or flavorful either.  Soullink::Concentration is probably the best of them, because Vigor is the most broken stat right now and Soullink::Balance just seems to be a bad & lame copy of Impositio Manus... as if the devs ran out of ideas. Transpersonal is just a VERY weak BT and I would even prefer a drop chance or XP bonus here.

 

I would definitely prefer some serious short term buffs over those crappy links with their semi-permanent 5% increases here and there. I'd rather enjoy something more like a Assumptio, Evasion or Incr. Agility.

[stradie2]

Crap is crap isn't it? its like saying oh man, I lost the PVP match but I can down your half hp so it is quite ok and I should be happy. -_-''

 

You should probably try to sacrifice a well geared knight and see what is your critical damage going on a good % of seeds and +20 refined gears on both character. Maybe I'm wrong or just bad at PVP and you could prove me wrong that we are actually legit against them.

 

Myself, a well geared SM (+10 - 20 mix of cazar and himelmez geared with 20%-30% blueseed/redseed with 28% power 18% armor) had PVP a lot of knight and 99% of the time they are just trashing us because we cant kill them with or without pot becaue they only need stun + one or few hit to kill us even we are on a more superior setting of gears and seeds. Worst if we are against monk/warrior, I will just die before I can do a hit to them if they critical on their first hit.

 

However,I do agree with your suggestion that SM is really good on his skill and need some sort of skill to keep this class relevant.

 

Normally in my guild (PF fortress/castle owner in SEA server) will prefer to have only 1 sm in each raid party because we have two good buff. The one who will on with his/her sm are usually with a crappy internet at that point of time or have something to do so he/she can just having a slack time because Sm don't have and cannot contribute that much compare to other. Cure is good but not as good as other healers in mass war (Sorceres LOR, Priest HH) they also offer more in DPS or CC. They contribute more toward the war and are making WOE easier to play. We can cure a tank in a battle but DOT heal can only do so much when there are multiple people targeting the tank and one shot his/her. Not to mention it is a single target heal and we are losing on the DPS end when we are healing due to the animation especially when you expecting cure to be on them most of the time.

 

 

Edited by stradie2, 10 October 2014 - 05:23 PM.

[HokaHoka]

First off, I'm a priest. This may be weird or out of place but I'll try to be fair and reasonable. There is no math in it though.... I'll mainly talk about heal.

 

A soulmaker is a class who, in theory, supports in battles by providing links and additional hots. Their defense and HP aren't high but they're blessed with agile movement and almost-instant skills.

 

They have 10/10 Cure which stacks. At first, this seems fair since they have crappy defense. However once they get good gears, their Cure becomes too much. A soulmaker can at least Cure for 10k HP every 2 sec. That's the lowest amount of Cure I've seen. The highest I've seen was 20k++.

 

Considering the fact that ML grinding is centered around lure and kill, Cure is superior to the other hots (Land of Recovery and Renovatio). The lurer will die on the spot if the healer is a Priest since Renovatio's duration isn't long. The same thing happens if the healer is a Sorcerer since LoR is stationary.

 

This kills the balance between healers.

 

I don't know about you guys, but in Indonesian server, Priests and Sorcerers are no longer favorable in parties. People will just use soulmakers to heal them. This is because the amount of heal from Cure is too godly. It gives the lurer a sense of security.

 

Compare this scenario to that if Renovatio is used instead. I use Priests as an example since Renovatio is pretty much similar to Cure.

Renovatio heals for 12 seconds with at least 4500-5000 heal amount. By the time the lurer arrives at the aoe spot, his/her HP diminishes a lot and the Priest has to pop Sanctuary (which has high CD) or Highness Heal. The former has no problem but the latter will surely take over the threat and kill the Priest. This is why Priests aren't favorable anymore.

 

Cure is also a fire-and-forget skill. Once a soulmaker cast it, he/she will focus on the other things. This is intended since ideally they will also use Soul Links and help in dps. Today, I rarely see soulmakers use links. They will press the same button (Cure) all over again. Some will even use macro. For the party, this seems like a non-issue. However for the sake of class balance, this is no good.

 

Long story short, please nerf Cure. Make it less godly or just lower it to 5/5 just like how it was before the Morroc expansion.

 

Cure can be stacked 3 times, making it powerful. However this shouldn't make the skill outclass the other healing skills. Ideally, 5/5 Cure is what we need here. 10/10 is too much. If Cure is only 5/5, it pushes players to look for a secondary healer.

 

Really, soulmakers have nice links which should be utilized more. From the previous comments, links need more range. I support this idea. Their links are beneficial. There should also be a way for them to use links when soloing except Devotion. It is to compensate for the lack of defense.

 

[feed3r]

Its probably fairer to compare the class as a whole in terms of healing.

 

The advantages of Cure is the long duration and stackable, while its not mentioned (or perhaps unaware by non-SM players) that the 'animation' time of Cure is much longer than Renovatio. Each cast will lock the soul maker for about 1-2 second in the jumping animation compared to spamming reno on the same amount of people which can be done very quickly. That said its obviously superior in the grinding-luring scenario due to its 30 seconds duration.

 

However, in other scenarios where immediate heals are required (boss hunts, PVP), Soul makers have no such options, Cure like reno only starts ticking after 2 seconds, and unlike Priests who have Highness Heal and Colloseo Heal for such purposes, Soul makers do not have an instant heal to do the job. Restore requires the target to be <20% MHP to be instant while Recovery does a little animation before dispensing the heal and its quite a small amount compared to 3 stacks of Cure. This makes soul maker very single dimensional healers, arguably overpowered but nevertheless still single dimension.

 

Nerfing Cure to 5/5 would be fine if there were also improvements made to the animation time for other heal skills, similar to the old Highness Heal vs the current one. They can also buff Cure Pearl to actually provide an option for aoe-Cure effects rather than the silly 1 time heal + debuff now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[HokaHoka]

+111111111 to buffing cure pearls, capping Cure at 5/5, and improving the animation time.

 

I won't deny that I don't play them but I've got a lot of SM friends as my reference.Cure heals for way too much that it makes PVE too easy.People also rely on Soulmakers too much, forgetting that we still have Priests and Sorcerers.

 

Heals are godly now. This made devs buff monsters too much. A lot of rebalancing needs to be done. However, if heals are reworked (either by nerfing or changing), it could bring about the hope that all healers are welcome in parties just like in the old days.

 

PS.

Yeah, we need Priests and Sorcerers during boss fights. With boss fights being only a dps race and one-hit galore, I think we only need one healer whose hot is 20k++.

[MingMei]

@hokahoka cure doesnt make it easy it only makes it possible(at least for DW and up content)

Priest got the Highest heal skill like you said they werent used as often because of threat management

Grinding is all about the HoTs burst heals means death

instead of nerfing cure why not revised heal threat mechanics instead 

cause as far as i know that is the problem(got ML30 priest and SM

 

 

and for cure pearls  i want a mechanic on that only activate it when receiving X% damage 

 

 

 

[HokaHoka]

I dunno, Chas.

 

Do you have an idea on how to revise heal threat mechanic?

That is a fresh suggestion!

 

Afaik if Cure stays the same, say goodbye to class balance. Just like what you've said: grinding is all about hots, burst heals mean death.

 

Welllllll, I still have faith in devs. They still need to release Hard Dungeon Renewal, Dayr Lava, Tower of Babel, and Niflheim (RO wiki).

 

If they insist on producing contents just like FP (you know, hellish bosses without mechanics and aoe alert).... [insert rage faces here]

 

Summon Greven

[Matsuyuki]

>tfw want to write a long post about this topic because I play both and there's so many misconceptions about them, but no time about it so I just tl;dr it.

tl;dr: Cure feels "better" than Priest's heals because it doesn't generate threat. If Highness Heal didn't generate threat Priests would outclass Soulmakers on every regard healing-wise (just like pre-aov!). I can manage to spam Highness Heal on my priest since it has a 16 Armor Greenseed Rune and Complete +20 Armor and I can heal DWU/FP better than a Soulmaker that has no way to react when various mobs hit the tank at once and take a bigger chunk of their health, or when the tank just plain sucks (aka it's a warrior with no refined armor and GS Armor Rune 1 because lol OP mobs).

tl;dr2.0: We have such OP heals because we have such OP mobs/bosses because AoV started an uncontrollable power creep that snowballed out of control, this needs fixing instead dropping nerfs and boosts all over the place.

Edited by Matsuyuki, 12 March 2015 - 11:07 AM.

[Seanski]

If cure is OP and needs to be nerfed then nerf priest DOTs too. Our max cure is almost just as high as priest DOTs combined... not sure about sorcs, but sorcs, like priests can heal and dps... SM is mainly just support unless there's another SM in a party.

[NilaR]

What if, instead of us just asking to extend the links' range, we can suggest a change on how links work? My suggestion is to change them into how AoE heals work.

 

- The old ways of how to attach links are:

• On single target, there is a limit of 10 m to attach those links and can extend up to 15 m before they break.
• On multiple targets, there is a limit of 10 m in circular range around caster that can be linked to someone on 14 m range.

 

While the single target links are simply attach a link onto a target within the range limit, the multiple target links have the same mechanics as Warrior's Battle Leap, Ranger's Arrow Shower, Wizard's Meteor Storm and some other classes similar skills. Each link on multiple link skills has same range limit upon their attachment on a target and a simple single link attachment of targets to the links caster as single links do.

 

- My suggestions are, regarding how links should be attached and including their range limits:

• To increase links range limit on single target, instead of 10 m upon attaching them to a target and extendable to 15 m, my suggestion is to decrease the initial range to 5 m to gain the extendable range limit of 20 m.
• On multiple links, changes should be made into how AoE heals work, or switch them link<=>heal mechanics. Either one of them:

 

Highness Heal  / First method of multiple links                                Restoration  / Second method of multiple links                                               

    C                                                                                                A        C

     I                                                  B as the initial                          \      /     \

    B                                                heal/link target                            B         D

  /  I  \                                                and A as link                                       /

D   I    E                                                 caster                                            E

     A

 

As with my single links range limit suggestion, on multiple targets range limit can be the same. 5 m limit on initial link target and the rest of additional target (on 5-10 m range of the initial link target) that the links range limit then can be extended to 10-15 m, while the range limit of caster and initial link is 15-20 m. This way, even if links have cast time and animation, new links should have extended range limit and slightly faster as you don't have to manually aim the initial link target.

 

Lastly, If implementing new links mechanics might be difficult, at least please consider the range limit rework. Reducing the initial links range limit to achieve a farther extendable links range limit. Thank you

 

 

 

[Glukos]

What if, instead of us just asking to extend the links' range, we can suggest a change on how links work? My suggestion is to change them into how AoE heals work.

- The old ways of how to attach links are:

• On single target, there is a limit of 10 m to attach those links and can extend up to 15 m before they break.
• On multiple targets, there is a limit of 10 m in circular range around caster that can be linked to someone on 14 m range.

While the single target links are simply attach a link onto a target within the range limit, the multiple target links have the same mechanics as Warrior's Battle Leap, Ranger's Arrow Shower, Wizard's Meteor Storm and some other classes similar skills. Each link on multiple link skills has same range limit upon their attachment on a target and a simple single link attachment of targets to the links caster as single links do.

- My suggestions are, regarding how links should be attached and including their range limits:

• To increase links range limit on single target, instead of 10 m upon attaching them to a target and extendable to 15 m, my suggestion is to decrease the initial range to 5 m to gain the extendable range limit of 20 m.
• On multiple links, changes should be made into how AoE heals work, or switch them link<=>heal mechanics. Either one of them:

Highness Heal / First method of multiple links Restoration / Second method of multiple links
C A C
I B as the initial \ / \
B heal/link target B D
/ I \ and A as link /
D I E caster E
A

As with my single links range limit suggestion, on multiple targets range limit can be the same. 5 m limit on initial link target and the rest of additional target (on 5-10 m range of the initial link target) that the links range limit then can be extended to 10-15 m, while the range limit of caster and initial link is 15-20 m. This way, even if links have cast time and animation, new links should have extended range limit and slightly faster as you don't have to manually aim the initial link target.

Lastly, If implementing new links mechanics might be difficult, at least please consider the range limit rework. Reducing the initial links range limit to achieve a farther extendable links range limit. Thank you

why initial range 5 meters? u should stay away 18 m from bosses at FP. initial range and links ranges should be 20-25 meters. always Moving seems annoying for using link. And i m ok with highness heal system but why we should need initial target? why we are selecting area after clicking to skill? so annoying. should be automatic. when we click to skill, links should bind 5 players around 20-25 meters of us with no area selection. with this way, links will be more useful

Edited by Glukos, 05 June 2015 - 12:54 AM.

[NilaR]

why initial range 5 meters? u should stay away 18 m from bosses at FP. initial range and links ranges should be 20-25 meters. always Moving seems annoying for using link. And i m ok with highness heal system but why we should need initial target? why we are selecting area after clicking to skill? so annoying. should be automatic. when we click to skill, links should bind 5 players around 20-25 meters of us with no area selection. with this way, links will be more useful

 

The purpose of reduced initial link, 5 m, was to increase final attached link range limit, 20 m. It's another workaround as directly suggesting to increase links range limit has never been implemented all this time. It was a kind of limitation for the links gameplay, for balance purpose, maybe- by increasing the final range limit, there's a reduced initial link. The idea is, it's a kind of hit-and-run method- we get closer to initial target, attach link and walk away to a safe distance as we can do so if the links were longer.

 

Also, I've yet to reach FP that I wouldn't know how things work up to that point, I'm terribly sorry. Is the 18 m range of safe distance from bosses at FP, from their AoE attacks, or also a safe range from overall attacks of bosses that their attacks reach up to 18 m so that you must be at a distance most of the time to avoid attacks?

 

Another method of multiple links attachment that you suggested would be the same as Priest's Sanctuary or Sorcerer's Deluge that it's does not require us to click, point at, or choose initial target as it would affect targets in the skill's range. Actually, that one way is also a good way of how multiple links should work.
 

[Glukos]

The purpose of reduced initial link, 5 m, was to increase final attached link range limit, 20 m. It's another workaround as directly suggesting to increase links range limit has never been implemented all this time. It was a kind of limitation for the links gameplay, for balance purpose, maybe- by increasing the final range limit, there's a reduced initial link. The idea is, it's a kind of hit-and-run method- we get closer to initial target, attach link and walk away to a safe distance as we can do so if the links were longer.

Also, I've yet to reach FP that I wouldn't know how things work up to that point, I'm terribly sorry. Is the 18 m range of safe distance from bosses at FP, from their AoE attacks, or also a safe range from overall attacks of bosses that their attacks reach up to 18 m so that you must be at a distance most of the time to avoid attacks?

Another method of multiple links attachment that you suggested would be the same as Priest's Sanctuary or Sorcerer's Deluge that it's does not require us to click, point at, or choose initial target as it would affect targets in the skill's range. Actually, that one way is also a good way of how multiple links should work.

i m not Totally against initial target suggestion but i m Feeling my suggest is better for multiple links. i am against that area selection part. Also for ur suggestion, 5 m still so short. 10m better tho. about FP bosses. yes aoe attacks doing 18 m. BUT there is a no warning. u cant understand when he will do aoe. thats why we are staying 18 m range for safe. Because aoe doing one shot to you.