At the time i was a new player so i dont remember nor knew much about the game, but i remember it was a pretty big deal this "nerf/fix" and it was talked alot, back in the days. When i heard of it, it was already years old, and we're talking waaaay before Renewal: it happened during original Ragnarok Online. I dont know if before Trascension implementation or before, but originally everything was supposed to deal Neutral element damage as a baseline, monsters too. I began playing when nameless Island was added, and the change had already happened.
Basically, being Ghost 1 reduced 75% of the damage in pvm, as the majority of the damage component was neutral element: especially the monsters's autoattacks. Imagine how much you can tank and how many monsters you can mob if you take only 1/4 of the damage just by the armor you wear; then the shield's reductions, the hard-def, raydric card... So, they changed the baseline element of monsters. How? they are still neutral element but in the codes the adjustment is skipped. This way they end up being element "Null", or "no-element". A sort of mytical 11th element, thats not counted by Ghost 1 armor element, as it checks only element Neutral.
iRo wiki focuses the phrase around "monsters's autoattacks" and how GR card making you ghost 1 wont do anything.
This though later lead to another "issue", or more like "incongruence" in the elemental rules for monsters; when monsters began to appear using Sonic Blow, or things like Brandish Spear, skills that determines their damage element upon the user's weapon's element, these monsters now eneded assigning the "Null" element to those skills. And Ghost 1 armor was intended from the beginning (and never changed) to reduce Neutral damage; they just discovered that it was too OP for tanking monsters's autoattacks. So, these skills now that were supposed to be Neutral, are not due to the "nerf" regarding a different thing, and fall outside Ghost 1 armor element. This argument is what i deducted, as im here in search of more detailed informations, as i mentioned in the first post. So its an ipothesis but it kinda makes sense.
Like when MVPs had huge values of VIT, then with the transcended classes and Creator's Acid Bomb they had to reduce their VIT down to 30 because Creator was too OP. The same with GR and the autoattacks. Tho, as i said before, later down the way it ended affecting baseline element dependat skills used by monsters. Too bad that the game changed sooo much that they will never fix that, making clones of the skills and set their attribute to Neutral, as it was supposed to be, because with 3rd jobs and, oh gosh... 4th... jobs... dealing hundred of millions of damage, and having hundreds of thousands of health... for them it doesnt matter coherenting the situation.
Edited by HistorianOfRO, 10 November 2023 - 01:04 AM.
