91 replies to this topic

[Kadelia]

oh so I need to wear specialized 3rd job fixed reducing cast time gear just so my 250% damage slinging arrow can cast 5x slower than my 380% double strafe while leveling my 6x dancer. o wait you're an idiot.

Edited by Jaye, 15 September 2010 - 04:55 AM.

[Wanderer]

I'll take TSS for example, 6 seconds cast time (1.2 fixed 4.8 variable) plus 2 seconds FIXED Zen making it usable every 4.5~5s seconds, DPS wise its almost useless if you cant one shot, then why would AV be any different?

[Prodigy]

Do not start to mess with renewal BASIC changes please, fixed cast times are GOOD and 20/80 is a reasonable value with 20 being reducable to 10 with sacrament.

Please let's not screw the basics of the new mechanics...

Because we will get future patches that will allow for more reduction of both fixed and variable cast times?

1st of all, not all changes are good. . . We already demonstrated the fact that the fixed casting times on SOME NON-3RD skills are bad such as Arrow Vulcan and FAS because those skills having a fixed casting time makes it not viable to regularly use (plus, their damage isn't all that scary to begin with, and are mostly PvM skills).

2nd, as far as I'm aware, all of our "future patches" that reduce fixed casting time all have a "3rd class only" equipment restriction. This means that they're utterly useless for fixing the casting time of non 3rd classes.

[Kadelia]

I'll take TSS for example, 6 seconds cast time (1.2 fixed 4.8 variable) plus 2 seconds FIXED Zen making it usable every 4.5~5s seconds, DPS wise its almost useless if you cant one shot, then why would AV be any different?

In this example, TSS should probably be exempt from 20/80 fixed casting as well, as this skill clearly had the high cast time so that even with high dex (120-130 monks can get casually) that the skill wasn't too quick. Either making the base time 2 seconds (so that it is 0.4 fixed, 1.6 floating) or removing the fixed so that monks would spend no more than 3 seconds firing this off would be fine given the lack of cast delay this puts it about par with a -100% cast time arrow vulcan.

[Wanderer]

But they are on par now imo, because AV has shorter cast time than TSS (~2s vs ~2.5s), a slight animation delay (1s vs 2s because of zen) and a lower skill mod (1200% vs 1750%).

Overall I think changes are made because of something, if EC has a bloody 5 seconds fixed its obviously because they want you to coat BEFORE battle and not re-coat easily if dispeled. If ganbantein has a great fixed portion it's because ME is no longer instant cast and will have ~2s cast time.

Edited by Wanderer, 15 September 2010 - 05:39 AM.

[Kadelia]

Sounds like you are going off wiki information. I am looking at the wiki info right now and it seems wrong. animation for AV is about 3 seconds and you can move just before it ends (around 2.8). Wiki's 1 second is dead wrong. With strings pre renewal you can TSS something like 1.5-2x for every 1 AV. They are definitely not on equal footing. With cast removal due to instant cast pre-renewal, TSS damage rate is through the roof, something like 2-3x the DPS of AV due to the instant casting zen/tss and the lack of after-cast delay. This is comparing to a 0 second cast time AV. It makes sense that zen/tss get 20/80 casting as the presence of lack of a cast bar drastically affect this skill's dps. AV on the other hand becomes significantly worse without instant cast, and unlike TSS, can be interrupted, requiring a phen, worsening the skill yet more in renewal.

It should be pretty obvious tss was meant to have a cast time and av was not.

Edited by Jaye, 15 September 2010 - 06:06 AM.

[Prodigy]

Overall I think changes are made because of something, if EC has a bloody 5 seconds fixed its obviously because they want you to coat BEFORE battle and not re-coat easily if dispeled. If ganbantein has a great fixed portion it's because ME is no longer instant cast and will have ~2s cast time.

Not all changes are perfect/reasonable/correct. I'm sorry to say this but, it seems that you're just putting blind faith in whatever the developers decide to do. I mean, I'm sure most people here would agree that I usually defend Gravity's stand point, but at least I try to reason things out.

Let me just take a go at your examples:

Energy Coat is the bread and butter survival skill of mages. Without it, they (at least Warlocks) become too squishy for 3rd class standards. I know that there's the whole "Glass Cannon" concept, but let's face it, when compared to other classes, mages do equal, or more often than not, less damage than other 3rd classes while at the same time are considerably squishier. If Mages are "Glass Cannons", then other classes like Sura and RK are "Steel Nukes". I'm not even going deeper into that aspect of the argument, but the point is, Energy Coat is a much needed skill and having a fully fixed, 5 seconds casting time makes it near impossible to keep up in a battle. Also, Energy Coat is far from OP now. Yes, Energy Coat was "buffed" to now reduce both physical and magical damage, instead of the preRenewal just physical one. However this also means that every hit of every spell will now also drain the caster's SP. And as you may or may not know, Energy Coat has diminishing effects as the percentage of current SP over max SP gets lower. This means that aside from Dispell, simply spamming any type of damage, however weak it may be, can counter Energy Coat. With all that said, I see no reason to nerf it with the 5 second casting time.

Ganbantien
According to the iRO Wiki Renewal compilation, it has a 3 seconds fixed casting time. Again, this was a skill that was designed to be used in the heat of the battle, and casting a 3 second spell, that has a chance to fail, just to remove a 3x3 ground area is simply not worth it.

Arrow Vulcan
As with all other archer skills, they were originally created, keeping in mind the fact that Archers can easily hit instant cast under preRenewal conditions. Looking at Arrow Vulcan specifically, its fixed casting time makes it very undesirable to use since you might as well use DS for better dps. If you browsed around the Renewal discussion thread that's been going on for over a year on iRO Wiki, you'd see that most performers agree that they're better off completely ditching Arrow Vulcan - that's how impractical the skill has become.

[Wanderer]

And do you think kRO players are dumb? These skill changes have been like this since renewal day 1 afaik and if they were so unfair and wrong they would have been changed in these 2 years imo.

Edited by Wanderer, 15 September 2010 - 07:06 AM.

[KittySuperstar]

I don't know if you realize this, but kRO has been changing things about renewal EVERY WEEK for TWO YEARS which obviously means THEY AREN'T ALWAYS RIGHT.

[Prodigy]

And do you think kRO players are dumb? These skill changes have been like this since renewal day 1 afaik and if they were so unfair and wrong they would have been changed in these 2 years imo.

I'll try to say this nicely since it seems that we're on the verge of going into a flame war, do you even keep up with the iRO Wiki Renewal discussion? People HAVE been complaining about these things for the past 2 years. They've complained to the point that they've stopped complaining because they know that they've yelled at the devs enough times to know that anymore yelling won't do them any good. Again, looking at my above example, people ditched Arrow Vulcan. That should be indication enough that the skill change was "unfair and wrong". Heck, even jRO players have acknowledged this fact about the 20/80 blanket casting time, which is why jRO is also pushing for those fixes to be made.

Speaking of "dumb kRO" stuff, let's see. . . Weapon Refine is still bugged where a job 70 Mastersmith has a better success rate than a job 50 Mechanic. Potion Creation and Forging are bugged in the same manner where since 3rds have a lower job level than trans, their success rates were reduced as far as job level is concerned. For the longest time, skills such as Divest Accessory, Manhole, Stasis, etc. worked on players outside PvP maps and it took kRO many months to get it fixed, even though kRO players were quick to report that bug. Up until very recently, Masquerade:Gloomy was usable on players outside PvP maps and it killed homuncs and pets (not just send them away as what the skill should do; it literally kills/deletes them).

tl;dr version, just because a "feature" has been in the game for so long, it doesn't mean that it's "fixed".

Edited by Prodigy, 15 September 2010 - 07:36 AM.

[Verlai]

Just want to comment on Aid Condensed Potion having a pointlessly long cast time.

[Kadelia]

Just want to comment on Aid Condensed Potion having a pointlessly long cast time.

ty for the good example! With anything short of a near-instant cast time, aid potion is pointless!

@prodigy: I would just ignore wanderer. he/she seems to not know about many of the glaring problems. Doddler has provided some lengthy bug lists and oversights.

Edited by Jaye, 15 September 2010 - 08:57 AM.

[Babbles]

Regarding the Fixed casting time.. You are listing specific skills, but not specific desires for skills after cool down. All skills that have a cast bar should have an after cast delay of some sort, even if it is really short.

So what would be your desired shortening value?

Such a task needs to go skill-by-skill, and depends some on character builds.

The REAL problem is that the new cast time formula was a kludge to address the problems of instant cast, particularly in WoE. After all, it was never a problem in PvM. The easiest solution might be to apply the changed formula in WoE (and PvP) maps only (although this would screw over guild dungeon maps, so maybe WoE maps only). BTW, there was nothing exponential about the original reduction formula; (1 - DEX / 150) is linear. The new formula has a faster reduction at low levels, down to about 50% of total cast time at 60/60 DEX/INT. The cast time then reduces almost linearly down to the 20% barrier at 175/175 DEX/INT.

Assuming we need to keep the formula on all maps, then I can say what should be done for these Archer/Hunter/Sniper skills. Each skill only has cast time and cast delay. The fixed part is calculated from cast time. Without magic strings, the cast delay is always there. At level 99, a typical Sniper build will generally have at least 120 DEX, and between 0 and 80 INT. However, these builds all affect the cast time about the same.

DEX   INT   Cast Time
160   20    36%
140   60    36%
120   80    38%
160   80    31%

So using these numbers for cast reduction, compared to what they used to be, then the cast times of both Focused Arrow Strike and Falcon Assault should be about 0.5 seconds. The cast time for Blitz Beat should be about 0.25 seconds. The after cast delays should remain where they were, although I have always felt the delay on Falcon Assault was a little too long (the SP cost was too high for spamming it anyway).

The cast time for Wind Walker should be reduced to about 2 seconds.

[Akin]

So using these numbers for cast reduction, compared to what they used to be, then the cast times of both Focused Arrow Strike and Falcon Assault should be about 0.5 seconds. The cast time for Blitz Beat should be about 0.25 seconds. The after cast delays should remain where they were, although I have always felt the delay on Falcon Assault was a little too long (the SP cost was too high for spamming it anyway).

The cast time for Wind Walker should be reduced to about 2 seconds.

+1

I'm all for just adjusting cast times, and I'm sure kRO developers would be more open to such suggestions. Putting in if/else checks for skills about whether or not to remove fixed cast or whatever, probably requires an engineers time and is thus more expensive. Simply changing the cast time may be something that iRO staff can do in a script file somewhere and could fall under their localization agreement with kRO.

[Kadelia]

Everyone seems to care about snipers but gypsy/minstrel need some love too, since right now they're stuck doing the same agi/dex double strafe build they did as a 2nd job without any perks like falcon eyes/wind walker/higher crit from gear/etc like snipers have.

[Kadelia]

Bump for relevance.

[Babbles]

Everyone seems to care about snipers but gypsy/minstrel need some love too, since right now they're stuck doing the same agi/dex double strafe build they did as a 2nd job without any perks like falcon eyes/wind walker/higher crit from gear/etc like snipers have.

Sorry, don't play Minstrel/Gypsy.

But yeah, it looks like the dev team doesn't play Archer classes at all. They really get screwed over in renewal. The loss of job level may only be slightly visible in the potting yield of Alchemists, the forging yield of Blacksmiths, and the upgrade success of Mastersmiths, but it is clear as day to the auto-Blitz of Rangers.

The fixed cast time portion might be noticeable to Wizards when they cast, but their AoE spells last a bit and hit hard. SinX might have a little longer casting SD, but they FLEE their targets anyway. Snipers, Bards, and Gypsies need to cast fast, and the skills were designed around them casting fast. Having a cast bar at all is a new thing for me.

[Puppet]

I dont like the fixed cast time on everything, even with the bishop skill the reduces fixed cast time alots skill are scary slow in comparison and breaks alots skills usefulness, I see renewal as big you to casters, while melee's seem to prosper.

If they dont give the mains like month of stat/skill resets i see all the people that didn't test anything getting pissed and leaving. And even with this I See alot more people leaving over renewal then staying, I think before even thinking of making the test server the new server they should make sure renewal dont run off people and split the populations again, cause if that happens they just gona merger servers again to fix the dyeing popluation

And serious is there fixed cast time on AV??

As it is the just killed TSS Build champsI never liked combo monk/champs but I think that is what gona happen to alot of them now

Edited by Puppet, 16 September 2010 - 01:41 PM.

[Cotano]

ME doesn't work as well in renewal for priest without great gear. Safety wall has been nerfed so we can't depend on that. We have way more dex/int than vit so HP is similar to that of a Wizards. With awesome gear I'm sure the cast time can be brought down to 2 to 3 seconds. The average ME priest is going to be looking at 5 to 8 second casting time where it use to be 2 to 4. I don't think ME should be nerfed like this because of all the skill requirements it takes to get it.

To help the balance maybe only apply to the nerf to WoE?

[Kadelia]

And serious is there fixed cast time on AV?

yup.. and even worse also on the slinging/arrow/melody strike, and those skills have a lower dmg mod than DS making them pointless

[Sera]

The loss of job level may only be slightly visible in the [...] the upgrade success of Mastersmiths.

Just wanted to point out, it's not "slightly visible," it renders the skill completely useless.

Potting and forging are a bit different though, since they are tied to stats which also increase, someone calc'd out though that they still do lose out on a few % success rate.

Edited by Sera, 16 September 2010 - 03:44 PM.

[Kadelia]

Bump for real-game use of these skills post yggdrasil going live.

I have a 64 Gypsy on Yggdrasil now, and with a full DEX/INT build the only thing I can use slinging arrow or Arrow Vulcan on are stationary things like Geographer and Drosera, because everything else cast senses me or is aggro and walks up to me and interrupts my insanely impractical cast bar and then further makes it impossible to attack with anything but pathetic melee damage. In fact the skill is pointless even on Drosera, as I need 2 AV thanks to my lower damage in renewal since DEX no longer is exponential, the perks of improve concentration and owl's eyes are minimal

Charge arrow is USELESS now. I can't even use it when I am being attacked, what good is it? If I start it when someone is further away, they catch up before you can cast it again. It is pointless now.

Slinging arrow needs 0sec base cast time. You already have lower aspd for using a shield and lower damage with slinging (250%) than double strafe (380%), that is plenty of trade off for getting a shield's DEF/reduct.

Please please remove slinging's cast time, remove AV's fixed time and reduce its base time to like 2/3 or 1/2 what it is, and remove or significantly (like -90%) reduce the cast time on charge arrow.

[Haldor]

I saw a wanderer 2 AV a magmaring. They're slow enough to where she didn't get her cast time interrupted. But still, it looked like it was slow leveling.

The cast time for FAS is laughable. Using it on my 101 Ranger, it's barely practical. I was able to use it while mobbing magmarings. I still got hit occasionally by the mob. But magmarings have a slow walking speed. Anything that walks faster will make FAS useless for soloing.

I guess I should stat/skill reset and stick to traps.

[Kadelia]

I saw a wanderer 2 AV a magmaring. They're slow enough to where she didn't get her cast time interrupted. But still, it looked like it was slow leveling.

Yeah, it is. I was doing exactly that (2 AV on magmaring). Its pathetic because 5 DS needed to kill the magmaring takes less time and takes the same SP. And a priest+gypsy from 64-99 is crummy EXP. Monsters give 1~1.6k EXP to 99, partying is NOT worth it. Sadly. Wish it was.

[Prodigy]

I just find it funny, if not ironic, that when the AV discussion first came around on iRo Wiki's kRO Renewal testers, they were all saying how it's balanced because you can eventually get it to around under 1 second. But the thing is, they were testing it on a 140+ Wanderers with almost max stats lol. As a Gypsy/Minstre (the ones who will really use AV because Maestros/Wanderers have SRainstorm), even going full dex/int still makes for a painfully slow casting time.