Let's just review how safety wall used to be and what its purpose was. Safety wall used to be a sort of lifesaver or protection from very powerful attacks. Priests could get it because I suppose it is one ultimate form of protection. Mage classes got it because... they were frail. Were it not for a priests heals, and tendency to get high vit, they would also be quite frail. This skill was meant to help people who would die easily, under normal circumstances. If you get caught off guard or slip up, then you are toast.
And even then safety wall would still only block 11 hits when maxed (and normally no one likes maxing it anyway), but the beauty of it was it didn't matter how strong or how weak the attack was. Safety wall is THE skill for fending off and saving your allies from melee attackers who are about to land a killing blow. It was even useful for helping people who are normally TANKS survive many things like attacks from MVPS.
However, it did have some drawbacks. First, there was the gem cost and weight. You have to put forth money to use this skill, because it was that good. And even then, you still couldn't use it indefinitely because the gems took up weight.. and well, wizards and priests never really had much strength. This cost could be negated by: mistress card, but that is a MVP card. Or, it could be negated by a wizard link (and only for that class, not sage or priest), however, on the flip side, the buff could also be dispelled with flying kick or.. dispel.
The second drawback is that each cast only affected one cell. You must get to that cell if you are not on it, and you must stay on that cell as long as you wish to be protected from melee attacks. And let us not forget the position lag, which would make it difficult to help an ally with safety wall anyway, since you may not be casting on the cell they are actually on. For a melee character wishing to be protected by safety wall, this was an absolute hinderance. For ranged characters, such as the wizard/sage who casted the safety wall, it is not such a problem, but it still severely limits your options.
The third drawback is... it takes so many skillpoints to get! Level 7 napalm beat, level 5 soul strike. Now, napalm beat... it's just garbage. I've still made use of it, but just to be annoying. Soul strike is also considered not a very great skill. And it may not even be the usefulness of these two skills to question, but rather the usefulness of OTHER skills one might have thought were much more important: such as... frost driver, stone curse, fire wall, and my favorite for stone curse combos, maxed fire bolt.
4th thing that really irks me... statuses go through safety wall. Now personally, I never believe this should be the case, as if you are taking no damage and being completely unphased by a physical attack, it should in no way debilitate you.
So, even though safety wall was great, it still had all these drawbacks that came with it. And yet, even still, there were SO many ways around safety wall. I know for 1v1 situations, sometimes safety wall can seem WAY overpowered if you are just not the right class. But for WoE with the whole range of classes, where there's groups vs groups?
You could have pneuma placed where you were about to cast safety wall, effectively blocking it in that area.
You could have ME put under you, nullifying the safety wall. Or a ganbatein.
You could be attacked by ANY ranged attack still. TSS, edp grimtooth, clashing spiral, arrow vulcan?
You can still be hit by ANY magic, even AoEs, considering if you were protected by safety wall, you couldn't be protected by ME.
You can be statused (stunned, frozen, stone cursed, silenced, even put to sleep for low int builds) and then have your safety wall eaten away.
You can simply be attacked with high attack speed or by multiple people, which will quickly take down the safety wall.
In non-WoE situations, you could be pushed off safety wall by certain skills.
There are so many ways you can counter the skill safety wall, that it never was overpowered or imbalanced in the first place. WoE played a lot like a giant (and laggy) game of rock paper scissors, and safety wall was a part of that.
But now for renewal what is safety wall replaced by? A glorified KE, except... it still has ALL the drawbacks I previously mentioned. Gem requirements, affects one cell, needs so many skill points. Oh wait, glorified KE? Maybe for the wizard casting it on him or herself. From the looks of it, it seems the strength of safety wall will not improve if it is cast for another character like a Rune Knight. For THEM, it'll most definitely be a gimpy KE. And let's not forget that safety wall would STILL be countered just as easily as it was before. And let's also take into account that now with fixed cast times and new variable cast formulas, all casters have it STILL harder.
In my opinion, you have taken a great skill and nerfed it so badly that no one would ever want to use it again. Sure, it still may be alright for helping protect from weaker attacks like in pvm grinding situations and regular attacks from high aspd characters... but its REAL use has been destroyed.
If you feel you absolutely MUST give the safety wall a durability, it would be most logical to base its strength on the MAGIC ATTACK stat of the caster, not their hit points. The mage class and priests' HP are not going to be too great, and it favors the priest (or arch bishop) far more because they will most likely have more HP. And furthermore, the durability of the safety wall should still be fairly huge. As in, with a high amount of INT, a good wand, and maxed safety wall, it'll absorb up to around 150k damage (purely taking renewal damage into consideration). This would have more room for improvement with maxed base MATK and the best of wands.
Keep in mind that the safety wall would STILL have the number of hits limitation as well, so it would still be vulnerable to a bunch of fast, weak attacks.
Edited by LethalJokeChar, 14 September 2010 - 03:25 AM.