Surreptitiously

Logged in just to pitch in.

Hasidim has many things that you can get by, his charge can be evaded (Although its not at a 100% chance) or dodged with Anchor Rush. His Orbs can also be outrun on a pet, or evaded, or completely blocked with Shield of Trust. However that is generally unreccomnended due to it leaving you open to get your rear end torn asunder by his Mineral Hail. Additionally, mana shield is extremely crucial to surviving against Hasidim, even with techs/high def+prot (Which until you finish g23, you wouldn't have Dampen Shock and Blunting Field).
For Tagar, you have to give twice the range for her scythe linear and horizontal attacks. Her windmill you should generally run straight in one direction asap, preferably with a pet if you lack wavesweeper/fleet/racial bonus. The slow, I don't remember any counters to it, but it should be able to be dodged (again, by anchor rush), and there should be a set time frame where the zone locks. Using pet link can actually make Tagar a bit easier, as if you place your pet and tell it to sit by one of the Pillars, and keep a short distance from Tagar, you can rely on your pet taking the heat while you focus on chipping her down.
The doppelganger, I actually don't even recall in g21. I had to actually look up where it was, probably because I shredded it that fast, and that was with a mediocre firebolt on a wimp connection. Which for this fight looking at the wiki, again, recommends Pet Link, and if the doppelganger uses shadow spirit, resetting its AI with windmill. Which is a feature by the way, not a glitch/bug.
For the Talvish fight, the biggest issue I remember most people having is trying to kill him with the skills that he has 80% plot reduction towards (Firebolt, Final Hit, Bash, Chain Impale), and not avoiding his instant kill with Shield of Trust. Other than that, he's manageable.

All in all, its G21. Its the finale for an entire chapter, and a lot of the issues you've explained are simply not using longevity and skills that you have access to and should be used to using, or aware that they can be used to make life easier. I have a bit of an opposite view for G21, and G22/23. I liked that there was things that I couldn't simply blast through and be half asleep in the meanwhile. But that's just one opinion. I'd reckon that if you used Divine Link and Mana shield, may end up having a bit of an easier time in what is essentially endgame content story-wise, not saying you'll breeze through it, but it shouldn't be nearly as painful and impossible as you make it out to be.

Finity wrote: »

Nerfing firebolt does not give people incentive to use other magic skills. It makes them not use firebolt. (or just give up on magic as well)

Hence why nerfing in general, especially when you view from devCAT's perspective, can be a very delicate task when you've normalized power creep and have ended up in a hellish point of maintaining your game when the focal point is the endgame community.

Cho wrote: »

Owntrolf - I understand your table which is why I'm saying context is important. I agree Firebolt can beat Hailstorm in cases but disagree that a revamp is the solution. Mabinogi gives players so many options that could be considered sub-optimal but might have different reasons for use and I honestly believe Ice magic runs on an idea of mana costs and repeated hits which puts Hailstorm in a slightly different place than firebolt.

Repeated hits, sure. Mana cost, Ice spear would like to say "hello". Hailstorm is an Advanced Magic, or Staff Magic. Comparing it with Meteor and Lightningrod... is difficult. Because the other two are given quite clear ideas about what Staff magic is supposed to be, and how they might want to flesh it out if they were to do a rehaul. Hailstorm might be nice if it was retooled to not be a ice GFS, because that's just simply lazy. If Hailstorm was affected by vivace, didn't have the sixty year prep time, and had a larger splash range, it'd do quite good. Meteor, despite LR basically conking it in damage because why not, still has uses as its normal surgical strike. However you might as well just use Nova Obliteration for that since meteor can just...not crit. See: Magic being in the worst state its been in years.

Cho wrote: »

Lutetium - I don't think you should call anyone out of touch when you're comparing NA Mabi to KR Mabi, that has been said to have way more popularity. You think all magic outside of Blaze and Lightning rod is objectively worthless? This is a big assumption on my part but I'm going to assume the reason you don't see people using all these types of magic is because the game has about 10+ different skill sets available to kill things with and chainslash is the newest one.

Yes outside of Blaze and LR, in the endgame content right now everything but LR and Blaze can do jack. Hell, hailstorm is ironic in tech because it can do better than firebolt. This is because when you get to severely high amounts of mdef now, Less is more, and hailstorm can certainly rack up the damage. Firebolt reaches a limit pretty quick and is more focused on hitting a lot.

Cho wrote: »

You can still see new players running around with different types of weapons but on the other hand I've seen some of the veterans around here openly tell new players "don't use knuckles, fighter is bad" "just buy a chainblade if you're an elf" and other fun-killing advice. And I've definitely seen people using int magic in runs. If you find mprot being too much of a problem, just use Hydra btw. That's what it's for. Though it would be nice if there were other magic defense/prot shredding options. There might be a technique or crusader skill for that idk.

I'll agree that dumb opinions like that are just what they are - Dumb. You're going to get those opinions all the time.
"Just use Hydra" is a poor solution. Its not a drop and done, affects a small zone unlike natural physical pierce which doesn't have such a restriction, and requires you to use an extra skillset for a minimal bonus in current endgame content, which you may not even notice.

Cho wrote: »

Blissfulkill - I understand this but sort of disagree about it trivializing things. Was leveling up a low level 300 ish mage a while ago and traded over a CC firewand to clear some SMs and even with rF firebolt there's a significant damage increase. It can trivialize high HP mobs ,early on, when the game is encouraging and teaching you to use magic+counter and icebolt combos as a solution.

Early game doesn't last that long, and bolt-counter and the situations where icebolt/lightningbolt are good become few.

Cho wrote: »

I brought up nerfing just as a suggestion. If you look at Arrow Revolver, it was nerfed when a cooldown was added to archery. Summon Golem was nerfed when r1 windmill was reduced to r6. They could always nerf firebolt or turn a portion of it's damage to a burn DOT which would incentivize people to use other magic skills. Preferably they could add other functions to Hailstorm like making it usable with spellwalk or fixing it so it works with vivace but these are much better solutions than to just revamp it so it becomes "A spammable magic aoe, like giant fullswing where we just make a gust of snow/blizzard/hail !?!??!" like OP said.

Again, wont disagree here. Magic doesn't need some flashy rehaul, it needs retooling. There is nothing really wrong designwise with the skills, especially not hailstorm. But flat out nerfing everything else, isn't a solution. Yes, MWM is a cancer and how it works with firebolt should really be redone, because the adverse affects that could simply just be done by removing magic weapon mastery and applying its bonuses straight to every other skill, adjusted of course to prevent +150% firebolt damage are far better than having an extra mastery on top of the elemental masteries, which could really use something to make it more exciting than just "xd one more bonus."

But no. If you're trying to say that magic is in a good state right now, its not. It wasn't remotely in a good state during Phantasm being end content, because everything started to outpace it. It was still usable in several areas, but the issues became far more apparent. Thunder is still worthless across the board, Fireball is okay but its lack of any multiplier is horrid due to how much power creep constants have done now, and Ice spear is nice but its not going to see any further past blowing up the back of the reserve/mines. Yes, I've found a use for icebolt in 7N elite, this is because it and mirage missile can be used on clerics to slow them down. No, it doesn't mean that the entire tab is saved, and definitely doesn't mean that there isn't a very dire problem for it.

Magic doesn't even have erg to save it. Staff erg is quite nice, but its not nearly as good as knux/cylinder/bars, and doesn't solve the glaring issues. I don't want a band-aid like the g23 weaps/erg, but magic doesn't even have that.

Gaea wrote: »

Greta wrote: »

I'm actually surprised that someone participated in this.

Oof.

I actually hate this image but I'll use it just for you.

Immediately reminded of this

On a serious note, I'll surely have open arms to welcome folks whom I shouldn't name, the entirety of Martyr and Derp, etc so on and so forth. I'm sure they'll love playing mabi for 24 hours and be very peaceful, break no rules, and who cares if they crash the server a few times, its a day to forgive, right?

HaruHime20 wrote: »

No, I know that the idiot Merlin was sadly important to the Story. I'm just saying that they picked the wrong character. The game didn't appeal to the entire player base.

I think, just bear with me a moment here, it is very difficult no matter what you do, to appeal to everybody.

HaruHime20 wrote: »

There is hundreads of NPC's but they settled for the least important, least wanted character. Maybe if Merlin didn't act like he is 13 and seeing a girl for the first time, his character would be better, but I swear the whole time it seemed like he was hitting on my character.

Did you miss the part where he's literally the greatest mage who ever lived combined with donte from DmC?

HaruHime20 wrote: »

And if there was never any intimate relations with Merlin, why would he act like there was? Why say anything at all. It was uncomfortable because it wasn't a girl saying Jokes like that. I just don't like Merlin, and I don't know anyone who does!

Jokes on you I actually like white haired mahou shounen DONTE.

Also, implications =/= what actually happened. Chances are he just got dead drunk and started rambling on about anything and everything zzz. Inference from a story is up to the reader and if you take things that negatively I think you might need to chill.