[NEW MILLETIANS] Please note that all new forum users have to be approved before posting. This process can take up to 24 hours, and we appreciate your patience.
If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the
Nexon Forums Code of Conduct. You have to register before you can post, so you can log in or create a forum name above to proceed. Thank you for your visit!
Closed Statistical Debate Forum Regarding Race Imbalance
Comments
They're durable with a Vales shield, but it hardly matters when it is either clear a room as fast in Shadow Missions as possible or do not get hit in Rabbie Phantasm.
But yes I understand the point of this thread. Mabinogi's main draw is that you can be any class you want at all times. Giants and Elves have limited options in some areas (no archery for Giants, limited hair options etc) but humans are able to basically do anything. I think the versatility of humans is more of a draw for me than anything. I would like it if Giants and Elves could have access to at least Archery and Lances respectively.
I'm kinda okay with not being the best in melee, I've built my character to be a tank, but even there it feels lacking. Honestly, it feels like giants were designed to be tanks, considering we get Taunt and Wind Guard, but a slow, not very effective aggro pull and a defence skill that locks you in place aren't great. (I am eagerly looking to the update for that). And the Vales shield is great, but as I understand it it's main draw is a bug that they've never bothered to fix, and it's the only large shield, so screw variety I guess. All in all, it feels like I'm pushing a boulder uphill just trying to fill a needed role in my party. (I also wouldn't mind having my only ranged attack not be on a 6 second cooldown, but I also don't need to sacrifice to ancient terrible gods for an event to give a bag to hold ammo that stacks to 2000 in the first place either, so I'm not gonna complain too much about that)
I've never really played an Elf so I don't really know exactly needs to be done with them, but I've heard a few stories about Final Shot, and I am unimpressed.
All in all, I like the races having specialities with some overlap. Let the humans keep their telestabs, just give giants and elves something that can actually compare. And everyone can get magic... unless you go melee first, then you're screwed because CP.
The matter of CRK Swords greatly boosting only humans may seem like a slap in the face to Elves and Giants, and it may seem even worse when compared to the Divine Weapons, however, everyone seem to forgot about the Divine Shield, which completes the Special Bonus of the Sword, and adds a +10 charge effect, meaning you do not have to dual wield the swords alone to get the effect.
In the Return of the Winter Warrior or Giant Battle Reorganization, Giants get a new Sword/Shield set, a New 1h Hammer that has the exact same, or nearly exact same boosts as CRK Swords, and I believe, new armor as well, all of which are Giant Exclusive. I won't even start into the skill revamps they get that put Wind Guard on the same levels of BS OPness as FH. As for what elves will get when their turn comes, I have no earthly idea, all I know is that it will need to be on the same level as what Giants are or will be getting to be justified.
My last little tidbit for you all...
"Balance isn't achieved when no one is complaining about anything. Its achieved when everybody has something to complain about equally."
I get that to some people that would imply making the races "worthless" and "samey" but in my eyes, its exactly what we need to encourage diversity. Again, I might be of unpopular opinion, I've wanted to rebirth as an Elf for quite a while now.
That solution still isn't perfect, because Final Hit exists, unless Final Shot receives a well deserved buff, and the game has gone in a direction lately where Giants aren't necessary. I understand the game's CC is going somewhat out of control, so they made Phantasm for example almost totally immune to CC, but wouldn't it be nice if Giants could actually taunt and tank in there? I get that not all Giants want to tank, some go to it for the enhanced (raw) melee damage or for throwing attack etc, but I feel that would be a more interesting, fair way to give credit to all races.
Scrap racial talents/gear restrictions, enhance/balance the racial exclusive skills (final shot, final hit, windguard), hide I think is fair enough to keep elf exclusive, mounted archery I don't really know where I stand. Mabinogi's pull to me atleast has always been that you can do anything you want, on the fly, so why restrict talents to certain races?
Heck elves are being seriously underestimated. +400% aim speed is a pretty big game changer ya'know, just toss that in with FS.
But I agree (as someone said in an at least similar way earlier in this thread) that we do not need more skills. Sure, it'd be fun, but we can't always make old skills right by adding new ones on top. That's exactly what has gone so very wrong over the years, particularly with passively gained stats.
Why do you think the raicial imbalance was getting more and more prominent as time passed by, aside from new equipment? Because the relative difference between racial stats and common stats(skills stats that make no difference between races) grew ever so smaller for instance for giant's strength, but is still really huge on elves' dex in comparison to their str deficit.
=> Humans have nearly as much str as giants now, nearly as much dex as elves, but elves have so much less strength than the other two races, while the rest basically floats around "everyone's the same".
It is perfectly fine and reasonable for elves to have less str, they were made that way. Now, to the main point: elves need to get their edge back. (Going to leave giants alone for the rest of this post because their update is in progress and we'll have to wait and see how it turns out to know how their balance will look)
Aside from elves needing a little more dex and int in general for being anywhere more proficient than other races at the talents they involve (because let's be honest, mana isn't an issue anymore WHATSOEVER with magic, even while near-constantly party healing), they require an edge skill multiplier-wise.
Now, int is pretty easy to max anyway, so giving elves a stat advantage there is worthless; instead it'd be easier to give them a straight up magic attack bonus. Probably attributed to Magic Mastery.
As for dex, perhaps giving them 20 or so extra max damage for archery would be appropriate too. I am not entirely sure, but dex is also easy to get on really high numbers, so a dex buff may not make that much of a difference anymore in the future. It may be necessary to attribute max damage to bow and crossbow mastery instead.
Secondly, the skill multipliers. I dare say ranged attack might need a minimal bonus for elves, because nobody uses the double shot in favor of literally anything else, maybe aside from duelling or the slap attack counter on Girgashiy if switching weapons would take forever. I know I do that on easy and normal while holding both a bow and gloomy to ss and buff while having a pet summoned.
Mirage missile is actually fine as it is.
Magnum shot is too dependant on reforges, that needs to be transferred over to the skill itself a little. Same goes for effective range, bows and xbows generally need longer range in favor of weaker effective range reforges. Same for crash shot's reforges, because otherwise the skill is pretty good.
Lastly..and this is something that's been bothering me for the longest time: activating skills.
As a european, I am convinced this problem will probably never even be considered existent in KR unless brought up, but it's there and it's the most threatening bottleneck to archery there is. There may actually not be much of a problem with archery at all should this be fixed, that's how gaping of a flaw it is.
Aside from the fact that when you ctrl-attack enemies, because the wonky hitboxes of enemies and their movement REALLY do not allow you to actually track them with your mouse and the fact that ctrl-attacking will sometimes attack literally anything instead of the thing you're pointing at because doesn't actually "lock" to the enemy (could probably be fixed pretty easily <_<), the biggest problem with archery comes from the delay of activating skills.
After almost every damn attack, my character will - without auto attack being on or any clicks being made - automatically attempt to load ranged attack after a magnum shot/mirage missile. THAT is a huge bottleneck. You may not want to use ranged attack. In fact, as previously stated..no. You do not. Definitely not. It's horrible. Even if it wasn't, it should be in the player's freedom to choose whether or not that is the skill they wish to use next. As to why that is a huge issue, I will explain with final shot.
Final shot. A potentially great skill. It was previously mentioned that teleporting reduces its duration - it doesn't anymore (though it doesn't last long in general). That was one of the changes of renovation. But that doesn't mean anything. Frankly I never use the teleport at all, because I waste 70% of FS' duration trying to UNLOAD FS + WAIT + TRY LOADING NEXT SKILL WITHOUT THE GAME REACTING + LOAD THE SKILL. Repeat the cycle forever.
You know what would fix that? Since FS can't be cancelled by knockback anymore anyway, it needs to have a duration bar exactly like way of the gun. DONE. ALL FIXED! CONGRATULATIONS!
See, the assumed 400% ranged aim bonus that we're supposedly getting with FS or some new elf skill (I haven't heard of it yet, honestly, I just saw it being mentioned in the thread) won't really help europeans either, especially if THIS bugged mechanic is kept in place. FS is extremely unusable because of how many actions are required to launch a single skill, each with a 1-2 seconds potential delay. Which is also how human ranged attack can be so superior to the elf version when given to the right person. It aims faster, so if someone who can load it and fire it instantly can push the red button to launch it, it shoots way more actually helpful arrows (also in the sense of survival in dangerous situations) than the elf version, because for people with high latency it reaaaaally doesn't matter how fast you can load it if you can't load and fire it in under t wo seconds anyway (at least not without gambling on predicted percentage values based on your average FELT latency towards the server, as you have little to no ways to check nor influence that factor so it ends up being all about guesswork).
I know, wall of text. I also don't really know if this was actually the purpose of the thread, as I haven't seen that many actual solutions more than just discussions in this (remake? of the) thread, but hey, just throwing it out there.
I personally am a fan of making an actual difference between the races. It's how it was initially, anyway. Now that balance is being brought forth, I feel like it's actually very hypocritical to suddenly go "races should be the same and just have cosmetic differences", when all this time we've wanted races to be equal but nobody ever listened and instead wrote it off as QQing. That's not how it works.
To begin with, if we wanted to abandon the concept of races altogether, why did we have it in the first place? We literally could've had a game with the race "Milletian", where you could either choose to have a human figure or a giant figure...and if you had a human figure, you could also pick elven ears and henna on top. Freaking. Done. You're all aware that's not how it went though - races were introduced with differences in mind. I feel like that is how it should be kept, as long as it's kept *fair*.
Just gonna drop this here.
It definitely isn't a big game changer, not sure if you play as an elf but there are tons of elves that don't even archer, like me (mage)
And the current "elf" archers will just be able to do about the same thing as they can do now, just a little bit faster.
IMO that "skill" is pretty much useless. Even FS is more useful (since you don't have to wait 1 IG/irl day to use it)
If final shot is more useful then I have nothing more to say.
I'm really annoyed that most of the OP class debate comes to to final hit. I know it's not the only factor but we keep touting human as best race just because of 1 skill. I don't like final hit, I like it as a skill but not it's current meta. It just rubs me the wrong way that all race arguments get dropped on the 1 skill that should have been nerfed and never was.
With the current KR revamps we even have humans taking the worst race spot in the meta. Elves magnum+final shot with be #1 best way to do things in the future. A giants bash will be the next highest DPS with their new blunts and the semi-passive vision damage bonus. Humans will still have final hit, mediocre range, and passable magic but the two other races will actually be better than them.
All in all, do I even play anymore? What am I doing here. ;;
^ This right here pretty much sums up how things are when the kr updates hit.
PS: I believe gunner is balance between STR and INT but I don't think it really leans either way from my experience so please correct me if I'm wrong
Even as a mage, I wouldn't mind race changing to human or giant.
Elves keep getting more and more neglected anyways, and for those who can't see that; you all probably don't even play as elves.
I personally wish I was an elf, range is one of my favorite skillsets and with the new visions buff it'll be amazing for them. Gunner is pretty even between all races with link/catering.
As for proof let's look at windmill which I recently mastered on my main human.
Giant (easy) r1 took about 2 days due to the radius reach and the requirements.
Human took me roughly 4 years off and on to master given the requirements. To get to R1 took about 2 weeks.
My elf has r8 windmill and it's painful with small radius only one handed weapons (mostly) and high requirements. I keep working on it slowly but burn out on it fast. Might take months to hit r1 of playing every day.
There are other skills like this as well. If it's up close and fighting giants come first, humans second. For range elves win but so many (g bosses) are resistant to range. I enjoy playing all three but yeah elves need some love, honestly I think they all do.
I was just going to be a forum lurker, but since joey came back from the dead I'll also come and complain.
You can't be annoyed that people are saying humans are OP just cause of 1 skill, then proceed to say elves will be the next OP thing because of 1 skill. The new skill isn't even as flexible as final hit, and KR combat and NA combat are COMPLETELY different. If you watch any videos of KR players, they can combo and pull off things that us NA players couldn't even hope to achieve.
Honestly they should've just tacked on the aim speed to final shot, instead of making another skill that does the same thing but better, with more constraints. With lag, animation delays, and elf lag, I'm willing to bet this new "OP" skill won't be nearly as good as everyone is making it out to be (and so far it seems only players who mainly play humans think elves will be/are fine). Honestly people need to stop thinking everything KR gets will play out the exact same way when NA gets it. (remember the "archery renovation"?)
And you're underplaying a human's ability in archery and magic. No race has any real advantage over another for magic(unless I missed some major update, the difference between a giant mage and an elf mage is completely trivial) . And Humans, while they can't spam Mag as fast as elves, can still clear rooms faster than elves, thanks to Crash shot and AR.
And for things like girgy raids, humans still have the best overall potential thanks to their ability to use lances, and the CD they have for support shot is HALF of that of elves.
Even for final shot, it has a 2 second load time, compared final hit, which can be used right off the bat.
(I also don't even play this disaster anymore)
I should have been more precise with my statement. Elves should be the best single target Dps post changes. I don't consider them the best race overall.
And...as for human archery it just feels off for me. I never use AR cause it seems to suck without specific forces. -shrug- I still wish I was an elf.