i agree with that im use to most MMO's where ur big heal in this case its critical heal would have a long cast time cause of its big heals but i guess people want ez mode so meh w/e they dont look at pvp the way we do.

i think the shadow mage are really powerful normally one or 2 shotting monsters , but you always ran out of mana pretty quickly , maybe the balance of power /mana is about right or do people think they should give a bit of power up to speed up the mana regen or possibly lower the cool down on the skill to regen mana for health as at the end of the day. a shadowmage is pretty much a glass cannon, once they run out of mana be it a castle seige or any boss mobs ect they pretty useless,

on another not i always found it hard to spot when runes were being dropped , wouldnt it be easy to just implement a auto loot button or AOE loot, or just make things alot easyer to spot whent hey have dropped .

The only time I've seen kanu run out of MP is after a few hours (like 5 hours) of nonstop floor 3 AoE grinding where all he does is heal spam. . . So I don't know how people have MP issues.

Oh poo.

I can run out of MP quickly enough, just running around above ground grinding regular mobs. Just spam AOE and DOTs over and over, takes about 15 - 20 minutes of constant pulling in a packed area, with mobs at or slightly above my level (I was 30 at the time).

It's not quick, and it's not the "recommended playstyle" and I don't think it's worth whining about... but I'm tired of people saying "I never run OOM, I cam spam heal and cast constant AOE and DOT and just basically nuke lvl 1 mobs with my highest spells repeatedly with one hand ties behind my back!"

Sheesh.

divvsy wrote:

The only time I've seen kanu run out of MP is after a few hours (like 5 hours) of nonstop floor 3 AoE grinding where all he does is heal spam. . . So I don't know how people have MP issues.

If he's only healing, that means he's working with a party. That significantly allows for better MP budgetting than soloing.

That being said, I also never ran out of MP, soloing Inaferus or Skarr on a dps build. 80 MP per sec pots = more MP per sec than all but 2 skills.

Rekikyo wrote:

divvsy wrote: The only time I've seen kanu run out of MP is after a few hours (like 5 hours) of nonstop floor 3 AoE grinding where all he does is heal spam. . . So I don't know how people have MP issues.   If he's only healing, that means he's working with a party. That significantly allows for better MP budgetting than soloing. That being said, I also never ran out of MP, soloing Inaferus or Skarr on a dps build. 80 MP per sec pots = more MP per sec than all but 2 skills.

Well yeah. . .I mean people ARE trying to balance for party play right? Because balancing classes for solo play in either PvE or PvP is how you break PvP in the end. When trying to balance a class one doesn't just look at what you yourself can do. You have to see what you bring to the party/team as a whole.

divvsy wrote:

Rekikyo wrote: divvsy wrote: The only time I've seen kanu run out of MP is after a few hours (like 5 hours) of nonstop floor 3 AoE grinding where all he does is heal spam. . . So I don't know how people have MP issues.   If he's only healing, that means he's working with a party. That significantly allows for better MP budgetting than soloing. That being said, I also never ran out of MP, soloing Inaferus or Skarr on a dps build. 80 MP per sec pots = more MP per sec than all but 2 skills.   Well yeah. . .I mean people ARE trying to balance for party play right? Because balancing classes for solo play in either PvE or PvP is how you break PvP in the end. When trying to balance a class one doesn't just look at what you yourself can do. You have to see what you bring to the party/team as a whole.

Solo play tests the extremes of a class. A team play tests the coordination/cooperation of classes. When no class can solo, it's going to upset alot of players. After all, alot of people play games to get away from people. They key is to make a game mostly soloable while also encouraging team play (I think that level 41 Lich and Inaferus do pull that off, because while I can solo them, it's going to take me 10 minutes to kill Inaferus and 5 hours to kill the lich - one slip up on heals in the duration of the kill and I'm a goner -Inaferus hits 700-1100, so on most attack builds, 2 big hits can = death.... double tapping an attack skill can kill you)

In other words, Solo play should be on the fringes of the sample's standard deviation curve (at the 97.5% would be the upper extreme, which would be where Soloists would apply, whereas 2.5% is where bad parties lie ;50% is where the average party would lie).

If you know nothing about standard deviation, it's a measure of how far from the mean (average) in this case players, can play effectively (deviate from the norm).

Sorry for getting technical. I'm a fringe player and that's my role in most communities. I can definitely play with a team, but over the long term I find solo-beating teams much more enjoyable.

Rekikyo wrote:

divvsy wrote: Rekikyo wrote: divvsy wrote: The only time I've seen kanu run out of MP is after a few hours (like 5 hours) of nonstop floor 3 AoE grinding where all he does is heal spam. . . So I don't know how people have MP issues.   If he's only healing, that means he's working with a party. That significantly allows for better MP budgetting than soloing. That being said, I also never ran out of MP, soloing Inaferus or Skarr on a dps build. 80 MP per sec pots = more MP per sec than all but 2 skills.   Well yeah. . .I mean people ARE trying to balance for party play right? Because balancing classes for solo play in either PvE or PvP is how you break PvP in the end. When trying to balance a class one doesn't just look at what you yourself can do. You have to see what you bring to the party/team as a whole.   Solo play tests the extremes of a class. A team play tests the coordination/cooperation of classes. When no class can solo, it's going to upset alot of players. After all, alot of people play games to get away from people. They key is to make a game mostly soloable while also encouraging team play (I think that level 41 Lich and Inaferus do pull that off, because while I can solo them, it's going to take me 10 minutes to kill Inaferus and 5 hours to kill the lich - one slip up on heals in the duration of the kill and I'm a goner -Inaferus hits 700-1100, so on most attack builds, 2 big hits can = death.... double tapping an attack skill can kill you) In other words, Solo play should be on the fringes of the sample's standard deviation curve (at the 97.5% would be the upper extreme, which would be where Soloists would apply, whereas 2.5% is where bad parties lie ;50% is where the average party would lie). If you know nothing about standard deviation, it's a measure of how far from the mean (average) in this case players, can play effectively (deviate from the norm). Sorry for getting technical. I'm a fringe player and that's my role in most communities. I can definitely play with a team, but over the long term I find solo-beating teams much more enjoyable.

I agree with you on this. It should be possible to solo most things (although there should be cases where partying is required at the appropriate level range for the quest/mob, but when a toon is a few levels higher than that level range, say, 5 levels or so, the toon ought to have a chance of soloing without dying). The game should also, however, encourage party play, rather than penalize it (as some games have done). The "MM" in "MMORPG," after all, means "Massively Multiplayer." If the game is set up in a way to encourage solo play and penalize party play, then it might as well be a single player game.

I'm sure some builds for SM are more conducive to solo play than others, but I also believe that an SM ought to have this chance to solo as well, regardless of build (unless the build is simply completely wonky), and that is not the case. Might be for level 35, isn't for level 30. That's not a good thing. Some players will always tend to face challenges finding a party, due to time zone, schedule, etc, and allowances should be coded into the game to compensate for that.

Rekikyo wrote:

[Snip quote tree]

While this is somewhat true, you also have to account for people who built their characters incorrectly and try to solo PvP/PvE then go "This class needs a buff!" (see the majority of these suggestion posts in all 4 threads (okay, maybe the Sorc one deserves to be excluded. . .)). It certainly was possible to solo most things in this game aside from bosses. During CBT, a badly built class in party play did fine because of the support of a group, while in solo play they failed. A good build on SM/War/Pal did perfectly fine solo (Sorc was just bad). Catering to the people who were messing around with builds then trying to go solo or PvP with half broken builds is laughable.

Example: Kanu could solo third floor temple grinding at Lv30ish no problem with the proper equips and skill/stat build (AoE). So could my Warrior (AoE with HP pots) and Paladin (AoE/Single target cycle with MP pots). My Sorc can go die in a fire, preferably her own - but I digress. As a duo (or larger party), we could lure rooms and run around hallways AoE'ing without care or pots. This was without the stats glitch that made everything amusingly easy. Yet when you look around you see people asking for more damage, buffs or more AoEs.

IMO they should've left it the Korean skill setup. Yes, no heals hurt, but it wouldn't be the first PvP focused game without a healer and required actual player thought to decide on how to sustain themselves.

I think we offtopic'd this thread a bit though. . . ┐(￣ー￣)┌

Rekikyo wrote:

In other words, Solo play should be on the fringes of the sample's standard deviation curve (at the 97.5% would be the upper extreme, which would be where Soloists would apply, whereas 2.5% is where bad parties lie ;50% is where the average party would lie). If you know nothing about standard deviation, it's a measure of how far from the mean (average) in this case players, can play effectively (deviate from the norm). Sorry for getting technical. I'm a fringe player and that's my role in most communities. I can definitely play with a team, but over the long term I find solo-beating teams much more enjoyable.

First of all, I don't think soloing the world bosses should really be an indicator of a class's soloing potential; I know that you're not suggestion such, but just wanted to throw that out there.

Each class is supposed to not just have benefits, but also drawbacks associated with the class. Sure, it would be great for the SM players if they gained the infinite MP capabilities of a sorceress, but think about where SM stands in the balance of other classes for a moment: SMs are defensively up there with the ability to heal themselves without worry, they get AoEs pretty early on in their careers, and are very capable of solo AoE grinding. The biggest downsides right now are that they do a bit less damage than sorcs and that they need MP pots for continuous grinding.

If you give a SM the sorceress's MP regen abilities OR power that outstrips the sorceress, think about where the sorceress currently stands. An SM can heal and has defense/HP buffs pretty early on, so they are defensively superior to most classes (save paladins at the level 35 cap). With power, an SM can now do more damage than sorcerers with the proposed buff; this, added to their already superior AoE capabilities, means they are now the best in both offense and defense. With a sorc's MP regen, a SM is now the only class that does not require any consumables of any kind to solo temple 3, while still being a defensive powerhouse and a very good AoE grinder. How, exactly, does either of these bring balance to the game?

I really suggest that all potential changes be made with a look at the general class balance in mind; every class is supposed to have some aspects that they shine in, and other aspects in which they are not as good as other classes. Most people in all four of these forums (sorc included, actually, despite how universally reviled they seem to be) will only suggest buffs to their class without caring about overall balance, and if paladin/SM weaknesses are removed without a consequential adjustment to their strengths, that would be pretty darned bad for the game overall.

@divvsy: Don't be so harsh on sorcs =p. They can solo floor 3 with mixed AoE's and ST pretty well with quite a bit of care, even if they need to gulp down HP potions to do so. Especially if my almost full left tree sorc can do it...