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As you guys may know, a couple weeks back they've ninja-patched the game to a terrible version which resembles what it used to be 1 year ago. I know many of you must have been told it is OK, and fell for the damage control by LionReign's leader, who's spreading rumors that the staff will fix the current situation or that it's not all that bad. Well, for starters, it comes from an inexperienced LV45 player, whilst the real damage done by that patch was to the content from Elbeck and above, or rather, LV70+ (maybe Lake B3 also became unplayable, but I'm not sure, haven't been there in a while).
There has been absolutely NO response from the staff on the matter. They have not included the changes made to stats and skills to the maintenance notes, nor replied to 1:1 inquiries, forum threads, facebook page's messages and so on. So if you see somebody saying everything is fine, regard them as trolls who want the game to fail, giving fake feedback on purpose to misguide the staff and let the game bleed out.
As I play Scout (one of the worst classes in both patches), a few days prior to the silent nerf I was testing the effects of attack speed and the minimum interval between 1 skill and another (Step). My tests were supported by a packet sniffer to get the exact interval in milliseconds between one cast and another was registered, visual comparison and a video breakdown to count in frames, so I still have the footage for that test. Here it is in a side-by-side comparison with the current patch (to the left): https://imgur.com/o2XzfmD
This gif is slowed down by 50% so you can see with more clarity.
Here are the changes:
- 1 second global cooldown was added to most skills, including Step;
- skill damage multiplier was reduced;
- offensive & defensive stats were reduced.
Now, how this affected Scouts - anyone can go back and see how they've been reworking rare/labyrinth options on gears to shift meta over the past months. Almost everyone had to remake their whole gear set to adjust to the changes, which is OK if it would last more than 2 months. When I played back in the first quarter of 2018, scout meta was Piercing Step, then they've changed it so Step would have a higher base damage and better synergy from rare/lab opts with the multiplicative formulae for Step damage in stealth state + Step damage %. Scouts can only get 3 seconds of stealth time every ~8 seconds due to the resets using Job I activation, and the damage when not in stealth is 11 times weaker (nearly useless). Before this patch I could use step every 150~180 milliseconds, as you can see in the GIF above, which would make up for the low uptime on stealth and the naturally low damage on Step (in fact, its base damage and multiplier is about 2.5x lower than Monk's Circular Kick). Now, being able to hit only once every second, the damage you can dish out for every stealth reset was reduced dramatically, being nearly impossible to get a single kill out of it.
Here is a video as example: https://youtu.be/9TnQ6FBIfXY
As you can see, my gears and stats are not bad nor easily acquired (I do have 10 elixirs of strength, btw), so I'm not really on the average level. Also, it's good to have in mind this is an area for LV75~96, and I'm currently LV91. When I first arrived at Elbeck at LV75 I would be able to deal as much damage per Step as now, even though I could barely reach 1.6K physical attack, nor did I have an unique weapon (the DEF reduction on it makes up for 700+ Physical Attack). I would kill 2 of those within only 3 seconds of stealth grouping them up, and would survive only with my mercenaries' heals 'cause they have 9m HP and I only hit 300K per second (and 3m with steroids for 1~2 hits).
But okay, you may be thinking: you're still able to kill them, why would you be complaining?
Well, even before it would take me 4 hours (premium channel + starry blessing) to get one level. And I would move and kill 3 rooms without the first one having time to respawn for a couple seconds. Right now, I can barely clear a room without a slave Priest before the first monster I killed respawned, so I must be making at least 3 times less EXP per hour (excluding all the deaths because right now I can't kill the gargoyles without a high risk).
This game used to be relaxing, something you could login, get a few growth levels on a daily basis and then logout - with lots of freedom regarding your time and schedule. Now, even to do the most simple chore you have to have god-like gears (and in order to do that, pay to win) and take a high risk + lots of time. We don't complain about p2w or class balancing, we just want our game experience to be enjoyable again, that's all. I seriously don't get how someone who's been hired to be a Community Manager can fail at their job in such a small playerbase - you, [CM] Mikael, are failing to deliver our feedback to the developers and/or make them work as they should. This game is dying because you've turned your back onto us. Neglecting your costumers will only compromise your own job, so step your game up and either give us an insight on what the developers think about this terrible patch, or fix it up.
This game being launched on steam was the best thing that happened in the past months; too bad this patch ruined it for everyone and the player count isn't keeping up. People will hit LV68+ and realize there is not much they can do to keep progressing after this - other than, of course, paying real money for EXP scrolls from the Steam launch package, which gives the game a bad reputation.
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