Information Halloween 2020 Balance Changes [Explained]

Welcome to this season's balance changes thread, bringing around a large number of small changes to quite a few classes - and just about all of them are buffs this time around. Most classes were fairly well balanced as of the last patch but could use a bit of tweaking, and hopefully with enough light touches the game can reach a place where all classes are viable choices and it's the style, gameplay, and mechanics of a class that are the main draw to them.

And now, on to the changes!

Paladins

• The animation time of Heaven's Hammer has been reduced

Being such a long skill to cast, it had become detrimental to cast Heaven's Hammer in bosses as the damage dealt by multiple Blasts tended to do a lot better than a single Heaven's Hammer, even against a large number of targets. After a rigorous workout, Paladins have gotten strong enough to swing the might of the heavens significantly quicker. With this change, it will be worth casting even with a few targets to help bolster DPM. We'll still observe HH after this change.

• 'Holy Charge - Sword' and 'Divine Charge - BW' damage increased from 140% to 185% at max level

When the initial Paladin buffs went through, it was only the 3rd job elements that received buffs, leaving Holy to collect dust in 4th job as it was inferior to the other buffs in just about every situation. With this buff, Holy will be a direct upgrade over Fire on any elemental neutral target, being a 1.85x damage multiplier vs. the 1.75x of Fire Charge.

With both of these buffs, we believe that Paladins will be in a better state in all places, including Horntail. We'll continue to keep our eyes and ears open to see how they tend to do and if they need to be changed further.

Shadowers

• The cooldown of Smokescreen has been reduced from 10 minutes to 5 minutes
• The duration of Smokescreen has been reduced from 60 seconds to 45 seconds

While Shadowers are often referred to as a support class, being able to provide utility only once every 10 minutes didn't do the class justice. So we've introduced a minor change to Shadowers, one that should further increase their utility. The duration is lowered but the usage doubles so it's overall a 50% buff to uptime if you're casting it off of cooldown, and should at least open you up to using it in more circumstances.

Archers

• Increased the stack limit of arrows to 5,000
• Decreased the cost and sell price of arrows
• Increased the attack of Diamond Arrows from 4 to 5 attack

This patch, archers get a new choice in whether or not they choose to use (as well as when to use) the bottomless pit of Soul Arrow or go for greater damage with arrows that offer attack. Now each use slot will hold 2.5x as many arrows and their cost will be reduced for most of the arrows. Because Bowmasters and Marksmen fire at different rates, their arrow prices reflect that, though that is a small benefit to 2nd/3rd job Bowmen over their crossbow counterpart.

Overall Bowmasters should end up using a similar number of sets as Night Lords and Corsairs, while Marksmen will use just a bit less. Even though the price to purchase arrows were lowered, to keep the existing balance, the cost of re-quivering your arrows will still be more relative to Night Lords and Corsairs.

Bowmaster Arrow Costs

Item	Old Cost	New Cost
Bronze Arrow for Bow	10 mesos each	2 mesos each
Red Arrow for Bow	40 mesos each	5 mesos each
Diamond Arrow for Bow	20 mesos each	10 mesos each

Marksmen Arrow Costs

Item	Old Cost	New Cost
Bronze Arrow for Crossbow	10 mesos each	2 mesos each
Arrow for Crossbow	40 mesos each	8 mesos each
Diamond Arrow for Crossbow	20 mesos each	16 mesos each

Marksmen

• Blind now affects bosses, and will lower boss accuracy by 10%, at a given proc rate

Marksmen come with a bit more utility this patch in making their second favorite buff more broadly usable. We explored making the 30% Blind work on bosses, but we found that would make Marksmen into absolute monsters. 10% lets them shine, but not too brightly, and buff other difficult to manage classes as well, such as Corsairs and Buccaneers who's new meta in Horntail has shifted around trying to stack avoid where ever possible.

Corsairs

• Armor-Piercing Bullets recharge cost increased to .9 mesos/bullet

Before, Armor Piercing Bullets cost .1 mesos each to recharge, which seemed to have been unintended, as Eternal Bullets cost .8 mesos per bullet. Putting them at .9 fits the pattern for recharge rates.

Buccaneers

• Avoidability increased to STR*0.225 + DEX*0.25

In the Summer balance explanation patch, we said that the avoidability formula will eventually be corrected. With the summer patch, avoidability was calculated for buccaneers with STR*0.2 + DEX*0.25 This new formula provides an increase of 1 avoid per 40 strength. This should let Buccaneers match their old avoid earlier and buff them further at higher levels.

• Speed Infusion range increased to match Sharp Eyes
• Time Leap range increased to match Sharp Eyes

We had heard concerns that SI and TL has a fairly low range, resulting in players not getting the buff and adding to the annoyance of Buccs. We've changed the skills to have the same range as Sharp Eyes, as suggested by a number of players!

• Super Transform now adds 5% passive weapon mastery starting at level 11

It's been difficult to know how much of a buff Buccaneer damage needed, and which skill(s) to target. In a class of combos and situations, it might be best to simply buff everything by a small amount. This 5% bonus mastery functions like the Dark Knight's Beholder, so that even outside of Super Transform you will receive its benefit. So this puts Buccaneers at 65% mastery compared to the 60% mastery of most classes, and overall should roughly be a 2.9% dpm buff to all skills.

• Energy Charge's meter fills 50% faster attacking bosses
• Energy Charge's duration increased from 50 to 60 seconds

Two last buffs to hopefully help Buccaneers manage their stance better, especially in bosses. The long cast times of skills such as Barrage/Demo are counter-intuitive to charging up the bubble, especially for bosses that are solely single target. We've been exploring the idea of improving energy charge since the winter patch. We tested out charge per line at one point, but our tests showed it was a bit TOO strong. After lots of number crunching and testing, we've decided to add a charge rate buff for bosses to will help expediate the process of getting your bubble.

Conclusion
Now, that's it for this patch's balance changes, and we look forward to hearing more feedback and discussions below. Special thanks to Alyosha for writing up the post, and all the Balance Team members Alyosha anon505 Fishy joota who contributed to this patch!

Another round of thanks goes out to the community, where many of the ideas come from and help bridge any gaps in knowledge. We hope this is a good path moving forward with regards to balancing. ^^