Now remember, this is all in testing, so there’s a chance none of these changes ever come (unlikely), or all of these come (unlikely). IMO, the new UI is definitely worse, although the new resolution (lolnotreally, more like resize) is muy cool.
It seems that according to the changes, Shadowers gets the biggest boost. Their DPM (remember, it’s not DPS in MapleStory b/c of critical, and the way skills work) becomes drastically increased and matches those of dual blades, which are extremely nerfed by comparison. Dual blades still get mobility with that Shadow Jump, so they have that one over Shadowers. However, Shads get a 4x Bstep, which is godly considering they can spam it now, and they get godmode with spammable fog (close to it anyway).
Other classes that get really badly nerfed include Archmages, Bishops, Arans (LOLnerfed), Battle Mages, Night Lords. Classes that saw a boost will be Paladins and Dark Knights (considerable boost). Heroes still the same, although 3rd job will be much more fun with boss soloing capabilities with Brandish as well as better mobbing with Ground Smash. Bowmasters, Wild Hunters, and Marksmen stay relatively flat, seeing some nice boosts here and there. Corsairs and Buccs do get kinda screwed over, their DPM will be considerably lower because their later skills gets kinda nerfed.
Getting back to the really badly nerfed classes though – 4th job mages pretty much lose their ultimates, at level 30 (max), there is a 30 second cooldown. So, probably for the first 10 levels, you’re stuck with a 40~1 minute cooldown of the ultimate, which sucks. This leads us to believe that other skills will be buffed, maybe, maybe not. Anyway, a lot of people are just saying Bishops got what they deserved, that they’re supposed to be heal slaves anyway, which was true I guess, but w/e, I don’t think any one class should run after DK’s all day, considering the way MapleStory works, partying and expeditions aren’t that great.
Arans are horribly nerfed – first of all, they lose one of their greatest advantages interms of DPM, the critical factor. Almost all classes get some type of critical (lolfailnexon), while all of Arans attacks get nerfed apart from Full Swing (LOLBOTTING<3). They cut down the Aran ultimate (Tempest) by half, as well as many other combo finishing moves such as Penril. They did increase Final Toss (trying to get people to use more strategy I guess, idk).
Night Lords also get pwned, they also lose their greatest advantage when it comes to DPM, critical. Also, their shadow partner only applies to 80% of their attacks when maxed, so considering that at a beginner level it’ll be expected to only work for 50% of attacks, which fails epically. Their Triple Throw does get a nice boost, but when you factor in that not all attacks are doubled, that’s a very sad day indeed.
All things considered, nothing is conclusive. They cut down the exp curve by like 70% for some levels, which is insane. However, there’s a shitload of factors to consider IF such a patch comes. We’re talking about the entire economy in shambles – in fact, most items will cease to be relevant with % equips. LUK will become irrelevant.
And even then, there’s the question of AP/SP resets. Because skills to increase mana and hp have been baleeted, and you get a % boost automatically now, how would they calculate that? Obviously, all characters made after this patch will be better. And, they’ll have to offer something like 150 SP resets for every character, or maybe offer a week of just free SP resets, but what if a person was on vacation? Or they would give every person that login a complete SP reset… but then that would screw over people who actually PAID NX to SP reset…
;-; It’s all very theoretical, but hopefully, only the balancing parts (skill damage increase/decrease) will come to gMS. The new damage formula completely effs mages over, it will destroy the economy then reestablish another one, so hopefully it wouldn’t come.
Wow that was a long post.