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Comments
Probably cause Archer and Sorc autos arent relevant while Gunners use it to animation cancel every skill.
TBH what is an identity for a sorc/mage?
Or what the stand of a sorc/mage?
It kind of depend what spell/magic mean for you in your mind
Melee chain combat style instant cast sorc... or super long range long cast time sorc?
mix of both?
either way would have rant/complains later since each have their image for sorc/mage
Personally I feel a way to keep things interesting would be if over channel literally was a longer cast to "over" channel and remove celerity. it also looks like this may be where sorc is headed.
All those mechanics aren't random, they are scripted to happen at certain percentages or timed intervals. BoC isn't DG or ICB or AR or any long CD buff. Not having it up is no different than an Archer not having RoA and ET up, or a Slayer without HT, MS up, etc. That -should- be a part of the game, having to make choices and remember mechanics. When you don't have that you have classes like Gunner and Brawler, or, in all honesty, Warrior and Slayer who have been updated. Warrior and Slayer now are jokes compared to what they were, although that isn't saying too much about Slayer as it was a pretty mechanically easy class before.
Note: i'm not talking about damage, but mechanics.
It's not about knowing or remembering mechanics, it's about guessimating the speed at which your party will burn though x% of the boss's HP. That depends on crits(and which skills crit), stuff the boss might do, someone dying etc. Plus, not all of those mechanics happen at the exact % they are meant to(which is the whole point of "burning") and sometimes you just don't know if the 50% mechanic will happen at 50% or 40% or if it'll even be skipped entirely.
Okay, but you have to know and remember both the encounter and your own classes' (preferably your party's as well) mechanics in order to do what you are saying. Sure, some tactics are about abusing the scripts by pushing burns, but that is just further exemplification of what i'm talking about. Yes, i'm not saying that everything will always work out in a run perfectly, but making a claim that because a core component of your damage is potentially going to be on CD during very specific points of a fight is not a good reason to call a skill flawed. Especially when the skill (Read: Buff) has a relatively low down time.
What I am also saying is that when you remove, or simply don't create, these types of choices you further simplify the game and not in the good way. You can see what i'm talking about if you look objectively at all the classes now. They all have lower and lower cool downs. They all are getting reduced mana costs. They are all getting more chains or animation cancels. They are all getting more defensive options and safe guards. As you know my arguments in that one thread on tanking way back, they have essentially removed parts of previous core mechanics, such as many monster attacks having a push back during block.
I am all for a change to mechanics that realistically hinder classes, such as the Archer's VM or Warrior's shared Edge mechanic, but not in skills that have become... cumbersome in comparison to these new classes and their relatively easy mechanics.
Why throw a [filtered] storm before we actually know the changes? Silly pride in difficulty of a class will get you no where when nobody wants to take you. My best friend in Tera is a sorc and I will always respect sorc, I myself am also a fairly decent sorc, but this skill is a problem.
Just let me be the Devils advocate on how this community really is. I have no problem with sorc at all, but the community does. So unless you always want "if we have a sorc we need a ninja or slayer to break shield" forever then atleast consider what I'm saying.
How is that an example of the skill being flawed?
What you are essentially claiming is that BoC is the reason Sorcs have lower DPS, or that they ignore mechanics to pad their numbers. Now, what you have to remember is that DPS is damage per second, and it is a culmination of all the actions you've taken to deal that damage. That includes, as Sorcs have to do right now, potentially holding off on BoC for a few seconds. What you also have to remember is that other classes have to do this with their skills as well, just some to a lesser degree. Edit: To explain a bit more: The problem with Sorc damage can be looked at from multiple perspectives, and saying that it is essentially BoC that is the problem is probably not the best way to go about it. You can look at cool downs, crit rate, the skill's damage, mobility, etc. and point fingers at those easier than you can at BoC. What this means is that if the best Sorc in the world was only half the damage of the best Ninja, then you could almost literally just double the damage of all of the Sorc's skills and you would achieve a parity, without ever touching BoC and while having that best Sorc still have to pay attention to mechanics and BoC. Now, i'm not saying this would be exact or that it is even a good way to balance the class, more to illustrate (as well as my other points) why you can't just slap the flawed title on BoC.
I don't really think you are playing devils advocate, and I don't speak for those other posters, but I do feel that the general direction of BHS leaves much to be desired in terms of balanced and challenging content/classes and is thus a legitimate potential for concern grounding in the previous changes and content they've made. The main concern to Sorc and BoC, from my perspective, is that the class is nearly entirely based around the usage of that skill. We don't know how they will change it, but as seen, many believe they will simply remove it or something similar. To illustrate it in another way, it would be similar to completely removing Warrior's Edge mechanic and simply making Scythe full damage off CD. At first glance it might look like not much has changed, but it would completely kill the whole mechanic (obviously) of edge building and how that relates to the usage of skills.
Nobody's ever told me to "hold whipsaw" for a mechanic, I've never heard anyone tell a warrior to hold scythe or a lancer to hold wallop. What other classes are expected to hold are not their core skills(don't forget, when you tell a sorc to hold BoC, you are also telling them to hold FB and Nova), it's always buffs and skills with long cooldowns where 10 or even 30sec of holding don't make much of a difference. It's also not "a few seconds", there is no specific timeframe on it. You can expect you'd be holding it for 2-5sec but it can turn into 30sec and the longer you hold it, the more you need to keep holding it as the mechanic gets closer.
On your other point: What is a core mechanic vs broken stupid is a matter of opinion. The reason people want edge and VMark "fixed" is, ultimately, in order to increase dps when 2 or more of those classes are in a party. Instead of, I don't know, coordinating, knowing their party mates, understanding class mechanics and making decisions on the spot. It removes a layer of "difficulty" from the gameplay that you(and others, obviously), have deemed unnecessary.
And you reference warrior edge, I main warrior and think it's aids, why scythe is 40% of our damage I do not know.
I, quite distinctly, remember the fact that Warriors couldn't build edge on shields. I also don't know why Whipsaw is being compared to BoC, try Sundering Strike or powerlinked Grim Strike? Lancer itself has been relatively irrelevant in terms of damage until not long ago. The reason you don't hear anyone holding skills back anymore is because in competent parties you don't need to unless you are going to try to push scripts, and this includes Sorc; in those cases I absolutely guarantee that they held their main damaging skills until the call to burn was issued. Another way to look at this is simply as proof of what I am saying, that making everything easier (like the changes to Warrior's CDs for example) is a perfect example of removing any need for choice and team work. One final point on this part, the difference between holding off on a large buff IS a big difference if doing so delayed the potential for another use of that buff, despite what you believe.
I'm sorry, do I need to write some disclaimer for each statement I make that doesn't hold absolute, provable truths? In fact, I am pretty sure I even mentioned that it was my perspective and what I felt the OP was talking about. That being said, the word core is typically meant as a base or centre. Add mechanic, in this case the game's/class' mechanic and you have the core around with the class mostly operates. I don't mean to be rude, but if you don't believe that most of Sorc's skills operate around BoC, or how Warrior operates mostly around edge and Scythe, then you are delusional.
Does that mean you can't play Sorc or Warrior without utilizing these mechanics or skills? No, but it certainly was not how they were built. As for Velika's Mark, that is NOT a core mechanic of Archer game play. It has almost no influence on how you utilize your other skills. It needs to be changed because the mechanic itself is flawed and is always going to be a problem, regardless of how well coordinated your party is. Full stop.
Warrior Edge is slightly different, and you make a valid point that removing it is simplifying the game a little. In this case, I would argue for a good reason and that is because sharing edge has no real value anymore, if it had any at all. The one example I can think of where having this mechanic was a good practice of coordination was when you either had a Warrior tank or a Warrior feeding you edge and Reaping Slash buff. One is completely removed from the game and the other requires the use of that edge for itself (as it really did anyway in the past). Edit: Also, Reaping Slash was mathematically proven by Berkenstal to be inefficient even at absolute optimal conditions. No other class in the game shares a core mechanic, and I would argue it could be a good mechanic that promotes coordination IF and only IF it actually gave an increase in efficiency when done right. As of now, it is at best as if both Warrior's edge were separate. That is why I feel this is an okay use of simplification. If they could have found a fun way to promote shared edge, that would have been better, but remember what I said about BHS and their ability to keep challenge in their game?
Offtopic, about the warriors edge system, i suggested in another post that the edge system was, instead of a debuff in the mob, a buff passive on the warrior. This way, each warrior alone would build his own edge. This would be nice, and would solve the "more than one warrior on the party" problem.