Paladin

We have teasers to share for our next Explorer Warrior class, Paladin. This is amongst my favourite class reworks thus far, so you guys are in for a treat!

Elemental Charge 2nd Job

Paladin also gets a new Specialized Skill from 2nd Job onwards: a reworked Elemental Charge.

Previously, Paladin had an elemental system consisting of 4 different buffs (Flame, Blizzard, Lightning, Holy). The buffs gave you both a damage boost and the ability to use Charged Blow to land a mobbing skill imbued with that element.

However, the majority of the time, Paladins simply imbued Holy Charge and left it at that, as it had the highest Damage % buff amongst the elemental buffs. Furthermore, elemental advantage becomes less useful the further you get into higher-level content.

In the new Elemental Charge system that we've imported, the Charge buffs have been converted into attack skills.

We also have Hammer visual effect variants, for those who prefer the aesthetics of Blunt Weapons.

Every time you use a different Charge than the last, you gain a stack of Elemental Charge and the duration refreshes. Every stack gives you increased Damage Reduction, Healing Received, and Weapon ATT. Skilled Paladin players will want to maintain their Elemental Charge at 5 stacks, to minimise their chances of dying and maximise their damage dealt.

Why defense matters now

Well, you probably didn't even bat an eyelid at the phrase "chances of dying". Indeed, especially in the Big Bang era of MapleStory, where defensive stats such as HP and DEF are seemingly inflated, and potions with high percentage-based recovery are always within reach, the appeal of defensive utility is definitely not as glamorous as the idea of offensive prowess.

As such, this is probably a good time to give a sneak peek into some of the gameplay and system changes that we have made for launch:

Defensive formulas in the game have been heavily reworked. Defensive stats such as Weapon/Magic Defense and Avoidability have been heavily tuned down, making it harder to amass high amounts of defense.

There will also be new high-level content designed to give players a serious challenge to overcome. You can expect new bosses with fully working mechanics, hardcore content with cooldown restrictions on potion usage, and many more adjustments lined up for those who are up for more challenging gameplay.

What does this all mean for you as a player?

Over the entire Beta phase of our server, while there was some semblance of class diversity, there has been an undeniable meta where classes who can deal higher damage are heavily favoured, while classes focused on support and utility are relatively underplayed. It's hard to fault this meta, as most if not all content in Beta could easily be cleared without needing to focus on defenses and utility.

Hence, we are hoping to reverse this one-sided meta by introducing the above changes, which reinforce the value and importance of classes geared towards survivability, providing the party with support and utility. Which brings us back to Paladin.

Defenses, set in stone 3rd Job

We have reorganized Paladin's skills such that the majority of its defensive and utility skills are now in 3rd Job. Because the server was rather damage-oriented, no players cared about investing into defensive skills at any point in time. Similarly, defensive 4th Job skills were usually ignored and never touched for the majority of a Paladin's lifetime (and any other class, really), only added at the very end of levelling, by which point they were of even less value due to inflated stats and high-level gear.

Therefore, expect to see some of Paladin's returning defensive skills in 3rd Job, such as Achilles, Divine Shield, etc. Placing defense and utility skills in 3rd Job ensures that a Paladin can enter its 4th Job phase and high-level content with defenses set in stone.

Parashock Guard 3rd Job

We also want to introduce a new 3rd Job skill which is undoubtedly Paladin's signature support ability:

Parashock Guard is a party-wide toggle aura that takes away 20% of the Paladin's Weapon Defense stat, but in return increases the damage reduction of the party. The party damage reduction gained scales with the amount of Weapon Defense that the Paladin has. Weapon Defense thus becomes a more valuable stat, especially for Paladin, to improve the defensive value of Parashock Guard as well as to reduce the drawback of keeping it toggled.

Furthermore, while Parashock Guard is on, Paladin gains an increase in Critical Rate, which also scales with the amount of Weapon Defense. Though the saying goes "The best defense is a good offense", the Paladin class gets to embody the exact opposite of this mantra.

Ignore Enemy DEF, reworked

Speaking of reworked formulas, we also reworked the way the Ignore Enemy Defense (IED) stat is calculated. Previously, it was calculated additively. Now, IED doesn't add up but stacks multiplicatively. Each IED source ignores a percentage of the DEF that's still left, not the original DEF. Think of stacking discount coupons: 30% off, then another 30% off, gets you 51% off, not 60%. So 30% + 30% IED = 51% total. An important implication of this change is that it is no longer easy to achieve huge amounts of IED% on your character. Every source of IED% is valuable, since stacking 100% or more IED is no longer a thing.

Threaten

This automatically revives a rather underwhelming skill that Paladin has: Threaten.

Behold, the majestic reworked animation as well!

Threaten reduces the DEF% of enemies by 30%, and is now more important than ever with the changes to the way IED is calculated. That is to say, as long as an enemy is debuffed by Threaten, ANY player who attacks it will have the equivalent of +30% IED.

High Paladin 4th Job

The new Paladin class also gets a significant power spike in 4th Job. Following the shuffling of defensive skills into 3rd Job, most of the 4th Job skills are focused on offense. We took the chance to address a jarring point of class imbalance: many of the original Explorer classes, Paladin included, lacked bonus Mastery in 4th Job. Mastery is about more than raising your minimum damage and having fewer random damage swings. In servers where bossing is a major part of the gameplay, lacking it is essentially a significant reduction to your DPM/DPS output. So we had to fix that.

High Paladin also introduces a novel implementation: the bonus stat you receive depends on your weapon type. A sword ignores an extra 10% of enemy DEF, while a Blunt Weapon adds 10% Maximum Critical Damage. This is our casual way of increasing the appeal of Blunt Weapons, which have been under-represented in the server.

Paladins also get an upgrade to their signature Elemental Charge skill, which further enhances the gains per stack of Elemental Charge. Moreover, it greatly enhances the attacking power of all your attacks, such as the reworked Charged Blows.

Blast 4th Job

Paladin's main single-target attacking skill also received a rework (and another hammer-variant visual effect!):

Blast now has an additional effect if you cast it while holding 5 stacks of Elemental Charge: it gives the Paladin a massive +40% Critical Rate and +20% IED buff which lasts 45 seconds. This effect, along with many other skills in Paladin's toolkit, synergises with Elemental Charge, redefining Paladin's playstyle in this rework. This class is no longer a 1-button slave, but demands a challenging rotation of skills which, if executed well, feels absolutely rewarding.

The class fantasy

And this sums up the overhaul of the Paladin class. We hope the vision of our Paladin class fantasy shows clearly through the changes we have made.

The Paladin is no longer the class that struggles with weak damage and irrelevant defense and utility. The new Paladin is an absolute tank (pun intended) of a unit, with defenses that overflow into party protection and personal damage.

Coupled with the exciting and challenging content in store, having a Paladin in the team might be the deciding factor in having a shot at overcoming the hardest content that our server has to offer.

The devs and I had a blast with this rework, and the same could be said for the next class that we will be teasing. See you in the next Class Design Diary post!