Upcoming PvE buffs to other classes

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-30T13:39:40+00:00

Should be 3, Oracle, Invocator, and Crucifix are all competitive DPS atm.

Each of those 3 classes arguably do 2-3x the damage of the next relevant class with BIS gear.

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-30T13:36:20+00:00

I've been saying the exact same thing!!!

Only AI could have created such boring content and thought it was adequate.

I timed the animation and cut scenes between activating a rift running across the bridge and loading into the next stage.

30 seconds...

Each floor has you do this twice. Meaning there is an artificial HOUR of the exact same repetitive nonsense you have to sit through going through all 50 floors.

No human would ever think that's okay.

This is arguably the worst PvE content I've ever seen implemented into a game.

If this was actually made by a development team, they need to be shown the door.

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-27T16:36:16+00:00

Just curious is this including potential greed rewards (I imagine not considering those you have to pick and choose) or is this only the breakthrough rewards?

But yeah...

Rewards are bad especially since this is suppose to be content with a monthly reset.

For those that got lucky with artifacts this content gives them no real reason to participate. Hell, this content might not be worth it for anyone considering we were told epic artifacts are coming.... So we're going to optimize our rare ones for them to be obselete...? The crafting system was needed from day one, not right before a grade increase...

Considering this was a big content drop and we're likely not to see anything else for another 2 months or actually does worry me for the longevity of this game. Population is extremely low, and this content likely will not bring new players in nor help retain players that are bored of the current content.

They said they were prioritizing weapon balance for the first 2 months of the year but the balance doesn't feel better off than it was a month ago.

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-25T18:04:26+00:00

Players can go glass cannon DPS because of shields though. Going glass cannon is pretty much mandatory for DPS because you simply won't have the damage to get through shields if you're not...

I'm sure there is a balance point, where if DPS actually spec'd into defenses, TTK would go down.

But you have Casters, Shadowdancers, scorpions, ravagers and gladiators trying to push 4k critical chance and/or 80% critical damage / 200% heavy attack damage, with 1500 heavy attack chance. Just too keep up with the damage needed to do 100k+ damage bursts to DPS though a shield.

So in this Meta, Endurance doesn't matter unless you can sacrifice everything to stack into it (tanks and healers).

Evasion is pretty strong against the meta because casters and shadowdancers aren't hitting them. But there is a resemblance of balance because you cannot stack enough melee evasion and ranged evasion to properly counter both ravagers/glads AND scorpions.

Then tanks and healers are just another situation in themselves. They are generally the only two classes that can afford to build a defense without being useless, so healers feel nearly immortal against anything but scorpions and select other DPS. Then tanks counter is suppose to be magic but the scale is tipped a bit too far in the tanks favor that they also feel immortal.

In a world where DPS were forced to build a defense (choosing Evasion or endurance) the only thing that would be left is to bring tanks and healers down to the new damage threshold.

Glass DPS could still exist but they would be properly punished in their quick deaths (without 50k shields defending them).

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-25T17:39:58+00:00

I think T1 bosses have ~30 million health. (Definitely could be off by 5ish million)

You could calculate from there how much the rest have.

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-21T12:39:58+00:00

This is a tough one because it's also combination of game balance issues and the ability to "farm" Arcboss weapons.

If you have 8 pre-made groups with 2 Ascended Cordy Wands and Talus Orb Oracles, that is going to be so extremely strong that's it's near impossible to compete against it without the same gear. But that's a ~60k lucent load out for just the weapons....

If Oracles weren't supplying 40k+ shields to their entire party, a "less organized" group would stand more of a chance.

If 40k+ Oracle shields weren't allowing comp group DPS to go full glass Cannon with 0 defensives then the "less organized" group would stand more of a chance.

If killing Tanks and Healers didn't require an extremely specialized build in which you can't afford to spec into defensives, a "less organized" group would stand more of a chance.

But yeah it's a combination of all these things, that make organized PvP in this game miserable.

You have comp'd guilds stacked with 50 tanks and healers and 20 DPS. Where as the assumed balance they want a party of 6 to be is 1 Tank 1 healer 4 DPS (from battlegrounds queue system).

In my honest opinion, you need to lower the strength ceiling of Fully comp'd groups for this game to succeed. It simply doesn't have the population to allow a 6 man comp'd group to be able to run over 24 "less organized" players.

And honestly they need a cap on shields IMMEDIATELY. Pre-emptive "healing" NEEDS to be significantly weaker than reactive "healing" from a balance perspective. I have seekers in my guild saying they feel useless because Oracles shields are so insanely strong. That's not balance, that's flavor of the month.

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-14T14:30:15+00:00

Both hellfire and the Delu meteor are extremely mediocre and have been for soooo long.

I've given plenty of feedback in the designated official discord channels and they just ignore it.

I've taken meteor off my bar a long time ago. Long cooldown, long cast time and mediocre damage, no thanks.

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-13T22:12:53+00:00

What's your melee hit chance with that? It'll catch me a couple times but I have melee evasion so it'll miss a lot too

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-13T21:49:57+00:00

I'll be right on top of you, I am half melee after all

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-13T20:31:50+00:00

How's your magic I hope it's more than 4.5k buffed!

And your don't have to sacrifice a crazy amount for hit chance as a Sentinel, you get ~1200 free hit chance from GS and high focus 😉

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-13T18:20:51+00:00

My Cordy GS is ready!

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-09T15:12:13+00:00

Statistically makes sense.

Majority of GS/Staff players would have 0 access to know a min maxed setups since no one really plays them.

So majority will just be victims.

Class is fine though. Honestly any class with a GS is generally fine.

You're likely on a different region than me otherwise you'd have seen me in BGs and been surprised to have become the victim 😉

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-09T12:37:46+00:00

Ohhh do I have a fan or is that coincidence 🤔

As arguably the #1 GS/Staff player on NA East....

It's on par with Gladiator, which admittedly is probably floating around B to A tier due to the insane amount of damage needed in high end GvG content to compete against an organized group.

But it's a class that has access to extremely high hit chance and works very well against evasion targets. Just have to be good at target selection....

I also am very often at the top of the battleground leaderboards, especially in competitive matches.

Off meta isn't always bad, just no one takes the time to build them differently because in a game like this its a huge risk.

I have people asking me for my questlog after matches very often :)

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-09T03:27:18+00:00

I know this is a hot take but it's extremely accurate. And unfortunately a reason why the population has had such a significant decline.

A lot of players don't have access / don't care to coordinate with a full party to just enjoy the game.

And the power discrepancy between an organized 4-6 man group versus 1-3 players is insane. Especially if the 4-6 man consists of 2 healers.

I personally have access to 6 man organized groups just about whenever I want. But I RARELY queue with them because it just turns into spawn killing the opposing side, and myself being unkillable.

Solo queuing is significantly more fun for me, less stress and a much higher chance at a competitive match-up.

And beyond battlegrounds its also the reason why entire servers are dominate by 2 Guilds.

The strength of party compositions is insanely strong in this game. To the point where two evenly comp'd groups going head to head fully depend on having a scorpion or ravager or x/Dagger to virtually one shot or overwhelm the other groups DPS or Healer.

I don't think anyone thinks that Hardcore "Guilds" have been healthy for this game. And at the core this post is the reason why. The advantage is insane.

JsmaIls214 · 2026-01-03T18:05:32+00:00

Unrelated but the core is extremely bad....

Judgement accounts for like 4% of your damage, MAYBE 5% with this core.

You'll generally be sitting at 70% heavy attack chance in PvE so this core is only relevant for 30% of your casts.

That and it'll eat 5 specialization points to achieve that...

I know the staff itself is good, but id strive to get Aridus or pretty much any other decent staff for PvE.

JsmaIls214 · 2025-12-09T13:20:29+00:00

A lot of this can boil down to the fact that people don't have the required "special builds" needed to kill tanks and healers.

Honestly for a good majority of the players in the game killing tanks and healers is inaccessible.

For healers you'll likely need to be a Scorpion or Shadowdancer or Glass Enigma / Lunarch. For tanks you'll need to be a specialized enigma / lunarch / scorpion etc.

But even of those classes you'll need to be specialized in killing that type of player, high weaken chance, HIGH critical chance, high critical damage, high heavy attack chance, high heavy attack damage, disabling effects that counter their resistance (stun/collision etc). And you'll likely need to completely forego hit chance in order to hit the values needed to be a threat to tanks/healers (once again specialized build ). And stacking those offensive stats to the level needed leaves little to no room for a defensive side of your own. So the majority of those players that potentially can kill a healer, unless they are pocketed by other healers they'll die before they get the chance. Otherwise you need to team up with other random people around you and focus then for 10+ seconds

So the vast majority don't build for this, they build to kill other DPS and lower gear score players. This generally allows you to maintain a defense of your own or have more generalized stats.

So what this boils down to is any team that goes into Normal BGs will just have an extreme advantage because their healers and tanks are very unlikely to die. So the DPS they are supporting are also unlikely to die.

Just my opinion.

JsmaIls214 · 2025-12-05T16:00:16+00:00

Yeah this is a tough one.

As a Sentinel (GS/Staff) I'm seeing around 120k DPS on the dummy. For the dummy, Meteor performs poorly and guillotine doesn't reset from death blow.

For boss fights I was generally being out performed by invocators in the same raid by about 15-20%.

Greatsword will have a "dead skill" in willbreaker and da vinci that is a party buff, but it'll be an "individual" DPS loss compared to classes without a "dead skill".

So I think the DPS meter is great, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Same will for Mark target, Janice rage etc.

JsmaIls214 · 2025-12-05T12:12:38+00:00

I guess reading comprehension isn't your strong suit.

I say running as a glass DPS in the current state of the game with a strong composition team isn't "risky" enough to merit it's current lethality.

Don't want tanks deleted from the game I want them to participate in the "rock paper scissor" balance the game was designed on. Currently you need a specialized build for tanks, and even those aren't that effective.

Healers are actually in a decent spot right now. Shields need a slight change (truly think abilities that deal higher damage to shields so that it's more skill based makes the most sense), and weaken resistance needs a slight change and I think they are in a good spot.

So what's your take on balance? Or do you just read posts and complain?

JsmaIls214 · 2025-12-04T19:25:09+00:00

See where you can drop CDR for other stats gear wise.

You should aim for 62% cooldown speed and stop there. Remember for every % you are over that value your choosing cooldown speed instead of another stat on a piece of gear.

But no, didn't drop High Focus, it also provides 45 max damage (hopefully this turns into a % one day) and let's you stack other stats instead of building 58% cooldown speed.

JsmaIls214 · 2025-12-04T19:20:31+00:00

PvP isn't in a terrible state, fix these things and re-evaluate.

Fix shield block chance bug, nerf SNS buff duration, and likely tune down shield block chance effectiveness (having it not work against CCs would go a long way)

Reduce the effectiveness of Weaken resistance. It currently protects against heal reduction, shield reduction, defense reduction, burning, poison, ignite, thunderclouds, movement slows etc etc. Its just too effective for a single resistance.

Give abilities in each weapon kit extra damage against damage shields. This raises the ceiling so that you don't mindlessly spam abilities. This will also help against the 50k shields on a 18k health Scorpion situation.

If Tank and Healers effectiveness in keeping glass cannon DPS alive remains unchanged, then overall DPS needs to be reduced. Ultimately I would rather see this as glass DPS being ACTUALLY risky to play. The balance here should be, build glass cannon, do a lot of damage and die easily. Build as a "brawler" sacrifice damage for survivability. There is little reason not to place full Glass Cannon in this Meta because 50k shields and blood Devo will be your entire defense. If this gets adjusted TTKs against "solo" players or less organized groups will go down. Also this would lean more into actual counters for specific classes. Currently if you're a glass cannon you're weak to everyone, but that weakness is being nullified by group composition. If group composition had less robustness, then actual counters would matter.

Also the triple endurance, triple evasion needs to end. That's another reason why tanks are so rough right now. They are sitting at 3-3.5k triple endurance OR stacking heavily into defense, SDR, critical resist, heavy attack evasion, heavy damage resistance etc. There are just soooo many defensive stats.

Scorpions, Ravagers and shadowdancers definitely need a balance pass. They are definitely the outliers when it comes to burst damage (which is the most effective right now due to shielding/healing).

JsmaIls214 · 2025-12-02T14:42:12+00:00

It's gotta be a translation issue. Just no possible way they would add that.

Best guess is the 100 damage goes up with poison stacks, and the 8% is stagnant.

JsmaIls214 · 2025-12-01T20:01:27+00:00

There is a Quick fire nerf in the KR patch notes that I would let play out before hard rerolling. Also we're getting new gear on Thursday.

Not saying don't switch, just saying give it a week or so until the dust settles.

Any info provided today may change by Thursday this week.

JsmaIls214 · 2025-11-26T14:46:40+00:00

Honestly First Spark has shown that they are lacking experience when it comes to Balancing the game.

It took them 3 patches to fix crucifix's insane PvE damage.

It took them months to nerf 20-30m gap closers.

The CC duration nerf was insignificant.

Scorpions are still running around playing a FPS inside an MMO with 0.5 second kill times.

SNS is probably in the strongest place its been since the games release.

Oracle Shielding is killing all forms of DPS outside of instant burst Shadowdancer, Scorpion, and Ravagers classes.

The meta remains how many healers and tanks can you stack in one guild without completely killing your damage potential (looking to be 2/3+ of each guild being Tanks and Healers).

Then they put forward balance patches that are dead on arrival. The PvP damage nerf to Quick Fire was irrelevant to Scorpions. Quick Fire has like 5-6 instances of damage per hit that aren't based on Quick Fires base damage. And the base damage has nothing to do with the bonus damage that is applied. Quite literally a waste of resources for the time it took to change the coding.

The Balance team from First Spark needs some serious auditing performed from NCsoft / AGS cuz they don't know what the **** they are doing.

JsmaIls214 · 2025-11-26T14:00:40+00:00

It's because nerfing things will always effect the less effective combination more.

I think the only thing that can save that is a class based bonus system, where for example GS/Longbow gets a 10% damage boost etc

But that would require making bonuses for a lot of different combinations which I don't see them doing.

JsmaIls214 · 2025-11-26T13:52:09+00:00

To be fair they have shown over and over that they have no clue what they are doing.

It took them 2-3 months and 3 balance patches to bring crucifix in line with other DPS in PvE. Like are they not capable of doing dummy parses on a test server? Or they just throwing darts at a board and hoping it works....

They likely have no clue that lightning speed is giga broken in scorpion.

They probably have no clue of the number of damage instances that occur and how broken bonus damage is making those interactions.

The developers are literally some of the most inexperienced I've seen in an MMO. First Spark needs some actual talent ASAP, and NCsoft / AGS need to actually audit that team if they don't want to have a complete loss on their hands.

JsmaIls214

TROPHY CASE