Whitesmith Class Update

[GM-Ayu]

To accompany its counterpart, the other class to receive skill edits in heRO will be the most expensive class: Whitesmith. This class is only given touch ups, and not a major overhaul like gunslinger.

Whitesmith's Problems in Pre-Renewall

It is by no means bad, but it's super unfriendly to play for multiple reasons, and the final result is that "it's not the worse, and there's some niche out there, so it comes out to be a meh."

It is clearly expensive to play: its good skills and defining feature is to throw zeny at your problems. We aren't going to change that part of its identity. However, on top of throwing zeny, it's also a SP consuming monster because skills are pricy and you need to refresh your buffs very often. To pay for both SP item upkeep and raw zeny is super punishing, so we're going to curb some of the class's SP cost. Paying zeny is enough. We don't need tons of honeys and blue pots on top of it.

A silly problem for Whitesmith that is absent for Creator (and Super Novice) is that it has a cart, which should be great for farming, but then you can't use it. Cart Termination (and cart revolution) requires your cart to be full to maximize your damage, so you can't take your empty cart to go farm in peace. We believe that if merchant classes have a cart as one of its defining feature, then Whitesmith should be allowed to actually use it.

Another reason why this class is strong but it's just far too hard to play: it is far too reliant on having only 2-3 usable weapon. "Ice pick or bust" for tons of monsters, then "Hurricane Fury/Giant Axe" for the rest, and there's no alternatives. This is caused by the nature that Whitesmith has effectively a single damage skill in practice. We aim to solve this problem by providing a small secondary build path for whitesmith: critical hits. If Whitesmith can crit on its skill, then you don't HAVE to use ice pick to bypass defense (though ice pick is probably still better most of the time), and you have a CHANCE at variety in what you can do. Mammonite will be promoted to have a chance to do critical hits so that it's not completely overshadowed by Cart Termination, while bridging the giant performance gap of a Whitesmith with ice pick, versus one without ice pick.

Finally: one of its buff is actively hindering the party. How many times do we see a blacksmith ruins parties with a buff that breaks the Hunter's bow? We want blacksmith buffs to be usable and plausible, so that it can at least play support in a party even if it cannot go to the front lines.

We hope that this will make the class be playable and accessible, while still retaining some of its known weaknesses where you are close range melee and extremely reliant on Cart Boost to keep your damage up.


The Changes


The changes are listed on the heRO wiki already, and will be implemented by the next major maintenance.

You can read about them here. You want to read Merchant, Blacksmith and Whitesmith section.

For the explanation of each change:

SP Changes: again to change SP cost so that the cost of the class is in throwing zeny, and not to drink tons of blue potions at the same time.

Cart Revolution and Cart Termination: damage formula changed so you always can use your cart however you see fit. You no longer need it to be full for max damage.

Buff duration changes: made to be more spread out in units of 30s to standardize the buff timers to be a bit more friendly, so that there's more uptime to keep attacking.

Mammonite: allows critical, but has no built in critical modifier similar to Gunslinger changes. This should open up new build paths and possibilities without resorting to ice pick, which has no equivalent or alternatives.

Repair Weapon: the item requirements have been simplified to Steel for everything. This way you don't have to worry about carrying all different types of junk "just in case" for different class weapon types. This should make the skill easier to use in all situations.



Gear Changes

Just like other updates, some gears are also updated to reflect the new changes.


To further promote possible gear diversities, some other 2 handed axes are brought to be closer in line to Giant Axe and Hurricane Fury in base stat just slightly so they aren't as embarrassingly unusable. In most scenarios, they are still weaker than the gold standard, but the differences are now narrower.

The following weapon has attack power changed, but no effect changed:

• Two-Handed Axe: 185 => 215 (boost the forged axes)
  
• Sabbath: 120 => 230
  
• Slaughter: 120 => 230
  
• Guillotine: 210 => 230
  
• Ignus Steel: 250 => 300
  
• End Sectora: 250 => 300
  
• Dreamstone Axe: 200 => 230
  

Gears with effect changes:

• Windhawk: ATK changed from 95 to 115. Grants Throw Tomahawk. Each refine of the weapon will give Throw Tomahawk a 5% boost in damage. It's still not going to be great, but it'll be a tapping option for smiths in parties to get bit more exp.
  
• Tomahawk: ATK increased to 210. Each refine increases the damage of Throw Tomahawk by 50%. This will give Whitesmith its only iconic ranged option a bit more oomph, and although the percentage boost is scary, the gear has no card slot so Whitesmith will hurt more at range, but it's still a farcry from Sniper.
  
• Heart Breaker: the weapon will not change for whitesmith, but it will be allowed for blacksmith to equip as well to enable critical builds before trans. However, blacksmith loses 50 ATK, 10 CRIT and the chance to hammerfall compare to Whitesmith. As a trade-off, this weapon is no longer usable by High Swordsman.
  

When will the changes rollout?

Whenever GM-Ayu doesn't need to work overtime. It'll be same update as Gunslinger update.


When the change is rolled out, all Blacksmiths and Whitesmiths will be given 3 free reset for a month so you can test out the changes and reset to a build that you like with no penalty.

No de-card options will be offered: it's buffs across the board.

We will keep an eye on Tomahawk: if it gets out of hand on the Tomahawk scaling, we'll reserve the right to nerf it with no compensations for Oridecons spent on the weapon (it has no card slots so no de-card talk is necessary.)


Mini-FAQ

Q: Will there be a Blacksmith card set update?

A: Yes but due to lack of time, it will not be released with this set.

Q: What about smithing? Will there be changes or updates for smithing in hero?

A: Yes, but not this update. Relevancy of smithing is a bigger systematic problem to tackle as a whole that is beyond the scope of this update. However, we'll at least introduce new smithing options and weapons some day.

Soon™.