Commentary on the Black Scarf and its associated classes.

[Nyalyn]

Well intentioned perhaps, the idea of this thing, but fundamentally misguided seeing as it doesn't address any of the actual problems these classes have. Essentially what you're doing is inviting people to Pimp My Ride, but instead of fixing their cars you promise them a set of shiny new chromed-out spinnie-rims provided they shape up their cars to tip-top standard themselves, then drive them to the other side of the world and back (I'm assuming here that the quest for obtaining the scarf is a pain in the butt without even having found the NPC - shoot me).

Let me ask you this; how many level 99 ninjas and gunslingers are there on the server? I'll save you the time of looking that up; 1 ninja and 6 slingers at the time of writing. And here you are catering to a market that is for all intents and purposes nonexistant. You might be thinking "well duh, but people are gonna start making ninjas and slingers when they see these shiny spinnie-rims, how couldn't they I mean seriously, they're so shiny!". While I'll concede that they are rather shiny for gunslingers, you won't get many enthusiastic cheers from the ninja crowd, and this is not only because there are no ninjas but also due to the fact that the problems of the ninja class are rooted in the skills being designed by stupids, and no amount of stat manipulation is going to resolve that.

I was going to write a long-ass, detailed post analyzing my gripes with every skill individually and suggesting solutions point by point, but I figured that'd be too much of a hassle for both me as the writer and you as the reader, not to mention the GMs should they take any of the ideas seriously, so I will instead suggest making an alternate ninja-only version of the Black Scarf that has the following stats:

-Cast time of Falling Ice Pillar, Lightning Crash and Throw Fuuma Shuriken halved.
-Aftercast delays across the board halved.

Now, before you burst a bloodvessel over the audacity of this request, let's take a look at what this change would actually entail:

-Throw Kunai would now be conceivably useful since it would be possible to throw it at a reasonable speed. It would still do crap for damage, its projectiles would still cost up to 14 times as much as equivalent arrows do and its range would still be half of that of bow/gun users.
-Throw Fuuma Shuriken would now be castable at a higher frequency, although it would still have the stupid-as-all-hell damage-split which I understand can't be coded out without changing the skill itself.
-Throw Zeny would now be viable in high-intensity combat since you wouldn't be crippled for 5 seconds after using it.
-Flip Tatami would now serve an actual purpose since you'd be able to hide or use a skill while the pneuma-effect persists, as opposed to just extending your death-sentence by 3 seconds.
-Dragon Fire Formation would be a slightly greater spell.
-Falling Ice Pillar and Lightning Crash would actually be viable for the first time ever, seeing as the problem these spells currently have is that they're centered around the caster as opposed to being ground-targeted spells. Anyone who has played a ninja will know that it is frankly unreasonable to the point of madness to try using these two skills as every time you get hit by anything you bounce off into the distance and discharge your silly little AoE into thin air. (pre-emptive reply to the LOL UES ILLUSIONARY SHADOW-crowd; go try mobbing with IS and these spells on RMS' test server. Do go on, I'll be waiting in breathless anticipation). Also take note that these spells do crap for damage, even against monsters that are vulnerable to their elements; DFF and NW are both far superior in just about every way. The only reason I'm even arguing for fixing these two is because it'd add great utility for both PvP and PvM, plus some much-needed variance in playstyles.

The Kiel card and other delay-reduction items are bound to be mentioned by naysayers at some point, so let me get them out of the way before I proceed: Half a cart-termination is equal to the damage a TZ will do in WoE while being infinitely more spammable, and with TZ being the only skill that could conceivably be abused with a high delay-reduction; your argument is now moot.

There are a few misc skills that would also be affected but I won't go into detail about them because I consider the benefits they receive to be insignificant to the point of vapidity. So in short: the throwing skills would receive an increase in both burst damage and damage over time, and the magic tree would get a slight increase in damage over time and a great boost to utility. I'd think this would make ninjas much more appealing to play than a mere boost to stats, which as mentioned doesn't really help the class in any significant manner. Also; Please reduce the level-requirement to 90 or 95. Consider that some of us may not want that pig-disgusting aura polluting our beautiful animu visages.


In closing of the ninja-chapter I'd like to argue for the reinstatement of the ability to use Shadow Jump and Shadow Slash in WoE. As I understand it this effect can't be coded into items, so it would require tampering with the skills themselves, something I understand the GMs to be reluctant to do. However, I can't conceive of a reasonable argument against enabling these skills in WoE apart from "LOL GRAVITY IS THE BOSS", which frankly holds less water than a sieve at this stage of customization. Monks, champions and taekwon classes are all permitted to use their mobility skills in WoE, and every single one of them poses a bigger threat to the wellbeing of a castle than a ninja does. You know it be true.


Now then... gunslingers;
Personally I don't think this class is half as bad as the lack of people playing it suggests that it might be. They're glass-cannons, to be sure, but powerful ones. The only real problems I see them having are the massive amount of SP their skills consume, the complete lack of utility, the fact that flip coin can't be relied upon in combat for five cents (heh), and the below-average survivability, which I contend that their damage-output more than makes up for. I'd suggest replacing the INT bonus of the Black Scarf with a significant reduction of SP consumption, say 30%.

There are a few other things that I could suggest that would make the class more attractive, but that would probably require tampering with skills;
-Give Increasing Accuracy a movementspeed buff for the duration of the skill. Gunslingers have no reliable ways of regaining distance between them and their targets, which severely gimps them when it comes to fighting players/strong monsters.
-Flip Coin should really have a higher success rate than 60% at max-level. Currently you can't replenish your coins mid-combat because of the rampant randomness of this skill.
-Give all of the mines their status effects back, and boost their chance of hitting. Freezing spheres used to freeze, flare spheres used to knock back, blind spheres blind, poison spheres poison, and I can't currently recall what the lightning spheres did, but I'm sure you can think of something to put there. This would certainly make gunslingers a lot more attractive in WoE, if nothing else.



Finally, in case the propositions for changing the Scarf are rejected, I'd like to throw in another idea into the mix: Consider the myst case hat, the siroma card, the salamander card, the dragontail card, etc. You could easily modify these cards to add equivalent buffs to related ninja/gunslinger skills, like throw zeny, lightning spear of ice, dragon fire formation and rapid shower, respectively. I'm not saying it'd get any non-ninjas/GSs excited about the classes, but it'd certainly make the current players of those classes a bit more content.