Thanatos Tower & Basement Update!

[GM-Ciar]

Info on new gears and the rebalanced orcus set can be found below.

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The gray gears bring with them a new kind of gameplay: the Near Death "red health" builds. To be strongest when you're at your weakest- high risk for high reward. Though each pieces combo individually with the body piece to allow greater flexibility in how dedicated you want to be with the full red health build.


Gray Shield [1]
Type: Shield
Def: 4
Weight: 60
Usable Class: Every trans 2nd job

MDEF + 4
Max HP + 400
Disable natural HP regeneration.
For every refine rate of this equipment, add a 0.5% chance to negate all physical damage for 2 seconds when physically or magically attacking while the user is Near Death.
[+Armor of Gray]
Max HP + 10%
[+Robe of Gray]
The activation rate of Shield of Gray's effect is doubled.

Gray Boots [1]
Type: Footwear
Def: 3
Weight: 40
Usable Class: Every trans 2nd job

MDEF + 3
For each refine rate of this equipment, increase ATK and MATK by 1.
[+Armor of Gray or Robe of Gray]
Max HP + 10%
When the user is Near Death and is attacking or casting spells, quintuple the ATK and MATK provided by this equipment.

Gray Cloak [1]
Type: Garment
Def: 4
Weight: 60
Usable Class: Every trans 2nd job
Required Level: 60

MDEF + 4
For every refine rate of this equipment, gain Perfect Dodge + 1.
[+Armor of Gray or Robe of Gray]
Max HP + 10%
When the user is Near Death and is attacked, quadruple the Perfect Dodge provided by this equipment.

Gray Helmet [1]
Type: Upper Headgear
Def: 4
Weight: 45
Usable Class: Every trans 2nd job

Disables natural HP regeneration.
ASPD + 4%
Cast speed - 5%.
This ASPD and Cast Speed bonus is quadrupled when the user is Near Death and is attacking or casting spells.
[+Armor of Gray or Robe of Gray]
Max HP + 10%
All stats + 1

Gray Armor [1]
Type: Armor
Def: 7
Weight: 240
Usable Class: Lord Knight, Paladin, Assassin Cross, Stalker, Whitesmith, Creator

Disables natural HP regeneration.
Max HP +500
When the user is Near Death, ATK & MATK +20%

Gray Robe [1]
Type: Armor
Def: 5
Weight: 60
Usable Class: High Priest, Champion, High Wizard, Professor, Sniper, Clown, Gypsy

MDEF + 5
Disables natural HP regeneration.
Max HP + 300
When the user is Near Death and is attacking or casting spells, gain ATK & MATK +15%, Heal Power +10% and reduce after-cast delay by 10%.

Gray Potion
Type: Consumable
Weight: 1

Reduces your current HP by 76% of your max HP, instantly bringing you to red health (minimum 1 HP).

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The Orcus Gears and combos have been rebalanced to be in line with the rest of HeRO's high end gears. They are still powerful, but not to the extent where every other gear is completely inferior and undesirable in comparison.

The new effects retain the stat boosts, meaning your stat bonuses remain intact (130 str builds, etc) but have less drastic secondary bonuses, in favor of a minor but useful offensive stat to the class that commonly wears them.

However, we still understand that these changes might not please everyone, and a few builds may need to be recalculated. Therefore, for 1 month starting from the time of this post, we will be offering de-cards to any orcus gear (Kauvra Boots, Green Babydoll, Orcus Bracer, Quah-Nomag Glove, Harthoon Heart). Simply send a support ticket and we will contact you as soon as we can.

The new Orcus gear effects can be found below.

Orcus Bracer [1]
0 Defense
STR + 2
Atk + 3%
[Combo]
STR+ 3
ATK + 3%
HIT + 3

Note: ATK power is toned down and Hit is reduced by 2. However, compare to the old combo, now it works for classes that rely on ATK power boost like soul breaker sinx and whitesmith (like what the old combo "claimed" to do, though does not due to coding errors.)

Harthoon Hearth [1]
0 Defense
INT + 2
MATK + 3%
[Combo]
INT + 3
MATK + 3%
Cast delay -3%

Note: previously, this gear is also bugged and provided no actual bonus standalone without the combo. Comparing old combo and new combo, you will only lose 4% matk and not 7% matk. The 1 point of dex is traded for cast delay reduction.

Quah-Nomag Gloves [1]
0 Defense
AGI + 2
ASPD + 3%
[Combo]
AGI + 3
ATK + 3%
ASPD +3%

Gloves got the most massive change to lose all defensive bonus, but now it's re-purposed to focus on ASPD while the attack power boost remains on the combo aspect. ATK boost now boosts base attack instead of % dmg boost as well (again, something the old item claims to do, but does not.)

There are no changes to Green Babydoll and Kaurva Boots.

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Why the change?

There's nothing wrong with gears being top of the line. There will always be Best in Slot gears. The problem for Orcus accessory combos is that they are the best for 4 different gear slots in almost every scenario without any trade-off, pushing every other gear's relevancy aside. Unless you are playing FS builds or a secondary tier/meme builds, it's the default gears to go to. The accessory combos were powerful stat-sticks that help you in every situation, giving high offensive power on top of barely any drop in defensive abilities. Only the garment slot with Proxy and Valk Mant really put up any real fight. The gloves combo providing perfect dodge and a massive 30 flee without any cards is an example of how it covers defense very respectably on top of maintaining ultimate offense at the same time.

The gears are also plagued by coding errors, as noted above, making it really hard to evaluate what it was actually doing. Orcus Bracer was doing more than its item description claimed, so it wasn't too difficult to fix it back to item description. The others were actually doing less than it claimed. If we "fix" it to match item description, the gloves and hearth will be even more powerful.

Therefore, we decided to rework the extreme bonuses and turn it into something that is still good, but actually balanced.

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And a personal note from myself (GM-Ciar), stating my opinion only, after reading everything on forum regarding how this was added. The original idea as per this post was that Orcus Bracer would be strictly a STR equivalent to Orleans Glove, which is a very fine addition. But, somewhere down the road, the bracer and the rest of the gears were changed, boosted massively, maybe to promote parties there, with little T&D discussion or feedback, at least from what I can see on the forum.

I'm aware these changes will dishearten many. It's part of the reason why it took 3 years to finally get this over with since it was first brought up. But when we come to think about it, when was the last time a party, any party, visited or considered visiting Thanatos' Basement for exp, or loot from the regular monsters? It was in 2016. Beside the same small groups of top-end players, when was the last time anyone even bothered to fight any of the MVPs in the map after dropping in for Orcus only? Who knows.

Accessibility is a huge issue too, with the map requiring quite a bit of time and questing to access. We will be tackling this in future updates as well. In conclusion, I hope both Thanatos Tower and the basement become more popular than before, and also hope everyone understands it is a necessary change and ultimately beneficial in the long run for HeRO.