Scaraba creatures

[The Roger]

After my dicussion about the queen mvp card, i realized whats maybe the real point of the issue: the will to not allow somewhat efficient ways to kill them using physical melee/ranged attacks.

Lets analyze all the common scarabas:

One-Horned scaraba: def 60, vit 20
-Autoguard lv 5 always
-Defender lv 3 when hit by long range attacks

Two-Horned scaraba: def 10, vit 45
-Defender lv 3 when hit by long range attacks

The two little scaraba monsters are easy, with the 2horned being the easiest.


Antler Scaraba: 25 def, 60 vit, 41500 hp
-Defender lv 5
-Stun Attack

Rake Scaraba: def 50, vit 75, 45600 hp
-Defender lv 5
-Hammer Fall

Why give them Defender lv 5? It totally exclude any viable long range strategy: spiral pierce/double strafe for single target, sharpshooting for mobs... And melee isnt a good choice either, with generally high def and stun skills.

From how the rake and antler scarabas are designed it apperas that the efficient way to kill them is fire magics, but the problem im pointing at is that the physical approaches to them are almost all cut off, especially the ranged physical.
With defender at lv 5 its not viable longrange fight them even with high-end gears, but the point of high-end gears is to make life easier or expand fighting strategies choices.

Its fine that for the low-end, mid-end geared player/s they are not pleasant to fight melee/ranged, but for high-end geared players too i dont think is balanced.

RO is a game built to let players increment their efficiency through better equips and it should be possible to face situations in more than one single forced choice.

So im suggesting to Lower Defender Skill on Scaraba creature from 3/5 to 1.

They will still be a bit more resistant to long range physical attacks (20% less damage received) instead of totally exclude it.

[Aaronock]

Because some dungeons have different setups for how they are fought.

Its clear the dungeon is meant to be a turnoff for most long range, physical strategies. There are still plenty of Melee moves that will eat through the Scarabs.

50 Defense sounds like a lot on Rake Scaraba, but its not that bad. A strong bowling bash user still will eat through that hp like nothing. Cart Termination will eat through your money pretty fast if you want to use it, but still pretty effective, and not a bad leveling spot for WS.

A combo kicker or combo monk might do okay, but its a mobby place in floor 2 compared to level one, so I wouldn't recommend it...but still doable if you have the gears I'd imagine.

They rarely cast hammerfall. I'm pointing this out because I did level a hi wiz there (solo), and even when SW'ing to go into SG...yah, I rarely ever saw it.

[The Roger]

Defender lv2 its fine too, the lv2 is 35% longrange reduction, its already alot but why to cut entirely the longrange strategies putting defender maxed at lv 5 for 80% range dmg reductions....

[Aaronock]

Defender lv2 its fine too, the lv2 is 35% longrange reduction, its already alot but why to cut entirely the longrange strategies putting defender maxed at lv 5 for 80% range dmg reductions....

Dude, for the same reasons magic reflect is given to some monsters, to have you create other strategies for tackling places, or that other classes are given a chance to shine in a party at least in one location.

Considering Snipers get pretty much the whole game to farm in if they gear for it...Snipers can have a few maps that are pretty much not for them such as Scaraba and Dolo Maps.

[The Roger]

I think is more like having monsters with high MDEF (so with vesper card plus +10 staff of piercing you could easily destroy them with magic for example of high-end gears) but those monstre also have Magic Reflect.

Even with defender lv 2 Snipers would still have a hard time:
150dex BurningBow+6 with queen scaraba card and fire arrows, sniper set and magmaring card in garment, SharpShooting skill damage is...

Defender lv 5
Rake Scaraba: 837 (55 SS to kill it)
Antler Scaraba: 1268 (33 SS to kill it)

Defender lv 4
Rake Scaraba: 1435 (32 SS to kill it)
Antler Scaraba: 2219 (19 SS to kill it)

Defender lv 3
Rake Scaraba: 2093 (22 SS to kill it)
Antler Scaraba: 3171 (14 SS to kill it)

Defender lv 2:
Rake Scaraba: 2720 (17 SS to kill it)
Antler Scaraba: 4122 (11 SS to kill it)

Defender lv 1:
Rake Scaraba: 3348 (14 SS to kill it)
Antler Scaraba: 5073 (9 SS to kill it)

No defender:
Rake Scaraba: 4186 (11 SS to kill it)
Antler Scaraba: 6342 (7 SS to kill it)


Maybe Defender lv 3 its fair enough, but u can see that even with lv2 only it would take 11~17 SS to kill a mob and they will cast heavens drive and earth spike at you.
It will still be difficoult but not impossible. Now its impossible with lv 5 defender.

For comparison:
High Wizard with 99 int/dex and only +7 SOP and salamander card in amplify will deal on them like 7k~8k each meteor (7k~8k is the sum of all 5 hits of 1 meteor)

Im not asking to make physical ranged damaging strategies easy, im asking to make them possible.

[The Legendary Joe]

My only complaint with the scaraba mobs is that the rake scaraba egg hatches WAY too quickly after it's damaged. It's hard to get enough damage off on them before they hatch and you lose out on the chance at that imperial guard.

[The Roger]

My only complaint with the scaraba mobs is that the rake scaraba egg hatches WAY too quickly after it's damaged. It's hard to get enough damage off on them before they hatch and you lose out on the chance at that imperial guard.

Oh yeah, its like IcePick CT or nothing (their mdef its insane too, 60 x_x).
Or Asura. Supertedious with asura.

[Summerstream]

My only complaint with the scaraba mobs is that the rake scaraba egg hatches WAY too quickly after it's damaged. It's hard to get enough damage off on them before they hatch and you lose out on the chance at that imperial guard.

Oh yeah, its like IcePick CT or nothing (their mdef its insane too, 60 x_x).
Or Asura. Supertedious with asura.

Bragi'd esma was one of the ways I was able to get it murdered fast enough on my linker. Other way was with lex.
Note: Best I have for mdef pierce for my linker is a single necro carded dex survivor rod. I do just fine on her when I take on no more than two mobs at once.

Water ball is also a viable option as well. I did just fine running around on my hwiz there, too, though not as successfully as Aaronock. I don't like moving, and uh.. my cast is slower than it should be.

I don't really notice the damage boost with Shield Charge when using the imperial shield. Perhaps I should go about farming a second and trying to over upgrade it and actually go beat the stuffing out of mobs with it. I did not notice the boost to GC/HC damage, though. The 10% wasn't really much, but my paladin also isn't in the build for actually playing around with GC. One of the few builds I haven't actually tried~ I leveled as a Shield build~

----

General thoughts:

Honestly, there are places that were not designed for ranged classes, and that is okay. It was intended that Scaraba and Dolomedes would be part of this limiter. Sort of like you don't level a mage in the same spots you do a swordsman, especially when you don't have all these fancy gears to be able to be on par with the swordie brethren. Sure, it's frustrating for people who have all the fancy gears they need, but sometimes you need to bite the bullet and simply use another character if you want to farm.

I've seen Knights, Mage-types (including ninjas and soul linkers), Whitesmiths and Rouge-Staker be very successful in these places.

Sometimes you just have to think outside of the box and step outside the boundaries that classes SEEM to have. Just like how Stalkers are always underrated, and people assuming that DG can't be partied~

[The Legendary Joe]

My only complaint with the scaraba mobs is that the rake scaraba egg hatches WAY too quickly after it's damaged. It's hard to get enough damage off on them before they hatch and you lose out on the chance at that imperial guard.

Oh yeah, its like IcePick CT or nothing (their mdef its insane too, 60 x_x).
Or Asura. Supertedious with asura.

Given their 90 vit, Seems like Acid Demonstration would be viable for 1-shotting them too, but don't think it'd be worth the mats....

[Poofy]

I'll admit, initially it was a bit upsetting for me to see how many things have pnemua and defender here. Working your way through quests just to find Dolomedes have defender, work to Dracos to find out that they too have Defender and then that some of the mobs in there also have pneuma wasn't a good feeling and initially it felt like I wasted my time through quests. Really though, the more I thought on it the more I was okay with this. Things can't necessarily be left as is from official given the prerenewal environment and I've come to appreciate a lot of the decisions. A lot of things are just Sniper food, if they die before they hit you then you're golden right? Toning that nonsense back gave a lot of creative freedom on what the area wants to encourage. The fact that this pushes non-hunting builds to not stand around and watch while everything is obliterated (pretty much anything melee) and encourages partying is a great thing I think. Granted, I think certain pushes have put Wizards in the best spot but perfect balance is never a thing that can be achieved.

tl;dr, I enjoy how Scaraba is in its current state despite a Sniper being my only current hunting class.