One hundred thousand posts!!

khuongduy004 wrote:The part about a certain class being so good can't be helped, the problem seems to persist in all the games I played. But about skills, that's the reason why I suggested cooldown on skills. It is to force you to use other skills, even if it is just for a few seconds. From my point of view, it would be more balanced if:

1. Skills have lower modifiers, so that default attacks are still worth using (for example, most skills should be around 120% - 200% atk / matk only)

2. Skills have cooldown, at least 2-4s on spam skills, 10-15s on most other average skills, and 30s - 1 min for heavy nuke or skills with OP effects

With the above, you would be using spam skills + default attacks for killing (mostly), then average skills if the situation calls for it, and save those long-ass-cooldown skills for emergency situations. Also, with cooldown, you could make a skill much stronger than other skills, while not having to afraid that it would "end up being so good that you never need anything else".

Still, that's just my opinion, I would like to hear what others have to say about that too.

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 [ I don't know about reducing so much the damage . . . I mean, if skills 120%~200% ATK only, they would deal as much damage as attacking twice with the skill maxed, meaning that thiefs and gunslinger's double attacks would be sorta like a passive skill that deal as much damage as a active skill that have cooldown, unless you put some sort of cooldown on to double attacks or reduce their damage to 150%~1xx% or something, but that seems stupid for me. also why bother using most of single-target skills if they'll deal the same as two hits anyway? high aspd attackers can ignore it, unless it's aoe or have a good chance of inflicting something. ]
[or so I believe, I might as well be utterly wrong]

[ I don't really play with mages so no comment for MATK based skills. my only character that really uses MATK is that [suicidal] sage of mine ]
[ and no, I don't have any better sugestions. ]
[ [[the SA thingy I meant was the 2nd class for SA]] ]

[ 99 523 ]

I think the real problem here is how much work implementing 3rds are about, and not how much we will actually have to change them. I mean, who cares about that anymore, the original is a mess.

"1. Skills have lower modifiers, so that default attacks are still worth using (for example, most skills should be around 120% - 200% atk / matk only)"
"2. Skills have cooldown, at least 2-4s on spam skills, 10-15s on most other average skills, and 30s - 1 min for heavy nuke or skills with OP effects"

You forgot about mage classes when making that. They dont use default attacks (except for Sages, but... you know), and so they must spam something fast. I understand how lame it is to spam a skill and dont even use the default attack, but that's what MANA or SOUL POINTS were supposed to limit.

In my opinion Mana and Cooldown have exatly the same purpose, limit how many times in a certain ammount of time you can use a certain skill. Using both makes me puke.
So choose it. It's either mana skills or cooldown skills, dont mix that shit.

Edit1: You can even make HP skills also.

99 522

[ wouldn't a 3rd class mage be fine during the cooldown by using the 1st-2nd class skills though? ]
[ I'm not sure how essential the 3rd's skills are but there shouldn't that much of a problem from what I believe ]
[ [[again I can be utterly wrong, as this come from a person who barely knows anything about the 3rd classes]] ]
[ [[yes, I'll be remembering people of that every single post]] ]

[ 99 521 ]

Oh... it was cooldown for the 3rd skills only?!
I totally messed up while thinking this time, sorry... well, of course it wouldn't be a problem if 1st and 2nd skills stay the way they are.

Edit1: If 3rds are applied as 2nds (check Lothar's Way in forums) then it would be a problem, but that won't happen, so cooldowns are ok in that case.

99 520

Even when the Lothar's Way is implemented, if I understand it correctly, then 3rd classes skill have 1st skills, and a few signature 2nd skills, right? So I don't think it would be much of a problem.

Also, we don't necessarily implement cooldown on everything like Gravity did, just keep the cooldown for a few skills that are obviously too much stronger than 2nd and trans skills. A few example of skills that surely need some cooldown, if the original effects are to be kept:

- Warlock's AoE spells, seeing the uber aoe and effects they have (15x15 Comet with burning, 15x15 Frost Misty with the new freezing status, 19x19 Jack Frost with 100% frozen chance, 15x9 Earth Strain that can strip). Even though for this to really work as a limitation we would need cooldown on Release too, because Release literally lets you spam 3-4 3rd skills within 2 seconds, bypassing all the cooldowns, but on the other hand, you need to "reload" using Reading Spellbook after releasing everything, so giving Release a cooldown could be debatable. But cooldown on those aoe offensive spells might mean that you can't have elemental advantage on mobs all the time.

- Archbishop's Praefatio, buffing Kyrie on all pt members within 37x37 cells is too much if it is allowed to be spammed, or may be a huge mana cost could be added to prevent spamming. Although mana cost can be bypassed easily just by spamming ygg, stacking AA or even the new Archbishop skill Epiclesis that regens 5% hp/sp per sec in an aoe for 30 secs.

- Of course, Epiclesis due to the effects stated above, lol

- Vacuum Extreme and Diamond Dust of Sorc might need to keep their original cooldowns too, as the effects they cause could be pretty OP.

- Royal Guard's Inspiration buff, that's too high bonuses to be kept on permanently.

- If you plan on removing Rune Knight's rune limitation of 20 runes per type (and I'm pretty sure you will), then Refresh rune would need cooldowns too. If that rune could be spammed, Rune Knight would be status-immune permanently

99 519

[ . . . . so much . . . . stuff ]
[ what the hell are those skill lol ]
[ I should probably read the skills through ]

[ 99 518 ]

Lemme summarize for you, lol

For warlock's spells, just keep in mind that Wiz / Highwiz's spell with biggest aoe is LoV with 11x11 aoe.

Comet is a spell with 15x15 aoe, with dmg ranging from 1800% - 5000% (depending on the distance of the target from the center of the spell). Iirc, the center where that 5000% matk happens is 3x3. It can pretty much guaranteed Burning effect. Burning deals DoT that is depending on yr max hp, so it is much much stronger than poison, even stronger than Deadly Poisoned state because it puts an icon above your head (so people know where you are when you are cloaking), and it de-cloak / interrupt your cast everytime the DoT is applied. Comet's original cooldown is 3 mins (although can be bypassed by releasing it through reading spellbook + release)

Reading Spellbook allows the user to "store" a few spells, then use Release to INSTANT CAST 1 stored spell each time. Because you can store multiple spells and Release has virtually no delay / cooldown, you can spam 2-4 release within 2s to cast them all at once. Also, because Release is a targeted spell, if you release a comet, it guarantees that the target will be in the center of the spell, so instant 5000% matk. You can store a maximum of 2 comets at once, which means instant 3600% - 10000% matk in 15x15 aoe (don't forget burning xD). Reading Spellbook + Release also has nothing to do with other skills' cooldown, so using these won't affect the cooldown of other skills, and you can also read + release a skill that is currently on cooldown (for example, you can manually cast 1 comet, then instantly release 2 more, that would kill pretty much everyone in the aoe lol)

Frost Misty inflicts new freezing status, this new status reduces movespeed by 50%, aspd by 15%, def by 10% and increase cast time by 15%. Yes it literally turns you into a turtle. And similar to burning, this puts an icon above your head, so cloaking / hiding won't help you to hide anymore. Has an official cooldown of 8s


Jack Frost is technically an improved Frost Nova, with uber aoe of 19x19 and 100% frozen chance. This skill has no cooldown officially.


Earth Strain deals dmg in a 15x9 aoe in front of you, and has 50% chance to strip weapon, helm, armor, shield or accessory. Original cooldown of Earth Strain is 10s. However, Earth Strain also can be casted through Release, and you can store a maximum of 4 Earth Strain.


Praefatio is a buff that gives Kyrie Eleison effect to all pt members in a 37x37 aoe around the caster. Due to MouRO's dmg limitation of 9999 per hit, Kyrie is actually more useful here than it is in the Vanilla version. So if you allow this to be spammed, a single Archbishop can render a whole pt immortal imo. Original cooldown is 40s at lvl 10.


Epiclesis is an improved version of Sanctuary. It has 5x5 aoe. Upon being casted, it will resu all dead allies within the aoe ONCE, then for the duration (30s), it will regen 5% hp/sp of anyone in the aoe every second. Also gives a bonus 25% max hp to anyone standing in that aoe. If you allow this skill to be spammed, no one will ever need mana again if they have an Archbishop by their side... The official cooldown of Epiclesis is 1 min.


Vacuum Extreme is an aoe Fiberlock that has 12s base duration. It will drag all enemies within the aoe (7x7 aoe) into its center. Also, while it is active, anyone stepping into the AoE will be sucked in too. I don't really remember Vacuum's cooldown, and irowiki doesn't seem to have it either. But back when it was first implemented, we could perma-lock MvP in Endless Tower with it, as the cooldown was lower than 12s for sure (around 5-6s)


Diamond Dust inflicts the new Crystalization effect at 50% chance. This effect is similar to stun (you can't do anything while under it), and it also drains 2% hp / 1% sp per sec. In other word, getting hit by this and you are a sitting duck waiting for the sorc to kill ya. Again I don't remember the skill's cooldown, but it was also around 5-6s.


Inspiration is a 90s-buff, 5-min-cooldown skill that boosts: +200 atk (with the renewal's atk formula, getting +200 atk means around 30-40% more total dmg), +25 hit, 25%+3000 max hp. It will also give immunity to all other negative statuses while active, and it can't be dispelled.


Refresh is a rune that cures all negative statuses (can be used even when you are stunned / frozen), and will grant negative status immunity for its duration. It lasts 1 min and has 2 mins cooldown.


As you can see, most of the above skills have either too strong effects to be spammed, or they are duration-based skills. So unless the buffs are heavily nerfed / skills heavily reworked, a cooldown would be needed to keep them balanced.


Although, from my opinion, nerfing them isn't a good idea, because half of them are improved 2nd skills (Praefatio is an aoe Kyrie Eleison, Jack Frost / Frost Misty are improved Frost Nova. Epiclesis is improved Sanctuary, Comet / Earth Strain are Meteor Storm / Heaven Drive with bigger aoe and new statuses). If they are nerfed, I'm afraid that they would become too similar to their 2nd skills, and we might end up with a "new classes, new skill names, but similar effects" system.


99 517

It does seem like the cooldown time IS required, that's what justifies the skill's overpower.

However, it does bring into mind a second issue: monster usage of these skills. It's entirely different when one warlock brings down a comet every five minutes, versus every monster of the same type using this skill once in their lifetime.

I'd need to add some kind of serious restriction to 3rd skills for monsters, or at least for skills that have a reuse delay. Perhaps the reuse delay should be applicable for all monsters given a certain map.

And... another reason why I wouldn't want to modify the third skills is.. it gets to be way too much changes, balance would be guaranteed to be impossible D: MouRO originally just changed a skill here and there, a little at a time (mostly because I found the original version of the skill either lame or too strong), and that's how it got where it is. I think for renewal, all skills should be left "vanilla," and only tune them up if there's some serious abuse going on.

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khuongduy004 wrote:Although, from my opinion, nerfing them isn't a good idea, because half of them are improved 2nd skills (Praefatio is an aoe Kyrie Eleison, Jack Frost / Frost Misty are improved Frost Nova. Epiclesis is improved Sanctuary, Comet / Earth Strain are Meteor Storm / Heaven Drive with bigger aoe and new statuses). If they are nerfed, I'm afraid that they would become too similar to their 2nd skills, and we might end up with a "new classes, new skill names, but similar effects" system.


99 517

I do have an idea for that kind of thing, but it's quite lame. If 3rds are applied as 3rds, as you said many skills just do what 1sts and 2nds did but better, my idea was to turn the 3rd skills into passives that improve the first ones. It actually doesnt change a shit of what's happening, the only thing is that the first skills would stay in the hotkeys, instead of accumulating dust in the skill tab.
To improve that and remove some of the lameness, you could then add some effects to the passives, or even give them some active functions like "commands", were activating it will make the skill behave in a different way, just like what Skotlex did with Monk's Triple Attack. That would mostly enhance gameplay other than power, so I dont think it's a real problem, and would actually add flavor to the game.

One example would be Praefatio being a passive that when activated turns Kyrie Eleison into an AoE (Increasing mana cost of course), it's passive effects could be either increasing Kyrie Eleison effects, duration, lowering mana cost, giving a chance to do something new, giving Kyrie Eleison another buff, or anything of that kind.

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Lothar Axe wrote:To improve that and remove some of the lameness, you could then add some effects to the passives, or even give them some active functions like "commands", were activating it will make the skill behave in a different way, just like what Skotlex did with Monk's Triple Attack. That would mostly enhance gameplay other than power, so I dont think it's a real problem, and would actually add flavor to the game.

One example would be Praefatio being a passive that when activated turns Kyrie Eleison into an AoE (Increasing mana cost of course), it's passive effects could be either increasing Kyrie Eleison effects, duration, lowering mana cost, giving a chance to do something new, giving Kyrie Eleison another buff, or anything of that kind.

Yea, even though that can work out pretty well for some skills, there are a few new 3rd skills that you can't really fit into any other 1st or 2nd skills. For example, how would you fit Royal Guard's spear skills into Pally's current skill set? On the other hand, if you give Pally those skills with their original effects, then who would even use Holy Cross, Shield Boomerang or Shield Chain anymore?

The reason why we even suggested to implement 3rd on its own in the first place, is because of the above issue. Most 3rd classes play styles are completely different from 2nd. A few examples are: Royal Guard is offensive-oriented, compared to Pally being more defensive-oriented; Sage is a single target autospell nuker, while Sorc is more on aoe-dmg and crowd control; sinx is about killing asap with EDP, but guillotine cross focuses more on disabling and annoying people with new poisons, etc. Of course, there are classes that almost stay the same, but for the classes whose roles have changed significantly with 3rd, you can't really implement new skills as a boost for old skills. On the other hand, if you put 3rd skills in the "vanilla" way, then for sure there will be untouched skills. People would just pick the new skills (for the cases where new skills are an upgraded version of old skills, such as the bishop's aoe buffs and heal instead of single target buffs of acolyte), or they would pick the best of both worlds (for the cases where a class' role is totally changed, such as picking defensive skills from pally, then offensive skills from royal guard)

Seriously, even with the current system, we have enough "useless" skills that people barely touch, don't give us more reasons to ignore even more skills  Just implement 3rd using Lothar's Way.

Skot, if you are too lazy to change everything all at once, you can do it the simple way: implement everything with their current effects and such, just reduce the dmg modifiers to fit into MouRO's current numbers. Then we can start tampering around with cooldown / delay / effects later on.

 99 514

Well... another thing is the damage cap. 5000% atk skills with 180second delays are pretty useless if they just hit for 9999 damage. Either the cap is increased to 99999 or removed altogether. And I am quite worried about the unintended consequences that might bring.

Toning down the damage modifiers will not help, because it just makes these "uber" skills pointless, and neither would decreasing the general damage equations to make accommodations for them, as it would require HP adjustments to avoid battle from being too slow... and it's basically the same as raising the cap, in a more complicated way :s

99 513

Removing damage cap is a must man... it's not cool to have that, seriously. Mou isn't that much of a serious server anyway, so dont mind that thing that much. And I'm sure there wont be that many Overpowered things if you remove that damage cap, just fix a few and everything will be alright. If everything get messed up I'm sure players will test it enough and give all details to how to fix it, that's how things were done all these years.

Any delay over 10 seconds is bullshit, wich is pretty much the average time killing a common mob in Ragnarok. Why? Why have a skill that can be used once every 20 encounters? Why make MVP or HUGE MOBS only skills? That's lame man.
"Oh, but it pretty much kills shit at once", whatever? Where's the fun?
"Oh, but I can blast shit at once", whatever? Do that with MERIT, with some badass build you made, you conquered, which you sacrificed everything else to achieve.
"Oh, but it's easier to kill that way", whatever? Where's the fun other than in challenge? Hitting that Infinite HP Boss or surviving that endless horde of monsters with endless combinations of skills, testing your own player skills and might, that's the shit a game is about!

Ahem... anyways, I recommend delays dont go over 10s and damage cap to be removed, so the game actually gets interesting. I'm not playing a farm manager, I'm playing a fucking action RPG game, give me fast-different-tools (skills) to wreak havoc (hunt) in the land (rune-midgard)!

99 512

remove damage cap => 30k holy lights in rapid succession

Is it possible for us to implement individual damage cap for each skill instead of removing the cap totally? Like for example, a comet could hit at most 49999 instead of 9999? Or you can make a few skills to have multiple hits, like you did with Heaven Drive. That would technically allow the skill to bypass damage cap, while doesn't affect other skills.

Regarding comet's specific case, it deals 20 sub-hits in vanilla, so I think it makes sense to change it to hit 5 times, with 4 or 5 sub-hits each (4 sub-hits mean it retains the 20-hit-total thingy, while 5 just seems like a nicer number to me, lol). That could give it the damage cap of 50k.

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khuongduy004 wrote:Is it possible for us to implement individual damage cap for each skill instead of removing the cap totally? Like for example, a comet could hit at most 49999 instead of 9999? Or you can make a few skills to have multiple hits, like you did with Heaven Drive. That would technically allow the skill to bypass damage cap, while doesn't affect other skills.

Regarding comet's specific case, it deals 20 sub-hits in vanilla, so I think it makes sense to change it to hit 5 times, with 4 or 5 sub-hits each (4 sub-hits mean it retains the 20-hit-total thingy, while 5 just seems like a nicer number to me, lol). That could give it the damage cap of 50k.

99 511

sounds good

Well, I could make exceptions for skills, but it'd be better if the exception existed for a "category" of skills rather than just specific cases. For instance, one could say third-skills have a limit of 99k.

Though, removing the cap would seem easier to understand... but some stuff is sure going to get broken that way. And what guarantees that anybody will report that, Lothar? In the past players have been perfectly happy using skills that do the most damage, without ever stopping to consider "we don't need any other skills!" to be considered a balancing problem.

If, for instance, Holy Light were the worst case, nobody would notice/report anything until you start seeing everybody change their class to an acolyte based one :S

Of course, I could just remove the cap and let "whatever happens, happens," is not like I am going to convince anybody that I still care about balance, or the server in general ;_;'

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Well... what guarantees... nothing. I actually thought the actual players and remaining veterans would report it though, since people are somehow interested in fixing the server, if I got it wrong then I'm sorry and ignore what I said.

If people will report it then I don't see a problem in leaving the server unbalanced for a while (removing damage cap and adding 3rds as they are for testing). It's not as if the server would die or scare newbies because it's broken or anything, somehow I think it's more interesting to get into a server that is like: "Hey, we are testing the game to make it better." wich is pretty much like Mou's appeal to: "Hey, try changing Ragnarok to your liking, that if you win the admin with proper arguments!". I mean, which servers do that? It's a one life chance to help fix this fucking broken game.

Anyway, the server isn't even serious right now, it's like a testing haven with small parties, we don't have competitive PVP neither WoE, guilds are just farming for a few, I mean... why so serious? Just do it, do something, take a step and we follow.

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Imo, if we do it the Lothar's Way, then either you remove the cap altogether, or make specific cases for skills to do more than 1 hit (like Heaven Drive). Because for this method, it means 3rd classes should be on par with trans. There would be no reason for their skills to bypass the cap while 2nd and trans skills are limited to 9999.

On the other hand, if you implement 3rd the vanilla way, then sure, removing cap for 3rd skills alone won't be a problem, though I'm just afraid that most 2nd and trans skills would be ignored totally if this happens.

Also, Lothar is right, the game currently is just about PvE, there hasn't been any serious PvP / WoE going on for a damn long time already. It's not like breaking the balance for a few months or more could worsen the server's current situation.

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[ by the way, if you do implement it the lothar's way, the skills of the 3rd's will have cooldown while the 2nd/trans will have delay? ]

[ 99 506 ]
[[ we are approaching 500 post YaaY ]]

just give thirds a delay time that is proportional to their damage ratio compared to trans.

ie. if comet does 5x as much damage as meteor storm, then give it a delay 10x as much as MS (10x because of DMR).
that way thirds can still choose stats between damage vs cast speed. if you do a fixed cooldown, then all thirds will focus on pure damage an vitality and they won't have as many possibilities as trans classes. boooring

soooooooooooo skot, how is the porting process going? when will we see mouro on rathena?

It's weird, but I've been very busy with different things I have to do with my family or friends :S

Mostly, I am updating the client so there can be something more fresh and less buggy to play with. So far, the adata.grf has been updated, the hexed client is updated, and I am updating the contents of the bdata.grf. I've tried to work at least an hour or two per weekday on Mou.

It's scary that I can't really test the new client without updating the grfs, and even after I get it to launch, I still have to get the server to accept a connection :S So... I wonder how much bug-fixing will be needed once that is done.

And after THAT is done, I can go back to migrating Mou to rAthena.

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PS: One thing I do agree with, is that "fixed unchangeable cooldown" is not a good model for skills. As Vitriol mentioned, that kind of mechanic in place would ensure that you just focus on maximum damage, and forget about trying to reduce casting delays. The problem is, RO in general works with cooldowns that are applicable to doing ANYTHING else, which really screws up the idea of certain skills having very high reuse delays.

I think I'll end up letting the delay-reduction from stats (at least) apply also to skill-specific reuse delays.

ETA for thirds?      

Wow, progress.

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P.S: Docile Vitriol is docile.

teehee, if you want to be on top, just say so!

to e honest, I don't give a fuck about skot's progress. I'm about to assemble my i7-4770k, gtx 670 rig in a few days. its unlikely that an updated mouro will be more fun than any of the alternatives.

I just love seeing people asking for thirds. skot spends so much time implementing them, and when he is finished he will have maybe 10 players online, which quickly drops down to 1 or 2 after the novelty has worn off. you guys are trolling him worse than I ever did.

can't you see skot? i'm the only one here who is really on your side.














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I've watched over you since you were but a wee child. and how you've grown into such a fine, diligent man! with sparkling eyes, luscious lips and fat buns! it pains me to see those bastards taking advantage of you!