BoxerTurtles

"Full Potential." You get out what you put into a class - if you put 40% in, you get 40% out. I've seen this over several MMOs (most commonly with healers, which B&S doesn't really have) and never have I seen such radical changes just because people are physically incapable of playing a class to its fullest potential, for whatever reason. Hand diff, skill gap, brain gap. Very rarely is the problem actually caused by the existence of the class itself. Fast stance swapping. Hand diff. I did it more regularly than I want to admit and at no point did I feel that it was detrimental to playing the class, I just had to be less trigger-happy with LMB/RMB and pay attention to what I was doing. Sometimes I looked goofy for using Divine Veil instead of Blazing Wall. It was whatever lol. It was not a fault of the class, it was the fault of the pilot - me. I have less than zero proficiency in Korean but I somehow find it hard to accept that particularly Fire FMs are more powerful without any kind of data. How is this supposed to be stronger? In what environments? Under what conditions? With what gear? And this still does not address the fact that the changes were dropped on us like a seagull turd. It came from a great height and it came out of freaking nowhere. People don't like being crapped on by seagulls, they also don't like having everything they know completely turned on its head and then some without any warning. I'm talking a simple "Hi folks! In the Symphony of Destruction update, the Force Master specialisations - Way of the Flame, Way of the Frost - will receive an overhaul. Here is what you can expect." or whatever saturated fluff takes fancy of whoever writes the patch notes/news posts. It should be unacceptable that such heavy hammered changes came through and nobody noticed or was notified in advance. It's not a minor change like "Blazing Palm does 10 more damage than before" that goes undocumented, this was an entire overhaul for what was one of the most popular classes in the game. If this ever happens again to another class, I hope that they receive ample warning of what is to come.

It has been well over a full week since I posted. Patch notes are STILL not updated with the full extent of the Force Master changes; STILL only listing the badge changes. This topic has not been acknowledged by any member of staff that I can see, nor does it seem like we will actually get the full patch notes detailing exactly how many changes they made to a class beloved by many. We want acknowledgement. We want an explanation, if one that doesn't sound like a complete fob-off exists, as to why this class was utterly decimated in the eyes of the playerbase. This change was completely soul crushing to the point where several players I know have class changed their FM or completely shelved it entirely. I shelved mine and I will probably not return to it for the foreseeable future, as I honestly do not see a reversion coming and I have no desire to play a class that I feel was completely torn out from under me.

I'm not as much of a long-term dedicated FM as some others (I mained Fire FM for 2-3 years until the update) but this update.. feels like a slap in the face to everything I loved and learned about the class. I'm a firm believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and cannot wrap my head around this change. If we had full, comprehensive update notes, it wouldn't have been as much as a shock (while still jarring). At this time of posting, and being aware that GreenStorm mentioned hoping to be putting the full notes up later this week, the patch notes only say: Even being a member of some highly informational Discords, I thought to myself "oh, that's it?". And then I logged on, lol. The layout of the skills feels awful, in a word. I'm personally still befuddled at putting the Parry on 2, after YEARS of having 2 as our main dps button - it was very jarring to wrestle with muscle memory. I know Summoners have their counter on 4 - while most classes I have dabbled in will have it on tab or 1. With the FM rework, it forcibly moved Fire Tab (parry) to 2, and permanently put Ice Tab in its place - which shunted our main DPS button to RMB. Now, pressing 2 does open up our KD, Short Fuse, and Divine Veil. But they are not in their.. "proper" positions. For as long as I played FM, Veil was C in Ice stance. Not anymore. It's X, trading places with Short Fuse. Why? I can't speak for all Fire FMs but I really, really don't like this change. Where's our Shadow Grasp aoe/mob pull? Why move abilities in the case of Short Fuse, Divine Veil, Blazing Beam/Dragonchar, and Fire Storm (parry)? How did such a MASSIVE overhaul get dumped on us without any prior warning or context? I don't know how the changes affected Ice, as that's not a spec I have much experience with, but from the perspective of a Fire FM enjoyer this is insanity.

I don't think it's exclusive to Musician - a friend of mine made a Warden alongside my Musician (both voucher boosted) and hasn't been able to get any achievements, story-related or otherwise. Achievements generally seem a bit wonky with this update - I got achievements from offals and skillbooks on my Musician, but did not get the achievement for beating Yunsang nor any achievements relating to raids after clearing those quests.